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The Alternatives Mason: Building Alts Knowledge Brick by Brick | Episode 31 | Navigating AI & Authenticity: A Dive Into Branding with Emily Binder
10 Plays8 hours ago
Join Brittany Mason in this enlightening episode of The Alternative Mason as she interviews Emily Binder, founder of Beetle Moment Marketing and Wealth Voice. They discuss the importance of having an informed point of view for building a strong brand, the evolving role of authenticity in content marketing, and strategies for overcoming a traumatic relationship with money. Emily also shares her journey into finance and marketing, the significance of self-advocacy, and the impact of AI on content creation.
Key Takeaways:
- Developing a clear and informed point of view is crucial for differentiating your brand.
- Authenticity fosters trust and strengthens your connection with your audience.
- Starting investments early builds financial resilience and long-term wealth.
- Understanding and leveraging social media algorithms can boost your marketing efforts.
- Embracing mindfulness, meditation, and managing stress improves energy and productivity.
- Future trends include AI, cryptocurrency, and innovative content strategies.
Connect with us below!
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Transcript
The Essence of Branding: Authenticity and Perspective
00:00:00
Speaker
What sets you apart as a brand is having an informed point of view. It doesn't have to be a hundred percent different from everyone else, just for the sake of being different, but you need to have a point of view.
00:00:12
Speaker
And I think also with the brand authenticity is an overused word, but just like at the beginning of this conversation, you alluded to something about money beliefs. I don't know the story, but I'm sure you've, maybe it's been told before or like my POV about marketing.
00:00:30
Speaker
and the foundation of a brand and the importance of content, you know, that is strung together over time. Some people say you should never give away content or value for free, because if you give it for free, why would they pay you?
00:00:42
Speaker
That's the opposite POV that I have. you have to like put that kind of stake in the ground and you will it over.
Guest Introduction: Meet Emily Binder
00:01:03
Speaker
because we have a very special guest, one of my personal favorites, Emily Binder. She is the founder of Beatle Moment Marketing and Wealth Voice, the top voice of ai marketing app and financial services.
00:01:17
Speaker
She's a lead strategist, speaker and consultant for firms like td de TD Ameritrade and Dimensional Fund Advisors, helping advisors and executives simplify their brands through smart tech, voice and authentic storytelling.
00:01:31
Speaker
With 15 years of experience at the intersection of finance, branding and innovation, Emily is known for helping people turn noise into influence and for reminding reminding us that money, like marketing, is a mirror and not a monster.
00:01:46
Speaker
Very excited to have you on, Emily. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today. you're welcome, Brittany. I'm happy to be here with you. I think you are just such a brilliant um mind in the industry, bridging marketing and finance together. I first met you at the Jolt conference a few years ago, and I really enjoyed, um you know, your your talk and your style.
Emily's Journey: From Psychology to Financial Marketing
00:02:09
Speaker
What drew you to the industry in the first place? How did you get started? I've always been student of markets and behavior, behavioral economics.
00:02:22
Speaker
I was a psychology major, actually, but I had a marketing career where I was working in all kinds of industries, different categories like entertainment, travel, telecom, and then i had clients in financial services when I started my consultancy, Beatle Moment, eight years ago.
00:02:39
Speaker
It was actually Ritholtz, and that was my first RIA client, which is kind of a ah cool one to start with. And I really liked just learning about kind of wealth management and that get got into funds and other other areas of financial services, but had always the marketing and the voice marketing background, like the podcast space I've been in since, I think, 2012.
00:03:05
Speaker
I like the industry. i like I like talking about money. I think it's such a taboo and a stigma and it shouldn't be. yes you know Essentially, money is a neutral tool, but it's so loaded and so activating, unfortunately.
00:03:17
Speaker
And people need to feel better about it. They want to. right yes There's so many things. that like It's a ricochet effect of good things in relationships, in society. in the economy when people understand money better, feel better about money, talk about it more openly, manage it in a positive, healthy manner.
00:03:38
Speaker
Absolutely. And I'm sure, you know, with your history of psychology and, and um you know, I mean, the relationship with money, we all have a relationship to money and it starts or very early on.
00:03:52
Speaker
And I mean, how that shapes us is, is everything. And I know a lot of people have a lot of trauma when it comes to their relationship with money, which is why I think that it is such a taboo subject.
00:04:04
Speaker
I'm one of those people actually. And I think that for me, like, yeah, my personal journey into finance was very unique as well. So Jolt was my, actually my very first finance conference.
00:04:15
Speaker
And I would say, yeah marketing is, has always been Um, you know, and yeah, for sure. Something that's more easier to, to come into rather than finance, just because of my personal history, um, with money. And so I had to really get over that. And, um, so for our listeners, how, what would you say about, because so many people are intimidated, i think getting into the financial industry and building that relationship to money, what would be your advice to people that perhaps have,
00:04:48
Speaker
um a traumatic relationship with with money. Do you mean like an everyday person?
Financial Wisdom for Young Women
00:04:55
Speaker
Yeah, anyone. Because we have a very eclectic type of audience.
00:04:59
Speaker
Okay, great, great. You know, I actually have a real place in my heart for especially young women when it comes to money. Like here's what I would say. This this audience I think is interesting and I've made content on YouTube for years really that was directed toward like people just out of college or somebody who wants to start a business.
00:05:18
Speaker
um The thing is, stop looking at social media so much because it's going to make you feel like you're behind. Okay, so we've seen stats that have come out the last couple weeks about the average age of first-time home ownership, I believe, is roughly 38, whereas it used to be like 26, 20, 30 years ago. And so things are delayed. It's happening later. It's harder to afford these things that our parents who had like a middle management basic job with a house and two vacations a year and a new car every couple of years. It's just things have gotten a lot more expensive.
00:05:53
Speaker
So I don't, I think a lot of people feel behind and they feel shame, but then they also have this keeping up with the Joneses and sort of the external,
00:06:06
Speaker
tenants of what looks like wealth, but then you actually start to see that loud luxury is now what poor people do. So the whole thing is is different. um I guess the advice though is really, even if you think it doesn't amount to anything, like it's $20 or $50, if you're 20 years old, just like automate $50 a month.
00:06:28
Speaker
Automate. You'll never miss it. You think it's not worth doing because it's so little money, get just Google compound interest. Google it and calculate it. and And there's that new, what's the name of, um it's Gerstner with the the baby the baby money, baby wealth. What's that government program where all the kids now get like $1,000 or, do you know what I'm talking about? I'm not familiar with it. It was a couple years ago at Future Proof. I saw him and i think he was with Josh Brown on stage talking about the idea of it and now they're actually doing it. That is fantastic.
00:06:59
Speaker
get started. every Everyone that's born gets, I think it's like $1,000 or something. It's invested into the market. You can't touch it until a certain age and you can only take it out to put a down payment on a home to pay for education, things like that.
00:07:13
Speaker
But it's compounding. Compounding. That's key. People feel like, A lot of people feel like they they started playing Monopoly like in the purples and they're never going to get to the boardwalk. I started, I have $4. I'm never going to catch up.
00:07:25
Speaker
This gives people that sense of, wait, I have $100,000. I'm 21 and I had this account since I was a baby. yeah like I can play in this game. I'm in the game. Yeah.
00:07:36
Speaker
Yeah. ah I wish I would have started young. Start young. That's it. And even if it's 20 bucks, if you think it doesn't matter, it it all compounds. The younger, the better. Start yesterday.
Overcoming Public Speaking Anxiety
00:07:45
Speaker
And when the other thing is people are like, what do you mean start? Where where do I do? How do I do it? Just buy SPY, buy an ETF, yeah buy a simple ETF.
00:07:52
Speaker
You don't have to get complex with picking stocks. Don't do that. Gambling, horse betting, same thing. What was, so what was your first job? I just get this feeling that you've always had a very entrepreneurial spirit.
00:08:06
Speaker
ah Well, I guess I have, but I did, I did work in corporate for like 10 years. All my twenties was my first job. It was in the entertainment company. I worked for premier exhibitions.
00:08:18
Speaker
So I was the early social media girly for all these like touring exhibitions like Titanic, the artifact exhibition, bodies, the exhibition. so you've been on social media since the birth really and yeah seen the evolution of it and the success that you can have with it from utilizing it.
00:08:38
Speaker
Right. It was like 2009 and I had no experience. I was like 22, 23. They said, oh, you can run the Twitter account and the Facebook. It doesn't matter. Give it to the 22 year old.
00:08:49
Speaker
So yeah, it's been the whole, time ah And you're so well-spoken too. You speak often. How did you get over your fear of public speaking?
00:09:00
Speaker
Or has that just something that's always come natural to you? There's always fear. You'd have to be actually a psycho to not feel any sense of fear when you get on stage because tribally on an animal level, when we are performing for a group, we are on trial for our life because back in tribal societies, the only time you would present to the group is when you were arguing to not get banished.
00:09:26
Speaker
Like you were on trial and you're arguing your case. Don't throw me out because then you would starve if you got thrown out of the group. So that's why it feels like life or death when you get on stage and you get, you know, get over it. It gets easier every time. but You should feel a little butterfly in the stomach inherently.
00:09:42
Speaker
you're You're performing and we're wired to seek approval from the group because it's linked to survival. But I think if you just know that you're adding value or helping people or inspiring them, then that's a motivation that helps you to get over the fear. If you're coming from a selfish place, it's probably harder to get over that fear.
00:10:02
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So do you have a pep talk or any superstitions or anything that you do before you go
Knowing Your Worth: Speaking at Paid Events
00:10:10
Speaker
on stage? There's that, I don't know who's, it's like a Ted talk about body language. So if you go like this, like i'm I'm the queen of the world, you go in the bathroom and do that for 20 seconds before and you like feel the strength and you spread your body out bigger, take more space. Opening your heart chakra. I'm very into chakras and energy work.
00:10:29
Speaker
So you're literally opening your heart chakra. Yeah, just go do that. And it does help. Beta blockers, know, whatever works.
00:10:41
Speaker
Practice, practice, like know your material. That is huge. Practice way more than you think you need to. That's the other thing, Brittany, I've been wanting to say this for a while. What is it with, I don't know if it's just in financial services, but there's, people want speakers who are speaking for free.
00:10:58
Speaker
Yeah. Speak for free. Yeah. At an event where they're selling tickets. Yeah. You're not going to pay the talent. that That's wild to me. I don't speak for free. There's no way. Being in ah the, ta okay, because you come from entertainment. I also came from an entertainment background.
00:11:14
Speaker
This has always been a thing for talent, actually, in my opinion. I mean, in my experience is talent always gets chipped, you know, like the model or the actor. I feel like you have to really fight for your your pay.
00:11:30
Speaker
So um how do you advocate actually, how do you advocate for yourself for raise or more appropriate pay, especially as a ah female? Have you found yourself in those positions?
00:11:43
Speaker
It's interesting because you think when you have your own business, now you don't have to like ask for a raise and yeah you don't have to answer to anybody. Everybody answers to somebody on some level. So true. If you are selling something in the world doing commerce, we are trading money for goods or services, you're answering to the customer in ways.
00:12:00
Speaker
So to answer your question, I take the emotion out of it and just have a rate, have have even a range and be flexible on it. But just be like, you know, this is what it costs. This is the value that I'm bringing.
00:12:13
Speaker
When you're first starting out, you should speak for free. You need a real if you're young and you want to speak like I have a real you can go to EmilyBender.com slash speaking and see it's years and years of doing this.
00:12:27
Speaker
And then you can start to say this is my rate. We need your resume. You need a portfolio. You need. to showcase that you can actually do the work and yeah and how your style is.
00:12:38
Speaker
I spoke for free for like a year when I was getting started, however long was, eight or 10 years ago, which is fine. um But then at some point, i just I've noticed this and I think it's so bizarre, but i wanting for someone to come to your event and being like, oh, we'll give you a free pass to our great event, but you're gonna speak for free.
00:13:00
Speaker
You're the draw. You're the content. In what other world with that? And they're like, oh, it's an ad for your business. No, it's not. i'm not here I'm not doing a commercial for Beatle Moment or Wealth Voice. That's not what I do on stage.
00:13:12
Speaker
So that's something that I've noticed. and It's like there are events that I was flown Paying you an exposure. And it's like you don't need that exposure. You've already built your...
00:13:23
Speaker
Exposure is always nice. Yeah. But there i've just there's something odd going on. I don't know if it's like an economic thing or if it's um a cultural thing, but there are events that I was flown to, put up in a hotel, and paid to speak at that now like don't pay speakers. I'm not going to mention, but it was wild to me.
00:13:41
Speaker
So know your worth, know your value. Yeah. Yeah. ah Just come from that abundance mindset. And there's there's no bad blood. It's not like an angry thing. It's like, okay, well, I guess it's not a good fit. You want free speakers, you get what you pay for.
00:13:54
Speaker
yeah I read a story yesterday, actually, of a woman who heard about a male colleague that was making significantly more than her doing the same job.
00:14:06
Speaker
And so she just simply, you know, called in a meeting and asked ah the company, you know, are you practicing um fair pay, you know gender equality and fair pay.
00:14:18
Speaker
And ah they said, you know what, that's a great question. We'll get back to you on that. They came back to her and they actually gave her a $60,000 raise, all because she just asked that question.
00:14:29
Speaker
So learning to advocate for yourself, speak up for yourself, and like you said, take the emotion out of it. Yeah. One other thing, Brittany, if you said you have kind of a mixed listener base, yeah just go back to like you said, how do you advocate for a raise or anything like that?
00:14:46
Speaker
Taking the emotion out of it is good. I'm not saying don't be in your feminine energy. It's okay to have emotions. It's okay to cry at work. yeah's okay Yeah. It means you care, but with With that sort of that conversation, i found when I was in corporate, if I ever wanted to ask for ah bump in compensation, you need to quantify how you either saved the money or made the money.
00:15:10
Speaker
It's a business case. It's not I have a great attitude and you like me and I'm always on time. It's like I saved you all of this money. You were wasting time before me. Here's how I or I may do this additional revenue and put in a deck.
00:15:21
Speaker
Here's how I was the solution. Here's how I resolved this. Track your successes, achievements, anything quantifiable, quantifiable. We're not talking qualitative.
00:15:32
Speaker
Track it as you go. Have a deck, have a folder, whatever, Google Drive, and then put it in a deck when you're ready to like go to your boss and set the meeting and, you know, you want to discuss this. Do some research. What are the comps?
00:15:44
Speaker
The Glassdoor. You know, and then you can always go somewhere else. But if you do go somewhere else, you should be getting a bump in pay or in in the overall comp. Like you look at it 360, right? It's not just the pure salary. like There's bonus. There's matching. There's equity.
00:16:03
Speaker
So you should be advancing unless the move is something that the lifestyle is so great, you're willing to take a cut, which is a thing, too. Mm hmm. I like how you mentioned you can still stay in your feminine energy.
00:16:16
Speaker
What does that look like to you in business?
00:16:21
Speaker
I was talking with my mentor, Sandra, ah a weekend or two ago. was in Atlanta and I saw her and she's been my mentor for like 15 years. And I said to her, what was that story you told me about the time you cried at work and like why it was okay to do that? And she said, here's what it was.
00:16:35
Speaker
So this was probably 25 years ago or more. And she was in a role related to, you I believe it was like accounting at a financial firm. And she had a male counterpart.
00:16:46
Speaker
And they had the same job, the same responsibilities, and they were both vying for a certain promotion. There was only one spot open. And then their boss, it turned out, was kind of messing with both of them and gave it to neither of them.
00:16:59
Speaker
And the man's reaction after, you know, trying so hard, working so hard for months to get this promotion and not getting it, he started of throwing things across the room. Like, slamming file cabinets, tossing papers. all You could hear this kerfuffle going on in his office.
00:17:15
Speaker
And Sandra went to her office and she started sobbing, just like, oh, you know, you just lose it. And these are just different reactions to the same situation. And they're they're both, mean, you should not throw things.
00:17:26
Speaker
But she's like, it's okay, because that's, I felt that. And I guess to be in your feminine energy at work, it it can be kind of difficult because by definition, business is a masculine endeavor.
00:17:41
Speaker
I'm not saying women aren't good at it. I'm saying if you look at the yin and the yang energetically, what is ma masculine is the sun, the feminine is the moon. The masculine is like generative, creative, and the feminine is more intuitive and In flow. So yeah, they both, they we need both. They're but complimentary.
00:18:01
Speaker
Yes. So having the intuition and, you know, maybe like a little bit of a nurturing or a communal and EQ is useful in business for sure. you also need the sun. Yeah. To grow and get things done. Yeah.
00:18:16
Speaker
Yeah. I want to talk more about the, the, your company that you started, Beatle Moment Marketing.
Origin of 'Beetle Moment': A Synchronicity Tale
00:18:24
Speaker
What's the name? i'm curious about the name. i got to know the story behind it How did you come up with the name?
00:18:30
Speaker
Yeah, the name is actually a reference to a moment of synchronicity. So hey Carl Jung, who is the Swiss psychiatrist, he was a contemporary of Freud.
00:18:42
Speaker
He was all about archetypes and the collective unconscious, which I was really into when I was in psychology in college. and read this book that he Carl Jung had written about this patient he had that was very difficult to reach in the sense that she was so rigid and um sort of intellectually stiff in a certain way.
00:19:06
Speaker
And he was trying to open her mind to archetypes and more going on. And it's like, lay down, tell me about your dream. Let's try that. And so she closed her eyes, she started telling about the dream.
00:19:17
Speaker
She said, I had a dream that my husband gave me this golden scarab beetle jewelry, like a necklace. And right as she was describing it, there was this tapping sound on the window And he looked and he's like, oh my gosh, it's exactly the same beetle that you were just describing in the dream. And he kind of grabbed it and said, like, here's your beetle.
00:19:36
Speaker
Now do you believe me? There's more going on. There's synchronicity. It's like when the universe winks at you. So always remember that story. And I was trying to name my business when i'm do Emily Bender Consulting. OK, great. That's not memorable.
00:19:50
Speaker
Yeah. Not interesting. So I try to name things with either an animal or a color when I can. There's reasons that it it just sits in the mind a little better. And then I thought of the beetle moment, a moment when the universe winks at you. That's what it comes from. love that. i love that story.
00:20:06
Speaker
When did you start? When did you launch your business? it was 2017. 2017. Was that eight Yeah.
00:20:12
Speaker
was that eight years and here So that's the marketing company. And then Wealth Voice is my SaaS tech. I guess it's a startup. if It's five years old. So what do you call startup at this point? It's a late stage startup.
Launching Wealth Voice Amidst a Pandemic
00:20:27
Speaker
2020, right at the beginning of COVID, started building that, got that launched in September of 2020.
00:20:34
Speaker
What was that like launching a business and kind so bizarre? So it was the weekend. It was in March. It was my birthday weekend 2020. twenty twenty And I was supposed to fly to New York to speak at Verizon on the Monday. And it was like the Friday night. And my contact there said, it looks like the city shutting down.
00:20:51
Speaker
We're just going to have you dial in from Zoom. So I got paid the full speaker fee you to go on a Zoom call. was OK, this is great. that's up But actually, this is not great because we're going into a pandemic. Yeah. And I'd had the idea to build an easy way to share your voice on smart speakers like ALEXA and Siri and at the time Bixby and Cortana.
00:21:13
Speaker
What if there was an easy way like WordPress or Squarespace manage your website easily? What if there was an easy way to manage your voice, your podcast, your everything that's on AI voice assistance? Yeah. Smart speakers, TV, everything.
00:21:25
Speaker
So that's what the idea was. And then started getting that built during COVID. It was a nightmare. Brittany, I was crying like every day. And the people I've never told this story, the team that I hired, the original developers,
00:21:39
Speaker
They kind of ghosted me at one point. There was like a month where I couldn't get ahold of them. i was gosh i was pretty far, like I had spent money to build this thing. They're ghosting me, it's COVID, I'm locked in my house.
00:21:51
Speaker
I hadn't had a hug in four months probably. And then said, okay, I had to do some psychological warfare to kind of get them back and finish the project, which looked like sending them a Harry and David gift basket.
00:22:06
Speaker
You know, you win more flies with honey than vinegar. Yeah. yeah So then once I got the code to where I needed it, like MVP, i was like, change the passwords overnight, get a new development team. Goodbye.
00:22:16
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It was terrible. it was terrible it so hard, but that's what it is. That's what it is. It's startup. So as far as this, a you know, AI and voice, I mean, what are your feelings then?
AI: A Neutral Tool Lacking Human Creativity
00:22:31
Speaker
You're obviously pro AI then. So what are your feelings with how the world is evolving with AI and how rapidly? i just saw the comparison of that first generation AI video of Will Smith eating spaghetti in comparison to what it was in 2023 to what it is now. It's so drastically different, you know, in just a ah couple of years.
00:22:55
Speaker
Yes, I i have, them I would don't want to say mixed feelings. I'm pro AI in the sense that i like tools, I like efficiency, I like technology.
00:23:06
Speaker
I saw yesterday that the AI slop, I mean, this has been a few months coming, but like New York Times put out an article just a couple of days ago about this could go down a pretty scary path because of that Sora, it's like a TikTok-esque video app, right?
00:23:22
Speaker
And you know it's all AI, but it looks almost real. And I think it's I want to say it's a neutral tool, just like money is a neutral tool, but maybe it's not neutral because what are we doing?
00:23:36
Speaker
ah yeah Why can't we make our own video? kind like Do I need to dub myself to make 60 clips to try to get more views on TikTok for what?
00:23:46
Speaker
For what? That's the yeah, for what? For likes and and views. For what? What's the purpose of that? Yeah. The danger to there's something called the dead Internet theory. Yeah. Sort of a conspiracy theory. You've heard this like a lot of people think that 99% of the Internet is already bot activity. Right. It's it's already dead.
00:24:07
Speaker
So if most of the Internet increasingly becomes ai slot, because if you think of the rate at which the content is being generated, it's not real content. It's a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy because it's an LLM. So it has no actually original ideas or thoughts.
00:24:23
Speaker
So it gets diluted. The quality gets diluted over time. So then you get to the point where nine out of 10 posts are slop. It's not creative. It's not funny either. There's no nuance.
00:24:34
Speaker
right Like I was driving down South Lamar here in Austin. It's ACL right now, Austin city limits. And there was this banner waving and it had the tagline, which I hadn't seen before, but it said a once in a lifetime experience twice a year.
00:24:49
Speaker
It's two weekends, hit they're back to back. But whoa, that's a great tagline. Obviously a person wrote that. It's probably been around for years. AI has never written a cool, like nuanced, layered tagline like that. It can't, it doesn't think that way. yeah So then when you look at advertising and creative, it starts to get very flat.
00:25:11
Speaker
what What are Super Bowl ads going to be when they're all AI done? You know, OpenAI this January, their whole ad on the Super Bowl was human created. The OpenAI themselves didn't use AI for their ad. Mm-hmm.
00:25:22
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:25:25
Speaker
So that's what I think about it. I think like, it's a neutral tool. Don't be a naysayer. Don't be like, I'm keeping my horse. You guys can go drive the car. But when it comes to content, I'm not, I'm pretty careful like how much I use AI for it. i don't do it for videos. Hell no.
00:25:40
Speaker
Yeah. If you see a video of me, it's me. Yeah. Yeah. I'm stickler on that. Yeah. technology. Well, I mean, i I think it's important that we all stay up to date on, you know, evolving and everything. But I have questions too. I think like we all do with what, what are the goals? What's, you know, driving this massive growth and, and then think about all the, all of the centers that we need to so support the energy that it takes you know, to just to support this AI.
00:26:14
Speaker
um I know like Northern Nevada, they're really concerned about, you know, around the Reno area that this is going to just evolve into just like, you know, factories supporting AI. It's killing nature and the so the water supply as well. And a lot of these are being built in states that have, you know, a low water supply anyway. So there's a lot of pushback on that. And um I don't know.
00:26:38
Speaker
I have a lot of thoughts on how that's going to affect our environment long-term as well.
Tech's Environmental Impact
00:26:44
Speaker
You know, all these things that we need to be considering. Our species doesn't care, Brittany.
00:26:51
Speaker
Yeah. Look, check the tape. Like, we don't care. You and I care. I'm doing my best here. so It's hard to balance yeah because we don't want to be left behind, so it's hard to balance. it's all the ethical...
00:27:05
Speaker
but it's all it's all the ethical We need ethical safe holds around. Sure. But we've like rushed forward into this so quickly. You remember when ChatGPT hit, it was like a couple months fall 2023, if I recall. Yeah.
00:27:19
Speaker
And then within a month we were looking at it and it was like it got to a million daily active users faster than literally any other app ever, even TikTok. So then we're all just jumping in and there weren't there is no like ethical safeguard regulations in every other industry.
00:27:36
Speaker
in the legal profession in the medical industry i would call it an industry not a profession there are safeguards and there's rules ethics even for an ah ria what is a fiduciary there are rules about what that means i do what's in the best interest of the client not getting a payback a kickback selling a product we don't have anything like that for ai we don't have the safe holds And I've been in the voice AI space for 10 years, believe it or not. Like I remember going to the ah early, it was called the Alexa conference and it became Project Voice.
00:28:08
Speaker
And we just, there was like a list that came out, the voice AI 100, looking back at the last 10 years. And I thought like, wow, it's been 10 years. um And we were talking about ethics back then and there was no consensus necessarily.
00:28:22
Speaker
There are some people trying to do the right thing. There's no governing body. We are a free market. We are a capitalist society. But mean, we have rules about seat belts and so cigarettes. You have to be a certain age to buy them and smoke them and pay big taxes on them.
00:28:37
Speaker
So eventually we'll have to regulate this. It will probably be too late. The internet will really be dead by then. I'm already like, gosh, I can't take this, the social media feed with the AI slap. like The slop, I know. i wish there was a way to like filter it so you didn't have to, you know, consume, consume. Yeah, because you feel your brain you melting. yeah Yes, correct. You do. I feel i feel it. there was I came across these videos recently and it was just was just a bunch of videos of
00:29:07
Speaker
a grizzly bear coming up to these, like ah a porch, different porches. It was the same concept and it was just video all meshed together of like a baby on a porch and, and a grizzly bear coming up and a cat runs out and like gets it to run away, scares the bear away.
00:29:28
Speaker
The first one looked so realistic, but then there's video after video and they're different porches, different scenario, same thing happening though. And it's just like, I don't, yeah, what what is the point of that, you know? Well, kids have been watching cartoons, which is also like junk food that does nothing for them.
00:29:49
Speaker
Really bad cartoons, not Dora the Explorer, nothing educational. mean, maybe it's not that different. Maybe just the modern version of the junk food we would consume, yeah both food and content in the 80s and the 90s.
00:30:01
Speaker
We need to preserve um media like PBS, you know? Oh, and what you said about the environment though, this is a tip. I don't know if everybody's aware, but the less that you thank JetGBT, the better. Cause every time you're like, thank you, it has to, it pollutes more yes just to say you're welcome. It's like polluting the sky every time you're like, thank you. Try to be polite.
00:30:26
Speaker
Don't waste, don't waste a single word. I think we're all a little bit concerned of the you know the eventual AI robotic. Right. We want to stay on their good side. we want to stay on their good side. Yeah. I think everyone's just a little nervous. I've been barking at Alexa for 10 years.
00:30:43
Speaker
know. Like we're not friends.
00:30:47
Speaker
We have a love hate. Yeah. Same. Same. Same. And Siri as well for me. Oh my gosh. More hate. Yeah. More Siri. Um, what is the unpodcast? I want to hear more about that. What is the unpodcast package?
Unpodcast: Video Content Marketing by Beatle Moment
00:31:04
Speaker
So this is ah package that we have at Beatle Moment Marketing, and it's an easy way to generate lots of high quality video clips for marketing purposes. Okay.
00:31:16
Speaker
So basically, I was producing long form podcasts, like we produced Tiger 21's podcast and they're 45 minutes long and I'm like, you know what? I noticed that what people do is they watch the clips and they rarely consume the entire long form thing.
00:31:31
Speaker
So the Unpodcast is a way where you can just show up on StreamYard, Riverside, something like this with an expert producer, it's usually me, and i will get the best out of you. I will get all of these juicy little clips with good hooks where you're looking smart, sounding smart, being helpful.
00:31:48
Speaker
And it's targeted to exactly the pain point of your audience. So if you're wanting to be on video, but you're like, i don't know how to do it. I'm i'm not great on camera. I can make it easy for you. And then we just batch So you only show up for four hours total at the beginning and you have four months of content like done for you in your sleep posted.
00:32:06
Speaker
And we use all these kind of cool, tricky methods that I've learned that are proprietary in the back end of like YouTube SEO and things like that. So that Yeah, you're going to be getting tens of thousands of not just views, but the right views.
00:32:21
Speaker
So BeatleMemote.com slash UnPodcast. We have a case study there. We've worked with a lot of advisors on this. I think the thing that sets it apart from like, why don't I just go on Fiverr and have somebody do this for a cheap amount of money is the production and the guidance, the media training, like the voice marketing aspects of it.
00:32:40
Speaker
here And you're so personalized. And you say that everyone is a brand. Right? So how do you develop yourself as a brand? How do you set yourself apart? How do you find your own voice?
00:32:56
Speaker
It's hard to do with AI. This is something I've been thinking about too. You have to think about, here's what I would say, start paying attention to what's going on in the news.
00:33:08
Speaker
in your industry and form your own opinions. If you pay attention for long enough, read books, listen to podcasts, watch YouTube videos and think about it, and you're gonna start to have an opinion about things.
00:33:21
Speaker
That becomes your philosophy. What sets you apart as a brand is having an informed point of view. It doesn't have to be 100% different from everyone else just for the sake of being different, but you need to have a point of view.
00:33:35
Speaker
And I think also with the brand, authenticity is an overused word, but just like at the beginning of this conversation, you alluded to something about money beliefs. I don't know the story, but I'm sure you've, maybe it's been told before.
00:33:48
Speaker
Or like my POV about marketing and the foundation of a brand and the importance of content. you know, that is strung together over time. Some people say you should never give away content or value for free, because if you give it for free, why would they pay you?
00:34:04
Speaker
That's the opposite POV that I have. So you have to like put that kind stake in the ground and you will turn off some people. Don't be afraid of that. Do you feel that your views need to be a little more polarizing to get the clicks, to get the attention or is it more just about the delivery?
00:34:24
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, unfortunately what does get clicks is whatever's polarizing and don't, you don't have to be part of that. Right. Um, the thing that helps too, is remember that people just want solutions to their problems or certainty or time saving, especially when you're dealing with a business owner or an executive, how can I make your life easier?
00:34:45
Speaker
So your personal brand is Everything you put out should kind of harken back to whatever that vibe or value or thing that you're ultimately building and doing.
00:34:58
Speaker
There shouldn't be discordance. If you sound a certain way in person or on stage, but you have AI writing all of your social media posts and they sound really stiff and it's not you, discordance.
00:35:09
Speaker
Inconsistency. Not connecting with your audience. There's no connection there. Yeah. Yeah. Be careful with the AI stuff because the younger you are, if you haven't formed your POV yet and your brand is still in that malleable clay format, if AI starts forming that for you, you haven't really done the work for yourself and it it will be It won't be recognizable, unique,
Authenticity and Meditation's Role in Business
00:35:32
Speaker
memorable. It will just blend into everything else.
00:35:35
Speaker
That's a warning about if you're young and you haven't really thought through how how do I think of things and AI does it for you, you're not going to have one. Yeah, I agree with you. I feel that the way that we are evolving authenticity is so crucial.
00:35:51
Speaker
And it's going to become even more important. People want people do want that connection. They want to feel seen. So authenticity is it's it's key.
00:36:03
Speaker
You know, they say that um what do they say energetically? like love is the most powerful um vibration. But the truth is they've measured it and it's actually authenticity.
00:36:15
Speaker
Authentic. Oh, yeah. Do you mean those experiences like you give a plant love and it grows better? Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. It's all physics.
00:36:25
Speaker
It is. Yeah. We're all energetic frequencies. So, yes, that is what a vibe. A vibe is a vibe. It's from physics. All of it is measurable.
00:36:37
Speaker
So find your authenticity. Stay true to yourself. It sounds so cliche, but it's true. And there is science behind it. Yeah, yeah. so If you're doing something, like with content and marketing, I think this is a good, like a litmus test.
00:36:52
Speaker
If it feels off or out of alignment, They can feel If you're out of alignment, other people can feel it because we have these mirror neurons. If I'm anxious, you're goingnna start to feel anxious when you're around me.
00:37:05
Speaker
It's actually Dr. Tara Swart. She was on Diary of the CEO and she did this episode. She's like, stress is contagious. You could smell it. you can you You know, hormonally, chemically, you pick up on stress like in a conference room.
00:37:19
Speaker
And that's why when you walk in a room and the vibe's bad, it's like somebody's stress is in the air or their anxiety. I think the same thing can come through through your voice. I mean, I don't think it I know it.
00:37:31
Speaker
The voice transmits that energy as well. The breath and then the body language. Yeah. Comes through on video. Yeah. This is why i love meditation, because it is and people I know people struggle with meditat Do you meditate?
00:37:48
Speaker
Do you do it a little bit? I'm not like you. and need to do better. I mean, i think the thing about meditation is, you know, you can always do better or, you know, but it's all about actually really just recognizing where you are. And I think like that actually it's, it's a muscle. The brain is a muscle just like anything else and you have to work on it and, um, you know, care for it. And so, ah slowing down the mind, slowing down the brain and being in the present moment. And I think that is such a great way to stay centered and connected with your inner self through the years. As I've worked on my practice, I've become much better at listening to my body because your body will tell you, as you said, when something isn't right, you know, when we say, Oh, that gut feeling, ah you know, I had a gut feeling that something was off. That's so true. Our gut is linked to,
00:38:43
Speaker
um to safety. And, and so it's that intuition is real. And so i think, yeah, my yoga and meditation practices helped me become a better listener and in tune with, with that.
00:38:57
Speaker
Do you have any, of that that you like to practice um to stay aligned and, and self-tuned? Well, working out of any any kind of exercise, of course, is great. My favorite thing rollerblading. That's meditative for me. I love that. Rollerblading.
00:39:15
Speaker
Yeah, I'm like a big rollerblader. have always been. my God. So you have like the inline skates. Like the actual- Oh yeah. with the do you have the um Do you have the pad in the middle where you can like jump on a pole and do tricks and all i don't do the tricks.
00:39:29
Speaker
Yeah. I just go straight. Yeah. And I listen to my music. I go to the Velaway. Such a vibe. It's a three-mile loop through Texas Hill Country. It's a one-way track, only bikes and rollerblades allowed.
00:39:40
Speaker
That's my favorite place in Austin. And I've been doing this for my whole adult life. It's my favorite. It's like meditating for me. Love it. What a vibe. Yeah. who love that.
00:39:52
Speaker
I don't care if it's not popular. I actually like that no one else does it. I love that. so It's a great workout. I was really into roller skating and rollerblading when I was there. I could see that because you have the roller like the Heather Graham roller girl. You could do that for Halloween easily.
00:40:07
Speaker
yeah That was always the Halloween costume I wanted, but I couldn't logistically pull it off. You're in roller skates all night, depending on what party you're at. it's like Yeah. The key to that would actually be finding those shoes that have Oh, the kids have those with the little wheels. Yeah. What are those called? I forget what those are called.
00:40:26
Speaker
i don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Shifting with, um, with the social media, I was wondering, what do you think about the algorithms?
Social Media Algorithms: Impact on Mental Health and Business
00:40:37
Speaker
Do you feel that they are helping or hurting us right now? They're, mm.
00:40:42
Speaker
They're hurting us. They're hurting kids. They're hurting my brain. They're, hurt they're making me stressed out. Like I don't even want to look at it a lot of the time, but on a business level, it's kind of good.
00:40:54
Speaker
Here's why. So I'm going to talk about the positives. Here's one positive. The algorithms, let's say YouTube, we'll just talk about that for now. They are trying to surface new content that may not have a lot of followers or likes from unfound unknown creators.
00:41:11
Speaker
That's a good thing because it gives a little bit more of an even playing field. If your content's good, you'll be rewarded. Almost meritocratic, right? Yes. Which is the opposite of old media.
00:41:22
Speaker
And I like that. I like that direction. It's not like we have three TV networks and commercials and programming that is decided by a few guys in a room. It's like anybody can make it. And if it's good, you get rewarded. Yeah. Cool.
00:41:34
Speaker
On the flip side, The way that the algorithm on, let's say, LinkedIn or Instagram, especially Instagram, works is that the more adrenalizing the content, the longer the people engage or the more that it stops the scroll. And it's literally like down to the millisecond measuring what is getting clicked, stopped, paused, anything is measured.
00:41:58
Speaker
So something adrenalizing that has certain hooks is going to get rewarded. and it wants to keep you on the platform longer. These are not media platforms so much as they are advertising companies. Mm hmm.
00:42:13
Speaker
OK, but it's not all bad. You just have to know that. Yeah. You have to know that about it. um The content for kids like we've seen the rates of depression, and self-harm in teenagers skyrocket. It's all completely, we we know that it's caused by social media.
00:42:30
Speaker
Jonathan Haidt, the Anxious Generation, he's doing the Lord's work, talking about this, getting no phones before 13 or 16 it is in schools, like some of the states, Australia, I think has already instituted that great.
00:42:43
Speaker
You shouldn't have this crazy drug in your hand when you're a child. It's a drug. It really is. Yeah. It rewires your brain. So as an adult, if you can handle it, cool. And it can help your business grow. Like both of my businesses, I didn't advertise.
00:42:58
Speaker
I've never spent a dollar on advertising. It's amazing. Content, social media, right? um Well, when I started my business in Ireland, I completely, I relied 100% on, I relied so much on social media.
00:43:11
Speaker
And I tried different marketing ah options as well. I i went to radio, i tried, ah you know, newspaper and I tried like, you know, the old school stuff, but then i just saw all of my growth coming from Instagram. And because I moved to Ireland, I didn't know anybody there and I started a business. And so, yeah I mean, that's how I got my name out there was literally Instagram.
00:43:37
Speaker
um What are some of your favorite social media apps, what are your favorite social media tools to use as far as for someone who is a small business who's just getting started?
00:43:50
Speaker
What do you feel are the best?
Effective Platforms for Small Businesses
00:43:53
Speaker
Instagram is really good for a small business. Let's say that you are a hairstylist or a plumber or whatever your business is. Maybe you're in marketing.
00:44:02
Speaker
It's a good way to reach people and YouTube. I love YouTube. I've always loved I've been on there since 2011. I wasn't always strategic or dedicated. like there were years I didn't post anything, but um YouTube is really cool.
00:44:15
Speaker
YouTube is I wouldn't even say a sleeping giant. Like YouTube has more time spent on it than any streamer, like more than Netflix. It's the top.
00:44:26
Speaker
That's where people are consuming the most content. And it happens on TV. I didn't. Yeah. have Netflix. Yeah. um I'm almost sure. yeah I got to double check that stat. It actually makes sense. no i Yeah.
00:44:38
Speaker
Yeah, it is. yeah ah YouTube is is really powerful. We all have it on our TVs now, you know, so yeah sometimes I'll put it on. You're right. I'll put it on and not even think about it.
00:44:49
Speaker
There are over a billion views a day on YouTube shorts alone. And a lot of them happen on TV, not just mobile. yeah So YouTube's, it's also, it's an SEO play, call it GEO whatever.
00:45:02
Speaker
If SEO is an old term in a year when someone's watching this, I'm just saying optimizing for whether it's an AI search, a regular search, all of it, YouTube and Google. So YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world.
00:45:15
Speaker
If you have a business, depending what it is, try making a tutorial video about the number one pain point that your customer has. I don't know why I've been this plumbing example I like, let's let's say there's something that always goes wrong with a toilet yeah or the kitchen sink, and there's a way to solve it in a 90 second video, make the video.
00:45:36
Speaker
Then you're gonna have so many people come to you when they have a more expensive problem. Like solve the little problem very easily, a DIY thing. And this could be how to do your nails. It could be whatever your business is.
00:45:47
Speaker
Yeah. don't know how to apply contour. Yeah. And then maybe you have a service that they send someone to your house to do your makeup. Like there's those apps where you get like the hair and the makeup that come to your door. Yeah.
00:45:59
Speaker
Like the glam squads. Yeah, exactly. So YouTube and Instagram, love. LinkedIn, Yeah, for B2B, LinkedIn's for B2B. It's the place. yeah It's also, it's harder and harder to get found as a business or a brand. So if you can be the brand yourself as a person, you're gonna have better luck. Nobody wants to follow a company, rarely. You've seen- Again, the authenticity, the personal connection.
00:46:26
Speaker
Yeah, when I post anything on Emily, it always will do better than if I post it on Beatle Moment or Wealth Voice, always. People don't wanna feel like they're being sold to. Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, what about Tik TOK? What are your thoughts on Tik TOK?
TikTok vs. Instagram: A Cultural Comparison
00:46:41
Speaker
Okay. I feel like it's a love or hate for people. Um, either I like to talk about it or they're not about it at all. I like it. Tik TOK is a different planet. Yeah. It has a different culture.
00:46:53
Speaker
Yeah. It's, I love how Bethany Frankel described TikTok. I don't know if you've ever heard this, but she's like, so Instagram is the Marriott lobby. You're wearing a lanyard.
00:47:04
Speaker
You might have a wine. TikTok is the wild after party upstairs where there's somebody in nipple tassels. Everyone's being themselves. Anything goes. So like things happen in both of those parties, but Instagram is also like really judgmental.
00:47:20
Speaker
I agree. It's judging. I feel like there's been such a massive shift also with Facebook. I don't even like, it's, I gotta be honest. I, for the longest time, had the biggest and strongest following on Facebook.
00:47:37
Speaker
And I have been verified on Facebook. ah Gosh, I mean, whenever the verification started. So I'd never, so I didn't pay for it. It was before but changed all of that.
00:47:48
Speaker
Um, and, but I can't get through and communicate to any, to anyone. And I was using it for business. And the fact that I can't, I've been verified on there for so long. I, I have a very large following on my public Facebook. I have like over 500,000 people on there.
00:48:06
Speaker
I can't get through to anyone at Facebook at all, at all. kidding For what, what are you trying to solve? Just my personal stuff. I when I had a business before I gave up two years, like I've given up on trying to mean the account is locked.
00:48:21
Speaker
The account is i can I can log in, I can get on there, I can post stuff, but I can't monetize. I can't monetize. What can't monetize? What are you saying? Like keep your shadow band?
00:48:34
Speaker
Somehow. Yeah. Yeah. Like yeah no one sees your posts or anything. Yeah. So it's funny because I have subscriptions on, on Instagram. I make money off of Instagram. I use Instagram as a business and, um, you know, Instagram is owned by Facebook. It's meta. It's all the same.
00:48:51
Speaker
And, um, I cannot monetize on my Facebook, but I can on my Instagram. mean, I cannot get through to anyone at Facebook. I've tried for two years now.
00:49:02
Speaker
I've tried to reach out to them and um it is impossible to communicate Facebook now. I don't know. I don't know if they have anybody even working there anymore. They have the office downtown here in Austin. I've seen i've been to lunch there. They have people in the building.
00:49:20
Speaker
So, yeah, I'm like, it's sad. I've kind of just like let go of Facebook and I have such a great following on there, but it's impossible to monetize on it. And um I can't, I don't know, I can't figure out why. That's my personal frustration with social media is building such a strong following and having it on a platform and you're relying it on relying on it um with Your business is reliant on it. And then something changes suddenly with that app.
00:49:52
Speaker
yeah And then your whole business is tied up into that. This happened when it was like Q1 with a the TikTok ban, when there was like the three-day shutdown of TikTok and people were losing it.
00:50:06
Speaker
yeah for various reasons but that i did a podcast episode around that time which was about like owning your own turf i'm not the first person that said this but you know we all hate email but you got to build an email list because anything could happen with these algorithms like your facebook page yeah tick tock could get shut down anything could happen you have to be that is not only on multiple but you have to build your email list or maybe it's like sms but you have to own a direct communication route, assume that at any point, like any tech yeah anything could happen. There could be a cyber attack. the The CEO could be in a sex scandal. Who knows? Any company can go. This is why we don't do handpicking stocks, too.
00:50:45
Speaker
Nothing is predictable. Own your own destiny. Have an email list. Be building that. Yeah. I mean, that's
Building an Email List for Direct Audience Engagement
00:50:53
Speaker
the solution there. It's like your insurance, your hedge.
00:50:56
Speaker
So is that your advice on how to best protect your audience? sending them yeah mean back to your own, your own website, your own. Cause I noticed you have, you have your business website, your own website.
00:51:09
Speaker
Um, like you said, you get better traction on your personal one. So do you feel everyone should be building out their audience to their own, their own, like perhaps like platform their own.
00:51:22
Speaker
Yeah, it's do social media because you're going to have more exposure in the feed than you would. It's rare. Like, sure, there's beehives and sub stacks. There's some people that have really great email newsletters that have high open rates, high engagement.
00:51:36
Speaker
Still be doing social media, but be building your own email list in the meantime. What that might look like is if you have, hate to say it, like a downloadable, a PDF, or some kind of digital product or thing, and just grab the email list.
00:51:49
Speaker
It's funny because years ago I said don't do this, but I've changed my mind about it. um because i've seen these platforms there's a ban the algorithm changes this happened overnight with like the panda algorithm update years ago and so many small businesses who were on page one of google then suddenly on page 30 because the algorithm changed overnight and that's where they were getting all their traffic from so you have to just have backup plans and don't put all your eggs in one basket yeah With TikTok, you've seen the creators after this ban, they were like, hey, guys, if you need to, make sure you're following me elsewhere because we don't know what will happen. Here's my handle on the other places.
00:52:28
Speaker
What's your favorite um way, like what would be your favorite like CRM? platform or, you know, like to do that, to do that, to protect your audience?
00:52:39
Speaker
Good question. ah The one that I'm using right now, I'm not happy with. It starts with an M and it's named after a monkey. oh ah Having some issues with that ever since they were acquired by Intuit, like the customer support has, it's not, it's not what it used to be.
00:52:57
Speaker
And that it's just, I think for some people it works. I have issues with my RSS feeds. I've got different things going on WordPress Squarespace. uh squarespace but like what people like hubspot people like hubspot i think that one's pretty solid i haven't been using it for years who then you know there's stan s stan stan there's substack of course there's beehive for email newsletter people like those who this this jump though like yeah all the intuit products are terrible right now britney quickbooks terrible small business owners
00:53:30
Speaker
They keep raising the price. The UX is bad. They're always serving ads. It's like, remember when you used to use mint.com for your financial dashboard, right? and it was all like ad written, eating your data, molesting your data, as Scott Galway says.
00:53:44
Speaker
It's like the same thing's happening on Intuit. I will say where we use HubSpot and good good feedback on HubSpot. I and like HubSpot.
00:53:55
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. hover down yeah You can tell. And isn't it on the guys that do My First Million? Aren't they like the founders of HubSpot or That's a good question. I'm not sure. Shane.
00:54:07
Speaker
Shane and Sam, um anytime there's a company where the founders are visible, that's a good thing. yeah I don't know who's running into it. I've never heard from their CEO. Again, it's that personal connection, right? Somebody's hiding.
00:54:20
Speaker
like Remember when John Legere was the CEO of T-Mobile and he was all over Twitter now and he's like, everything's pink, we're having a party. And you're like, i love T-Mobile, even though it had kind of it was like the Kia of phone service. It wasn't a cool like deluxe brand. I mean, like what's deluxe? But you're like, I'm going to go with John.
00:54:40
Speaker
I'm not going with AT&T. Who's that? It's just like my grandpa's phone, which I now have, by the way. Yeah. Speaking of AT&T, I saw this morning that there was a massive data leak.
00:54:53
Speaker
So... Um, if you are any of our listeners, um, with AT&T, should definitely look into that. I know that there is I believe it's a class action lawsuit that's going on. So definitely apply and, um, make sure that you are, one of the people that was not affected by that. If you are a listener or you, Emily are with AT&T, I have a person that experience with at and t from a few years ago. So I will be Verizon for life.
00:55:24
Speaker
I should go over to Verizon. Yes. it was I was trying to get good. verizon they And i save I have everything on Verizon now too. And I save so much money actually with my internet and um everything on Verizon. so Okay. Well, Verizon, yeahs inquire within to sponsor the pod. blog I know. Yeah. Hey, Verizon, sponsor me.
00:55:47
Speaker
So I have just a couple more questions for you. um Thank you so much again for taking the time to to chat here. So I know your time is money. Time
Startup Life: Wearing All the Hats
00:55:56
Speaker
is money. So as money um so you your phrase, the CEO and the janitor, please, please tell me more about that.
00:56:06
Speaker
That really caught my eye. Oh, the the CEO and the janitor. So this is what I did the first year or two of Wealth Voice. I was wearing all the hats.
00:56:17
Speaker
What that meant, I wasn't really cleaning up because I didn't have an office space, but um it's just when you're a lean startup and you're doing everything and you have like no or very few employees.
00:56:29
Speaker
And it was exciting and fun, but I did get exhausted. And then I hired some help when I could. I kept it really lean though. Like I didn't want to spend money on employees at first until I could validate the concept and have revenue.
00:56:46
Speaker
i'm not going to hire anyone until I have revenue. I have a different view on startups than a lot of people. like I would never take investors and money before I had revenue. In this day and age, there is no reason that you should need investors to build something.
00:57:00
Speaker
like In the last two years with AI, with Vibe Coding, you can build an MVP very affordably. When I did this in 2020, it was far more expensive than if i did it today and i still got it done at a level that i could bootstrap it and then prove the concept and start making money like that company was in the black in the first month yeah so because i did it pretty affordably now whoa it would be way easier now even more so yeah so ceo janitor yeah like cleaning up messes that were below my pay grade all the time and then getting to a place where you've
00:57:39
Speaker
you know, learning what would be the most important to delegate first. And yeah. yeah Yeah. Hiring is tough. It's, it's the most important thing. Start up because you really need people that you trust and it's business, but a startup, you know, I mean, everyone's got to kind of do a little bit of everything.
00:58:04
Speaker
You know? Sure. Sure. It's a fun thing to do when you're young. I think startups are a young person's game in ways. Like, do you remember that app Quibi? That app was like a little TV network Quibi with a Q. Yes.
00:58:18
Speaker
Yes. It was like for six months it was going be in its purple. Yes. Okay. But they had, I want, right. This was um like seven years ago or something, but the CEO or president or somebody they brought in to run, they were like in their sixties, all like two or three of the lead.
00:58:33
Speaker
And it's this startup that's trying to take on like YouTube TV. And I just remember thinking much like a president needs to be young. This is a grueling job.
00:58:46
Speaker
Why do we have old people running this thing that you have like, you should be getting four hours of sleep a night. Yeah. Yeah. To do this correctly.
00:58:56
Speaker
Emily, you have been fan fantastic. Is there any advice that you have for entrepreneurs that, you know, small business, small businesses getting started?
Protecting Your Vision from Negativity
00:59:08
Speaker
um Any resources, advice, podcast books, anything that you can give us for them to feed their minds? Hmm. Yes.
00:59:21
Speaker
So I have some videos on my YouTube channel about tactical things, which like how to file an LLC. There's some stuff if you need tactical help on that strategically or philosophically, I would say if you believe in your idea, that's the most important thing.
00:59:38
Speaker
And you know in your gut and in your heart if you're on to something. and if it's aligned with you, and then you can do it. Be careful who you tell about it and don't announce it.
00:59:49
Speaker
Don't announce anything. Keep it under your hat until you're really ready. Because when you have an idea and it's it's like an infant, it's in a fragile state, you need to be careful like, who's the babysitter? Am I leaving them home alone with somebody I don't even know?
01:00:03
Speaker
It's fragile. So protect it. And you have to protect your own mental, your attitude and your motivation and all that, which it's very it's very vulnerable at the point when you're starting a business.
01:00:15
Speaker
And it's it's tempting to go out and be like, guys, guess what? I'm starting. Oh, here's my logo. Do you like but it's my swag? Wait a year. Wait till you have revenue coming in. Because it's so, I've had this happen where I'm like, I have a really good idea. I want to go tell my friends, do you guys think this would work?
01:00:30
Speaker
And i went bought the yeah URL of this other new business that I thought I was going to do. And I talked to somebody and she was like, I know you really well. I don't think it's right. And it it did deflate my balloon a little bit. I shouldn't have talked.
01:00:41
Speaker
I love her. But if you have to trust yourself, like black out, black out the noise, black out the social media, just like burrow into a hole and build the thing, do the thing.
01:00:53
Speaker
When it's fragile, protect it early on. That's great advice. I do have to ask you your favorite alt. We are, um you know, as you know, Bonarien Capital is ah specializes in alternatives. So what is your what would be your favorite alt to invest in? What do you think we should be paying attention to right now?
01:01:16
Speaker
Bitcoin. Bitcoin. going to Bitcoin, Brittany. So I've been in Bitcoin since 2016 and I have it on cold storage at this point. I was a victim of the ah FTX fraud disaster with SPS.
01:01:33
Speaker
And I was a victim of the BlockFi disaster. However, I had just recently gone to cold storage before that all happened. um So like I was able to save most of it, which having, I guess you could call it not dollar cost average, but bought in at price points over the years since 2016, like I'm up.
01:01:52
Speaker
I've got a good chunk of my net worth in Bitcoin. I still believe in it. I really like it. I'm not a crazy like maximalist with it. I don't have the red eye avatar, but yeah, that's my all.
01:02:05
Speaker
I'm not going to pretend that I could speak to things I don't know about. I know about Bitcoin. i am I went to the Bitcoin conference earlier this year. It was a very eclectic group of people. Fantastic time. And I learned so much. i finally i finally have you know bought some Bitcoin myself.
01:02:24
Speaker
I got late into the game, but I'm in it. And so talk to us about cold storage and the importance of that. So the entire idea of cryptocurrency is that it is decentralized.
01:02:39
Speaker
So you own it. There's no governing body. There's no bank. It's yours. If you were in a fire and all of your possessions burned your house, your clothes, your dollars, you could go to an island and start over with just that 12 seed phrase that unlocks your cryptocurrency anywhere in the world.
01:02:58
Speaker
Great. At the same time, With great power comes great responsibility. When you're on cold storage, if you lose that seed phrase, there is nobody coming to save you. It's gone, goodbye.
01:03:10
Speaker
So you're on your own destiny in all ways. I like the idea of something like a Coinbase and exchange that gets people's foot in the door who they may not be technical enough to do the cold storage thing.
01:03:21
Speaker
I do have a video on YouTube about how to set up the Trezor cold storage wallet. You could do Ledger, Ledger's actually better. But i went to cold storage because i kind of wanted to figure out how to do it. And I wanted to own the complete experience of my crypto because I had gone through BlockFi freezing quite a lot of my assets.
01:03:41
Speaker
It was Bitcoin and ETH. You should try to go to cold storage if you can like watch my video and it doesn't scare you and you can do it, great. Coinbase is pretty safe. But none of this, it's not FDIC insured, it's not a bank.
01:03:54
Speaker
And we saw what happened with, first it was Mt. Gox and then there was FTX. i Yeah. Yeah. and Anything can happen. Yeah, anything can happen. So you have to own it yourself on your own cold storage on your, it's a drive, but it's really the seed phrase. Because if the drive blows up in a fire, you could still get to the crypto if you have the seed phrase.
01:04:12
Speaker
And by the way, this also is a kind of a delicate thing. Like, do you write it down? I know. you really Or if you do, like, you have to It's a treasure hunt. like you write a few words in this place and the other words are in another place and nobody knows. But then if you get amnesia, then what?
01:04:31
Speaker
So then you need to figure out a way with like your advisor, your wealth.com account to give hints about what the words could mean. Yeah. Without saying what they are, but you're like a hint that you. Okay. So crypto is really cool as far as alts.
01:04:44
Speaker
I think the safe rule people say, like advisors say it shouldn't be more than 10% of your net worth. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like the core and explore. It should be an amount of money that if it went to zero, you wouldn't want to die. oh good. Yeah.
01:04:59
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Emily. It's just, you've given us a wealth of knowledge, so much to take away. You're welcome. no You've been fantastic. I can't thank you enough for taking the time to chat with us.
01:05:15
Speaker
So yes, be authentic. um Check out, check out Emily's website. Do you want to share with our listeners where they can find you and follow you? EmilyBender.com. My handle is at EmilyBender everywhere.
01:05:30
Speaker
Everything's there. And you can find me on YouTube. I've got a podcast, EmilyBender.com slash podcast called Voice Marketing with Emily Bender. It's on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, everywhere. um You can check out my marketing company at BeetleMoment.com. That's Beetle with two E's.
01:05:46
Speaker
That's enough. he Perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you everyone for tuning in and listening to this episode. And we will see you next time on the alternative Mason. Thank you so much.
01:06:02
Speaker
The opinions expressed in this program are for general informational purposes only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual or any specific security. It is only intended to provide education about the financial industry.
01:06:16
Speaker
To determine which investments may be appropriate for you, consult your financial advisor prior to investing. Any past performance discussed during this program is no guarantee of future results. Any indices referenced for comparisons are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly. As always, please remember investing involves risk and possible loss of capital.
01:06:36
Speaker
Please seek advice from a licensed professional.