#154 The link between personal development and growing a business, social media marketing, and the most common mistake entrepreneurs make, with Kim Barrett.

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Episode Transcript

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0:03  
Welcome to the personal development mastery podcast. I'm Agi Keramidas. And my mission is to inspire you to grow, stand out and take action towards the next level of your life. I interview leaders, authors, successful entrepreneurs, spiritual teachers, exceptional people who will inspire you to improve your life. Tune in for two episodes each week, and make sure you subscribe to get them as soon as they are released. In today's show, it is my real pleasure to speak with Kim Barrett. Kim, you are a world renown social media marketer and international speaker and trainer having taught around the world, your best selling author and you have been in the marketing and business game as an entrepreneur for over 17 years. You're named as one of Australia's top social media marketers, and you're passionate about helping service based businesses and entrepreneurs generate more engagement online leads and most importantly, sales. Kim, welcome to the show. It's a delight and a privilege to speak with you today. Thank you so much for having me, I really appreciate it. I'm very much looking forward to it. And I want to squeeze I was telling you earlier as much as I can as much value as I can out of it in this short time we have together. I already said a little bit of a very short introduction. But in terms of giving giving us a bit more context to the this conversation we're about to have. Do you want to share some maybe key defining moment or perhaps what led you to go into marketing in the first place?

1:57  
So ever since I was young, I always kind of observed businesses and I was always curious as to what made businesses stay around, what made businesses shut down because you could go to the best restaurant, have an amazing experience, enjoy it. And you know, when you're younger, you don't really kind of notice Well, how many people are in here, versus how many staff there are, how much are we spending versus how much it's costing them and things like that. And you know, we would eat enjoy ourselves. And then a few weeks later, a few months later, that story's gone. Or you go in and you go to a shop and you buy something and then you know, six months later that store is gone. What was the difference between those businesses and the businesses that have been around for a long period of time that always are there that always have people coming back. And one of the things that I picked up very when I was very young is that well, sales and marketing have a huge, huge part to play. So if you can't bring people in, that are interested in your products and services, and then you can't actually have a conversation with them and feed them or close them or give them the information or the products that they need, you know, you'll never be able to grow your business. So that's something that I observed when I was very young. And I was like, Well, if I can help businesses and help people get in front of more people get more of the right person coming to them, then surely, I should be able to help them grow as a byproduct of that. So that's what really kind of attracted me to the field of marketing, management. All those sorts of things. When I was younger, I went to university to study because I thought that was the path to go down. But I very quickly learned what, what made businesses kind of work, what made them what made them not work. And one of the big ones was, you know, bringing in new clients and customers every day. And that's what really attracted me to marketing and online marketing because I really loved playing around on the internet. As a kid, you know, I would always try and kind of wait to my parents go to bed and then I go back up and connect up the dial up modem, plug it back in, turn it on, and, you know, make those sounds and all the probably the younger people might remember that you had to do it. And if someone comes out grabs the phone, and then it disconnects you all the joys of that time. So I would always wait till about nine o'clock when my parents would go to bed and I'll come back out and connect the modem back up, turn it on, dial it up, and just spend time just searching around the internet, finding out things and that's when I really started diving into the world of online marketing as well.

4:22  
You said something earlier which reminded me of businesses not marketing and selling and closing as a result. And he reminded me of that phrase that says that if you build it, they will come some people assume that just by building something which is great or extraordinary even that will ensure business so what's what what would you say to someone stating something like that, that all I need to do is beat great.

4:52  
I mean, I mean you look at even the greatest people when people say like for example like Tesla and Elon Musk They're like, Oh, but they don't have they don't do any marketing. They don't have a marketing department. It's like, well, I would argue the fact that they do like Elon Musk is a one person, PR machine and marketing department, right? But for for small businesses, if you just open the doors, like, how can you expect someone to want to come down and purchase something from me, if they haven't heard about you, to me, that's, that's the biggest mistake we can make. And it's like, you may be able to scrape by some level of success, some level of, of growth, but it's unpredictable. And for me, my pure goal for businesses, small, large doesn't matter is to help them bring the predictability back into growing their business. Because if you cross your fingers, and as you can see that sort of green screen behind this is a real Street, this sort of background on my office, if I just if I'm just waiting here every day, I can't control how many cars or people walk past me, it's impossible, I cannot control that number. But online, I can control of the pool of people that are online on a daily basis, based on how much money I'm willing to spend, I can control how many of them see my message, because Facebook has been around so long, Instagram has been around so long as have all the social platforms, they know on a daily basis, XYZ number of people log on. And for me, if I'm looking to purchase ads, doesn't matter. If I'm spending $1 a day or $1,000 a day, I'm going to get a portion of those people see my business, my message, what I'm about and my products and services, that's predictable. Yes, there's a problem. Sometimes Facebook ad accounts get banned. And all that sort of other craziness that happens is just the cost of doing business online. But generally speaking, is that I can pretty much predict that. So for me, that's that's the that's the difference. It's like, if you build it, they will come by and how long? Like how long can you wait, that might be true. But so can you sustain yourself for six months, one year, two years, and sustain your family for that period of time to help them. Most people, if you're starting a business, you're probably you know, similar to us, where it's, maybe you're bootstrapping, you're just starting out, you're like, Oh, I make the money, I spend the money, I do the work, I help the client, so I send them the products, and then it just keeps going like that. So it's like, if you're just like, I'm just gonna wait for them to come to my website to call me to go back to my shop. It might take six months, a year, two years for that to be a bipartisan happen. So, you know, by all means, if you have all the money in the world sitting in the bank account, no. Build it and they will come sure no, no worries. But for most of us small businesses, we've got to get out there and you know, make things happen. So that's why I believe advertising and marketing is the more predictable way to go about that.

7:43  
Thank you for that answer. And it's a very, it's good to get this this opinion, obviously, for for most is wrong. But there are people that believe that Roland actually ordered your comment on another phrase as well, Kim, which is about marketing, it's a definition of marketing, I heard some word. And it says that marketing is simply attracting those people that you want and repelling those that you don't want. So from your perspective, how does that sound as a definition?

8:20  
I would say that's not necessarily marketing. I think that's like copywriting job, which is like a subsection of marketing if you want to kind of chunk it down a little bit. So for me is that your marketing is about building awareness on a big scale in my eyes, and then you have sub sections of that, which is like advertising copywriting. And it could be in direct response form or otherwise. I think that copywriting if it's a print base, or in copywriting, if you write a script and you articulate on video, that it does have the job of repelling those you don't want and attracting those that you do. Because in an ideal world, unless someone has read something, you probably don't necessarily want to repel them if they don't know what the business is about yet. So that's the only kind of caveat I would say on that statement. But I would say it's pretty, pretty close to accurate.

9:10  
It was the choice of word rebel that made an impression on me when I heard that it's rather strong word but. So, Kim, and I would like to focus the conversation a little bit more towards the small business owners today or the solopreneur if you want to call him like that, and even though I know you've done we've worked with at a very high level with people like Gary Vaynerchuk and Reese Witherspoon. But if we take it down to this level of people who are at the small business level, looking up to scale Can you tell me first of all, what do you think is a common or the the common mistake that most People do at that level and it's easily avoidable.

10:04  
is at every level, the most common mistake, everyone does, it doesn't matter if you're a small business big, it's like exactly the same, which is that they don't. People don't focus on a niche, or niche for the Americans that might listen, right. So most people will put out a generic message. Because they think that they do, as we said before, they don't want to repel people, they don't want, they don't want to pull people off, they want to attract everyone. Because if I attract everyone, make more money, you make more sales. That's because because everyone sees it. Now, that couldn't really be further from the truth, because especially on social media, we can be so specific, you know, there's been documentaries written about and filmed about how much of the data they have in the US that we, that we have access to, right. So for a lot of people, you know that that's, that's a problem. But if you're in the if you're a small business, in marketing, that's a benefit. Because you can be so specific, you can really laser target your message and speak to one specific person. So a marketing campaign should always have a niche in mind should always be focused on something specifically because one person is going to have a different problem, and a different perceived solution to that problem than another. Doesn't matter if there's a building over here behind me. And there's a guy similar age, similar person to me interested in marketing, we both have different problems, we don't both have different solutions that we're looking for. So the job of the of advertising, especially direct response advertising, is to speak to me in that specific problem that I have. So now that we have all of that data available to us, Trisha small businesses, we can really be laser targeted, you know, message, rather than try and put something that's generic in case we do if you go back, you know, 20 odd years where you'd be running a TV ad, if you could afford it, because expensive radio ad the same thing, billboard ad, same thing, again, maybe you could get a newspaper ad in there. But we had to be very generic, because 10,000 50,000 people going to read it. And we're hoping that the person who is ideal for us is going to read it. And then now, you know, they'll respond to give us a call. Whereas now we can flip that around a bit Great, let's attract exactly the person who we want, speak to them speak to their problems, and bring them into our world, through through the power of the internet. So just means that we can completely flip things around. But most people are still stuck in the mindset of I need to appeal to everyone. So that's why I say the biggest thing everyone does everyone, not just small businesses is fictitious, forget about that. They just try and appeal to the general population rather than really narrowing in on that one person.

12:51  
And when you say narrowing down your niche, or needs, how much specific Do you need to get? I mean, sometimes I hear like, you have to name the the Avatar and really like speak to him was it's a real person, are we talking about this level of detail,

13:12  
as as detailed as you can get? Imagine that even if you're going around to their house at nighttime, and you're putting on binoculars, and you're looking through their windows, and you're going okay, I can see what he's watching on TV tonight, I can see what he's had for dinner. And you know what newspapers, he's reading that level of depth, because we do have the ability to hone in on those things. Now, I'm not saying that if someone else comes to your business that falls outside of that spectrum, that you can't work with them. Of course, we still want to like if people come to us, and we can help them and we our product is right for them. They can work with us. But from an advertising campaign perspective, we ideally want to make sure that we have that real specific person that we're talking to for that ad campaign to make it a success.

13:57  
That's what they say what you said about the binoculars you might remove that phrase to to live inside the mind of your ideal customer. Exactly. Kim, let me ask you something slightly different take the direction a little bit different. I read somewhere you you wrote or I think I heard it, you said you can only grow your business to the extent you can grow yourself. And I very much agree with this. But I want to kind of bring together the business side and the personal development side and how you know many people focus solely on business development not all doing skill skill skills to grow their business, but not necessarily the other side. So what's what's your thoughts on this?

14:47  
situations? It's usually important. I wish I could claim the credit for saying that I can't remember where I heard it from but I wish it was one of my original thoughts there. But I mean, if you just think about when you grow a business, right When you're starting out by yourself, as soon as you start to add on a team member or two, then you become responsible for them, then you become responsible for paying taxes, then you become responsible for making sure that they have a space to work, then suddenly, you know, they've got a family, you're responsible for making sure that they earn enough money so that they can feed their family, plus your family, plus any partners you might have, plus the responsibility to the rest of your family. Plus, you have to go out there and you know, make sure that you exercise eat, right, you know, you're doing all these things, it's a, it can become a very big burden. Now, if you don't go through the personal growth, where you can learn to anticipate these things coming, where you can learn how to alleviate levels of stress, where you can kind of easily let go of problems that might happen, because you can have a disgruntled client or customer come in and abuse you and say all these bad things about you. And then the next second, you could turn around, smile, and then talk to your team or smile and talk to a new prospective customer, you're gonna be able to do all of these things, which if you don't have, like, if you just have this skill set, can can be in a tremendous burden on you, if you're not able to learn how to roll with these things, how to flow and how to adjust them, what happens if you have a bad month, because similar to life, there's seasons, right? There's nothing can ever be tremendous forever and ever and ever. That's the the, the beauty of of life is that there is you have the polar opposites, you know, you have some things that are just okay. But then you have things that are great. And you can have times which are which are bad, which is going to be the same in business, but if you if you can't navigate those things, you know, I liken it to, to, if you were captain of a ship, and it's like, great, you can know how to steer a ship and roll a ship, let's just say it's a rowboat, right, we can know how to steer, and we can roll it, that's our skill set. But when you see the dark clouds coming in, because it's the storm, what happens next, like that's, that's your ability to understand yourself, understand the ocean, understand all of these things going on around you, which only can happen as a byproduct of you focusing on yourself and developing yourself and, and really, you know, delving into that world because it's, I've, I've never, I've never spoken to, or worked with someone who was successful in their business that hasn't done some form or shape of personal growth and development. Even if they don't know, it might not be labelled as personal development. But like the the experience of running a business, like I mentioned, at the very start of this, this little sector here that we're talking about, that is going to be personal development you have you have to develop yourself personally, to successfully go grow through it. And as you do that, if you can realise and go cool, this is a growing learning experience for me amazing and keep going, then you haven't you they like a great thing I heard is that you don't fall to the lowest level. What's the phrase so you don't fall to the lowest level of your training to people that are going to train hard, right, you fall fall to the lowest level that you are prepared to fall to say if you've done that, and you've done all that preparation. From that point on, you set yourself a new standard and that's where you kind of operate from and then you'll have more growth that comes at those those extra levels. But that's that's kind of the flow that I see. And I know I've personally experienced that. In in businesses like that, probably the craziest thing you can ever do is be a solopreneur and grow and have a business. Most people if you if they saw what we got up to there, like they'd be shaking their heads and gone, you know, you're a crazy person. What are you doing? You're running a business and doing this and working that amount of hours and that amount of stress. Surely, you know, but you know, that's that's what we entrepreneurs, business owners solopreneurs. That's what we do. We're a little bit crazy, you know?

19:03  
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21:21  
I think anything that stretches the bounds of either your your comfort, or your knowledge. So I still think everything I do in business is personal development, it stretches my mind on what's possible, and stretches me to into situations where I may not want to do things. You know, the old comfort zone as people want to call it, it's like, well, that's Yes, it is a comfort zone, and more so acceptance zone, it's like, I accept things that happen in this area. And if they go outside of that, if it annoys me, frustrates me, freaks me out makes me happy, upset, whatever it might be. But my goal is to grow the level of things that I can accept them work within. If you look at people that run, run, run countries and presidents and prime ministers and things like that. It's like they have to get to learn to accept and deal with many, many, many, many different things on a daily basis. The only way that they can do that is by growing their zone of acceptance again, cool. All right, we're having a nuclear crisis with North Korea today. Okay, like, let's I accept that let's let's deal with it. And let's get the answer. So that to me is kind of the in a nutshell, the definition of what I put on personal development, I mean, that's gonna push you and pull you outside of the homeostasis that you might be. That's a

22:44  
it's a great with gent. I like very much what you said about the acceptance zone, because the, the tone of the phrase is different than the comfort zone, the might represent the same thing. But for me, it has a different colour when when it's acceptance, Shawn, so thank you for that. Let me ask you a couple of hypothetical quickfire questions. One is if you could go back and meet your 18 year old self, what one piece of advice would you give them?

23:15  
I love this question. I haven't changed yet. So which is good go by and lots of lots of Bitcoin, but by all of the Bitcoin and just hold on to it. No, I, the I mean, the the more the more serious answer. That would be what I would say, though, but the most serious answer would be more so along the lines of it's just like this. listen to advice of those that have done it before, faster. So I've paid for a lot of mentors listened to a lot of mentors. And sometimes you like, but or no, like, I think I can figure it out. Or I can get through this and say, No, no, just listen to the people that have already done it and listen to them fast, then you will have much, much, much crazier journey for your business life.

24:05  
That's solid piece of advice. And let's say you had a magic wand and wave it and send something in the world as it is today. What would that be?

24:18  
Many things I would enable everyone to have the best ability in the world that exists to come up with creative ideas. The reason being I think if like creative ideas is all that is needed to pretty much solve any problem because when I say like we can you get rid of walls, we could get rid of famine, we could get rid of these things we could get rid of. We could get rid of sex trafficking, anything like that, right? We could if we could wave a wand like by all means I'd love to get rid of all listings. However, if we get rid of one problem and your problem will occur, and but if everyone can, because when I look at it, I see people, for example that are like homeless in the street. And they sit there, they're standing there with a sign. It was like, Well, if that was me, I always think about if I was that person, what would I do? How would I do things differently. So rather than do that, I would be like, hey, like, anything you want, I'll do it for 20 bucks an hour, or anything you want, I'll do it for food shower, and a place to stay tonight, I will do whatever you want. Because to me, if that's, that's a different way that I could approach that situation, rather than being like, I'm homeless, and I need these and I'm like, please, please donate money, because this is what's happened to me. Or I would be very specific what I can do, I'll go around like the building areas and be like, Hey, I will, like, I'll just go knock on the door. But I have 10 bucks, I'll come in, I'll empty all those bricks over here where whatever you want me to do with them. All I want is some food and some water, and maybe a shower done, like I could go around and do those things. So I think if people could get more, that's a very broad brushstroke for homeless people. So please don't think that I'm saying that. That's all we need to do. But if people come up with more creative ideas, and I think that the people that are having problems, if they could always think like that, from a point of creativity, they could help themselves get out of problems, but as well, globally, if everyone was able to think very creatively about outcomes about ideas, I think we could solve a lot more problems a lot faster, rather than because it's like, there's always going to be a problem. So like, why don't we all just become great problem solvers, so that we can get through them faster, eradicate them faster as well. him this

26:39  
thing about the creative identity is something that that could easily talk with you for half an hour on its own. So it's completely fascinating. And emerging from this conversation we had, if you were to give to the listener, one actionable item, something they can take away and implement, what would you tell? Tell them

27:01  
I think it would circle back to the advice that I would give myself which is on the point of listening to people that have already done things. And ideally, keep one voice. So if you listen to podcasts, and you listen to the people that are empowering you with personal development, just listen to this podcast, and apply the things that you hear. And you will have utmost levels of success, I can pretty much guarantee because it's like the thing where most people fall down is on follow through is on implementation. So if you hear something and say, my thing I said I would do is listen to people that have already done it and apply it faster. If you just did that you would have more success guaranteed. But if you listen to every single episode of this podcast, and you listen to every single person that's come on and given advice and shared their wisdom, and you did everything that they did. Like you there would be no stopping

27:50  
on that stick. How what's the best place to for someone to connect with you again?

27:57  
Probably on on Instagram or Facebook, you can find me at real Canberra, Rei al, Kim Barrett double r double T. That's where I hang out and you can shoot me a message anytime if there's anything that sparks your interest out of today's conversation. Put me a message 99% of time I get back to people pretty quickly. And yet more than happy to work to chat and help wherever I can.

28:19  
I want to thank you very much for this conversation for your time, Kim, I think there were some invaluable lessons there to be taken. All the best with you and your your mission. Last parting words

28:37  
focus and implement everyone just do that and you will have an amazing life.

28:47  
I hope you enjoyed listening, and I have a question for you. How would you like a blueprint to your personal development? If you sometimes think that there are so many different things out there you could do for your personal growth, but you're not sure on where to start, or what's the next best step. If you'd like a blueprint to help you take control of your personal development, your focus habits, confidence and ultimately your time and energy. Then you will love my online course essential personal development blueprint. The link is in the show notes or type bits dot and wise last ideas course Agi s course and until next time, stand out don't fit in!

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