• I want to talk about how to stand out in your interactions with your followers, with brands, with anyone over that you're meeting in person or email that you don't know well, but you're directly interacting with. Anytime you leave a meeting or an interaction with someone, a lot of times like there are always action items, people promise to do things. I'm going to introduce you to this person. I'm going to send you a link to this hotel you stayed at, whatever it is.
    Over 50% of the time, those promises are not done. There's something that I've been focusing on in my own life, and that I've already seen being really helpful. It's setting up systems to make sure that any interaction you have with someone, if you've said you're going to do something, figuring out the how are you going to do it, how are you going to make sure that happens, and creating opportunities to do favors for people. You guys know I love those Lyndon Johnson books and if you've got a year of your life and you want to burn through them, I 100% recommend that as a good use of your time.

    My boy, James Zimmerman, if you're listening, I know you're an LBJ man, yourself. He read them. I've talked about this before. Lyndon Johnson essentially became president of doing favors for people. He was maniacal about figuring out how he could do something for someone and then doing it immediately. Not asking for anything in return. There are what he would call five-minute favor. Something that takes you just a couple minutes to do. To be able to do that, you have to understand what people are struggling with, what they're interested in.
    You think about what are this person's passions and interests, and what professional struggles are they having right now? If those two things, you open up huge opportunities for you to do something above and beyond that sets you apart and makes you really memorable. If you're at a meeting with a client and you ask if they're traveling anywhere, and they say they are and you've been there, and you have a blog post about it, send them that blog post, obviously. If you haven't been there, maybe you go do a little research and you'd say, "I've heard about this restaurant. You should check it out while you're there."

    Then you put a note in your calendar about when they're going and when they get back, say, "Did you go to that restaurant? How was your trip?" That ability to find a way to do something for someone and then to do it right away, it puts you on a whole other level of competency that people will just start to think about you in a different way. What they said about Lyndon Johnson was that, he was a guy that got things done because he just never promised something that he didn't do or try to do.

    Immediately, not in two weeks. "Oh my God, I'm so sorry. I forgot about this like just remembered," or "Oh my gosh, my inbox has been crazy. I'm just getting to this." It's about doing that stuff immediately and going the extra mile. I'd say for your followers as well. I know the DMs and emails and all that can be a lot. Again, let's just talk about LBJ for a second because this is a passion of mine. He was crazy. He worked people like crazy. He worked till like 2:00 in the morning every day. If one of his constituents from like rural Texas had something, "Hey, can you help me get my pension?"

    He was like, he had his staff on that day and he solved that problem that day. For your followers, again, it's easy to see those incessant questions as a burden as like, "Why are they keep asking me this? It's so annoying that like I tag the brand and the photo and then people still ask me what the brand is." Yes, I understand that is annoying. What if you flip it and say that like, "I'm going to come up with a system, so that every single question I get gets answered effectively."

    That person now feels really special because they're thinking you're at a different level than them and you took the time to answer them. I've started sending these like these follow-up emails after meetings. A lot of times it's people coming asking me for a meeting but then I send the follow-up email saying, "Hey, this is exactly what I'm going to do for you." They're always like, "Oh my God, thank you so much. I was going to send you a follow-up. Sorry, I didn't get to it." They feel like you care.

    They feel like you value them and that that meeting was important to you as well. If you can flip it and think about, as we say, providing value at every interaction, you should think about that with your posts. That every post should provide value. Every interaction you have with your audience should provide value. You should be thinking about how you can do that. If you can't handle it yourself, think about how can I get a staff if you can afford that and you're doing well enough, how can I hire people to scale this?

    How can I scale myself so that anytime someone asks a question, they're getting an answer that day because I think if you did that, are you going to get growth right away? No, but I think in a year, your following and what was happening in that following would be dramatically different. Because we talk about Grace Atwood all the time. She is someone that takes that stuff very seriously about saying like-- If she's getting a question from her audience, she is answering it. She's putting time and thought into that answer. Not looking at us as a burden.

    Businesses need to scale, right? We're hiring a bunch of people at Fohr. We're going to be over 50 people this year. That is happening because the scale of the business changes and I need more people to support the level of shit that we're trying to achieve. That is how we continue to grow. As you grow, your operation needs to scale, and you need to figure out how you can make yourself bigger and how you can make sure that you can interact more broadly with that audience. That is one of the many lessons that you can take from Lyndon B. Johnson.
    Episode #185
    - Vine returns as Byte, how to use micro influencers, and WOW at work