Today, on the Book More Show, I had a great conversation with Aubrey Berkowitz of Armada Digital. He shared how thought leaders, authors, and speakers can establish an online presence that strengthens their distinct brand and captures qualified leads.

We explored the evolution of personal branding in a post-pandemic digital world and the vital role of a focused online platform for anyone looking to engage clients.. Aubrey also provided proven conversion strategies for driving speaking opportunities through tailored pitches and comprehensive, accessible content that pre-qualifies the speaker.

Lastly, we discussed leveraging books and other assets to build online credibility and maintain an authentic personal voice in today's AI-influenced landscape.

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

1. In this episode, Aubrey Berkowitz from Armada Digital discusses the transformation of personal brand websites from static brochures to dynamic lead generation hubs.

2. We explore how personal branding has gained increased importance in the post-pandemic digital landscape, emphasizing the necessity for a strong online presence to maintain professional relationships and verify referrals.

3. Aubrey and I highlight the significance of having accessible and comprehensive content to pre-qualify thought leaders for speaking engagements, differentiating between pitching to end audiences and gatekeepers.

4. The conversation delves into the strategic use of books and other content assets to build authority, drive organic traffic, and the competitive advantage held by legacy players in ranking content online.

5. We discuss the psychological benefits of offering varied content formats, such as books, newsletters, and e-learning courses, to build trust and facilitate decision-making for potential clients.

6. The episode touches on the importance of personalized website navigation and landing page strategies, noting that the homepage is not always the primary entry point for visitors.

7. Aubrey emphasizes the role of a well-crafted online platform in establishing a distinct personal brand, which is crucial for individuals in diverse fields like private equity and banking.

8. We examine the balance between leveraging AI for content creation and maintaining authenticity in personal branding, noting the growing societal ability to recognize AI-generated content.

9. The discussion covers the concept of "paid lead generation" through speaking engagements, where the true value lies in ongoing relationships and engagements built from these opportunities.

10. We underscore the importance of making it easy for decision-makers to see the value in hiring speakers or thought leaders by providing comprehensive, accessible information about their work and value proposition.

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Aubrey Berkowitz:
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LinkedIn: Aubrey Berkowitz

TRANSCRIPT
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)

Aubrey: So knowing what that end conversion is usually dictates the path we take, because there's different areas of attack that you can go about it as a speaker and a thought leader too. Now, going back to it again, there's going to have to be critical assets, because if there isn't some kind of asset, you're only pitching yourself and you're relying on a heavy amount of your personal brand, having already done the lifting.

Stuart: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Bookmore Show. It's Stuart: Bell here, and today joined by Aubrey Berkowitz. Aubrey, how are you doing?

Aubrey: Doing. Great thanks for having me, Stuart:, appreciate your time.

Stuart: Pleasure buddy. I'm looking forward to this set this scene for people so we know each other. We've had a few calls and there's such a great crossover between the businesses. I think this is really going to be an interesting podcast for people, because it's going to be ones that are directly applicable, like sometimes we're talking about subjects that are maybe slightly not es esoteric, but maybe one level removed, but I think this is something that's going to be 100% on mark for everyone listening. So why don't we start, give a bit of a background about you and the company and then we'll go from there?

Aubrey: Yeah, my name is Aubrey Berkowitz. I'm the managing partner of Alter Endeavors, which is a digital lead generation company, as well as Armada Digital, which is a hosting and ongoing support company. We help authors and speakers and thought leaders build out online platforms and lead generation strategies to help. Whether that's driving more speaking engagements, whether that's adding to your newsletter, taking a book to market, whatever that final conversion point might be, we help speakers and thought leaders build their personal brand.

Stuart: Fantastic. Such an interesting this idea of the specific use case for the asset. It's something that we talk about a lot in terms of books traditional books people think about a build it once and they will come, or it's a thing that sits on the shelf and maybe serves several purposes, but we're really talking about that specific purpose for you guys. I know a lot of the conversations that we've had have been specifically around that book web, book-based website to promote that brand and build the build that asset as a lead generation tool. Obviously, websites aren't anything new for people we're 2024 now, so they've been around for a little while but I think people still approach it as an afterthought or something that's trying to serve absolutely every purpose. For a lot of people that you're working with, the websites that you're building, do these tend to sit in addition to other websites that people have got, or are they the main and only one that people are using that people other websites that people have got, or are they the main and only one that people are using?

Aubrey: So it's interesting. You brought up kind of the historical background of how we view websites, because the online world has changed so quickly in the last few years. We're having your own digital online. Let's call it a town hall, a hub, a platform is now more important than ever because when we're talking about thought leadership and when we're talking about driving leads and conversions, ultimately that has to happen somewhere. So the website now, rather than being a brochure, rather than just being purely informational, has turned into an area rich for conversions, for speakers, for thought leaders, for consultants, for fractions. So that's the shift that we're seeing is that these strategies that might have seemed like afterthoughts have become even more important as we're transitioning to an even more digital world.

Stuart: Yeah, and the kind of fracturing of those presences and almost people's ownership. I mean kind of think about it from a couple of perspectives either if you're a employee and trying to be a specialist in your area and there might be a positive interest that you want to move elsewhere and promote yourself, or there might be the kind of negative side of layoffs happen and you might find yourself on the outs before you realize it. Establishing your presence separate from the company presence is important. And then from an entrepreneur, business leader, founder perspective, the turnover of businesses is much faster than it was before. Brands reposition or pivot or whatever positive or negative reason for it. But having an entity which is you and people can build that rapport with you and then as the other things move, you're still you.

Aubrey: That is so much more important now than the last couple of years absolutely, because you look at the way and let's talk about some of the more niche instances where this is very applicable. So let's talk about if you are someone that's in maybe the private equity space right, you might be work, you might have an interest in 10 different companies, or you might have written three different books. So how do we bring that all together, right? And how do we bring together maybe, things that might have a different content to them, right? And maybe you're an author that speaks in different areas of leadership?

Having that online hub, having that personal brand, like you mentioned, is a way to differentiate yourself. Banking is another example where we see this. Bank presidents, you're able to go and create your own business, hunt your own business, but people recognize you as the brand. So how do we maintain that? But also, at the same time, create a lead generation environment that can contribute to both, too right, and can contribute to multiple areas that you might be involved in? And again, that speaks back to the new critical importance of having a personal brand website, to the new critical importance of having a personal brand website. If I were a car dealer 15 years ago, it's not as important as it is now, where we still want to shop local, we still want to have a relationship with the people. So that personal brand site also functions as a way for people to verify their referrals.

Stuart: Right and to that point you're making now about the people still want to shop local.

They still want to have a relationship with a person.

That almost the change in the last couple of years, kind of post-pandemic, and more and more people working from home although I mean that might be changing slightly, but still it's much more of a separated place that we're in now rather than the workspace where everyone is in the same place and when you meet you ask what they do and they talk about their job or their role, having the person piece tied to it.

It's, I mean, in marketing, what we've said for years that people buy from people, they don't buy from companies, whether that's at the macro level and thinking about brands and big identities, down to the kind of micro level of the transaction and you get a rapport with the person who you're dealing with on the phone and that idea we work with a lot of realtors in another part of the business but the idea that you become their guy. A very good friend of mine, jim hacking, is our immigration attorney, so he's the go-to guy when I think immigration facilities. I think Jim, he occupies that spot in my brain, so the same ability to build that personal place where people can go and feel like they've got a relationship with you.

Aubrey: And we've just moved Stuart: to such an online content driven world as well, where unbranded searches at the highest percentage it's ever been, and what unbranded means is that people are searching for terms and phrases around subject matter rather than just company names. So it builds further to what you're saying and we love to quote do our own research. What does do our own research mean? Right, it inevitably means we're going to go back to Google or we're going to go online, because we are now trained and conditioned to know how to actually use the internet to achieve the goals we want. My five-year-old nephew now understands how to use an iPad and understands that he can search the internet for YouTube videos or other content mechanisms that he enjoys, and the future generations are growing up with that baseline.

They're growing up with the baseline that you and I had of let's go to the library. Well, that library is now online and it's infinite.

Stuart: Right actually that's a great example. So our youngest is uh 14, almost 15, and just graduating at eighth grade, so he's getting a. He's had an ipad for a little while, but he's getting a phone finally. So he's very excited about that. But when we're out and about or when he's not near the ipad, he'll ask something and he'll either say let me borrow your phone or right, yeah watch us as we're typing the search if he's in the back of the car on the other side of the room.

We're just trying to do it and whenever I do it or his mom does it, he always says we get a response and he always queries it. Well, let me see what you type. Let me see what you type. Yes absolutely.

Because you and I came up in a kind of more Boolean type world of typing in Google searches, where we're trying to guess what the I don't know if I mean it was an algorithm, but you wouldn't necessarily have called it an algorithm back then we're trying to guess what search parameters will yield the best results, whereas if you see the natural language way that they search today, they're just typing in as if you're asking a question. As it moves more towards voice, that's just even become more prevalent. So you were mentioning about the natural language search and the unbranded search and people just querying this online assistant to find the things. If you as a presence are there, someone might remember your name, we might remember the subject you're related. To start searching that, going down that rabbit hole if you don't have anything related to you and they're missing the connection with the brand. It's a gap that's going to get more and more pronounced over time. I think absolutely, and there are internets and they're missing the connection with the brand.

Aubrey: It's a gap that's going to get more and more pronounced over time. I think Absolutely, and there are internet statistics online statistics that show the difference in what you're mentioning as well. So your son's generation is 18% more likely to focus on local search than our generation is.

Stuart: Right.

Aubrey: And where this also comes into play is how you mentioned how they approach search terms. So we used to I don't know if you remember the original Ask Jeeves, but it was term comma right and we tried to match like you said. But the younger generations, they're searching for content around key phrases Now, taking a step back. For speakers and thought leaders and authors, this is an amazing opportunity Because it means suddenly the content that we create is exponentially more relevant in search. Now, we've all seen the search algorithms using AI. They've been using AI for years, they always will be. But even now, when they're integrating AI into the Google search, it's pulling from content and it's pulling from the content we create on the internet.

So, there's untapped potential now to utilize your content in a way to where you can drive people back to your actual platform. Now how do we all make it come together with the book? Right, the book is the richest source of content that you can create. Book, right, the book is the richest source of content that you can create. Yeah, it exists, and you can then take pieces from your book that you know are relevant, write content around that and create an ecosystem to where we're driving results that are relevant to the subject you actually talk about.

Stuart: Yeah, actually that's a great bridge, because we obviously don't do anything with websites at all.

That's out well outside of our scope of interest.

But we're definitely encouraging people to, now that you've done the work of creating the content, take that content and amplify it elsewhere and elsewhere.

It makes perfect sense that it's on their own site. So the idea of let me use the scorecard book as an example so the scorecard book has eight steps in there, eight building blocks of a book. Those eight things are pieces within their own right, so to be able to either take the raw content or take the idea of the content and then elaborate and expand on it. And because these books are created based on the things that you know so well in your head, and a book is a relatively confined, one of the elements in there is specifically beneficial constraints. So we actively try and keep people constrained so that the project gets completed. But any one of those elements that you're talking about, as a business owner who's been doing this for a couple of years, you can talk and write and develop and expand on those individual pieces out of an item, almost. So the website seems like the perfect place to then, if you're doing that work to then bring it together.

Aubrey: Absolutely, and the advantage, like we said, of a personal brand site is that you can have different books on your site that all relate to what you do overall, rather than branding your site around the book and I know we're kind of tiptoeing around it, but we keep mentioning the importance of books, and if the one major determining factor we've seen for consultants to have the most success is do you have a book, do you have something that you're saying in the market that is unique? So where the opportunity then lies is let's take this personal brand you're starting to build and let's build out some of the ancillary funnels of it too. Let's have community built around your book to where we can actually start getting to those what I call late end conversions, late end conversion being a consulting gig, a speaking gig or wherever the monetization really comes in comes in.

Stuart: Yeah, it's interesting that the idea of people wanting to speak, particularly at the beginning, unless they've got a very established track record and kind of they've got a demand created so people are coming to them.

For the rest of us it's probably less that there might be some referrals and there's a bit more kind of relationship capital passed down, that down that connection. But for everyone else it's kind of putting the passed down that connection, but for everyone else it's kind of putting the opportunity out there and hoping that someone will respond and pick up to it. And again, speakers are the same. By having that, I almost imagine that it's the case that if you pitch to a organization that's looking for a speaker and they then look for you and you don't have anything out there, even if you had the best pitch deck or presentation on paper, if they're not actually looking for you and seeing something that's out there, that's reinforcing that this is something that you can do. I imagine that's like a resume problem of kind of yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. You just filtered out at the first.

Aubrey: It's an audience problem too, because what we see a lot of times is speakers and thought leaders.

We like to think about where everyone can get passionate about what we talk about.

In business, we can all get passionate about it.

We can, and sometimes people can deliver the most amazing speech ever, right? But we're thinking about it of the audience being who we're actually talking to, as, as a speaker, the audience is not the one booking you. There's going to be somebody in the organization and they're going to have to go back to their board and justify your cost and justify your value. Now, unless they've heard you speak before, and even if they had, what are they going to use to go back to their people? It might be a pitch deck, sure, but everyone now expects to be able to go online and again going back to doing your own homework, being able to find something on that person, on their personal brand, being able to engage with their content, whether it's download a chapter of the book, whether it's join a newsletter, join a newsletter. These are all things now that, by doing it the right way, you can pre-qualify yourself when it actually gets to the point where the speaking decision is being made and who's speaking is being right that principal agent problem.

Stuart: If you've got the, there's a disconnect between the end audience and the gatekeeping audience of who's actually buying.

Yeah right that's another reason why it's such a great opportunity to speak together, because we're so aligned on this approach. The amount of times that we talk to people about a book project and then go through that, that, that initial ideation point of, okay, well, who's the ideal prospect? Okay, within that ideal prospect group, are they the end users or are they the end customers? Because that might be a different group. And where it is different, it's very important to make sure that you're either could be the right answer, but you're pitching it at the right level and you understand the impact, the downstream impact, of what you're setting up.

The really interesting one is and again this is a bit out of scope of of what we're talking about but you can imagine a scenario where people, once they understand that there's a gatekeeper in place, there's an agent in place between them and the people that they're ultimately delivering to, but that presentation of the package, that value proposition that you're putting out there, if you can address that, both of those markets, by saying here's what I'll deliver to your end customers, but here's what I'm delivering to you to make the decision as easy as possible and overwhelming the evidence for each step, it only takes a little bit of orchestration, to separate yourself from the crowd, because I think the majority of people don't do that. They're just focused on what they do and they're in that mindset of well, I do it and I'm passionate about it and I'm the best, so everyone else should just understand and jump on board.

Aubrey: Yeah, and I can speak about what I talk about every day, right. And then the other trap kind of bringing back to what we had discussed a little bit earlier is so, once your presentation's done, having a book as a leave behind piece is something that these program coordinators all prioritize, because they want to keep continuing to provide value to their audience, to their users. I'm going to use a hospital association as an example, because we have a client that's a speaker for hospital associations and what he's been able to do is leave them behind with materials that consistently provide value beyond just what he speaks about.

Stuart: Right.

Aubrey: And that's where the real late stage rich conversions come in. For consultants, right I almost like to think of it as you're speaking is sometimes just your paid lead generation. If you're a thought leader right, you're just paid to hopefully get an ongoing engagement with somebody that you're speaking to. But that only happens if you're providing value, right, and if you're providing something that they can take back with them. Whether that's a book, whether that's joining a newsletter community, whatever that might be providing the value is the real way to engage and create longstanding customers as well.

Yeah, I don't know if that's the same for you, but I don't see the very many people getting rich off just the book anymore right, exactly, and the with the speaking has been the gateway.

Stuart: It's the start of the conversation. For us, our whole model is it's according to the phrase of the conversation starting book is exactly that premise. It's the start of the conversation that leads to something else, saying that the book isn't the product, the conversation from the book is the product, and the same with the speaking element and the same with the website. All of these things can layer in to reinforce the credibility or the ease at which someone gets to say yes, particularly when you're dealing with employees of an organization where it's their job to to book these people or to make these engagement pieces, because they're not as, on the one hand, they're not as passionately engaged with the outcome as an owner might be that, hopefully, they're still good at their job and they're passionate about their job, but there is a difference, but then also they're doing this every day, so they've got 100.

Focus on this particular role and as much as you can streamline that for people and make it an easy decision to say yes to. There was a. I was on a call earlier today and a similar call last week where the person was talking about a conversion heuristic and I have it written down but it's on my other desk so I'll try and remember it for the I've never heard of this term, so I'm fascinated real quick so he was talking about conversions and get into a yes.

So the outcome of a yes is a multiple of four times the motivation, so 4m um plus 2v, which is two times the value proposition plus two times the incentive or the ease of use of doing whatever the action is, but then minus any friction and any anxiety. 

Aubrey: And I butchered that a little bit isn't it funny how conversions have become so math-like. You know we think about it as so much psychology and so much people, but there's still an underlying element of math to it.

Stuart: Right, there's that art and science, but there's definitely a decent amount of science that you can test against. So all of those things the motivation, the value proposition, the ease of the incentive to actually click, whatever the thing is against the friction and the anxiety, whatever we can do to ease that overall completion whether it's on a webpage or whether it's putting a speaker proposal out, or whether it's standing on stage and delivering the material and then leaving people with a book which reduces anxiety, which removes friction, increases value proposition, leading someone to an author website or your particular brand where you have the whole world view of the thing that you offer. Easily presenting people, whichever way they come into it, easily presenting them with the next step all of these things are kind of levers that we can pull to streamline the whole process. So when you're dealing with people, how many people come with a very clear idea of what they want to do, versus they've kind of got a loose idea of the outcome that they want and you've got to guide people towards making it to that finish line.

Aubrey: That's a great question, because speakers, thought leaders, authors are very particular about their content. So typically we'll find that people have that I want to say blue sky ready in their mind right of what that looks like. Now the interesting thing is that not every speaker is going to be set up for the same late stage conversions. You know, if you're someone that is focused on retirement planning, you know you're going to be much more focused on getting consultations with maybe an entire company to set up their benefits and so on and so forth. So knowing what that end conversion is usually dictates the path we take, because there's different areas of attack that you can go about it as a speaker and a thought leader too. Now, going back to it again, there's going to have to be critical assets, because if there isn't some kind of asset, you're only pitching yourself and you're relying on a heavy amount of your personal brand, having already done the lifting.

And that's something that we all like to think. We're known in our industry, but if you look at the Google search volume, for most companies the founder is probably the seventh or eighth term that they're the highest position for. So you're still getting traffic off of yourself, but there's that opportunity to branch off and really create something of your own. Create something of your own. So typically there's also steps as well. Right, maybe I'm looking to host event series and I want to have my book be a part of that promotion, or maybe I want to build a community, but it all always comes back to what that end point conversion is. The biggest problem I see speakers and thought leaders fall into. The biggest trap, I guess, is the idea that my content alone, just what I say, can drive an entire personal brand. That's only half true.

Stuart: Right.

Aubrey: Because there still has to be some kind of ongoing conversation, like you're saying, to where we're still elaborating every day and training our audience every day and nurturing that audience to where, when we have them come back to the personal brand and site, they're actually ready to convert. Whether that's sign up for a speaking engagement book for press, is a big one in that nature. If you're using a PR company, they're almost always going to insist you have a personal brand website. They're going to insist that you have things like press and media. And where does all that live? So that's really where it all starts. For us is that personal brand platform allows you to have the legs to do other things beyond just what you say and lead generation.

Stuart: Right. So the people who are kind of consuming the site, the people on the other side, is there any? I'm trying to ask a question in a way that isn't the obvious answer. It's different for every person. Are there any trends, I guess, around what people are looking for now? So if, when I'm thinking about the people who've written books with us over the years, there's that mix of kind of very small independent financial advisors to larger business owners who are looking to establish more of a movement or a different way of approaching things, the kind of manifesto type book of how we're planting a flag in the ground of doing things differently, so the people who are coming to those websites, the information they're trying to consume, is going to be a mix of potential clients but then potential network partners or people who are, who can kind of amplify that message out in the broader world. So is there any kind of trends on the types of information that people are wanting to see when they come to that site? Will be that everyone's different?

Aubrey: Yeah, absolutely. I think that there are several things lately, and I'm going to take this in two steps, because, with the platform there are, because I see this as a two-part answer. With the platform, there are certain things that if you are trying to be a speaker or a thought leader, it is almost essential to have. One of them is, you know, press kits on your actual site. If you give presentations, having unique URLs for your presentations so that you can drive traffic specifically to that Small things, even though, like having your headshot, we see that all the time where they won't have their headshot. But a streamlined experience once someone gets to your site is the first step of this answer.

Now, in terms of what people are searching for, we get to put our math hats back on again, because the way that people search is always changing. We mentioned the more of the unbranded traffic, but there are several factors to consider in your organic traffic. The first is how much volume is there, right? So how many people search over a 30-day period? The second being okay, what is the competitive density? So how many people search over a 30-day period? The second being okay, what is the competitive density? So how many of my competitors are trying to rank for this term and then Google will actually give a score for the term of how difficult it is to rank for. So we want to act almost like a financial planner here, where there's going to be some terms that are worth the optimization for and some that we might say there's less traffic but it's less competitive.

Now, backing up. What does that mean? Well, again, with math, 65% of Google search results end in the first three results. 80% end in the first five. Once you get to page two, you are getting five to 7% of total traffic. So if you pick a term where you're going to be on page two but there's, you know, a hundred thousand searches, that might not actually be worth it because you might not be getting enough of that math. So what we look at now is the actual trends and we pull the data and what we've seen overall is that people are searching for specific content around their pain points. So with the book, what pain point do you answer? What are you alleviating and what value are you providing? Then let's start focusing on optimizing towards that.

Stuart: And it's such a great example of A why it's difficult for people to do themselves. Now it's such a complicated and busy space. To be able to rank for anything by yourself is probably difficult for someone coming in today. Now there's going to be legacy players who did do it themselves and they've got the benefit of age and kind of holding that ground initially. Kind of holding that ground initially.

But for someone starting from scratch it is pretty challenging, I think, to have a map of, to be able to see that landscape and the map of which ones are worth it and which ones aren't. And then the other point that I really love and again it's one of the reasons why books are so valuable is this idea of topic bridging. You've written 60, 70, 80 pages worth of stuff that's in your wheelhouse, in your ballpark, but there might be four, five, six, slightly longer tail keywords that are accessible and worth doing. That you might struggle to come across yourself, but working with someone like you guys, you can then take the existing content that you've got and then bridge it into a relevant search term, and it's a much easier job of doing the bridging work rather than looking at a blank page and thinking I've got to create this thing from scratch.

So it just gives so many opportunities to leverage the work that you've done into this whole other realm of optimization and organic traffic, and then, as we were saying earlier, the specific outreach and the dedicated pieces that you do. It's kind of, once you've done that work, it just opens up so many opportunities. And the underlying tentpole piece is a book which in and of itself has an outsized authority compared with the same information in a video or on a web page. Again, there might be good use cases for doing those things as well, but the fact that it comes back to the book, it's just a disproportionate advantage, I think, particularly while still I mean books are getting more and more popular for people to do, but still it's a small minority of people who actually do it.

Aubrey: You know, something I've always found interesting too is that authors in general and maybe it's just the ability of writers, right, in general authors have an easier time relating and explaining the audience for a book than on the website. So what we found is that by pulling content from the book, that's easy, blog material that can be repurposed, that's already been used or it can be managed in different ways to where we already understand who the audience is. And the pain point is Because you mentioned it, there are legacy players. Yes, that happens. Your social media can actually be a huge driver now, depending on what platform you're on, if you're on Twitter, if you're on LinkedIn something that can be a huge organic driver.

But at the end of the day, people, we use websites now as a tool. Websites are not just brochures. We as a society, go to a website with an expectation that we can accomplish a goal, and if your personal brand site doesn't accomplish a goal that leads to conversions and leads to more business, it's just a missed opportunity. In general, right, and like you said, that book often bridges the gap, because the book reinforces your authority each step of the way while someone's engaging with your personal brand.

Stuart: Yeah, it does kind of accelerate the whole know, like and trust process. Now you've got a place where people can, one place that's convenient, that people can learn more. It brings it all together and, whatever the touch point is into that world, you're always presenting people with the next step and, in a way, that kind of builds on the authority and credibility because you've managed and brought together specifically the journey that you want to bring together for that audience. You talked about having unique urls for things.

When you're out there reaching to people, one of the things I've said to people for the longest time is, if you have the opportunity, if you know you're addressing an audience, one of the easiest ways to do is give people a copy of the book in the first instance, if you feel like there's any friction to asking them to name an email to download it, but then say, hey, actually we've only got 20 minutes here on stage, but I actually recorded a bit of a deeper dive on one of the main subjects in a video and head over to this page and get a copy of it there.

So, again, using the assets that you've got the speech that you're delivering, the email that you're sending, the book that you've sent out, but personalizing it with a note and then delivering more information to just use a small step, that again has a larger amplification of that personal connection, because all of it is about personal connection. We're really trying to make that, make a person feel welcome and that we can help them, and we're enthusiastic to help them. So as much as possible we can make a conversational conversion, a one-to-one relationship. Even if that one-to-one is at scale, then it just oils the wheel so much more.

Aubrey: Yeah, absolutely, and you talk about just building that authenticity too.

Right, and one of the big trends we saw out of the pandemic was people trying to move towards a e-learning or some kind of virtual learning as a consultant, because the idea was oh well, we can sell 10,000 licenses. That also relies, though, on having built that authority. It relies on having something that you can say like, and the best example I've seen that works is actually taking chapters out of your book and building an e-learning course out of that and the book as a side-by-side material, because we all want to create these different sticky mechanisms to keep people within our funnel, within our environment, within our ecosystem. But the interesting thing is, to this day, people still are willing to make the commitment on a book over an e-learning class, regardless of the cost. Cost nine times out of ten. So it's an interesting thing we're having the partnership works, but if we're trying to just pull and be an e-learning or, you know, having that virtual classroom type, there's still got to be some kind of legitimate content associated to it, right?

Stuart: yeah, it's two things that spring to mind, as you mentioned. That is one, this idea of minimum viable commitment. We call it when we're talking about books on the back cover, this idea of the small step, the smallest viable step that moves people towards a buying decision, to be able to give someone the book, which is the overview. And yes, there'll be a certain amount of people that don't take any steps more than just request the book. But they would probably never your clients anyway. It's a very tiny minority of people who would read the content that was in there and then think, okay, I'm done, now I don't need anything else. It's a disproportionately larger majority that will consume the content there and realize, oh, this is the starting point, and now I need to go to the next one and the book has done that kind of conversion or compelling piece for you to move them forward.

And then the second point that you mentioned is the backup or the reinforcing element of multiple formats, so to have a book as a follow-along, even if people don't actually read it. There's a psychological again. I was on a call earlier today. Actually, I wrote down because I thought I need to remember this because I'm going to use it yeah, this happens to me all the time.

It's normal, right right, yeah, unless I write down, it disappears again. So the person was talking about landing page conversions and we were running through some older landing pages and the language that was on there and there was a longer piece and someone commented well, that's a long piece, I'm not sure that someone's going to read it. Or there was. It was, uh, adding reinforcing elements to the page. So there was the copy and then the bullets and then some overcoming objections and some logos, icons for credibility and some testimonials, and someone made the comment oh, there's a lot of stuff there. It'll take a long time for someone to read through it.

So the comment was that I don't want to teach people to read. I want to compel them to make a decision. And those things that are on the page, or if there's an e-learning course and the fact that a book is there to back it up, it's not necessarily that you're trying to create more content than they're actually going to consume. It's that you want to add to the value proposition so that it compels them to take the decision, and the decision then moves them on to the next step and they may never revisit some of these issues or some of these elements, but it just builds on this momentum of yes towards that decision point and we know from you know, obviously, the thousands of years of mankind that there's really three things that lead people to buy.

Aubrey: Right, there's the do I trust you? The authority, are you saying the right thing and is it easy for me to make the decision in the conversion point, right there? So when we're thinking even about web user flow, there's almost a narrative we want to build on a page, and if it takes a little, want to build on a page, and if it takes a little longer to build that narrative that includes those three things, that's fine, as long as there's a conversion point. Now, at the same time, we can look back now and say that some of the most simplified conversion landing pages perform the best. Let's take a look at Google.

What do you do when you get to Google? There's only one option. Right, there's one, or well, I guess you can. There's multiple. Now, you can go in the menu and all of that, but when you land on the page, your only option is to search. Now, that works because we've already decided Google is an authority and we trust Google, at least for the searches. Now, when we're designing a landing page though, sometimes you're right it does take a little bit of time to answer that, to prove that you're an authority, to prove that what you're saying is correct. But throughout all of that, if someone comes to your site and already knows, you just want to pepper in conversion points throughout.

Stuart: Right, and that, I think, is something to do Right, and that knowing where, where they come from, and this kind of second level thinking around everything we do, it's not the hey, we should have a website. So let's build a website and that's it. It's okay. Well, what's the purpose of the website and how is it being used?

Aubrey: it's not right who's?

Stuart: the something that gets overlooked far too often with websites yeah, and this idea that the home page has to do everything and do everything for every person, whereas in certain use cases and I'd say a lot of use cases the entrance points to the website are unlikely to be the home page.

They're more likely to be a deeper page, either whether that's directly linking someone to it or because they've searched and found one of the answers to the questions which you were talking about before.

We've kind of over-indexed, I think, in the work that we've done in the past around landing pages, in that our mental model pretty much comes from an ad or a direct response-based world of someone sees something that drives someone to a landing page and therefore the landing pages that we've got typically are just very short and very the text almost replicates the ad.

So from the ads to the page and then the opt-in, because the thought process there is that someone's already made the decision that they want the thing, the fact that we technically need a landing page to capture some details, which obviously is bypassed with lead ads and things like that, but it's just a function of having to get to that next step, but that's fine in that use case where they are coming in through that particular funnel, but the example that we were talking about before. You send a pitch deck to someone to promote a speaking engagement. They then search for you all, go to a home page or go to a page that you point them towards, which is the speaker organizer landing page. If that was just a name and an email opt-in, that wouldn't be the right answer. What we want to present to those people is this amount of stuff that makes their decision easier. So, anyway, anyway, a long way.

Aubrey: The other thing to consider here because we haven't mentioned this and you just kind of touched on it when someone's booking you for a speaking engagement, they also want to know that you have your own audience and means of promotions. Because if you are able to promote their conference or their event or whatever that might be, through your own personal brand, you're a lot more attractive now as a speaker because you come with some clout. And now you know, I look at several examples of you know some of the big time circuit speakers and yeah, I mean, yes, it is kind of a you know chicken versus the egg problem, right, Like, once you get to a bigger, big enough platform, you probably don't have to self-promote as much, but the ability to promote where you're speaking at those types of things, that's a value to a lot of conferences, to a lot of events, so on and so yeah, and again it comes back to that orchestration of it.

Stuart: So, and there's only one, gary Vaynerchuk. There's only one, tony Robbins right, the majority of us aren't at that level. So as you start coming down in the kind of tiers of speakers below that and get more into the real small business world of actual business owners delivering presentations on things that are delivering value to other small business organizations, then that same it becomes a degree of. It's not a difference, it's a degree.

Aubrey: If that makes no, absolutely yes, because you're having to separate yourself now and yeah, and provide, and that's why we really think it's super important for personal brands and for thought leaders to have the ancillary assets like a book right, like media pages and bios and things of that nature, like the newsletter. You know, if you're going to be pitching your book to a publisher one day, or to an agency or anything of that nature, they're going to want to see the size of your following and your newsletter.

Stuart: Yeah, I mean you can imagine a scenario of speaking at an organization at a lower level not a big stage level, but a more realistic level for the small business owner or the speaker who's kind of just getting going or getting some traction, but to be able to send that organizer to a page where you're obviously promoting the event after the event. You've got social media snippets If you talk about what a great event it was and how, how good they were at organizing it, anything that you can do to. Again, it reminds me of that joke of the two guys walking through the jungle and they hear a lion and one guy's putting his sneakers on and the other guy's laughing at him and say you'll never outrun a lion. And he looks across and says I don't need to outrun the lion, I just need to outrun you. So it's that same little bit of orchestration of your presence that makes you the easy choice over other people. And then just talking about the traditional publishing routes and we've had authors that have gone that direction after they've worked with us that the idea is kind of germinating and it's turned into something bigger.

But I was on a. I dialed into a virtual meeting last year sometime and the speaker from stage was the operations director of a big traditional publishing house and he was saying hey, listen, if two people come to me and one person's got a 10 000 person audience and the other person's got a couple of followers on social media, we're going to pick that person because we're in the business of selling books, which isn't our business. We're in the business of starting conversations, but they're in the business of selling books. So if you're not coming with an audience and the same goes for speakers they're in the business of making their event as successful as possible, and some of that is you delivering the value and leaving the assets that enhance the experience for the attendees after the event, but also if you can do something to promote it and make them look good even better.

Aubrey: That's the secret, right, that's the secret is when the person, that's because you mentioned it, there's the gatekeeper and the audience right, and the gatekeeper's tail is on the line for how you perform, not the audience right, how you speak. The audience is going to hear what you say regardless. So the other thing, too, that you know you mentioned that a lot of speakers and thought leaders overlook is getting the actual video clips of their speaking engagements right.

You know that's something that we always press of. Do you have video clips that we can include of you speaking on that personal brand site? What can we do to keep building that authority and legitimacy? I mean, even if it's just something as simple as you walking through, you know, a couple key points of your book on a five minute YouTube video. Reinforcing that authority is something that often gets overlooked because, again, the trap we fall into we in general, as speakers and thought leaders is that the audience is the one that's going to be looking for us online and that's just simply not the case yeah, yeah, it's a second degree element, not the first.

Stuart: Again, that's what makes it difficult for people, I think, trying to do this by themselves is there are so many moving parts and it's not so much that it's rocket science apart from the bits that are rocket science, because clearly there are bits that are more difficult to do for people than others, but everyone can get something up.

So there's a debate about whether that something is good enough, but it's secondary. So that's something is good enough but secondary. So that's almost like a point in time problem, if it's either good enough or it's not good enough and either fix it or don't fix it. But the bigger picture is what you're alluding to there. It's the constant reinforcement, or the constant ability to reinforce, to stay that one step ahead of the competition all the time, to be able to orchestrate and bring together all of these elements in a place that makes the people looking for us find something that we want them to find and accelerate that conversation towards yes, I'm in the right place and yes, I want to do business with you right, because a lot of business owners when they exit, they exit because they were successful, they have a story and they are an authority and thought leader in their space and kind of the what's next?

Aubrey: Well, yeah, obviously I want to be a consultant, I want to share my experiences and my success and kind of grow the next generation. But your story doesn't always just resonate alone. It has to be relatable, right, and I think that's where, from a content perspective, people and thought leaders need to really focus as well. As when I'm writing this book, when I'm developing this website, am I saying something that's going to actually resonate with people, or am I saying something that maybe is unique to me, that might put people off, because people search online also for subjects related around their problems? So, optimizing pages for the, again, the pain points you solve in the book if those resonate with other people, that's how you really build solid, organic traffic.

Sometimes we see people get very lost in in what I call their own internal isms, okay, and we like to think about the fact that, because we use a term very often that somebody thinking about us or looking for us is going to use it too. So that's just another trap to avoid where, with your personal brand site, you can be very targeted and specific about the message and make sure you're alleviating those pain points, rather than on social media you're kind of shooting a little scattershot of of. I hope my content resonates with whoever is going to see it on their feed that day right and, at the end of the day, it's not something that you own.

Stuart: There's always that huge risk of, yes, use it as a gateway out to the world, but make sure that you're bringing people back to the thing that you own and the thing that you've got control over and someone's not going to rug pull you because some algorithm got triggered and then your account's shut down for a week you bring up a great point, because there's also an existential reason to have a personal brand site, because, as we move into a more online and technical world, owning your own name online is going to be way more important than it was maybe 25 years ago.

Aubrey: Right, you know? I mean, we see, one of the first things that I recommended my brother-in-law to do when he's, when his children were born, was to buy the URLs. Buy the URL their name, you know because that's virtual real estate that is only going to appreciate in value. 

Stuart: Yeah.

Aubrey: So if I'm a speaker, thought leader, and I have any idea that I might want to do this one day, owning the url is the first step, because that's something that you want to make sure also, that you own your own space online for the future, right yeah, absolutely.

Stuart: And, as you say, moving into a world where it's going to get increasingly difficult, slash impossible to tell the difference between a surface view, at least, between what is, I'm going to say, real but even have to air quotes real these days, but what is genuinely authentically you, actually you versus what isn't the whole idea of. At least this is the place that you own, and if stuff appears outside of that, it's one degree of credibility less. The place that you own has to be the place that is the, the sort, the single source of truth of what you're willing to put out there. It's, uh, again, increasingly important, and even more so for people like authors and speakers, people who business, owners, who appear out there in the world more than just an employee on the street that doesn't really have an online presence. The fact there's so much of your content out there I mean this podcast. We're 180 episodes in, so that's 180 episodes on awesome.

Yeah, 180, 180 hours of me talking about this out there real achievement, other podcasts that we've achieved. So if someone's scraping and wants to create content that sounds like me but isn't me, hey, I've fed them a lot of stuff to kind of feed that machine, but at least I know that no one else is putting stuff on my website. It's the place that I've got the keys to.

Aubrey: I'll give you a hot take for this, but I do really believe that as a society, we are recognizing AI generated content quicker and quicker than ever before. We are starting to notice the patterns of how AI writes content, for example. So, like, the here's blank is going to be chat GPT. We know that right, but I think we're going to eventually, and I think of the saying. What makes me think of this is the saying that I wanted AI to do the dishes and the laundry while I created art, but instead AI is creating art while I do the dishes and laundry, and I think that's so true to where eventually, we will start going online.

Now, I'm not discrediting AI within content strategies, because AI is always going to be better for creating efficiencies, but are you going to build that same trust using AI as we, as a society, start understanding what AI looks like? There's times I'm sure you've come across something where you're like I can tell that's an AI generated article, or I can tell that this page has AI generated content. Now, there's nothing bad about that, but we're trading the trust and authority for efficiency. So I always want to remind people about AI generated content. Is it worth it? Is that trait of efficiency worth the authority and authenticity of your voice, because that answer is going to be different for everybody, right?

Stuart: exactly, yeah, exactly. It's understanding the trade-off, and that's again. I mean. We started by saying that I was excited by this show because we got such a line thinking about things. Obviously, people ask us about ai generated books and you said exactly what I say. The reason for, the only reason you would do it is either you don't have your own ideas which isn't true for the majority of people that we work with or you're definitely not a good idea, if you're a speaker or thought leader, to be going out ideas.

Good luck, yeah it's relatively self-selecting, yeah, or you're trying to do it for efficiency and the reality, particularly using our process up from the book generation side of things is it's 90 minutes of your time and it's 100% of your voice and if the outcome is a conversation, the outcome isn't a product. You're not trying to sell a book for $5 and sell a million books and then retire. You're trying to have conversations with people who are eventually going to come in through your door or jump on, zoom and talk with you. If the book doesn't represent the way that you speak or the way that you think or your approach, that's a disconnect, that isn't gonna, that isn't gonna jive. And then the language and trying to clean up what is generated to make it in your voice. It's just not efficient. It's not the best way of doing it.

A much better way of doing it is create some unique, authentic content yourself, like this podcast. We've got an hour now that we've been talking about this. We'll absolutely use ai to amplify it afterwards. But the efficiencies that we're doing is in the distribution and the generation and the clipping. It's not in the ideas or the thoughts. The ideas and thoughts are the uniquely I don't want to say the uniquely human thing, because that sounds a bit pretentious, but it's the uniquely our thing and our approach in the way that we do it. So definitely use AI to amplify things, but don't use it as the seed of the thoughts.

Aubrey: Right, and there's also there's really no true answer yet about how Google is going to handle AI generated content.

Stuart: Right.

Aubrey: How search engines are going to handle AI generated content. Now, my personal belief is that eventually, all content will have to be run through an AI for the optimization, and that's how Google will approach that and we'll you know, for us as content creators and us as search engine people, we'll have to make tweaks and optimize from there, and you know, the humans will come in after getting the feedback from the AI. But the dystopian view is what is twofold? What if Google doesn't prioritize AI at all?

Right prioritize AI at all. You've been creating all of your content and all of a sudden, google says that content is not valid and legitimate content for our search engine anymore. What's the next step? The second dystopian fact is that, ultimately, when we're talking about keywords and we're talking about rankings, humans are going to make the decision about their business better than an AI, and I firmly believe that. And what an AI risks is getting into negative feedback cycles to where the AI doesn't know the difference.

Right, if it's raining or overcast, if it's supposed to rain, if the forecast says it's raining, we can look outside and be like, oh, it's just overcast, I don't need my raincoat. So I think that's something. To be weary is probably not the right word, but look around the corner, right and start thinking about that, and maybe the answer will be one day that Google says all content that's gonna be ranked properly needs to be generated by AI. Maybe that will be the case, but there will always be a need for us, as humans, to step in and increase the effectiveness, authority and legitimacy of whatever that efficiency is creating.

Stuart: And I think that ties us up neatly in coming back to the whole idea of personal brands, because it's that individual approach to doing things. We see this with financial advisors a lot. I mean, a 401k is a 401k at the end of the day, but how they present their business, their priorities, how they work with people, the care that they give to their clients, that's the differentiator. And just as much as one person will work great with this group of people, another person will work great with this group of people. So there's an abundance out there where just you as your personality, your presence, is more than enough to win at this game. Um, time always goes fast, it's uh, pleasure talking with you.

Aubrey: Great to come on.

Stuart: Thank you for having me yeah, no problem, we should definitely circle back in a few months and do a kind of a 202 or follow-up level. I want to make sure that people we gave some great pointers there for people in terms of thinking about how they should bring their personal brand together, but then of course it runs up against the practicalities of doing it. So I want to make sure that people can kind of pull some more of your resources and see what you guys do, because you've got a lot of great stuff over there to take this to the next level. So where's a good place for people to go?

Aubrey: Yeah, the first step I always recommend with people is the data, everything online. For little people to go yeah, the first step I always recommend with people is the data, everything online. We talked about the math. It all comes back to data. It all comes back to making informed decisions. We offer complimentary search engine optimization audits.

So if you go to alterendeavors. com and you go on the side menu, you can find our complimentary SEO audit. We'll go through, look at all the data, all the traffic. If you don't have a personal brand site yet, what we can do is we can look at some of your competitors and see what they're doing and see what resonates with your story and your mission. But at the end of the day, why I say to start with that is because websites are only as good as the traffic you drive to them. And if we're not driving quality traffic to a site for a speaker, for a thought leader, for a personal brand, it's going to be difficult to get good speaking engagements right, it's going to be difficult to get good consulting jobs, to get that good end point. So that's why I think starting with what is the actual search term, the strategy for getting organic rankings, so on and so forth. That's what I always recommend to start with. So you can go to alterendeavors.com and in our menu there's a free SEO audit.

Stuart: Perfect, and I'll make sure I'll link directly to it as well in the show notes so, as people are listening either in a podcast player or on the website, they can just click straight through.

I'll also link your LinkedIn profile as well, so people can connect with you directly, directly. We could talk for so much longer and looking forward to doing another one of these and diving a little bit deeper. It's such a, as we start off by saying, it's such a great crossover between what we do and the way that we talk to people and try and get people to think about a book. The fact that you guys aren't thinking about a website purely from a design perspective and it has to look pretty and not really that worried about functionality or who's engaging with you, really, starting with the end in mind of this thing, is here to do a job of work and let's make sure that it does that. So, yeah, ties in so well. I'll be. Thanks again, buddy. Really appreciate it everyone. Thanks for listening. Make sure you check out the show notes for links straight through and then we will catch you again in the next one thanks.