How the Unemployable can get their 7 Figure small business noticed with Jerod Morris. Part 1.

Jim James: 0:00

This week, I'm going to take a little bit of a departure from the normal, because I was very privileged to be interviewed by Jerod Morris over at the unemployable initiative. And. I was on their podcast in the community. I want to share my lessons and learnings from the speak PR program that I shared in this unemployable community. So here's the first half of the program and the other half is coming out in two days time.

Jerod Morris: 0:30

And welcome fellow unemployables to yet another lunch and learn our regular opportunity here inside of the unemployable initiative to get. By learning from the wisdom experience and enthusiasm of a fellow member. This is our 39th lunch and learn. And our 106th live learning opportunity taking place here on the afternoon of October 7th, 2021. I am your host, Jerod Morris. And you know, there are a few common themes that come up time and time again, whenever I host a Q and a, or pose a discussion question about the challenges. That unemployable initiative members are facing in building their audience-based businesses. And one of those recurring themes is about getting attention, getting noticed with so much content and so many distractions vying for the attention of our ideal audience members. How do we get our content, our story ourselves. In front of them in a way that compels them to pay attention. Well, unemployable initiative member, Jim James literally wrote the book on how to do exactly this Jim wrote. And self-published the unnoticed entrepreneur, 50 ideas for your company to stand out. It includes his speak PR methodology, a simple five stage approach that creates a framework for business owners to build a simple and structured approach to their public relations. And today. Jim is going to share some of the most relevant lessons from his book with us. As we all try to increase our ability to get noticed by the people who matter. Jim, welcome to, to this lunch and learn to the unemployable initiative. Great to have you here,

Jim James: 1:58

Jerry. Thank you so much for having me on I'm joining you from sunny bath in England. I'm not in the bath, but there is a place called bath. I'm joining you from here. So a real pleasure to be with you. Thank you so much for invite.

Jerod Morris: 2:10

Absolutely. So, okay. Before we get to your presentation, I have to get the backstory behind the line and your author profile that says this quote, his first brush with getting noticed was at 18 when he jumped out of a plane in return for sponsorship and received expedition equipment in return for media, publicity, what happened there? That sounds like.

Jim James: 2:32

Well, you know, I grew up in, the Southeast of England too. wonderful parents, but parents who are not commercially, particularly savvy one was, an academic and one, the social worker. And I, I want to place on operation rally, which is this expedition to go to Australia. And, I got a job, like all good middle-class English boys did. And when I did the math. Selling toys in the shop, which is my job. I would, I wouldn't get enough money before the, the expedition left Australia. So I had this idea that I would, I would do something I was afraid of and that most other people would be afraid of too. And that was jumping out of a narrow plane, Jerod. So I found this little air field near me, called head corn and. I, I went around the shop and asked people to sponsor me and, and amazingly enough, I raised much more money by jumping out at that airplane than, I would have done in a year of working for somebody selling toys. So it's kind of a, a light bulb moment, but then I had the money for the plane, but I didn't have the money for all the kit. So I went to, a local newspaper and said, look, if I go on this trip, would you cover. Trip if I get some sponsorship and then they said, well, that sounds interesting. So then I went to, a local hiking shop and said, if you give me some kit, I'll get you into the newspaper. Anyone else sounds like a good deal. And so there was this 18 year old and I didn't know what I was doing, Jerod, to be honest, never heard of VR. It just seemed like a, a good way to kind of bridge the two people's needs. And yeah. So jumping out of a plane got me there and then getting some PR for a mountaineering. Got me clothed. So that's it. That was my first introduction to kind of enter being an entrepreneur and being in publicity,

Jerod Morris: 4:19

just a brilliant plan. You know, sometimes when we, when we feel like we don't know what we're doing is when the best and boldest ideas come out.

Jim James: 4:26

Yeah. And I don't think I told anybody because no one said it wouldn't work. So I think I just did it. You know, now you, you put it on social media and people say, well, maybe you shouldn't do that. You. You know, I think sometimes ignorance is just the best formula for being brave.

Jerod Morris: 4:40

Yeah, absolutely. Well, cool. Well thank you for sharing that story. And, with that said, I will turn it over to you and we look forward to seeing your presentation.

Jim James: 4:49

Well, thanks so much. And I think I'm really, I started out by jumping out of an airplane and then I went to America to university and, and got sponsored to go to central America on an expedition. So I kind of got. Background of having adventure and having it sponsored. But I wanted to ask how many people, Gerald that are here today are entrepreneurs. And I don't think we've got the poll or not, but I guess pretty much everybody in the unemployable community is sort of freelance or unemployed. Right.

Jerod Morris: 5:21

And the attendees and most of the people I see here are entrepreneurs.

Jim James: 5:26

Right. In's raised his hand. And then the second question. How many of you. Thanks, Dan. How many of you also became fathers or mothers when you are running your own business? How many people started to run their own business? Because, yeah, Dan, so you'll know what I mean. I, I went to China in 2006 from Singapore where I had gone to start a company in 1995. So. I had a history of kind of starting businesses and having done them in England and America, I then went to Singapore and I got to China and Jerod within about a year. I met a beautiful woman and I had my PR firm. And if, you know, if you do PR you get paid by the hour. And then, and then all of a sudden we had this baby on the way. And I thought, how do I make more money? When actually I'm going to have less. Because PR is time for money, right? So I feel like working out that if I sold toys at four pounds an hour, I'd never get to my destination. I figured the same was going to be true with, with PR selling time. So when I was a young lad, I heard been on the back of a Morgan sports car, and I'm not sure whether anybody here is familiar with Morgan, anyone here heard of Morgan sports. Maybe it's a British car company been around since 1909 so I got to China and I had this young family starting. I realized I would never be able to make enough money just raising money from. And my cousin sent me a picture of a Morgan, just like the one that my uncle had when I was a kid. And I thought, what a great, what a great idea. Well, what a great antidote to being, you know, a dad and losing my, my youth. So I bought a Morgan sports car Jerod and I imported it to China. Now the thing was when I drove it to place, is people. You know, chicken, chicken church, show me, let's see. What kind of car is that? Jason? the lady an old car, right. And I said, actually, it's a new car. Look, it has a license plate. I can get a license plate. And I said to someone, do you, would you like to buy one? And they said, yes, the Chinese suggests. So I rang Morgan and said, Hey, you know what, where's the dealer. I've got a tech PR background. I know nothing about selling cars, but I could help your local dealer sell cars in China. And they said we don't have one. It transpired that I imported the first Morgan sports car to China, Jerod evaluated. Right? So this is in 2011 a year later on I'd made an application to become the dealer. Of Morgan and we've got appointed to be the importer for Morgan. And this picture you see on the screen, isn't just my solution to running out of money. Cause at school fees to pay for that. Now two children and I found a free parking space in Tiananmen square. This is in forbid and city, right? This is right in a very central Beijing. What I decided to do was to drive my car into the very center of the forbidden city unannounced. And without any permits, what happened was I, I took a journalist that I'd met outside a supermarket who was taking pictures of my car, and I took him with me. And before the police came, which is about five minutes out of this. We got loads and loads of photographs fast forward, seven years, Jerod. And what I did was I managed to build the Morgan brand over the next seven years in China. And the speak PR methodology really comes out of some of the lessons that I've learnt, where I built a car brand in China, even I didn't speak Chinese. Even though I didn't have an ad budget and I didn't have any support from the manufacturer. But I just think that resonates for entrepreneurs who have got something really, really cool. Can add a lot of value, but actually they haven't got VC. They haven't got maybe a big backing, but they've got something really valuable to share that they know people will love if they see it. That's really what happened when people saw the Morgan car. So what I wanted to do was just to share, this is how it kind of started in China. I did something a little bit. And this is actually within the purview of absolutely every entrepreneur. It doesn't cost anything to have an idea and take a little bit of a risk. And what I've done since being back in the UK is to then start a podcast called the unnoticed entrepreneur, and I've got 350 episodes. now if that, and I catalog what I call the speak PR process. But what I've also done, Jerod is I've interviewed now a hundred experts and fellow entrepreneurs on how they get noticed and the tools that they use, because I'm a big believer that every entrepreneur deserves their Thyms. And that's the, the Greek word for recognize. So in this book, I've basically curated and I had to thank, Brian Clark for that. I was listening to the, the seven figures, small one, Dale mano, my walks in the countryside here and heard you and Brian talking about you'd have to write everything, but you can cure, rate the ideas of others. But what I've done is to create the stress. So that the ideas flow so that an entrepreneur has the ability to put it into some, some system and in some context. Very simply for PR. There isn't anything really super, super scary or, or clever. It's about creating content, having that be context relevant. And here's the part that most entrepreneurs and big companies fail in. And that's the consistency. Jerod, what happens is many companies create content, which is self serving. They talk about themselves, they create content and they send you. But it's not relevant at the time of the place that it's going to be received by the audience and they do it sporadically. So what I've got here is this idea that we have this five stages and because we're building trust with our audiences, we have to do it consistently. So the essence of the know, like trust is the trust. And the knowing about you maybe from advertising or from PR the liking might be from that, but it doesn't make people buy from you unless they trust you. So it's the consistency of communication. That's key. And of course that's the same in any relationship with family or friends or colleagues or teammates. So public relations used to be who, you know, now public relations. What content you share? So there's been a game change in the last 15 to 20 years from the relationships matter to what you create matters. So I just created a very simple process because there's a lot of information on the internet, which is all very tactical. But what I hear from clients is I understand that, how to do linked. Very well or understand how to do Facebook ad through well, but I don't understand how they integrate. And then this kind of rush to short-term tactics. What we've lost is the ability to sit back and take a strategic overview. So speak PR is the simple acronym Storify, which is about putting events into chapters and building your own story around your own. But more importantly, Jerod, it's not just about your story. It's about the story of what we, what we call the avatar. And most people think of the avatar as being your customer. But I think of it as three audiences, it's your customer, but it's also your employees and also your partners, all three of those have got to be aligned for your business to succeed. So Storify. It's the first part. And if we think about star wars, for example, the story is actually about Luke Skywalker, but we have OB one as the mentor. And actually what we like to think about what I like to think about in the CPR program is that our role as business owners is as the Gobi one Kenobi, we're the mentors, the coaches, but the story really needs to be. About the person who in the, in the journey. Now, the reason that's important is that when we come to personalizing the message, it doesn't just mean saying dear, dear Jerod, to Alan, whatever it means, the message needs to be relevant to the person who's going through that journey. In other words, If we look at Luke Skywalker at the beginning, he doesn't want to hear that the story of his needs to hear. He doesn't want to go on that journey, but eventually he realizes that this is his journey. So under personalization, it's the message, but it's about personalized and a message for the individual. That's going to hear it, not just about making it a, like just a name replacement engagement is all about creating compelling content and content. And I'll talk about this in just a little. But content, which can be shared. Now, what many companies do is they create content about themselves and then they wonder why it doesn't get shared with anybody else. Content that gets shared is content that's proven to be new and to be easy to understand. And I'll explain about the cascade theory in just a minute. Content that we create needs to be new because then people take notice of it. But it also needs to be simple to understand, because if it's complicated, people don't want to take the risk to share it. Amplification is all about now using the technology that's available for entrepreneurs, all sorts of great AI tools. And this is the part that really has leveled out the playing field for, for businesses. Along with big, big companies. And then the knowing I'm going to talk about the active communications index. So it's a simple, very simple process and it comes down to increasing content creation, increasing the frequency of distribution, and finally increasing the number of channels. Okay. Hope is everyone okay with this so far? We don't normally talk for this long without having people interrupt, especially at home, my children. Interrupted by now.

Jerod Morris: 15:30

So yeah. Sounds like everybody's good.

Jim James: 15:33

Okay, great. So the idea is I'd like people to think about counting the input, not the vanity metrics, as we all learned from Facebook going down this week, if you only count the likes and the shares. Actually you are really, sort of at the behest of these big organizations. So one of the key takeaways I'd like people to think about today is what I call this active communications index, which is very simple. How much content do you create? How often do you share it and via how many channels, content times frequent. Time's channels. It's very simple, but what happens is people create content. Sometimes they'd send it maybe sporadically. Now they don't optimize all the channels. So I know today I haven't got that long, and this is all explained in the book, but a key topic, a key idea of this speak PR is if you think about what you do, not necessarily what. What the platforms tell you the result is because actually, if you continue, just like, if you work out in the gym every day and you do a certain number of reps and a certain number of weights, you will get fitter. You will get stronger. Okay. So the active communications index, this very simply as how much content is being produced by your company, where is it being distributed? And when is it being sent and how often now each one of these has more detailed, but I know I don't want to bore everybody, but I do want to just dive in a little bit onto the when, because for those of us that are running companies with different geographies, I have, I have offices in Singapore and China still, but I've planned to in America, we must think about when someone is going to receive the information. We too often send information when it's ready. I have not taken into account whether it's time zones or it's someone's on the way to school. So they, it's not an optimal time to receive that tweet. So each one of these elements has got more depth to it, Jerod, but this idea of what you're sending, where you're sending it, when you're. I mentioned the cascade theory. There's a chat from the university of Vermont professor Sheridan Dodds. Who's kindly entertaining to me what I've been writing the book, another chap called Duncan Watts, who was it? Google the key point about the two step flow of influences. This that it's more important to find people who are easy to influence. Then it's important to deal with one influencer. So let me just say that again, as this diagram shows what's important is not to go to one hero or heroine influencer, but to find lots of people who are ready to be influenced. Does that make sense? What that means is that sometimes from. Paid influencer, but the message that they give the influencer, doesn't go into the influences network beyond maybe a recipient for something to go viral or to cascade. What needs to happen is that everyone who receives it needs to share it so that the influencer shares. It doesn't mean that the people in his network or her network want to share. Okay. And for something to go viral, you want everyone in that network to also make it go viral. And there's a formula that they talk about, which I won't bore you with, but it's a key point in the speech PR program. It should also be very, very reassuring for entrepreneurs because it's not about paying one person to who to tell their network. It's about telling lots of people who are receptive to your message. To share it with the communities. So it's a fundamentally important point because it liberates the entrepreneur from thinking that they have to find one influencer. I made a little bit of a simplistic forgive me classification here where I think everyone can see and maybe people that are listening to audio. But what I've got is a two by two matrix and it's all about content and consistency of delivery. So what I have in the top left quadrant, which is yellow by the way, is I've got a picture of people following and that's people that are sending out Dole content consistently. So generally there are lots of especially big companies. They send that information from the corporate marketing department. It's not very , it's not very interesting, but they keep sending it because the metric is how often you. Their followers, no one really follows them. They just kind of take part in the bottom. Right. I've got green, I've got people that are opportunist people that deliver information. It's really interesting, but only in consistently. And I've got a picture of a bag snatcher, there for those that can't see it in the top. Right. I've got people that deliver information consistently. And deliver innovative content. So And in the bottom left where we've got people sending out dull information every now and again, that's your unnoticed, right? That's your unnoticed entrepreneur, but we can help with that. You and Brian, Jerod, you know, your key communicators because you consistently deliver innovative content, which is why you can build communities.