Dan: Welcome to the Boss to Boss Podcast. In our interviews, we feature remarkable people doing imaginative things in often unimaginative markets – usually from the world of B2B. Today we’re joined by Amelia Sordell, a personal branding expert and founder of the agency Klowt, who work with founders of tech startups to FTSE leadership teams in helping them leverage the full value of their personal brands.
Needless to say that Amelia has grown her agency in a large part through her own personal brand, having become an absolute megastar on LinkedIn and with a rapidly growing following across Instagram and TikTok – all channels that we’ll be covering in our chat today.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Transcript
Dan: So, Amelia, why do you think it is that most professionals feel uneasy about developing or having a personal brand? Even the term I think a lot of people find slightly uncomfortable. What’s the starting point for overcoming that mental hurdle?
Amelia: That’s a good question. Um, look, I think the general feeling of discomfort with building someone’s personal brand is generally around an ego thing, right? And I don’t mean that in you’ve got a big ego way. I mean that in a you’re worried what people think about you, you’re worried that your mates are gonna screenshot your posts on LinkedIn and sharing and the WhatsApp group. You’re worried that your colleagues might have seen that video you put on TikTok and they’re gonna take the piss out of you. You’re worried that, god forbid, someone disagrees with your opinion, and you have to kind of go shit, like, someone doesn’t like me.
But seriously why do you fucking care? I think that’s a question that people need to ask themselves if they know they want to build their personal brand. They want to do it, to see the value in it. Why do you fucking care?
That’s why people don’t build their personal brand and there are, I guess, two sort of answers to this. The first one is why the fuck do you care like, really? And I know that’s really easy for me to say because I’m running a personal branding agency and, by all intents and purposes, I’m very confident and very comfortable in my own skin. I love that people don’t like me because then it means that people that I do want to like the content I’m putting out do like me. So I understand I’m coming from a place of mass privilege in terms of, like, why do you fucking care? But seriously why do you fucking care? I think that’s a question that people need to ask themselves if they know they want to build their personal brand. They want to do it, to see the value in it. Why do you fucking care?
The amazing thing about your personality is it repels who you want it to repel and attracts who you want to attract. So the more authentic you make your personal brand and you know personal branding is a scary word right. What we basically mean is your reputation, like, what are you doing to manage that reputation? , The amazing thing about your personality is it repels you want to repel and it attracts who you want to attract, right? So by building that personal brand by doing that at scale, by putting content out online, by sharing your authentic thoughts, by adding value in the way that only you can add. Yeah, some people might not like it. Why do you fucking care? Because the people that don’t like it mean that the people that you do want to like it will like it. Also, like, a nice, I guess, side piece to building your personal brand is it builds your confidence, and the more you post the more confident you become with posting. That’s why I’m so confident now because I have so I’ve built up such a resilience to people not enjoying my content and people not wanting to engage with it, or worse, people engaging with it to tell me what’s wrong with it.
By building that personal brand & by doing that at scale, by putting content out online, by sharing your authentic thoughts, by adding value in the way that only you can add, yeah, some people might not like it. Why do you fucking care? Because the people that don’t like it mean that the people that you do want to like it will like it.
I now have confidence in everything. It’s not just posting my opinions online. It’s not just sharing things online. It’s doing things like this. It’s walking up to people in the street and saying hey I love your outfit or, you know, speaking on stage in front of 1000 people. I now have such a level of confidence and such, er, I think I said before we started recording such a, in a non-arrogant way, such a love for who I am literally through posting content that it’s changed my life.
I know that sounds really fluffy. But I promise, there are so many people who can relate to this and I’m sure you’re one of them. Doing this podcast has probably changed your life, not just in the opportunities It’s given you but in the confidence it’s given you, in the conversations you’ve had and your perspective and all that kind of stuff. So, there are huge benefits that are not just, you know, tangible ah ROI to personal branding. So to come back to your earlier question, why do people not do it, it’s because they think it’s an ego-driven activity when, actually, it’s an opportunity imperative if that’s where you want to go.
Dan: I think it’s interesting what you say there. It’s about conditioning isn’t it? It’s like anything in life. It gets easier the more that you do it, right? So is there a particular starting point where you’d say you know what, just do x for a certain period of time, like, even if it’s quite a modest first step just to get that ball moving?
Amelia: Yeah I always say people start commenting on people’s posts. So whether you’re on Instagram, or you’re on TikTok, or you’re on Twitter, or you’re on LinkedIn, commenting and being social and social media is grossly undervalued. The hilarious thing about social media is people are the most anti-social on social media than they are, like, in any other part of their life.
If you’re just sitting there scrolling through stuff that, to be honest, probably makes you feel like shit, you’re not actually being social at any capacity. And actually, that’s going to probably give you less confidence because you’re comparing yourself against other people and all that kind of thing. So stop scrolling and instead of scrolling remove all the people from your network or your feed or your follower base or the people that you’re following that don’t serve you, that don’t add to your perspective that don’t give you new information, that aren’t teaching you something.
So stop scrolling and instead of scrolling remove all the people from your network or your feed or your follower base or the people that you’re following that don’t serve you, that don’t add to your perspective that don’t give you new information, that aren’t teaching you something.
And the incredible thing about that is you’re now curating a feed of people that you want to engage in, right? So you’re not having to go out and search for this content and it becomes a chore, it’s right there in your feed. You know, go and follow people that you look up to, that you admire, that you’re inspired by, that can teach you something, that enrages you in some way, that have opinions that you’d like to disagree with or have a discussion about.
Go and follow those people. Number one, it will give you so many more perspectives that you currently don’t have, because the way that social media is is it gives you more of what you like, which creates an echo chamber, which means you think your opinion is fact. We can go down that on a different conversation and probably spend a whole podcast talking about that. Um, but it gives you a different perspective. It also gives you an opportunity to add to someone else’s discussion which is way less intimidating than starting one of your own, to go and comment on other people’s stuff.
It’s probably worth noting that one of the comments I left on someone else’s posts ended up becoming one of my biggest viral posts myself.
And the amazing thing about that is the more you comment on people’s stuff the more inspired you get, and the more inspired you get the more confident you become in your opinions, and then you’re more likely to share them on your own channel. It’s probably worth noting that one of the comments I left on someone else’s posts ended up becoming one of my biggest viral posts myself. I just copied and pasted that comment and turned it into a post – literally, word for word copied and pasted it and I got, like, 27000 reactions on LinkedIn.
Dan: I guess the other potential barrier that I imagine you get presented with a lot, or people position as the the the reason why they can’t do these things is time, right? And particularly given that you are dealing with some unbelievably busy, you know, important individuals. That must be a real genuine barrier to them?
What are some of the ways that (a) I guess you might encourage them to sort of mentally approach that? And (b) are there certain ways to be more efficient during that tricky first three, six, twelve months where it feels like you’re having to invest more than you’re getting back? Are there certain things that people can do in order to have the biggest possible impact in the smallest amount of time?
Amelia: Yeah, I mean to answer the first part of your question, this goes back to anything right? When you’re starting something, whether it’s a business a personal brand, or a fitness campaign to get yourself to the best shape that you’ve been in, you go to the gym on day one. You look in the mirror. No results. You go to the gym on day 2, you look in the mirror, no results. Day 3, no results. Day 4, no results. Day 5, no results.
Most people get to the end of day five, or day six, or day seven, in that campaign of going to the gym or being on a diet, or whatever it might be, and go this doesn’t fucking work because I can’t see the results right. But if you do that consistently for six months or a year and you look back, like I have recently. I’ve been on this whole kind of fitness biohacking journey, and you look back on what you started in July last year, and we’re now heading into June 2022 and you go fuck I look good. Because you can’t see the changes on a day-to-day basis right?
Paying into a high-interest account over a period of time that compounds, right? That effort you’ve put in on day-to-day basis compounds into money, into abs, into weight loss into influence, into money that’s coming into your business – because someone’s seen something you know posted three months ago, and they’ve been following your journey since then. Now they’re like, right, Dan’s the right person for me and I want to work with him.
It’s unsexy but consistency pays, right? And, unfortunately, in a world where we have 10-minute abs and juice cleanses, and all this shit, people believe that they can get results immediately. It’s just not true.
It’s the same with anything, right? It’s unsexy but consistency pays, right? And, unfortunately, in a world where we have 10-minute abs and juice cleanses, and all this shit, people believe that they can get results immediately. It’s just not true. I mean you can, but it’s not gonna be sustainable. If you check a bunch of money into a, you know, Facebook ad funnel, it might pop out a bit of ROI. But that’s not sustainable because have to keep putting money into it, right.
This kind of, if you want to build longevity and anything where there is a personal brand and business, you, your fitness, whatever it might be, you have to keep showing up every single day -even on the days where you get no likes, even on the days when you can’t see your abs, even on the days when you feel like shit because that’s what creates this thing that you’re trying to build.
Um, so go to your second part of your question around how can people do this with the time I mean you’re dead right. Like we work with CEOS, we work with senior leadership teams of you know, large organisations who simply do not even have time to have lunch. Like, it’s scheduled into their diary, right? Like toilet break, scheduled. Go to email, scheduled. Um, so time is an issue. However, you’d be amazed how much you can do in 5 minutes on social media.
You need to figure out what the best channel is for your audience. But also, what is the best channel to deliver the message that you want to deliver to your audience, right?
So my advice to people would be to pick a channel – pick the channel that your audience is already on. Don’t do this thing where people go on Google: What is the best social media channel? And that goes Twitter. Incorrect information. You need to figure out what the best channel is for your audience. But also, what is the best channel to deliver the message that you want to deliver to your audience right? So your audience might be on TikTok but they might also be on Twitter. But if you’re shit on video, or you hate video, or you’re just not very animated – like, I love video, cause I’m. you know, animated and it lands. I’m much better at video than I am at copywriting, so I love doing video content. But if you’re not into that and that’s not your thing, and you think, god, that sounds like it smacks of effort, go on Twitter instead. Nail that first and then you can think about the other channels.
And to go back to the kind of 5 minutes a day of what you can accomplish in that, the easiest way to churn content out at, you know, at ah a large scale in the shortest amount of time is to have a system in place, The system in place that I use is I document everything.
This morning, I was doing 10 minutes of guided meditation the minute that I woke up. So my alarm goes up at 05.55 by six o’clock, I’m doing 10 minutes of guided meditation and at the end of that guided meditation, I was like ding, ding, ding, ding. Like all these little ideas came into my head and I just quickly voice noted them into my phone and then I cracked on, had my shower and got ready.
I now have about 7 posts that I’ve got in my phone, or at least the beginnings of them in my phone, so that when life does get in the way I’ve got a week’s worth of content already in my phone. So document everything, get into a habit of making notes in your phone. Dictate them into your phone – which is a great hack because (a) I’m lazy, don’t have time to write things. But (B) it writes at how you speak? Um, and people do this weird thing when they write content where they all of a sudden become like the Queen and it’s like, oh just asking my audience what they might think, and it’s like that is so boring, and it’s not you, and it’s awful, and no-one writes like that.
So you write it how you speak. As in, you dictate it into the notes section of your phone because, you know, when you dictate it. it writes it for you This amazing thing happens and it becomes more colloquial, becomes more engaged. The grammar is horrific. But it reads better, right? Because it’s it’s written how you, speak. It’s like we’re having a conversation and so when someone reads that it’s as if you were saying it to them. And, therefore, it gets much more traction. It gets much more engagement, gets much more interest because you’re not doing these, weird thank you letters to the queen bullshit that everyone else does on, say, LinkedIn, Twitter etc.
Document all your ideas. Dictate everything into your phone. That’s the first part of the system. The second part of the system is once a month write down ten frequently asked questions that you get from your clients and answer them in posts.
Document all your ideas. Dictate everything into your phone. That’s the first part of the system. The second part of the system is once a month write down ten frequently asked questions that you get from your clients and answer them in posts. Um, and then the fly will from there is look at the comments. What are the questions you’re getting in the comments? Those are your next batch. What are the questions you’re getting in your DMs? Those are your next batch and just do that consistently. Document your ideas.
Share frequently asked questions as posts and the beautiful part of those two things is one, you’re being personal because you’re sharing your thoughts, your opinions, your ideas. The second part is you’re adding value to your audience only you can add. So. There’s a reason why people want to engage with you. Super easy. Um, and um, honestly I only spend about 10 minutes a day on social, period. It’s posting engaging with other people’s stuff for five minutes that I leave because, hey, I’m a founder too. I’ve got a team to run, I’ve got shit to do, I’ve got podcasts to do, I’ve got payroll to make, etc. Ah, don’t have time to be on social or all the time, albeit I am running an agency that does that.
Dan: How important is evergreen content that you can repurpose? Because I guess one of the challenges if you’re using a lot of, like, really personal content, it’s not necessarily going to be that evergreen, right?
Amelia: Yeah, so I do it on sort of an 80/20 model. So 80% of our content either mine or any of our clients’ content is evergreen, which is including the personal stories because they’re evergreen, right? Like my experience when I was 21 is still my experience when I was 21 now, as it was ten years ago, right? How important is it that we can repurpose this content and use it again and again?
Telling those stories and learning those lessons and sharing those with people is it really helps you connect. I’ve told the same story like eight times in different ways on LinkedIn and I still get the same reaction. Every time it goes bang, bang, bang, viral. And it gets bigger and bigger every time I post it. It’s the same fucking story I just slightly tweaked it a little bit. It gives people an insight into who I am and my thought process and how I view the world and all that kind of stuff. So to answer that I guess the second part of your question first, not repurposing your content is like wearing a great outfit once – it’s a waste of money, right.
So to answer that second part of your question first, not repurposing your content is like wearing a great outfit once – it’s a waste of money, right.
So we have a strategy where once a quarter we go back and look at the previous quarter’s content on shield on LinkedIn. You can use Hootsuite on any other platform and just see what did the best, what got the most views, what had the highest engagement rate, you know, what got you the most comments. And above that, we’re doing this from a sales perspective. What we do is DMs.
Which post actually got you the most leads right? Because, quite often, it’s not the viral post that gets you the leads. The viral post gets you top-of-funnel engagement, top-of-funnel awareness. But actually, it’s the stories where you’re sharing client wins, customer wins, you know, stories about your business that don’t get that engagement that gets you loads of DMs. So when I say DMs I mean, you know, leads coming into inbox. So figure out which ones are quote, unquote, best performing based on what you believe success to be for your personal brand. Um, and then remix them, repurpose them. Sometimes you just copy and paste them again and bang them out like I’ve done a post.
So I think I said I don’t know it was when we’re recording or after recording. But as I said to you earlier, one of my biggest posts was a comment I left on someone else’s post and I simply copied and pasted that comment into LinkedIn, in a post, shared it. It was one of my biggest posts and I was, like, cool. Well, I’ll put this on Twitter then, see if it bangs on Twitter. Same thing. It banged on Twitter and I was, like, cool, but I’ll screenshot it. And then I’ll post it again on LinkedIn and see if it bangs – and I did bigger when I’d screenshoted it from Twitter on LinkedIn than did my originally post on LinkedIn. So make the most of what you’ve got, right? There’s no point in trying to reinvent the wheel. Something works just do it. I’ve been saying the same shit for three years and people still listening to me.
80% of my content plan is evergreen. 20% is reactive. And what I mean by reactive is you’re finding trending news articles, things that are happening in pop culture, things that are happening in the world, and leveraging that and giving your opinion and, or, giving your point of view or your perspective or highlighting something happening.
Um, so don’t worry about trying to be different and original every time you post, like, you know, if you want to be famous for something you got to keep saying the same shit over and over and over and over again and keep saying yeah, um. But to go back to I guess the first part of your question um is yeah evergreen is important. 80% of my content plan is evergreen. 20% is reactive, and what I mean by reactive is you’re finding trending news articles, things that are happening in pop culture, things that are happening in the world, and leveraging that and giving your opinion and, or, giving your point of view or your perspective or highlighting something happening.
Trending stuff is really slept on by a lot of people. We all have strong opinions about what’s happening in Rwanda, we all have strong opinions about what’s happening in Ukraine, we all have strong opinions about if you have an interest in coin base Ceo saying, well, if you don’t like working here you can fuck off. Like we all have strong opinions about that. But none of them match. None of us actually share it on LinkedIn, or on Twitter, or on TikTok. Why? Because that alone like, I think, it’s three out of my top five biggest vial posts have all been trending news articles.
So 20% of your content plan, once you get to a point where you are comfortable and you are consistent, I wouldn’t recommend doing it straight off and back that was overly complicate a simple procedure but seriously think about looking at. Trending news articles and if you’re doing it on LinkedIn. It’s really easy. You can just go into the trending LinkedIn News bit and just pick an article from there and just give an opinion on that.
Dan: Really interesting. But I must admit when it comes to things like, you know, jumping on top of things like trending news articles, it’s something that I myself have this bit of a kind of psychological barrier. That’s entirely kind of made up and in my own brain and you know, not at all real.
I wanted to just move you away from social media for a moment. When it comes to building a personal brand, it makes absolute sense that we would focus the conversation on social media. But of course, the challenge that is sometimes aimed at social is that you are building on somebody else’s land. You are essentially vulnerable to the whims of that particular platform if they kind of go through aggressive monetisation or they ban you for a naughty comment you left, or whatever it might be. I just wonder from your perspective, what’s your view on that? Is it an imagined threat and if it’s not imagined, what should people do to mitigate the risks of that?
Amelia: I don’t think it’s an imagined threat. I do think it’s one that you shouldn’t be worrying about if you’re just starting, because if you’re just starting out on personal branding, right, and you’ve listened to me talking about systems that you should use and how often you should be posting, all this kind of stuff. You’re then, like, fuck I have to do a newsletter, and fuck I have to, you know, do this. I need to get my website done. You’re never gonna do it and so I’d rather you just did it and then worried about the stuff after. Done well is always better than done like perfect always, right? So just start, just start.
It’s like, you know, back to my gym analogy, I always use the gym because it’s something that everyone can relate to like.
You want to lose weight you got to just start, right? You can’t keep fussing around which diet you’re going to do, what weights are you pick up, like, which machine are you going to use? What day you’re going to go? Just fucking start – go and do this sit-up. Um, so I think that’s the first the kind of caveat of what I’m about to say. The second thing is, once you get a point where you are comfortable and you are consistent, because personal branding is only 10% content, 90% consistency.
I get so many DMs from people but, like, how she got 100,000 followers. Like that’s crazy. I’m like, I’ve literally been doing this for three years, and three years ago no one even liked any of my content – got, like, zero likes and here we are, like three years later. So, with the consistency thing, really really important, as I said, 10% content nice and consistent. But, ah, in order to kind of mitigate that risk of I don’t own this data, essentially, like, you don’t own that followership you do own the influence – which I think is important to say right?
If you’re influential on LinkedIn, on Instagram, on TikTok, whatever is, and you’ve built up that audience there, it isn’t going anywhere, It’s a bit shit but people still know who you are, right? So one of the things that I’ve done to mitigate the risk is I’m now on most channels.
If you’re influential on LinkedIn, on Instagram, on TikTok, whatever is, and you’ve built up that audience there, it isn’t going anywhere – whether the algorithm changes, yes, and you get banned. It’s a bit shit but people still know who you are, right? So one of the things that I’ve done to mitigate the risk is I’m now on most channels. So I focus really heavily on Instagram. In the minute I want to get to 10k as quickly as possible on Instagram. Previously it’s never been of interest to me, right? Because I’ve been head down focused on LinkedIn. I want to get LinkedIn to £100K before I even thought by anything else and I’ve done that now, right? That’s all ticking over. We’re growing about a 1,000 a week, like, I don’t need to really spend a huge amount of time on worrying about LinkedIn. I spent a huge amount of time on it engaging with people but I don’t spend a huge amount of time worrying about the execution of what I’m putting out on those channels.
Instagram is a heavy focus me because I want to build a different audience there for people that have never come across me on LinkedIn before. Same with TikTok, same with Twitter. So I’m focused really heavily on those three channels at the minute but above all, I’m most focused on my podcast – because my podcast is such, as you will know, as a podcast host, such an opportunity maker. Not just from yeah, it’s great to get 10,000 downloads and, you know, we’re in the top 30% of podcasts in week one just purely off the downloads of the first episode – which is awesome and makes me feel, like, you know, that little dope of, like, that ego coming up going all well done like it was exciting. That doesn’t really matter to me. What matters to me is I’m getting to speak to interesting people. And I’m introducing myself to their audiences who are then going to follow me on the other channels that I’m building influence on – and then I can start thinking about, cool, what is the next step am I going to do in a newsletter? Am I going to go and do in-person events, am I going to, am I going to? My personal brand in itself I don’t have any interest in monetising.
Like I don’t want to make money from… I do most of the stuff I do, speaking gigs wise, and that kind of stuff, I do for free because I don’t have any interest really on making money from something unless it’s, you know, something that I would normally charge for like a workshop or something like that, which is completely different. Because that’s, you know, I’m basically teaching you how to do what I do for the clients that we charge a lot of money to do it for. Most stuff I do for free because I don’t have any plans on really monetising my personal brand. I just want to spread the word of how powerful this is, right – how powerful personal branding is. And as a result, as a byproduct of that, my business is 100% inbound, and I’ve been really intentional about separating my personal brand from Clout’s company brand – which is why we invest so heavily in Clout’s company brand, and Clout’s website, and Clout’s SEO strategy, Clouts you know…we don’t do any paid.
There is a threat there that you could be banned from a social media platform and you could lose all your followers, or you could get cancelled, but, hey, that threat existed regardless of what you’re doing.
But everything that we do on the company marketing side is intentionally different from what I do in my personal branding side because I want it to be infinitely scalable and not necessarily tied to me. I want to stand up on its own, as its own business. So yeah, there is a threat there that you could be banned from a social media platform and you could lose all your followers, or you could get cancelled, but, hey, that threat existed regardless of what you’re doing. Your business could go bust tomorrow, your biggest supply could quit your, you know, your best employee could leave. You know, you could yourself have some kind of health crisis that means your career ends. Like, I don’t think you should make plans around a threat that doesn’t really exist yet. And hey, I’ve been banned on LinkedIn and most of our business comes from Linked, right? And I’m still here…so.
Dan: Very good answer. So, using your fitness analogy, I guess every great fitness routine involves the creation of great habits, right? And I think when people are in a routine and they get into a nice rhythm with something, everything becomes so much easier. I just wonder if you can maybe share just a couple of habits you have that allow this whole process to occur?
Amelia: Yeah, um, look I’m not one of those people that’s, like, 05:00am club. Let’s go eat drink green juice and I never do yoga at sunrise. Like, I’m the ant of that. I’ve always said to people I don’t do this, I don’t do that.
To be honest, sometimes I run exclusively on caffeine and binge at six o’clock in the evening. Sometimes I’m really healthy. It just depends on how I feel that day. But as I’ve grown as an individual, probably as I’ve grown the business, I’ve grown as an individual, and I’ve also become really interested in high performance, really interested in the, I guess, conditions I can create myself and my environment to encourage that. And so I’ve kind of experimented here and just naturally I’m a curious person, so I’m always asking our clients are at the top of their game like, oh, what do you know? What do you do in your routine, like, what? What do you do? Just simply cause I want to know, like, I’m just intrigued. And as a result, I guess, of exposure to all these highly successful, however you wanted to define successful people, and also learning in myself what I operate best at.
So one of the best exercises I did recently, so, I’ve never spoken publicly about this. This is an exclusive for you. But I see a therapist and I have done for 15 years but I now also see a psychic. Which to a lot of people will be very, like, oh, we thought she was a serious businesswoman. She’s a psychic, like, that’s a bit weird. But the reason I see the therapist is for, you know, the same reason everyone does. We all have something in our lives that was damaging and we all have trauma in some capacity. Right?
The psychic then helps me know what to do next. So the little things, like, I get up at 05.55 am because I’ve realised through this process that I’m a morning person and actually I do my best work in the morning. I do my best thinking in the morning. I’ve also realised that I don’t like staying up late and, unfortunately for all my friends that like going out on a Saturday night, I like being in bed at 10 pm.
So that person helps me make sense of my feelings and why I behave in a like, you’re helping me understand why I do things and my behaviour, so I can then improve it and change it my psychic, regardless of whether she tells me about what’s going to happen in the future or not, which too much I don’t fucking care about. She helps me then know what to do with those feelings. So now I’ve identified how I feel and why I feel it. The psychic then helps me know what to do next. So the little things, like, I get up at 05.55 am because I’ve realised through this process that I’m a morning person and actually I do my best work in the morning. I do my best thinking in the morning. I’ve also realised that I don’t like staying up late and, unfortunately for all my friends that like going out on a Saturday night, I like being in bed at 10 pm.
That’s what I like. I like reading, you know. I’ve written down this list and, as a result of this kind of process between the psychic and the therapist, I’ve written down this list of what are my triggers, like, what triggers me to behave in a bad – what I perceive to be bad – way. So It could chaos. My house is chaotic. It could be that I don’t feel like things have been done on time which are all high standards. It could be that I don’t feel in control. Those are all triggers for me and I’ve built my routine then around the opposite of those things. So if I feel triggered by chaos I make sure my house is really clean and make sure the office is really clean. I make sure that the team put their stuff away before they leave the office.
Because a lot of people don’t realise but 80% to 90% of your output in performance is based on your mindset. So if your mindset’s not great everything else is fucked.
If I’m triggered by feeling out of control, I make sure I have a strict routine. So going back to your question earlier, like, I get up at 05.55 am every single day. I have the same lunch and dinner pretty much every single day. Because it gives me a routine. I know what to expect. I feel in control. And because of all those things that I do, you know, the meditation piece that I put my easy mo on my feet to go to bed, and all this kind of things – because I figured out that’s what works for me. Because of all these things I do I’m then able to execute on a content plan I need to do. I’m able to execute on the leadership I need to do for my team. I’m able to execute on being the best fucking Mum I can be because I feel the best I can be. And I know this question was around social media. But actually, if you’re not happy with your life offline you’re never going to be able to build any kind of influence on it – because inauthentic people can smell that from a mile off.
So you can listen to my habits and routine all you like, but I think the reality is you’ve got to make a list of what triggers me. What makes me feel calm and then what routine can I build around those things to make sure that I’m always feeling calm, happy, and the best I possibly can. Because a lot of people don’t realise but 80% to 90% of your output in performance is based on your mindset. So if your mindset’s not great everything else is fucked.
Dan: Really interesting. So, final question then. TikTok seems to be where all the cool kids are hanging out now..Certainly not me…but I have seen some really-
Amelia: Why you’ve got the perfect excuse to be chopping up content.
Dan: Well, maybe this is going to be the first thing I’m gonna do immediately after I’ve found some news items to jump all over, obviously, is set up a TikTok profile straight off this.
But I’ve seen some fantastic case studies in some of the most surprising industries. Individuals and brands really kind of leveraging the massive organic reach that TikTok has at the moment. I just wanted to get your perspective on that. Have you seen much success with your clients? Are you seeing much success with yourself personally?
Amelia: Yeah, I mean, we hired someone from TikTok which is great – but she’s actually applied for us three times and she was rejected two of them and then applied again. But she came across us on TikTok and kept coming across us on TikTok and she was, like, this is meant to be. I’m meant to work for this person because they just keep coming up in my feed. Yeah, from a hiring perspective it’s been awesome. We have just landed our first TikTok client exclusively on TikTok. We have other clients that are on TikTok that we manage their TikTok accounts. We’ve landed our first TikTok-only client.
TikTok is a distribution channel. Like most social media, to be honest, it’s a distribution channel. The incredible thing about having multiple distribution channels is you have access to multiple different audiences. You have access to multiple different demographics. But probably most importantly with TikTok, which I think a lot of people don’t realise is, none of the fastest-growing member segments is between 28 and 35 – which a lot of people don’t realise. But the second one is there are, I think, the membership base on TikTok, something like seventy or eighty percent of the people on TikTok are not on other social media platforms. So if you’re not on TikTok you are missing out on millions and millions of people you’re just assuming a dancing 18-year-old and actually are probably decision-makers in their business or decision-makers in their households right? So if you’re not on TikTok what the fuck are you doing? It’s not what people think it is.
TikTok is a distribution channel. Like most social media, to be honest, it’s a distribution channel. The incredible thing about having multiple distribution channels is you have access to multiple different audiences. You have access to multiple different demographics.
Which is great for people like me because I sell services that help people do well on that and it also gives me a competitive advantage because I’m an early adopter – so probably in a year’s time I’m gonna have 1,000,000 followers on there but just simply because I jumped on it fast and Im trying to be as consistent as possible on it. But all you lot are going to join it next year and go ‘fuck, TikTok’s a thing’ and then it’s going to be really hard for you to grow.
Dan: But are you seeing more traction on TikTok than you are say on LinkedIn?
Amelia: Yeah. Look, I mean it’s all relative right? Like your content has got to be engaging.. You’ve got to be consistent. You’ve got to be engaging with your network. Those are true of every single platform you’re on. But the organic reach on TikTok is wild.
And what I mean by organic is you can have 10 followers and get a post that gets 17,000,000 views and it’s insane. One of my biggest posts was literally, I put up a picture, but like a green screen behind me, and it was a picture of Valencia. There’s new shoes and they’re just awful, right? They look, like, eighteen years old and they’re just covered in dirt and they’re selling them for a thousand pounds apiece, And I made a TikTok about, you know, this is branding, people are paying money for this and it got like 50,000 views. And now I have all these followers.that I wouldn’t have had if hadn’t posted that thing.
TikTok is where social media is going. It’s so much more raw, it’s so much more unedited.
And I also think TikTok is where social media is going. It’s so much more raw, it’s so much more unedited. It’s so much more, like, don’t wear makeup, and do this whole setup studio bullshit stuff. Like, it’s whip at your phone and quickly crack something out. And actually, TikTok knows that and so they’re built-in actually like an edit proper editing suite into the app now for creators to be able to produce like proper videos in the app. Because they want it to remain authentic. And I think if you look at where Instagram is now, and they’re trying to compete with TikTok with reels and all this kind of stuff and, you know, the stories there are still pretty big. But if you look at where Instagram is they’ve got a lower user growth than they’ve ever had before. Like, it’s a declining new user sign up and then you look at TikTok which is not even at its peak., I just think it’s I think it’s a street strategic marketing imperative if you’re B2b, B2C to or you’re doing any kind of marketing for branding reasons, you need to be on TikTok. It’s just the most slept on social media channel as far as I’m concerned.
Dan: Yeah, find it very difficult to disagree with that. So yeah, maybe this is the inspiration that I needed.
Amelia: I mean yeah, the easiest thing for you Dan would be to record this video. I know this is audio-only but you’re missing a trick here. You’re doing these podcasts once a week. Record this video, whack it into Premiere Pro or hire a Fiverr freelancer to do it for you. Chop it up into ten TikToks.
Dan: I totally agree with you. So I think, as I said, I need to find some good news articles to jump on and set up my TikTok account and just get my alarm going for 05.55 am tomorrow morning. New life, new Dan, new podcast.
Look, I mean, this has been absolutely fantastic. Really really enjoyed it. I know I’ve learned an absolute ton. And to go back to your point earlier I think, certainly, for me, I mean I’ve done best part of a thousand interviews over the last half of many years now. And that would be the single biggest thing that I love the most is, like, to your point 20 minutes ago. If I ever say anything remotely interesting I’m almost certainly stealing someone else’s line and just passing it off as my own.
So thank you ever so much for your time today. It’s been fantastic.
Amelia: Yeah, thank you so much as well. And just to kind of round it off with what you just said there, both in life and in content everyone is inspired by someone else. Nothing is original and so you have to consume to create right? So thank you very much for having me.
