[Transcription starts at 1:13]
Hello, hello, hello my podcast people, and thank you for joining me for yet another episode of my favorite podcast. So if you're listening to this or watching this on the day that it drops, it's December. Happy December. One of the, I don't know, strangest, coolest, I don't know, one of the most interesting things about running your own podcast is that you will typically record the day, a time before that the before the actual episode gets released, obviously.
Uh, and so right now, it's actually still November, but we're gonna celebrate December right now because we're listening to it. It's gonna be December, uh, and I wanna talk about the future. I wanna talk about what I think we're gonna see in 2023. So if we go to the past for a second, last week was Thanksgiving.
It is by far my favorite holiday. There's the both/and, I'm just gonna say it. There's the both/and of a holiday. I'm not out there celebrating fucking John Smith or anything like that, like pilgrims and shit like that. It is a holiday that has come to just mean for my family, the time that we all get together. We live far apart, especially me.
I'm on the other side of the country and we can all get together. We go to my sister's house. Last week there were five dogs, two kids, and eight adults there, I believe, and it was freaking awesome. And this is largely, that time there, largely inspired this episode and actually an email that I sent out to my Mafia on Monday.
But before I get into that, um, this ties into the whole episode and also ties into last, or ties into Monday's episode, episode 427, which was How to Actually Get Brand Deals. Uh, my guy over at @slantboardguy, um, that's his Instagram handle, @slantboardguy, he sent me a new slant board and it's called the Flex Board.
I haven't tried it out. I literally like just got home like not that long ago, but I wanted to use the beginning of this episode to shout them out and say thank you. I didn't put them in the last episode. I don't have a formal contract with them. I don't, you know, get any kickbacks. There's no affiliate or anything like that, but I was, and I didn't know this, you know, unbeknownst to me, I was the first person in the US
to buy their slantboard and support it. And you know, I'm all about that early adopter life. And this was back when I was doing all the knees over toes stuff and, um, had found knees over toes through Keegan Smith and he's now, I believe the @ATGmentor on Instagram, but had been following his stuff for quite some time and he was doing a lot with the slant board.
And obviously I'm a physical therapist, I'm not, ya know, slant board is not new to me, but I also didn't really wanna DIY the slant board, mainly because I didn't wanna fall. I didn't want it to break, and then I didn't wanna slide off of it. So the sandpaper that you use and like how you affix the sandpaper to the slant board is very important.
So that in mind, I just went and bought what Keegan was using and it was from this guy, @slantboardguy, and that was in Australia. It was, you know, I, and honestly, I don't remember that being like a big debacle or anything like that. And that's who was selling it. People trusted it and so I bought it and lo and behold, I was the first person in the US to buy it.
And obviously I promote stuff on my, my page, because like if I like it, I want people to know about it. And since then he's sent me things. Uh, that sounds weird, he sent me things. But he sent me a custom slant board. It has my Maestro logo on it, and he just sent me the um, their flex board, which has hooks on the side.
The whole premise with this is that it has hooks on the side, so you can use bands with it for resistance, which obviously it's, it's gonna change the resistance profile as if you're, as opposed to using a dumbbell. And now the top part or the concentric moment will be much harder than the eccentric moment.
Uh, and you'll have like a shortened overload movement. Um, that's what I really wanna say. You will have a shortened overload movement or a short overload movement. It's gonna be more difficult at the top of the movement. But either way, it's cool. I wanna say thanks. And if you wanna check all the partners that I have, the people that I promote, you can go to that link, themovementmaestro.com/partners. But all of this speaks to the value of relationships, which is at the heart of today's episode. So, while I was home last week, my grandmother was on her phone the whole time. And now I'm not mad about that cuz y'all know I'm, I'm trying to be on my phone the whole time. And she was, you know, showing us videos from it.
She was laughing. She loves to play solitaire. My grandma loves to play some solitaire, but she was connecting with people and then, you know, just finding entertainment, on Facebook. So if you were to ask people in the online space about Facebook, people in the online business space about Facebook, folks would very likely say it's dead.
Namely those people who don't like it. I don't love Facebook, and I have said it many times, like it is dead. But what does it actually mean when we say a platform is dead? What do they mean? What does that statement, the platform is dead, social media's dead, Facebook is dead. What does that actually mean? So we know Elon may actually like legit be killing the platform, killing Twitter.
Like he's gone over there and he's fired people. And now it's a question of can it actually run? Which is very different than something like Facebook, which is very much still running, but it's difficult to have that organic growth. As it relates to Twitter and a platform perhaps actually dying, where like I cannot work anymore,
this is why I constantly talk about getting people onto your email list. And I'll probably do another episode in the future specifically about email. Again, my favorite is ConvertKit, it's on that list of partners. If you want to, uh, do me a solid and uh, use that affiliate link. But, Elon perhaps potentially killing an actual platform, when we kind of colloquially say the platform is dead
I think that's very, very different. And I think what we mean is that organic growth really isn't so much of a possibility. Namely that potential of virality, which do we even want? I don't know, but it's not so possible anymore. All that falls into the umbrella of relational width no longer being a thing, but is the platform actually dead? As per my grandma's usage,
seemingly not at all. Relational depth is actually very much seemingly still alive. I actually went on TikTok the other day and did a, did a, I dunno, a TikTok about this. I do random stuff over there. Like I, I've kind of given up on trying to like grow something, mainly because of what we're talking about today, relational depth.
Like I, I'm not just going for attention, like attention for attention's sake, ain't the way. I went on TikTok and just did a post and was like, do you ever go on Facebook or you find yourself on Facebook, I'm usually on there checking my Facebook groups, but I kinda like go through the feed or whatever it is, whatever it's called, and I'll be like, who is this person?
Like I have friends on there and you know, sometimes people get married, most of the time people get married and they change their last names. It's a lot of the female, women that I follow and I'm like, who is this? What? I don't even know what's going on on here. So, while that may sound contradictory to this relational depth, um, idea,
it's actually not cause these are people that at one point in time actually did know and should I, you know, had I kept up with it the way that my grandmother is, does rather, I would still know who they are. So I very much believe that the platform is still very much alive. It's just that we can't go viral on it.
And if you're trying to run a business and get in front of new eyes and you're caring predominantly about relational width and you're trying to, you know, act in the way that these big platforms are acting where they're just caring about market share and more and more, more, more, more, well then, yeah, it's dead.
Width is dead. But I would contend that relational depth is very, very much still alive. And that is my 2023 online business prediction: Relational depth will reign supreme. I said it in the Thanksgiving episode from last week, endless abundance is not real. My guy, Jessie, he shared a really good quote with me the other day, and from, I think from one of his friends and the quote, read something along the lines of, “The opposite of scarcity isn't abundance, it's enough.”
And you know, Jessie's my guy. He gets me, he sees me through and through and he sent it to me and I was like, yes. That is literally it. And it's just so punchy. It's such a good sound bite, right? Ya'll know I stay talking about “What's your enough? What's your enough? What's your enough? What's your enough?”
And so, if we're looking at success in the online business space and making it easier to achieve success, whatever you consider success to be, that's gonna start with you determining what your enough is. As this concept relates to online business in general, 2023 especially, smaller is better. Smaller is sustainable.
Smaller doesn't scale, but it doesn't need to, especially when you've established your enough. I had a conversation the other day with one of my clients, Stacey. Love Stacy. I love her. And she, we both have memberships. I think I brought up another episode. I speak a lot. I kind of forget where I said things, but we were talking about memberships and
how awesome, or let's take it back, what it would mean if you put a cap on the membership. And you know, I had a little slip there before because I think it's awesome. I sat with it for a moment when she proposed that idea and I was like, actually, that's amazing. Like what if I kept the Mafia at a 160 and I was like, this is the cap.
It's not gonna go anymore. And when people leave and I can open up to new people. There is something so freeing about that, right? I think we're actually at 160 right now, so let's say that's, this is it. It's the limit. No more. Something incredibly freeing about that. When we are just like more, more, more, more, more, more, more, the limit doesn't exist,
that's actually quite overwhelming to me. And you have to launch again. You have to kinda and get more. When you're just like, nah, this is good. And that allows me to actually relate with each of the people in this thing. Right? So I will do an episode on memberships. If you've been in my ecosystem for any amount of time, you know that I'll probably try to talk you out of starting a membership, but I have many, many reasons.
I don't wanna, I could literally go on and on, so I'm not gonna digress. I'm going to take a moment, center myself here. I could talk forever about memberships, but the, the main concept as relates to today's episode is that keeping things smaller will allow you to actually relate with people.
It will allow for relational depth, which is what is going to reign supreme in 2023. It's what is going to allow businesses to thrive. It's what's going to allow businesses to endure whatever's coming, you know, with the economy and things like that. This is the answer. So tactically, I wanna break this down from like the macro level and the micro level,
and what we can be doing. Tactically from the macro level, like from the bigger picture here, this is gonna look like, like I was just saying, smaller cohorts or just smaller models in general. I'm still doing a bunch of reading and such about regenerative agriculture and kind of, this is, you know, all in my head the sustain, sustain.
Well, wow, that was a moment. We're not editing it out, keeping it real. All of this sustainability, um, you know, concepts is, is top of mind here. Obviously it's easier when things are smaller than when they are huge. So from an online business perspective, we're looking at smaller cohorts. We're looking at smaller models for things when maybe you're doing like niche launches and things like that.
Even smaller would be one-on-one coaching. I think that that's absolutely going to continue to be a very viable option. And as it relates to your services and your offers, one-on-one will always be the easiest to sell. One-on-one will always be where you start off just because it has the most trust kind of baked into it.
We're gonna see a lot of conversation marketing, meaning connecting with people in the dms and people reaching out before they purchase things. This is nothing new. It's been going on. I just think that it's gonna something that we can really and should- I'm gonna throw it out there, I don't like that word but I'm gonna do it-
something that we should double down on in 2023. Email connection. You folks know I stay harping on email. The beginning of this episode, I was harping on it, right. And using it actually for connection, email connection, not email marketing. Not email broadcasting. And I specifically and strategically use that word connection instead of broadcasting or instead of marketing, because it's not just blast things out there. It is actually look to have conversations with people.
And again, we see that smaller is better. In this case, smaller is more sustainable. Meaning if you have a smaller list and I get it, smaller's gonna be relative, but if you have under a thousand people on this list, I want your opening rate to be at least 50%. Um, but you have this smaller list, it is easier then to get back to people cause you have fewer people that may potentially respond to you and apply to you.
So we see smaller is better, smaller is more sustainable. Maybe we'll see text marketing, you know, text connection. I don't know. I think it's just, I was speaking to my girl TaKisha, my cousin TaKisha, earlier today about this. And I think that as it relates to these kind of platforms, they don't really matter as much as the actual brand matters.
Do people want to connect with you? Do people share your values? Do people want what you have to sell? Well, then they're gonna be more willing to connect with you on different platforms. It's not that the platform you're using is wrong, if no one's connecting with you. It's probably your messaging, your branding, maybe your brand and you just haven't really established yourself yet.
Um, so yeah, that's what my thoughts on text, text marketing, text connect. From a macro perspective, we're looking at seeing people how they want to be seen. And this comes directly from, I believe Nic Strack and James-Olivia Chu-Hillman, both of which I've brought onto the podcast. And that's actually the, their definition of empathic listening, right?
Seeing people as they want to be seen, not as we want to see them. And this requires actual and active listening. Not listening to respond, not listening to sell things. Not listening to just steal words and market, but to actually see people as they want to be seen. What do these people care about? What do they actually want?
How do they want to be seen? What do they value? And we know that word of mouth has always reigned supreme, and I think that it's going to continue to reign supreme in 2023, and that's why all of these things I've just listed are things to double down on because they lend themselves to this word of mouth marketing, where you're gonna focus on the people who are there.
So focus on the smaller cohorts, the smaller group of people. It's actually amazing. And then they will go and spread your message farther and faster than you ever could. Lastly, before we get into the, the micro tactics or micro strategies, I think that we may see time objections, right? We've, we've seen time objections coming out of Covid and people being concerned about like, how long is this gonna take?
I kind of wanna DIY it, do it myself. I think those will still be there, but these time objections will be overruled or overcome by outcome guarantees and more, um, bespoke product structures. So that ties into that one-on-one offer. So when I say bespoke, meaning it's gonna be tailored to what the relationship needs.
And maybe you're not having a zillion calls, maybe it's just that they get Voxer access to you. For those of you who don't know, Voxer is a messaging platform, allows for voice notes and text messages. So maybe that's how you're staying connected with people. It doesn't necessarily need to be that it is, um, you know, all of these calls and you have a zillion calls for the one-on-one service.
It can still be the one-on-one service, but if there are time objections, cool. Then we just don't meet, you know, formally as many times, but you still have access. So that's gonna be on you to kind of figure out what fits best. But I think that that is gonna be the way that the time objections, if they're still there, will be overcome.
Okay, so as it relates to the micro tactics and things that you can be doing in 2023: Number one, initiate conversation. So this is what we call opening a vulnerability loop. This is how trust is built. It's built through the opening and closing of vulnerability loops. You put yourself out there, the, the public then responds and that closes the loop, but then that opens another loop on there and that you have the opportunity to close.
The way that we would look to do this would be Instagram Lives. You know, I love me, a good Instagram Live. I haven't done one in a minute, but I'm going to Stories. Instagram will always reign supreme, maybe I shouldn't say always, but will, will continue to reign supreme because of Stories and DMs. Yes, I know TikTok has Stories, but it's not the same.
There's a lot of bugginess with it, and this is coming from someone who actually uses it, which is not me, my sister. I was talking to her about it and she's like, I hate them. It's, it's not the same. Whereas on Instagram, Stories are there to show your life. In my opinion, yes, there's definitely room on the actual feed these days to show your life.
Show your life for sure. We're kind of going back to how Instagram used to be, but you can really chronicle your day. You don't have to create, you can just document. What are you doing? Let people in. Let them see what you are about. Show your life. That gives them the opportunity, right? You're opening up a vulner -vulnerability loop.
That gives them the opportunity to close that loop, aka respond to that Story and they're more likely to respond to that Story. One, because it's more relatable, it's your day to day. They can actually be like, yeah, I have an opinion on this cause I do the same thing. Whereas when you're teaching something, it can be kind of removed from them.
Uh, and number two, it's a bit more private, right? When people comment on a post, it's like very public and that's typically not part of someone's someone's day. Uh, so it gives 'em the opportunity to do that and, you know, feel safer. Third part here, from the micro perspective, it was in the macro, it's also gonna be the micro, which is actually emailing and having calls to interaction, having calls to action in your emails, and then actually responding to people.
Again, you got a smaller list, it's even better. We're gonna respond to comments. So number one, we said responding to emails. This is gonna be, next part is responding to comments. It doesn't need to happen like five seconds later. Just at some point. Respond to those comments, respond to those DMs. Have conversations. Told you,
conversation marketing is going to be huge in 2023. 2023. Building trust. When we're having these conversations, whether it's a comment or DM, use people's names. It takes two seconds to go to their platform, and that's a beautiful thing. It takes two seconds, but it pays in, handsomely. And most people won't take those two seconds.
So go to their profile, see their name, ask them their name, and actually use their name in the comment. Use their name when you're having conversations. And remember that person, right? We're not doing this like as a robot, we're doing this to actually have a conversation with somebody. If you were speaking with somebody in person, you probably wouldn't have some super long conversation with with them without, you probably wouldn't have some super long conversation with them without asking them their name, or at least I wouldn't.
So you can do the same thing online. Next point here, say thank you. Say thank you to everybody. Say thank you for the shares. Thank you for the comments. Be grateful if you wanna go deeper into that and the why behind that, check out last Thursday's episode, that was the episode I did on Thanksgiving. It's all about the secret to happiness, which is expressing gratitude, being thankful for things.
Tying into this, and still under this umbrella of micro tactics is gonna be lateral networking. So I kind of alluded to it earlier when I was talking about commenting on posts and how the general population, this isn't kind of part of their day to just comment on someone's post. And I would, what I would throw back at you is, how often do you do it?
I make it a point, not like a homework point, but if someone's post is really good, I'll comment. And if someone's like post is super helpful, I'll DM them. I actually did that today. I did it twice actually. Um, one of 'em, this guy Omar, he had shared a post that had a, a light in it, which I will share in a bit.
Um, we'll do an episode all about lighting and sound, and he shared a post that had a light in it that I actually bought today, Cyber Monday, and I just sent it to him and I was like, dude, this is super helpful. Like this light, this price point with these features. I like, this is steal in my opinion, steal of a lifetime and just sent it to him.
Uh, that dude Jeremy from @personalfinanceclub, I sort, I spoke about him before I message him and just say thank you quite a bit cause this stuff is really good. And I share it and I tag him. And actually we had a conversation today, uh, and he, he started following me today, like, we're friends now. So yes, I consider when someone's following you and you have conversations, that's you're friends now.
And I would consider this overall, lateral networking. And we're looking when, I'm gonna suggest that you look to do that outside of your niche, your niche, your niche, however you say it. This kind of from a bigger picture, can, can shortcut the trust cycle, right? So as a physical therapist, let's say I was still practicing physical therapy and I'm networking with, you know, let's say Jeremy from Personal Finance Club, he's completely outta my niche, but we become friends and suddenly he has someone in his audience, someone in his family that needs physical therapy,
he knows me. And now that person is more likely to come to me per his, or on his recommendation. And kind of it shortcuts that trust cycle. They trust him, he trusts me, and now by proxy, they more so are more willing to trust me. So looking at that lateral networking piece and not doing it, just, you know, not doing it for the business side.
Like, I gotta grow my business. I'm gonna go and like talk to people, but just to relate with other people. Just to go and have conversations, to go and support other people and see what comes about. That is how I became friends with @SharonSaysSo. Literally just commenting on stuff and saying thank you, and literally saying thank you for all the stuff she was sharing.
I was like, this is amazing and I've learned more than ever as it relates to government and things like that. So, lateral networking for the sake of lateral networking for the sake of relating with people. Credit people when, when you get ideas from them. So that can be like a kind of very simple way to do some lateral networking.
You've got an idea from them, a concept from them. Shout 'em out. You don't have to, you know…yes, it'd be really nice if you actually them a direct message, but also shout them out. And circling back to what I said earlier, when was the last time that you went and commented or do something like this, you commented on someone's post, just told them how dope their content was, or how dop a post was, how helpful it was.
I challenge you. Go and do that today. Connect with people for the sake of connecting with people. Leading with gratitude is such an easy way to do that. So 2023 prediction, like I said, it's going to be all about relational depth. As it relates to getting ahead, start building relationships right now. I've been talking about this since I've started this podcast, so hopefully you've been doing it this whole time.
But the only thing that we can really do to get ahead is to start right now. I do think that we're gonna continue to see longer sales cycles, and this is just something that like, I think is gonna be there forever. People have tons of information at their fingertips. They have ways to one, be overwhelmed.
Yes. But they have ways to go and research things and look for different things, which means that sales cycle is going to become longer. Before it was like, you want this thing? Well, there's only one of them, so that's probably the thing that you're gonna go and get. Whereas now you want that thing. Well, here's like a zillion of these, you know, ways to get this problem solved.
Good luck picking one. Who are you probably gonna pick? The people that you like. I would say that if you were to poll your audience and see how long they've been following you before they bought something, it's probably months to years. I know for me it definitely is. People have been following me. I'm thinking about Tracy right now who said with full certainty she was following me for two years before she bought anything.
We're gonna see that. We're gonna continue to see that. And so the best thing that you can do is start building those relationships now. People are gonna buy from people who they know, like, and trust. And so the sooner you can start working on building those relationships and having those conversations and opening up those vulnerability loops and closing them,
the better off that you'll be. And that's, in my opinion, the only way that you're gonna “get ahead”. I wanna kind of play devil's advocate for a second because I think that people may, perhaps…when I do these, I, I very much feel like I'm preaching to the choir. My people get me, but also the podcast is growing and so maybe this is your first time listening. If it is,
thank you for listening. Thank you for watching and tuning in. But for anyone who is feeling like, “But I wouldn't talk to that many people in person.” I'm talking about lateral networking here and going out and commenting, and if you're like, “But I wouldn't, I feel like I wouldn't do that in person.” That's the point, right?
That is the point. That limit that you feel, that self-imposed limit of like, I wouldn't talk to that many people in person. Awesome. I'm not, I don't want you to go and talk to a zillion people online. I want relational depth. So this isn't just go and lateral network to lateral network. This isn't just go and comment to comment.
That used to be Gary Vee's old like $1.80 method. Like leave your 2 cents on 90 people's things, whatever. I don't want that. I want relational depth. So this account that you keep coming across and you're like, man, I like their stuff and I've liked it before. Make sure that one, you are liking this stuff.
And two, shoot 'em a DM. And it won't be that many people, and it shouldn't be that many people because we are going deep, not wide. 2023 in my humble opinion, will be all about depth. Not width. 2023 we're looking at relational depth, not relational width. To quote James-Olivia Chu-Hillman, “All work gets done through relating,” and it's my opinion that 2023 will belong to those who do that
the best. All right. I am being mindful of the time here. We're like hitting like 25, 26 minutes, so I'm gonna wrap this thing up. As always, incredibly grateful for each and every one of you. If you wanna check out the show notes or get all of the information and you wanna do on the computer, you can head over to themovementmaestr.com/428.
All the things will be there, including the transcripts. Yes, I'm plugging the transcripts again. Why? Cuz I work hard on these things and I wanna know if they're valuable to you. I want you to know that they are there, and so I'm gonna plug them. Why not? All the things are there, all of my gratitude is here, as always, endlessly appreciative for every single one of you.
Until next time, friends, Maestro out.
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