Reverse Engineering How to Be an Industry Influencer

There are a lot of people that want to build communities. There are a lot of people that want to write a book. There are a lot of people that want to do lots of different things. But the question is how do you get started?

There is no better person than my friend, Dr. Glenn Vo whom I have known for a few years now, and I’ve seen him grow his brand from being just a dentist to a best-selling author with his book 2612 Cherry Hill Lane. One of the few books I actually read end to end.

Normally when people write books, you look at them and these things suck because they’re just trying to get their brand out. But if you read Dr. Vo’s book, you can see why he’s a best-selling author. You can see why he’s got a successful practice in Denton as a dentist, and why I chose him to be my dentist too.

Here is a snippet of the 1st webinar we did together which was teaching agency owners what not to do with dentists when you’re pitching services.

But a lot of things that we have discussed there are the stuff that’s applicable to anything. You don’t have to be a dentist. You could be an attorney, or you could be an accountant. It’s just the best practices on how to be a part of a community and how to be the Industry Influencer:

Just Get Started

A lot of times, whenever we have like this big plan or this big goal, we feel like we need to get that goal in like one sitting or one swoop. However contrary to that, look at it this way: Think about just eating a meal.

You don’t grab your whole meal and just shove it in your mouth, right? You don’t just eat it in one bite.

You take multiple bites and then you’re finally done. 

Set Big Goals

So when it comes to like accomplishing a big goal, it’s okay to have big goals, but then you’ve got to reverse engineer that goal into smaller bites so that you can slowly work towards that goal.

 If you’re looking to do like accomplish 10 things in one sitting, you’re gonna be disappointed. And that’s where people get stuck. They get frustrated. They’re like, “Well, I want to have a following of 44,000. I wanna do all these things”.

But what they fail to realize is that everyone that you know, me for example. I have spoken on so many great stages. But what you don’t see are the hours of traveling. You don’t see me just trying to work on my schedule. You don’t see all the grind. 

All you see is me, on the stage, talking to people and meeting different people. You don’t see all the work that goes into it. 

Need more convincing on how important goals are? Here is a Course on Standards of Excellence that will convince you and make sure that you are set up for success moving forward!

Understand that there are steps

It’s good to have these big goals but understand that there are steps that you have to take. Just make sure that you take those steps and do not try to jump past all the steps.

That’s where you get frustrated. That’s where you fail, and that’s where you say, “You know what? I can’t do it”. 

No, no, you can do it. You just didn’t go about it the right way. 

It looks like such a long distance from where they might be to where you are but it is possible.

Make sure that you serve your audience right

That’s the big problem.

So it’s all about quality and value. 

So what was the key value that you provide to your community?

Get the right team

Have a great mentor and realize that there are certain things that you are really good at–your genius ability. That is only you. That is the stuff that you should focus on and everything else needs to be delegated.

So this is the main mindset thing that you just need to break through right now. 

If you want your time, if you want your time back, you’re gonna have to pay for it. Now, some people may say, “Well, you know what? I wanna save some money. I want to try to do everything myself”. 

If that is you, then I want you to sit down and get a piece of paper and write. What is an hour of your time? What is it worth to you? 

A hundred dollars, $200, $500, a thousand dollars?

Now, once you do that, list out all the things you do in a day then ask yourself, are all those tasks worth your time and I promise you, it’s not.

And again, if you’re willing to pay a little bit to get that time back, you’ll be way in front. 

So what if I told you that for a quarter, maybe even less of what it costs your time that you can get someone to do that for you? Would you be interested? 

So don’t approach it like, “Oh, I don’t wanna spend any money”, think of it as, “No, I’m actually saving money because I’m not trying to Photoshop an image that honestly unless you’re a photographer or in the graphic design space, you probably suck at it and you’re gonna end up spending more time”. 

Have a team to help you run the stuff that’s not worth your time. 

Who do you hire and what specific step do you need to actually take? 

Ready to hire but not sure where to start? Here is a VA Hiring Course that will teach you from how to post up to onboarding!

Create your own systems and processes

You’ve got to start from the bottom and start creating your own systems and processes and start working there. 

So start right now, write out exactly what you want, and then find the person that can adopt that. And again, what you want is what’s really important. 

Want to learn how you can supercharge your brand just by having the right systems in place? Here is an Office Hour Episode that talks about just that.

Don’t assume that people know what you want

Don’t assume that your assistants are mind readers. They’re not. 

If you want something, if you need something, just ask. Because the worst that could happen is they can’t do it. 

What kinds of things do you have your VAs do for you? 

Build the Right Relationships

Being in Masterminds, being around other people that are successful or that you can learn from, who have done something that you want to do is what is important. 

Money is important. Yes, I understand. But you know what’s more important? Relationships. 

Because if you have the right relationships and you cultivate those relationships, that leads to more relationships and more doors that open.

The relationship capital is priceless.

You want to make sure you make these meaningful relationships because they open other doors and you will meet so many other people. So how?

• Follow the right people

 If you like somebody, follow them. Learn everything you can from them. If you like what they’re all about, see if you can take it to the next level and possibly work with him in some capacity.

• Attend the right event
• Do your homework

Do some research to think about who the people you want to meet and think about how you can stand out.

• Ask something significant

Understand who the other person is and really talk about what is passionate about them.

So when you’re in a presence of someone whom you know you can learn from, get your priorities straight. The right priority is how much is that knowledge gonna be worth.

Consider relationship-building as multiple steps. 

Find the right coaches

The biggest mistake some people make in growing their personal brand is that they feel like they can do it themselves. And that’s like the curse of anyone who is highly motivated and also highly educated.

“Oh, well, I went through dental school, I went through eight years of school, of course, I can figure this out on my own. I’ll just watch some YouTube videos and I’ll read some magazines”. 

That’s the problem. Here’s the thing, in order for you to become what you want to become, you actually had to go to school and go through a process.

Like you can’t just go on YouTube and learn how to be a dentist, right? 

You have to go through and you have tests that’ll test you to make sure that you have the aptitude to move on. So you can’t just say, “Well, I’ll just figure it out”. 

That’s the biggest mistake that highly motivated and highly educated people make. They simplify something else and make it very trivial that, “oh, I can figure it out on their own” when in reality it takes a lot of time and you need to have the right coaches who will sit with you and hold your hand and show you everything. 

If you do it by yourself, it’s gonna take twice as long and it won’t be as nearly as effective. 

Create Content with Other Experts

So you still need to produce the movie. You are the movie, you are the expert, and you’re interviewing other people.

And when shooting podcasts and other long forms:

• Have the guests make funny faces and use that as a thumbnail
• Make all the promo units at the end, not at the beginning. 
• Since we are going to cut this episode up into little snippets, you can decide the questions to ask in advance. 
• And any time you’re talking to someone who’s well known or who’s been on lots of podcasts, you don’t want to ask the same dumb questions that they’re always asked.
• And if I don’t have some really good questions or I have not put enough time into the research, I’ll ask him, “What question do you wish people had asked you but they don’t ask?”

Repurpose a lot of content

So we’re going to chop up different things from this podcast and turn them into Instagram stories, turn them into blog posts, turn them into other kinds of derivative.

And you see that that’s the beauty where you can take one long-form piece of content like this podcast and cut it up so we have snippets, tweets, cool pictures, and other things. 

Did you know that you can use an AI for repurposing? Here is an Office Hour Episode that talks about the Power of Descript to Repurpose Content.

If you want something, just reverse engineer it. Figure out what steps you need to take to get there that will let you know whether it’s something you want to go through or you don’t.

But if you just have this grand plan of, “I just wanna make millions of dollars”, you don’t reverse engineer it back then. You’re just going to have that dream and it’s not going to go anywhere. 

So figure out what you want. Be very detailed about what you want, and then reverse engineer it back to accomplish that goal.

And I would say that life is not a destination, it’s a journey. And so look at it that way. And when these new things come up, just understand it’s just part of the journey. 

And at the end of the day, people are still people, just a different medium to communicate with them, and the way you get their information just changed. 

You just got to kind of move on to the next medium and just embrace that. Embrace it instead of fight.

So reverse engineer, no matter what industry you’re in, if you start with that, you’ll figure out your path.