Step Into the Spotlight!
How Personal Branding and Digital Marketers align well!
Sit back and listen in carefully on why personal branding is so important. Now even more than ever! Enjoy Tsufit Author of the wildly popular provocative book, ✭ Step Into The Spotlight! : A Guide to Getting Noticed! , a Silver Medal Winner in the Axiom Business Book Awards
TSUFIT coaches Experts, Coaches, Speakers, Authors & Professionals to STAND OUT & GET NOTICED! Grab the 11 free Spotlight Secrets series re how to stand out in 30 seconds at Spot Light Secrets.
More on Tsufit herself you can visit her personal site.http://www.tsufit.com/
The podcasts touches on many personal branding goals including:
✔ Get Noticed or Get Known?
✔ Write a Book?
✔ Prepare Your Signature Speech?
✔ Polish Your Speech So You Captivate Your Audience?
✔ Raise Your Fees?
✔ Stand Out in Just 30 Seconds?
Here’s a tip: ✭ Claim Free Secrets on how YOU can stand out at http://www.SpotlightSecrets.com
Enjoy the show about personal branding and standing out!
The transcripts are also below! If you would like to be a guest, learn more and schedule your podcast with Jeff Stanislow here.
Also, if you like this and want to up skill your digital marketing personal branding game using social media. Check out this course!
The Host: Jeff Stanislow, CEO of Chief Internet Marketer
Transcript of the Digital Marketing Podcast on Personal Branding:
Jeff: 00:01 Hi, this is Jeff Stanislow, the Chief, at the Chief Internet Marketer. We are here today to welcome a special guest with us, Tsufit. How are you doing today, Tsufit?
Tsufit: 00:12 I'm doing great. How are you doing Jeff?
Jeff: 00:14 Good. It's an honor to have you being a Forbes and entrepreneur magazine and a special author of Step Into The Spotlight. I appreciate your time.
Tsufit: 00:24 Happy to be here.
Jeff: 00:26 Well, great. You have a guide to getting noticed. Tell us a little bit about what it takes to get noticed in today's multi bombardment universe.
Tsufit: 00:36 Well, it is getting harder and harder because there isn't a square inch of space anywhere on earth that somebody isn't writing on somewhere from the floor of the grocery store to the back of the bus everywhere. I think today the way you get noticed is to tell stories, and make sure you're visible telling those stories. So you have to create a bit of community around that. But if you can find a story in your own life, let's say, that's colorful and relates in some way to what you're doing, then you can use that as a metaphor for your business. I can give you an example of that. I had a client years ago who had like a professional speaker bureau or something. She would book speakers, but she was not a speaker herself, but she was invited to come give a speech to a chapter of the Professional Speakers Association. She came to me with his dry, boring speech and she said, "Tsufit, I have a dry, boring speech, but I don't want to look dry and boring because I'm all about the speakers, right?" So I interviewed her and I found out that she grew up on a tomato farm. So tomatoes are colorful, right? They're red. And I thought, oh, maybe we can use this. And so we made this whole analogy between tomatoes and speakers and, and we said how some speakers are just seedlings, right? They're not ready to say... Oh, I forgot an important part of the story. When I interviewed her, I found out that when she was a kid she used to help her, like eight years old, she would help her dad take these tomatoes to market. So we said some speakers were still seedlings, some were way too green for market, others were ripe and plump and juicy and others were just plain rotten. She used that analogy in her speech. It went over really, really well. There was a lineup of people waiting to speak to her after. So that is a way to get noticed in a noisy world, in a world where everyone is saying, look at me, my product is the best. , nobody hears that, but we're trained from when we're little, when somebody says, let me tell you a story. Right? Right away we start listening. So find your story and learn how to tell it well.
Jeff: 02:54 I agree. I think a lot of times , marketers in general or even people who are working on their personal brand, they have a lot to offer, but a lot of times they just can't package it in the right way and becoming skilled and telling the story is an excellent way to build that brand or explain yourself and even cut through all the bombardment.
Tsufit: 03:24 Well, exactly. The other thing is too kind of hone what you want to get seen for because the thing is if you want to get seen for everything, if you want to get noticed for everything, you're probably going to get noticed for nothing. Right? You kind of have to make a choice. So, I'll just give you another quick example of another one of my clients. She had a graphic design company where they did brochures and books and business cards and flyers and all the normal stuff, and websites, all this stuff that you would expect that kind of company to do. When she finally came to me as a client, I said, "well, first of all, everybody and his brother and his neighbor and his post man, is a graphic designer nowadays, we can all do our own stuff and even if we can't, we have a neighbor who can do it for us." So that's not really gonna get you noticed but you said one thing in that big long list that not everybody does and that is that she makes books. So she changed the name of her business to: wemakebooks.ca, ca is the Canadian version of .com and or .us or whatever, and she focused on that. She again went out networking and she used to do a boring 30 seconds where she would say, "hi, I'm so and so, and we for all your graphic design needs, we'll do your flyers, your..." And I said to her, "this is boring. Let's tell your story." So again, I interviewed her just like the tomato girl. I interviewed her and I found out that she, oh, I should say the tomato woman. We found out that she grew up in the Swiss Alps in a 600 year old farmhouse. And I said, "well that's interesting." She used to have to go all the way down the mountain to the valley to get books from the library because she loved, loved, loved to read, but she didn't have any books. So I said to her, ", wouldn't it be cool if we could stay in this 30 second thing that your favorite book was Heidi?" And she said, "oh, Tsufit, It was." The reason I suggested saying her favorite book was Heidi because my client's name was also Heidi. So anyways, so she told this story about how she used to go down the hill to get books in the library and it was a perfect way to promote her book creation business. She had never told that story before and she had never focused on books before. All of a sudden she got noticed.
Jeff: 05:39 Just by changing the way she presented her offerings,
Tsufit: 05:48 That's half of it. That's part of it is by how she presented, and the other half is by narrowing what she's presenting, because that doesn't mean that if you go to Heidi, that she won't make you business cards or flyers. In fact, she did. She made some postcards and whatever. She still does websites, but she doesn't talk about all that stuff, right? She goes and she talks about, I mean, once she gets, remember those old movies, Jeff, were you like... Really old timey movies? Right? You'd go to the railway station and there'd be like 10 different wickets, right? Little windows. You'd go to the first guy and you'd ask to buy a ticket and he'd say, "no, no, you have to go like three windows down to buy a ticket." This is the information. Oh, a window. So you go three doors down and guess who's standing there, Jeff? It's the same guy. It's the same guy, right? He walks three doors that you walked. So the point of my little story, which again includes the visual, which is what people should be doing, is that just because you do 10 things, like this guy does 10 things at the railway station and my client does 10 things and I do 10 things. I mean heck, I'm an author, speaker, coach, I coach people about marketing and publicity and speaking in public and branding and humor and all these things but if I said all those things nobody would find me. If I said I was a business coach, which I am again, nobody would find me because who isn't a business coach these days. There are quadrillion of them, right? So you have to narrow it and you have to also help them find the door to walk in. Now, once they're through that door, right? Once they walk through Heidi's door, because she said she makes books, she can still offer them all those other services once somebody walks through my door because they want to get noticed and stand out, and then they say, "well, can you help me with a speech?" Of course I can, but I have to know how to label that door. That's what she had to do. That's why she changed her business name, and that's what your listeners have to do. If they're entrepreneurs, if they're marketers, you have to figure out what is the one thing you're going with. It doesn't mean you have to drop everything else. That's the big objection that people make initially when you suggest going narrow, they say, yeah, but I don't want to cut out 50% of my business or I don't want to cut it out. All these potential clients, you don't have to lose them, but you have to narrow the doorway.
Jeff: 08:10 Yeah, I completely agree. Because you have a list of services if you're a service provider, but you have to have one of those services resonate and be able to tell the stories so someone can come in and then you can expand upon those services.
Tsufit: 08:28 That's right. Yeah, that's right. Not only be able to tell the story, Jeff, but be able to tell the story in different lengths of time. I mean, if you're invited to be a speaker for 30, 45 an hour, you have to be able to tell the story in an hour, but you also have to be able to tell that story in just 30 seconds because most of the time if you're at a BNI meeting or a board of trade or a chamber of commerce or wherever it is, or maybe at a conference and you get the mic for 30 seconds, you've got to be able to tell that whole story in 30 seconds. Not necessarily so they pull out their wallet and they write you a check, although that has happened to me many times, but just so that they come talk to you, right? You have to be able to tell in 30 seconds. So in fact, I actually have a free series, which I offer to people, about how to do it in just 30 seconds. So at the end of today I'll give you the URL so that you guys can get that free.
Jeff: 09:23 Yeah, that's, that's great. I mean, I could imagine someone that says your tomato picker client, that you kind of went there, someone says, "well, what do you do?" and somebody says, "well, I picked tomatoes." Well, that's like, something that says, wow, what do you mean by that I want to know more. That you've got them engaged with five words or right away. And then you can talk to them about the process of picking tomatoes and you've got to grow them and you got to mature them. You got to water, then they have to get sunshine. You have to take the weeds out. At the end of the day you know when its the right time to pick the tomatoes. That's a story.
Tsufit: 10:00 Yeah. What you're talking about is when you do it one on one, right? Because, and what I'm talking about is when you do it 30 seconds with a microphone in front of a room, which are two different things. I'm glad actually that you brought this up Jeff, because a lot of times I mean I teach a whole four week course about that 30 second networking infomercial. So, sometimes people craft and perfect this perfect 30 seconds and then they go do it with somebody one on one and it sounds robotic. I mean, it sounds like you're not engaging directly with the person, right? So what I'm talking about and what you'll get, and with these spotlight secrets that I'm going to tell you about at the end, that's what you do in 30 seconds in front of the room. What you just did is you took what we would've done in the 30 seconds and you made it so that you could do it one on one with somebody when you're waiting for the scrambled eggs at your networking breakfast.
Jeff: 10:55 Yes. It's so important to be able to be dynamic in regards to knowing your audience, and knowing where you're at.
Tsufit: 11:03 Right, and really speaking to people, you can't just spout out a canned response because you memorized it.
Jeff: 11:10 I'd be like, "congratulations, you memorized something."
Tsufit: 11:13 I know, we laugh about it, but I've heard people do this, like I'll be standing in line reaching for the raspberries in the lineup and I'll ask someone what do you do, and that person is so proud that they perfected the 30 seconds for later for the microphone. They'll tell me the whole 30 seconds and I'm thinking like, you're not talking to me. You're talking to the audience but you're not talking to me. So it's interesting because when you talk to somebody one on one, you have to speak to that one person. When you're talking to a room of a hundred or a thousand people, right? You still want to look like you're speaking to one person but what you never want to do is speak to one person as if you're speaking to a crowd. That never works. It doesn't work in person, and it doesn't work in email. You know how people send out auto responder series emails, which this series that I'm offering at the end is an autoresponder series, but you still want to make it so personal that somebody will hit reply and tell you their response. I get those replies like all the time from people like I don't know if those people think that I got up at five that morning and sent 5,000 different notes to 5,000 different people, but people responded as if we're speaking one-on-one and you've got to learn how to do that.
Jeff: 12:32 I think that is a very good point. The art of being able to do that using copy and a system that you put in place, it takes a long time to develop and get it right. You see that in sites like Linkedin all the time, people just will send you a list of things that they do.
Tsufit: 13:01 Oh my goodness. I just got one today. That is just like talking to the wall, it's talking to the wall. It's so silly because it just so doesn't work. I don't know why people don't get that. It doesn't work. You just ignore that stuff. So better a short sentence that engages somebody to say tell me more, tell me more, like that song from Grease, then just bomb them with all this stuff that they're not going to read and they're probably going to disconnect from you anyway.
Jeff: 13:33 Yeah, exactly. That's great. Good bye. People have to learn how to tell their story in whatever type of media that they're using. Like you said, like it's a one on one conversation, it's a presentation in front of a group of people, or if it's an email, an outreach email that you're looking to start a relationship with, that story has to be front and center and it has to be crafted correctly for the medium that you're using.
Tsufit: 14:02 Yeah. You asked me a question off the top, Jeff, you asked about how you stand out nowadays, right? And one of the things that a lot of people are interested in nowadays is being a quote unquote influencer. I mean, I've never aspired to being an influencer, so to speak, but if you can gather an audience of people who are interested in the subject that you deal with. Okay? So for me, I wrote a book called Step Into The Spotlight, a guide to getting noticed. So my topic is helping people in business, entrepreneurs and professionals and authors and speakers, whoever they are, coaches, helping them step into the spotlight in business so that they attract and so that they attract clients. So, I was sitting around one day on January 1st thinking, okay, what am I going to do different this year? I just randomly created a Linkedin group and we just hit over 10,000 people. The name of the group is, guess what? Step Into the Spotlight, right? Jeff, you're a member, right?
Jeff: 15:02 I am.
Tsufit: 15:02 I branded it around what my messages, I branded it around what I do, but then I brought, I mean, nobody's going to come if it's only about me, right? So I invited other people who do what I do, both people who are expert at it and people who want to learn from it. Like I said, we just passed 10,000 members and it's an active group. It's not like a lot of Linkedin groups where it's one way broadcast because that totally doesn't work. I mean there are groups of 500,000, even a million on there, but they're kind of like poster boards or broadcast boards, right? It's as if a TV show was all commercials, right? Nobody pays attention, but in our tiny little intimate community of 10,000 people are actually talking to each other. So to answer your original question, how do you stand out? Well, another way to stand out and maybe elevate yourself in business and in terms of visibility is to create a community around yourself and then keep attracting other people to join that community. If you attract people who have their own audiences, okay? So Jeff, you're interviewing me now on your podcast. You've got your own audience who is going to hear this podcast. That way you expose yourself to other people's audiences. So in my Linkedin group, I not only have a ton of podcasters and a ton of journalists but I also have a lot of other Linkedin owners and Facebook group owners that each have huge audiences of their own, in fact, much bigger audiences than mine. There are people in that Linkedin group who have audiences of 300,000, 400,000, 75,000, 150,000. Those are just four people I thought of off the top of my head that these guys are active in our community. So again, how do I get noticed while every time one of these guys posts their followers notice and it helps me stand out.
Jeff: 16:54 That's great. I mean, in essence, one of the things we talked about a little earlier too, and we just touched on is community building. This is kind of what you're alluding to is to help build a community, but you got to build a community that's engaging and that's respectful and that values the content. If not, like you mentioned, there are many groups on Facebook where it just feels like people just log in and they just blast their ad away. They don't even do the story telling to engage anybody.
Tsufit: 17:26 Yeah, and on Linkedin as well.
Jeff: 17:28 It's frustrating to see that. Tell us about building your community and, why has it been so successful or what were some of the challenges that you kind of went through as you're building the community and when did it really take off?
Tsufit: 17:42 Okay, well, I'm still waiting for it to really take, I mean, who knows what really take off means. I mean, we have the attention of Linkedin because there are at least four, probably more, but four that I know of Linkedin employees who are members of our group. A few of them have reached out to me and actually interviewed me repeatedly about the success of our group and they've kind of wanted to know our secrets. So I'm about to spill them here with you. First of all, I will say it's not for the faint of heart. It's a ton of work, especially because LinkedIn's notification systems are not what they used to be. I mean 25/7 is not an exaggeration, more than 24/7 in terms of the amount of time and energy that's put into this community. The way we keep it interactive is we don't let people post their articles or their teaching posts or their seven tips to that or five ways to this because it's a group primarily of experts and entrepreneurs in media, and they don't want to just be bombarded with each other's content. They want to actually ask each other the kinds of questions that they might ask each other if they were in the green room together backstage at the tonight show or some kind of talk show and they'd say, "hey, how'd you get that guy on your show?" "How'd you get to be a guest on this other thing?" "How did you publish your book?" "How did you get this endorsement?" So in our group, we encourage people, first of all, to comment on other people's posts and secondly to post, not a question that will make them look good and look like the authority, because we assume you are an authority or somebody who knows what you're talking about if you're even admitted to our group. Although there are also people admitted who are just there to learn from those people. So, there is some of that, but if you're there, it's not to show off with your questions. You can show off if you want to with your answers. So you'll answer other people's questions and for example, Jeff, you have a podcast. If somebody else said, should you have guests on your podcast or not have guests, should you have sponsors or how do you get sponsorship, some kind of question, or what kind of distribution do you use? What kind of microphone do you use? That's not a question you would pose because you know the answers to those things, right? Unless you, let's say you wanted to get sponsors. So maybe that's something you would post, right? What you could do is you could answer other people who ask those questions and then you in turn, let's say, Jeff, I don't know if you have a book or not, but if you don't yet have a book that you've written, you could post something about, should I self-publish or should I try to get an agent, a publisher? Or which of these three topics do you think would be more interesting? Or let's say you've already written your book and you're saying, which book cover do you like better? Or which title do you think would work? Or which audience should I go after, a lay audience, or more of an expert audience. The success of the group is based on the fact that we are pretty rigorous about filtering out all the one way broadcast, look at me, material. The other thing that we do is we invite big mouths to join the group, and when I say that, not in a derogatory way, but we invite people that we notice comment a lot. Not just junk commenting, but really engaging, insightful helpful comments, not so much people who post a lot because it's easy to find people to post a lot, but people who engage a lot and also people who have their own communities. So as a result of that, the engagement in our community, which by the way, your members can join if you just go to www.spotlightgroup.biz. If you shoot me a note that you heard about it on Jeff's podcasts. If I like you, maybe I'll let you in, but I just want to point out for all you digital marketers out there, since this is Chief Internet Marketer, what I did right there, okay? It wasn't subtle at all how I slipped in my little plug for the group, and in fact, while we're not being subtle, I'll also give you that URL for the free tips that I mentioned earlier, www.spotlightsecrets.com if you want the free tips about how to stand out in 30 seconds. I want to tell on myself and point out not only that I snuck it in because you never know at the end if the guy is out at a time and he doesn't really ask you or whatever. So if you're a guest, remember that. More importantly, what I did was I bought a forward from GoDaddy or whoever your URL provider is, your domain name provider. I'm not sending you to www.linkedin/tsufit.com/tsufit/group/4789929... or whatever my group number is, right, because you're not going to remember it. I'm not going to remember it, especially since I do a ton, ton, ton of podcasts and radio shows. How am I ever going to remember a URL like that? Even if I did my audience, wouldn't. I spend 10 bucks or whatever it is. I buy the forward spot like www.spotlightgroup.biz right. I branded with the spotlight, which is the same as my book, Step Into The Spotlight. That will take you to the group, or if you're interested in how you find my book on Amazon, go to www.spotlightbook.com that doesn't take you to my website that takes you to Amazon. Why would I spend 10 bucks to send people to Amazon? Because when I'm on a show, when I'm on a podcast or a radio show or a podcast like Jeff's, I could just say, you want to see my book, go to spotlight book.com I can remember it, the audience can remember it. So there is a really useful tip for any Internet marketer, whether it's a program, like I have a program at www.spotlighton101.com or 30seconds.biz or bookcreationworkshop.com or whatever. I mean, I can rattle them off. That's not the real domain name or real URL for any of them. They're all forwarded to easy domain names that I can remember that I see that Jeff will put in his show notes that other people can pass on. People remember, they'll find it. So that's one thing to keep in mind. Whatever it is you're promoting, make sure you have a forward for it.
Jeff: 24:01 Yeah. Especially one of the things that even on top of that being smart as far as being able to communicate it relatively easily for you to be able to remember it, you can also get the analytics from your hosting provider if you put Google analytics. So you'll be able to see when people come to it and visit it. So after a show or something, if it gets promoted, it's logical to see that traffic. So versus you wouldn't see if you say go to Amazon and search, Step Into the Spotlight.
Tsufit: 24:33 If they search Step Into the Spotlight on Amazon, recently, somebody put out some kid's book with like animation kind of thing, and I don't know, sometimes it pops up higher than mine so you don't want to rely on that or they don't spell spotlight right. You just don't know what people are going to remember. Oh, like for example, the last podcast I did, I told you I do a lot of them, she kept saying, Stepping Into the Spotlight, instead of step. So, they remember that name wrong, but spotlightbook.com is pretty easy to remember, right? The only one that's a little harder for people is tsufit.com, which is t s u f I t.com. That's my main website and my main blog. Even for that, I've got spotlightblog.com or stepintothespotlight.com which all point to the same place, just in case somebody remembers one and not the other.
Jeff: 25:29 Right. They're not SEO plays either there...
Tsufit: 25:33 No, not at all. It's just so that I remember them, and so that the audience remembers them.
Jeff: 25:41 What are your thoughts on public relations and hiring a public relations company that may help you in a local market. Where do you see that industry in general? Oftentimes you get some people that say, "Oh, you should hire a public relations specialist if you want to become an authority figure and they can connect you to people." I just was curious what you're seeing in the market place and you kind of live in this space a little bit. What's new in that arena?
Tsufit: 26:16 Well, I'm not sure that I can tell you what's new because between the time that you and I are recording this and it air even if it's in five seconds from now that you push the button, it will have changed because that's how fast technology is changing. So the only thing that I can really address is kind of the fundamentals behind it. The fundamentals behind publicity is that nobody cares about your business and nobody cares that you got a new office and nobody cares that you hired three employees. Nobody cares about any of that. All they care about is the story. The difference between publicity and an ad is an ad is something you pay for and you get to control the message. The message is exactly what you... red apples, 10 cents, here's my phone number. You can say that in advertising and pay for the advertising and they're gonna see it, right? But if you try to get publicity for your red apples, you don't know what angle they're going to take on that, right? You don't know if they're going to talk about the bug infestation lately in red apples and make you look bad or that your apples are overpriced or your apples are making people sick. Like you don't know what angle they're going to take. So there is a risk with publicity as opposed to advertising. The credibility of publicity is like through the roof compared to advertising. Publicity is an editorial comment about you. It's something that you didn't say about you. An ad Is something that you say about you. Publicity is something that other people say about you, right? That old thing, if a tree falls in the forest and no one's there to hear it, does it make a sound? So, you can be great at what you do sitting in your basement, but if nobody knows about it, then you might as well just keep sitting in your basement. Like you're not going to sell anything, right? So here's the thing about publicity. If you get publicity, you might really get well known. That's the plus side, right? The downside of publicity is that you might get really well known, right? The plus and the down is the same because if you get known for something great, great. I'm sure there are a lot of actors right now who wish that they could hide based on, in the recent years, the kind of publicity that they've got that they could not control in any way. Because of our changing times and the accountability that we're forcing on everybody in society, right? So to answer your question about like, should you hire a publicist or a publicity firm or not, I think that's kind of the basis of what you're asking me, I've taught courses on how to be your own publicist for probably 17, 18 years. Right? During all that time I've always said, "don't go hire a publicist unless you're a Zillionaire." If you're Coca-Cola, whatever, you can afford it. First of all, because when it comes from you, sometimes it's easy. I know this sounds counterintuitive. Sometimes it's easier for you to get publicity then for a publicist to get publicity for you. I'll tell you an example of that. So here I am going around all these years preaching don't hire, you don't need a publicist, just do it yourself. And teaching people how to do it. In fact, chapter five of my book is called "Extra, Extra Read All About It or How to Get Your Face in the Newspaper No Robbing a Bank. Okay. So, that's my whole huge chapter on publicity. I almost wrote a whole book about publicity until I decided, no, no, it makes more sense in the context of this book where we also talk about branding and speaking and your persona. But anyways, so let's say I wrote this book and there's a big chapter on publicity and in the big chapter on publicity, I addressed the question of whether you should hire a publicist. Now maybe in some cases it makes sense if you have a very short timeline or you have way too much money lying around or you don't have time to do any of the work yourself but I, actually I'm looking at the book. Should you hire a pro? Right? The thing is there is a benefit to not knowing the ropes, right? Your publicist knows the ropes and therefore won't do certain things that you're not supposed to do, right? You don't know what can't be done. So you do it. By the way, you can always hire a publicist later if you really decide that that's something you want to do. Here's the thing, I actually preached this for all these years that you don't need to hire a publicist and then my book comes out, Step Into the Spotlight, A Guide to Getting Noticed, and I thought to myself, "tsufitt, if your book doesn't get noticed, nobody's gonna think you're credible." Nobody's going to want to come hire you. Because I do private coaching and consulting on how to get heard, how to get seen, how to get noticed, how to get known, whether it's publicity or speaking or writing a book or branding or whatever it is. That's what I do for a living, and if my book didn't get noticed, right, if it didn't win awards, if it didn't get noticed, then I wouldn't have the same credibility. So I caved. Okay, here's a confession. I don't always tell this to everybody. I caved. Okay? For your listeners, only Jeff, don't let it leave this room. I actually did hire a publicist. I think we entered into a contract for like six months. I spent an exorbitant amount of money on this project and got very, very little. I mean, we've gotten a few radio shows, like a little mini radio tour, which is fine. Radio is the easiest thing on earth to book yourself. Even before there were so many podcasts. Radio is starving for content. There on 24/7 most of the time they need good guests. If you're a good guest, you don't need a publicist for that, but I still, I did it right. In terms of print, which mattered much more to me, some people want TV. I wasn't that crazy about TV because I don't like to be in the chair at five in the morning and going through the snow, which I had to do here for a national show here in Canada, I love print because you can reproduce it. In those days in your press kit or here online or whatever, you can quote from it. So I got a handful of things from this publicist, but there were things that this publicist said she couldn't get. I went, when our retainer was over, I went back by myself and took a different angle and I got a full page article by myself that my publicist couldn't get, and even before my book came out, I got a full page in the Toronto Star, which is a national newspaper. Anyway I got national TV documentary, tons of stuff on my own. So the answer to your question, should you hire a publicist? I can't say an absolute no. Again, if you've got way too much money, zero time, but still bottom line, whether you hire a publicist or not, I used to have a publicist who sent me her clients before she would take them on for me to help them find the story. So for example, she wasn't from her, but that tomato lady or the Swiss Alps Heidi Lady, that kind of thing, the publicists doesn't always dig. Some of them do to find the story. So they'd send them to me. Anyway, you've got to do the legwork. You've got to find this story. You got to find the angle. You have to find the why should anybody care about you because the only reason anybody's going to interview you on a podcast, write about you in a newspaper, right about you in a magazine. The only reason someone would do that is, a: if you're famous. I mean, if you're Julia Roberts, maybe they'll write about you anyway, even if you didn't do anything interesting, but if you're not a celebrity, the only reason anybody's going to write about you is if you do something interesting. If you have a good story to tell. So before you even think about publicity, think about, well, what's my story? What's my angle? There was a company in the U.S. that made big fans that were on the ceiling of arenas, like a hockey arenas. They'd have a big fan there and I don't know what their name was. It was something like, I don't know, ACMEHVACA, who knows? I'm just making stuff up at this point. I don't know what their name was, but their clients would kind of colloquially, just kind of for fun, call them and say you guys sell such big ass fans, big ass fans. They have this marketing manager who said, "all your clients say it, why don't you just change your business name to Big Ass Fans, a picture of a donkey and showing his hind whatever. There was a big controversy about it. They put up a big billboard where their local municipality didn't want it to be because they thought it was insulting and it was degrading. I heard about this because I read about it or heard about it online, I forget, the BBC covered this story. So they created publicity by making a choice, by having a provocative name. Like for example, there was this handyman who was out of work and he came up with the Rent a Husband or maybe it was Husband for Hire, one of them, and then I guess the other one must have copied him anyway. He was not doing well. He was just a regular handyman before that. He comes up with this cool name. Next thing, he's on like Good Morning America or one of those morning shows. Giving handyman tips. Right? I think he used the tagline "tall, dark, and handy.".
Jeff: 35:59 I liked it.
Tsufit: 36:00 All of this. Everything that I've said to you comes before the consideration of whether you should hire a publicist or not because let me tell you, there is no publicist that is just going to do what we just talked about, right? I mean, I don't believe so. You go to them and they'll say, "yeah, I have connections here, here and here and we'll try to place a story." But then they're not going to work with you to find the story, to find the color, to find the angle, maybe a little bit with the angle, but there's a lot of prep work you're going to do first, and if you're already doing all the hard work, the legwork, then give it a shot yourself first, its not really hard.
Jeff: 36:39 Yeah. I think that that resonates. It's kind of funny you mentioned the Big Ass Fans and again, what happened is they changed it from, We Sell Big Fans to something that kind of resonates with people and it gives the interest and it gets the story. So tell me a story behind Big Ass Fans.
Tsufit: 37:03 Well, let me actually just add onto what you just said there, Jeff. You said it, what did you say? That it attracts fans or I forget, you said something about sort of indicating that people like it. Well, some people like it, but what was even more valuable to them is that some people hate it, right? They were gutsy enough on their own website to not only publish the kudos where people said, "oh, I love it, it's so cool." They also published all the hate mail that they got and people saying, "I will never buy from your company, it's not dignified, it's unprofessional." They didn't run away from it. They didn't shy away from it. They published those comments also. I mean, not hate mail. Not that scary mail, but just the negative stuff too they published also, and that's what created the controversy. If you have any doubt at all that controversy sells that polarizing your audience sells I just have one word for you, president. Okay. I'm Canadian. So, not my president, and I know you want this to be evergreen. So, regardless of when you publish this, check in the history books, there was a president who said whatever he wanted and did whatever he wanted and didn't worry about alienating half or even two thirds of the potential audience because you don't need half the audience. You don't need two thirds of the audience. Sometimes if you have a solid one third of the audience, that's enough to get you over the top because everybody else is trying to be generic and everybody else is trying to fit in and everyone else is trying to be professional. How else would you have had 17 candidates, right? Like in the last presidential election? And 16 of them had, or 15, most of them had experience. Then you have one who just said, "you know what, I am what I am, I'm going to say what I say." And by the way, I'm not taking a position here. I don't publicly take positions about politics, but I do take positions about branding and marketing in politics. The branding and marketing of taking a strong position is brilliant because for every person who hates you, there's going be someone else who loves you. Right? Sometimes they love you because other people hate you. So polarizing your audience in business is always a wonderful, not a wonderful idea, but it's a strategic idea. It's one that will get you noticed, which was the question you asked me at the very beginning of this call. You said, how do you stand out in today's world? Well, you had 15, 16, and that's just on the republican side, candidates who had experience. On the other side, you had another five who had experience or whatever it was, and the one person who had none of that was able to get elected by polarizing his audience. .
Jeff: 40:04 Yeah it's interesting. Have you ever watched a movie or series that was called The Loudest Voice?
Tsufit: 40:11 No, but I will.
Jeff: 40:13 It's about Roger Ailes and how he started Fox News and it was basically saying the same thing. So basically it's like all the other news networks, they are polarized in one direction. What we're going to do is we're going to go the opposite way and we'll call it fair and balanced, even though it's a more conservative view. What he was saying is like, well, the traditional media is more, I guess left leaning, and so we're going to come up with, right. And that's where we're going to come up with fair and balanced, because even though it wasn't necessarily meant to be fair and balanced, as in like we're going to talk about both sides of things. He was just saying, we're just going to try to balance the polarization.
Tsufit: 41:07 Right, I will check it out, Jeff. Thank you. Actually, you make me think of something else. One of the most brilliant things you can do in business is not only to, to brand yourself. Now, branding is not something you really do to yourself. You make choices. Branding is the perception that your audience has of you, but you can make choices that may make it easier for your audience to make those choices and to brand you in that way. Your audience brands you really, but you guide that by how you behave and how you look and what you say. One of the most brilliant examples of this, of not only kind of labeling themselves one way, but also branding their opponents is the Apple vs. PC spots that you can see either at my website at tsufit.com or just Google them on YouTube or whatever, check them on YouTube. PC was the norm, 90, 95% of the people had it at that time, but Apple comes out with this thing where they personify a computer by using a person in a black T-shirt, a young smug looking guy in a black T-shirt, and he represented the Mac. Then you have this kind of bumbling, Charlie Brown looking character in an ill-fitting, itchy looking, brown suit who represented PC. Not only they branded themselves as cool and for artistic people and for entrepreneurs and for all the, like the cool kids, right? They branded the PC as being like for the older generation, the ones who wear suits. That PC is complicated a Mac is so easy, a baby can use it, and you can just plug it in and go like two minutes after you get it home, whereas on a PC, you're going to be doing that for hours. They managed to brand not only themselves, but their opponents, right? Well, that is what a quote unquote right wing radio is now doing by calling, they call the left... What we consider traditional media, the right calls, left wing media, okay? So whatever you call it the right, like Rush Limbaugh or people like that, they call traditional media drive by media, right? They've got this phrase right, drive by media. So labeling your opponents is brilliant. I mean, like, I don't think anybody really enjoyed the labeling that went on in the 2016 election whether it was from people calling a crooked Hillary or little Marco or low energy Jeb or whatever it was. I'm sure we're going to see a lying ted Cruz. I'm sure we're going to see a whole new round of it this year because you have different people on the other side this time. Even though nobody probably liked it, I won't say nobody liked it, but it makes people cringe. It works. It absolutely works. If you can label your opponent, drive by Media, Lying Ted Cruz, whatever, it sticks with people. So I'm not suggesting that people listening to your show, there's that great song, "Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," by The Animals. I am not suggesting that you should go around calling your opponents or your competitors liars or drive by media or crooked, for sure you don't do that. Right? But what Mac vs. PC did? I probably wouldn't do that either, but it sure worked for them. They didn't say anything derogatory about PC. They just said you want it to be easy come get a Mac. It looks like a PC is going to be a little more complicated. So how can you do that in your business? Now, I'm not suggesting you go on the attack, but at least make sure that your distinct enough, right? So Apple is distinct enough. The Mac is distinct enough that we know it's for people who consider themselves to be artistic. Maybe they're not really artistic or entrepreneurial, whatever, but just buying that makes them feel that way. Just like if you buy a pair of Nike running shoes, you're going to feel inspired to just do it. It definitely means you're going to get off the couch. You're probably still watching Jerry Springer eating Twinkies, but buying the shoes makes you feel like you're doing something. That's the kind of branding that again, to answer the question you asked me at the top, that is how one stands out, by creating a distinct positioning for yourself in the marketplace, and occasionally, if you're gutsy enough, maybe branding your competitors.
Jeff: 46:03 Well, I can't agree more Tsufit. I appreciate your time and what I'm going to ask you to do is give us a couple of ways to contact you, your most important ones out of all the laundry list of ones that you provided us. Then in closing, tell us about being a standup comic as well.
Tsufit: 46:25 Okay, Let me give you the links first. So if you want to read Step Into the Spotlight, A Guide to Getting Noticed, which is the book endorsed by the Who's Who of Whoville about branding and marketing. No reason to be shy about it. I was really blown away to get them. So I do say that with a joking humility. Go to www.spotlightbook.com that will take you to Amazon. If you want to join our Linkedin group, go to www.spotlightgroup.biz. You want to know more about me? Go to Tsufit.com and you'll see the spelling when Jeff puts it in the notes. Most importantly, the first thing you should do is go to www.spotlightsecrets, with an "s" at the end, spotlight secrets, plural.com. Put in your name and your email address and then press the first button. A second form will pop up because we have anti-spam laws here in Canada. Fill out the second form as well, the same email address and your country, and hit send or whatever it is, and you can respond. You can reply to any one of those tips that you get from me. You'll get three the first week and then it slows down to like once a week or once every 10 days. You can hit reply to any of those and get straight to me, and I'd be happy to reply to you. So that's the best way to get to me.
Jeff: 47:57 Oh, fantastic. I'll make sure I put that in my content. Then as we close.
Tsufit: 48:00 Oh, about the standup comic.
Jeff: 48:03 Stand up comedy. Let's hear it.
Tsufit: 48:05 The thing is that I did not set out to be a standup comic and I don't really consider myself a standup comic, but what happened was I was a singer, right. I've been talking about for the last however long we've been talking about standing out. Yeah, I had a good voice. So does every other singer who gets on stage mostly right? If you're bad, stay home. But if you're a good singer, that doesn't help you stand out. So one of the things that I did, I wasn't really consciously thinking to stand out, but I would do comedic songs also. Not only, but I would throw in a few in every show. So I dared myself to go to Yak Yaks, which is a comedy club here in Canada, and do a couple of comedic songs, but I couldn't just get up and start singing at a comedy club. So I did this little comedic intro, a little comedic out-tro. Next thing , I'm doing standup comedy on national TV. I got invited to be on another TV show. I got a comedic role in a sitcom for four years. And so, I guess I can honestly say that I am a comedian, but that's not kind of the main thing that I do now. What I do is I speak about marketing and people tell me it's entertaining. I bring a comedy into that and I teach my clients how to use comedy when they want to stand out.
Jeff: 49:21 That's excellent. Well, listen, I appreciate your time today and what we thought was going to be a 10, 15 minute, conversation did get us to close to that hour, so I appreciate it very much. Thank you very much.
Tsufit: 49:34 My pleasure. My pleasure. Bye.