This Statement Triggered Us: Chase Dimond & Nick Shackelford Talk Through Personal & Brand Building

What's up, everybody? My name is Nick Chaguford. I am here taking over Chase Diamond's podcast because we had Uncle Nick date yesterday with Shay, myself, Jamie, and Chase. And something was just on my mind. I could not get off my mind. And it's something that really sits heavy to the success of the businesses that I built, the ones that you built, the one that we're building together, and the ones that we're probably going to be building in the future. And I really want to talk about this because it is important to understand that where this is coming from comes out of a place of need and a place out of, like, enjoyment, which is something that's unique to start out with without you guys knowing what we're going to talk about. But it came from a good friend of ours. His name is Eric Carlson. He proposed a question, and it was more of a statement that, like, I guess you could say when I read it, I felt triggered or I felt attacked because I was like, oh, wait, is this me? And so I want to explore this with Chase today because a lot of what we do is around the amplification of messages or the promotion of things that we are supporting or a part of. And I want to know, like, how that line should be walked, okay? Can I read it? Let's do it. Yeah, let's do it. Okay, so Eric goes, it's amazing to me how most of the people others find to be impressive in my industry I find to be unimpressive. And most of the people that are under the radar I find to be wildly impressive. It is almost like the more likely you are to be known the less you are actually capable of others that the less you're actually capable of other than self-promotion. So that I just want to let that drop real quick. I want what's your reaction when I read this back to you because we talked about a little bit. Yeah, it's funny. I actually saw that post on my feed and I liked it and I just I don't know. I'm very much like I didn't want to engage. I kind of felt a little triggered too. I'm like, oh man, is he shooting shots at me and Nick? And obviously he isn't and he wasn't but I kind of just like liked it. I was like, oh, it's an interesting fair point. I think it's a couple things, right? Like I think the guru space has kind of gotten this bad rap, right? And I think to some degree we're kind of in this guru space just by the fact that we have courses, right? Just by association of our courses. We're in this space. That being said, right? Like I think for us personally, I think we've been doing this long enough and I think that we've been doing it well enough that we're definitely not in that group because I think for example, like you start out you do it and people maybe listen to you but pretty quickly people can catch on whether you're fluff or whether you've got it right. We've got enough talks. We've done enough things. We've got enough courses or it's actually like we're doing what we say and on the other end, right? Like I think the part that was really important to me is like we are practitioners. We run an agency, right? This year the agency will do eight figures in revenue. We are actively growing and building. So I see his point. I agree with it to some degree. I did feel triggered but I was like, all right. I sat down and thought myself and I thought I'm talking about cool. That's not me. That's not you. So let's talk about it. No, dude. You're you took the word out of my mouth. So I sat there and I actually I went in I went and commented on this. So I'm going to read again what I said. So I don't paraphrase. I'll go specific. I go. There's an arc of limelight that has to be carefully maintained building others while knowing when to talk and knowing when not to talk generally if you stick with what you know and do which should be changing as you progress. You should be good and I'll double down on this today. So I've been doing this seven eight years and the narration of commentary was like here's strategies that we are executing and not just strategies that we're actually here's things that like we're going to try next and then we are known as the Facebook person or the email person, right? Yeah, there's like this progression of growth that an expert goes through potentially. They don't always have to because there's some people that are fantastic at what they do and they just stay and they do that. They continue to do that. And there's no there's no there's nothing negative about that. They just didn't choose or they may not have had the opportunity to go from where they were to a different position yet still being the same space and what I mean by this specifically is like say your media buyer and you begun you begin to be our lead media buyer or the best media buyer and you go actually I don't want to manage anybody. I want to have more campaigns. I'm going to do more things or your lead email designer. You don't necessarily want to lead designers. You just want to design on better bigger projects like there's ways of doing what you are doing and continue leveling up in that direction. There's also ways that you level up in different direction. So I was like this is like the arc in my brain right now. First you're an expert executing Facebook guy email guy email guy email girl Facebook girl. Then you're an expert creating other experts. So you are training and teaching then you're an expert managing experts executing. So now you're managing a team of those that you started training then you're influencing an overall community of experts that are executing. Here's what's working. Here's what's not working. Here's here's things that you should try your things. You shouldn't try then you begin building tools for executing experts, which is the phase that we're kind of in right now. We border this three thing. We border managing experts. We border the influencing of a community and we border building tools for experts. So if you look at that arc your conversation moves away from the little day-to-day things you're doing on the platforms in which you're using and then you start talking about like what does it look like now you're going into leadership now you're going to like overall testing and training and learning growth and you want to influencing and what channels you need to do to build those influencing and then what tools you have to build for experts. For instance, the SAS tool that you're building on design. You work with a tons of brands. The biggest unique advantage we have on our email team is two things beautifully well-designed custom emails. Yeah, and the amount of campaign that campaigns that we launch and execute against. Well, you can't necessarily do too much campaign play work. That's more of like the club in the ESP, right? Yeah, but the design stuff you can impact that which is why you're choosing to go build in that direction, correct? Yeah, in a couple thoughts here is like man as you're saying that's so beautifully said it. My mind is like racing to all these things like for me personally my journey at least on Twitter and on social was like very hardcore. Every single post was an email tactic tip strategy, right? Really deep in it, this deliverability, that deliverability and over time I'm like, okay, I definitely want that content that's the content that people know me for. That's the content that I personally geek out and love but now let me talk about the agency, right? And how do I kind of get this group of people that are building agencies or freelancers wanting to kind of break into the agency game. Now I'm talking about things that we've done to scale the agency. Now I'm talking about things that are e-commerce, right? So you kind of go to your point of like the specific topic or the specific vertical to kind of other things within the vertical and then you talk about the category which for us is e-commerce and agency. And now you have the tools, right? So there's all these things that are kind of across my mind and things that we're doing but for us and for you everything I'm doing touches email or retention to some regard, right? So I've been very laser-focused for the past five or 10 years on that and it's not jumping from email to SMS to messenger and the latest and the greatest trend, right? I'm very focused and going deep and kind of wide in that. And I guess my question for you is like when people work for us or when people work for someone, right? Do you think like they don't become that guru and that kind of self-promoter because they have this ceiling? Like what I'm trying to figure out is like when he says the people that are underrated are the people that have no exposure to the social crowds and the platforms. Is that because these people are just brilliant executors that are internal to a brand or internal to an agency that aren't the founders and therefore they don't feel like they can have it? Like where do you think he's coming from or what are your thoughts? Interesting, that's an interesting direction. I'm gonna take it in two different ways. What I truly think he means are the ones that are not like really active or sharing or posting about it are the ones that are actually doing it. So it's an easy thing of like those who can't do teach and those who teach don't do. It's like it's pandering towards that a little bit but it's also, he's also saying that like look, I've met a lot of people that are like look at me pumping their chest and look at me I do great things and I actually know them they aren't that great at what they do. So he's like that's what he's speaking to specifically and the note that you're just mentioned of like well is that because those people or the incredibly unknown people that are doing it are great at it? Is it because they are not necessarily in the limelight or they have a founder that's above them that's in the limelight and they they feel like they can't do it? I don't I don't think that's it. I think it's I think it's a personal choice like spending time on building in a way that like you really want to be conveyed online or a way that you really want to share or provide something online. It's very difficult. It takes a lot of time. So if you if you actually aren't putting time and effort into that you're not going to do it. You're like I'm great at my job. I don't I actually don't need to do this and the biggest most frustrating thing I think people forget about is that ---- takes time. It takes so long. You might be like I am motivated to share it right now, but you have to be that way that feeling the next two or three years. Yeah, because you're going to see people fall off and like well, they talked about it for a couple months and they're no longer here anymore. Like what's going to happen? So you yeah, it is it is a mix and this is why we do this at Geek Out. Like we don't have no I take that back. We have a couple that are like what I like to call circuit speakers like myself and James. We've done affiliate. We've done account world. We've done blue ribbon. We've done a lot of these larger ones, right? Well James and I don't really talk James. I'll do a new talking on the topic, but I'll share I'll leave discussions or conversations, but I won't do a talk at my place. Everybody that's doing talks with me. I've never done before. We're having to coach them, which is why that's the big appeal is because they're all people that are executing it nerds. I'm able to pull out of the computer and go yet. Sometimes the nerds that you pull them out of the computers to kind of talk about they don't sell they don't sell tickets. Like they don't they don't they don't bring the masses to them. Sometimes they do something like oh, this is a unique person but like when I was rising the number one angle that they use me was like spent a hundred million dollars from the founder fidgety that sells tickets. So like you you got to be aware of this stuff when they when you kind of are building these areas. What is your story? And I tell this when look we're trying to build up people within a team that want to be built up. Joe Michaela be Zeb whoever wants to do it. We're like guys. Come on. Let's go. Like I got you like Jason chase Nick will put you up. But like if they don't want it we can't help. Yeah, I want to pay back on one thing that I asked you that you said that I kind of really agree with. So for example at your time at common thread, right Taylor really was like that figurehead and kind of that promoter and you and Savannah were kind of under him and you kind of answered that question indirectly basically send like well the people that want to promote themselves and want to kind of impact change are going to do it regardless. So you and Savannah built really really strong powerful personal brands while you guys were there and now that you guys have left it's continued to kind of flourish, right? I think I think that's one. So I think to your point if there's this ceiling or this founder that's kind of above you or the person that's above you in your mind, that's that's not reality. That's built. Those are walls built in your head that are preventing you from doing it. So go freaking do it doesn't matter who you are. Obviously do it the right way. I think the other thing is and I obviously agree with what Eric said, but I think the other thing too is I think when you can teach someone something especially if it's highly applicable and it's things that are working today, not that work three years ago, like most of gurus are teaching things that work in the past where we're teaching things that work in the present in the future that is actually mastery, right? If you could break down complex topics like email marketing and Facebook marketing in a way that the masses understand and they can improve on I'd actually argue that that is more impressive than someone who's just doing it themselves. It's keeping it to themselves, right? I think being willing to share what's working in level the playing field for lack of a better word makes everyone better. It makes you better because you get insights from others that makes them better because they get insights that they might not have often the ---- that you and I think is basic or proprietary or simple is actually the things that gives people this light bulb moments that allows them to build and create and scale. Those are kind of my thoughts kind of piggybacking on what you said. Well, I'm with you on this and I have to say being at Common Thread really showed me because we had a lot of things to talk about like we had a lot of things that popped off a lot of the things that myself and the group that I was part of directly was winning on and I always felt confident talking about the things there because I was the one either doing it or leading the team that was doing it. If it's so far removed that's why I'm not going to jump on and talk about email. That's why I'm not going to jump on and talk about SMS unless it's something that we're currently doing but even as I prepare for affiliate world like I have a really, really great presentation that's all stemming from the organization of what I need to communicate but I'm aggregating info from Motion, from Anze, from John, from Nicole, from David, from Matt, from Ariel like all the things that the team is building and all the things that I've been asking them to kind of like trial and test like we're about to showcase. So even that progression of like, hey, here's what I used to do 2019, 2020 and here's what we're going to talk about coming in from what my team found out in 2020 or 2020 and 2021 and now 2022. So it's this like really big interesting thing and it's important for those that are creating content in the space to know that like, look, there's nothing wrong with you not being that person anymore. You know, being transparent about why you're not longer that person or who you're now passing the baton to to be that person is so much more important as I like graceful exit into whatever it is you're currently going to talk about is super important. That's something that like I think why I'm speaking my why I'm so compelled to talk about is because it's something I'm currently experiencing as I change from who I was to what I will be on the things that we're talking about. Yeah, and dude, it's such a rewarding thing and it's kind of posted about this last week at a time recording this. We're actually on Valentine's Day last week. I hosted the state of Commerce and on my Facebook memories. I love seeing those it came up that two years ago. I spoke at geek out and this was February of 2020. This was right before lockdowns covid pandemic. I literally like a week or two before I spoke at your event, which is my first in person and it kind of just spark like for me falling in love with teaching and connecting and now I'm hosting virtual events and I'm speaking at yours and you're speaking at mine and we're bringing people up from our team like be who runs our SMS team. She spoke at our event last week and she spoke at my one at Blackfriars our Monday and she has opportunities to speak at yours. So it's kind of like this cooling kind of this cool self-fulfilling prophecy where like you kind of paved the way as leaders and founders and you have to let your team kind of have the same opportunities that you had and oftentimes they're going to do it bigger and better which makes everything that much more efficient. So true. It's a great point to like double down on that one because it's to me. It's it's really really important that just understand when it is time for you to Xero and that vehicle of promotion for yourself for the team for your company for the product, whatever it is, just know when it's your turn to get in the back seat or get in the driver's seat to let somebody else to kind of take to drive and it's fine. It's really okay. It really just be be secure enough in yourself to know that that's totally okay to do and get ready to progress. I was super impressed. I really want to talk about this real quick. Yeah, my my last thought and I'll let you close this out is to that point be okay being uncomfortable be comfortable being uncomfortable, right? Because that means you're growing and you're changing. It's anxious. It's scary. It's exciting. It's exhilarating going from who you were to who you now are to who you want to become and just kind of leapfrogging, right? You're going to be so uncomfortable. Don't let that kind of handcuff. You don't let that stop you. Keep going. No one knows what we're doing and to you for the last words. Now that I almost wanted that to be the last word. So I will say double down on the uncomfortableness just be ready to talk about what's next. Like what is next that you're actually doing and building and going through that will be the most exciting thing for your audience because you'd be surprised your audience will grow and educate with you. It's kind of like when you're an artist and you've released your first your first soundtrack and as you're growing it will release more and more albums. You're like OG crew is like you know, like this doesn't sound like you anymore. We'll like look you progress. You change your style. You change your vibe. You change your your topics and oftentimes for the loyal ones that really are listening and caring they're usually going to want that content from you. Anyways, so keep creating overall. You can't stop creating you have to keep going. Thank you. Tweet at us. Are you I am Shackleford. I'm Nick Shackleford on Twitter. I am Shackleford tweet at us. I am Shackleford at Ecom Chase Diamond. Let us know what your thoughts were on this one and we'll make more appreciate you brother later, man.