How Ditching the Act and Showcasing Your Whole Self Will Drive People to Seek You out for Your Expertise – In Just 7 Minutes with Leonard Kim

Resources/Links:

• http://surpassyoursuccess.com/quiz

Summary

Leonard Kim is the author of Ditch the Act: Reveal the Surprising Power of the Real You for Greater Success. His TEDx Talk, Why You Should Let Your Fears Guide You, has been internationally recognized as one of the best TED Talks by Forbes, Inc. Magazine and Mashable.

In this episode, Leonard shares how he helps people to really realize the exact things needed to go out there and achieve that success.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 01:18 – Leonard’s ideal client: my ideal client is probably going to be a coach or a consultant who is making about 50 to 100 grand right now.
• 01:56 – Problem he helps solve: Helps people to really realize the exact things needed to go out there and achieve that success.
• 02:56 – Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Leonard: Most people do is they try to create this airbrushed life, it’s like the Instagram lifestyle let’s show how great I am. Let’s show how amazing I am.’
• 05:30 – Common mistakes people make when trying to solve that problem: Let’s say you see John Maxwell and you’re a John Maxwell coach, or you see Tony Robbins and you’re like, I want to be like this person, or Oprah, or whoever it is. These people are like 17, 25 years into building their personal brand. And then if I go and copy someone that’s stage 17, and I skipped stage one through 16, guess what, it’s just not going to go and connect with people. So, you have to start at the very beginning and start at your roots and build out your bio as thoroughly as possible.
• 06:18 – Leonard’s Valuable Free Action(VFA):You can work your way up to sharing the biggest struggles ever, like maybe losing a client, losing a business, losing a spouse, and losing something huge, which is going to drive the deepest connections with your audience. Get millions of people to go out there and see you. And then go drive traffic and then more conversions to your particular coaching or consulting business.
• 06:28 – Leonard’s Valuable Free Resource(VFR): hhttp://surpassyoursuccess.com/quiz
• 07:32 – Q: “Where should you start to showcase the whole self?” A: One thing that you should really focus on is starting at the very beginning, which is your bio. Your bio is going to be the most important thing in the world and what your bio needs to do is connect with people, it needs to make them feel emotions towards you and it needs to be relatable. So that means go and describe everything that you’ve ever gone through in life and get it

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“The more of themselves that they can see in your story, that's what's really going to drive and connect home. And that leads to more clients, more revenue, more great things that you get to do .” -@mrleonardkim Share on X

Info about our correspondent host: Travis has a background in sales, marketing, and strategy, and left the corporate world several years ago to start his own agency. As a copywriter by trade, his biggest skill is putting the right words, in front of the right people, at the right time. Travis has developed go-to-market strategies for grassroots apps to Fortune 500 and helped optimize up to $50k per day in Facebook Ad spend for one of the biggest startups in Asia.

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Travis Bennett: 0:09
Hi everyone, and welcome to another edition of Marketing The Invisible. My name is Travis Bennett and I’m rocking it out of Yangon in Myanmar. Proving you can build a successful business from anywhere in the world. I’m joined today by Leonard Kim. Leonard, a very, very warm welcome.

Leonard Kim: 0:23
Hey, how’s it going? I’m so happy to be here today. It’s a nice and bright sunny day.

Travis Bennett: 0:28
Yeah, lucky for you. I’m at a, we’ve hit darkness now but we’re at the tail end of rainy season. And it’s been about a meter of rain dropped every day for like three months. So, I’m hanging out for sunshine.

Leonard Kim: 0:40
Oh wow. Well, at least it’s over or it’s at the tail end. You got that going.

Travis Bennett: 0:45
For sure. There’s a swimming pool that I haven’t used in far too long. For those of you who don’t know Leonard, he’s the author of Ditch the Act, it’s coming out in October. And actually, his biggest success has been his TEDx talk is, Why You Should Let Your Fears Guide You. It’s been recognized as one of the best TED Talks ever, by Forbes, Inc. Magazine, and Mashable. Leonard, it’s great to have you on the show today. We’re going to be talking about, “How Ditching the Act and Showcasing Your Whole Self Will Drive People to Seek You Out for Your Expertise”. And Leonard is going to explain everything in just seven minutes, which is going to be awesome.

Leonard Kim: 1:19
Cool.

Travis Bennett: 1:20
So, I’m going to start this timer and we’re going to jump into question number one. Leonard, who is your ideal client?

Leonard Kim: 1:26
So, my ideal client is probably going to be a coach or a consultant who is making about 50 to 100 grand right now.

They’re building up their consultancy and their coaching business, but they’re really having trouble driving leads to it. It’s kind of like their marketing the invisible, like no one knows who they are and they’re kind of trying to grow, just like what your shows about. So that’s basically who the target audience is.

Travis Bennett: 1:50
Perfect. And question number two, what’s the problem that you solve for these people with your business?

Leonard Kim: 1:56
Well, everyone wants exposure, but not many people know exactly how to do it. We all have goals to kind of be out there like, maybe like Tony Robbins, but not exactly at that same level, but somewhere close to it. But not many of us know exactly where to start. We get caught in the weeds; we do all these different things.

But the problem is usually what we do is we do the things in the wrong order, or we’re completely missing a step or two, that really gets us there. So, what I do is I really help people to really realize the exact things needed to go out there and achieve that success.

Travis Bennett: 2:27
Gotcha. Gotcha. And we’ve got five minutes, 50 seconds on the clock. We’re doing good for time.

Leonard Kim: 2:32
Cool.

Travis Bennett: 2:32
When people are trying to do this for themselves, right? When they don’t have advice from yourself or someone else in your industry and they’re trying to build their own personal brand. They’re not addressing their own fears and all the things that have held them back and the challenges that they’ve gone through. What are the typical symptoms that people experience when they’re trying to figure this out themselves?

Leonard Kim: 2:56

So, what most people do is they try to create this airbrushed life, it’s like the Instagram lifestyle. Let’s show how great I am. Let’s show how amazing I am.

Now, let’s say I’m someone who needs coaching or consulting. Chances are I have this deep struggle within myself. I feel inadequate, I don’t feel good enough, I need to go out there and achieve more. Then I see you, the coach, the consultant, and you’re living this perfect life, guess what, I feel more depressed because I’m nothing like you. I don’t feel a connection with you either. So, if I don’t feel this connection, and I feel more depressed, I’m not buying your services because I can’t relate to you. Those symptoms are deep because now you’re going out there and you’re doing all this marketing, but you’re basically spinning your wheels because you think you’re doing all the right things, but you’re not getting what you need to actually get done. So now, what you’re really doing is you’re avoiding the fears that you have and instead you’re focusing on what you think you should be doing but it’s just not working.

Travis Bennett: 3:53
Okay, so it’s kind of like you’re working hard, but it’s not working in the right channel in your business. So that you’re not actually getting the success that you should be getting because you haven’t tapped into this, probably.

Leonard Kim: 4:06
Yeah. You haven’t tapped into this big thing that’s going to revolutionize your business. And what that requires is for you to go and discover your fears, all the things that you’re scared of, where you’re like, I’m going to get judged, mocked, ridiculed, laugh off stage, and all this other stuff. But those things don’t actually happen when you share your biggest vulnerabilities. Instead, what it is, it’s the greatest equalizer. Because when I go out there I go, hey, look, I almost lost my phone. I almost killed myself. I had to go live with my grandma, I struggled, I worked at big businesses that failed. Guess what, now it’s like, oh, I’ve only been trying to make an extra 20 grand a month to pay for a new home. But I can relate to this person. I get their struggle. And then what it does is it becomes more motivating to the person who’s watching, instead of holding them back and making them feel disconnected from you. So really, what people see is when you share your story, they don’t see you in your story, they see themselves in your story. And the more of themselves that they can see in your story, that’s what’s really going to drive and connect home with the person who’s watching your stuff. And guess what that leads to more clients, more revenue, more great things that you get to do

Travis Bennett: 5:15
That’s cool. That’s cool. So, we kind of touched on the question number four, we’ve got three minutes on the clock. But the mistakes people make when they’re trying to do this themselves. You said they’re showing off that Instagram lifestyle. Are there any other mistakes that people normally make?

Leonard Kim: 5:30
Yeah, so let’s say you see John Maxwell and you’re a John Maxwell coach, or you see Tony Robbins and you’re like, I want to be like this person, or Oprah, or whoever it is. These people are like 17, 25 years into building their personal brand. And then if I go and copy someone that’s stage 17, and I skipped stage one through 16, guess what, it’s just not going to go and connect with people. So, you have to start at the very beginning and start at your roots and build out your bio as thoroughly as possible.

Travis Bennett: 6:01
Gotcha. So then for people who want to do that, right, they want to get started on step one. What’s one valuable piece of advice that you could give them that they can start using today where they can maybe get the ball rolling and not jumping to step 17, but they can start doing it the right way?

Leonard Kim: 6:18
So, if you think about things like muscle, what we have is Instagram brush culture, where everything is this airbrushed, and everything looks perfect. We’ve kind of conditioned ourselves that way so that’s what we know how to share. We forgot how to share the bad version of our lives because we were told to not air our dirty laundry or to act in certain ways. I created five different levels of exposure that teach people how to just go out there and share the smaller things that happened, like maybe dropping food on your shirt and just going out there and sharing the small things. So, you can work your way up to sharing the biggest struggles ever, like maybe losing a client, losing a business, losing a spouse, and losing something huge, which is going to drive the deepest connections with your audience. Get millions of people to go out there and see you. And then go drive traffic and then more conversions to your particular coaching or consulting business.

Travis Bennett: 7:08
Gotcha. Gotcha. So, question number six, we’ve got a minute left on the clock. So, we still got some time. Where should we send people if they want to go to learn more about what it is you’re doing, and they can get some more help and advice on this problem?

Leonard Kim: 7:22
So, I have a page up right now. It’s called surpassyoursuccess.com/quiz. And what it does is it helps you surpass your success from where you are now to where you want to go.

Travis Bennett: 7:33
Perfect. So that’s surpassyoursuccess.com/quiz. You can jump on there and get some more insights and learn a little bit more about Leonard and everything he’s doing. Perfect. So then, 25 seconds, what’s one thing I should have asked you that can give some extra value to our audience I haven’t got to yet?

Leonard Kim 7:52

Cool. So, I guess one thing that you should really focus on is starting at the very beginning, which is your bio. Your bio is going to be the most important thing in the world and what your bio needs to do is connect with people, it needs to make them feel emotions towards you and it needs to be relatable. So that means go and describe everything that you’ve ever gone through in life and get it.

Travis Bennett: 8:15
Perfect. And that’s seven minutes. Leonard, it’s been a pleasure having you on the call today. Thank you so much for your time.

Leonard Kim 8:21
Anytime, man. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Travis Bennett: 8:24
Perfect. And thank you, everyone, for listening in. That’s another episode wrapped up. Cheers, and thank you.

Tom Poland: 7:49
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.