Transcript:

Brad Powell: 0:00

I’ve published 200 video podcast episodes and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this Most experts think they need a perfect content plan, they need viral guests and they need to do constant output to stay visible. But after 200 episodes I’ve realized visibility has nothing to do with quantity and everything to do with trust and conviction. I’ve gone from doing weekly interviews and live streams to only rare guest episodes, deep dive solo episodes, and now I’m using AI to actually slow down and go even deeper. In this video, I’m going to share what changed, what I got wrong and the truth about building a show and video content that actually grows your business. And if that sounds good, let’s start the show. Welcome to the Standout Business Show, where it’s all about making a bigger difference by showing up differently.

Brad Powell: 1:01

I’m Brad Powell and I’m a video brand architect who’s helped hundreds of experts turn one hour a month into videos that make you the sought-after authority in your field, without feeding the content machine. So why did I stop inviting guests on my show? Well, first of all, let me say that I actually really love doing guest interviews. I find it really fun. I find that I always learn a bunch of stuff, and probably most important for me personally is that I’m constantly honing my craft as a good listener and a good interviewer, and that completely helps me with the kind of work I do, because I’m always interviewing my clients in order to help them create good video content. And so, by practicing each week with a new and different guest who usually is someone who I’ve never met before this just helps me get better and better at the thing that I actually really like to do, get better and better at the thing that I actually really like to do. However, what I found over time is that my message, the things that I actually stand for and what I believe in and all the stuff that I want to share with my audience has been getting kind of diluted, because my main job when I host a guest is to showcase them and to make them look really good, and while that’s a very worthy goal, it’s not exactly helping me with my own marketing and marketing my own business. So for me, the big lesson is that expert-led solo content that’s you showing up as yourself, getting on camera and saying the thing you want to say. This is way more powerful when you do it right.

Brad Powell: 2:53

The second lesson I want to share is that it took me almost 200 episodes to figure out the real promise of the show, and I think it’s probably the biggest mistake I was making was that I was running this series the Standout Business Show without really going deep on what’s the premise and what’s the promise and what is the outcome that I’m really promising people who want to listen on a regular basis. So, starting about four or five months ago, I really went deep into trying a lot of things in terms of figuring out what are my core beliefs and what are the core beliefs of my audience that I want to be addressing on a regular basis so that when people start listening, when you start listening, you’re being taken on a journey, and it’s a journey of transformation. So I had to come up with what I call the chain of beliefs, and if you want to learn more about all that process, go back to episode number 191. I’ll put a link in the description down below, but the process is basically this idea behind the psychology of why people will buy from you. The chain of beliefs are all these links, all these separate beliefs that people need to have in order to be able to say yes to your offer. So these are things that they have to believe about themselves and things about what they think about the future, and things about what they think about your offer and the way that you work, and also a kind of trust and connection with you yourself, like, what do they have to believe about you in order to be able to say yes to hiring you to help them with whatever problem they want to solve?

Brad Powell: 4:46

I did this long thing on, well, what are my chain of beliefs and what are the chain of beliefs that anybody who wants to listen to this show needs to go through. Part of that process was naming the monster. Naming the monster, which is like what am I against? What’s the big thing out there that we’re planting our flag and we’re taking a stand against? And in my case, the monster is the content machine. And what I’m talking about here is this exhausting, performative, algorithm, pleasing marketing system that almost everybody is doing, and it’s pressuring you, as an expert, to chase attention and to dilute your message and be acting like all the influencers that are out there, instead of the real authority that you actually are. It’s going to force you to act like somebody who you’re not, and it’s not authentic. So putting all of this together is now this underlying foundation and philosophy and thinking that goes behind this show and also goes behind the work that I’m doing. 200 episodes later, that’s all it took for me to get here. 200 episodes later, that’s all it took for me to get here. This has allowed me to come up with the real promise of the show, and I’m just going to read it off to you now.

Brad Powell: 6:19

The Standout Business Show reveals how expert entrepreneurs like you become the most sought after brand in their industry, not by feeding the content machine, but by scaling trust, one conversation at a time. Does that sound clear? Go ahead and put a comment in the bottom if you get that, or if you have questions, or if you feel like whoop, that just went right by me. I don’t know what you’re talking about and for my work, I now have a way to talk about that. So now Mic Drop Moments becomes a way to turn your expertise into short, powerful videos that make you the most sought after authority in your field. So clients show up ready to work with you. And now the overarching theme becomes you don’t need to create more content. Your best content is already happening. You don’t need to create more content. Your best content is already happening. You just need a system to capture it and turn it into high performing authority building video. So you take low effort plus high visibility, which will get you sought after status.

Brad Powell: 7:17

Now I’d like to tell you a little bit about the process of how I got here. I made my co-host ChatGPT. What’s really interesting is that, even though I’m using artificial intelligence more than ever, I really believe that this process has made my content and my delivery more human. I feel like I ran this show wrong for a really long time and I think the biggest mistake I made was trying to build the show without a strong underlying belief framework. To get there, I went on to OpenAI and I started feeding it some different frameworks that I’d gathered from different sources. I learned about the concept of the chain of beliefs and I came to chat GPT and said hey, here’s this concept. You’ve been training on all of my transcripts and all the thought that I’ve had about this show and the kind of conversations we had, can we apply this chain of beliefs concept to the show? And shazam Pretty soon. In no time at all, I had this framework which connected all of my thinking.

Brad Powell: 8:33

So, as a listener, you’re going from overlooked and underexposed to becoming a familiar face, to becoming a trusted authority, to becoming a sought-after business. Okay, and the idea is to create a journey that your audience really craves. You want to be creating content for yourself that follows the same kind of journey and provides the same kind of transformation, so that your audience is going. Please bring on more. This puts you in a position where you’re no longer chasing clients. Clients are coming to you. You’re not competing because you have become the go-to choice. You don’t have to hustle, because the opportunities that are out there are seeking you out. And so here’s what changed when I finally got these pillars and foundations in place.

Brad Powell: 9:30

One of the things that I did was I turned this show into a YouTube, first podcast. And then what I also did was that I created a series, an eight episode series that all followed the theme of ditching the content machine. So I named my monster and basically was saying come with me on this journey so that we can follow along and figure out how we all can ditch the content machine. And if you want to go and binge that entire series, I’ve turned it into a playlist and you can find the link to it in the description and I’ll put a link up here. The cool part about this was that it didn’t take very long for me to start to see some concrete and tangible results. So my first victory real victory came after the fourth video. This was a video called the Attention Advantage and it was all about the story of the politician in New York, zoran Mondami, and how he beat his rivals simply by being really smart about making smartphone videos. Well, that video absolutely caught fire. It has now over 30,000 views. It’s been watched, 1,700 hours worth of watch time, which is a lot of watch time and probably more interesting from a show perspective. That one video has attracted 671 subscribers to my YouTube channel, which is really definite, concrete audience growth. It’s like wow, that’s amazing. Just one video. And if you want to check out that one episode, go find episode 198, and I’ll put a link to that in the description down below.

Brad Powell: 11:21

And the last thing I want to talk about is how I’m using artificial intelligence and the idea that AI isn’t really going to replace you, but you can totally use it to reveal the real you. The real question isn’t whether or not you should use AI, but what skill do you want to build when you’re using AI. So, for example, a lot of people are thinking well, I could just make an avatar and the avatar looks and sounds like me, and all I have to do is write out some text and feed it to the avatar and it’ll be out there doing my thing. I’ll never have to get on camera, I’ll never have to dress up, I’ll never have to fix my hair. It’ll just be this wonderful, perfect clone of me, maybe even a better version of me. It’ll be out there talking on my behalf and people will think it’s me and they’ll connect with that and good things will happen. And yes, you could do that.

Brad Powell: 12:19

But the question is back to what skill do you want to build? And this is where I want to challenge your thinking. If you are the person behind the curtain and what you’re doing is script writing and taking that script and giving it to your AI, or maybe you’re just managing you’re managing the part of the AI that’s writing the script and you’re an editor and you edit it and then you give it over to your avatar, well, that’s the skill that you’re developing. But if you show up on camera and you talk directly to the camera, like I’m doing right now, and you bring your energy and you bring your persona and you bring your personality and you tell your stories and you talk about stuff that AI doesn’t know anything about. All of that, if you take a moment when you are with a client and you’re in that natural zone of genius and this stuff is just pouring out of you because this is what you do, and you’re in that natural zone of genius and this stuff is just pouring out of you because this is what you do and you’re really good at it and you’ve recorded that moment, and then you take that and share it with a wider audience.

Brad Powell: 13:21

All of that is training you on how to be personable and connecting and maybe even a good listener Like you are developing all of these skills in terms of how to show up as a real, genuine, authentic person that people want to relate to. This is what I want you to consider when you’re thinking about should I use AI? And that’s actually not the question. It’s what skill will AI help me develop so that I can be better at what I do? What I’ve learned over 200 episodes is pretty simple. You don’t need to post more. You need to say the things that you believe in and show the things that other people aren’t willing to show. And if you’re an expert who’s been feeling underexposed online and you’re holding yourself back, well, maybe it’s time to start showing up as the real you. And if you’re ready to be seen differently without feeding the content machine, go check out episode number 199, which is how to make your expertise visible in just 90 days, without posting every day Until next time. So long.