How to build a following by breaking rules  

 Last time we talked about why hard teaching kills momentum and why infotainment is what actually builds trust, authority and sales. But that’s just the surface. Today we’re diving into the stuff that really makes people pay attention. Let’s just say this one might get interesting.

[00:25]
I’m Igor Kheifets, and this is The ListBuilding Lifestyle. The podcast is for anyone who wants to build a wildly profitable email list working from home. If you’d like to make six figures, travel the world and help people improve their lives in the process, this podcast is for you. I also invite you to claim a free copy of my best selling book, The List Building Lifestyle Confessions of an Email Millionaire at www.igorsbook.com
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[01:12]
Radical honesty. So, radical Honesty is a very interesting concept, very simple to execute with any group of people, with a common interest. So, I’ll give an example of the way I use it in our industry. For instance, for many years now, I’ve come out, and I’ve been saying this for many years, and I basically, kind of came out guns blazing, if you will, taking a huge dump on social media, right? And I kind of sell people on the idea that social media is a waste of time, right?

Now, surely there’s people out there who make money on social media, but my philosophy is that social media is not worth the effort, and that in the long term, you shouldn’t focus on your social media following, you shouldn’t spend eight hours a day building a following, shouting at people who really don’t care about what you have to say and won’t follow you and won’t buy from you.

And so, I came out with this, and I basically used the radical honesty approach to share that message, right? So, I came out and unapologetically offered this opinion and backed it up with lots of different lessons and stories and statistics and things like that.

This helped me carve out a space for myself as a leader in “the making money online space”, as somebody who kind of bashes social media, right? And this message landed well with the people who either already believed this to be true, or they’ve tried social media in the past, and they couldn’t make it work, and they wondered why, and so now this explains why they could make it work. So, coming out and stating, just honestly, stating how I felt about social media allowed me to generate a big following of people who agree with that message.

[03:22]
Now, in any niche market, you probably have, if you will, a set of beliefs, or a set of things that people believe in that they get told all the time. In our market, it’s that they should build a TikTok, video channel, that right now, everyone’s being told they should be using AI when it’s just like anything else, they might be using AI, they might not be using AI. It’s not mandatory to be successful. They’re probably being told that.

Now, there are some truths, by the way, of the things you’re probably being told that you should be doing, like hey, building your list, okay? But many of these truths are not actually true. So, one of them is to build a social media followers, it’s definitely not true.

So, you come out and you kind of have this contradicting truth that you’re mentioning, and that positions you as an authority figure, somebody who has an opinion that contradicts the general public’s opinion or the common opinion in the market.

If you’re in the health space, you can express a counter opinion to something like, “if you’re in pain, you shouldn’t take Advil or Tylenol”. Maybe, because they numb your receptors, and it’s actually not good, etc. So, you kind of pick a popular opinion and then smash it, head on.

[04:54]
Now, another technique is what I call thy enemy, and that is actually picking something or someone as your enemy, and really hitting hard and really almost like making fun of your enemy.

So, throughout different points of my journey, I’ve had fun with this and, and I’ve used Facebook in general as a platform, Facebook ads, still use it, by the way. If you read my book, it’s very clear that Facebook ads is the enemy, right? That social media is the enemy.

But also, I’ve done it with people, where I would pick Tai Lopez and Gary Vaynerchuk. For example, with Gary Vaynerchuk, the whole hustle mentality, like the guys running around Wall Street and Manhattan, with the microphone and the phone attached to his ear, and he’s always doing business and this and that, and they interview this and seminar that.

And he’s always has something to say, he’s like, always hustling 24/7. Actually, one of my best friends, back in Israel, he actually loves to listen to him first thing in the morning, because he finds him very motivating.

But, I’ve had entire campaigns built around the whole “don’t listen to Gary V” angle. And I would find different videos of his, and I would find different mantras of his, and I would try to counter those with my own set of opinions that I could back up with results, of course, and that always got attention.

[06:31]
And let’s do one more that I believe can be very useful to you. Another one as far as infotainment goes, you can create your own language, this is actually one of my favorites, where you can come up with words, you can invent words, you can invent phrases, statements, metrics and you can basically come up with new stuff, okay? New slang, new acronyms, new concepts.

And so, -excuse me- for example, infotainment did not exist up until several years ago. Someone came up with it, then Russell Bronson actually changed it, not changed it, but he took infotainment, and he then kind of said, Okay, let’s do edutainment, right?

So, you can basically come up with your own language, and I think that’s very fascinating, because when you do that means you’re a thought leader. So, you’re not just somebody who transfers or regurgitates information, you have your own unique twist too, that’s also very powerful.

So, coming up with your own language, your own words, your own phrases, your own metrics, your own turns of phrase, that’s very powerful! Because that alone creates a category of one, which is a very powerful concept.

[08:07]
If you’re not familiar with this, creating a category of one is how you carve out a space in a very competitive market. Basically, this is why competition doesn’t matter, by the way. This is why most people who are, you know, they’re not very educated about marketing in general, they look at a competitive niche market and they think, oh, no! It’s too competitive! Everyone’s already making money, there’s no space for me.

But the reality is such that if the market is gushing with competition, means there’s a lot of money in it, and all you have to do is to come in and figure out, how can you create a category of one, meaning you’re still going to be in that market, but your position is going to be a little bit different compared to everybody else, which will make you unique and stand out. If you study marketing campaigns, you’ll see this quite often, that the greatest offers, the greatest products, usually have that element to them.

[09:19]
Thank you for listening to The List Building Lifestyle, get access to the previous episodes, transcript of today’s show, as well as other exclusive content at www.listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. Also remember to claim your free copy of my best selling book at www.igorsbook.com. It explains how I made millions with list buildings starting from scratch, plus I’ll give you $3,000 worth of free bonuses, including my best landing page templates, email swipe files and traffic blueprints. Go to www.igorsbook.com, now to claim your free package!