Your Social Currency With Gerard Adams

FOWNDERS President, Elite Daily Co-Founder, Entrepreneur, Investor, The Millennial Mentor – Gerard Adams

“Is content marketing still relevant?” What does it really mean to be “authentic” Why is it practically worthless to chase likes and comments? Watch/Listen to find out.

You’ll also learn the single most important reason you should build your “personal brand.” How to get influencers in your niche to promote your products. Why Gerard thinks THIS is the best (and most powerful!) social platform today. (No, it’s NOT Facebook.) AND…How to organize your social media content to avoid overwhelm and despair.

GerardAdams.com

Learn Social Currency – Ride The Billion Dollar Wave!

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Video Transcription provided by GMR Transcription Services.

Jaime:	Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I'm Jaime Masters. And I am so excited for this interview with Gerard Adams. Now you can check him out at GerardAdams.com, but he also sold a $50 million dollar company, Elite Daily, to Daily Mail, back in 2015. He was a millionaire by 24. Don't everybody hate him yet. He also runs an accelerator called Founders.com. Thank so much for coming on the show today, Gerard.

Gerard:	Thank you for having me.

Jaime:	And I totally highly recommend everybody check out your Snapchat, which is I think hellogerard, right?

[00:06:00]

Gerard:	Yes.

Jaime:	Because I've been following you since Peter Vigue told me all about you, because I've interviewed Peter also, and a couple of other guys I've seen on your Snapchat also, so make sure everybody follow up. So tell us a little bit about what actually Founders does, so that way they get a sense.

Gerard:	Sure. And it's interesting that you brought up the Snapchat because ever since Instagram launched their story, I've like shifted to doing more Instagram than I have Snapchat. I know; it's hard to manage both. Yeah, again, thank you for having me on the show, this is pretty cool. I launched a startup social impact accelerator in Newark, New Jersey, where my grandparents and my parents grew up. I'll explain how it kind of happened, and where I got the idea, and what it is. After I sold the company Elite, I started getting asked to speak all over the country. 

[00:07:00] 	And I was ranked in New York for like social incubators. And in Silicon Valley I was going and being a speaker for what's called Draper University, which is run by Tim Draper, which is one of the very renowned venture capitalists. I was noticing how like these tech cities were building these startup ecosystems to support Millennials and their ideas, and their new businesses, so that they can thrive and have a place to live, work, play, get educated. They were like the pioneers, like big cities of course, New York San Francisco. 

	And as I'm traveling and speaking to their entrepreneurs, I'm like analyzing what they've built in these cities, and how it's provided like real opportunity for Millennials, real jobs, real skills, a real ecosystem for them to thrive and get resources for their new businesses all in one place. And I was like why aren't we seeing those in our inner cities as well. 

[00:08:00] 	Okay, it's great that we have them in our big booming cities, but like me growing up in a little community, I know what it's like to grow up and be in my mom's basement, or going to maybe - if you're lucky, you got a Starbucks in your community, but you don't have really much - many resources for you to foster your ideas and get a new business going. So I wanted to take that concept and bring it back into inner cities. 

	My family was originally from Newark, New Jersey, which is a place that when you think Newark, everyone thinks crime, everyone thinks poverty, or you think the airport, like there's nothing good that you think about when you think Newark, New Jersey for so many years. And there's so much happening in Newark. It's the biggest city in New Jersey. Again, I have a special - it's has that special place in my heart because of like family, which is the most important thing to me. 

	So I said if I can - like, kind of like this saying if you can do it in New York, you can do it anywhere. Well, I felt like if we can do this in Newark, then we can definitely do it anywhere. So our goal was to build a brand. 

[00:09:00] 	And what we built is a live, work, play, part of the community, where we're in the middle of what's called central ward. We're very close to the universities. There's over 40,000 students. Nearby there is NJIT, and also nearby there's Rutgers Newark, so there's a lot of students as well. And in the middle right near there, we built a building that's 25 apartments above, and then below is this awesome workspace incubator, that's an open collaborative space. We brought in like a little food incubator to bring now like brick and mortar kind of food into the area. 

	And basically what we do there is quarterly we run a 12 week accelerator program called Seed to Scale. And that's all for, it's kind of for new entrepreneurs that are just launching their businesses, maybe it's within the first year, to the first three years, and it's a place where they can come live, and then through those 12 weeks I bring in some of the top mentors in the world, expert speakers, CEOs, tech entrepreneurs, all people that I've built a relationship with over the past 14 years, for them to come and mentor and speak. 

[00:10:00] 	And every single day we run a workshop. And what's different about us, so there's these accelerators around the world that are run by like the Googles of the world, like Y Combinators, Tech Stars. What's different about us is we're not just like tech focused, we really consider ourselves like a human accelerator. Like, we really focus on personal growth, on mindset, on emotional intelligence, leadership skills. We're bringing cross fit into it. 

	We bring Muay Thai. We bring in every meditation. You know, everyday, your morning is a morning ritual, that's focus on mindset, that's focused on meditation, that's focused on physical, that's focus on a motivational, something like that before the workshop begins. And then it's just grind time, the entrepreneurs they got to take action and implement what we're reviewing and build their businesses. So that's kind of what we're building right now.

[00:11:00]

Jaime:	Everybody's freakin jealous that they didn't have this growing up when they did it. So the funny thing is that it took me forever, or what feels like forever to learn this stuff. Meditation, I actually do Muay Thai also, which my audience definitely knows. So when we go over all that stuff, it took me to know all this. Can you imagine being just at the very beginning, because it's not about - and I'm sure you feel the same way, it's not about the fail. 

	Like, unfortunately I've had a lot people go through Y Combinator, and it's all about like you succeed, you succeed, or you fail, or you fail. And in general it's not about that at all. It's about how you evolve as a human being because you have some being successful later, right?

Gerard:	Yes.

Jaime:	Hugely important. But I love your concept on community, because that's the one thing - I mean, I grew up in the middle of nowhere in Maine, not any kind of community for this whatsoever. And so being able - I thought the internet was the best thing in the world, considering it was able to bring people together, but I feel like we're coming back around, where we need the human interaction. Are you planning on doing it more than just Newark, and having it in other places too, because I want you to have it in Austin also.

[00:12:00]

Gerard:	Well, I'll be there for South by Southwest. But yeah, that's the goal. So the goal is to really build a franchise model. We'll just build this out. We have all this proprietary curriculum, these curriculums that we build. We're building out like the whole online community aspect similar to what We Work did, where like you can easily connect to different people in the network. We're building all that out, all the technology stuff that we're conscious of how important that is because we do live in a society that is like an on demand society, where we are used to Ubers in the world. 

	So we do want to have the convenience of having the technology, but 100 percent, like I think what makes us unique is that we're engrained in the community. We are doing event is the community. We're actually teaching entrepreneurship to the middle school in Newark, New Jersey. We're opening up internship programs with the local high school. We're just getting - involving the community in what we're doing. I think what you're saying is so true. 

[00:13:00]	I think about it all the time how it's like we need that human interaction again. We're so connected on these devices, like it's just like we're spending the majority of our time on devices. I feel like we're on the computer and devices and less and less time actually getting to know people and connecting with people. And I think I love that we have these things to connect with people, it's allowed us to connect with people in ways that we never could imagine, that our parents ever definitely, but you do need to get to there and make an impact in the community and network with people and have that human interaction.

	And I think that's what Founders is doing. And the whole goal is to this year - last year we built it, we tested it. We're a startup ourselves, so this year we're proving it, you know, that it's needed. I'm talking to all these entrepreneurs in my network, and all the cities and the communities they're from. And I'm saying is this something that you think would flourish where you're from? And a lot of the feedback I'm getting is yes, we need this. We need this process. 

[00:14:00]	Because a lot of my friends are Angel investors too, and I'm an Angel investor for years. And I'll tell you like you'll lose a lot of money when you just write checks and then you kind of like, you know, you don't know what's going to happen with the entrepreneur. But if they're in a place that you know they can thrive, there's a process for them, where they're going to get educated, they're going to learn. 

	They're going to rub shoulders with other passionate, ambitious individuals. They're going to be in place where it's setup for them to live, work, and still have that play. You're going to hedge your risk a lot more as an investor, too. So I'm getting that feedback back, proving the model this year, and then our goal is to by next year start to pinpoint the next city that we want to expand to.

Jaime:	So that's what I was going to ask you, what's the business model behind, like is it a nonprofit, or does it actually have a scalable business model?

[00:15:00]

Gerard:	Yeah. So it's social enterprise, meaning it's a for profit, but we have a nonprofit arm. So the for profit is kind of what holds the IP of the curriculum, the brand, the real estate, where we have what is called media labs, because we focus a lot on content marketing, whereas a lot of other accelerators are very again tech heavy. We do have software developers, but we're more focused on content marketing. How do you - when you build your product, how are you going to get it out to the world?

Jaime:	I want to dive into - yes, let's dive into that. Because that's the other piece that I really want to go into is what makes up a really successful type business? Because the people that are listening right now are like, that's great, but there's in Newark. Great thanks, maybe it will come to my thing, maybe once, alright great. Thanks guys, appreciate it. So now, maybe we can dive into what you think really makes up a good scalable business that actually makes sense in today - nowadays. 

	Because I feel like the internet way back when, we were all like yay, and now it's starting - not become saturated, but content marketing is harder than it used to be. we really care more about the - I mean, when we're looking at Google and the changes with all that stuff in general, there's so much that somebody has to get on top of. 

[00:16:00] 	So you say content marketing, and yet that could be weeks, and weeks, and weeks, of learning. So you tell me, what are the most important thing for a business right now, as they're moving forward in that space to be successful?

Gerard:	Well, on one note, just so you know, we have people moving from all over the world, so if you're interested.

Jaime:	You should move to Newark.

Gerard:	We provide housing, that's why we have the apartments; feel free to hit us up. I feel like what we try to do at Founders is get back to the fundamentals, so to speak. I think for you to have a successful business today, it's first and foremost; you really do need to understand why you're doing it. I get it, like I knew what it was like to be hungry, to want to become a millionaire. And have that first million dollars hit my bank account. I'll never forget that day. I'll never forget calling my dad and being like it finally happened, like in the first million dollars.

[00:17:00]

Jaime:	Finally at 24. Everyone's like you suck Gerard. No, I'm kidding.

Gerard:	I didn't expect it to happen that quickly to be honest. But I think it comes down to the fundamentals of like really first and foremost understanding why you're doing what you're doing. And like what is it that you're bringing to the world? You can't rush. You can't like say, you know, I want to rush it and get as many sales as you possibly can for something, and you're just going to rush and get something out. Like, really think through like what is it that you are offering to the world? And are you putting yourself in your customer's shoes? 

	Whoever you're bringing this too, are you walking in their shoes? Are you like really, really differentiate yourself from everybody else, because you're bringing this to the world. Like, if you want to make millions of dollars, if you want to like for me with Founders, we want to turn this into impacting a billion lives. So it's like how are we really going to differentiate ourselves? 

[00:18:00] 	And like I always - in all of my businesses that I have made millions and millions of dollars, I know it's hard to sometimes think about this, but it's money never leads it follows. And if it follows you from making a fantastic - I was going to curse for a second - a fantastic product first. You know, you need to have that first. And make it that - and it's got to be different. So there's two aspects of it, and the content marketing side, you have to, right now in today's day and age, you need to be thinking social first. 

	You know, not every business, but in my opinion, I don't know if you can be like ultimately scalable and successful without having some social form of marketing. If you're marketing to Millennials or the future, the future generations, maybe not always, but even an older demographic, like we are on our Smartphones, that's just ht truth, so you need to be thinking social first. How am I telling the story? What is my brand, like what are the core values of my brand, and again not rushing the content marketing, but being quality over quantity. 

[00:19:00] 	I feel like we live in our generation where we're chasing. We're chasing as many likes, as many comments, as much we can, we're chasing, we're chasing, we're chasing. You know, it reminds me of back in the day with push and pull marketing. I think we need to stop focusing so much on the push, and start focusing on the pull. Like, start focusing on like: okay, let me slow down. What does my brand represent? What are those core values? What is the story that I'm telling for my brand because that's most important. I got to make sure that I'm doing that authentically, and doing it through quality content, not quantity and chasing people. 

	Let them come to you because you're authentic, because you're telling a good story. You know, because you're impacting people's lives, and people see that, and then get back into, not just from the social first and content marketing, but human, remember we're humans. So like, you know, I did this again with myself three weeks ago when I was looking at my social, my personal brand. I was like hey guys, let's take a step back, like what is Instagram? 

[00:20:00] 	What is it for? Okay, it's a tool for communication. Okay, what is it for? It's to build our community. Okay, when it's all said and done, what is it for? It's to connect with humans. That's what we built - it's really for. It's past just social media. It's a way to connect with humans. It's a way to connect with people. So how can you take that experience and make it something real, that's more than just this screen. It's something that you bring people together. You bring community together. 

	You get and invite people to do something, like bring people together. And I think that's what makes your company really truly different again, is like you said earlier, like it's full circle. Let's get back to the point of you are writing a hand written letter to your customers. You are inviting people to come see you and meet you. You are unconventionally doing an impromptu meet up in a city that your target market is in, and doing something like that. 

[00:21:00] 	And again, just like sacrificing, if you do that for a good two, to tops three years, I'm telling you, if you do that for a good two years, solid, all in, I guarantee you that you will get like - you will start to get that model that works. You will be able to understand what's clicking and what's not. You'll get authentic feedback from your customers. And then you start doubling down. And by year three, you break through year three, that's when you can hit the seven figure mark.

Jaime:	I'm so thankful that you put a timeline on this. Because the question that I was going to ask, which I'm going to ask anyway, but now that we've clarified the timeline a little bit, people when they start putting things out, they have no idea if it hits or not, because attraction, or pull marketing is great, but when you only have like three people that are looking at it, you're like: did they like it? I didn't get any likes. I don't have any feedback. So that first year, no offense, I remember I was like this sucks. 

	Like, nobody's doing anything. And you don't know what's working versus what's not working. So you're literally going out and throwing stuff against the wall to see if it sticks, and it can be really frustrating the first year, year and a half, until you start finding the things that work. So what advice do you have for people to speed that up a little bit?

[00:22:00]

Gerard:	So yeah, I hear you. I mean, early, early, in the very beginning, I still think though that you do need to understand, like get the core of your brand down. Get the aesthetic of the brand down. Get your narrative down. You have to do -

Jaime:	How do they get it down though, that's question? Like, how do you actually get it down enough that you know it works? Do you know what I mean?

Gerard:	Yeah. Well, that definitely comes with testing. I mean, first of all you need to do like, you know, a deep dive into what - it's basically the way you do it is by asking questions. It's that simple, right? First you got to ask yourself those questions, like what do I want people to feel? What are my core values? I go through this with a lot of brands all the time. 

[00:23:00] 	Do you want them to feel that it's a friendly brand, that it's something that is authentic, that it's something that is raw? I don't know, you can go on and on, because these are the words, you know what are the values that you want the brand to really stand for? And once you kind of nail that narrative down, which you're talking about, which is the push. I think to expedite that process is collaboration. 

	You know, for me, I think that one of the best ways to kind of get out there quickly is through collaborating. And you look at where the market is going with influential marketing. You know, people nowadays are not resonating as much with just running banner ads, and running pay per click ads, and that kind of marketing. They're connecting with people, individuals. 

[00:24:00] 	And it's not like your typical, like A class celebrity, these are regular people that are focusing on their personal brands. So let's just say you have a fitness type product, start to get your aesthetic down, because they're going to care about who they represent, but then make a list of everybody that is an emerging influencer, emerging expert, in your filed that relates to those values that you wrote down. That relates to that the way that you want people to feel, look at their content. And then you need to come up with a program. You're going to need to invest into a program. 

	You know, you don't have to spend a crazy amount of money, but I don't think you probably need to start off with at least $5,000 or $10,000. And start to get some brand ambassadors for yourself on social media. Send them product. You know, in the beginning with Elite Daily, we didn't have all the money in the world, we we're bootstrapped, so we sent people swag, send people your product. Build a relationship with t hem, tell them your story. Tell them why it's important. Tell them that you want to build an authentic relationship with them. 

[00:25:00] 	It's not all about the fact that you want them to promote your brand, it's that hey, look, I really love your content, study their content. I want you to use my product, and whether or not you promote it is up to you. I want you to use it and give me your authentic feedback, and I really will admire your work, your content. And I don't want anything in return, I just want you to try my product and give me some authentic feedback. 

	And if you like it, I would like to then discuss how maybe you would like to work together and become an ambassador for my company. And people that have influence love that. Love that more than someone coming and saying they're just going to offer money. I just got a letter two days ago from a young guy, who had a hair product company. And he wrote me a letter and he said - Charlie Dapper, was I believe his company name, just sent to me yesterday. And he sent me some product. 

[00:26:00] 	And he said to me: I love your product. I love your content Gerard. I love what you're doing. I'm a fellow guy who is originally from New Jersey. I just want you to try the product. Tell me what you think of the product. I don't want anything back from you; just if you gave me that feedback it would mean the world to me. And if you really like it, I would love for you to have an unlimited supply of my product, just use it. 

	And if you one day would like to work together, I would love for you to be an ambassador for me. You know, to me, I was like - it was an authentic hand written letter, I loved it. I'm going to - like I just did it right now, I just talked about him. Like, I will try his product. I will give him some feedback. And if I like the product, I won't even charge him. I know he's a startup. I'll put it out on my Insta Story. I'll every once in awhile I'll plug it. 

	And I think that influencers, they care about their brand, because that's their, what I coined, it's in trademark, social currency. You know, they're building a life based upon their social currency. Their brand is everything, and people resonate with that. We're now as individuals, the media platforms. 

[00:27:00] 	You know, it's no longer like you need to go and be on this big media company. No, like people are the media platform. So find the people that resonate with your brand and build authentic relationships with them, collaborate with them. Another thing you can do is what you're doing right now, create a podcast. And you don't need to have a lot of money to start something like this, like a podcast. I do a video series on YouTube, on my YouTube channel Gerard Adams TV, where I interview modern day leaders, it's really high production. 

	It costs me a ton of money, but when I started doing YouTube is you don't need to have the crazy equipment. You could literally use an iPhone. You can literally get a camera for $400 or $500 that's pretty good, that's how many days in the last seven days, and start to create a vlog, or do an interview series. But again, create a channel for yourself, become a media platform yourself as well, and become an authority in your sector. Talk about what's going on in your sector. 

[00:28:00] 	You have to gain people's trust. And the way to do that, and the way to build a trust, build a community, is by giving value. So the way you do that is create authentic content, build authentic relationships, and it is going to take you a good year and a half, two years, and it never stops. It really never stops. If you want to be successful at it, you're going to - it's going to continue for as long as you're building your company, it will just evolve. Any great product will evolve. 

	Look at Apple, you know, we didn't start like an iPhone. It started with this huge Macintosh. So just know that it is a process, and eventually you'll evolve as an entrepreneur, and as a founder. Your company will evolve. We all started at zero. You just got get started and get moving.

Jaime:	Yeah, the journey is supposed to the fun part, so even if it sucks at first, you can still keep moving forward and know that the evolutionary process is coming. Don't worry guys; things will change as you go no matter what. Let me ask this though, I love that you're thinking about authentic relationships. 

[00:29:00] 	That was my goal at the very beginning. I'm like, I just want friends that actually know what I'm talking about. So I made this amazing network by reaching out to people. But you probably get pitched a ton of stuff all the time. I'm going to go back to what you said about the guy sending you the hand written note, what are the pieces of not to do? 

	Because I get sent a ton of stuff also. Gifts, which I love, it feels like Christmas going to, you know. But what made his stand out over somebody else's? Because you must get sent so many different things like that. And now you're going to get sent a whole bunch more because you just said this on my show.

Gerard:	Awesome. I think what stood out was the letter. I can tell if somebody is speaking, you know, is really writing from a place that's authentic. I mean, because I get things all the time as well, and sometimes people just send me their stuff. And they'll maybe wrote a little - maybe they'll write like maybe just a quick sentence, like this is for you, anything like that. 

[00:30:00] 	Or maybe a lot of time they'll DM me, and they'll try to be authentic on a quick DM, and then they'll try to send dh to me, but it has to go further than that. And I think that what was different about, I believe his name is Joe, was that he really did a hand written letter. And it didn't come with an ask, it came with a gift. This is a gift. This is a little bit about me and my story. I'm from New Jersey; this is why this is important to me.

Jaime:	He connected. Yeah, he's like: okay, how can I connect with him as a human?

Gerard:	Right. So like boom, that connected to me. And hey, I don't need you to - he specifically said, I do not need you to give me a shout out. The fact that you use my product is meaningful enough to me. If you can give me some feedback of what you think, that would be great. And I got feedback for him. I think his packaging sucks. I'm going to tell him.

[00:31:00]

Jaime:	If it's weight in gold I'm sure from you also, to be able to get that, you know?

Gerard:	Right. So I think when you take the time to connect and really write - you know, I struggle with this. Like, I want to write a letter to my grandfather right now. You know, for the past two weeks, I've been like: I'm going to write this letter to my grandfather. I haven't written to him in a long time. He's in Texas, so maybe when I come to Austin; I'm going to visit him as well. But I haven't written to him in a month, and I really want to - I've been wanting to do that, so guys hold me to it.

Jaime:	Right. I'm already going to - so I've got your Snapchat, I'll message you. I'm good about that piece.

Gerard:	Oh, good.

Jaime:	If you say you're going to do it, you better do it, alright.

Gerard:	Exactly.

Jaime:	What date? What two days from now?

Gerard:	Yeah, that's definitely.

Jaime:	Deal.

Gerard:	So we live in this world, where it's like there's so much noise and so much happening, like really freakin separate that and like take the time, put your phone away. And if you do something like that and you can connect with people, I think it really goes a long way.

[00:32:00]

Jaime:	Okay, so now I want to sort of transition that exact same thing, that human connection piece to what you're doing really well online? And I have so many questions about this, because how much do we show of our personal life? So in your Snapchat, you're like I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, which is amazing, but for me in general, I'm like how much do we show the veil? 

	So to me, I'm the same person whether off camera or on camera, everybody says that, except I swear a lot more off camera, than I do on camera. That being said, I don't know, I have kids, I don't know how much I should be sort of showing what life is typically like? So how do you determine what you show versus what you don't show?

[00:33:00]

Gerard:	Well, you got to be - I think a lot of people are sometimes shy with social media, with the camera. I think that the more real you are the better, but I think you should - I mean, people want to see the real like - there's so many people - I went through this, like there's so many people going and putting motivational quotes up. There's so many people using repurposing the same content over and over again. That's going to fizzle out, probably want - if you really want to build trust and build a real community, you need to let people in, and not be afraid, and know that people are going to judge you. 

	People are going to - and it's the truth, that's what people do, but you just got to be confident in saying to yourself, like this is it. This is my life. This is where I live. This is who I am. If you have family, like people love that. I love when I see my friends that are out there that are influencers that are showing themselves. Like, yesterday my friend, I'll give you an example, Jason Stone, he's a big influencer. He has [inaudible] called Millionaire Mentor. You know that guy who does the salt with the steak, that's gone viral?

Jaime:	Oh, yeah.

[00:34:00]

Gerard:	I don't know what he does, he does like this little thing with the - he was putting - he was cooking for his kids, and he was doing it on Snapchat, like him mocking that guy, slapping the steak, like putting the steak down, doing the salt. And that's been such a viral content, that original guy, but I thought it was so funny that he was letting people into his kitchen, showing his kids, his wife's there laughing, he's doing something, like people want to see that human interaction, see who you are behind it all. 

	And then you're going to have a little bit of what I call edutainment, which is you need to be educational. You got to cut out like all the other personal life stuff. You got to be educational, like how are you providing value for people?

Jaime:	That was my question. Because the thing is, like I have a family YouTube channel, which I don't tell anybody about, but it's fun. Because I don't want to waste people's time either, so I'm all about like we have only this much time, so this is content and it should be fun, don't get me wrong, but this is content that really matters. 

[00:35:00] 	And so part of me is going how much is background information, like hey, this is sort of me, this is what I'm doing right now, and not necessarily giving - I mean, it's letting people in, but it's not necessarily giving value, so where is that line?

Gerard:	You know, it's a tough thing. It?s like that question of like what's the balance of like having a relationship and being an entrepreneur, there really is no balance. You know, you kind of just need to follow your intuition. I know that's a tough situation, you want like a hard answer. Fr me, I don't know, like I just sometimes I'm like: I'm going to show my relationship. I'm going to put it up. I try to, especially within the beginning, you really want to focus more on value, on education, not - when I say edutainment, like you really want to sway towards the education. 

[00:36:00] 	And then sprinkle in the authentic you. I try to keep weekends, like my content on the weekends; I try to keep more for like personal. You know, but during the week, I try to really focus on education and value, and maybe I'll throw in some content, maybe I'll throw one post up that's a little something personal, but mostly I weigh more on the educational part.

Jaime:	See, okay. So like I did a helicopter ride, and that got more like views on Facebook than my normal content. And I'm like what the heck; do people just want to see selfies of me? And that sucks too, because then you have to try and decide what - I mean, if they like it, you want to give them more, but I also just don't want to do that the entire time. So it's interesting because we've been talking about doing a vlog or a daily sort of thing more on video side, and I kept going back and forth. 

	But I feel like I know you because I've been watching your Snapchat and your beautiful girlfriend. And I'm like oh, I feel like I'm part of your little world. And I can see Peter and friends, so I feel like I know you, even though we've never met before. So I feel like there's a huge value to that also.

[00:37:00]

Gerard:	Yeah, it also depends on the platforms. So you got to figure out what platforms you want to be on, and where you're going to double down. So like Snapchat, I use her a little bit more of a personal use. Instagram, I'm giving more value consistently, and I sprinkle in the relationship here and there. I put on my Insta Story a little bit more personal. But I feel like it's also based upon your platform. So maybe you want to be - first of all you want to figure out what platform you want to dominate.

Jaime:	That's what I was going to ask. Yeah, give me your run down of how much time you're spending on what platform for people, so they can pick and choose?

Gerard:	So I think that right now the most powerful platform is Instagram.

Jaime:	Really?

[00:38:00]

Gerard:	I do. Especially, like looking at the statistics ever since Insta Story came out, Snapchat, its growth has now been like hindered. It was growing at an exponential rate. But I don't know, for me, I double down on Instagram because I do like the fact that you can have the pictures. It doesn't all disappear in 24 hours, but you can do the Insta Story and that can disappoint. And you can do it all in one platform, you don't have to bounce around.

Jaime:	Yeah, because I want to ask you this. Because I feel like Instagram is really great for fitness, and or Millennials, there's a lot of younger people on that, so I think it also depends on your audience is. Because I've even had - I've had clients go through and do launches, have huge Instagram followings, and be like nobody bought from Instagram. Like, nobody that follows me on Instagram actually bought my thing, versus something else. 

	So I'm looking at the data behind it, and again, I only know a handful of people that have huge followings on Instagram, but it's not delivering the ROI that a lot of people that are assuming based on my information. So what have you seen on Instagram?

[00:39:00]

Gerard:	I see that it's a great place for you to build your community. I would agree that it's not the number one place that's going to drive necessarily revenue, unless you're a product. Like, I have something called the Fidget 360 that I helped these young 17-year-old kids start. They grew to over 100,000 on Instagram. And they generated up to $60,000 last month in sales, you know, direct to a Shopify account selling their products. So I think it's good if you're going to - for your product, it definitely can drive sales. 

	If you are an individual, if you are a personal brand, and you're building your authority. And you want to, let's for instance have a digital marketing - you know, a digital product, like a course. You know, what I've noticed is that you need to build your authenticity, your trust, your community on Instagram, and then have them go into an email list, and then that's where you'll drive more sales to your actual product. I know that one of my friends, he's killing it. He built up his email list to 250,000 from Instagram.

[00:40:00] 	And now he's using his email list that he built up to sell his courses, as well as becoming an affiliate for other people and stuff, and he's doing unbelievable.

Jaime:	What was his avatar then on that for the 250,000 person list?

Gerard:	Who is his -

Jaime:	Yeah, like what type of demographics?

Gerard:	Younger. Yeah, it's definitely geared more toward Millennial demographic. Which you think about Millennials now, we're like hitting now this like awesome period, where you have me, which is like we're hitting this older Millennial demographic. We're now more mature. I'm looking now at younger Millennials that are out partying all the time at the club, and I'm like that used to be me. There's now, I feel the Millennial generation is hitting - it's getting ready to hit its prime. 

	You want to be marketing to Millennials because there's a huge shift in buying power that's coming into Millennials right now that are now hitting their 30s. 

[00:41:00] 	And they're taking shit more serious. They're now starting to make more money. And they will spend the money on something quality that connects with them. Like, it's known that a higher percentage of Millennials will go and spend the $35.00 for a soul cycle class because they're connected and they like that quality, even though they can go and get a gym membership for

	 $25.00 a month. They have the whole gym for the whole month. So now's a great time to market to millennials, in my opinion. I think Instagram is one of the greatest platforms, as well as Facebook is still extremely effective, extremely strong. YouTube, I think is more of a place that less about selling product; more about putting out content, providing value to your people. Same thing with podcasts. But you would know more about that than I would.

[00:42:00] 	And then Snapchat, it's interesting to me. I don't know people that are selling a lot on Snapchat. To me, it's more of like letting people into your personal life; just being authentic. Going on there, drop in some knowledge bombs. I find it hard to grow on Snapchat, and I do feel like it is wavering more towards Gen Z; way younger demographic in my opinion.

Jaime:	Yeah, I agree 1000 percent. I do it for fun. I started learning about it because I need to know what's up and coming; I love that stuff. So I did it many, many years ago when it was still like you send dirty pictures. Not that I did that, but still. But I've had it for a really, really long time and it's interesting to see the evolution of how it's come. But it's still to me really hard. I only can follow so many people; I can only digest so much content. And that was the other question I had; how much time are you spending on content?

	It makes perfect sense for you as a personal brand but what are we looking at for time-wise, to be able to go: on this platform I do it like this, and then I do this, and I do this, right?

[00:43:01]

Gerard:	Yeah, it really is a full-time job; I'm not gonna bullshit.

Jaime:	Good, thanks.

Gerard:	It's a full-time job. I think if you're just starting out, don't get overwhelmed. And it really comes down to I would tell you to really plan out your content because it can get stressful. It really is stressful to every day think about oh, my God, what am I gonna post today, what am I gonna post today? You want to focus on your business. You want to be focused on your product. you want to be focusing on how else - what your funnels are looking like, what your marketing is, how it's converting, what your cost per acquisition is.

	There's a lot of things, the foundation of your business, legal, team building, culture; there's so much you need to do when running a business. So it is stressful when you have to worry about social and building out content. So the best thing you can do is plan. Plan better. 

[00:44:00] 	Like, take your Sunday, take two hours on whatever day you're most comfortable with and just plan it out. The same way if you're going to do a podcast, you sometimes do several interviews in one day. You want to do that with social. You want to go - be bold. Go do a photo shoot. Even if it's your friend helping you, or maybe hire a photographer for a day. Go around and take some photographs. Pile up, do a Dropbox. Get like 30 photos and then plan out your posts. 

	There's apps nowadays you can use to put quotes over - if you want to do some quotes over some authentic pictures of you. I use Snapseed as one of them. There's an app called Preview. You can download this app and it literally allows you to mock your Instagram as to what your feed will look like when you're posting it. So you can see what it looks like. That will help you plan out your posts on a weekly basis.

[00:45:00] 	That way you at least know. And then look at your insights and know okay, I get more engagement - and this will come with testing in the beginning. "Do I post at 8 a.m." How does that work? 9 a.m., how does that work? 12 p.m., how does that work? 2 p.m., how does that work? And it's a balance of figuring out the amount you want to post. I used to post more but now that I'm starting to get more influence, I kind of post less.

	Experts will tell you different things. Some people say less is more. Some people say look, we live in a 24-hour society so post three or four, five times a day. I think that you shouldn't post more than three times a day. I think you should master posting once a day before you go anywhere. Master posting once a day at the very least. And look, your friends and people will be looking at you like what are you doing? Why are you posting so much? You can't mind that; you have to realize you're building a community.

[00:46:00] 	And the only way that people are going to discover you is if you're putting content out. So post once a day, quality over quantity if you can; do the best you can. iPhone is perfectly fine; iPhone pictures are great. Change your profile picture to being something more professional. Delete all your old shit. No one cares about your personal shit that you did a year ago, two years ago. Delete all that. If you want a personal account that's private, build your personal account that's private for your family and your friends.

	But if you're going to take your social currency serious and you want to become a brand that's representing your company, the same way you would treat your company you need to treat yourself. You've got to be serious. It's quality and take it that way. Figure out the hashtags. There was a period of time where hashtags worked really, really well. Then there was a period - Facebook is constantly changing algorithms all the time. There was a period that it didn't work as well. Now, hashtags are back. You do get some engagement. And remember, people are lazy so the hashtags; simple.

[00:47:00] 	Simple words that people are going to like and look up, that relate to the type of content that you're putting out. For me, entrepreneur, tech, I could go on and on - millionaire, mentor, stuff like that. But just one word. And have them saved so every time you post, put up a comment and put those tags up. If you do it consistently, you will start to see a growth. Don't get bogged down for the first month, the first two months. It's slow and steady. For me, it took me - even after having an exit, and having some money to be able to invest in it, it still took me 18 months to really feel it, to really now break through on social media into the hundreds of thousands. 

[00:48:00]	And finally now, thinking about leveraging that and build relationships, build my list, build my community. Traveling-wise, speaking engagements and things like that; it does take time. The number that I realized is you'll start to see results if you're doing it consistently throughout the whole year but I do believe that your 16 to 18 months is when you'll really be like shit, I feel good; this is really working. You're starting to get to the thousands.

Jaime:	The time is going to pass either way so you might as well be doing it consistently than two years from now. Because this stuff isn't going to be changing. And this is what I wanted to chat with you for a few minutes before we have to wrap up. Because as time is passing and technology is getting better and better and better, we're just getting more and more connected; there's going to be more craziness. There's going to be more content marketing. We think now - you've heard the old adage, "When's the best time to plant a tree; either a hundred years ago or now," and everybody's like well, it's saturated now. 

[00:49:00] 	I'm like, can you imagine what ten years is going to be? So when we're looking for you specifically, because I know you like the future in tech and looking at the founders, there's everybody with VR glasses and stuff. So when you're looking at the next five or ten years, what do you think is coming up for some of this stuff? Do you think Instagram is still going to be around? Do you really feel like we're going to be really into this whole VR craziness? What does the future of content marketing look like in the future? Predict for us; we?ll come back in ten years and see if you were right.

Gerard:	I don't think it's going to change. Look, smartphones have changed the game for us. Over the next five to ten years, the phones will continue to get smarter and better but we're going to continue to have social. I'm sure there's going to be the new Snapchat that's going to come along. There's going to be new social platforms. I do think that Instagram has built a strong enough foundation and now with Facebook behind it, that it will be around. 

[00:50:00] 	And I do believe that you do need to start now. One way or another, you need to start putting yourself out there, building an authentic community, keeping up with putting out that content. You know, I mean as far as like technology-wise, virtual reality I'm really excited about. I don't know. It's going to be interesting to see. I don't see everybody wearing VR glasses. I think it's going to be very - used particularly for education. I think for gaming it's going to be huge. I think for training purposes it's going to be huge. 

	And I do think for like - I don't know how to - like an expirituential type of way to connect with a brand. It will be in addition to their marketing. So if you want to go buy a car, you want to go buy a house, you can use it to go and feel like you're getting a tour of that house, or feel what it's like to be in that car without having to go to the dealership. 

[00:51:00]	So I do think it will be in our lives for sure, from a marketing perspective. I'm really interested in - if I were to predict one thing, and this is 100 percent we do know is that video is 80 percent of the content consumed going into next year is video. If I were to make two bold predictions, it would be that we're going to have a new video peer to peer platform, and I'm giving you a little insight that I'm working on that at Founders.

Jaime:	Good to know.

Gerard:	I don't know who will win but I do believe there will be a new social platform for video. I do believe that. And the second prediction is that I do believe that we're going to see a huge shift in the next ten years in augmented reality. There's something where - it's pretty amazing but there's a company out there called Magic Leap. Did you hear about this company? Some of the biggest - some of the wealthiest billionaires in the world, as if they're not wealthy enough, are all investing into this one company.

[00:52:00]	Again, I don't know if they'll be the company or not but they've been working on a secret project where you literally, without having to put on glasses like Google had, Google Glass, you'll be able to - instead of us doing this Skype call at our computer, we will literally be able to just like have it in the air. And be like, what's up? Like freaking if we're now - what's that show, it's not Star Trek, where the Flinstones - not the Flinstones, what's that cartoon with the flying cars?

Jaime:	The Jetsons.

Gerard:	The Jetsons.

Jaime:	Right?

Gerard:	Uber is working on flying cars right now. I think augmented reality, in ten years we're going to start to have technology just in front of us without having to have a device. So that's my prediction.

Jaime:	No. 1, I want that; No. 2, I want to get ahead of all that. You know what I mean? I am a little obsessed with it and when I usually ask people this question they go blank, so I love that you actually had something to say. I definitely appreciate it.

Gerard:	Cool.

[00:53:00]

Jaime:	And that's the thing. Like we can't necessarily predict trends so therefore there's really no point in going, "I'm going to put all my eggs in the augmented reality basket and screw what we're doing right now." That's silly, of course. But I also think that people knowing what's coming up and where millennials are actually going to be later, so we can make sure that we're there first or waiting for them is hugely important, too. 

	I love this. I have to start wrapping up. I know we're running a little over; I really appreciate it. So what's one action, out of everything we went through, what's one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million?

Gerard:	Oof, okay. One goal to get them to a million; you know what? I'm going to go back to what we talked about and I'm going to challenge all your listeners to write a letter to all of the people that you make a list of that are in - and this can be one of two ways. People that have supported you thus far that are meaningful to you. Maybe your first customer, or your first ten customers. 

[00:54:00] h 	If you have a customer base out there, like your very first ones, I want you to write authentically to them. It could be - however you want to connect with them. You could write it - if you have a lot of customers, you could do it through your newsletter. But a letter from you as the founder; I want you to take the time to do that. And then I want you to write a letter to influencers and people that you think would be great ambassadors for your company, telling your story and connecting with them to get them to see if they would be interested in representing your company. And I think you will become closer to that million dollar brand.

Jaime:	Oh, I adore this. So where do we find you on Snapchat so they can hashtag you, or tag you [inaudible] see all the letters and [inaudible] -

[Crosstalk]

Gerard:	Do the Instagram, do the Instagram.

Jaime:	Sorry Instagram, yes.

Gerard:	Instagram I'm more - I'm definitely more active, I communicate more. I'm doing more of my Insta story. So just @gerardadams, G-E-R-A-R-D, A-D-A-M-S and I look forward to connecting with all of you. Let me know. I want to know that your fans have done this. 

[00:55:00]	So definitely tag me, hit me up. Also, if you want to join my community, GerardAdams.com, I'll be writing a letter to you. So thank you so much for the time, and Jaime, thank you for having me on.

Jaime:	Yeah ,and make sure everybody check out GerardAdams.com because he was telling me all about the cool stuff he has coming out on his newsletter with videos and all sorts of craziness. So if you like this, you'll definitely love that. Make sure you check it out. We'll definitely link to everything in the comments, and now I have to go add you on Instagram because I haven't been following you before. So I'll make sure I do that.

Gerard:	Okay.

Jaime:	I hope you have a fantastic day and I really, really appreciate you coming on.

Gerard:	Sweet.

Jaime:	Thank you so much.

Gerard:	Peace.

Summary

Title

Your Social Currency With Gerard Adams

Description

Learn the single most important reason you should build your "personal brand." How to get influencers in your niche to promote your products.

Tags: content marketing, Evnetual Millionaire, Gerard Adams, jaime masters

Categories: All, Featured Millionaire Interview, Marketing, Millionaire Interviews

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

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