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My name is Gary Henderson, and I built the creator studio to show you what's possible. Today we have Dillon Kivo in the studio. Dillon is going to talk to us all about building your personal brand. And he shares how out of 8 billion people in the world. All we need to do is find like 1%, like imagine if 1% of the world. Which just fanatic about us. They loved us. If we could get 1%. It will completely change our lives. What that means is 99% of the rest of the world. Can honestly just go F off. It doesn't matter what they talk about. It doesn't matter what they do. We're only looking for that 1%. So go ahead and hit the follow button on the show and let's jump straight into the studio with Dillon

Gary Henderson: 0:48

All right, welcome into the studio. Let's get Dillon up on stage. Dillon, I just shot you an invite. You should see the ability to accept. Can you hear me?

Dillon Kivo: 1:00

Should be good. I think I'm here.

Gary Henderson: 1:03

Yeah. Nice to hear you today. How are you?

Dillon Kivo: 1:06

Oh, it's been a crazy day. I just literally just got to the airport about 15 minutes ago But i'm more more than excited to to be here talking to you right now, man It's been it's been a great day so far. How about you?

Gary Henderson: 1:19

it's, I'm, look, it's a great day for me too. It's six o'clock. I, it's a Friday evening. I've had an amazing week. Um, it's been, it's been fun. It's been fun. I'm,

Dillon Kivo: 1:30

Well, thanks for having me

Gary Henderson: 1:32

yeah, you're, you're welcome. You're welcome. So, Creators Dillon. Is one of those special people that understand that media is really, really important and Dillon's worked with people like Bradley and Andy Frisella and the Carolina Panthers and Russ Ruffino that was in the studio with us and Jim Quick to grab a lot of media attention and media exposure. So what we're going to spend some time today talking about is why this is important, how we achieve it for us. And then what our goal should be when we actually get there, how we convey our message, how we turn that back into getting customers, building our brand, growing revenue. That sound good with you Dylan? Dillon?

Dillon Kivo: 2:19

Let's get it going.

Gary Henderson: 2:20

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So Dillon just finished a speaking gig today, right? Like you were with Eric Worre, is that right?

Dillon Kivo: 2:28

Yeah, I did a podcast with him yesterday and then earlier today I was with Brad and then today I'm with you so far. Yeah. So it's been, it's been a crazy 24 hours for me actually.

Gary Henderson: 2:40

So you get the power of using other people's audiences and you get the power of, of media. Um, why is that so important Dillon?

Dillon Kivo: 2:49

So there's. There's multiple reasons. So let's just start off with the obvious of somewhat hijacking the audience of people that have similar audiences as myself. We'll just use this as an example. So all the listeners that are listening right now, and future listeners, as you know, these are a lot of creators who are interested in getting published for themselves. And that's exactly who my audience is. That's what's what I teach. It's what I coach, it's what, it's what I represent and that's what my brand is all about. And so when you're able to, and that gives same for you, right?'cause then I'm gonna publish this all over my social channels. You know, you're sharing the love. I'm sharing the love. And it's kind of that perfect blend of I'm able to provide value to your audience. And then in, uh, in replacement of that, you're also able to provide value to my audience. Once they look you up, start following you. Now they're going to be on your journey following you forever. So it's just that, that really healthy symbiotic relationship where if I can provide a substantial amount of value to your audience, well, they're also going to appreciate you interviewing me and introducing me to them to where it's like, wow, man, thanks. This, this has been, you know, this is like a great, a great, a great trade off for the both of us.

Gary Henderson: 3:59

Yeah, it makes absolute total sense. You know, I've learned that's living taught me years ago that if we can provide value and use other people as our guides and our resources, then we don't have to create all the content and we still look like the expert and that's what's happening. You're going and being a guest here today. I'm a great host. I'm bringing in a great expert guest and I don't have to create all the content myself. It works.

Dillon Kivo: 4:23

Yeah, and it also adds variety to right. Like there's only certain things that you can talk about. There's only certain things that I can talk about. So when you talk about expanding your expanding your reach and expanding the topics that you're able to cover, you can bring in those subject matter experts where they're going to be basically teaching your audience. And the best part about it is you don't have to spend 10 years learning whatever the whoever you're interviewing has already done over the last 5 to 10 years.

Gary Henderson: 4:49

Yeah, I agree with you completely. So how do you, how do you get started in this process of getting some exposure and getting to other people's audience? What's the, what's the getting started point?

Dillon Kivo: 5:02

So a lot of people think that they need to start at the top, right? So let's talk about tier one places. We have New York Times, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc. Magazine and all the ones that I can rattle off where everybody's like, Yeah, I've heard of them. Everybody thinks they need to start there. But the reality is you actually, it's just like a ladder. You have to start at the bottom. So what I recommend is one, everybody should have their own blog slash journal and they should publish in it every single day because organically Google is going to pick up those articles. They're going to share it with people who don't know who you are. You're going to become more visible online. You're going to become more discoverable on Google, and you're going to continue to build out that Google digital footprint, as we call it. Now, there's all, then you can start getting into even LinkedIn. There, they have pulse articles where it's just blogs where you can just write yourself. You can even start up your own medium blog as well. Thrive magazine has a great one. These are all free resources where you can speak your mind and educate people for absolutely free. Again, hijacking the audience of those platforms. And of course, there's always the paid methods where you can, you know, you can hire us, you can hire a PR firm. There's many great PR firms out there that actually specialize in amplifying the message of. Literally the people, every single person listening on this, on this podcast right now. So there's a lot of free and paid, paid ways to go about it. But I always, I would say for the first year or two, start with the stuff that's in your reach. That's actually free because it's going to take you a couple of years to even form your voice anyways. The reason why you reached out to me is because you thought I had something important to say and that I could share the message with your audience. You didn't reach out to me because I had zero followers and you had no idea who I am and I'm just a random person that you saw on the side of the road. You reached out to me because you think that I have a somewhat substantial brand and I probably know what I'm talking about. And that's all personal branding, but it's taken me eight years to get where I am today. And it's at, it's all because of just being very consistent within the media, within social media and PR and all of that stuff.

Gary Henderson: 7:03

Yeah, it's, you know, the overnight success that takes eight years to become that overnight success. All that hard work and all those. Those reps and all those, those moments and those learning experiences finally start to pay off after you've built up that resume.

Dillon Kivo: 7:20

Yeah, yeah, totally. And the best part about it is most likely just document what you're already doing. It doesn't mean that you have to build like a side gig or this isn't a full time job. Building your brand is essentially documenting what you're already doing. Just record it and publish it. And you don't have to put on a big, you know, dog and pony show. Document what you're doing on a day to day basis. People want to know who you are and they want to learn from a real person. They don't want to learn from, you know, a logo or a company these days. People want to connect with people.

Gary Henderson: 7:52

Yeah, I think that I saw something the other day and they were talking about some of the biggest brands and the founders behind them and the founders audiences that the personal brands were like two, three, four X multiples higher than the actual corporate brand.

Dillon Kivo: 8:08

Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of, you know, look at Gary V, look at Grant Cardone. I do believe that. Media is kind of becoming decentralized, which is really interesting, because for many years, all the way up until I'd say the last three to maybe five ish years, with the help of YouTube and all these social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and now you have threads, I do believe that people are starting to take control. And having their own media channels, look at Patrick, but David, now he's interviewing people like, you know, Tucker Carlson and Andrew Tate Brothers and stuff like that. So people are starting to say, wait a second, I think there's other avenues that we can be getting our news sources from who aren't necessarily getting paid off. Right. Because a lot of these, a lot of these new sources are typically owned by like the five biggest families. I'm not going to get too, you know, controversial here, but I'm just saying people want to learn from people. And I think people have more trust than these media, these media channels do these days.

Gary Henderson: 9:05

So that's, that's kind of what you're doing. If we break this down, right, you're using other people's audiences, you're using the media. in order to build your platform so you ultimately have your own decentralized media station.

Dillon Kivo: 9:17

That's right. I firmly believe that building your personal brand. I don't think it's a difference maker. I think it is the difference maker. I think that building your brand and who you are, it's not your colors, not your font, it's not your logo, it's who you are as an individual. That's what building your brand is. Your personal brand and my personal brand, we can use the same color scheme on our website, the same fonts and everything. Even our logo can be similar. But that doesn't mean that people are going to resonate with you the exact same they resonate with me, vice versa. So it's, it's being true to who you are. I believe that the best way to come up with your personal brand and, you know, your identity is starting with your core four beliefs. And if you never, if you never, you know, delineate from those core beliefs and you're always spreading that message and always staying true to that, I think you're going to get just millions of Raven fans that believe the exact same thing you do.

Gary Henderson: 10:12

Ooh, I like that. I like that. So why don't you dig into those four core beliefs and why those are so important?

Dillon Kivo: 10:18

So everybody, of course, has different beliefs. Um, personally, I do tend to be a little bit more than conservative side. And so if you see some of my content, it follows those trends, right? And I know that a lot of people like, well, I don't, I don't want to touch any controversial topics. I actually, the podcast yesterday, Eric Worre was, was half of our podcast was actually about that. And so. He does believe that, and you probably be able to listen to this, where you should be able to just, you know, stay kind of even keel and not really rock the boat too much and kind of drive that center line. Whereas you got guys like Brad Lee, Grant Cardone, where they're extremely vocal, right? They're on the complete, Andrew Tate, complete opposite, opposite side of the spectrum. And the thing is, is people will die for their beliefs. But they will waver from their thoughts. And so building your brand like Bradley, where you're kind of that, you know, just, just tough. Alpha guy where he's extremely, it looks, it seems to be extremely conservative. That's his brand and that's who he is. You're never going to see from toast. We'll say more of like the left related posts, cause that's not who he is. And he stands firm with that. And I think that the question you have to ask yourself is, am I willing to face the consequences from making certain posts? Uh, am I willing to waver from my core values just because I think that's what the audience wants to hear? Or do I want to strengthen the followers who already believe what I, what I believe and actually have them become more loyal?

Gary Henderson: 11:51

Yeah. I am on the side that says that you should lean into your beliefs and you should let people become more loyal. I am on the side that says you need like 20% of the world to love you. The rest of the world can hate you for all I matter. And it's actually better if they hate you than if they're in the middle, because the 20% will love you that much more.

Dillon Kivo: 12:13

yeah, I completely, yeah, because the thing is, is those 20% of individuals, they feel and think the same way that you do. And so if you're talking so, you know, so abruptly about a specific topic and, and share those beliefs with them, they're real talk about connection, they're going to connect with you like never before, because it's, oh my gosh, you know, this person believes exact thing I do, I'm going to stand by him forever.

Gary Henderson: 12:38

Yeah. And I think so many people are scared of that. They, they get the 20% that love them, but they try to get like another 60% of the people that. Like, are okay with them, and then they only want 20% haters, I'm okay to get like 80% haters, for me. Like, that's alright with me, let me go be

Dillon Kivo: 12:56

And that's, and that, and that's definitely like on the extreme. And I, I take that a step further and say, if you really do the math here. There's about, we'll say, you know, we'll just say 8 billion people in the world. If you have 1% that is obsessed with you, you have more raving fans than anybody in this entire world. You don't need to try to captivate everybody. If you can just get 1% raving fans of the world, you're going to dominate anything that you do in life.

Gary Henderson: 13:28

That's so true. And like, really think about that, that means, if your Instagram posts are getting 10, 000 views, Right? You're looking for a hundred of those people to be raving fans. The other 9, 900 people that look at that post, they're not your people. Like, that's what we're really talking about. That's how small of a number this is.

Dillon Kivo: 13:50

Absolutely. And the craziest part is most people, they start off and they have one or two raving fans. And the crazy part is they don't even take care of those one or two people. When those people comment on it, we should just start up an Instagram account and you know, make a couple of posts and you get the random follower that joins and they start commenting on your stuff or messaging you. The crazy thing is people don't mess with, they don't, they usually don't get to the tens of thousands of followers or millions of followers because they don't take care of the little amount of followers that they currently have. And they expect people to just stay and grow. If you don't, if you don't actually, you know, engage with your audience. It's not logical for them to want to stay with you. They're taking their time out of their day and their energy to respond to your your post or DM you, whatever the case is, it's your job. It's your duty to respond to them and, you know, kind of keep them engaged, keep them coming back for more.

Gary Henderson: 14:46

So, how do you handle that as you start to grow and scale a brand? Like, I mean, you've got, like, I'm small. I've got 20 some thousand followers. You've got almost a million followers. How does that, how does that scale out?

Dillon Kivo: 14:58

Well, I definitely have a large team. So I, so at any point in time, if somebody DMs me, even if it's on the weekend, my goal is to respond with no more, no more than like six to 12 hours. Right? So there's always people that are managing my page. And that's definitely one great way to stay on top of things is eventually there's not enough time in the day to stay on top of all these messages. Right? So the easiest way is to just hire out people, borrow other people's hours. Um, yeah. But on top of that is making sure that the content that you're posting. Post content for yourself. Don't start deviating your content based off of what you think people want to hear. And I think that's a big problem that people get is, Oh, people don't, you know, they try to guesstimate what that next viral post is going to be made out of. And the reality is, just be you. And if you're going to go viral, you're going to go viral for who you are, not who you're trying to be.

Gary Henderson: 15:52

Ooh. I like that, but I have a question. How do you feel about Pivots? Have you seen Bobby Althoff? Have you seen what's going on with her?

Dillon Kivo: 16:01

I have not. No.

Gary Henderson: 16:03

So, it's this... White female. She's 25 years old. She was a mommy tick tocker, and she's now made a pivot. And she on her podcast, she launched a brand new podcast. It's called like the very good podcast or something like that. And one of her first interviews was Drake, and she was in bed with Drake. of her next interviews was Lil Yachty, and she was at one of his houses. She interviewed funny Marco. She has an interview coming out next week with Mark Cuban. So she went from being, honestly, she went viral a couple times because she was breastfeeding and her breasts became lopsided. One was larger than the other. Doing what she does, she was a mom. And then, now she's this podcaster in bed with Drake, asking the most random questions in the world. How do you, like, how do you know when those pivots are needed? And I know you don't know her, but I'm sure you've seen a lot of people, like, start to cut their teeth and start to grow and do the reps and then make a pivot and just take off.

Dillon Kivo: 17:12

And I think that's the beauty of building your brand. I do believe you can pivot whenever you want. But I do believe that as early as you can in finding your voice and finding your foothold within whatever industry that you want to serve. So the longer that you can be consistent in that industry, you're going to build raving fans for a longer time. Would you rather build a brand from your 20s to 60s, or if you continue to pivot, pivot, pivot, and then you're on your last leg? When I say last leg, I just mean, as far as talking about 60 years to the last year, you're going to build a brand. If you only build it from 55 to 60, that's only five years of, of, you know, growing reach in your audience. Whereas just like in any career, the longer you have, the more reps you have in specific industry, the stronger you're going to be just like when you're working out, you don't work. If you work out, you know, if I work out today and look in the mirror, see nothing. I work out tomorrow, look in the mirror, see nothing. When I do that for probably three to six months, I'm probably going to see very little change. But you ask, you look at me in six years. It's completely different. It's the same thing with your brand. You have to build the muscle, but it's all about being consistent. Now back to your question about like, how often can you pivot? Technically you can pivot whenever you want. The problem is you have to be, you have to be okay with sacrificing the gains and the reputation and the audience that you've built up until that point. And you have to ask yourself if it is, you know, if it's worth it. So there's always gonna be consequences with what we do in life, but it is the consequence worth the change, worth the difference. Um, and sometimes people go through phases, right? Women are essentially, let's say, pregnant for around nine months. And so if they build their brand about being pregnant, well, that, that's okay. And it's expected that at some point that's going to kind of fade out, right? They're not going to talk about being pregnant 10 years down the line if they're not. So I think, I think there's, there's lifestyle that people naturally make. And I don't think that's a problem, but I do think you have to do it very strategically.

Gary Henderson: 19:05

Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. And, you know, I think there's something to be said about getting, you know, finding your voice and figuring out what you actually want to do and being willing to step out and go do it. Um,

Dillon Kivo: 19:16

The easiest thing to do, like one thing that I've always advised my clients, because a really difficult question for people is what should my brand be? And the easiest way to identify that is what are you the most passionate about? And what do you see yourself doing for the rest of your life? It's usually going to answer that question for you because if somebody is, you know, a coach or, you know, like an athletic trainer, And that's in, you know, and they're trying to think, well, what should I do? What kind of space should I get into? That might be a great spot to start. And it's okay if you pivot, pivots are okay. Uh, there's nothing wrong with it, but make sure that you just start. So often I talk to people and they're like, yeah, I just, I'm thinking, I'm thinking I'm coming up with different thoughts and colors and logos. And then he talked to him six months later. And it's like, Hey, John, how's the brand? You know, how's the journey coming along? Oh, I haven't started yet. So sometimes I think it's just starting. That's going to initiate. It's going to open up more doors and just kind of initiate the idea. It's going to lead you down the path of self exploration and you're going to find other passions down the road. When I started doing PR. It wasn't like, oh, when I started my brand, PR wasn't the thing that I started with. I started with just having an agency that helped people build their personal brands. And then I thought to myself, this is early in like 2016, 2017, and I thought to myself, well, wait a second, I'm not even taking my own medicine. I'm building up other people's social, I'm getting them to a million followers, I'm getting them all verified, verified when of course it wasn't paid for, when it was more so earned. And then at one point I was like, wait a second, if I'm not a... If I'm not an example of what I preach, there's no way that people are going to believe that I can do this for them. And that's when I started my personal brand of I blow people up. I get the more authority and credibility. And, you know, of course, PR ties in with that, but it's more of making people. It's making people look successful sometimes before they actually are. And that's okay. Because if you don't have, if you lack credibility, no matter what you say, nobody's going to believe it. No matter what you say, a lot of people are, they're not even going to give you the time of day, time of the day. They're not going to listen. So until you're a credible person and you can do that in various ways, but of course PR is my favorite Simply because it's the easiest I can get some of your magazine the next 24 hours Where it's not, you know, there's all these other ways of building your brand But I think using the media is the most immediate way to do it

Gary Henderson: 21:47

I think so. It gets you instant credibility, but you just said something. You said you kind of made this shift. You were blowing all these other people up, but you weren't doing it for you. When did you make that shift when you started actually focusing on your brand?

Dillon Kivo: 22:02

I made the shift when I noticed that I was making the same amount of money year after year I was kind of floating between like 150 grand a year. This was about six, seven years ago. And I kept asking people like what, like, and looking up to other people, like, what are these people doing different? What can I do to change? And the difference was as soon as I started building my brand and associating myself with people that were just, Say much bigger than me, more popular, more influential, more credible than myself. I started realizing that they all had something in common. Other people were talking about that. See, for me, it's easy for me. It was always easy for me to talk about myself, you know, come hire me, come hire my agency, me, me, me, me. And I don't, that only, that only works for so long. And eventually it's like. Well, Dillon, you keep telling yourself or you keep telling us that you're so great, but how come other people aren't telling us you're so great? And it wasn't that they were saying I was bad, but it was more so once they started seeing my face and let's just say it was a, you know, Times Square billboard seeing, you know, in Forbes a few times and entrepreneur and I've been at this point I've been in, you know, about 300 different. You know, from local to regional to international news publications and magazines. And now it's like, Oh, that makes sense. So other people are pointing, you know, other people are putting their stamp of approval on me and my clients. And that's what adds the credibility. It's when Forbes says, really good at what he does, what I do. It's not dealing. It's not myself saying I'm really good.

Gary Henderson: 23:35

I wish I would have figured that out at the stage of the journey that you did. I figured that out when I was running an agency that was doing two and a half million dollars a year in billing and never focused on my own brand. All I did was help my clients and I had some of the biggest clients in the world. I was working with Eric and, you know, Ray and Louis and Michael high and company and Jeff Walker and Gabby and all these great big clients. And what really did it to me was I wanted to be on Louis's podcast, Louis house, the school greatest podcast. And I asked

Dillon Kivo: 24:10

Yeah. Cool.

Gary Henderson: 24:12

he was my client. He had been my client for five years and he looked at me and he said, Gary, go do something great. And that just hit me really fucking hard, because in my mind, I was making a lot of money for him, I'd been helping him grow, like, my agency had been his agency for five years,

Dillon Kivo: 24:31

Wow.

Gary Henderson: 24:31

told me to go do something great, but what I realized was, I wasn't really doing something great, I was a great agency, and that's, and that's great in its own regards, and I'm not dismissing that. But not great in building my brand and getting the coverage that I needed, getting other people talking about me like that. And that was a big shock to me that I mean doing two and a half million at that point. And I said, Holy shit, I got to go do something different and started building at that point and building my brand there. I wish I would've learned when you did.

Dillon Kivo: 24:59

Yeah, and, and that's, that's the thing too is you know, some people learn that's at 15 years old, right? I mean, look at, look at the Paul Brothers. They've been building their brand for the last decade. And the crazy thing is, is people don't understand the magnitude of how powerful a personal brand is. The best thing about having a personal brand that people can trust, they relate to. And, you know, the biggest thing is it unlocks doors and it gives you access to people, places, and things that you would never originally have access to, unless you did have a powerful brand. There are certain stages that I can get on to, there's certain backstages I can gain access to all because it's like, Oh yeah, Dillon Kivo, like it's either they know me or it's, well, we know that he's probably going to, you know, he's going to talk to a bunch of people right here, you know, write some articles about it and just, we're going to gain free publicity or whatever the case is. I can also use it as a tool to, I mean, today met with Bradley. A guy like that's not going to meet with anybody and I'm not, and I'm not saying that I'm like, we'll say at that level if you will, but I am saying that I'm at a big enough, a big enough level and I've achieved at least just enough to get the yes or to meet with Eric for, you know, 15 hours yesterday or whatever the case is, you become a lot more respective, I believe, and I do, I do think that your, as your reputation grows, It allows you to do bigger, bigger things. It allows you to charge more money with certain services. I mean, just literally in nine months from even just three, I only created a social media channels and this was September of 2018 that year before it, like I mentioned about 150 grand the year after 1. 8 million. In 12 months, it was like it was like 9 to 12 months. So nothing changed our product Our services stayed the exact same. In fact, our prices actually decreased believe it or not The only difference is we were getting In a ridiculous amount of leaf flow that was coming in and that was all organic We were starting to run ads and all of that stuff, of course, too But the organic reach that I had was just phenomenal because I had people like dan fleishman and all these other You know a listers that were just you know consistently posting or sharing my content And then I was, I was able to gain the reach from their audience as well in return.

Gary Henderson: 27:21

Yeah, it just, it's easier. It's like, you flew to Vegas, you're there to see Eric Worre and, and Brad Lee. You could have flown to Vegas and went and done a little event at the Holiday Inn Express off the Strip. Same amount of effort and energy, but you got way more opportunity because of the work you put in early on and you built those relationships.

Dillon Kivo: 27:43

Yeah, and what's even better too is, see, I met Eric Worre through Dan Fleischman. What I didn't know until this weekend is, Bradley and Eric Worre, they've been friends for a while. And they go see like hockey, like nights games and stuff like that together. So, You know, when I, when I show up at Brad's office and he's like, Hey man, how was your trip? You know, what did we get up to? Oh, I was actually at your friend Eric's yesterday, right? Like there's kind of, it adds just that, that, that really personal, um, the personal relationship and connection where it's like, Oh wow, I'm going to instantly trust Dillon because all my friends already do. It's kind of like that warm referral that's automatically built in, you know,

Gary Henderson: 28:21

Exactly right. You're 100% correct. So when you are building your brand, should we go like super niche down and be really, really focused and try to be one of the biggest voices in a small pool? Or should we go more broad and try to be more relatable to more people?

Dillon Kivo: 28:44

I think in the very beginning, I think a great plan again. I think I'm not saying that whatever I'm saying on this podcast is 100% accurate. I mean, this all this is just my opinion, but I have worked with some, you know, so awesome men and women in whatever space that they're in. One thing that work what I've seen that actually works the best. It's for the first year, read it as a buffet, post anything and everything on your social, see what you like talking about, see what, how people respond to what you're talking about. And over time, the more you post, the better you're going to, you're going to start closing in on that feedback loop. And after a while, it's okay. Wow. People love what I'm talking about. Branding or PR or media or how I can, you know, blow up my brand. And so, and I'm also seeing that people are responding extremely well to that. And it was also something you have to marry your passion and also how your audience is responding. But I don't think that forever. You want to stay broad. I think that you want to kind of think national but perform regional. And local, right? And so over time, the beauty of just see, this is the benefit of starting your brand. You have the ability to really get niche and very specific on who your audience is. There's nothing like having great a hundred thousand followers and 10, 000 people came from your fitness journey for fitness journey. 10% came from your, you know, Health and mindset coach. And then 10% came from, you know, branding and 10, 10% came from anything else. Right. Cause then you just kind of have 10 different industries that follow you. And eventually those numbers are going to start dropping like flies because you're not posting about the topics that they originally followed you for. And that's why going back to what I said earlier, the longer you can stay consistent, the better and the longer that your, your tribe is going to be built over time because people have been listening to you, you know, talk and coach and mentor them about. Whatever industry that you're still with 15, 20 years down the road, but if you're always hopping from, you know, the next shiny objects, the next shiny object that you see, the problem is people are going to get very uninterested quick because it's wait a second. I started calling dealing because he always talks about personal branding and, you know, brand building and stuff like that. But if I start talking about, you know, crypto, I'm going to start, everyone's going to just start dropping my flies around me because that's not why they follow me initially.

Gary Henderson: 31:04

It makes total sense. Stick in your lane, build the relationship, keep building the momentum on top of that.

Dillon Kivo: 31:11

Yeah,

Gary Henderson: 31:12

Dillon, I was, I haven't read your book yet. I'm going to grab a copy of it. You wrote a great book, um, from, I mean, honestly, I read a bunch of reviews about it, but a wall street journal bestseller about the authority playbook. And you say the most expensive PR strategies fail and why the simple ones win. So why is that?

Dillon Kivo: 31:32

so repeat the cut out for a second. Just repeat the last piece of that question.

Gary Henderson: 31:35

Yeah, most definitely. Why you say that the most expensive PR strategies usually fail on the simple PR strategies win big time. Why do the simple strategies win? And what are those?

Dillon Kivo: 31:45

So when I'm referring to simple strategies, you know, a lot of people think that you need to go spend 10, 20, 000 a month on our PR firm out of, you know, Chicago, New York, L. A. But the reality is most people aren't ready for that. And so P. R. The word P. R. Is more than just getting in, you know, these international publications. P. R. Is also your social media still considered P. R. Media. And so starting with the stuff that's free, It's generally going to yield you the best results because if you get big enough using the free methods, more than likely these big national international publications, they're actually going to reach out to you. And you can use here. Here's a nice little, you know, treat for the audience is using different websites like helpful reporter out. com. You're actually going to gain access. It's all free. You're going to get access to about 500, 000 reporters for absolutely free who are actually looking and searching for the topics that you're already talking about, the topics that you know about, and they're just looking for subject matter experts, but you're not even paying a PR firm for that. You can actually set it up to where three times a day they're going to be sending you emails about about reporters looking for information and content in your specific niche that you can pitch them ideas and that, you know, you can send them a little pitch about yourself and send them a pitch about the different topics that you'd be able to talk to talk to them about and that they can write about you for free. Whereas if you pay us, you know, a PR firm, let's just say it's a Forbes article or something. You might be paying 10, 15, 000 for that Forbes article. Yeah. But if you build up your social media and start building up organic contact, like reaching out to different journalists who are talking about your industry on Twitter or LinkedIn, you can reach out to these people for free. It doesn't mean you're going to get 100%, you know, 100% success rate as far as, you know, landing a placement, but what it does mean is you're going to be on the radar. And so next time they're looking for something that's, you know, down your alley, you're probably going to be the first person that they reach out to. It takes time. It's not like it's easy. If you want to just do the, you know, fast track to getting guaranteed placements, of course, hire a PR firm. I'm not saying don't, but I do think that in the very beginning, when you're finding your voice, do the things that are free. Because more than likely, let's just say you start working with a PR firm today. Well, in a year or two down the road, you might not even be in the same industry. That's actually kind of a problem because then you're becoming really known about something that you're not even going to be doing for the next 5 to 10 years. And again, you're building up the wrong audience if you're doing that.

Gary Henderson: 34:14

Yeah, it makes total sense. Using services like Heyro, help a reporter out, um, using free services to build up your reputation, build up your reps, actually get out there and build relationships with journalists. And then eventually as you grow, because I would imagine that a lot of people that if they're not ready for the tier one publications and they go hire the firm and they pay the money because they have the budget, it just might not work for them. And then they may get a bad taste in their mouth about PR. But if they go out and they start, Doing the legwork first and building some relationships, they'll get ready and they'll learn what stories actually drive energy for them. What stories give them their, their desired return. Is that

Dillon Kivo: 34:54

Yeah, that's 100% accurate.

Gary Henderson: 34:58

Yeah. Because like there's an art in telling a story that's going to get you some exposure compared to selling, telling a story that's going to get you customers. Right.

Dillon Kivo: 35:07

Oh, I could have said it better myself. Absolutely. And you know, the thing is about PR. A lot of people think it's just vanity or it's just to say, you know, we call it credibility bar where you go to someone's website and they see, you know, as seen in as featured in their board, you know, fancy logos. That's great. Does it add credibility? I'm sure a little bit. However, people need to start looking at PR Actually is lead generation. And here's how let's use Forbes. For example, I don't know the stats exactly because they change all the time. But let's just say Forbes gets, um, a million views every single day. Probably even more than that. Well, if you are a business coach or a financial coach, Forbes is already doing the hard work of getting your audience's attention organically and their audience automatically trust Forbes. No one. Forbes is saying, you know, Hey. To say John Smith is the best financial coach or whatever the case is, it's a great way to, first off, that's, it's, it's unlimited. You're going to get unlimited leads from that over time. I'm not saying you're gonna get, you know, a hundred a day, but what I am saying is it's going to pay in perpetuity because unlike Facebook ads, where you put a dollar in and you hope to get two or three back, as soon as you turn off that faucet and you stop paying Facebook, you're no longer going to get leads. Whereas I still have articles that were published back in 2017. What is that? Like five, six years ago where I'm still getting messages from people saying, Hey, I read the article that Forbes wrote about you. How can we set up a call and do business together? And it's probably going to be like that for the next, you know, it could be 10, 15, 20 years. And that's the difference of of PR and using Facebook ads or Instagram ads where it's direct response where you got to continue just, you know, paying that lead lead engine in order to get a return PR. It's it'll pay forever. Those articles will be live literally for probably the rest of our lives.

Gary Henderson: 37:09

You know, that's a really valid point because we could go out and buy all the leads we need today and we could, you know, get, get some value today. But if we. Spend some of our time and energy and effort. Like we need leads today because PR doesn't always give us an immediate return. We don't always get the exposure. We don't always, it doesn't always get ran. Um, sometimes, you know, it, it takes six months or it gets pushed. So we need a mix of both, but I agree if we're not spending time putting that organic traffic out or putting those articles out, letting other people talk about us, I think we're just going to be stuck in a wheel of always having to pay for our leads. And those aren't getting any cheaper.

Dillon Kivo: 37:46

you're, you're, you're, you're so, you're so accurate. And another, another thing that we haven't even talked about yet is the SEO advantages that PR comes with as well. Right? So when you're getting featured on these, I don't want to get too, too nerdy or technical on you guys, but when we're talking about SEO, there's something called domain authority. Whereas the higher domain authority, it's listed generally from zero to 100, a website like. Forbes, Entrepreneur, Yahoo Magazine. That's going to be, you know, between like 80s and 90s, which is about the highest you can get. The benefit of getting a backlink, which is them pointing a direct link back to say your website. And I always recommend using your website as a backlinking PR that you get. If you point that link back to your Instagram or Facebook or YouTube channel, it's not that it's a problem, but you're going to get zero ss e o value out of doing that. And so what you wanna do is point every link back to your website.'cause it's actually over time, every time you get a high domain authority publication like Yahoo point back to com. Well then my domain dealing.com just gets a little bit stronger every single time they do that. And eventually it's say like, Right now, I've got about, you know, 250 or 300 publications that are now putting back to Dillon Kivo dot com. Well, then anything I post on my personal blog is also getting amplified for free. So now that I have a blog on my Dillon Kivo dot com. Well, a lot of times those are starting to rank higher on Google because Google is saying, Oh, wow. Forbes, Yahoo, you know, say Wall Street Journal, USA Today is pointing back to Dillon Kibo. Clearly they trust them. Well, now we do too. So Google actually uses other websites to validate your website. So that's the stronger, you know, warm referrals, so to speak, to Google that you can get, the stronger your website's going to get. In other words, the more traffic you're going to get for free.

Gary Henderson: 39:35

Yeah, look, I, I, I geek out right there with you. I have, our domain name has a domain authority of 45. That's our personal blog that we write on. So I agree with you. You should be we don't do it every day But you should be blogging and journaling We wrote some really cool content early on that was talking about how much time the average person spends on social media and we became the authority for that quote and we quoted by Into it and HubSpot and all these major radio shows and everyone, Forbes and Inc. Everyone cited us as the authority on how long people spend on social media. And

Dillon Kivo: 40:17

See, there you go, dude.

Gary Henderson: 40:18

backlinks, so many backlinks. It was insane.

Dillon Kivo: 40:23

And I'm sure you see the difference. The more backrooms you have, you're going to see a direct response to your audience increasing over time. Because that means that the, let's not forget their audience. Let's just say, you know, 10, 000 people see that article on Yahoo. And if Yahoo has a backlink to your website. Well, let's just say you have a 2% conversion on that and you've got, you know, 200 people that are actually clicking to your website. Do you know how much more traffic and more, how many more leads and how much more revenue you're going to get from just that one article? And that's not to mention all of the other subsidiary publications that feed off of each other. They have this, this thing called an RSS feed for some people. They'll link up to Forbes or Yahoo and say, okay, anything this publication posts. Let's repurpose it for our own website. So now you kind of have that, that trickling effect that it kind of starts at the top, we'll say Forbes, and then it gets onto 10 other publications. And then each one of those get onto 10 more publications. And I've seen it. I've seen it. It happens. All it happens every day for our clients is we get them published in one publication. You check the next week. There's 30 others that are basically highlighting the article that we published for them. And again, that's all for free. And at the end of the day, it's, it's, it's sad, but it's true. Publications don't care about me. They don't care about you or anybody else on this call. And that's not a problem. We're okay with that. Publications care about their audience. If you provide so much value where they can't deny but say, yes, I want to publish it, that's how you, it's going to be a winning symbiotic relationship. You have to make them want to publish the piece more than you want to get published on their publication.

Gary Henderson: 42:03

Yeah, that's right. You, you have to have a compelling story. You have to have something that they want to talk about. You have to have something that their readers will enjoy. They're, they're fulfilling their... Like, they have to create content. If people bounce off their site, they're going to lose their credibility.

Dillon Kivo: 42:19

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Gary Henderson: 42:21

that. They, you know, they want to tell their boring story or they don't want to lean into something that's interesting. They try to write content that no one wants to read and they wonder why they never get published anywhere.

Dillon Kivo: 42:33

Because people are publishing for themselves, not for actually providing values to others.

Gary Henderson: 42:39

Well, Dillon, this has been a fascinating conversation. Where can our audience connect with you best? What are your best channels?

Dillon Kivo: 42:45

You know, I'd say for sure I'm the most active on Instagram. So it's just at Dillon Kivo. Um, but of course. Just like I've been kind of preaching, my website also has a lot of, a lot of great content. And that's just DillonKivo. com. D I L L O N K I V I K T O. com. But I'd say if we're, if we're talking social, for sure,

Gary Henderson: 43:06

Well, I appreciate you so much. Um, we'll get this podcast published eventually, um, in the next couple of weeks and thanks for taking some time today. I know you're busy. I'm glad you did this from an airport. Our goal here is to show creators what's possible and I think what you're doing is possible. You're traveling, you're going to. Big guests on huge podcasts. You're meeting with insane entrepreneurs. You're living the dream life of a creator, getting all this exposure. And I'm glad we got to experience that a little bit live while you're on the road. So thanks so much, Dillon.

Dillon Kivo: 43:36

Thank you so much for having me guys. I, and I really do appreciate every, every single person listens to this podcast too. There's so many other things that you could do with the last 45 minutes that we just talked about, but the fact that you're, you're willing to, you know, spend your time and your energy learning and growing, that's what's going to be the difference maker in every single one of your guys lives on this call as well.

43:53

I think Dylan summed it up perfectly. You spent the last 45 or so minutes of your life. Showing us that you want to learn and grow. And since I know you finished the podcast and I know you listen to it because you're hearing me right now. I need you to take one more step in your journey today. One more step. I need you to open up your phone. And I need you to go to gary.club/discord. Open up your computer. And go to Gary dot club's slash discord. And when you do. You're going to come into our community and I want you to come into the introduction channel and I want you to say hi. I want you to introduce yourself because I know you're here to learn and I know you're here to grow. And I can't wait to meet you. I'll see you soon