Below is the transcription of this episode:
Matt: Good morning, everybody. Happy Wednesday. It is Wednesday, April 13. We're live, it's 10am Eastern as usual. If you're watching via replay, we go live every single Monday through Friday at 10am. Eastern, and you can find us on our Facebook fan page legendary marketer official. My name is Matt. I'm the CMO here at Legendary. I host occasionally and we have another awesome guest today. If you weren't on the show yesterday. We had a fun one yesterday. You should go back and watch yesterday's show. But we typically will bring on a guest and we'll interview them and share a little bit about their story, their journey. What's new in their business, those kinds of things. We're gonna bring out a guy Christian if we can all give me a little hand clap emoji in the chat. That'd be awesome. And we'll bring in our guy Christian what's up?
Christian: Hey, morning. Nice to meet you. Thanks for inviting me here.
Matt: Of course, of course. Where are you calling in from?
Christian: Yeah, I'm from Germany.
Matt: Okay, sweet, right. All over there in the afternoon. Yeah. 4pm
Christian: Okay, cool.
Matt: Not too bad of a time. Time overlaps. Yeah, cool. Well, welcome to the show. And for everybody who hasn't met you yet or doesn't know of you. Tell us a little bit about you and your story, who you are and how you found legendary?
Christian: Yeah, so my name is Christian. I moved here in Germany a couple of years ago. I'm originally from Romania. And you know, last year, I didn't do anything productive. You know, I just wasted time watching rails and some things like that. I always tried to start ways to make money online, but I always get told that it's a scam. Right. And I think everybody thinks that at the first time, and I was watching reels and a guy popped up, always talked about like, he makes this kind of money, that kind of money, you know, and I was like, Okay, that sounds a bit interesting. And I reached up, reached out to him, you know, and he told me about affiliate marketing. I never heard about this before. I didn't even know what great marketing was. And yeah, I did some research and I gave it a try. At first I saw that this course cost $7 Right. I thought that okay, maybe if this didn't work out for me. What I lose you know, I will waste a little bit of time but I am doing that anyways, right? afterward I was watching only rails. Nothing special. So that is how I found it.
Matt: Very cool. So have you taken any sort of training like this before? Or you know, like what? What was it like diving into the training and getting started and stuff?
Christian: Yeah, so this is my very first try online. So I didn't need anything like this before. It was everything. New to me. And yeah, it was pretty awesome. But I tell you the truth at the beginning when I started it i My first thought was, what the hell am I doing? You know? Yeah, so it was a bit overwhelming, but, but yeah, it was good.
Matt: You made it through cool. Yeah. So what? What was what stood out to you? Well, I'm actually curious as you're going through the training and everything. What was that process? When you say it was a bit overwhelming, what exactly do you mean? Was it like a lot of information or was it also new to you what did you mean by that?
Christian: Yeah, I guess a lot of information, right. I didn't even know what the sales funnel was. But the beauty of that was that I always had questions like, what is that? What is that and I always got my answer. At the next challenge. So it was pretty hot.
Matt: Yeah, cool. That's awesome. So you, you go through the challenge. You get started, you're starting to figure things out. Did you get into content creation or what happened next and what was your story saying starting the challenge?
Christian: Yeah, so basically, I enrolled in training last year in August, and before Christmas, I moved to a new apartment. I knew that I wouldn't have time to create content and things like that. And at first I wanted to, I didn't want it to show up. On camera right? I want to hold on to some random stuff, you know, pictures, motivational quotes about affiliate marketing. I still don't wanna get some pictures, you know, and edit some quotes and Christmas time I was thinking about it that after occasion, I would go in deep into affiliate marketing and I was thinking, You know what, I want to do this for me, you know, for my future, why should I roll my face? Now, that was a pretty big step for me. But I didn't need any content creation or something like that. So yeah, that is another new thing. Also,
Matt: Super cool, man. Super cool. And you're now I mean, pretty much omni present on multiple different platforms. You're doing a really good job of content creation. You built a little audio not a little 1000s of people following you. What's been your experience of being on multiple different platforms like Pinterest and Instagram now that you kind of really took the curtain down and just, you know, basically said screw it. Let's just create some content. Let's go for it. What's that been like? Were you shy? Was it overwhelming, you know, how did that go?
Christian: Yeah, at the beginning, I was really shy so Exactly. Last week. I watched some of my very first videos, you know, at that time, I thought that okay, this is good stuff, you know, but when I rewatch them, it's totally bad, you know? So yeah, it is good to be on multiple platforms because yeah, I picked up I didn't have only positive experiences, you know, I got restricted multiple times. And it's good if you aren't online on multiple platforms, but then because at that time, you can focus on another platform, right? So it's pretty good.
Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Cool. That makes sense. That makes sense. And I feel like with you you've got a good start so you've been doing kind of an opera strategy, meaning like, starting to repurpose some of your content. How long have you been doing?
Christian: Yeah, I've posted my very first video on January 21. On Instagram, and I think like, three weeks after that, I started that Pinterest. I am still trying to figure out the algorithm and everything like that, but yeah, takes time.
Matt: Cool, I love it. And you're getting lots of views and you're building followers and that's super cool. And what I'm, I'm I'm a little bit curious. Are you on Facebook reels? Not really. Are you on Facebook at all?
Christian: Yeah, so I only have a personal account. Yes.
Matt: Okay, cool. Yeah, I would encourage you to try it out. Give it a good go with your Omnipress because you're already on Instagram rules. So if you've got a Facebook fan page, it doesn't require a lot more work to take the Tick Tock video and you know what I mean, just repurpose it the same way you do on Instagram. But the reason that I was saying or the reason I bring that up is lately we've been seeing a lot of people get some really big growth on Facebook reels. Like really big, bigger than Instagram. So just a thought, just throw that out there to you. Thank you. Yeah, of course and you're already omnipresent. I mean, you're already reposting to all these platforms and are sort of in a rhythm already. You've got a system so it's like it's not actually that hard to just add another one. And most of these, most of these social platforms are just learning from each other. They're just, you know, Instagram will make one tweak and then Facebook will make a tweak and then tick tock will make a tweak and then Pinterest makes it tweek. And it's sort of become this thing where they're all kind of copying each other. But, you know, they make money through paid ads. So the more time people spend on their platform, the more money they make, the more profit they bring. In. So, you know, Facebook over the last two years has watched Tik Tok basically, you know, not destroy their ad revenue. But think about Facebook's perspective where iOS 14 came out and made it a lot harder for people to advertise and then tick tock came in and stole all the attention and now people are just scrolling tick tock the way they used to scroll Facebook. got exposed, you know, I mean, it got exposed for being a lackluster algorithm. subpar social platforms and so what ended up happening is Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and all of these platforms copied Tik Tok to the best of their ability. And, you know, there's two takeaways that I have for this and I'm going on a little bit of a rant but hang with me one is tick tock was created for short form video content. And the reason that these other platforms have struggled so much to get the traction that they have is because they weren't built for that. Right tick tock is absolutely built for it. That's the whole point. Is short form video content. And so it's what people go there for. But Facebook and Instagram that's not what they were really built for. Instagram was a photo sharing app Facebook's more of a storytelling app, or like a photo sharing kind of thing like a memory sharing thing. And so when so on, on on Facebook, now that they're trying to come out with the short form video, it's taking a little bit of time to adopt and figure out how they can put that into the feed and how they can push more of those videos forward and make it more of a native thing. I don't know if they're ever going to get to the level of Tik Tok and in terms of their organic reach but I will say this I'm I'm currently right now watching multiple different marketers who are taking big tick tock audiences hundreds of 1000s and growing by the 1000s on Facebook, and using those exact same tick tock videos just literally reposting them. And here's what I think about that. I think that Facebook is probably a better platform overall to grow audiences than tick tock tick tock. You can grow fast. But if all things are equal if you're growing an audience at the same rate, the benefit of Facebook is that number one you can you can post images, you can tell stories, you can use the written word, which is really important because in the in your ability to connect with people the ability to write something so say a 500 word post, you simply can't do that on Tik Tok, it's impossible. The other thing is not so much if I believe one is better than the other. The other thing is that the whole point of Omni presence is that your followers follow you on multiple different platforms. They open Facebook and dammit there's Christian again they open Instagram dammit, there's Christian again. They opened Tik Tok. Here he is again you know, and when that starts to happen, what happens? They build your trust, it becomes a trustworthy sort of familiar face. And that's how you build a really powerful audience. Does that make sense?
Christian: Yeah, you're all right here. Yeah, and I'm Victor who can really grow fast but people are commenting you know that they are interested and things like that. And in the next second they leave you know, but I think that on Facebook you already bring your targeted audience like they are really one step ahead of those people like they are really more interested in this whole thing.
Matt: Yeah, I think that's a good point. That makes sense. So on a daily basis, tell us a little bit about your content creation, how much content are you pushing out? Is that a couple times a day? Is it once a day? What's that? What does deep batch content look like?
Christian: Not really. I still work on that. So because I'm still working a full time job, it's not so easy to find everyday time for that but I am trying to do it. I try to post that at least three times a day, but the minimum of two. So two times a day that is what I want to make every day. Sometimes there are four but
Matt: yeah, yeah, makes sense. It makes sense. And I've been there, man. I mean, what's your full time job? You work with metal?
Christian: In SF.
Matt: Yeah. I when I was 20. So exactly when I was your age 26 Good that day when I was a youngster. I I worked in a coffee Roastery and I would pick up these big I wasn't only like 130 pounds myself, but I would pick up these big 130 pound sacks of coffee and I worked that and then sort of like you you have you know, you have another job that you do on the side too. I had, I was driving for Uber and Lyft and and I was taking all my money that I earned on Uber and Lyft and I was spending it on Facebook and Google and basically paying for ads trying to figure out and how in the hell am I going to get rich online? Basically, like how am I going to make some money on this internet thing? I mean, I know money is flowing out there sort of viewed like a pie like I was like, man, there's this huge pie and a bunch of people that I know who are not more talented than me or not more gifted than me are like claiming their little piece of this pie. How do I just get my little slight you know, like how do I cut out my little piece and certainly I think I would earn maybe like four to $800 a month or something from Uber and Lyft and just driving people around. I mean it sucked but yeah, I mean,
Christian: Well, pod work pays off with time.
Matt: Yeah, and you're right, and I think it's all perspective, too. I mean, you've got like two jobs basically. And I think sometimes people are like, Oh my God, what a grind. But isn't it funny how like you know, you earning your first $1,000 online changes perspective a lot, right? Because now it's like you see that you're working towards something and you see what that's building towards and helping you. You know, I just feel like everything is sort of the glasses that you're looking through. You can have glasses that are very opportunistic and then you can have glasses that are very pessimistic, and you could drop another human being right into the shoes that you're currently in. And they might have a totally different approach and a totally different outlook on their business. Their life, everything. It's just
Christian: Yeah, you know, it's not a bad thing to work two jobs at a time. So if you want to achieve something, we just have to work for it. You know, we have to work hard.
Matt: Yeah. Well, and you have to work smart too, because what I learned was, as I was as I was going through all that was like, there was just an absurd amount of work that I was doing laboris work and I ended up just kind of learning like, hey, you know, you could put in all of that work sitting at a little desk into something that's going to be an asset for you. And I learned well, and what I found out years later, about five or six years later, after I quit at that company, is they ended up selling to one of the biggest food manufacturers in the world. And, and what I realized when I thought back on that was one I should have negotiated some sort of ownership in the company. But number two was what I learned was that all of that labor, that hard work that we're talking about never built me an asset. I never built an asset for myself, right? So it was like it was work and work and work and work and, you know, wake up at 5am or, you know, I had days where I would wake up at 4am and go through a Facebook or Google training because I was so in love with it. I was so obsessed with figuring out how to master something like Google ads, right? And so I would wake up at 4am. I would watch a little training for a couple hours before going to work at six. get done around three or four. Come home basically pass out on the floor. Just like just completely exhausted. And kind of do it for a couple more hours. Right. I'm sure you understand that. And I just learned at the end of it all that I'd never built a hard asset for myself. And now looking back on it, I was like, okay, if I'm ever going to do that again, which I actually mean, I work for legendary, right? So, for me, I'm an intrapreneur. I enjoy functioning and working inside of a company structure because it's where my talents are and it's where my skills are best used. So for me I enjoy working with a team. I very much am introverted, but in a remote team where I have people who are smart and talented and work hard and produce great stuff like that, for me is life giving that's really important for me. And so, but anyway, I just ended up learning that building a really valuable asset for myself is probably really important in this whole thing and I could work smart and I did work smart on building a great blog and worked hard on building real skills in myself. That would pay me regardless of if I quit a job or got fired or got laid off or whatever, you know what I mean. So you have all of your hard work that you're doing. But you've also got smart work that you're building, online business, and you've got these different social channels that over time as those build there's, there's I'm not saying you should sell them but there's real hard assets there. Because what'll happen is what happens with any real hard asset. Let's think about companies who are traded on the stock market. People want to invest in them. People want to do business with them, right? And so you're at like almost 4000 followers, but it doesn't take that long after where you're at for brands or other people to start reaching out and being like, hey, you've got a lot of followers, your content is really cool. Can we possibly pay you 5000 bucks to advertise our whatever, right? Like a couple of videos about you know, our funnel builder, drop a couple of videos about whatever, right so that becomes a situation where, yes, it might be hard work at first, but it's smart work because you're doing something that can pay you big dividends over time for not doing that much more labor. You're certainly not breaking the hell out of your back end meal or whatever the hell you're doing. I don't know if you did a good job. But for me, I was like, Yeah, I'm pretty much done with the whole backbreaking coffee bag thing like this. You know? Yeah.
Christian: So it's particularly that in a very short period of time you what you can achieve, you know, so I didn't really talk about that I made my 1000 followers on Tiktok in three weeks, you know, after starting it, I thought at first that it will take two months or something like that. So in a very short period of time, you can achieve a lot. Yes, it is awesome.
Matt: Yeah. And also, I mean, think about this, so this is when I was kind of blown. Away with your story it is like you got our challenge and purchased our Blueprints like last September. Is that right? Yes, yes. So September, like eight months ago, nine months ago or so? That is crazy. Right? Like eight, eight or nine months ago. In our world we like instant gratification. Everybody on this call is gonna be like, oh my god that that's so long, right? That's what takes you so long to see success. But the truth is, it is like in most cases, you go to whatever, 12 or 13 years of schooling and then you go to university for maybe another two years at least. And then maybe another, maybe a full bachelor's degree, so maybe four years worth of schooling, and maybe you go get a master's degree too and you end up with a ridiculous amount of money in debt. And all of that time. And so when I look at somebody who's eight months in, has actually looked at and studied some training and then implemented it. Like that's really powerful to me, you know, and it's a really short amount of time and like you said to I thought your point was really well taken. 1000 followers in just a couple of weeks is pretty quick. I mean, that's really quick, given how social media has been the last 10 years. It's the fastest I've ever seen. Not not your story in particular, but I mean, like the overall trend on Tik Tok in the last couple years, the ability to get that many followers is just crazy.
Christian: Yeah, and I would like to point out here I think that yeah, of course legendary marketer and this training is pretty awesome. Whoever says something like that is just simply jealous, but the community that you have in Guysville is really powerful because you know, when I started out with creation, I had lots of questions, right? And they reach out for the marketers, you know, and this is the duty of the war thing. Every one of them has tips and hacks on how to do this, how to do that. And I think this is the worst thing that you guys are teaching in the lessons. So this mindset is totally awesome. And also other marketers reach out to me that, hey, your content is great, but if you try something like this, maybe it will be better. So this is something powerful.
Matt: Yeah, that's super cool. That's yeah, that's that's something that's happened organically over time. But I will say this. When it comes to growing communities, I've thought a lot about that, right? Because, you know, there's a big, big value in being integrated into our community. At legendary. And I always thought and wondered, you know, what's the cause of that? Like, how does that just happen? What, what elements and pieces have to be there? And you know, when it comes to growing a community, my takeaway was basically, that you have to be the person in order to attract people like that, right? So I look at somebody like Dave, who leads our companies, the CEO, everybody in our company looks up to him, respects him, and he has a very genuine like behind the scenes wants to help people and he wants to see the people in legend succeed. And also the other. The other piece of that is he's done a lot of internal work himself, to not be reactive, and to not shame people and to not so sometimes you'll go into other Facebook groups in this niche or in this industry, and I've, I've been in this sort of online marketing education niche for 10 years or so. And we've even got reports of this from other people, but there'll be sort of this toxic environment where the leader of the group or the leader of that course or whatever is kind of like he feels he or she feels a little insecure or whatever. And so when he's giving feedback, it comes across just kind of like, you're kind of an asshole, you know, and, and, and that's just all sort of led from the top down. The leader of the crew, if he's like that, the community's probably going to be like that, too. It's all just sort of a reflection. And so, over time since I started about four, three and a half, four years ago, with legendary, I've seen that grow and adapt to you know, people who don't really resonate with that they slowly kind of disappear, and people who do resonate with our community. Stick around and like you said, really enjoy that communal aspect. And I think it's just a real testament. I mean, props to Dave for that, but also to people in our community. I have to say, you know, thanks to all of you who volunteer your time, who volunteer your energy, and it's really created and fostered a place that's good for people. And I think that that's really powerful. I'm glad you brought that
Christian: up. Yeah, yes, indeed. That is exactly the topic that they talked about yesterday. That is,
Matt: right, right, right. You saw that
Christian: you know, I would I would make a new headline for that haters gonna hate
Matt: It was so funny. I was. No, I mean, I mean, yeah. I just yeah, it's super powerful. I think everybody in our community was or has been really helped by others in our community, especially successful people and and, yeah, I really feel like, you know, here's a good example. Let me say this is my last thing about our community. Here's a good example. You're a great example. You got about 4000 followers on Tiktok, which is a solid amount but you're not in the 250,000 follower range, right. And sometimes people think that in order to give back to the community or teach people or show people something, you have to have a huge following. You got to have made a ton of money online. You got to have all this stuff. And, and you know what I think the beautiful part about legendaries community is, is that people who have smaller followings, but have learned and have grown and have implemented they make a shift in our community from going from learner to doer and teacher quick and and we have such a value at legendary of making sure that people don't just take from our community but that they're they they quickly turn around and begin to give back to our community. There's two reasons for that. It really stretches people, and it fosters a healthy environment, but also the best way to finalize a learning experience to really cement something you learned. Psychologists have found the best way to do that is to begin teaching it to somebody else the moment somebody takes information they've learned and they teach it to somebody else. It cements it and it really sets in that they understand it in a new way. So it's twofold. We're trying to help people stretch and grow but we're also trying to make sure that people actually learn these marketing skills for the long term as well, if that makes sense.
Christian: So it does take time. I still have to learn a lot, you know. With retirement, everything can be good.
Matt: Yeah, yeah. And I just You're so you're so at the beginning you know Gary Vee always talks about how you know if you're under 30 You're basically infant you're just getting started you know sometimes when you're ambitious though that's hard to hear. You're like hey, you know fuck off, dude. Like, you know, I'm trying to go here like quit telling me how good I have it or how, you know, not how easy I have it, but just how early on my journey I am , like I don't want to hear that from you. Or I want to hear what I am supposed to be doing? You know, but I do think you're super early on in your journey, you know, and that's cool. And there's a lot of people in our community who wish they were in that spot, you know, and who wish they had the internet and social media, like they like you have today and the affiliate, the ability to reach millions of people. In a with a thing you can hold in your phone, and a video you can create in 60 seconds. And you could be in front. I mean, think about the guy. Do you remember the guy who made the Ocean Spray video that went super viral where he was the Fleetwood Mac song and I can't remember his username. It was like the most viral video two years ago. It was here I'll show you on my phone real quick. Yeah, his name's Nathan Apodaca. Just look up Fleetwood Mac's dog face on TikTok. You'll find it right away. And it's just dude he's on a skateboard in the middle of quarantine. It's like May 2020. He's listening to Fleetwood Mac, and he's got a huge bottle of cranberry juice and he's just chugging cranberries. And yeah, dogface. Yeah, he went super viral. Ocean Spray invited him to their headquarters and it's like, the dude just popped open his frickin phone and was just like, Alright, here we go. Yeah, you got a truck. Like somebody got him a truck from that video Like, like, what I'm trying to say 26 You know, and don't view this as a short term game but view this as a long term skill building experience where you can earn while you learn which is exactly what you're doing. You are earning while you're learning. And, and yeah. Future is for you. What Um, tell me tell me actually, I'll leave it at this. Give the people here one, one nugget or one little thing that you've been learning in the last 30 days that's changed things for you or that you've had a big shift and want to encourage them with? Yeah,
Christian: So don't overthink it. Because when I got started, I posted lots of trendy videos, you know, that help you to grow fast. But I didn't implement any storytelling, you know, and like, three or four weeks ago, I started doing that and I think that I have found my targeted audience right. So implement more storytelling, talk about yourself like I have here that my English is not so good, right? But that is the way my content will be unique. So just go for it. I love it.
Matt: I love it. Don't overthink it. Get go and I liked that part. I liked the note that you dropped there about not doing any storytelling. That's huge because you're trying to create videos to get some form of virality right and go viral. But what you were missing or maybe what you were missing is a balance there of storytelling and the bigger broader picture of the brand as a whole. Right. So cool. I love that. Christian that man. Thank you for coming on. They will put up with you and follow you and check you out. But yeah, or do you prefer people to find you on Instagram on tick tock on where you prefer?
Christian: It doesn't really matter. Just drop a follow up. Thank you.
Matt: Cool. We'll put them all we'll put them all up All right. Thanks, man. How thank you so much for coming on. Stay in touch. Let us know if you ever need anything.
Christian: Yeah, thank you for inviting me. Have a good one. See ya.
Matt: All right, guys. Give him a follow. For those of you who are listening. You can follow him on Tik Tok @christianfogasofficial. You can find him on Instagram. You'll find him on Pinterest and find them anywhere. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of wakeup legendary be legendary. And when you go follow him when you go follow Christian make sure that you let him know. So I'm on the show. You wanted to give him a shout out and like his videos, you can follow him. Just help boost his channel a little bit. Give him a little stuff. Take it easy, everybody. We'll be back here tomorrow.