Kimberly Spencer (00:00:00) - Hello, my fellow sovereigns and welcome back to another episode of the Crown Yourself podcast. I am so honored to be here with you today because we are answering one of your questions that I have received over many years. This question has come to me and it was one that I struggled with too. When I was first starting out in a building in the Empire Building business. It was one of like, how do you market yourself when you are multi-passionate? You know, you sing, you dance, you write books, you can do poetry, you can stand on your head. You're a mom, you are a business owner. How do you market that special secret sauce that is you? How do you showcase that as a brand, as a personal brand? I am so excited to bring to you Boyd Peterson, who is the founder of BP Media. He builds stronger, more profitable businesses. He is a business profit coach, an author, a public speaker, and a trainer. And here's the thing as to why I felt it was incredibly important to bring Boyd on because Boyd is also a successful children's book author and a sci-fi author.
Kimberly Spencer (00:01:11) - And in 2015, he finished his first business book, Beyond Hot Air Marketing, about setting up your own marketing plan and implementing it. So he's been in the paper business, he's been in marketing, he's been in computer engineering, he's been in children's fiction. And yet even though he has been multi-passionate and had many different pursuits and many different action items and things on his list from many different areas, he still is able to market himself as Boyd Peterson. And so I am so honored and excited to bring to you this interview. So hopefully if you've been struggling with something like, how do I market myself with all of these different skill sets, all of these different talents that I have so that people see who you are fully and completely in what it is that you do? Well, that's the question we're going to answer today in our episode with Boyd Peterson. Welcome to the Crown Yourself podcast, where together we build your empire and transform your subconscious stories about what's possible for your business, body, and life.
Kimberly Spencer (00:02:24) - I'm your host, Kimberly Spencer, founder of Crown Yourself, and I'm a master mindset coach, best-selling author, and TEDx speaker, known to my clients as a game changer. Each week you get the conscious leadership strategies you need to help you reign with courage, clarity, and confidence so that you too can make the income and impact you deserve. Imagine this podcast as your royal invitation to step into your full potential and rein in your divine purpose. Your sovereignty starts here and your reign is now. I am so excited to be here with you today with a B, a boy. Who is Boyd Peterson, who is just Boyd and I met at Lunch Club? And one of the things that struck me about Boyd was not only the fact that he has a giant family, but also that he is an author, and has a social media agency. And so you do so much. And I know that many of my audience are multi, passionate entrepreneurs. How do you manage all the multi passions?
Boyd Petersen (00:03:32) - Well, the key to having multiple things is to understand how much time you're going to spend on each one.
Boyd Petersen (00:03:39) - And so on. Book writing that I spend only about three hours a week, you know, in one-hour blocks and I schedule that. But for my other things, it just depends on what is going on and what I need to put in for each of those other projects.
Kimberly Spencer (00:03:56) - And book writing with your authorship, did that just come out of just a desire to just release something creatively or to do something different than social media? What led you to books?
Boyd Petersen (00:04:10) - Well, so a few years ago, I used to own a newspaper and I didn't write for it. That was the editorial staff. But I loved writing every once in a while columns about movies that I would review. And occasionally I would do something else that was entertaining. But even before that, I used to write articles about where technology was going. And so back in the 90s, I worked for the Washington Post and the Dallas Fort Worth newspaper and the Los Angeles Times just writing that column, and I really enjoyed doing that.
Boyd Petersen (00:04:48) - But then after I sold the newspapers, I said, You know, I've written all these blogs about marketing. Why don't I put them all together, update them and make them a book? So I did. And then I really liked doing that. And then my kids started saying, Well, dad, you made up all these stories over the years. Why don't you put those into books? And so I started doing that. I would bring out a story every year that I would write for Christmas, for example. And it was all about people that were around at the time when Christ was born. And so I would write, you know, so I wrote one about a shepherd boy who, you know, his dad is the shepherd that you hear about in the Bible, but he's the boy. And I wrote about an orphan kid. I wrote about a merchant from Egypt who came to see the Christ child. But the day before he gets there, the star disappears, you know, things like that.
Boyd Petersen (00:05:55) - And so I had a lot of fun with that, and I made it a whole series within one book. And that's where I got to be a best-selling author from that book. I didn't do it with my marketing book, but there's a lot of competition for marketing books. But then I still write. I write both fiction and nonfiction. I have six business books right now that are all dealing with marketing to some degree or another. And then on the fiction side, I have two out there right now, but I've just been asked by Amazon to do something. They've just released a new program which is basically a short read type. It's not books but more guest stories, and you sell them for $0.99 to $1.99. And a friend of mine is doing that and he said, Oh my gosh, I'm making several thousand dollars a month because people want to download it while they're on the train to work or on the bus to work. And it's a 20-minute read and I'm going, Hmm, that ought to be fun.
Boyd Petersen (00:07:02) - And then Amazon asked me, said, Hey, these other books that you're writing, they have the short stories that'll be perfect for this. Why don't you do that? So that's how I get into it. And I have all kinds of stories in the works of fiction, and I like to write about time travel as one of my favorite subjects, but in fact, one of my stories is based in Ireland. And it's about a young man who finds a box that his family's known about for years but has been missing. And he finds it. And it actually allows him to travel to different times in Ireland. And as he gets to some of these places, he realizes that the people he learned about in the history books aren't matching up to the people that he's meeting, and he has to help them become the people that they will be. And so it's kind of a instead of a butterfly effect, it's the. Opposite. He has to encourage change. So and have a lot of people who follow me that want to know more about that.
Boyd Petersen (00:08:06) - That sounds fun.
Kimberly Spencer (00:08:08) - I mean, it seems to me like and this is one of the things that I wanted you to really come on to if you follow the fun. And has that been a theme throughout your life that has also resulted in making money from the fun?
Boyd Petersen (00:08:25) - Oh, yes. Yes. And it is a lot of fun to write these stories. It's a lot of fun to do. A lot of the things that I've done. I love working for social media. People say, Oh, that's so hard. It's always changing. And I'm going, That's okay. I like change. I like learning, but then I also like having fun with it. And so that's kind of what I like to do. And yes, you can make money from having fun.
Kimberly Spencer (00:08:51) - And you teach authors, especially about how to get followers to build the audience for the book before they release the book. How can we make that fun? Because I know that there are many authors listening to this and or aspiring authors who have a book in the background of their life that are like, what's the runway supposed to be for the lead-up? How long do you need to build followers before you launch the book? Give us a little bit of that secret sauce.
Boyd Petersen (00:09:17) - Boyd Oh, I'd be glad to. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, I taught at a convention or a summit. I guess they called it. It was called the Aspiring Author Summit. And the thing they had me teaching about is how you use social media to build your audience before you have a book. Or how do you keep an audience between books? And so I gave a lot of examples like Stephen King used to. He doesn't anymore, and there's a reason for that. But Stephen King used when he would be researching a book, he would go and he'd find all these things and he'd put it on social media and say, Guess what I found? Guess what I found? That's what I found. It was all these cool facts and figures that he came up with. Well, Dan Brown, on the other hand, never releases anything that's going to be in his book. But there are all kinds of fun things he finds that isn't going to be in his book because he never wants anybody to even have a clue as to what his book will be about that he's working on.
Boyd Petersen (00:10:19) - And that's great. But both of those draw people to it. Now, in the case of people who don't have people following them, I'm going to give you a good example of somebody who did it right. And there's a writer named Andy whom you may have seen in the movie The Martian a few years ago. Well, he wrote the book The Martian, and he started off by just having a few of his friends and family following him on Facebook. Well, then he would put a piece of what he was writing about on it and he'd say, What do you guys think? And they'd come back and they'd say, Oh yeah, this works. Well, how about adding this? Or, you know, maybe you could do this with it. Well, within a year, he had worked up to about 10,000 people following him, okay, Because everybody was talking about him. But he was only like maybe 20% through the book writing the book. Well, three years into this type of program, it took him a long time.
Boyd Petersen (00:11:19) - He gets a call from NASA and they said, We'd like to meet with you. And they send him a first-class ticket to go down to Florida at the SpaceX Canaveral or Port Canaveral, I guess they call it. And they wanted to give him an inside view of the things he was talking about. So it helped his book become better. And so now it takes a long time to do what he did. But he wrote his entire book, putting it piece at a time on there and getting people's opinions about it. But it built a following so that when a book publisher came along and said, We want to buy this book, we want you, you know, we want to pay you a lot of money because you've got a lot of followers. And when he released the book or when the publisher released the book, it had an instant top of the list. New York best-selling author, because he had over a million people following him. And that's what it takes sometimes. Now, how do you get that yourself? You know, for the normal person, it's a matter of just simply releasing a little bit of information, getting your friends to tell other friends about it, and getting people excited about what you're writing about.
Boyd Petersen (00:12:43) - And once you start getting that, the momentum starts picking up. For a brand new writer, there were actually 15 different things that I told at the conference, and I don't have my notes in front of me, but 15 different things you can do to get people excited about your book. One of them is really simple. Just tell people what's going on, you know, what your day is like or what you know. How much are you writing about, you know, and tell them a little bit about it. There are all kinds of things you can do with it, with getting people excited, asking them questions. Now, when I write books, especially the one that was the best-selling author was. I had people tell me that I had five covers for my book and I didn't know which one to choose, so I put two covers at a time on my social media and said, What would you like A or B? And then when they'd say A, then I'd say, Well, why do you do like A over B and get a discussion going? And what is social media? But getting people to engage? Well, pretty soon and I had quite a few people following that and then bringing up the next two covers and asking them.
Boyd Petersen (00:13:57) - And again, I asked questions back and forth. Then I bring up the fifth cover and put it with the first one that won. And pretty soon I got a whole lot of people. And so when I released my book, I suddenly had hundreds and hundreds of people who wanted to buy the book because they helped me choose the cover. And that was you know, that's a great way of getting people excited about it.
Kimberly Spencer (00:14:19) - So it sounds like, you know, giving people the option of buying into the product. I think something that I'm hearing a through line is the idea that people really want to contribute, Tony Robbins talks, that one of our six human needs is contribution. And people actually want to feel like they are contributing to someone else's success because in a way that's helping them feel successful.
Boyd Petersen (00:14:47) - It really is. That's a big thing that I found. And, you know, like I had one person tell me, well, why do what about sharing what you're going to put on the back cover? Now, sometimes on the back cover, you just have what it's about.
Boyd Petersen (00:15:03) - Other times you put all of the reviews that you're getting. Well, you gotta start somewhere. So let's talk about what you are going to put on the back cover with that before any reviews. And let people help you hone it in and let them help you identify areas where maybe you're missing something. Now, I've done that with a couple of my friends who are other writers and we help each other that way. But we started doing it so that we would share it with each other's air on their posts. And their people would help me get mine going and or better. And it always works because it does. It's people getting involved. They feel like they're part of that story. And that's a cool thing to do.
Kimberly Spencer (00:15:54) - Yeah. And I think that with marketing and social media, I see as a coach working with business leaders that there are a lot of beliefs around marketing being hard, especially with the Gen X generation of like, Oh, social media is so hard, it's so complex.
Kimberly Spencer (00:16:10) - How can you simplify those beliefs for the older generations to just say, Hey, it's not as hard as you think?
Boyd Petersen (00:16:21) - Well, and that's one of the big things that I help people figure out. There are a lot of people who say, Oh, you know, social media is hard to do. It takes too much time, it takes too much money. It's that there's no ROI on it. Well, I have figured out ways to help people figure out all of next week's posts in an hour this week. Okay. So can you afford an hour to do all of next week's five posts next week? And most people say, yeah, I can do an hour Well, and that's what I do is I teach them how to do that. And here's how you have to schedule what you're going to be doing. Now, a lot of people say, Well, gee, I've written 15 posts. What do I now write about next? Well, there are 36 different types of posts that you can use for social media.
Boyd Petersen (00:17:12) - And, you know, yes, some of them are, you know, cat videos or other things that, you know, are kind of fluff. But there are things that you can do that are really strong without it always being one of two things. People, especially business owners, try to either be educated all the time or they're selling all the time. And I'm going to tell you, nobody likes to be sold all the time. And so it really bogs your social media down and you'll lose people when you do that. They just won't pay attention anymore. If it's always educational, they might find it educational, but they're going to put it on the back burner after a while and say, Oh, I'll get back to it. The key is having a variety of posts, and that's why when you look at 36 posts, no, don't use all 36, but maybe you choose 6 or 8 or even five, and then one a day you do one. And so that might be educational. I teach a program called Recipe for Social Media Success.
Boyd Petersen (00:18:15) - It's a free program for anybody to watch. And with the recipe for social media success, it talks. We use the word recipe and we do it for recreation. He is for education. Uh, RBC couldn't remember my alphabet anymore. C is conversational here. You're starting to get into a conversation and ask him questions. Ask him Do you like this or that? That's what I do with my books. But it can also be about individual things. When you talk about AI, that's inspirational. Now a lot of people say, Oh, well, I can get quotes from somebody and they say there are three types of quotes you should be using. One is just a generic one. One is about your industry and the third one should be from you. And if you're a book publisher, you put in some quotes from your book, whether it's past books or current or when you're writing right now. People love that. They love to be able to quote an author. Okay. Okay. Well, that's RSI.
Boyd Petersen (00:19:21) - Then the P is promotional and that's when you can promote yourself. But it doesn't always have to be selling. It can be. Hey, I've got this seminar we're going to be having. Would you like to come and learn more? You know, it might be. There are all kinds of promotional things you can do. And then the last one is entrepreneurial. It's telling about yourself, about the company. What's your vision statement? What's your mission statement? And for the book, it's really important. What caused you to want to write it? Okay. And that's a really big one to use. Now, once you get a few of them going and you schedule them, it's really, really easy. You just sit down and say, Oh, today is going to be, Oh, let's see. We want to do a conversational one on Tuesday. Oh, we're going to do an inspirational one on Monday. And once you've got it all calendar out, it's easy to sit down and say, Oh, I just need to do this.
Boyd Petersen (00:20:18) - Oh, I need to do that. And in an hour you're done.
Kimberly Spencer (00:20:21) - I think that that's such a poignant point about all the different types of and I love that you use the acronym recipe because my husband's a chef. And so I think I know he'll find this episode incredibly valuable. But I think the quotes are a huge piece, especially in the coaching space. I see so many coaches just posting quotes from other people instead of their own quotes, I mean, you have something to contribute to the conversation. Why are you not, why are your quotes not as relevant or you're promoting them as much as you would promote a quote from like Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King? Yes, you haven't reached that status perhaps yet, but who's to say you won't? And so allowing yourself to put your mindset into the space of putting yourself in the level of being worthy of being quoted.
Boyd Petersen (00:21:21) - Yes. A few years ago I came up with a quote and it's a word of mouth.
Boyd Petersen (00:21:25) - Marketing is the most important type of marketing. But if you can get them to give you it as a review now word of mouth marketing, you can make it go viral, which is word-of-mouth advertising on steroids. Well, I'm now hearing from different people on their stage. You know, somebody told me the other day that there was a Brian Tracy mentioned that and he gave me credit for it on stage. Well, I wasn't in the audience, but somebody else was. And they said, Hey, you just got mentioned on stage by Tony Robbins. Oh, that's cool. So it's kind of fun. But if you don't put any of those out there, you'll never have any opportunity to be put out, you know, for people to use your quotes.
Kimberly Spencer (00:22:15) - Yeah. And I just heard an epic. I love the quote about being able to put your advertising on steroids just from marketing reviews. And I just heard one that I'm sure you're familiar with from Jay Abraham If you cannot market what you do better than you do what you do, you will not be doing what you do for very long.
Boyd Petersen (00:22:36) - That is so.
Kimberly Spencer (00:22:36) - True. So how do you work with people who are very, very skilled creators, authors, and publishers, but they're not skilled marketers, or at least they don't think that they are?
Boyd Petersen (00:22:49) - Well, you know, the best thing is to get a little bit of training. You know, like going to this. The Aspiring Authors Summit is a great one because for those that are thinking of being authors, we had 35 people in the audience and a bunch more that were online. Okay. So it's all about doing these things and learning the things that you're not maybe as competent at first.
Kimberly Spencer (00:23:16) - Yes. Yes. 1,000% being able to learn those pieces because the following is a huge piece of the puzzle. Now, I know that there are a lot of them. Shortcuts in a way or perceived shortcuts, especially when it comes to social media, where people think that the following is 100% reliant upon the number of followers. Is that the case? Have you seen that to be the case or does it matter? Also the quality of followers?
Boyd Petersen (00:23:46) - I tell people they need to find the quality of followers and I'll give you a good example of that.
Boyd Petersen (00:23:52) - I have an author that I work with. He's also a public speaker. And he said I got to get to 10,000 followers on Instagram. I've got 30,000 over on Facebook, but I need to get to 10,000 on Instagram very quickly. And I said, Well, do you want quality or do you want quantity? And he says, Well, I want quality people, but I need 10,000. Well, we worked him up. So he was up to about 3000 in a two-month period. And he just says, I want more, I want it faster. Well, I said, Well, if you buy the numbers you're looking for, it's not going to help you. Now, here's what we had. We had that. When he posted something about 15 to 20% of all of those online, we were looking at it, consuming it, and interacting with him. Well, he finally decided, no, I've got to buy some then. So he went to a company that sells, you know, got him a whole bunch of them.
Boyd Petersen (00:24:53) - In fact, he's up to 20,000 now. But the people seeing it are down at 1%. So he has quantity but not quality. And he's not getting any more people who are buying his books or wanting to attend his seminars or anything like that. And he's calling me saying, I've got the numbers, what's going on? And I said, Well, where are your numbers from? And as I get in there and look, well, gee, you've got a whole lot of people from, oh, the Philippines, from India, from Vietnam. Do they even speak your language?
Kimberly Spencer (00:25:33) - Yeah. Yeah. Or, I mean, I just deleted about 2000 followers off of my Instagram very transparently because I was just wondering why my engagement has been lower on Instagram for years. Considering that I had about 7500 followers and it was working with a social media coach and she said, Go in and look at your followers. And so I've been spending a few more hours on the elliptical recently doing the 75 hard challenge, and thus I'm on the elliptical and I'm exhausted.
Kimberly Spencer (00:26:08) - So I just started scrolling while moving my body. And I realized I had about 2000 followers that were completely bogus accounts. Yeah, but came out of nowhere when I was working years ago with a publicist back in my e-commerce days, and that sprung out of nowhere. And I decided I was just like, I don't want these fake followers that are hurting my engagement. Yeah, it looks like on the front end that they have I owe 7500, but I'd much rather have 5000 engage followers, people who are able to see and be served by my content, than have the fancy numbers because I've also seen I've worked with some influencers who have the 2050 500 K followings. And so often followership does not mean money in the bank. I think that's a big differentiation to make because I like and I have seen I'm a part of a group for six and seven figure business women and most of them have followings of less than like a thousand people, but they are focused on the quality of the following, the quality of making sure that following is also turning into prospects and clients.
Boyd Petersen (00:27:26) - Yes, and that's exactly it. You know, there's a gentleman that I follow. I'm trying to remember which one it was, but I think Evan Pagan said that it's better to have 500 quality people who follow you that will spend money with you or spend money on you. Then 10,000 that you don't have even 1% doing so. And that's the key is you've got to have a good loyal following. And if you're building it the right way, it will be a good, strong group of people that will follow you and that's what you want.
Kimberly Spencer (00:28:09) - Yeah. To me that says I think the followership is, is such an interesting concept because for me that is more of a community that you're building rather than, Oh, it's because every time somebody is like, Oh, you know, I only have 400 followers. I'm like, Have you ever been in a room with 400 people? That's a big room.
Boyd Petersen (00:28:31) - Well, and especially if they're all there to see you.
Kimberly Spencer (00:28:34) - Exactly. If and if you know that they're there to see you and that they want to see you and that they're engaging with you and they want to be a part of that community, it is a very different game than having tens or hundreds of thousands of followers who may like a post from time to time, but they are not actually your raving fans.
Kimberly Spencer (00:28:53) - No, I love EB and Pagan, by the way.
Boyd Petersen (00:28:56) - Yeah, he's great. So that's the key with a lot of things is find the tribe I call them, you know the ones that really want to be part of your community. And once you find them and you engage with them, it doesn't matter how many you have. Okay? If you only have 5 or 10, that's a little bit too low. But, you know, they're going to tell other people and they're going to attract other people to you that are going to become part of the tribe as well and will communicate with you. And that's what you want. That's the right way to organically build your following.
Kimberly Spencer (00:29:39) - Yeah. What would be some of the best strategies video quotes like you gave us the recipe for social media success? But I think one of the things that many of my audience are thinking at this moment is, do I have to write it? Do I film it? Like, what is the best medium that you found?
Boyd Petersen (00:29:59) - Well, okay, so there's a couple of key things that we've discovered ourselves.
Boyd Petersen (00:30:04) - A lot of people say, Oh, you've got to have a video all the time. Don't believe that. Here's why we know that one person I was just telling you about bought a whole bunch of people. When we were testing some of his things. He had great engagement when he had 3000 people if he did three videos a week. So we do a video on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. But on Tuesday and Thursday, he would do some static images and a story that went with it that people could read. Well, we had the highest engagement with that when we went to five videos a week. He went from almost 20% of his followers consuming it, watching the whole video down to less than nine. The reason why is that it was too much for him. So we went back to three videos a week and two static images, and suddenly his viewership went up. Now he always had more viewership on his videos, and that's why he wanted to try five videos a day or a week.
Boyd Petersen (00:31:12) - But when you do, too many people just simply say, Oh, I'll put it off and they don't get back to it. And don't do ones that are just text only. You know, with Facebook, you know, that was how they first started. But when you add an image to something, add an image that goes along with whatever you're going to say. And one of the other things we found was putting some words in the image. And I'll give you an example of this. I went to a concert one time and I took a picture of a band up on stage. And, you know, I got some great, you know, people following it. But it was like, you know, 2 or 3% of my followers on Instagram. Well, a few months later, I went back to that same image and realized that instant success comes with months of hard work. Well, I put that up there and suddenly that image and it went along with how this group had to grow and build, you know, do all the background things they had to do to become known.
Boyd Petersen (00:32:20) - And so we talked a lot about that in this post. Well, that one I had 32% engagement from on my social media. So having an image with some text on it that draws you in is also a good thing. But don't just do video, don't just do images, do those, but do some of both.
Kimberly Spencer (00:32:48) - So allowing for that variety. I think one of them I mean, it seems to me like we've already hit on the desire, the human need for contribution, the human need for variety, but also the human need for certainty. And I think that that really plays into having consistency with your social media strategy or your authorship strategy to be able to consistently build that certainty that you know, like, and trust the audience. And a big piece of trust is having the certainty that you're going to be showing up and producing content that serves in some way.
Boyd Petersen (00:33:26) - That's absolutely right. And one of the other things, though, is to be consistent. I've got several clients that when they were doing it themselves and it's not that they were putting out bad content, they were just putting out maybe once every couple weeks and they put up a, you know, a video or a picture of them doing something like I had a company that does rain gutters.
Boyd Petersen (00:33:53) - Well, he does both the rain gutters and the rain gutter guards. Well, he was getting about one lead a month from that. Well, we. But he was only putting up 1 or 2 pictures every month. Well, we started doing five a week, so one a day, all five days of the week. And he now gets 10 to 15 leads a month. And that's what he was looking for. And it keeps him and his crew busy. But it was all about consistency and not always being about just showing what he's doing. I mean, we still do those because there are some fun ones that he's at. Like, you get up in a rain gutter and he's got a bird nest on each end of it, and another time he found a baseball in it. There are all kinds of things, but the key was having something fun that people would, Oh, that's funny. But also we did some education, we did some other fun things. We had some testimonial-type things.
Boyd Petersen (00:34:59) - So some Internet reviews that we put on there and they all drove traffic to his website and ultimately to them purchasing from him.
Kimberly Spencer (00:35:10) - I love that play of having the fun, the education because too much fun makes it can appear not necessarily professional though. I mean professionalism is a perception but have it like if you have too much fun, it may detract from you being an educational or inspirational brand. And then the testimonials and having that variety and the consistency of having the variety is a huge piece, right? I would love to just dive in for a hot moment on the mystery of hashtags.
Boyd Petersen (00:35:48) - Oh well, especially on Instagram, hashtags are one of the best ways to attract new people that are interested in what you're doing. You put a hashtag in, that's you get a hot hashtag that's targeting your audience. Then you will get people to say, Ooh, I want to follow you more. And they will. They'll follow you. Now, there are some great hashtags out there that you don't want to do.
Boyd Petersen (00:36:16) - Okay? Now I'll give you some examples. So before Covid, the number one hashtag that was being followed and promoted and people putting on their posts was the hashtag love L-o-v-e. Okay. Had over a million new people putting up things every month. They had over 20 million people that were following it. The only thing was you put something with that on it and you're gone. Before anybody could hardly see it because so many people were posting to it. Okay. But if you and a lot of people would just put love up there and it didn't mean what their post was about, had nothing to do with love or, you know, love this coffee. Well, you know, maybe that's good or maybe not. So. But when you find the pieces that fit what your business is about and you find that there are followers of that, that's when you use those hashtags. So for example, with my social media business, social media marketing tips are one that a lot of people have. It's attracted them to me and they follow me because they want to know those tips.
Boyd Petersen (00:37:35) - They want to know about my recipe for social media success. Another one is that I've got a well, my client that does the rain gutters. Now, of course, you could put rain gutters up there, but you know, he only works here in the Salt Lake Valley. And because we're here in the Salt, I'm in Salt Lake City. So we've found Utah homes. Is a great one for him. So, people that own a home or are looking in real estate for homes, see him. And if they're going to be selling their homes, they're in that same category. We've drawn a lot of people to them by just putting it under Utah homes. We also have rain gutters in Utah. Now, there are not very many people who have that or who are following it, but we probably get 1 or 2 new followers from that every month. So it's finding all of the different hashtags that can draw people to your tribe. Who is it you're looking to get and how do you get them there? Hashtags are a great one to do that with, and it's all about figuring out what those hashtags should look like.
Kimberly Spencer (00:38:52) - Agreed. I started using some location-based hashtags, even though I have an online business and it has been bringing in much more followers for location-based. Even though I'm not. I've served clients all over the world. But being in Los Angeles, in the US, which is one of the personal development spaces of the world. So it does help to bring people and followers into my area. So I love the combination of location-based hashtags, title based hashtags with hashtags. Is there a certain way because you can see how often they're used? And as you said with the hashtag love, it's used so often that by the time that you're lucky if you even get seen. So is there a number or a metric that like under a million uses under, you know, 500 K, should that also be included in the hashtag strategy to be able to have that full variety?
Boyd Petersen (00:39:55) - Yes. That is the short answer. The long answer is you want to find some that are probably between 50,000 and 200,000.
Boyd Petersen (00:40:07) - Those are really good unless they're generic for the whole world and you're trying to localize, then you want to find even the smaller ones. Now I've got some people like I've got a physical therapist that we have just narrowed it down to just the locale here in the Salt Lake Valley. And some of ours that we are in only have 50 or 100 people following them. But funny enough, we're now ten, 15% of those people are now following him and paying attention to him. So, you know, having fewer numbers, it's all about quality, not quantity again. And so don't discount something that has only 500 or 5000 followers or posts to it, because sometimes those can be the best ones for you because they're exactly targeted to what you're trying to or who you're trying to attract to you. So don't be afraid to go with even the smallest of numbers. In fact, we've got one company that we started with, and they put a hashtag out there that they made their own and they, you know, they got 5 or 6 people following it.
Boyd Petersen (00:41:25) - And I always do recommend people do their own hashtag. And like in my case, my hashtag is BP media. The problem is, is there are three other companies that use BP media, including British Petroleum. However, I have taken it over because I post so often and it says BP media all the time. And so the company that's out of the two other countries and the one that's here in the United States, they don't even stand a chance because I dominate that now. And that's good. And I now have a lot of people who go and follow that hashtag because I have dominated it. So having your own and going after small ones, don't worry about it, especially if you're a localized person. But if you're international, well, you know, like my social media marketing tips have drawn to me people from Australia, from London, from Dublin, Ireland. I have people that come from all over the world because I'm in those as well. And for me, that works great.
Kimberly Spencer (00:42:40) - And you can follow the hashtags on Instagram to see to connect also with the other people in your niche in your area who are using that as well.
Kimberly Spencer (00:42:53) - Is that how effective and how often should we do that to connect with those? Some would say, competitors. I don't particularly like the word competitors, but those other people who are using the hashtag as well.
Boyd Petersen (00:43:09) - You know, in some of the cases we've done, we actually look to go after those people. So I have personally myself, of course, I run an agency that's a digital agency now. I work with small people all the time, you know, small meeting new startups up to probably ten, 20 employees. Now, I work with big companies as well. I have a multinational company I work with, but I attract a lot of the small ones. And because of that, a lot of the ad agencies here in the Utah area and even some other areas like I've got one out of Australia and one out of Texas, that they refer people to me all the time. And they're, quote unquote competitors. But they are. They know that I have expertise that they don't want to go after.
Boyd Petersen (00:44:01) - And then I have their expertise that I don't want to go after. So I refer people to them. And it becomes a great way of building your business by helping your competitors, so to speak. But they're not. They become your joint venture partners.
Kimberly Spencer (00:44:23) - Yes. Power partners and the ability to see people as your allies, not your enemies, is so key because I think collaboration and the opportunity to work with someone like I know and I think we all have to as business owners, have to check our ego to think that everybody is going to be a perfect client for us. That's not the case. And I have referred probably, I would say 20 to 30% of people who come to see me, to other coaches who I think would be a better fit for them just because if what they're wanting is not 100% of what I can deliver, I don't want to take their money and give them a bad experience. I would much rather pass them off to someone else where they go. Oh, I got a great experience, and thank you so much, Kim, for giving me that referral so that I didn't work with you.
Kimberly Spencer (00:45:24) - So the ability to see other people as your allies is essential.
Boyd Petersen (00:45:29) - It really is. And then the other side of it too is a lot of times the person that you're working with says, hey, you know, I can't. I'm not really the right coach for you, but here, let me get you to the right coach. They appreciate that. And they will actually recommend you more times because they know that you'll find the right person for that person, for that friend of theirs that needs your type of help.
Kimberly Spencer (00:46:00) - Yeah, And I wanted to touch on just the idea of because you specialize in reputation marketing and as a multi-passionate entrepreneur, how do you navigate the world of having multiple passions and marketing with one strategy?
Boyd Petersen (00:46:20) - Well, it really depends on what you're trying to do. You know, there are different ways of marketing, but if you have multiple things that you're working on, you have to sometimes you have to keep them separate, but other times put them together. So to give you an example, I have a, you know, I do books and I have a Facebook page called Void Time.
Boyd Petersen (00:46:44) - And so people go there. It's not followed by too many people because they haven't really pushed it very hard. But I have people who are dedicated to that and that's great. But every once in a while I talk about that on my media page so that people know what I'm doing and people like to know outside of the media, what am I doing? And when they hear that I'm a book publisher or a book writer and author, when they hear that I am speaking at an event, that's when they go, Oh, really? I didn't know that. And pretty soon that raises your or I guess I call it elevates what people believe in you as well because you've become an expert in more than just one area. So don't be afraid to share those kinds of things with other people.
Kimberly Spencer (00:47:40) - Absolutely. I love the ability to trust. I think it also comes down to trusting that your audience is smart and can figure out that we all are humans and do multiple things and have different roles in our lives that we play and that that carries over into the audience that you attract as well.
Boyd Petersen (00:48:00) - That's right. Well, you know, and people find that it's very fun that a lot of the stories that I write about come from me telling stories to my kids or now my grandkids. And like I'm writing a book right now and I'm telling each chapter I create as I'm telling my grandkids a bedtime story and they love to come over to Grandpa's house to have a sleepover so they can hear the next chapter. Well, you know, it'll take a while before I write it all out, but it allows me to do that. And when I mentioned that on any of my social media platforms, I think people go, That is so cool. Hey, And then they want to know more about not just that, but then they also it raises their, Oh, you've got grandkids, you got this, it attracts people to you. One of the things I had, I had a guy who I was doing some he was a mortgage guy and we were not doing very well with him. And I couldn't get him to give me any personalized stuff.
Boyd Petersen (00:49:06) - Well, finally he told me one day he says, Hey, we're headed out of town, we're going down to Moab, we're going to go do some jeep up in the mountains and don't know if you know what Jeep is, but you know, you go rock climbing on jeeps and yeah.
Kimberly Spencer (00:49:20) - It's.
Boyd Petersen (00:49:20) - Crazy jeeps to the point of. Where it's almost falling over. And so I said, Oh, that's perfect. I want you to send me some pictures. So he did. I put them up the very next week. And guess what people said, Oh, my gosh, I love that you're cheaper. I am, too. Hey, can you give me a quote on my mortgage? Suddenly, his mortgage business started taking off because of his hobby. Don't be afraid to tell people that you do things. I have a mechanic who, during his off time, likes to watch sports on TV and knits scarves. Well, that's it.
Kimberly Spencer (00:50:03) - Awesome. You know, that's amazing.
Boyd Petersen (00:50:05) - And when somebody, when we mentioned it in one of our social media, posts the next day, we had a guy come into his place where he was working and said, I want to talk to the knitting mechanic.
Boyd Petersen (00:50:18) - Now, this guy is a huge, burly guy, probably bench presses ÂŁ400. I don't know. And this guy comes out and he says, I want to shake your hands. And this guy is in a tweed suit and, you know, maybe five foot three. And, you know, but he says, I knit hats and I have buddies that we all get together and do the same thing you do. And he brought them $20,000 of business that year. He then also sent a whole lot of other people over to them to this mechanic shop because of the knitting mechanic the owner didn't want me to even mention that he was a knitting mechanic because he thought, oh, he'll look like a sissy. Mm. No. Turned out the other way around.
Kimberly Spencer (00:51:09) - That's amazing. First of all, that mechanic is knitting because I never would have pictured that. And so that is such a wonderfully polarizing in a way perspective. And yet it draws in exactly who his ideal customer was and the fact that the more that you show your humanity and your authenticity and your truth, the more it attracts exactly the right people into your world versus vanilla marketing, which is so boring and bland.
Kimberly Spencer (00:51:42) - If you're not like it may attract, it may repel, it may kind of be like, Hey, I really prefer my vanilla with sprinkles and they may go somewhere else. So. Boyd, I have just loved our conversation and you have brought so much truth and authenticity I love all of your examples from all of your clients and all your stories. Are you ready for a little rapid fire?
Boyd Petersen (00:52:04) - Sure, Go ahead.
Kimberly Spencer (00:52:06) - Who is your favorite female character in a book or a movie and why?
Boyd Petersen (00:52:11) - Who? I have lots of really good characters I like in both men and women. Female, though I would probably say I like the person like Sigourney Weaver when she was playing in the Alien movies. You know, she was this astronaut that had to rise to the occasion to take out the alien that was taking over all of her shipmates. I love that. You know, I love any of these people that rise to the occasion. And sometimes they're the underdog until they get that opportunity to be the leader.
Boyd Petersen (00:52:48) - She is one of those that I have loved watching. And even when she plays the baddie, she's really good at that.
Kimberly Spencer (00:52:55) - You are speaking my language. I love the stories of the underestimated underdog who rises into her reign. Those were always the stories that I loved as children as well as a child. I wasn't multiple children unless it's all the kids in my head.
Boyd Petersen (00:53:17) - Different ages.
Kimberly Spencer (00:53:18) - Different ages, different ages, all the different ages. What woman would you want to trade places with? To live in her head to see how she thinks to be in her life just for a day?
Boyd Petersen (00:53:29) - You know, there have been some really great people, you know, one that I thought was very, very astute to how things work was Nancy Reagan. Nancy Reagan was somebody you know, she helped so many people's careers become careers. And no one really knows that. I'll give you an idea of what happened. Barbara Walters one time got a feather in the cap when she was just starting out to get to meet with Nancy Reagan.
Boyd Petersen (00:54:06) - Now, she wasn't first lady at that time because this was in the 1960s. So she's there interviewing her. Well, Nancy Reagan, after three questions, stops her and says, let me give you some advice. I just gave you an answer to your first question, and I left it open for a second follow-up question for you. And you didn't take it. You had your questions all written out already about what you wanted to do. I want to start this again. I want you to throw those questions away. We'll start with the first question, but let's see what I'm saying and ask the next question that goes along with my answer. Barbara Walters became one of the best interviewers of all time, in my opinion. And it was.
Kimberly Spencer (00:54:55) - Fantastic.
Boyd Petersen (00:54:56) - It was because of Nancy Reagan who helped her do that. Okay. She honed that skill. She owned it. So that is so cool.
Kimberly Spencer (00:55:08) - I love not only the concept of us all helping each other rise and just giving those little perspective shifts that can just change the trajectory of a career.
Boyd Petersen (00:55:21) - Right. And Nancy did that with a lot of different actresses, a lot of politicians, a lot of different people that were just needing help. She was really good at being able to help people see what they couldn't see within themselves. And so that would be one person I would love to, you know, get to know a lot better.
Kimberly Spencer (00:55:44) - But if you were to have your success at twice a speed, what is the one thing you would do differently?
Boyd Petersen (00:55:51) - You know, always love the line of failure fast and get on with the next opportunity. One of my quotes is that success is on the same road as failure. You just get to failure before success. And you know, that's kind of what I look at with that. You know, if I'm going to fail, I want to fail faster and move on to the next thing that will be a success or another one that fails fast so I can get to the right success. Or learn how to pivot better.
Kimberly Spencer (00:56:26) - And I think pivoting comes from failure typically or from or from, you know, pandemics, failure or pandemics.
Kimberly Spencer (00:56:33) - One of the forced failures. Yep. Forced failure. And so what is your morning routine to set you up for success for a day?
Boyd Petersen (00:56:45) - You know, I do not push the snooze button ever. So I get up when my alarm is set, and I get on with what my main routine is. You know, I get ready for the day. I make breakfast for my wife and me, and then I do a little reflection on what needs to be done for the day. And it allows me to get clear of the most important things that need to be done for the day. And then as I get going during the day, of course, other things come up. But I have started with the things that I know I need to get done. And one of the other things I find is that if you start with the hardest thing first, you'll get it completed, and then it's all downhill from there.
Kimberly Spencer (00:57:33) - And such a great reminder. That's one of the things that I advocate for, is really doing the hard thing or the thing that will procure the result three years from now.
Kimberly Spencer (00:57:47) - So having that longevity mindset rather than those necessarily just those short-term wins of like an initial hard or urgent thing. Yes. So what is your nighttime routine to set you up for success in the morning?
Boyd Petersen (00:58:03) - I do like to unwind a little bit, you know, and some people I've heard say, oh, you shouldn't be watching TV. You should be, you know, reading a good book. I read a lot of books and I read both business and fiction as well because I know that fiction books will also enable me to be more creative. But when I am about to go to bed, I usually watch a program depending on how sleepy I am, you know, whether it be a series or a movie with my wife. And we spend time together. And then as we're getting ready for bed, it's all about talking about what happened for the day. I mean, during dinner time we talk about what happened during the day, but what could we have done better? What were some of the cool things that we did that we hadn't talked about already? And then it's all about getting it.
Boyd Petersen (00:58:59) - Your head is in the game of it's time to let everything go and get to sleep.
Kimberly Spencer (00:59:05) - I love that routine. I love that you have a nightly reflection with your wife. That's beautiful. What do you consider to be your kingdom?
Boyd Petersen (00:59:14) - Oh, my kingdom.
Kimberly Spencer (00:59:15) - Well, yes.
Boyd Petersen (00:59:16) - I am very, very good at working with social media. And I get a lot of people who come to me and say, Boy, teach me more. And so that's kind of my kingdom. I know what I'm doing with social media. Many years ago, I used to do everything, you know, websites, trying to do SEO, doing all these different advertising things. And I finally decided I can be better at best at one thing or a master of none. So it's like the house that Jack built. Jack was a jack of all trades, but a master of none. Well, I decided that I shouldn't be the jack of all trades. I needed to be a master of one. And so social media is what I've decided to go after.
Boyd Petersen (01:00:09) - And that's my kingdom that I live in.
Kimberly Spencer (01:00:11) - Amazing. Boyd. I loved our conversation. Thank you so much. Boyd. You have dropped some major knowledge bombs as well as shifted hopefully some belief systems around how to use social media as a tool, as your ally, and as a massive weapon for your success. As always, my fellow sovereigns on your throne. Mind your business because your reign is now. Thank you so much for tuning in today. If what you heard resonated with you, be sure to subscribe and start creating a bigger impact now by sharing this with a friend. Just by doing that one simple act of kindness, you are creating a royal ripple to support more people in their sovereignty. And if you're not already following me on social media, connect with me everywhere at Crown yourself now for more inspiration. I am so excited to connect with you in the next episode and in the meantime, go out there and create a body, business, and life that rules because today you crown yourself.
