One, two, three, I'm ready to go. I'm ready to go. One, two, three, I'm ready to go. Everyone, this is Vernon Ross, and one of the social strategy podcasts bringing you the best online business social media, good fashion networking, and on Fridays.
Every now and then I do a special show, something that's short, but talks about something that I think is important that you learn from, and be able to go into the next week with something amazing that's gonna help make a difference in your life. So this Friday, I happen to be searching because the book has just been notified that the cover wrap is finally done, and I can order books now, and so I should have my first published book published by Morgan James Publishing in my hands, in my grubby little hands in about two weeks, and I cannot wait. I've got some pre-orders to fulfill myself and ship those books out so I can't wait to ship those books out and start getting some reviews in. It's gonna be awesome and amazing.
So when I was looking through Google, I just happened to Google my name because I needed to look at every place that I've been promoting the book. Now granted, I have not really gone into promotion mode with the book yet, so I haven't been on a lot of podcasts, but I was on marketing to crush your competitors. My good friend Fabian featured me on the show, a link to that is in the show notes, and it's been doing really well. I think over 1,200 downloads for that one episode, so I'm really happy about that.
But as I was looking through it, a couple of my blog posts came up from before I started the podcast. Now what's interesting about that is on August 9th, 2013, I put up a blog post about learning lessons, and it was actually called the lessons we learned. Now I was talking about really bad 70s Kung Fu movies, and the reason I was talking about those movies is because they're the movies that you watch and you grow up and the voices don't match the sound, or the lips don't match the sound, and the voices just are horrible and not right. But there's always this moment where you have the hero who's fighting against the really, really bad guy, and there's some teacher that shows up, and once the student becomes better than a teacher, he can then go and best the bad guy and get rid of him.
So I'm thinking about these 70s movies, and the reason I was talking about these 70s movies right around this time is that I was coaching. And if you guys don't know, I'm a certified coach, certified business and life coach. And so I had a few clients, and I was working with one of my clients, and I introduced her to this concept that she really wasn't familiar with, and it really opened her mind of so many things that she could do with the information that she was producing. I mean, when so many different directions for her, and she was really excited to get this information.
So in the middle of the conversation, she made this statement and she goes, well, Vernon, why haven't you done this yet? Yep, and that was when I had that flashback to those Saturday morning Kung Fu movies where the student had surpassed the master. And I'm like, wow, okay, she was right. I should have been doing what we talked about, and as I always tell people, execute, execute, execute, it doesn't do any good to talk about it if you're not gonna do it.
And not only had I not executed on the very same stuff that I was talking about, I had really quite honestly a lot of bullshit reasons on why I hadn't, and it was pretty bad. I didn't realize that. And I was happy that it actually happened because it got me on the right path. I was like, you know what, you're right.
And then we moved on into the conversation, and afterwards I thought about it and reflected on it, and I'm like, wow, I need to really get on my stuff and start doing this thing. Well, right before that happened, I had heard about podcasting. And I was like, you know, I'm gonna go ahead and launch this podcast, and I have been researching podcasting for about eight months prior to that. So I say, you know what, within the next month, I'm gonna go ahead and launch a podcast.
And since my birthday is coming up, I'm gonna launch it on my birthday, September 30th. So September 30th, 2013, is when the social strategy podcast was born, which is why I'm calling this episode Fallback Friday, because I wanted to talk about a few of the things that I've learned since 2013. Now, what I was talking to her about was actually taking the information that you've already done, your blog post, and repurposing those for podcasts and for videos, and creating products from really, really good work that you've already done, and taking advantage of that, and introducing it to a new audience. If the audience that you're currently working with is already familiar with it, then you just need to seek a new audience that's not, and teach them the same good stuff, and add to it as you learn from it.
That was like what I was talking to her about. Now, in 2013, after I started my podcast, I had no idea this podcast was gonna take me on this journey. So now it's 2017, and I'm just gonna run through a few of the things that has happened since I started this podcast. So I started this podcast, it kicked off, it was really successful, and it's opened a whole lot of doors for me.
I've spoken on dozens of stages. No keynotes directly from the podcast, but I have been invited to different conferences, to speak at conferences, to keynote and co-MC conferences, in particular, the Midwest Digital Marketing Conference. I was able to co-MC that conference with this guy named Ed Doming, who's really popular here in St. Louis, the third year that they had the conference, or the second year that they had the conference, something like that.
But now, this year, I'm gonna be introducing several keynotes, and again, MCing and doing stuff with the conference, heavily involved with the digital marketing board, at the University of New Missouri, St. Louis, and because of this podcast and my work with podcasting and with the college, they invited me to be an adjunct professor and actually teach podcasting. So if you guys follow the podcast, you already heard about that, but these are some of the amazing things that have happened because of podcasting. And so I cannot say enough about how wonderful it is to be able to do something that you absolutely love and enjoy, and would do for free, and then have somebody pay you for it.
I've been on dozens of other podcasts, I've been booked to speak, paid and unpaid, and quite honestly, some of the unpaid stuff equals out to make you more money than the paid stuff. But I mean, it's been amazing. And I've also gotten like paid consulting work just from having a podcast, launching it, and talking about it, and really making sure that I'm putting out quality content. So that brings me to this.
If you're going to do something, whatever it is, you have to work hard, and it's going to take time. But when you take the time to be consistent at it, and quite honestly, I haven't been as consistent as some podcasters, there have been some months, especially when I was writing the book, I did not put out an episode, or I only put out one episode, but I kept it going, and I kept promoting it. So even though I wasn't producing content, I was actually promoting the podcast to make sure it was growing. So in the months where I didn't have much content going out, the podcast actually grew by thousands of listeners because I was promoting the podcast, which is another thing that I learned along the way, all because of podcasting, conferences, in particular podcast movement, in the Financial Bloggers Conference.
Without those two conferences, I would not be where I am today, with the connections, with the relationships, and definitely with all of the fortune that I've been able to get from being associated with those two events, the people in those events, and the friends that I've made from being involved in those events. It's been an amazing ride, and the funny part is, is I'm just getting started. I'm really just getting started. The book is coming out, that wouldn't happen if it wasn't for podcast movement, and making a friend at podcast movement who introduced me to someone else, who introduced me to someone else, that ended up helping me get my book published.
It has been an amazing ride, and I do encourage you, if you are curious about starting the podcast, do it. Contact me, email me, vernonavurnanross.com. I can walk you through the process, I'm actually doing some of that work now, and oh by the way, if I hadn't told you, or if this is the very first time that you listen to my podcast, I actually now work with pot being. Pot being is one of my clients, potbeing.com.
They are a podcasting hosting company. This happened recently, actually, after I signed the college up for a podcast, they asked me if I would join their team, their enterprise sales team. So now I'm working with them, their client of mine, and it's an amazing relationship, and I love it, and it's a great company. I wouldn't be working with them if it wasn't, and I'd already been recommending them over the past couple of years.
So this didn't just happen automatically. All of this stuff has been stuff that I've been building and working on for the past couple of years, but I wanna let you guys know that if you work hard and consistently as something, you put the time, you put the effort, that's the key to the success. It's time, effort, and execution. You have to do the stuff that you talk about.
You can't just coach people through it, you just can't tell people, hey, make sure you do this, make sure you do that, make sure you do this. You actually have to go do it. There's a favorite quote of mine, and of course Gary Vannerchuk, one of the people that I'll follow online, one of my distance mentors, and I just happened to know Gary, and he has been on the show, one of the quotes for one of his videos, he goes, there's this massive misunderstanding. Almost zero people have pulled off substantial success without putting in time an effort.
And he's absolutely right. You can't do it without putting in the time an effort. It's not gonna happen overnight. You're not gonna have a successful anything overnight.
You've got a grind, you've got a hustle, and real hustle means doing it when you don't wanna do it, when it's not easy, when it's not convenient, and sometimes it costs you money. Because none of the conferences that I go to are free. It takes travel, it takes hotel, it takes sacrifice, you're gonna get a little bit of debt, you're gonna do a lot of things that you don't necessarily wanna do, but you have to stay on the path because you know that it's gonna pay off. And like I said, the funny thing is, I have not even gotten started.
You guys just wait to see what's coming. There are so many amazing things on the forefront. And I just wanna share that with you guys. I've learned a lot since 2013.
I mean, I learned a lot every day, but I've learned so much since 2013, and I'm so glad that my student called me out on it. And she actually, a long time ago, surpassed me in what she was doing. She's an amazing person. I'll introduce her to you at some other point in time when I finally get her on my podcast to talk about coaching and the business that she's built from the ground up.
But that was an amazing conversation, and it really helped change the direction of what I'm doing. So let's say guys, I just wanna bring you a quick little recording, and this turned into something that was a little bit longer than five minutes. But hey, that's what happened. It's a Fallback Friday, and this is something that you can take into the week.
Time, effort, perseverance, execution. That's the key. You wanna know what success is about? That's what it's about.
All right guys, I will see you in the next episode. I got a new one coming out this coming up week. We're talking to a guy about all the stuff you hate to do. A.B.
Split testing, all the good fun stuff. This guy's brilliant, and I think you guys are gonna really enjoy this episode. So definitely email me, Vernonatvernaross.com. Find me on Twitter at RossPR.
Remember, the book is ready for pre-order still. It's not launched yet. You can find a link to it and everything that I talked about in the show notes. Check it out and leave me a message.
Let me know what you think about this episode. And if you like little episodes like this, this is just a mini one. Under 15 minutes, this one, I usually go for under five, but this was just a fun story for me to tell. And I do like to reflect back on things and look back and see where I've come from.
Make sure you guys are doing that. Make sure you're journaling, writing something down, doing something to look back and see where you are. Otherwise, you are living in the perfect time machine. Because if you're not moving forward, guess what you're doing?
You're living in the past because you're doing the same exact thing every day, which is why you don't move forward. And to me, that's what a time machine is. It's something that just keeps you still and keeps you in the same place. And you look back and guess what?
You're in the same place the last year and you haven't moved forward. That's being stuck in time. We don't want to do that. We want to move forward.
So I'm going to go here, get out of here and I will see you of course in the next episode.