RV (00:02): I gotta say, Tori Gordon is becoming one of my favorite people to hang out with. I just think she’s so cool. And so smart. And, and so mission driven. I mean I just, you know, it’s, it’s people like her that when they become clients that I just feel lucky and like how humbled, because it’s, it’s just an honor to me to be associated with people who care so deeply about their audience and for them to trust us, because I see how, how much they work to serve the, the, the people in their community. I mean, just amazing. And, and, and we learned so much from them and I learned a ton, right. So obviously I’m welcome to the recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. I’m, I’m sharing my top three takeaways from the chat that I just had with Tori Gordon. And man she’s built over 800,000 followers. RV (00:56): She’s one of the top creators on all of TikTok and she’s, she’s, she’s amazing. And I love the content that she does, the way that she does it. The consistency, the, the care that she has for her audience and just getting a chance to know her. I mean, you got to, you know, experience a little bit of her personality. I just think she’s doing a lot of things. Right. And I, I think I say, look out for Tory Gordon and y’all like, look out for Tory Gordon. She’s, she’s gonna be huge. And she’s obviously enough right. To, to, you know, I think it’s funny her, she has the coachable podcast, what she talk about and she’s super coachable, right? Like here she is like part of our community learning from us and, and teaching us and networking. And I mean, just watch out, watch out world for Tori Gordon. RV (01:38): So if you didn’t listen to the interview, go listen to it. But there’s, I learned, I mean, one of the things that she said has, has been ringing in my head now for like the last couple weeks, since I, since I actually did the interview with her in a really, really powerful way. So I’ll, I’ll, I’ll tell you what that is. So first of all, first, my first takeaway actually is super tactical. I did not know this. It makes so much sense. It’s kind of like, well, duh, Rory, like where, why would you not, why would you not figure this out? And it’s, it’s a very, very pragmatic thing it’s, it’s related to, to TikTok, but also I believe Instagram reels and, and I’ve been doing it and it’s working and it is put keywords in your text overlays. RV (02:30): What does that mean? It means that, you know, like when you post a video a reel or, you know, whatever, a, a TikTok, if you’re on TikTok, you can put titles on your videos. Well, whatever you title your video, the app is, is reading those just like the way that a Google, you know, bot crawls websites and reads the headlines of a website to tell you what that page is about. It’s, it’s informing that. And there’s all these kind of parallels between search engine optimization and, you know, like app optimization for all these social media sites. And it’s kind of like where search engine optimization was 10 years ago is where a lot of these apps are right now. And so just like, you know, one of the things that we say a lot is hashtags are social media. What keywords are to search engine optimization, right? RV (03:22): And so that’s part of like, when you’re doing your hashtag strategy. Well, when you’re also doing normal search engine optimization, one of the most important things you do is the headlines. What are your, biggest lines, meaning font size on a page, and the words that you put it in those headlines, make your site more indexable, more findable for those terms, whatever the terms are that are in the headlines while the same is true. This is what she’s saying. The same is true with your little, you know, videos that you post on social or your pictures. If you’re putting titles as text overlays, the apps, the algorithm, them can read those. And so that is an indicator to the algorithm. What that content is about the same way as a headline is to a Google like a crawler about what the website is about. RV (04:13): So it’s the same thing. And it’s like, well, duh. Yeah, of course it can read the text. Why didn’t I think about that? So instead of calling my video, you know, one thing I was thinking about today, which is like, nobody is searching that you say you, I did this this morning. I did a video that was like the number one secret to extraordinary customer service. And now I know that by putting the word term customer service in that headline, it, it’s not line, it’s a, it’s a title text overlay, but it’s the same as what a headline would be on a webpage. Now, people searching for that term or people who follow that term. The, the, the app is more likely to serve that content up to them. And it’s like, well, duh, right. So you have just like, you have keywords and headlines for search engine optimization. RV (05:01): You have hashtags and text overlays for social media content, duh. But I didn’t never thought about it until she said it. And so brilliant. So, so, so simple. Now the second thing sh she said to the, the, my second takeaway is the thing that she said to me that really, like, I’ve been thinking about this a lot and it’s actually impacted my behavior a lot. And, and I think she kind of just rattled it off, but it really hit me hard. And it was when we were talking about the future of social and content and like the, you know, the metaverse and all that kind of stuff. You know, and I think I was kind of lamenting about how it’s just like, I just don’t like this stuff, like I’ve, I’ve not, I’m not super social, like in real life. And I think that’s a little bit why I’m like a little, you know, slow to social media and picking it up. RV (05:58): And I don’t, I don’t love the idea. I don’t love the idea of living such a big part of my life, not in real life. And that’s an issue I’ve always had with social media, even of going like, well, if I’m spending time over here, that means I’m, I’m maybe not spending time with like people in my real life. And so I’m not sure, you know, there’s some parts of it. I mean, there’s some parts I love and some of the best relationships I have some of my very best friends in my life. I actually met, you know, online. And so, you know, that’ll be in another part of the future with the whole metaverse conversation, which I suspect will be talking more about because I’m, I’m gonna be diving into trying to understand what does it all mean, but here’s, here’s what she said. RV (06:41): So just to get, to get to the point you, you know, I was saying, I’m not sure I like this. I, Im not sure I like the technology or where this future is, is heading. And she said, the sooner I can accept it and get on board with and understand it, the sooner I can shape it, the sooner I can understand it, the sooner I can shape it. And y’all, that really hit me hard because I realized that this whole idea of, I don’t like the idea of a metaverse, I don’t like social media, media is a very self centered view, right? It’s not selfish. It’s not like you’re hurting anybody, but it’s, it’s, it’s a self centered view. It’s saying this is about me and what I think, but a true service centered view would be to go, there’s a bunch of people who need help. RV (07:39): I gotta go to where they are. Right. It’s, it’s kind of like going well, you know, I’ll you know, I’ll, I’ll give to needy people who, you know, show up in my neighborhood, but it’s like the most needy people might not be in your neighborhood. You gotta go to them. You gotta go to where those people are. And the sooner I can understand it, the sooner I can shape it. And just that idea of going, you know, what all these people they’re gonna be there. And when I think about the metaverse, I go, this is happening. I can see it. Right. And it’s, it scares me cuz it’s, it’s literally a half step away from the matrix, like the movie, but I can see people going, number one, if I don’t love my life in real life, if, if I have a hard day or I, you know, I don’t like where I live. RV (08:25): Maybe I don’t like my house. Maybe I don’t like the people in my house or my neighborhood where I just don’t feel good or I, you know, I go to a school that I don’t love or a good job that I don’t love. And I have this negative experience when I come home, the idea of going somewhere where I can feel loved and cherished and important, and people of course, people are gonna do that. Of course they are. That makes a lot of sense. The other part of this that makes a lot of, a lot of sense to me is that a lot of our best relationships are, are no longer in physical proximity. Right? So even if I love my life, I still go, my best friend lives in Texas. And you know, my other, my other friend lives in Florida and whatever, right. RV (09:13): They’re not here. So you have that amplified by COVID and all this crazy, like we’re working from home, we’re not sure. And we’re, we’re back in the office, we’re not back in the office and you know, so this idea of going, yeah, let’s just hop in there and connect. I, I mean, it’s gonna happen. Right. And, and I was following Zuckerberg on Instagram and he’s, you know, show in these videos of him playing with these gloves, these haptic gloves, where he’s like fencing with this Olympian fencer, and he can feel this, the virtual sword hitting against her virtual sword. I mean, so the technology is gonna be there and I, I don’t love it. Right. I don’t, I dont don’t want this to be the case. I don’t like, I, it’s not how I would design things, but to what Tori said, it just really hit me. RV (10:05): It’s like the sooner I can accept it, the sooner I can understand it. And the sooner I can understand it, the sooner I can shape it. And you better believe that if there’s all of those reasons for people to be in that metaverse, then you can be certain that there’s gonna be lots of bad influences in there and all sorts of, you know, negative things and all sorts of needs because there’s still people, there’s still real people inside there. And they have real hurts and issues and self-doubts and insecurities. You know, there’s a whole newness of a whole new metaverse. So those people need hope. They need help. They need encouragement, they need education. And that whether I like it or not, it feels to me like this is happening. And so I wanna understand it because the sooner I can to understand it sooner, I can shape it so that, you know, thank you for that Tori that really hit me hard. RV (11:02): And I think affected me in a, in a profound way. And that leads me to number three, which was you know, probably my favorite reminder, although it it’s one that we talk about a lot and it just, it’s just cool to hear her Edify and to see somebody like her, who’s such a rising star going, this is how she’s thinking. And, and seeing her win going, this is the attitude we’re talking about, right? Like you don’t, you, you can, you can be mission driven. You can be service centered, you can be audience focused. You don’t have to fake it. You don’t have to, you know, flaunt everything. You can, you can just be in the service of others and, and win. And she said, instead of thinking about how many followers you get, or how much money you make, spend more time thinking about what do I wanna be remembered for, right? Like what do you want to be remembered for? You might not even need social media to make money. You might not even care about marketing or personal branding, but it is an opportunity to leave behind something, right? It is a, it is a, it is a, a historical record of your life, which is means it’s a historical record of your philosophies and your beliefs. And thus, it is a chance for you to leave a trail of what you believed in. RV (12:27): And that’s, to me, a powerful reason enough to at least consider doing this. I mean, the idea that that Jasper or Liam might one day listen to podcast episodes that I recorded years before, or watch a YouTube video of me doing a Ted talk back in 2000 and whatever year, it was 15 or read a book that I wrote in 2012, that is super inspiring to me. And to go like for those who that don’t know, those are my kids, those are our kids Japer and Liam and, and go, yeah. And also your team, right? If you lead a company, you go, it it’s a chance for your team. Like you don’t, you don’t necessarily get to see or have conversation with every person team, especially you have a big team and go, this is a chance for them to you understand, like, this is what we believe around here. RV (13:20): This is how we operate. This is, this is what we do. You know, this is who I am. This is what our company’s gonna be about. That’s super powerful. And thinking about what do I wanna be remembered for? And also the idea like, you know, I, I think of about, of course Ziglar was one of my, one of my, my dearest mentors, the idea that people watching Ziglar videos on YouTube every day. That’s awesome. I mean, people listen to Jim row tapes. Like, I mean, there’s these, you know, Charlie tremendous Jones, there’s Dale Carnegie. I mean, there are legends of this industry and space who are still massively impacting the world today because people are consuming their content. You know, and it’s, that’s a really, really ripe opportunity. And so don’t forget that, like, don’t forget that this isn’t about metrics and money and, and followers and, and credibility. And like, this is impact. And there are more tools than ever before in history for you to, to make an impact on the world, right? Like you, you sit and go, oh, what do you wanna do with your, I wanna make an impact. I wanna help people. RV (14:43): All the tools are in your hand, right? You’re one button away, right? You got a hundred different apps you can use to do it. Impact people, change their life, make their life better. Do it like pour into people, share the thing that you have on your heart and share it. Because I, I know this, there’s a lot of people out there promoting a lot of trashy stuff and bad ne messages. And there’s a lot of meanness and negativity and harassment and horrible stuff going on and the good people of the world, the mission driven messengers, like we gotta step up and we gotta, we have to pump good out into the world to combat some of the bad we have that chance you have that chance. I have that chance, even if we don’t like it, the sooner we accept it and we understand it sooner, we can shape it and we can make an impact on people and be remembered for something pretty cool. RV (15:46): So thank you for the compliment of tuning in to all the stuff that we put out. That’s amazing. It’s the coolest thing ever. And you know, there’s a chance you and I haven’t met yet. And I just love you. I feel so grateful and honored that you allow us the opportunity to shape your business, your mind, your life, a little bit. What a privilege to compliment. We love doing it. We cherish it. I hope we get to continue doing it. I hope we get to meet in person and give you a hug, not just in the metaverse, but in real life. . So keep coming back, talk to you soon on the influential personal brand podcast.