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Leonard Kim Went From No Promotion To The King of Promotion

Humanize and be yourself to maximize your promotions

Stream below or right-click here to download the episode. 

 

Sales Tips you’ll learn in The Sales Podcast

  • Branding, marketing, and startup strategist

  • But he struggled at first

  • He’s “stuck in his ways since I’m Korean!”

  • He was running away from his fears but he didn’t know what he was afraid of

Jia-Jiang-On-The-Sales-Whisperer-Podcast-Session-37
  • Took shortcuts in everything…

  • Had to keep starting over

  • Had his electricity cut off and had to move back into his grandma’s house

  • Had to recognize his faults and grow

  • Moved to his friend’s sofa for $100/mo

  • Broke his ankle so he was stuck on a couch for three months so he reflected

  • You’re where you are where you’re supposed to be

  • He went back through his life and analyzed cause and effect

  • His business partner has a process for doing this quickly

    • Two sets of sticky notes

    • He writes on one set

    • Has his friends write on the other set…and people are honest and direct

    • Now you know what you have to work on

    • He had issues he didn’t realize…he was scared of being hurt by people he helped

    • He had to accept and forgive

    • He accepted responsibility

    • His mom is a “great victim of everything” and she doesn’t have joy in her life

  • 2011 he got an entry-level job

  • For two years his goal was to get promoted

    • He worked hard

    • He wore a suit

    • But didn’t get promoted or a raise ($16.24/hr)

    • He could only eat one meal per day (Obamacare cost him his lunch money, literally)

    • People told him he was arrogant

    • He applied to 100 jobs, got three interviews and nobody hired him

    • Went back to school and it helped a little

    • He went out and shared his feelings and experiences and within six months he had two million reads on his posts

    • He wrote posts on his Blackberry on the bus

    • Within 18 months he had about 10 million reads and figured he should monetize it

    • He started on Quora and didn’t have a website

  • Posted the same stuff on his site

    • About me page

    • Subscribe button (RSS feed)

    • How to hire him (for free…which was a bad idea that he quickly recognized)

      • Raised his prices

      • Doubled his rates and doubled his rates and doubled rates

    • Did sales in 2005-2006 he was in sales and understood it

    • Did some marketing from 2007 to 2011 so he understood it

    • All of the companies went out of business so his resume was “full of broken hopes and dreams”

    • So he started marketing himself

  • May 2013 and by Dec 2014 had 10 million reads

    • It’s hard to master social media all at once so dive into one and master one 

  • Doesn’t trust tools, he trusts people to do his social media

    • First, it was the 17-year-old sister of a friend

    • Then it was a friend who broke an ankle

    • Then it was an intern who got 2,000 retweets to be hired

    • #BruisedBananaEaters

    • He had Deborah create a PowerPoint based on his articles

      • One was like a college assignment and it wasn’t “right” or “shareable”

      • Then she made it 10 times better

      • From there she got better and they tightened it up

      • Now she re-purposes his content

    • When one VA left he had her write up a list of tasks

    • Maybe 80% of his posts are branding

    • He does his own CTAs

    • Most of his content is evergreen

    • When you use current events you get a huge spike in traffic from people who don’t care about you

    • Use BuzzSumo to create better titles, avoid controversy, replace the image, update links

    • His assistant works maybe 30 min/day after a month of getting up to speed

    • His Vegas assistant creates new content but this is her part-time job so it may take a month for her to get it done

  • Humanize yourself and be yourself

  • For example, a doctor

    • Maybe unapproachable…educated…aloof

    • Make them be seen as “just like me”

    • Tell their story

  • Hungry, Humble, Honest is how 17-year-olds should brand

Links Mentioned In The Sales Podcast

Market like you mean it.Now go sell something.