I did this awesome interview with Shannon Lewis from 36 Marketing. I want to share it with you guys here. We talked a lot about personal branding and being really authentic, especially when it comes to your MLM and in social media, because that’s why people follow you. I want to share this with you. I’m really excited. Please go check out her page. At the end of the interview, we talk about how to get a hold of her. She’s amazing and this was a lot of fun.
JR: Hi. Thanks for joining us this morning. This morning. I’m really excited. We’ve got an interview here with Shannon Lewis. Shannon runs 36 Marketing out of Orlando, Florida, isn’t it Shannon?
Shannon: It’s all over. It’s a remote agency, believe it or not. I’m based out of Tampa, but I’m in Orlando quite a lot.
JR: Okay, fantastic. Shannon, today we want to talk about personal branding. We know, that especially in network marketing, that personal branding is so important as people are utilizing the web and utilizing social media, especially to both influence other people, sell their products, as well as find new business partners. Personal branding has become such an issue, and I think it’s something that is so poorly taught within the industry. Before we dive into that, I’d love to get a little bit of your background: how you came to form 36, where you’re coming from, and even a little bit of how you got involved in network marketing, as well.
Shannon: Absolutely. I’ve been doing marketing now for about 15 years. I started at the corporate level working for Fortune 500 companies, and then moved to the agency sectors. I finally just got to a point where I wanted more flexibility with my life; I wanted to be able to travel, I wanted to be able to be at family events, I wanted to be able to go to every single friend event that I had going on: weddings and things of that nature. And so, I just decided to open up my own agency, and instead of doing the typical brick-and-mortar cool, trendy office with the Ping Pong table, I decided to reinvest that money and work with the best of the best and the industries, so I reinvested it in all my employees and all of the contractors that I work with. I look at it as revolutionizing the way how marketing is done, because you don’t necessarily need to all be in the same office or location to have that common goal and to get everything done, so that’s how 36 was born. I’ve been doing that now for about four years, which is great. I love it. I love every aspect of helping businesses grow and helping brands grow.
It was just about a year ago, I got involved in network marketing, as well. And primary reason there is Warren Buffet always says, “Any successful entrepreneur is going to have multiple income streams.”
JR: There you go. It’s very difficult to argue with Warren. That was very, very enlightening. I appreciate that. I need to shut down some audio here on my computer apparently. When you got involved with network marketing, tell me a little bit about how that came about. You told me a little bit about the story, but I’d love to hear your view on the industry before and maybe a little bit after.
Shannon: I always laugh because, before I did my own research and before I got involved in network marketing, I was against it at all costs. I looked at it as a setup for failure, to be perfectly honest with you, to the point in all of my social media profiles, I had no network marketing companies don’t talk to me. Don’t reach out to me if you’re trying to sell me anything. I don’t want to know anything about it. I put it out there, literally like that. And it got introduced to me. I saw a lot of friends doing it and I saw a lot of friends having success with it in terms of being able to leave their full-time jobs that were constraining them from being able to enjoy their life. And to the point, one of my very good friends made the comment, she was a school teacher of how she was constantly missing her son’s activities because she had to be at school for other kids’ activities to the point that he says, “Well, mom, when are you going to be there for my activities?”
When I hear stories like that, I’m just like we have to start thinking smarter instead of working harder, and we have to start thinking about outside of the box a little bit more of how we can generate revenue, do something we love while still living our lives. I think that’s the biggest goal with our coming into the funnel of how can we do things smarter and better, not just the way things have always been done. I started doing my research and just some of the companies that I was interested in and yeah, I mean that’s how I initially took the jump in, was I just wanted to try some of the products. I just wanted to get my hands on some products, try them out a little bit. I ended up falling in love with the products to the point where once you love something, it’s just like a restaurant and saying, “Hey, JR, I love this restaurant. You should really try this restaurant.” Same concept.
JR: Absolutely. It’s so funny because so many people in network marketing happens every single day, and not just with network marketing companies. I mean, you talk about restaurants like that is network marketing. You’re talking to your network and you’re doing some marketing for them–and that’s amazing.
Shannon: For free.
JR: Yeah, for free. They didn’t pay you and maybe they should have. When it comes to personal branding, I know that you’ve, recently especially, taken a shine or taking an interest in and helping entrepreneurs, and really even more specifically, inside of network marketing, with marketing coaching and personal branding coaching. If somebody was coming to you right off the bat and they say, “Okay, I need to build my personal brand,” what are some of those go-to moves that you’re going to go to immediately to get somebody started off on the right foot?
Because so many people that are in network marketing or are just starting network marketing have never even thought about how do I make myself look better. Many people are teaching the what. Honestly, what I think is a problem where it’s like sell, sell, sell, sell, sell! And they’ve forgotten. They’ve forgotten the marketing portion of sales, which is a whole lot more attraction and whole lot less shoving it down someone’s throat. Sorry to ramble on, but what are some of those, those initial starting steps that you would recommend for somebody?
Shannon: Yeah, I mean, I couldn’t agree more with that. When you go to some people’s social media profiles and it’s just flooded with products that they’re selling, it’s just instantly a turnoff to a lot of people. It honestly, in my opinion, gives the whole industry a really bad name, because to me, it looks like you don’t want to connect with me on a personal level. You’re just trying to sell me something. I think the biggest thing when we talk about building your personal brand and quote unquote “selling,” it’s all about building relationships. This generation that’s coming in, the millennial, the Gen X generations, they want that human-to-human interaction. People want to work with people again; we don’t want to work with robots.
The first thing that I always do with anybody, and I do this for, not only my team and my downline but I open it to other network marketers, as well, who are just getting in the industry, because what a lot of people don’t understand is this is your business. You are officially a business owner. People sometimes look at it as, “Well, I’m just paying a small investment to get into this company, and now everything’s going to happen for me.” Not realizing that they’re going to have to still invest time. They’re still going to have to invest some money to be able to grow that business and make it profitable for them.
The first thing that we always do is talk about your why. I think you talked about it on one of your previous podcasts, the Simon Sinek on Finding Your Why. It’s one of my favorite TED Talks that I’ve seen. It’s so great of understanding why am I waking up every morning to do this? Why am I taking these extra hours out of my day when I could be just sitting watching Netflix to build something bigger than what I currently have? That’s always my first thing that I do is I ask somebody their why.
The second thing that I always do is what’s going to differentiate you from me, because obviously, we’re both selling the same product. At the end of the day, we could technically be considered competitors. There’s going to be a reason somebody is going to want to buy from me versus you, whether that’s because I have that common interest of yoga, or I have that common interest of traveling, I have that common interest of I’ve got children. You always find those things that are going to make you relatable and that are going to make you stand out among a crowd of other people that are essentially doing this similar thing.
Those are the first few things that I always do. We always establish the why, and we always establish maybe three or four things that is going to make you stand out from anybody else that’s within that same industry.
JR: That’s awesome. I’ve been doing a lot of learning and lot of research lately. One of my mentors, a guy named Steven Larsen… Steven is probably the king of, what I’ll call, offer creation. A lot of that is exactly around that very thought. It’s an opportunity to create an offer that differentiates you because within network marketing, you’re right, we all sell the same stuff. If there’s a million distributors in your company, guess what? You have a million competitors.
Shannon: Good luck.
JR: You’re selling exactly the same thing in exactly the same way. You’re not differentiating yourself. Getting past just the differentiation of your personal branding, I’d love to hear some of your thoughts on things that people should be doing, apart from, obviously, your why and figuring out what makes you unique: things that you should be doing as a part of that branding effort. What are some of those must do’s on social media is what I’m thinking about most. What are some of those must do’s that you’ve got in mind?
Shannon: One of the biggest things that I always say is building your network. I mean, there’s two big things. If you’re talking in terms of social media, the word is right there being social. You want to socialize with your followers, and you want to engage with them. The second piece of attraction marketing is, again, that very first word attraction. Think of it in terms of dating. You want to give just a little bit on your first date. You don’t want to talk about your family’s health history and how your father has heart disease and how your mother is a little bit crazy and little bit loony.
You don’t want to be talking about all these things up front, you want to give just a little bit to make so many are curious about you, to want to come back and learn more and take you on that second date. And then on that third day and then on that fourth day and then before you know it, you’re in a relationship.
Those are the two big words that you always want to keep in mind when you’re dealing with social media is being social, putting yourself out there and giving them just that little bit of key pieces of you. That’s going to attract people to want to follow you and want to engage with you on that type of level. Funny enough, you and I met through social media. We’ve been able to build a great collaborative relationship. We’ve been able to compare ideas, and so this is how social media in my eyes is set up. Some people will look at it as a really bad thing because it tears people away. I look at it as a great opportunity to be able to connect with other like-minded individuals.
In terms of what you should be doing on a regular basis is finding those people that you feel you’re going to have a common interest in. I always have a three-piece rule when I’m looking at anyone’s profile in terms of do I want to connect with them: are they relatable, do I think that I would get along with them, and do I think they have what it takes to be successful at what I do?
JR: Awesome, that’s fantastic. It’s funny, it was our last episode, I introduced the Renegade Daily, a daily method of operation. Talks about, in one of the posts, there are one of the things to do: one is to interact with your network and to grow your network, so I’ve got to make 10 new friends a day.
When Heather and I first started in this business here a couple of years ago, I had 850 friends on Facebook. I went nuts. I added people all over the place to where it was like eight weeks later, I had 2,000 friends on Facebook, and now all of a sudden, I could basically re-release the same offer that I had made two months ago and 75% of the people who are on my friends list hadn’t seen it yet, and that’s growing that list and constantly, frankly, refreshing that list. I go through it regularly. I’m going through Facebook and if I see Debbie Downer pop up on my Facebook feed. I’ll give people a pass. Like, okay, you got a bad day, you want to vent a little bit, fine. People are human, but if I go through and that’s all they’re doing is venting, sorry, we were friends. Goodbye. I don’t need that negativity in my life, and that’s a big part of it.
As you’re doing personal branding, like put out there what you want people to see about you. One of the problems with social media, Instagram especially, is that you only see the really, really, really cool stuff that happens. My children are all grown up a little bit more now, our youngest is nine, but when we had babies. We post cute pictures of babies and oh here’s there three months picture and their six-month picture. But the pictures I enjoy the most are the ones where you see spit up all over my suit coat and blown out diaper up the back of the kid. Like, that’s real. Like it. People connect with that.
The pictures I’ve seen lately… I saw one that was absolutely adorable. She must’ve been a week-old baby wrapped up like a burrito with a bow on her head, basically. She’s wrapped up in a cocoon, and they took these beautiful pictures of her. I remember getting with our youngest, I remember getting family pictures and he was six days old. We were doing these pictures and my wife wanted to have him be on naked on this bear skin rug thing or this furry rug, so we did that and he totally peed all over it.
Shannon: I was just going to say I feel like I know where this story is going.
JR: I mean, all over it. We just laughed. Honestly, at that point, we were so sleep deprived.
Shannon: … authentic side and showing the real vulnerable pieces of you as a human being, because that’s what makes you human at the end of the day. I will say I get more engagements on some of the posts that I do on social media, where I’m showing a little bit more emotion. There is a post that I did a couple of weeks ago on my Instagram page, where it was one of those days where everything built up, built up, built up. I just had a big, big breakdown. I was like, I’m going to capture this because this is the part of entrepreneurship that people don’t see. Everyone always goes around saying how great it is. And here I am sitting on my yacht and here I am traveling the world. What people don’t realize is that first year to two to three to four years, it is nothing but hustle and grind, hustle and grind, hustle and grind. If you are able to even take a trip, you are extremely lucky, so I love trying to show that side.
I think it’s really important too because, again, that’s what makes you human. One of my biggest pet peeves is following different bloggers and stuff and every picture they’ve got is just this perfectly posed picture. You just look at it like nobody holds your coffee cup like that crossing the street like me more. I’m just like, oh my God, it’s getting all over it.
The more real and the more authentic you can be on social media is going to be a part of that attraction to your following.
JR: Yeah. I think that vulnerability lends authenticity. People can trust you more when you’re being authentic. One of the things I’ve tried to do with this podcast is to show the journey because that’s what that’s what makes it real, because it’s really hard to follow somebody… When you see that when you see a network marketing leader who’s making millions of dollars a year, they’re doing six figures monthly and you’re just starting out. It’s cool to say, “Wow, I could do that,” but then the back of your mind says there is no way on earth you’re going to be able to do that. It’s this fight constantly inside your head.
The challenge or the benefit of showing your climb to that pinnacle is so much more real for people. It also shows them, “Hey, look, I did this, and not just yay, for me. Look at how I did this, because you can do and if you’re willing to put in that work in that grind and that hustle that you talked about.” I read a book by Richard Bliss Brooke. It was The Four Year Career. It’s a spin on words of the 4-Hour Workweek.
Shannon: Great book by the way.
JR: Huh?
Shannon: Four Hour Workweek, great book.
JR: Oh, fantastic book, fantastic book. The Four Year Career talked about how you can work this like a career for four years and be in a place financially where you’d never have to work again. People think about that and we’re like, “Wow, four years isn’t very long.” When they think about 40 in a career. But when you’re in the middle of those four years, it stretches on for eternity. It feels like sometimes. The struggle is so real. But that same struggle, when you’re talking about personal branding, is what makes you a real person. What makes you followable. I think that when we’re willing to get real with ourselves and to show the outside world our real self, we get a lot more credibility and people are more willing to listen to what we have to say, because they know that we’re not just full of crap and that we’re not blowing smoke 24/7.
I mean the Instagram influencers, we’ll call them, that go out there and every pose is perfectly posed. I saw a meme once about an Instagram shot of a pretty girl and how it was like, “These are all the pictures that it took to get this picture. It’s like 25 pictures that the husband had sit there and snap in order to get just the right pose with just the right light with my hair in the right spot.” It was hilarious to see it, and I had a lot of fun because I know some people like that.
Shannon: It’s funny that you say that because that’s what we do. Me and my team, we are constantly doing shoots with each other because you want to have content, you want to have relevant content, you want to show real life. But what people don’t understand is you literally do take 200 pictures to get that one shot where everything is lined up right: the sun is hitting you in the right spot, the hair’s looking good, the nails are looking into it, the makeup’s looking good, everything’s looking good. We always joke because we have a lot of boyfriends and husbands that will come out. We always called them the Instagram boyfriend or the Instagram husband where we have that joke where it’s like, I’m going to need you to climb on that light posts up there and hang upside down…
JR: …to block out the shadow.
Shannon: …to block out this shadow over here. The funny part really, and I try and educate people on this too. I actually have a whole video reel that I’m putting together right now. I have yet to publish it. I will be publishing it, so as soon as I do, I’ll let you know. It’s the start to finish of what a photo shoot looks like and what I look like in real life, because what I put out there, of course, that image is going to be touched up. Of course, I’m going to have that filter on it because that’s what makes my page look aesthetically pleasing to the naked eye. When you’re looking at it, you want to have that same filter overlay that either makes it a little bit more mute or it makes it a little bit more white or it has that pink undertone to it or that blue undertone to it, whatever it is.
When you see a professional, an influencer’s page, you’re going to see all of these things you’re going to see. I asked like video of the photographer telling me what to do. I look so awkward and uncomfortable because I’m not a model, I’m just a regular girl. It was a funny reel that I’ve put together to show like this is what it takes to do an actual photo shoot and to put these pictures together, but here’s the real me at the end of the day, I’ve got pineapple hair nine times out of 10, I’m not wearing makeup half the time, I work in workout clothes on a regular basis. That’s just the real life. I think that’s what people want to start seeing more and more of.
JR: Yeah. I mean the touched up and retouched images we see constantly how they’ll show up on magazines are like, and this is what it looked like. And , the person has four extra inches on their waistline and everything else. It’s sad, really, the vanity that’s gone into that to portray. It especially affects women how women are portrayed in media. I think in a lot of ways social media has done us a disservice. It’s funny to think back to when I was a kid and we had a roll of film that sometimes wouldn’t get developed for months and sometimes years.
When I spent two years in Chile, I brought home rolls of film. I had a bunch a done while I was there. But like it was, it wasn’t digital. I mean this is pre-2000. Everything was on film and it was a in… It’s funny because you don’t get the same… Instagram couldn’t have existed in that world, and now we have it.
Well, so we’re about out of time for today, Shannon, but I wanted to get just your last thought and word as it relates to personal branding with what you’re doing with 36. One, how can people get a hold of you if they are looking for your services, and two, beyond that just some easy things maybe that they can do to freshen up or to really get started with their personal branding efforts.
Shannon: Our website is 36mktg.com, or you can follow us on Instagram, which @36mktg.com. You can also find me on my own personal Instagram page that way, it’s @Shannon_E_Lewis.
The biggest thing that I always recommend when people are starting to build that personal brand, and they have no idea what they’re doing in terms of that, is go find other people within your industry that are doing it right. Do not copy them because it’s already been done. What I mean by that is if you go and follow my page and you see what I’m doing, clearly, I’ve already done it. So the same type of following is not going to reciprocate the same way to you as they are to me because they already see these types of shots or types of captions being done. What I do recommend is seeing how they’re doing it. See the consistency with how they’re posting, mirror that. Find what makes you you and mirror that same look and feel but making it authentic to you, personally.
JR: Awesome. That same advice can and should be used across a number of different ways, not just when it’s talking about personal branding. Hey, Shannon, thanks so much for joining us. Again, you guys can find her @Shannon_E_Lewis on Instagram or @36mktg.com on Instagram, as well. Shannon, thanks so much for hanging out with me today and look forward to seeing some of your fun stuff coming forward.
Shannon: Yes, likewise.
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