How to Get Attention Online: What a Magician Knows That Marketers Don't - w/ Jimi transcript

What if I told you that what you've actually done is you've actually selected a card. You said the king of spades. Stop it. A marketer just pulled a card out of my head live on camera. I was not expecting that. This is not something we had planned to do. Except he runs the same exact trick on your customers. You just never catch it. The first stage of any kind of communication, it's called the connection. During that connection, your body is actually releasing neurotransmitters called oxytocin.

Connection, curiosity, and then the close. He calls it the magic script. Then he gave me one framework, a whole year of content, all yours, and none of it that AI can ever fake. And the whole thing fits in one hand, pun intended. Please join me in welcoming Jimmy Gibson, a magician turned marketer turn magician turn marketer on the show. Without any further ado, let's jump in. Jimmy, welcome. Hi Nean, great to be here. Uh looking forward to our conversation.

Really happy to have you. And where I want to begin with is um most brand uh or most communications people that I talk to that are on the internet do not have the unique background of being a magician. So I do want to start there. tell us about your past life, if you will. And then as you do that, maybe you can layer in what being a magician taught you about attention and how to hold people attention, get people's attention, cuz ultimately a lot of that is what we're doing on the internet right now. Correct. Absolutely. Yeah. And I've got lots of stories, so you'll have to stop me and uh interrupt or this will go on for hours. Um, so yeah, I was looking through some boxes a couple of years ago and I pulled out this little membership card to Merlin's Mail Order Magic Club.

You know, there was no Amazon Prime. You couldn't get it overnight or same day. You had to wait 6 to 8 weeks. Usually, you cut like a little coupon thing out of a back of a comic book. And anyway, I flipped that card over and I did some quick math. I was like four years old and I thought, "Okay, well, I can't read or write. I guess my parents signed me up for this. You know, I was always the kid that was um following the back of the box of the cereal box and putting the toy together before I could read.

And so I think there's some level of how do things work, but then I needed to be able to channel my class clown uh genes that I guess I grew up with. And so I love performing. And you know, through middle school, my friends parents would hire me to perform for their birthday parties, and I was getting like $25 a show. And I thought, "Wow, I'm I'm rich." Um, and then in high school, I met a gentleman who was the account executive for a Fortune 100 company. He worked at the ad agency that handled the account and they were looking for a promotional entertainer.

And I thought, "Wow, that would be great." And so for the next 16 years, that's what I did. Wow. Wow. Um, but then I got to hang out and and so this was in high school, right? And so everybody else is doing, you know, retail or cutting yards and I'm doing these shows and I got to hang out at the ad agency and I thought, well, they do a lot of cool things there. It was kind of at the tail end of the Mad Men days and you know it was very uh cool to see what creative things were happening and why they were making the decisions about what to do and what not to do. And so I just ask a bunch of questions. And so I kind of had this dual path of where I was a magician but I was also working at advertising agencies. agencies. And it's interesting how they both helped each other because, you know, if you take a magic trick and you layer it

on top of a marketing message, it basically follows a pattern of three phases. And, you know, we can get into that um if you'd like, but yeah, you're trying to make a connection with the audience or make a connection with your ideal client. you need to keep that attention and then you need to move to the finale of the trick or the call to action or whatever the case may be. And if you don't follow that sequence, it just feels weird, especially in a business situation. Um, and then for a magic show, you end up not getting the applause and the trick doesn't come off the way you want it to work. And so, yeah, I would say uh you referred to it as my past life. I actually still perform because I love magic. I love performing. You know, it's something I've been doing my entire life. And um I donate shows to community events. I get

paid to do shows. Um you might try something on the podcast today if you'd like. like. Oh wow. Okay. Um but yeah, I would say that's a quick flyby and there's lots of things that we could talk about as to how that works and why it works, but yeah. No, that makes sense. And I love how holistic that was in terms of I like you started at four and then you kind of painted the entire picture of everything you've been up to up until this point.

So I think that was very succinctly done which you know I can always appreciate that. um something you said jumped out and was very interesting and so you may have heard of O Pearlman um who is not really I guess a magician but kind of in that space and I was listening to him recently and he mentioned that you always have to have your best trick as the last trick and it's only after hearing you just now that it clocked to me that that's exactly kind of what a CTA is right so if you leave your CTA or call to action embedded within your message or what have you it it doesn't work and this it's the same exact reason as why it doesn't work in magic right so I think that was like just a realization that I had that was very interesting um I am curious to explore the three phases that you mentioned because you know

we're all about frameworks on on this show cuz the whole point is that instead of giving advice quote unquote we're trying to teach people how to fish if you will and frameworks help do exactly that so I am curious to uh if you could please share a little bit more about the three phases that you were mentioning. Yeah, sure. You know, I know the name of the episode is action and wanting to take what you know and, you know, have a a bias towards doing. And so, let's use that as our playground here. Um, I don't think I asked you where you're sitting today. Where where are you located? Chicago. Chicago. Uh, Chicago, the windy city. Yeah, I visited there a couple of times. Um, actually with that client, I visited they had us all go to a performance of Second City, which I guess typically was a feeding ground for Saturday Night

Live. And yeah, that was a cool experience. experience. Um, are you in downtown Chicago? Are you in the suburbs? Where are you? I'm in Lincoln Park, so it's about a 15minute drive from downtown. I could never live in downtown. It's just not my cup of tea, if you will. But yeah, the neighborhood I'm in is much more silent. Well, not silent, I guess, but non downtownish. It's more like a quieter, you know, more homely type atmosphere. It's very close to the lake, which is why that's one of my biggest reasons for being here. So, it's a 10-minute walk, and it's a walk I take like twice daily. It's my favorite part of my day. Oh, good for you. Well, I'm in Charleston, South Carolina, and um I don't live in downtown Charleston because we get a lot of tourists here just like you do in Chicago, but Yep. Um I can leave my driveway and be

downtown in a restaurant in about 12 minutes. So, similar kind of geography. Yep. Yep. Yeah. So, you get the best of both, right? right? Yep. Um, well, I'm going to ask you to go to the front door and open that door. And there's been a delivery this morning. morning. And it's a box that looks like it's kind of been around a while. So, if you could pick up that box and bring it into uh it's your choice. Do you want to take it into your kitchen? Do you have a table somewhere we could put this box? It's um it's not huge. It's not heavy. It's probably about the size of like a shoe box. Uh, like literally is this like Sorry, I'm not We're in our mind. We're in the theater of our mind. So, I want you to imagine this. I got you. Yep. So, I go to my That That was a trip is all I'll say to that. But yeah, I I'll go to

my door. I pick up my thing. Yep. Great. Yep. It's right here. Actually, why the kitchen? We'll just, you know, have the box right here. Yep. Okay. Great. And so maybe for some of the listeners and viewers, they can uh take this little journey along with us. And so you um you know, it's covered in round p brown paper. It's taped up. So you're going to un wrap the box and then you're going to take the lid off. And what's interesting is there's four packets of envelopes in this box and they're all tied with a ribbon. And so you pick up one of those packets and there's multiple envelopes tied with a ribbon in packet number one. And as you look at the return address, you're kind of confused. It looks like it's from some secret club or organization and then you look at the address and the address is a relative of yours that

you've sort of lost touch with. Um they've been a favorite relative. There's no, you know, weirdness about it, but you're like, "How in the world did I get these letters?" Hm. And so you put those down on the table beside the box and you pick up another pack. And as you look at this pack of letters, you're thinking, "Okay, I know exactly what these are. These must be love letters." And I don't know if I should be opening these letters or not.

Oh, okay. Let me put these down. And then the next group of letters that you pick up, again, tied with a ribbon, you look at the return address. And this is a little bit confusing because it's from a private investigator. And you're thinking, okay, uh, did this person hire the private investigator or is something being disclosed in this? And there's like the world's cheesiest little slogan and logo on the return address. It says, "We dig up dirt on anyone." And it has this little shovel or spade like next to the return address. and you kind of chuckle and you're like, "Okay, that's kind of corny." But it does look like it's been around a while, so maybe that was cool back in the day. H H um and then you get to the last packet of envelopes and you pull those out and you look and it's actually from a diamond mine in South Africa and you're

thinking, "Oh man, this is my lucky day. Um Um I never knew." So, you've got these four packets of envelopes, and I'm going to let you open one of these today. Um, which packet do you go for? Do you go for the secret club? Do you go for the love letters? Do you go for the private investigator? Do you go for the diamond mine? Which one is intriguing to you today? today? Um, wow. That just because I'm torn, we'll just do method of elimination.

Okay. I think the relative is probably not compelling enough given the other contenders. So I think the relative goes in the bin first. So we left with three. Um today I don't feel too nostalgic. So I think that's the end of the love letters as well. So that leaves out the PI and the diamond mine. There is probably no way somebody just happened to send me a diamond even in this makebelieve scenario. So, I'm actually tempted to open the the cheesy we dig up dirt on you PI letter that was sent to me. As it stands today, my answer might have been different yesterday. It probably tomorrow, but today I pick the PI. You are very analytical in your decision-m. That is fascinating. [clears throat] Um, okay. So, you're just going to untie that ribbon and you're going to spread out those letters. And as you turn them

over to try to decide which one to open, you actually see that they're numbered. And there's number and they're in order. And the numbers are from 1 to 13. And so you can choose any one of those numbers. Which one do you think is the right one to open? 13. The number 13. Well, what in the world is all this about? What if I told you that what you've actually done is you've actually selected a card. Mhm. Mhm. There's a deck of cards behind me. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And as we went through those various scenarios, [clears throat] I said there was a secret club or organization. organization. There were love letters or a heart, a private investigator. investigator. And I said, "There's a little shovel or spade in the logo." And then there was a letter from a diamond mine. So we have the four suits. And then I said, "Turn

those over." And there's numbers 1 through 13. So with aces low, what's the top card if ace low is a king, right? Mhm. Yep. So, in effect, without you even knowing it, you selected the king of spades. Correct. Of spades. Hold on just a minute here. For some reason, I think I have got the jokers still in here. Mhm. Mhm. All right. But if I go through the rest of these cards, [clears throat] I'm not sure what's going on here because you have selected.

Oh, there we go. They were all kind of mushed together. Wait a minute. There is one one that's turned around. I don't know if that's possible. You said the king of spades. spades. No way. Stop it. Get that in focus. Yeah, that it is in focus now. Yeah. Wow. No way. Wow. So, that's crazy. Let me explain what's going on there. What was the first thing when you said, "Let's look at the three phases." Mhm. Mhm. There was something I did right after that. that. I thought you just jumped through the premise. I think unless I am forgetting uh like a where you lived. Ah, yes. That that is what it was. Yep. Correct.

So, I asked you where you live. We talked about Chicago that I had visited that. You told me about walking around the lake that you didn't want to be in downtown. downtown. Correct. Correct. I told you I lived in Charleston that I also did not live in downtown. So, I know your whole show is about just having a conversation. And so, we were having a conversation, but that is actually the first stage of any kind of communication. communication. It's called the connection, right? And so what happens during that connection? Your body is actually releasing uh neurotransmitters called oxytocin. And those neurotransmitters are sort of that feel-good chemistry that it's hard for you not to enjoy where the conversation is going because I'm asking you about yourself, right? Yeah. Yeah. You're telling me. And so tell me how

that felt. Um, and you know, we're basically at the start of the podcast, so we haven't talked about a whole lot of stuff yet. So, how did that feel when I started asking you about yourself? Yeah. Um, a few feelings, right? Obviously, I don't think there was any overarching ones, but I think the biggest one was just of um, stimulation, you know, cuz this is not that something that has ever happened in any of my episodes. And also the stuff you were asking had actually nothing to do with the question I had asked you. But I obviously know and trust you enough to know that you know you're just not randomly deflecting the question altogether. So it was a big chunk of that and then separately there was also yeah basically what you just shared right like when you build a connection with somebody when you just share about

your common experiences like when you mentioned that you have a similar geography to where you live in your city I think that has a way of binding people together in like a relatable way. So I would say those two were the biggest uh feelings that at least rose to the top among some other stuff like there was some confusion. There was some classic you know what in the world is going on but that was lower those were the top two. two. Great. And so basically through that I have gotten your permission to move to the next phase which is the curiosity phase. M and so the curiosity phase is an interesting one because you have to know you have to be able to read the room and you said a couple of things that you know we're on this podcast we have a particular amount of time that we want this to you know be recorded for you

said I've invited you on the podcast so I trust that you're going to go in a direction with your questions and then I started getting into this box that was sitting on your front steps and at some point you thought, "Okay, am I supposed to go to the door? Did you ship me something this morning?" And then we started going through all these scenarios. So tell me how that felt. Yeah, it really felt like I was being led is is really this one's pretty overarching, but I was able to relinquish control to whatever it is that you were doing for two reasons.

First, you did it really well. So, credit where credit is due. You were just there was just no doubt that this was going to be something, you know, so I didn't know what it was going to be, but I was able to trust you and put my faith in you that you were going to take me somewhere cool, for lack of a better term. And yeah, I think that was just the next section was basically just this like I was just happy to be led by you.

Yeah. So, we've established that connection. I've invited you on this little journey. I actually invited the listeners if they would like to go on this. They may have had a different experience with the envelopes. And then as we started to go through the envelopes, that was kind of weird. Now I can't go through 14 different packs of envelopes because at some point the curiosity is going to turn into boredom, frustration, you know, whatever the case may be, right? Yep. Well, I know that I need to communicate communicate four different things and so those are the return addresses on those envelopes.

I never ask you who the relative was. It's not really important. That's up to you. you. Um but it does position another character in the story. There's also a physical space, right? And so we've gone to the front porch. I've guided you to the back and you chose the kitchen. We're opening the box that's covered in brown paper and and so there's a lot of textural and spatial things that you're able to imagine, right? I didn't just have you floating in air.

Mhm. Even the ribbons, the brown paper, all of it was very rooted in the real world. Like we I knew exactly what I was imagining. Credit to again. Yeah. And that's to suck you in to this experience. And so what's happening there is actually a release of dopamine. And so we probably, you know, hear about dopamine addiction with social media. It's not really addicted to social media. It's actually the expectation of closure or the expectation of a reward.

And so that's why you binge TV, right? Because Because they open a loop and then your brain has to close that loop with the next episode or what's going on. And so what I'm doing is I'm taking you down this path and you're sitting there thinking, I don't know where this is going. I'm going to be along for the ride, but sooner or later we have to resolve this, right? Yep. And so, um, we got to the end of the four. I told you you were going to pick one of those packs of envelopes. You did a elimination process. Um, we had a number from 1 to 13. And then I said, "What if I told you?" And then I leaned back and I started to explain and recap the various return addresses.

And I don't think it was until maybe the third one when we got to the private investigator and I said shovel or spade. So when was it that you were able to bring this all together into a card? Oh, actually if for it was when right when I saw the deck of cards is when it immediately clicked for me cuz the diamond is what also did it cuz that was like direct versus some of the other [clears throat] stuff that was more uh you know like metaphorical if you will.

But so yeah, but as soon as I saw the deck of cards I was like ah and then the 13 cuz obviously there's 13 uh in a in a deck. So yeah. So now your brain is starting to release serotonin, which is that everything is right with the world. Um, it all makes sense. Oh, that was kind of cool. But I'm dragging out the finale of the illusion, right? And this is the part which is the conversion. conversion. And so I'm spreading the deck. I'm saying, "Oh, there's something wrong.

Oh, look. The two jokers are in here. Oh, oh, here's one that's turned around the other way." And then I'm holding the back up to the camera and then I spin it around. And so we're sort of building to that final phase. And if we map that across any kind of communication, whether it's a blog post, whether it's a social media post, whether it's an in-person sales presentation, whether it's communication with your team, if you don't follow those three phases, and I call it the magic script because it needs to follow a scripted path, it feels weird, right? And so I think we've gotten into the habit now of making a connection which sometimes feels a little fake because we know that we want to get to the call to action and so we say some things or we do some things that we think are making a connection and then we go straight for the close

and that feels kind of weird. You know, if you've been on LinkedIn and somebody sends you a connection request, interesting, that's what it's called. The first thing that happens after you accept that connection request is they hit you with some sort of request or a pitch of some sort and you're like wait a minute you don't even know me like you have not elicited my curiosity and so through that part of curiosity I said what if everything that we've just been through is actually you've selected a card and so when you say what if you're basically creating a bridge between what you think and what is possible. And so if you have a business where you're selling a product or service, service, then if you know your ideal client has gone down these paths to solve their problem or get something that they want and you say, "Well, what if I could

provide that to you in half the amount of time at double the quality?" Like their brain starts to go, "How is that possible? Is is he or she a magician?" Right? like I don't understand. And so then your brain is seeking for that. And then you get the chance to explain how you're going to be able to deliver that magic. And now the call to action feels like the next logical progression and it's not a sales pitch. And so I could have just explained that flat out, but the experience that you went through and this extended discussion about the three components and the neurochemistry that's involved, I think it'll make it stick and it will give folks an application to make sure they spend enough time in each one of those phases.

And it's not manipulation. It's not um you know sneaky. It's just the natural way in which we like to receive information and it sets you up for the best opportunity for success. Yeah. And actually not only is everything you just said, not only is that true, I think I want to add that when you take somebody through an experience that's as which stands out to this extent, right? I think what you do is you just um plant champions in the world so that so I'm already bursting at my seeds to go and share this with like a few friends and once I do that right of course I'm going to tell them that do you know who taught me this and then you're going to come up right so I think this is such and for me this is where the real power lies because this is where this stuff gets exponential right it compounds like the people that are

listening to this is not the end of your influence here in terms of what you've taken us through because because it was so good and because we were moved so much, we're going to share it into the world without you ever um asking us to. You didn't even acknowledge that this is something that we might do. So that for I just wanted to call that out in terms of what makes you know experiences like this so cool. So this is very interesting, right? and I'm already filled with ideas of how to implement this in my own writing. So for some context, this is very interesting timing because um over the past two months actually is where I've finally started taking writing on LinkedIn very seriously. seriously. By seriously I mean that yeah thank you.

By seriously, I mean that before it just used to be your ad hoc, hey, I'll just write it. Treat treat it as Twitter basically, right? Which is not the greatest approach when it comes to at least LinkedIn cuz it helps to have a plan. You at least want to have some semblance of a content flywheel and such. So, I've been doing that and the more I do it, the more I start to pick up on patterns where before when I used to see a post that goes mega viral, I used to just be like what in the world did this post have to go so viral like why like this makes no sense like you know but then as I spend more and more time and like some of the ideas that you mentioned today maybe 20% of them were halfbaked somewhere in my consciousness here and there but what you've done now is I'm already I can think of going back to those posts

and I can see that all of them did this exact thing that you talked us through. Right. So, so this is very interesting. So, where I'm going next here is Jimmy, can you can we do like a you know live walk through of how we can use this to actually write posts, right? and maybe I can come up with like an example of a post that I'm trying to write and you can like maybe help Wordsmith or maybe not Wordsmith but at least ideologically help align what I'm doing wrong. Do you think that would be a worthwhile exercise? exercise? Yeah. Before we do that, um I also want to give you a framework that will allow you to probably fill up your bucket for the next year of things to write on LinkedIn. And so, um, one of the things that's happening, and I write five days a week on LinkedIn, um, um, the preponderance of generic

and flat and meaningless content that is happening now is because of all the AI help that people are getting. And so I would say I'm a fan of using AI for the leverage that it provides, but it is not going to be able to tell your story. It's not going to be able to give the texture that it needs to connect with your audience. And so the framework that I'm going to provide will number one ensure that it cannot be written by AI.

Number two, it will create something that you can use for any kind of communication and it will allow you to have enough content that you're never going to run out of things to say. And so I'm going to hold up my left hand and the first one I'm going to start with is my pinky. And so we probably remember the pinky promise you gave on the playground to your friend to say, "I pinky promise this." And you didn't break that promise. And so, um, whatever it is, if you have a business, if you're, um, working in a business, if you have something that you're passionate about, what are you promising that you're going to do? And so, let's just use a business example at this point. point. Sorry, real quick, if I can jump in. A lot of my audience is trying to do personal brand building, so I think that approach will be more applicable.

Perfect. Okay. So, as far as a personal brand, which is a great move, uh, especially in the world of AI because AI loves people instead of logos. So, in your personal brand, what are you promising from a content perspective? What do you have opinions on? What will you stand behind? What will you draw a line in the sand and say, "I will not accept this or that, but you will commit to doing this." And so what is that promise that you can stand behind that has teeth to it? All right. And so it could be a promise to your reader. It could be a promise as a personal brand to your business. It could be a promise in how you relate to other people. It could be a promise in how you do business. It could be customer service or how you answer questions. And so right there you've got 10 or 12 things related to a promise that you're going to make.

Uhhuh. The next one is the ring finger. And I use the ring finger because you know in most western society that's where you wear a wedding band. And you might think that's a promise but it's actually the passion. Like what are you passionate about? Why did you why are you doing what you're doing? Um from a personal brand perspective what what gets you up every morning and what do you dream about? And then are you in it for the long haul? You know I've been married 20 years.

that's a different mindset than uh you know a passing relationship. And so what are you committing to for the long haul and how are you going to communicate that in your messaging? And so these are things that you know those two fingers alone you've probably got 20 things you can talk about. The next one is the middle finger. And that's typically a symbol of, you know, people think it's a vulgar gesture, but it's actually a gesture of defiance. And so, you have to name your villain. Um, who are you giving the finger to?

Um, and so the way you rally someone around a cause is to identify the villain. Look at any story and there's a villain, right? And so we have to fight that villain, you know, from a personal brand perspective. Uh we just talked about the fact that you're going to commit to uh using AI but not having it take over your brain or your personality. And so you can make the robot your, you know, villain and you're going to be involved in every step of the process. Um, so I would think about identifying your villain. And again, it can be a person, it can be an ideology, it can be um, you know, any type of uh, metaphorical villain. Yeah. Yeah. The next one is the pointy finger. And I say the pointy finger because you have to be able to point at somebody. Who is your audience? Who are you speaking to? Right. um you know, you

just did a recap um last month or earlier in the month about your hundth episode and you were trying to find who is the audience for this podcast. If you don't know who you're talking to, then you can't really talk about those previous three fingers. And then once you point to them and say, "I'm speaking to you." Then they can go, "Oh my gosh, how did how did they know that that's what I'm thinking?" And then you can turn that finger around and you can invite them in, right, to your world. Um, you also, if you're doing a post, let's, you know, use that as an example, there should be one key idea. There should be one thing that you're talking about, one problem that you solve and one call to action from that post. Your post can't be about 20 different things that, you know, requires clarity.

And then the last one is the thumb. And the thumb print, you know, or the thumb is a universal symbol for, hey, things are going well, things are not going well. And so as you build your personal brand, you have to measure like is this working, is that not working? And then be able to adjust, right? Um and then the thumbrint, what thumbrint are you leaving on that person's brain after you share what you're going to share, right? What do you bring uniquely to the conversation? Um, how is what you're saying and what you're doing from a personal brand perspective going to change somebody's thinking, change your community, change the world? Um, it's unique to you. I have three sets of twins as nieces and nephews. They can actually open each other's phones with their Face ID, but they can't open it with their thumb. It's unique to them.

And so, if you don't put your unique spin or your unique perspective, then it's just going to sound like everybody else. Um, and if you think about AI and the way it is basically a pattern recognition engine, when something stands out or something is unique, it goes, "Hey, that's different than what everybody else is saying. Let's go over here and look at what content is coming out of that particular channel." So maybe that'll be helpful. again, if you get stuck, look at one of your fingers and decide what are you going to take a stand on today. Yeah, I love what you said about AI because I was talking to um this friend earlier and it's so interesting because all of the even the greatest most frontier AI models because they're trained on all of the data on the internet. Um, the way to think about it

is if you're at the base, right, and if you're trying to get closer to the mean, sure, it can make sense to do that. But if you're trying to get to the ceiling, it's not going to get you there cuz it'll just make you regress to the mean because that's just what it's trained on. So, if your goal is to lift yourself up and get to the meanish area, it might be a better use case. And again, there's caveats to this. None of this is like a blanket across the uh you know globe true but it's just a helpful thing that I learned that you know I'm I'm just sharing but based on your framework the question I have is so it's very easy to remember I think I can just tell it it it to somebody in my sleep so it's really good with that my concern is that is the goal then here to incorporate all five fingers in every post or some

combination of them like can you talk us through converting this knowledge that you gave us to actually how to use it when we write. Does that question make sense? sense? It does and thank you for bringing that up. Um, and they will also tell you that AI loves frameworks. And so if you type in to chat, GBT, Gemini, Grock, Claude, Jimmy Gibson, and the magic script or Jimmy Gibson and the five finger framework, it'll come up because I have talked about this multiple times, right?

And so, um, give me a topic, uh, that you're thinking about writing about. about. Yeah. And actually just as a fun exercise, maybe I can quickly rapid fire like all five of my fingers. Would that would that work? Yeah, sure. Yeah, great. And we can also test if I remember. So the pinky was a promise. So my promise to um like my audience is that um so wait, what was the promise about? Sorry, can you remind me one more time? time? What are you going to stand behind? What are you going to guarantee? what what hill are you going to die on to make sure that you're going to fulfill that promise to your audience?

Correct. Yeah. So, sorry about that. Yeah. So, I think in terms of promise for me, it is being able to help the average Joe or Jane that doesn't come from technology use AI for their day-to-day life in a way that helps them without getting overwhelmed by just how much rage baiting goes on in in that world and to continue to do that over an extended period of time. So I'm the source of information for of the 10 breaking news headlines that happened today. This is what concerns you and here's what it means for your day-to-day and you know I want to continue to do this pretty much forever. So that is my promise. My passion is that uh this is exactly what I really like to do. So say somebody is you know they haven't started. I am not an expert by any means at AI but I I know enough to be two steps ahead of them. So my passion then

is to bring them up to speed to where I am and then do that in a way where they make their own decisions. No one's spoon feeding them anything. This is what you need to do. I'm an expert. Do A then B then C. No, we reject that. You figure out your own path. I'm just trying to get you to see what's out there. For the enemy, it is inaction slash being overwhelmed. Um there is it's so easy to just get lost. There's like 16 new updates to every tool every day at this point. So what are you going to do?

Right? So what's important is don't worry about all of the avalanche of news going around. Focus on your problem. Figure out how you can solve that. It's good enough. You do not need to boil the ocean. for the pointy thing. I think I mentioned that it is pretty much any person that is trying to get better uh in terms of utilizing this wonderful new technology that can truly improve their lives even though a lot of them don't realize that currently. And then for my thumb or my unique imprint, it is the way I've been able to learn this stuff is um I used to be in my past life like a programmer/computer scientist. I am no longer that. But I was able to really just hack through, for lack of a better word, you know, agentic workflows, whatever you have to do what I need AI to do for me. And it's my belief that

literally anybody can do it. I have an 8-year-old nephew that I tried to coach and he's gotten pretty far. He's like honestly embarrassed me in terms of how good he is already. So my unique thumbrint is getting through to people that even if they don't come from tech they can be an accountant they can be anything it doesn't matter um a magician maybe they can still utilize their like what I'm telling them to you know actually do the thing that they need to do so this is like my five finger thing and then most of my posts are some flavor of this right so say something new dropped I write a post about here's what this means for you ignore all of the other noise type of thing is that helpful? Did I, you know, we overbloat that? that? No, that was great. And I'll just give you some feedback. Um, that was amazing

that you were able to go through that. Um, I have a suspicion as I was going through those five fingers, you were already one step ahead and it was triggering some things in your head. Um, um, I understand uh that we have a limited amount of time and so you went through that very quickly. quickly. Yep. But I will point out some things that resonated with me. And and so one of the things you said is do you have to include all five fingers? No. The goal is that you don't need to talk about um a hundred different things. You do not need to be posting uh sunset photos with quotes. You need to choose three to five things to talk about [snorts] from every single angle. Um, and that should give you peace to know that you don't have to talk about everything. And so, if I had to boil down what you said, it's

basically encouraging people to get off of square one and take the next logical step that doesn't have to be a herculean step. It just needs to be um movement in a direction and then over time that will compound. And so, you can wrap that in whatever package you want. Um, and each post can literally be about one finger and your perspective on how that happens. And so, gotcha. The most interesting thing that I heard you say and the reason why it was interesting to me was because of the diagnostic specificity of what you said.

You have an 8-year-old nephew and you've been able to help. Is it a him? He, she, him, him, him, him. Uh, nephew, obviously. Sorry. Yeah. um not enough tea this morning. Um so you've been able to help your nephew and you've been amazed at the progress and so now what that tells me is um um wow if you can communicate and then you also said you used to be a programmer and a developer. Mhm. Um, and so one angle that you could take, which would be contrarian, is you think you have to know all this stuff.

I'm a developer. I know what happens behind the scenes, but I am able to communicate to an eight-year-old, and you would be shocked at what they've been able to accomplish. And so you could actually take your thumb print and move it to your pinky and say, and so this can be an authority play. And you can add some more details about your developer background and say, I'm a developer. I know all the behind the scenes scenes behind the scenes. Yeah.

Ones and zeros that's going on, but I promise I'm going to make it so simple. an eight-year-old can understand. And here's the first lesson I would like to teach you. And so if you look at the structure of a LinkedIn post, we talk about the hook, right? And so the hook um needs to satisfy that connection and you can also build in a little bit of curiosity. And so if you looked at a LinkedIn post, the first line is your connection post, which you have 65 characters to be able to do. The second line can be your curiosity, which you have 45 characters to do. And then the body of your um post can basically take them through more curiosity where you're going to open a loop and close a loop, and then your call to action or your conversion at the end. So again, the whole post is the magic script. We're picking

something to create the hook. And so a sample hook that may work for what I just described is um um uh I used to be a computer geek, but I realize nobody wants to hear that. I just taught I love that. I just taught my 8-year-old nephew how to do X and I'd like to share it with you. Now, obviously that's longer than 65 characters and 45 characters. And so this is where you can use an AI model to go, here's what I'm thinking. Here's what my parameters are. I need this to be a snappy hook that will stop the scroll. scroll. And then perhaps there's a photo of you and your 8-year-old nephew.

Yeah. um a little video, a something. Um you know, infographics and carousels um have the most engagement of any type of content. Um and and so then you can start to mix that up. Um articles are back in vogue because they stick around longer. Um and so if you look at your cadence, you can go, "Okay, I'm going to post three times a week. Here's the different types of posts I'm going to do." And then you can sort of mix and match just like you've done with your podcast. You can decide, well, I kind of like putting these together, but they're not getting much traction, so I've got to try some other things. And it becomes an experiment. Was that helpful?

That is so helpful. And just from what you've told me, I feel like Yeah. Um, even though you just laid the foundation, I've already even been able to build up the first couple floors, if you will. So what I mean by that is I love that you said that not all five fingers need to be hit on every post because there is such a big component that's often underlooked of you resurfacing on people's feeds. So say you talked about the thumb today and you talked about the middle finger day you know two days later the person reading knows and remembers who you are like so their brain can piece together your five fingers fingers individually right like sorry I mean holistically even though you're not talking about all five fingers on all on on each post you just need to do it cyclally enough for that to stick in terms of who you

are for the person that's reading which is also such an underrated thing and not at all something I've been taking advantage of at all cuz people might think this is a bug, but I actually think this is a feature, right? Cuz you can experiment, you can go after various styles. You can um you know, yeah, just not feel like you're locked down in a box while still being true philosophically philosophically to who you are, which is the five fingers. Yeah. So, I love that. And honestly, I feel like this should not like I feel I I feel, you know, like I need to pay you or something because let's play around. Let's play around with the middle finger and who the villain is with that same set of characters, right? So we have you and we have your nephew and then we have the gurus who are telling you that you have

to be some expert at knowing how all this works. And so if you did a post basically the same post but you're going to structure it in a different way. You could actually have two different villains and they become two different posts because the villain could be [clears throat] don't believe all the gurus. They're trying to scare you. listen to my eight-year-old nephew and how he learned to do blah blah blah blah blah. So now that's even better. Wow.

And so now I go, okay, I'm aligned with the way you think because I don't want to believe the gurus either. So there's your connection point. Then I've added some curiosity and go like what? Your nephew. Okay, I got to read this. But what if your nephew was the villain? What if you said, "Um, I just spent an hour with my nephew and I hate him." Not really. He gets it. I don't. And so now you go, what is it about this 8-year-old brain that is able to do something because we have been programmed as adults to not see things in the same way. And so you're kind of sarcastically sarcastically making this younger kid a villain. And so now you can play around with that and then if you have like I'm kind of snarky and I like to have a sense of humor because nobody has a sense of humor on LinkedIn. LinkedIn. Same actually. Yeah,

I like to be that way as well. Yeah, definitely. Yep. And so right now you've got like four or five posts all with the same characters. And so if you spread those out over multiple weeks, people are going to start to learn and you can bring your nephew back. And now your nephew becomes, you know, a star in your post. And everybody's like, "Oh, yeah, his nephew, what's his nephew up to these days? What is he learning now?" And And now you can bring in your grandmother, you know, all these different family members. And so we learn that your family is important to you.

Like growing up, my my family was my audience, right? And so I would do things on my brothers and my dad and you know, all these kinds of things. And so that starts to create this richer, fuller texture where we get to know and we feel because everybody else, you know, has people that they interact with. So bring them into your story. So yeah. Yeah, he would love that firstly. So he has a YouTube channel and he's always asking me for shout outs and I just I'm like, you know, there's no need for that. But but he would not complain. The one kind of parallel question I have to this is does any of this change when you're writing posts specifically with self-promo in mind for those of people for for the people in my audience that have say their own podcast or a course that they have or if they're actually

trying to sell something maybe they have a business. Does this change at all or is it still playing under these same rules but maybe the execution looks a little bit different? No, I think that all happens in the conversion step. So, if the call to action is um listen to the podcast, if the call to action is consider a purchase of my service, you know, then you get into funnels and you go, go, let's go back to the ring finger. Are you respecting the courtship? Are you asking them to marry you too soon?

Um, you know, you have the first date. Is it a coffee date? Is it a dinner date? Like if you rush to the marriage and you want them to buy something before they've had the experience of dating you and getting to know you, then it's going to feel a little creepy and a little desperate. And so you have to respect the relationship in the courtship. Um to use an oldfashioned term. Yeah. Um but yet it has to follow the same sequence. sequence. Very interesting. Wow. Um Jimmy, what's next for you? Um cuz it really feels like you you have this just on lockdown like what a true master. So I'm very curious from your vantage point which feels so far above mine. What do you see like what do you see around you? Talk to those of us that are trying to get there. there. Um well believe it or not I was not writing online till about two years ago

because I did not want to add to the noise. noise. Wow. And I had lots of people saying, you know, you should write online. You should do these things. And I go, yeah, I don't really think I have anything to say. And then I finally decided like, I'm just going to do it. And so I made a promise to myself that I would write 30 days and launch 30 pieces of content. And I joined a cohort that did that. And then I was like, "Oh, well, people are actually responding.

They're interested in what I have to say." And so then I launched my own podcast and I had 54 episodes which I'm bringing back. But that was an experiment that I was like, "Okay, well, I'm going to do it." And then um I decided I wanted to learn how to do video. And so I said, "I'm going to post a video every single day on LinkedIn." And I posted 146 videos. And then I realized that LinkedIn is probably not the best place to post videos because the algorithm is not in favor of promoting them like that.

Correct. And so I said,"Well, let me start writing." Well, here's what happened. Not only was it the conversion of AI and you know, I've been this company that Thrive Internet has been around for 20 plus years. We've seen a lot. You know, I've been with them for five and a half. And so, through the process of me writing and doing all these things, um, we started to see that personal brands, which we've just talked about, are one of the most important things. And it's actually, um, connected to dollar value. when an executive or somebody within an organization is able to speak and become visible, that can mean real dollars for that brand. And so the owner of the company came to me and said, said, "We see the writing on the wall. I'm not going to be the person to get out there and do this stuff. I've seen what you've

done online. I want you to be the voice of the brand." And so I was like, "What?" Okay. And then I was like, "Well, how am I going to do that?" And so because I took a chance and stepped out there, I didn't know there was an audience watching and then I was asked to do this in a bigger way. And so then I just continued to level up and go, "Okay, I'm just going to try a bunch of stuff." I was on a bunch of podcasts. I started writing for Forbes and Entrepreneur. I write a blog on the company website every month. And I do a 15minute video that accompanies that. And I started seeing like, "Oh, this is actually working." And so the feedback loop was, okay, I I kind of can't stop now because I've sort of figured out what to do and where to go. Yeah. Yeah. And so then I studied and I'm like, what else is going on with other companies?

And so then I initiated a study of 400 businesses across 500 um different verticals. Um, wow. wow. I'm traveling to Savannah, Georgia tomorrow to speak in front of a group of business owners about this very topic. Um, I decided that I wanted to put all this down in a book. And so I've written a book on this very topic. And so I would say if the audience is listening and they're thinking, "Well, I'll never get there." Well, of course, because you're looking at me after two years of saying, "Yeah, I'm going to do this." And I set incremental steps and then I leveled up those steps. And you just have to start with step number one.

The first post that I made, I was scared to death. You know what? Nobody saw it. The algorithm is not in your favor, right? And so, and that's a good thing sometimes, right? right? Yes. Yes. And if I look back at the first video I produced, it was horrible. But I was like, just be okay with being bad and getting better. And so when I gave myself permission to not be perfect, that nobody's going to die by me posting something, be respectful of other people, genuinely have their best interest at heart. And so if you want to teach something and I would say educational content is the most consumed because we all want to learn something, you know, if we're like-minded and you genuinely have a heart for your audience, then you're going to get an audience that connects with you and just don't get discouraged. Like some days

you don't feel like it, okay, okay, do it anyway. And that starts to grip build that muscle. So yeah. yeah. Yeah. No, no, I can relate so hard to a lot of what you just said because a lot of those things are basically precisely the reason why this podcast exists. So it it always, you know, almost moves me in a in a weird way to interact with people that get this idea because I know it for you it might just even seem trivial, but I know you also know that it is not trivial for other people and it's almost at this point my mission, you know, to change that fact. I do think everybody should u, you know, understand this trivial fact. Um, for those that want to get in touch, Jimmy, for your mastery around brand building or copyrightiting or what have you, what is the best way for them to reach out to you?

you? Yeah. And so, I'm practicing what we talked about. Um, connect with me on LinkedIn. If you DM me and have any question about anything, I'll actually answer you. So, happy to make that invitation to folks. And then if you want to learn more about the company, um, even if you're, you know, not at the point where you can hire a digital marketing agency, but you want to kind of see what's involved. And we have a huge amount of writers on staff. And, uh, again, I write, um, go to thriveaggency.com. thriveaggency.com. Uh, and yeah, I would say those are the two places that you can, uh, start to understand more about how all this fits together. together. Awesome. And I'll be linking both of those in the show notes for anybody curious to directly go to those places from there. Um Jimmy, this has been just so incredible. I just want to say I

think the so at the end of every episode I love to you know talk about the thing that I like the most from that conversation and I think with you it's really hard first of all is what I will say in the to just you know table stakes. It's there were so many incredible moments. I will say the thing that's my favorite though having you know noodled on it a little bit in the back of my mind was how you so I gave you like a five seven minute spiel about my five fingers you were able to first correctly identify like a random niche thing that I just threw in for no reason that actually didn't even have to do anything with the five fingers and then you were further able to drill down on that already niche thing and further spread it across three different slices of stuff that I know I would stop scrolling if I if that landed on my

feet. Like it was actually so good. So it shows that you know it really speaks to your expertise and the mastery level that you have at this and honestly yeah my my show is like bejeled by your presence and this this has meant so so much for me and I truly want to thank you for taking the time for me and our audience here today. Yeah, absolutely. It was fun and um um believe me once you start writing and get into this for those listening you'll be able to see patterns and identify and you'll be able to do the same thing. So don't look at it as some you know magic power that I have um just stick with it and and you'll have the same skills and you'll be amazed at like oh my gosh I can actually see through the the fog at this point. So yeah. yeah. Awesome. school.