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In today’s Q&A, we are helping Sam discover how to differentiate herself and understand why someone should listen to her when there is so much content out already out there online.
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Resources Mentioned in this Episode
- Today’s expert is Matthew Kimberly from matthewkimberley.com
- Chris Ducker Event
- Matthew on Twitter
Let’s dive into this week’s question!
JOCELYN: Hey y’all! You’re listening to an Expert Q&A with S&J. Today’s expert is Matthew Kimberley at matthewkimberley.com.
Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. Join us, each week, as we teach you how to flip your lifestyle upside-down by selling stuff online. Are you ready for something different? All right, let’s get started.
SHANE: What’s going on guys? Welcome back to the Expert Q&A with S&J podcast. This is our Thursday edition where we bring on experts to answer your questions. Jocelyn and I always say, we do not have all the answers but boy, we get all the questions. So we like to pass these on to people that know more about certain subjects than we do. And we have an amazing guest for you today, a guy that we met just a couple of weeks ago, in the Philippines, at Chris Ducker’s ‘Tropical Think Tank’ event. One of the best speakers we have ever seen and a real guy that knows how to book yourself solid. It is Matthew Kimberley from Matthewkimberley.com. Matthew welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast.
MATTHEW: Great to be here, S&J. Thank you for having me.
SHANE: Yeah, we are so glad you are here because we are clueless about some of these questions, especially the one we’ve got for you today. So Jocelyn, let’s throw Matthew a question here.
JOCELYN: Alright, this question is from Sam and Sam says, “There’s so much information out there that I find it hard to differentiate myself. How do I make my blog stand out in the crowd and make it unique? I’m talking about a subject that is well-covered by many others. Why would anyone listen to me?”
SHANE: This is a great question Matthew because, you know, we think about this all the time because really, when you think about it, every issue is pretty well covered on the internet. So how do you make yourself stand out in such a crowded world that we live in these days?
MATTHEW: Sure, absolutely great question and the first thing that comes to mind is don’t worry at all about the content. It’s great that there’s information out there, it’s great that other people are talking about what you are talking about because if they weren’t, there’s probably a reason for that. So, if you find that you are the only person talking about something, unless it’s brand new and very, very, very little – is brand spanking new, then that’s validation. That’s external validation. If other people are talking about vacuum repair, then that means that other people are listening to other people talk about vacuum repair. So that’s great, good job, there’s other information out there. Now, how do you differentiate yourself and how do you make your blog stand out? There’s a couple of ways that I would go about doing this and a couple of ways that I would advise my clients that they could go about doing it. The first one is, you. Okay, so the information that you are presenting is standard, it exists elsewhere, but you are the only person who can deliver it the way that you can deliver it. Many of us, when we adopt a public persona, we water down the really interesting parts of our self.
SHANE: Right.
MATTHEW: We often say this in corporate emails, both from companies to their mailing lists, but also people when they are wearing their professional hats; here where I live in Malta in the Mediterranean, most emails begin, “Dear Mr. Kimberley, I trust this email finds you well.” Now people –
SHANE: That’s an old standard form email.
MATTHEW: Is that the same? I mean, who speaks like that in real life?
SHANE: Right.
MATTHEW: I’ve got a client who’s a recruiter, and they are a great recruitment company, incredibly successful, and they update their social media with, “Dear Candidate, we are currently seeking –” and who says ‘currently seeking’ in real life?
SHANE: Right, exactly.
MATTHEW: Nobody says that, we say we are looking for – so drop the shackles around professionalism; it’s 100% possible and in fact, much more interesting to be professional without being formal. That’s the first thing. Now, you might be very formal, that’s okay. So you are the person that’s interesting. So naturally be yourself, that’s [Unclear 0:03:49] and regular advice and that’s the thing that you expect me to say but also, I would think very hard about what makes you, you. What makes you slightly different, and ramp it up, and amp it up and slightly magnify that element of yourself. For example, I know that I have a pretty good vocabulary.
SHANE: Right.
MATTHEW: I know that I have, in my head, access to words that many people might not have access to. I have an interesting repository of linguistic stuff –
SHANE: There you go, that’s [Crosstalk]
MATTHEW: I dropped it, I dropped the ball with stuff.
SHANE: That’s okay.
MATTHEW: So being aware of this, I make it a point when I send my emails, or when I write my blog posts or similar, to use words that other people aren’t using. I make it a point to ensure that I address the highest common denominator, while many people in my space make a point of addressing the lowest common denominator.
SHANE: Right.
MATTHEW: Lots of exclamation marks, lots of capitals, lots of dumbing it down. So one of the ways I chose to differentiate myself is to use my voice ramped up to 11. You seen that movie? Spinal Tap?
SHANE: Right.
MATTHEW: Turn it up to 11.
SHANE: It’s interesting you say that ‘cause like when we first started out our podcast, we actually had this conversation of, ‘Man, people are gonna think we talk really funny ‘cause we are from the south’ and like nobody else in podcasting is from the south. They are from California or New York and like we were like, yeah, but everyone’s gonna love that. So we purposefully chose to start every episode of our podcast with the word “Y’all.” “Hey y’all!” because that has ramped up us that’s how we talk, and people really loved it.
MATTHEW: Absolutely. You know, you said people would love it, there are going to be some people that hate it.
SHANE: Sure.
MATTHEW: And that’s great, that’s exactly what we are looking for, not for the sake or riling people up, or getting on their wrong side, or deliberately aggravating them, but because when people are hating on you, it’s a sign that there are strong forces at play. And when there are strong forces of hatred at play, it has an opposite effect with other people. So, if you stand for something, this is how you differentiate yourself – you stand for something. So let’s say that your subject is in fact, vacuum repair, let’s say that you write a blog about vacuum repair; how about if you are the fundamentalist Christian who writes about vacuum repair? Okay? That’s how you differentiate yourself, but only if you are actually a fundamentalist Christian or deeply, deeply religious person, and you let that speak through your words. So you know, you can – perhaps you end each blog post with a small prayer, or a recognition of thanks to the Lord or whatever it is that you do. Or perhaps you are – perhaps you are the deeply liberal vacuum repair guy, and you pepper your stories of vacuum repair and vacuum reviews with references to pro-choice and [Crosstalk] lifestyle, peace-mongering, liberal stuff. What’s gonna happen then is, you are going to deeply attract the people who like that, and you are going to repel the other people. And do we know about objects, or artifacts or things that simultaneously are attractive and repellant. They are magnetic. They are magnets, right? Every magnet has a north and a south, so if you want to differentiate yourself and become more magnetic, don’t be afraid to wear your beliefs, your personality on your sleeve, and let that infiltrate everything. And if you look at the people who you admire the most, the people who are invited to appear on TV shows as pundits, the people who write opinion pieces for newspaper columns, these are people who stand for something because if you are invited on to a TV show and you don’t have a strong point of view, you are not going to be invited back –
SHANE: ‘Cause you are boring, basically.
MATTHEW: – ‘cause you are boring, don’t be boring. And you look at everybody who you admire and you know, just pick up four or five gurus, for want of a better word, and you say, what is it about them? Yes, they have expertise; do they have more knowledge than you? No. They certainly have a lot of knowledge but they are not the most knowledgeable people. Typically they have two skills, the also-rans or the people who inspired to be like them, don’t have. The first skill is the packaging and presenting information. So, either they got that knowledge or they are very good at packaging it up in a way that other people want to consume it and secondly, they normally stand for something pretty overtly. You don’t have to dig too deep to find out what their core beliefs are.
SHANE: Awesome, that’s a crazy good answer and there’s no way we could have delivered that any better for that question. That’s why I totally saved this question ‘cause I knew you were coming on the show and I was like Matthew Kimberley has got to answer that question.
JOCELYN: Yeah, I love that advice; I think that the problem a lot of people have when they are starting out, is that they are trying to attract everyone and I’ve heard it said that if you try to attract everyone, you’ll attract no one. And that is just the bottom line of online business or any business for that matter. So we love that, thank you so much Matthew, we knew you would give a solid answer to this. Where can people find you online? What are you up to right now? Tell us a little bit about that.
MATTHEW: You know, the best way to forge any kind of relationship with me is by email. So you should go to Matthewkimberley.com and give me your email address at the first opportunity because 80% of the stuff that I write, which is really good, doesn’t make it online anywhere.
SHANE: Awesome, all right guys, that wraps up our Q&A for the day with Matthew Kimberley, an amazing answer about standing out and differentiating yourself online. Make sure you head over to the show notes for today’s episode at flippedlifestyle.com. Till next time, take action, get out there and flip your life. We’ll see you then.
JOCELYN: Bye!
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