Podcast: Play in new window | Download
The Health Fit Biz Level 1 Course is now available HERE.
Get started using coupon code getafterit to save 50% until Wednesday, August 23rd
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
Ryan: I’m Dr. Ryan Debell. Welcome back to the Health Fit Business podcast. In this episode, Dr. Anthony Gustin and I talked about the differences between being a primarily business person growing a business and being a subject matter expert/influencer. Anthony shares the highs and low he has personally gone through growing a business, what the benefits are. He used to be a Macadamia nut, I’m going to eat it right now. What can you actually expect going down the route of trying to grow a business primarily versus more of the route that I’ve gone through which is kind of growing as an influencer thought provoking person? What are the benefits and also the low points. So, we both got a little bit personal in terms of some of the struggles because reality is different that what it appears on the internet or from an external vantage point. So, that’s what we got going on this episode. Let’s get into it.
Ryan: Welcome!
Anthony: Welcome!
Ryan: To the…
Anthony: Health…
Ryan: Fit…
Anthony: Biz…
Ryan: Ness…
Anthony: Pod…
Ryan: Cast…
Anthony: of throwing back to the…
Ryan: This episode, why don’t we even say? We don’t know the episode.
Anthony: 54!
Ryan: More of 47.
Anthony: 40 something.
Ryan: In this episode, we are looking at how and why were the differences between being a business person or running a business as a primary role and like what it takes to do that versus what it takes to become an influencer and thought leader.
Anthony: Two sides of a coin baby!
Ryan: Two sides of the coin. What’s the coin?
Anthony: Probably a dollar coin. Sacagawea coin.
Ryan: Anyways, so there are two sides of the coin and what you have to do and achieve greatness on one side of the coin is different than what you have to do to achieve greatness on the other side of the coin.
Anthony: People think a lot of times online business means that you have to be the best of both of these things.
Ryan: We talked about kind of these when we talked about the episode on, what was that?
Anthony: How to get started?
Ryan: Why you don’t need a following to run an online business.
Anthony: Right.
Ryan: Because they are different things.
Anthony: 100% and so, this is a good thing for us to talk about because I think we both gone the separate sides of coin here. We are oddly really hard into the business person aspect and you’ve one really hard on the influencer aspect.
Ryan: And we both thought about going to the other side of whether we should or not.
Anthony: I think we should definitely have more balance, each of us but it’s definitely different approach but we are getting to the same in place.
Ryan: It is like there are many roads to roam?
Anthony: Right. Yes, I love that.
Ryan: Did I just make that saying up right now?
Anthony: No. No. I thought you said it several times before.
Ryan: I’m pretty sure I was not the first person to say that.
Anthony: (laughs)
Ryan: Pretty sure! Of course not, being ridiculous!
Anthony: You are clearly more on the influencer position than I am and I am more on executing, run, and grow businesses from kind of behind the scene aspect and that’s just how things have morphed in the last four years.
Ryan: Yeah!
Anthony: So, what are some skills that you think are different that you excel at as an influencer versus a business person including some kind of pitfalls if there are?
Ryan: A lot of this, we have a deep conversation yesterday about this. I think if you want to be an influencer, one of the most valuable things is you have to consider what you do as being on the level of expert opinion. If you can’t offer expert opinion and unique perspectives on a topic, how would you be an influencer thought leader? You are not an influencer if you repeat the same stuff that everybody is saying and don’t give your unique opinion or explanations of it because then that’s like kind of everyone had already thinks. If you want to position yourself as someone who let’s say goes and does talks and gives lectures or whatever you have to synthesize a lot of different information, think deeply about it and give your own take on it. That’s what people are looking for from an influencer or from a subject matter expert or what’s the other one I’m looking for? There’s another word I’m looking for.
Anthony: Expert?
Ryan: I said subject matter. Influencer subject matter expert! Okay! That’s what it is. Now, like what we talked about, if I wanted to just grow the business side of Movement Fix and I wanted to sell a product on how to stretch and roll and stuff, the content that will be made would be different because no one’s looking at like complex thoughts and ideas to sell a basic program. A basic program and the sales of that will be the thing that grows the business. It will have to be essentially sold or the traffic will be driven by writing articles and doing videos on basic things that solve basic problem. That basic stuff is not what makes you an influencer thought leader. Thought leader was the word I was looking for a minute ago.
Anthony: There is this inherent contradiction between running a business and value provider versus being an influencer and value that you provide there. Example of how it differs for the stuff that I’ve been putting out. Think about this as like a spectrum of value that you can provide. It’s all good like any value you provide is good. It’s not like one is better than the other but for instance I have some very crazy ideas on nutrition and stuff that I will probably publish on my own personal site. So, I have kind of a place to put that but if I put this wacky super long in depth thought pieces about nutrition on for instance, the Perfect Keto site, which we talked about in a podcast one or two episodes ago about how I have a content system written up. No one who is trying to learn about basic ketosis stuff would find that valuable. That will not be valuable for that person.
Ryan: It doesn’t help. It does not improve the business.
Anthony: Right. But putting up a lot of very easily digestible content like “Top 5 Practice Keto Recipes.” Like, that’s not a unique thought however that is still very valuable to a certain type of demographic and certain type of people that I think is easier to build the business on.
Ryan: So, that doesn’t lead to being a thought leader writing recipes but it solves a problem or answers questions for people and that can then help grow your business.
Anthony: Exactly! So, the strategy on that end is let’s find out what people want to know. Let’s find out what people from this traffic get. Let’s invest very deep into having a lof of this surface level… I won’t say basic but fundamental pieces of value and content versus as an influencer. I think what happen is people try to do that and then dilute their brand, an influencer brand, because they are putting just a bunch of basic stuff as one person.
Ryan: Yeah. Right.
Anthony: We like so if you just did videos and like how how to stretch out your calf, how to stretch out your hamstring, instead of like unique things like this is why people have pec tears. Example I gave to you like…
Ryan: Yeah. The crossfit article I wrote about the pec tears originals.
Anthony: The more unique of the perspective and thought you can put out…
Ryan: It wasn’t a report on pec tears. It was my speculation on pec tears which is like positioned as expert opinions.
Anthony: Yeah, which contradicts like putting out information about how to stretch your calf. That like, for instance, should be and we talked about yesterday how the Movement Fix as a business versus Ryan Debell… Dr. Ryan Debell (excuse me) as an influencer.
Ryan: Shhh… Hey come on! Come on Anthony!
Anthony: Are almost like two separate things.
Ryan: Right.
Anthony: …when it comes to that. And that is why kind of why I developed my personal site in conjunction with…
Ryan: Yeah. Thats been you know like… This is a pretty candid podcast that’s been a challenge for me to try to figure out how do I balance that. And then for you too. There’s a desire to be an influencer and write these articles but how do you balance that with the business. These aren’t easy questions that we know the exact answer to. These are struggles we go through that you and I talked about. We want to share these because people who listen to this podcast are going to go down or are going down the same path.
Anthony: Right. For instance, in its this momentum that we are killing either way for both of us. For instance, all of these that I am running are going very well if I cut away from that try to build an influencer positioning and really hone in my ideas that I have and publish those, then I’m taking away from momentum that could actually lead to more influence down the road. Likewise with you, if you pull away from creating all these great content that you think uniquely about to put in business systems and then grow this, then the less that you will have the momentum of growing an influencer network and going that direction.
Ryan: Right, right.
Anthony: This is a difficult question like we said but when you are thinking about this from starting from scratch, I think you can kind of feel it back and if you’ll look at both of our personalities, I think that it was just natural for us to kind of gravitate to where we were.
Ryan: Yeah. We probably gravitate naturally went that way.
Anthony: I don’t feel as comfortable like posting videos of myself or recording stuff as you do which is completely fine. Like people have different things. For some people it’s like super fun, easy, and like natural to do. With me, it’s like a struggle.
Ryan: Other people, you put them on camera and they freeze up, they can’t talk, they turn into different person and then you take someone else, you put a camera on them and they are just naturally able to do it. It’s weird!
Anthony: That’s one of I think.
Ryan: I can be trained. That can certainly be trained. When I was starting recording videos, I wasn’t as doing it the way I do it now. I learned how to be better but I would say it came relatively natural.
Anthony: When you’re starting out, this is the question you get to ask yourself “Do I want to provide value for many people and like provide base level of…”
Ryan: It’s like directly.
Anthony: “…of influence or do I want to really just provide a specific thought provoking things cause I have a lot of stuff in my head that I want to get out.” I think that’s kind of where you should invest in influencer or in business. It’s really, if you think about that, what’s more important to it that time. For instance, when I saw the problem of nutrition in ketosis to me this wasn’t a problem like people didn’t understand complex biochemistry and like my interpretation of how that really work. It was people just really don’t get the fundamentals of how to apply it.
Ryan: They just don’t even know how to eat healthy. Like they are not worried about the biochemistry implication. Like the biochemical implications.
Anthony: Like that type of stuff is a unique thinker. I think I have a lot to provide I just don’t think that is even close to necessary for people to learn about.
Ryan: One of the things like the strategies that I’m going to be using after we’ve been deep diving to it this weekend is for the Movement Fix, I will continue to push forward trying to be in my mind doing things that are more like giving my opinion and thought provoking ideas. I’ll do that through articles and continued podcast. To continue growing the business side, I will have to I’ll either get guest authors or content writers or content creators to make more of the basic things that people are searching for. How to stretch, how to roll out, how to do these things and then base essentially products to solve those problems that are related to those queries.
Anthony: Right. Let’s talk about downsides of maybe being influencer or versus being business owners.
Ryan: The downside I think I need coffee.
Anthony: So, I think maybe it’s a downside for both.
Ryan: Maybe we got to brew another batch here.
Anthony: Downside I think for business person, the upsides I think is it is much easier to obtain a lot of revenue in resource capital.
Ryan: Yes.
Anthony: You can really be resource rich very quickly doing that but influencers are called influencers for a reason. I think that people follow brands but don’t really… Like it is harder to create like a movement behind it. You know.
Ryan: Yeah.
Anthony: It’s just like a business with a product, it’s not like a credible foothold where I think influencer, you have a lot of massive loyal credibility baked in. But then it is just inherently a little bit harder to gain a resource capital.
Ryan: Yeah. There’s certainly a balance that has to be made for both because I’ve been able to be on my podcast and things like that. I’ve been able to create a lot of connections with great people. Like the pec article, I was interviewed by Yahoo news where they wrote an article on it citing me on Yahoo about the pec things.
Anthony: Right.
Ryan: Because I wrote the article as if like from my perspective and so, that is the connection as some point who knows what will happen with that. Right now, I know like one of the executive writers at Yahoo. Had I not done that and just focused on like supplying the basic information, that would not have happen. The connection would not have been made or I would not have these great people on my podcast who now I can reach out to, they know who I am, you know. We’ve chatted, et cetera. So, those maybe the upsides but the downside is forming like… having the resources monetarily to do larger things because it is just not set up that way especially at the beginning stages of being an influencer I think.
Anthony: It’s definitely a longer slower growth phase.
Ryan: I think with that, if you were to graph it out, it is longer, slower up and I think that that also makes it harder to go down quickly.
Anthony: Yeah. I agree with that.
Ryan: Versus a business supplying a product, it could go, it could be a quick up and a quick down. Like there’s less staying power I think because we’re humans and we build personal connections and I think that personal connection is built with an influencer to or you feel like it’s just different, you know.
Anthony: Right. So, that being said, each have strengths, each have weaknesses and both are right.
Ryan: And both can lead to very great places. Both resource monetarily and connection and the ability to help people.
Anthony: Right. And so, I think when you are thinking about starting out or kind of moving towards someone of an online presence or online business, kind of getting away from a day to day service based thing, I think that Challenge of the Week would be maybe putting just a blank sheet of paper two columns. One influencer and one business person and just writing down things that you’d want to do each of those and seeing where you think maybe you’d have to most impact, be irreplaceable and where your personality will fit the most. Kind of using that and thinking just setting in and being comfortable with not trying to do both at the same time but just doing one and seeing if you can.
Ryan: So before we end, I mean that’s the COW, I think it is important from our experience we share like what people can expect going each route in terms of like emotionally and like psychologically and the challenges and things.
Anthony: Okay.
Ryan: So like, as an influencer for example you’re making a lot of stuff that’s great before people give a shit.
Anthony: For a long time.
Ryan: Like a long time. You’re writing articles, you’re making videos, you’re doing podcast and nobody cares for a long time and that is a mental struggle. Like info disclosure. It’s not easy. Because you’re like “Man! I made all those great stuff!” People don’t value it. They don’t respect it. That’s because it takes a long time to get to a level where people start to gather around behind like the stuff that you’re putting out and do respect it and value it. So, I think when people go down the influencer route, you have to know that’s it’s going to take time and it’s not going to be fun mode always. You’re also going to get a lot of people who openly disagree with you and so you have to be able to deal with that personal criticism.
Anthony: Trolls. Haters.
Ryan: Or trolls.
Anthony: Trolls.
Ryan: Yeah. You going to have to… Like I get these Youtube comments that are stupid and then people like writing rebuttal things about stuff that I make saying Im wrong. You have to be okay with that.
Anthony: It’s a very personal…
Ryan: You have to detach, you as a human versus you as an influencer. That has to be something like you can reflect upon. The great thing is when people do value it that’s very like justifying cause it’s like you. You know what I mean? So, those will be some of the things you can expect going that that route. I would say it took me several years not that I am even at that large of a point yet, I mean I am still working my way up. But looking back, three or four years, it has certainly changed but there are lots of days where I thought I myself like “Men this is freaking… This is tough right now. ”
Anthony: Yup!
Ryan: Psychologically.
Anthony: So, one of the things about the downside of doing business stuff is that you’re stuck kind of where you start and there’s means of staying power. Let say for instance, keto goes away, people are not going to be interested in anything I have anymore. The time and money that I spent growing this company will just be gone. Whereas if, let’s say instead of movement you are now interested in brain chemistry and want to research just brain stuff, there is this audience where they value your specific thought as a person and you can just take them that way and like you said you have much longer staying power and more flexibility and long term presence. I think that’s another thing that people think about maybe the downsides of going the business route. Upside is extremely fast growth possibility because people like you as just one person as one influencer you can not put out the content or grow the credibility that you need to grow a business really quickly the same way in six or seven months like Perfect Keto. Impossible!
Ryan: You make a great product and you could sell thousands and thousands and thousands of units immediately because people want a product, they don’t need to like have known about the product for three years and follow it before they make “Oh! I want this now!” So, buy it.
Anthony: It is easier to scale earlier with a product and a business than it is when you are an influencer.
Ryan: In an ideal world you have a great business and a great influencer, that’s the holy grail that I think we are both trying to achieve but we are going down the opposite side of the coin path.
Anthony: Right but for instance, you have a very good business behind your influencer kind of direction and I have a decent amount of people following the stuff that I do and appreciate what I’m doing because of my transparency with the price. We will have a little bit of it but is really tough to blend the two.
Ryan: It is tough to blend the two but that is like part of the next project.
Anthony: Always learning.
Ryan: Always learning and so, yeah it’s not like being an influencer you don’t make money. You can do well for yourself. You can have great times right. You can do a lot of cool things. It’s not like “Oh! Doom! Either both of these suck!” They are both awesome!
Anthony: Right.
Ryan: But you know what the problem is? People are so full of shit that no one will ever tell you the negative because they want to have this freaking veneer where everything is fake around them.
Anthony: The Instagram life of everything around you is incredible.
Ryan: Instagram just f… Wow! Did I just drop fs?!
Anthony: Yeah!
Ryan: It’s just freaking bullshi*t! I posted this video. On there is me doing whatever. Each of this getting real now.
Anthony: Yeah, it’s fun!
Ryan: I was shooting. Whenever I go to like festival or like something like that, there’s always like this basketball shooting games and I always try to win Alona a stuff animal.
Anthony: Got you!
Ryan: And, so I had her record me doing shots for my instagram and I airballed two and I made one and so I just posted the one of me making it. And then I put in the caption: “I missed both of the airballs but I showed the one that I made. Instagram’s BS! This isn’t real.”
Anthony: Got you!
Ryan: But I can make it look like “Oh! Ryan is so cool. He just … every shot.” That’s not real!
Anthony: You can eventually record until you get it right.
Ryan: Exactly!
Anthony: Basically people are b*llsh*t. We’re tying to do some real stuff.
Ryan: The real stuff basically everybody’s b*llsh*t every time they post these stuff.
Anthony: Every good thing comes with a lot of bad stuff too. Even though those stuff are really good a lot of bads. You just have to deal with it.
Ryan: Yeah! You see stuff on the internet “Oh my God! That must be so nice.” You know what. There’s a lot of times I’m in the airport my flight gets cancelled and I’m like “Why?!” I can be at home just hanging out or like how many days I haven’t been around. Like “Oh my God! I have to make a video!” And then I go “Oh! Nobody watched it” especially in the early days. “Oh man! Why did I even bothered making this.” Like there’s self doubt. There’s a lot of things that are going that no one wants to talk about.
Anthony: That’s why you are listening to this podcast because you are up for the roller coaster ride. Right?
Ryan: It is a roller coaster ride and you know what I think that over time the highs get higher.
Anthony: And the lows get lower.
Ryan: I don’t think the lows get lower. I think the lows get relatively lower to the high but I think that the overall the curve goes up but you don’t get to these like deep levels of despair. There’s just the highs are so high that your lows are relatively lower but they are absolutely higher than your lows before.
Anthony: Oh! 100%. It’s like a climbing roller coaster.
Ryan: It’s like a climbing roller coaster that has larger hills. Man those are graphs! We’ll have Margot make it. Beautiful graph.
Anthony: You can draw it in iPad Pro.
Ryan: Oh yeah! That’s a different conversation. Alright! So…
Anthony: Challenge.
Ryan: Challenge of the Week is make those two sheets. One side is influencer, one side is business.
Anthony: Brainstorm getting started on a project where you feel most comfortable and kind of ups and downs that you want to take and get on that roller coaster ride baby!
Ryan: And get after it on that rollercoaster, coaster after it!
Ryan: Thank you guys for tuning in to this episode of the Health Fit Business podcast. If you found it helpful, please share with someone that you think it would also help and leave us a five-star rating on iTunes. Make sure also to go to healthfit.biz and sign up for the email notifications to which you can find right on the homepage so that you get all the updated podcasts and blog posts sent directly to you. Until then, we will see you next time.
End.
Recent Comments