Bryan McAnulty [00:00:00]:

What if you could build a business that makes money every single day without trading your time for dollars? That's exactly what Gemma Bonham Carter did back when she was working a nine to five in public health. Stuck in traffic at eight months pregnant, she knew that she needed more freedom. She launched her first online course in 2017 and made $13,000. But fast forward to today, that number has skyrocketed and her course business now generates over seven figures a year. And she hasn't had a $0 day since 2020. Gemma helped over 10,000 students launch and scale their profitable courses. And now she's integrating AI to help creators move even faster.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:00:32]:

And if you are just selling information at some stage, that is going to die. I think there's like two ways to compete in the new world of AI. One is like integrating it fully. Like, what are the tools? What can I be building? How can I help my students implement faster? And then the other is today, she's.

Bryan McAnulty [00:00:49]:

Here to share her best strategies for turning what, you know, into a thriving course business, how AI is reshaping the industry, and what it really takes to build a business that runs on autopilot. Welcome to the Creator's Adventure where we interview creators from around the world, hearing their stories about growing a business. Hey everyone, I'm Brian McNulty, the founder of Heights platform. Let's get into it. Hey, Gemma, welcome to the show.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:01:18]:

Hey Brian, happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:21]:

Yeah. My first question for you is, what would you say is the biggest thing either that you did or you are doing that has helped you to achieve the freedom to do what you enjoy?

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:01:30]:

Oh, yeah, great question to start off with. Um, honestly, I think it was really like betting on myself and going all in on like the digital courses and digital products kind of model for my online business. Um, when I started, I could talk for this entire episode about the many business models I tried of like, you know, doing services. I was doing DIY workshops, like cra, you know, craft workshops. I was, I had an Etsy shop, I was a blogger. I did all of these different things and it wasn't until I, I actually gave like a talk at a conference about blogging and it was, you know, basically me teaching about blogging. Right. And I had all of these people come up to me afterwards asking follow up questions, like, really wanting to pick my brain about, about what I had been sharing.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:02:21]:

And a light bulb moment went off for me of like, oh my gosh, okay, this is it. Like, I love teaching about. And at the time it was about blogging strategy. It's since shifted to teaching about like online course marketing strategy. But it was at that moment that I realized, okay, I actually want to lean all the way in to this model of creating online courses and digital products. Something that can generate revenue for me without requiring me to show up live every single day. And that shift really changed everything in terms of what I was building in my business. And so now, yeah, I have this business that, you know, largely runs on.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:03:01]:

I talk about this in when I teach marketing of like the marriage of evergreen funnels and live campaigns. And so we really maximize our sales by leveraging those two kind of marketing strategies. Um, but it means like, I have a pretty flexible schedule. My calendar is full of white space. I can take time away from my business without worrying that that's going to have a really detrimental effect on my income. I actually like my family and I moved to France all of last year because I can take the business with me. Right. And do it from anywhere.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:03:33]:

So that's really the biggest thing was like making that decision and going all in one on building the kind of the systems, the infrastructure that were required to make that happen.

Bryan McAnulty [00:03:45]:

Yeah, that's a great point because I was thinking about that for myself recently too. There's definitely a difference in business of like, okay, I have a business, it's doing things. Maybe I'm trying a bunch of different things like you said, but when you really decide for yourself, like, okay, this is really what I believe in, what I care about and like, I'm really going to go all in on that. It definitely does make a change, I think, in everything for sure.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:04:12]:

And I was also working, I mean, just to give you like personal life stuff. At the time I was working in kind of the nap times. I had babies at home at the time I was off on maternity leave and I had this really clear vision of like, okay, I really do want to turn this into a full time income so I don't have to go back to my 9 to 5 job after my mat leaves were over. And. And so I had that like fire under me. Right. To figure it out. And yeah, really went for it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:04:39]:

Yeah. Well, the next question I have here, maybe I'm going to kind of answer it for myself already. And we kind of talked about it and hinted at it that like online courses, part of the reason I think it's such an incredible business is it does give you that freedom. You do have that potential. And I think most of us like starting a business as entrepreneurs, a big Driver of that is that we want to be able to have this freedom in our life and in our business. And some people get confused and think they want to make a bunch of money. But the reason you want to make money is to be able to have that freedom for yourself. And like online courses are really great at being able to provide that for yourself.

Bryan McAnulty [00:05:19]:

Would you say there's any, any other different, like number one benefit of being a full time course?

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:05:25]:

I mean, I think you've kind of nailed it. Like for me it's that piece of leverage, you know. So when you're selling courses, you're not stuck in this cycle anymore of trading your time for money like you would be if you were offering one on one services as a coach or consultant or service provider. Right. You can only take on so many clients before you're going to max out your time and then you're kind of having to make a decision about going like, am I going to build out an agency and have actual like staff and team members? It becomes a whole different business model. But it's completely different when you build an online course or some sort of digital product because obviously you can build it once and, and sell it hundreds or thousands of times. And what's really amazing is like I have programs now that I created back in 2019, 2020 that I'm still selling today. And while we have updated them, of course we've updated the curriculum over time.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:06:19]:

Like I continue to sell these same flagship programs and we have thousands of students who've taken them. So the leverage piece is just really incredible there. And the, any impact, like I can impact more people by selling this as an online program or course than I could if I was doing this one on one. Right.

Bryan McAnulty [00:06:41]:

That's exactly what I was just going to add to it because I had the same moment when I had this small web design studio and I realized that I don't want to only be able to have this leverage to be able to have the time freedom for myself. But ideally I want to be able to impact more people too and not just be like, okay, well I helped this client. That's really nice, but I wish I could help more people. And that's another reason why this model is so great.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:07:06]:

Totally agree. It's amazing to me now that I've been running my business for as long as I have, like the different people in different industries that have come through our doors, like from all, like parenting, real estate, nutritionists, artists, you know, wellness experts. The fact that I feel like I've Been able to touch so many people in these different industries and the ripple effect from that is very fulfilling.

Bryan McAnulty [00:07:31]:

Yeah. So I think our audience is. They're probably sold on the idea now, if not already. I want to touch on what you mentioned about the combining the live and evergreen. I want to hear more about that, of how you do that because I think this is a point where people get stuck. They hear, they hear all these things from different people. Like, oh, evergreen's a way to do it. Oh, you've got to do live stuff.

Bryan McAnulty [00:07:56]:

And I think it's pretty. A pretty common problem for people either to not know which to do or which to do when.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:08:03]:

Yeah. So it's all sort of part of this like, I think of it as like a big machine with cogs and the wheels are turning and they all kind of can help support one another. You can't necessarily build the machine all at once. Right. It's like you do one thing, you get it working and then you add in more and more layers to it. So I just want to like preface by, by saying that because it can feel a little overwhelming when I talk about this system, but. Exactly. You're exactly right.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:08:29]:

So the idea is they can all work and they can all work together. So if you're hearing voices of people you know in your, in your feed, like you're seeing ads all the time or you're on email lists of people who are really promoting one over the other. In my experience of doing this for as many years as I have, the real magic happens when they work in conjunction with each other. So you can have something like an evergreen funnel, whether that is a webinar based funnel, whether it's a funnel that kicks off from some sort of freebie you have with an email sequence afterwards, whether it's a little challenge, like it doesn't really matter and it probably aligns with. You're going to have to think about how it best aligns with your audience in the program you're trying to sell to like develop the right evergreen funnel for you. But you can have that running 24, 7, 365 so that as new leads find you, this is what you direct them to. And the idea is that the people who are ready, the people who are fast action buyers, the people who know that they want the solution now, they're going to be the people who buy in that evergreen funnel. But what it also does for the, you know, a standard conversion rate is 2%.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:09:40]:

So let's say 98% of those people don't buy. What you've done in that funnel is you have positioned yourself as an expert in your niche. You have dropped a lot of great content for them. Because when I teach Evergreen funnels, it's not at all just like, here's a bunch of really salesy, push it down your throat emails. It's like we're actually providing really thoughtful content in those emails and in that webinar or whatever it might be. And you've established a really strong understanding of your offer. So then two months down the line, six months down the line, a year later, you know, whenever it is that you run a live promotion, those people on your list already know about that program because they've gone through that funnel. And so then what happens is you've got all of this baseline know like and trust already there and they're so much more likely to jump into the program when you're doing that live campaign that has that hype and that energy and that real time feel.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:10:38]:

And like you actually can connect with people on like throughout that live campaign, whatever that looks like. And it's really interesting. When we brought these things together, we have found and it has remained true to this day, like years later. When we look at our live launches, our live campaigns, over 50% of the buyers have gone through the funnel before. So it's like they went through that funnel, built that baseline with me, and then purchased in the live launch. And I just can't like stress it enough that these things work so incredibly well together. And the live launch also attracts different buyer types. Right.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:11:16]:

If you got the fast action people in your funnel, you're getting the people in your live launch who maybe need more of those touch points. They need the longer Runway, they need more of that warming with you to, to make the purchase.

Bryan McAnulty [00:11:28]:

Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. Okay, that, that's very clear. I'm curious next for AI, like, why can't course creators ignore AI in 2025? I'm really big on AI. I want to kind of hear your take on that.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:11:44]:

Yeah, well, oh my gosh. We could spend the whole episode talking about different ways we're using AI, I feel like. So I think that there's like nuance here because AI can be from a course creator's perspective, AI can obviously be really incredible at helping you produce elements of your course that you're building. I think what's important to understand is like the legality point of view. This is all still very gray area of like, can you really copyright and sell something that AI has produced. And as far as I understand right now, the answer is no. So if you want to retain copyright of your and have it really be like your intellectual property in your program, I still really am a big believer that this needs to come from you. Like this needs to be your experience, your skill set, your thoughtful, you know, expertise that leads the creation of this course that you're putting together.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:12:49]:

But then use AI to help you build certain things out. Like for example, a really simple example would be like, let's say I'm recording videos that teach something for my program. Well then I can take the transcripts of those videos and have AI help me put together all like the welcome stuff for the each lesson. It can help me put together like the additional like tools or workbooks or accompanying downloads that go with each of those courses. Right. And then the other aspect that I think is really interesting and important as we move into 2025 and beyond is like integrating AI into the offer itself. Meaning if I'm building out, if I'm teaching you something. So let me give you a really tangible example.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:13:34]:

I have a program where I teach about email marketing and I'm teaching you about email marketing. I can actually build public facing tools using AI. So I use ChatGPT in this case via like custom GPTs. I can build them to be trained on my frameworks and methodologies like my ip and hand those over to my students so that they can implement what I'm teaching so much more quickly. So I have, you know, a custom AI assistant that is trained on my way of doing subject lines and it spits out subject lines for them. I have a custom AI assistant that's trained on my way of doing email marketing and they can use that AI assistant to write the emails for their business. Right. So integrating AI, I think into our courses and into our offers is this next iteration of like the online course model and world.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:14:30]:

And, and if you are just selling information at some stage that is going to die. Like I feel like this is we're in a moment where like things are shifting. So you really want to think about usable. I think there's like two ways to compete in the new world of AI. One is like integrating it fully. Like what are the tools, what can I be building? How can I help my students implement faster? And then the other is leaning into human connection. So it's like human connection over everything else. Like I'll give you the information and have curriculum for you, but we're going to be doing coaching or we're going to be doing.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:15:02]:

We're offering, you know, one on one stuff or we're auditing your things. There's a community or there's whatever it might look like where we're leveraging actual human connection. And I think that those two things are going to be more and more important in this field. And then as an aside, just because I can't, we can't have this question. I can't not talk about it. But like as a course creator or frankly any online entrepreneur, if you're not using AI to run the backend operations and systems in your business, you are like leaving a huge amount of, I don't even know how to put this, like you're not leveraging the efficiency and time saving that you could be. And I am a huge believer in the way that I don't think you need to be up on every latest AI development, frankly. There's new things coming out every day.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:15:48]:

It can be a full time job just to like stay on top of it. But what I have gotten most value from are building these AI assistants. I do them on ChatGPT and Cloud for like two different functionalities. But I have these little assistants that are trained on very specific things for my brand and my business and my operations. And those assistants now do like, they have saved us countless hours per week and save me so much expenses when it comes to like team as well. So absolute game changer. Had to mention it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:16:23]:

Yeah, I completely agree. And like, like there was so much hype and everybody talking about the idea of like, oh, you want to get a virtual assistant for your course business or whatever. And yeah, that can be so powerful. But like you can get a lot of that now from AI essentially for free. And yeah, you don't have to say like, I'm going to take all this time to understand all of it and implement it with everything. But I always say like think of one tedious thing that you do repetitively, like how can you involve AI in that? Because there's probably some things where, or even if, if not something that you do repetitively, something that you wish you could do repetitively but you just don't have time for. And there's probably some things like that that it's just a small little thing that you've gotta do all the time, but if AI could take care of it for you, it would save you hours every week or month or even every day.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:17:13]:

So yeah, yeah, the operational things also like copywriting stuff, there's just so many avenues for time saving. It's wild.

Bryan McAnulty [00:17:21]:

Yeah, yeah, that's great. Yeah. And I agree with all of your. Your points there. I think creators should either realize, like, the way I say it is that if you're making courses, like the idea of like a mini course for like $9 or something like that, I think that's kind of going away because, like, you can still, you should still try to make, like, great lead magnets and all of that. But if somebody can just go to, like, ChatGPT and ask them to explain it, they can pretty much just get it there. But where your value comes as a course creator is your unique message and your unique experience. And that's why people want to learn from you and would purchase from you and not somebody else.

Bryan McAnulty [00:18:03]:

And they can't get that from ChatGPT because ChatGPT is not you, for sure.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:18:08]:

Yeah. And this also ties into the whole conversation around building your business on your personal brand. I think as a course creator, that's more important than ever because to your point, if you want to stand out and compete in the marketplace, if you're just behind like a faceless logo, you're really not able to build that same, like, relationship with your audience that you can with a personal brand. And people will buy. People buy from people. Right. Like, all of that really matters. And so if that's not something that you have thought about or put much time into thinking about in terms of how am I really, how is my personal brand really coming through? In all the content I'm publishing and everything that I'm touching in my business, now's the time to be thinking about it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:18:53]:

Yeah, yeah. So to be really clear, I think a good example of maybe what not to do is to think like, okay, like, I heard Brian and Gemma talking about this. So that means I'm gonna go make 1000 AI generated courses and go sell them all. That's how I'm gonna use it. No, don't do that. And it's all going to be at this faceless brand that is. I'm just going to build that that has little value. And the value that it does have is only kind of going to go down.

Bryan McAnulty [00:19:22]:

So, yeah, it's got to be yourself. You don't have to, like, share everything about your personal life, but having some way for people to connect with you, that's really going to change a lot and help you impact more people with that. And then the other point about, well, how can you then integrate AI with what you're offering? I like that point as well. We've done some of the same things with custom GPTs. I did that when we made like an AI course at the, not last year, but the end of the year before that and right when the custom GPTs came out, we included a couple things that could help you with things like that and told our creators like, you guys should do that too, like build a GPT you can offer with your course. And I think a good way to think of this is you mentioned, I think you mentioned like the idea of having like a formula. Like this is the way you would write an email or you would write a subject line and you can tell that to AI and then it can help implement that for people and even if it doesn't do it as good, which it's probably of course going to be better to just get it from you directly and get like actual coaching from you directly to do that. What's really powerful about it is wherever you do have some kind of formula of some certain specific steps, you would tell somebody the AI by the fact of it being able to say like, okay, you give me this information now, here's what I'm going to like transform and give back to you.

Bryan McAnulty [00:20:42]:

Just being able to see that as like the potential customer or student, it can really help you learn and move along a lot faster. So it's really valuable to your customers in that way.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:20:52]:

Yeah, couldn't agree more.

Bryan McAnulty [00:20:55]:

Awesome. So yeah, I've talked about my opinions on, on AI a lot here and Heights platform. We already offer a bunch of AI tools for our creators. Like our, our view in like the course creation process is the AI is not making the content for you, but it's helping you with different parts of that. So it's helping you set up all your products and like configure the settings, the technical part. So like you get to focus on creating and not like learning software. And then when you have made the lesson, it can go and review the lesson and let you know like, hey, here's some questions your students might actually answer about this. So you've got that like first, first initial feedback if you're not ready to put it in front of real people yet.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:21:35]:

Yeah.

Bryan McAnulty [00:21:35]:

And so I'm curious, is There any other AI tools that you swear by besides like ChatGPT?

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:21:42]:

Oh, I've kept it really lean in terms of using ChatGPT and Claude are my two big ones. I use cloud when I need, usually when I need more like longer form writing done or kind of deeper thinking, that's when I'll use Claude. And then ChatGPT is more of My, like, my hype girl, she's really good at like the more like peppy stuff and she's really good at like quick tasks. So yeah, I kind of think of them like a little bit differently, but I really use those two the most. And then we use Zapier and make a lot and they kind of do similar things in terms of like building workflows and automating workflows, but they just are in their own lane a little bit in terms of like the style of workflows that they build. So sometimes we've had to use like one versus the other, but we have both and we've also used that. So we've used Zapier for this. But to build almost like a clone of me so that when my students are inside of my program and it's been.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:22:46]:

That clone has been trained on all of my content for that program, they can go and ask it questions. And so it's kind of like a 24.7chatbot for them. And if it, if it gets stumped, then the question can come to me, but it's like the thing that they can use to get their answer more quickly. So we, and that's built out on Zap. You're in connection with OpenAI. So yeah, we. But generally keeping it quite lean in terms of. I don't think you need to be subscribed to like 17 different pieces of software.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:23:14]:

I think you can get a lot from a few.

Bryan McAnulty [00:23:17]:

Yeah, yeah, I agree. Yeah. ChatGPT, I would say, is a good first one for everybody. Like if you're not paying for at least the 20amonth plan, like, it's definitely worth it.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:23:25]:

Oh my gosh.

Bryan McAnulty [00:23:26]:

Yeah, so, yeah, I agree with that. I don't think there's too many tools you need. I'm curious actually, have you tried the new, the deep research feature in ChatGPT?

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:23:37]:

I haven't, but I, when I saw it come out, I, I was like, okay, well maybe this is going to dethrone cloud for me in terms of thinking that cloud is my deep thinker. Like, maybe ChatGPT is going to come to the playing field now with, with more capacity in that way. So we'll see.

Bryan McAnulty [00:23:54]:

Yeah, so it, it's at the time of recording here, it's like less than two days old.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:23:59]:

Yeah.

Bryan McAnulty [00:23:59]:

Um, but I've tried it a little bit and it is really powerful. So here's my idea of like how to use it for course creation. Like we tell everybody that you've got to go and like validate what you're trying to do and do some research, but most people don't, like, enjoy doing that. Right? You want to just build the thing that you're trying to build. And so I think that this deep research can potentially do a lot of that for you. And I think you could probably come up with a really great prompt to share with your students and customers about what they should ask it. But essentially what I tried is I said like, okay, I want to make an online course teaching people how to use AI to produce music. I'm a musician and I've been looking into like, AI for music, right? So I told it that and I told it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:24:46]:

What I wanted to know was like, what. What are people asking about online? And because you want to figure out, like, well, what's the questions that people actually have? Because you need to address those in the course. You need to address that in your landing pages, your emails. And I wanted to know, like, is there a competition? Like, what does that look like? Who else is doing something like this? And like, what's like, how can I learn more about, like, the actual result that this should provide people? What are they actually looking for to learn? And I had it run. It took like, I think about 20 minutes to like run and do its. All its research. It went through 30 different sites and it shows you all the sites. It's like reading on the side and then its response.

Bryan McAnulty [00:25:26]:

I had to like copy and paste it to check how many words it was. It was over 11,000 words that it gave me back in one message. So is this really, really detailed report. I probably should like, keep it to like this length at least. But I told it like, after it gave the report to send like these specific details at the end, so at least I could like, read that quicker. And yeah, it was really powerful. Like, I found I didn't do too much manual research myself yet thinking about that, but it gave me tons of great questions that, like, I never thought people would be asking but, like, made complete sense. And like, yeah, it was basically like, what I would say is, if you have a bunch of ideas for a course and you're not sure, like, well, what's the one I should actually move forward with? Just run every single one through deep research and then look through those reports that you get back and then you can decide.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:26:18]:

I love that suggestion. That really changes everything about how one does market research.

Bryan McAnulty [00:26:25]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, It's. I think it's such a fun time for creators because basically you just get to create. You get to do like, all the Fun parts now is like where you can spend your time more instead of all the, like the research and the technical side and, and all of these things.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:26:43]:

Love that. Yeah. And the copywriting even like. Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

Bryan McAnulty [00:26:49]:

Yeah. So let's see, what else should we talk about with. With. I think there's a lot of other things we can cover with this still before we get on to anything else, any, anything else you, you feel that you want to just mention related to AI or like how you see people use it or maybe how they can first start using it if they're not already.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:27:12]:

Yeah, I mean I think people are getting a little bit nervous about figuring out the AI assistant piece. So like the custom GPT piece and I guess I would just say it's not as scary as you might think it is. Like just start to explore creating one and in terms of like actual tactical tips, when you go into ChatGPT to create your first custom GPT, I wouldn't necessarily use the. It kind of takes you through like a little chat bot to try and configure your like instructions and things like that. And I actually think it's better to do it away from that. I feel like sometimes it can like lead you in the wrong direction. And so my inclination and the way that I've built a lot of mine out have been to start just with like a simple Google Doc of like putting ideas on paper of like, what is if I want to create, let's say an AI assistant that is going to help me write captions for my social media posts. Like I just want to kind of brain dump on paper everything that it will need to know about caption writing and then take that to just regular ChatGPT and have ChatGPT help you flush those out as really comprehensive instructions.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:28:22]:

And the more I think people will like build a custom GPT and then it doesn't work that well. And so they're kind of like, eh, forget it, like it's not that great. And just like anything with AI, the more specific you can be in your instructions and the more like knowledge files. That's basically like the, the library that you can upload to the custom GPT to give it the background information it needs. The more you can do that, the better the output will be. And I made the mistake at the beginning of like trying to build a custom GPT that would do everything right. It was like, it was like from a social media perspective, it'd be like, okay, well write the text overlay for those carousels and then also do the captions and then also turn it into an email. And, and, and, and I found that the more specific I was and kept each one to one like it being hyper knowledgeable on doing the one thing really well that was definitely like the best play and it was when I started to get the best output from them.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:29:22]:

And then you can always build them into a workflow. Right. If you want some one to produce something and then it gives it to the next and it produces something gives it to the next. Right.

Bryan McAnulty [00:29:30]:

So yeah, a cool thing that I wish OpenAI talked about more is like you can ention in a chat the other GPTs and so you could have the one like help you with a subject line or something and then you can say like at mention like this other one now can you do this? And it's, it can be confusing because as humans like if we were going to work with another human, we would expect they can do a bunch of different things for us.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:29:56]:

Right.

Bryan McAnulty [00:29:56]:

So it's natural to think like oh, I'm going to make this assistant. It's of kind going to do all my stuff. But the current models, yeah they excel at like doing one very specific thing and then you got to make different ones for those different tasks.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:30:08]:

Totally. And then the last thing I'll say is that the other thing that's been really useful across almost all of my AI assistants has been to develop a really strong brand book at the beginning. So I actually have this as like a little mini offer that I sell to my audience and it has all of these very in depth prompts inside of it to take you through a conversation with ChatGPT or Cloud or whatever tool is your, is your preference to pull out like back to our conversation early about personal brand like to really pull out what your brand is all about, who your target audience is. And we're not just talking about these like baseline things, we're talking about really deep like what are their emotional desires, what are the trigger events that are going to get them to make a purchase? What you know, all of these like I think this section on my target audience is like seven or eight pages long in my brand book. So it's like in depth. And then you're gonna also put in things like the offers that you have in your business and maybe some writing samples or things like I do say this or I don't ever say this. And if you have it all in one brand book, that brand book can be attached as a knowledge file to every single AI assistant that you build and you don't have to keep reinventing the wheel and it becomes this, like, one source of truth, of like everything about your brand or your company in one document. It's also incredibly helpful if ever you are bringing on team members or, you know, need something that kind of gives people the overview of what your business is all about.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:31:43]:

It's. I waited way too long to create one and should have done it ages ago.

Bryan McAnulty [00:31:49]:

Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. And yeah, having having this extra documentation that's really helpful to AI is also going to be helpful to your team or like, anybody who's going to work with you in the future. Yeah, I would say that that was a great way to describe it because, like, AI isn't going to, like, be able to, like, reason through and understand, like, those fundamental, really important things that it needs to know about you. But if you can tell it those things, and if you can tell it like, this is how I work, or this is how the formula works, then it's really able to, like, transform and use that.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:32:24]:

Yeah.

Bryan McAnulty [00:32:24]:

And so that's the way you've got to think of treating it. Not saying like, hey, you're going to write a really good subject line for me. Go do it. If you do that, it's going to say the same words that it says for everybody else. Like, it's going to say unleash, unlock, and like, all of that kind of thing.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:32:38]:

And it's going to have the rocket emoji it loves.

Bryan McAnulty [00:32:41]:

Yeah, it's going to have a rocket emoji after it. And so that's not what you want to do, but if you can tell it like, like, I specifically do these things for when I write a subject line. And like, this is how it has to be and like, this is what words you choose, you're going to get a much better result.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:32:56]:

100%.

Bryan McAnulty [00:32:58]:

Awesome. I'm curious, is there anything like that you're working on now that's new that you're excited to share?

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:33:06]:

Sure. It's funny, it's based on our conversation that we've just been talking about. So I have a new offer that I kind of beta sold in Black Friday of 2024. And so we've been dripping it out to those beta buyers this month, so at the beginning of 2025, and it's going really well. It's a. It's an offer called AI Dream Team. And it's all about this. It's all about building, like utilizing AI to build these very customized AI assistants to really help you run the back end of your business and your operations.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:33:40]:

And I have been like, head down building all of this out and has been so fun. I haven't been this like lit up about anything in a while. So yeah, that's kind of the new area for me. And I think in 2025, like I'll. This will. I'll publicly launch it and then sort of develop more like marketing around this offer and get more people into it. But it was a runaway success. When we did this beta round in, in Black Friday, it blew us away.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:34:09]:

Like it was almost six figures in sales just on one day during Black Friday. Yeah. So it was. You can. The appetite is there. People want to learn about this stuff. And I think it, for me it really lines up with what I've always talked about, which is how to run a successful, ambitious big business, but in part time hours. Right.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:34:32]:

Like, or in the way, like in within the boundaries of your life and giving you that freedom that you really want to be able to hang with your family, to travel, to pursue your hobbies. Right. To like live your life the way you want to live it, not be chained to your computer all the time. And I think this is why, like, I'm just so excited about it because we, I've talked about that in terms of marketing strategies, but this is like a whole new area for me to be able to really teach about this stuff and it's changed the way I've run my own business. So.

Bryan McAnulty [00:35:06]:

Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I, I have similar feelings about everything with AI and all that. It's really such an exciting time to be a creator.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:35:14]:

Yeah.

Bryan McAnulty [00:35:16]:

All right, awesome. Well, I've got one more question for you and that's on this show. I like to have every guest ask a question to the audience. So if you could ask our audience anything, whether something you're curious about or just want to get people thinking about, what would that be?

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:35:29]:

I mean, I think it would be back to our original part or what we talked about sort of when we opened this, this episode, which was back to the idea of developing a business around your expertise. And so the one question I would have would be like, if you could teach a group of people one thing. So that could be something you've learned in your career, it could be something you've learned in your business. It could be something to do with your life experience. Like, what would that one thing be? And have you pursued it? Like, is, are you building it? Is it out into the world? And if it's not. This is maybe me giving you your, you know, kick in the behind to, to get building and to put it out there.

Bryan McAnulty [00:36:10]:

Awesome. All right. Well, Gemma, thanks so much for coming on the show. Before we get going. Where else can people find you online?

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:36:16]:

Yeah. So if you're, if you love listening to podcasts, you can head on over to the course creator show and hit subscribe. We also publish episodes weekly, or at least we try to weekly. And you can find me on social media at Gemma Bonham Carter or on my website, Gemma Bonham Carter.

Bryan McAnulty [00:36:35]:

Awesome. Thanks so much.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:36:36]:

Thanks, Brian.Bryan McAnulty [00:00:00]:

Have you ever bought something that you didn't actually need or splurged on a purchase that you could barely afford? It's happened to all of us, from phone cases that TikTok made me buy to the expensive bags or cars to look like our favorite influencer. But why do we do it if we don't actually need any of it? Dr. Mara Einstein is here to help us understand why even the most reasonable people fall prey to the shady marketing tactics deployed by Brands in 2025.

Mara Einstein [00:00:23]:

If you can get people really angry, you can get them to engage with your content. And. And the more you get people to engage with your content, the more money you, as a creator, will make.

Bryan McAnulty [00:00:34]:

For a decade, Mara worked in corporate marketing for some of the biggest names in the business, like MTV and NBC. Today she's left that world behind to become an academic and marketing critic. That transition was motivated by a desire to pull back the curtain on consumerism's dark side. And if Mara looks familiar to you, it's because you might have seen her on the Netflix documentary Buy now, the shopping conspiracy that reached the top 10 most popular movies in its week of release today. Mera is here to help us understand how we as consumers can become more aware of manipulative marketing and how as brands or creators, how we can do better in the way we promote our products. Presented by Heights Platform your all in one solution for course creation and community building. Hey, Mara, welcome to the show.

Mara Einstein [00:01:20]:

Hi, Ren. Thanks for having me.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:23]:

My first question for you is, I'm wondering from your perspective, do you think that creators out there should aspire to be more like the big brands and how they market themselves or not?

Mara Einstein [00:01:37]:

No, probably not. If you are a smaller marketer, that's part of what you bring to the experience, actually, that a larger marketer can't bring. And that's actually why social media has been so successful, why digital media has been so successful sort of up until now. We'll talk later about what's going on now. But if you think about something like Facebook, the reason why people were so successful is that the place is created as a community, or at least that's how it was framed. That's how it was marketed. And when you talk about Facebook, you talk about your Facebook friends. It's not your salespeople, it's not your customers, it's not your prospective consumers.

Mara Einstein [00:02:18]:

These are your friends. And the hope is that you will post something and that the friends and family will then repost it for you. Because what we know is that word of Mouth marketing, since the beginning of time is the most successful form of marketing. And what corporations know is that if they talk to you, Brian, you may or may not listen to them, but you're going to be more likely to kind of hold back because you know the content that is being sent to you is biased. But if your friend, or better yet, your mom, sends the same content to you and says, oh, I heard about this thing, then you're more likely to purchase it when you are a small creator or a smaller company. And this is one of the things that people have found on TikTok. And I, I think why people, particularly smaller businesses are so concerned about TikTok going away is that they're able to be on that space and be themselves. Because people want to buy from other people.

Mara Einstein [00:03:22]:

They don't want to just have a package somewhere. They want to know the story. So if you're taking this back to sort of marketing 101 kind of ideas, what you're talking about is branding. And what branding does is that people don't want a transaction. They don't want to, I have a pen, I'll buy the pen and it's done. They want to know what the story is behind it. So that's why something like Nike has always been so successful. It's not about their shoe.

Mara Einstein [00:03:49]:

And yeah, their shoe is good, but there's plenty of people who make very nice sneakers. It's that there is a mythology behind it. So people want to know the story because it's the story that they connect to. So I think the most important thing for, you know, particularly small producers is to be able to, to tell that story and explain to people, you know, why did I make this? Why did I think it was so important for me to give up everything else that was going on in my life to create this product? And why do I think it is so perfectly suited to you? And it's that sort of emotional heart connection that people, people grab onto, people connect to. And then people want to buy your product because they want to see you be successful.

Bryan McAnulty [00:04:39]:

Yeah. And I think I'd love to talk more about, and I guess I'll get into it here in the next question about how like brands, what they do to try to convince people to buy and all these tactics that they use. And I think how some creators, when you're brand new to this, of like, okay, I want to sell something online, I want to build this product. You think like, okay, well, do I have to use these, like, slimy sales tactics? And like, I Don't want to sound like I'm just going on TikTok, hey, buy my stuff. But you don't want to be like that. You want to be the way that you just mentioned and, and when you are genuine and just explaining to people, hey, this is, I made this thing because I really care about it. I think it's going to help you achieve this result. Then you don't really feel like a salesperson explaining that because you're describing how you really feel.

Bryan McAnulty [00:05:32]:

And that's actually going to work better than saying, hey, introducing my new thing, come buy it now.

Mara Einstein [00:05:38]:

And it's something corporations can't do.

Bryan McAnulty [00:05:40]:

Exactly.

Mara Einstein [00:05:42]:

Corporations would love, love, love, love to be able to do that, but they can't do it. And that's why they have to do all the slimy stuff. So that's why when you see things like cause marketing and corporate social responsibility, so that's when companies tie themselves to causes. And one of the main reasons why companies do that is because over the last 30 to 50 years or so, institutions within our society don't have the same kind of impact that they used to have. So what happened is that companies came in to fill that void, that other social void. And so brands became identifiers for our personality. So, so we're, God help us Tesla or we're Starbucks versus Dunkin Tom shoes. And so all of these brands say to other people who it is that we are.

Mara Einstein [00:06:45]:

But what happened with the younger generation is they said, okay, Mr. Corporate America, if I'm going to use your brand as an identifier, I need to know what your value system is. And so a lot of companies began to connect themselves to causes that they knew were important to the younger generation. So Toms like giving back shoes, being ethically farmed coffee for Starbucks. And I love this. When I was studying multilevel marketing and I was looking at Tupperware and Tupperware, you can't make this up was sustainability. On the one hand, they're claiming sustainability because they're saying, oh, you don't have to use all these plastic bottles because you can use ours. On the other hand, they make this plastic that is so utterly indestructible.

Mara Einstein [00:07:40]:

One, we don't know when or if it will ever break down. And two, because it is so durable, they have to keep coming up with more and more and more and more stuff to people to have to go and buy. So then you get into the, the over consumption issue. And so, you know, if you look at how cause marketing works for these Companies or even corporate social responsibility, which is the bigger joke, because most of what's done in terms of the guise of corporate social responsibility is actually regulated. And then they just put it on their website and say, oh, look at how wonderful we are in terms of the environment. But if you're talking about cost marketing, what happens is that the most of the causes get taken advantage of. Now, on a smaller level, if somebody wanted to do that and I. And there are ways to do that that isn't slimy.

Mara Einstein [00:08:32]:

So if you take something like Mac Cosmetics, they have a lipstick that they come out with once a year and all of the money, not all the profits, because that's where things get a little iffy. A lot of companies say, oh, it's the profits, but you have no way of, one, telling what the profits are. And two, when they've hit their goal, because they always have a cap on how much money they will actually donate. You never know when they have hit their goal. And so you keep buying the product, thinking money's going to the cause. But if you're a smaller producer getting connected to something that's in your local community, and I think, particularly now, getting connected to community because people are feeling like the federal government doesn't have their back anymore. And so what we're seeing as a trend right now is this. Let me get back to my community.

Mara Einstein [00:09:26]:

Let me get back to the people I can help at the local level. So if you're a local producer and you can do that, that I would recommend, but you've got to commit. It's got to be part of your brand, it's got to be part of your DNA, and you've got to be willing to stick with it over a long period of time or just don't get into it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:09:45]:

Yeah, yeah. It's great advice. Yeah. So you spent over a decade working in corporate marketing for some of the biggest names like mtv, NBC, and you've got a new book coming out, Hoodwinked How Marketers Use the Same Tactics as Cults. So I would kind of like to share with our audience here so they can understand what's really happening. What are these brands really doing and how they're promoting their products and marketing them. And if it's not the way that a individual creator should be doing it, then at least they know. And at least they know, like, this is the path that maybe I should be going down.

Bryan McAnulty [00:10:23]:

So you shed some light on in your book how brands use these deceitful marketing tactics. What professional experiences kind of inspired you to write that book.

Mara Einstein [00:10:34]:

Ooh. This book is actually 30 years in the making. I know that sounds crazy, but it really is true. This is my eighth book, and it's actually the book I'm most proud of, because it really is everything that I am. I started working in looking at the connection between marketing and religion 25 years ago when I first started studying for my PhD. I have an. I have an MBA in marketing, and I also worked in advertising agencies before I worked in the television industry. So I worked on Miller Beer and I worked on Dole Foods.

Mara Einstein [00:11:14]:

I worked on Avis cars. When I was a secretary, I worked on Atari International. So that tells you how long I've been doing this stuff. And even in the late 90s, I was seeing that people weren't really happy. And they weren't really happy because they were spending too much time on media. And I felt like my energy on the planet was not best spent getting people to engage more time with media. So what does all of this have to do with marketing and what's going on? Now? What we're talking about is. And what I talked about that book, and I expand more in Hoodwinked is the marketing funnel, right? So the marketing funnel, you have awareness at the top.

Mara Einstein [00:11:59]:

How do you get people to know about your product? The second stage is consideration. Then you have conversion, and it's called conversion. Some people just call it purchasing, but on most charts it's called conversion. Then the last part of it is loyalty. Now, what we call loyalty is marketing evangelism. We've had this blurring of what religious folks do and what marketers do. So that was back then. So now add on to this the digital space.

Mara Einstein [00:12:34]:

And what you see what happens in the digital space is that a lot of the tactics that cults use have been inserted into the digital space in an incredibly insidious way. So one of the first things that happens is that cults always are looking for vulnerable targets. If you think about cults, one of the places that they go to look for recruits are college campuses. Early in the year of college campuses, because it's when people are coming to a new city, they don't have a support system. They want to find their group. And so somebody walks up to them and says, why don't you come have a free dinner with us, or come take a free yoga class, or come answer a couple of questions. And the next thing you know, they've been pulled into this group through a whole process. Well, the same thing is true online.

Mara Einstein [00:13:38]:

And what facilitates it in the Digital space is that the technology is created to make us more anxious and more angry. And we become more anxious and more angry, we become more vulnerable. We become more vulnerable to marketing messages. Now, someone could say to me, oh, but Professor Einstein, that's always been the case, right? We've always targeted vulnerable people. Yes, but not in the same way and not without them knowing about it. Every ad is all about telling somebody there's something wrong with them. Because we don't tell you there's something wrong with you, you won't go out and buy our product and fix whatever that is.

Bryan McAnulty [00:14:17]:

We actually noticed in one of your videos lately that you mentioned that we live in this anxiety economy rather than an attention economy. And so, like, I guess, how. How else does that play a role? Can you go in more deeper? Like, yeah, how. What else are brands doing to, like, kind of make you anxious? Other than, like, I know I see like on social media, in the news, even like the headline or whatever is always sensational to try to grab your attention about something horrible is happening or something like this. But other than what we maybe do know about of, okay, a brand's going to tell me that I want to be thinner or something like that, what's the part that maybe we don't see or don't realize how they're manipulating us?

Mara Einstein [00:15:08]:

That's where the technology comes in as opposed to what marketers are doing. I think people are probably now aware of the idea of intermittent rewards and that social media is. The technology is created in such a way to keep rewards back from you and then sort of flood you with them. And I think people may know this on sort of minor intellectual level, but may not have dug in as deeply as other people have. And I learned stuff too, that I wasn't aware of when I was researching the book. So, for instance, now, basic technology, obviously, the notifications. Notifications are to get you to open up your phone, engage with the content. We all know that stuff at this point.

Mara Einstein [00:15:55]:

People probably also know that the second you open up your phone and start engaging, you're going to give up about 23 minutes of your life before you're going to extricate yourself from that. So it's all about keeping you connected for as long as possible so you can see as much advertising as possible. But what.

Bryan McAnulty [00:16:11]:

Also, I don't really use social media and there's definitely been times where like, for some business reason, I need to check Facebook or something like that, and I'm there and 10, 15 minutes later, I'm thinking, why why did I come here? What is happening?

Mara Einstein [00:16:26]:

I thought that was just me because I was getting older. It's like walking into the kitchen and why did I go here? Sort of like that on social. It's kind of like that on social media too. But it's also that they, the way it's created is that, you know, you go because you're looking for the dopamine hit. Right. So you, you want to go there hoping that you'll see a post from a friend or something that's going to be useful to you or whatever it is, but oftentimes it's just a bunch of ads or whatever that aren't useful to you. So you keep scrolling in hopes that you're finally going to get that thing you really want. But the other thing that happens is they hold back your likes.

Mara Einstein [00:17:03]:

Right. So it's not that, you know, all of a sudden you're going on there. If you're, if you are a creator that you are go there and then you're going to check, oh, did they like what I post? Did I say something that interests people, whatever. And then you find out nobody did. And then you come back and all of a sudden there's been like a massive dump of likes on your post that's also done intentionally to keep you coming back.

Bryan McAnulty [00:17:27]:

Yeah, I want to actually expand on that a little bit from the technology perspective because.

Mara Einstein [00:17:33]:

Please do, because that's not my area.

Bryan McAnulty [00:17:35]:

I build software. Yeah. So that's my expertise. And what I can say is, first of all, I think you made a really good point about like the, the scrolling and like everything is designed exactly to be as perfect as possible for the platform. Not for you, but for the platform. And so just like they're using the same mechanics of how like a slot machine works that like, yeah, you're not always going to win. But they've designed it so like maybe they can't show you the perfect video every single time, but they have created this re reward mechanic where you'll want to keep scrolling to find that next funny, interesting, whatever video there is. And in terms of like the, the likes and holding that back, there's technical reasons why when there's so many things happening, it's easier to like batch things together and then deliver it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:18:26]:

But I am 100% sure that internally the team is saying, like, oh, we have to do it that way, let's make sure that we do it that way because then the user's going to come back wanting to see, oh, did I get any likes? Did I get any likes. And just when you're about to get fed up with it, look here, you got a bunch of likes now and it's like, oh, okay, great. And then they've got you hooked again.

Mara Einstein [00:18:49]:

Thank you for that confirmation because that's what I learned. I was like, it's very nice to hear that. That's.

Bryan McAnulty [00:18:56]:

I, I also do want to add, I guess for myself a little bit that realizing this and building software for so many years, part of what actually inspired me to build heights platform was seeing like how these social media platforms are designed to just keep your attention and keep you on the platform for as long as possible. And I thought like, well, why can't we apply some of those mechanics to actually help people learn and like help something useful happen rather than just have advertisers put ads in front of you?

Mara Einstein [00:19:26]:

Yeah, I mean that's the same reason why I left traditional marketing and went into academia. I just felt like, because there's also a sense of, there's things that you and I take for granted having worked in these spaces for a long time and it is hard for people to find out the information. And frankly, that's why I went on TikTok. Right. I'm, I'm a 65 year old academic who's just been doing this marketing stuff for close, you know, nigh on 40 years. And there's things that I just know that, that because I'm also in a classroom, I know that people don't know and I get reminded that people don't know that. I finally jumped onto TikTok to two years ago because I felt like, you know, not everybody's going to go find my books or be able to see me in a public space giving a talk or whatever, but they need to know this. And what I have discovered in that space is things that people have really glommed onto are things like geofencing.

Mara Einstein [00:20:25]:

But in terms of the, you know, getting back to the conversation about rage and anger and anxiety, the. It's not just the technology itself that does that, it's that the creators are incentivized to also create that kind of content. So what a creator is trying to do is to get as much attention and engagement as possible. And we know that that happens. Here, I'll plug somebody else's book. Jonah Berger, who is a professor at Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote a book, God, it must be almost a decade ago, called Contagious. And he talks about the six things that get people to share content and the two most Operative ones are anger and awe. Right.

Mara Einstein [00:21:12]:

If you're like, oh, you know, so many dogs or cat videos or whatever, or you're just amazed about something that happens. But the other is rage farming. There's a reason why there's a term for it. If you can get people really angry, you can get them to engage with your content. And the more you get people to engage with your content, the more money you as a creator will make.

Bryan McAnulty [00:21:37]:

Yeah, in the last like couple years or so that has become something that not only because of like the algorithmic, algorithmic nature of social media platforms and how it shifted more to that rather than being followers, but that more general individual creators have taken notice of, like, oh, this is a way that I can get attention. And unfortunately, like, yeah, there's too much of that kind of content where they know like what's there. They're sitting there thinking like, not how can I be the most valuable to people today, but what can I share that's gonna make people the most frustrated and angry? That everyone's gonna comment and share on this and it's their, their bait posts, as they're usually called, that like it's not, sometimes it's not even the thing that the person actually thinks or truly believes in their head, but they're just sharing it just to make everybody angry about it.

Mara Einstein [00:22:27]:

And so then what begins to happen is you, you end up on a hamster wheel. So what happens with anxiety? And I'm not a therapist, but I think people can understand this. When you're anxious, you try to do something to relieve the anxiety. And so for some people that may be doob scrolling. So the more anxious you are, you end up on social media more, which makes no sense at all, but is true that you become more anxious, you spend more time on social media, you get more anxious and then you go and buy something because you want the little dopamine hit. And buying something will help to relieve that tension. But you end up in this never ending hamster wheel, which is why a lot of people are I think now one, what's interesting to me, what's going on TikTok. Now with the possibility of the TikTok ban, people are saying they're not going to move to other platforms or if they are, they're going to limit their platforms or they're going to just spend a lot less time on social media.

Mara Einstein [00:23:29]:

Because I think that there's a whole group of people and one of the things that I do talk, the last chapter of the book, I say social media are dying. And this was before all of this was happening. And I talk about it in terms of Cory Doctorow's idea of insidification and inshidification is this idea that when platforms are created they start with, you know, with the creators who and the influencers who build up the platform with all this fabulous content, who then bring in all the followers who love the content that they're seeing. And then that is all being built up ultimately in the service of advertising. And so when you start to get advertisers into the spaces, it stops being what people came there for in the beginning. People are certainly feeling that on Facebook and Facebook is only useful for groups now as I think as far as most people are concerned, Threads doesn't have advertising yet. But it's supposed to come soon and I think when it does, it's going to be not so great. Even people on TikTok weren't loving that TikTok shop was sort of overcoming what was happening on the platform.

Mara Einstein [00:24:47]:

And so when that starts to happen, when people start to think, feel like the space is no longer their space, they start to pull back. What you also have is the Google lawsuits where we don't know what's going to happen in terms of Google being broken up. And I think the case still stays even with the new administration. So they're going through their own things right now. And now with a possible TikTok ban and people not going to other meta products or possibly not going to them, I think what we're going to see is a real faster decline of social media in a way that people wouldn't have thought about a year ago. And I mean, look, and I don't like to bash marketer as a rule. One of the reasons why I've been able to do the work that I do is because I did work in the industry for so long and because I do have the credentials people understand that I've had to respond to clients. I worked for Miller Beer.

Mara Einstein [00:25:55]:

I was the only woman working on Miller Lite. I've been battle tested when it comes to the advertising industry. I know what it's like to have to respond to clients that have very large budgets. And it's not an easy thing. And so I realized that I'm also in this very privileged position to be able to look from a higher perspective and say, guys, take a look and see what's going on. Is this really what you want to be doing? Are you really communicating the thing that you want to communicate? And are you using the best tools to do that. You know, going back to the whole cult tactics, the second part of the cult tactics is to use deceptive marketing. You know, tell people that you're one thing, get them sucked into what you're doing, and then you turn out to be something completely different.

Mara Einstein [00:26:49]:

And those are the kind of tactics that you want to stay away from. If you don't want to be a scummy marketer, you want to. You want to be upfront with people, don't tell them that. Don't tell them that you're something that you're not. And so, like, what cults do, like I was talking about before, you know, come in and take a dinner. You know, come in and have a free dinner, and then you find out you've become part of the Hare Krishnas once you've been sucked into the group. And part of the way they do that, and this is the same thing that marketers do, is they create communities around brands. And this is something that became very popular in the early 2000s, is that it wasn't just about, you know, having a transaction with the brand, but creating a community around it.

Mara Einstein [00:27:33]:

So it became much more difficult to extricate yourself from the brand because you weren't just connected to the brand, you were connected to the people who were around the brand. And so Jeep is a great example of this. What Jeep has done for years now is they have the Jeep jamborees. And so if you buy a Jeep, one of the values of the car is that you could drive it off road. I mean, that's why these were created. And so once, one weekend during the year, they have people come and they teach them how to drive the car off road. But you don't just go by yourself. You bring family members with you, and then you meet all of these other people and they get you to connect with them.

Mara Einstein [00:28:17]:

So you become this community of Jeep owners and you have your hand signals and whatever. You see yourself on the streets or in that case.

Bryan McAnulty [00:28:26]:

Yeah, that, that. I get that. But is that actually a bad thing?

Mara Einstein [00:28:30]:

Well, no, it doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be. You can do cult like you can do brand communities. When you take brand community to the next level is when it shifts from a brand community to a brand cult. And so you can do community. And, you know, as long as you know when. If people can leave and. And all of that, then it's not a cult.

Mara Einstein [00:28:51]:

But there's a spectrum of brand called. So sort of in the middle, I would put Apple, right, which has Been a brand called, as I always use as an example of a brand called. But because of the Walled Garden, it becomes very difficult for you to leave Apple, should you decide to do it, because you've got the iPad and you've got the phone and then all your music is on itunes and all of that. And so when you want to leave, you don't necessarily get to take all that music with you, which you don't discover even if you've paid for it. You don't discover until you try to leave. On the other hand, if you want to go the far extreme, then you have something like Brandy Melville and there's that great HBO documentary called Brandy Hellville, which is a girls clothing company for adolescent girls. They have one size and the one size is for very, very small people. So it makes you feel like you're not part of them.

Mara Einstein [00:29:46]:

So they're defining who will be part of them. And it's very white and it's very blonde and it's very young. But there's all kinds of machinations that go on behind the scenes to make the brand very culty.

Bryan McAnulty [00:30:02]:

Okay, got it. So you mentioned about like Apple and like the Walled Garden and everything, how that works. I think it'd be interesting first of all, for everyone watching. Definitely. I want to get into more of like, okay, now we know a lot about the bad things that happened now, what's all the right ways to do things. But I think maybe a good last thing to talk about is like the like dark patterns in user experience and how companies will design something like a cancellation flow for your subscription where they make it hard to figure out how to cancel or make it just. The interface is purposely designed to be inconvenient or bad or difficult with multiple steps to get through. So that way they will try to retain you or get you to do the action that they want you to do.

Mara Einstein [00:30:48]:

Right.

Bryan McAnulty [00:30:49]:

What are your thoughts on, I guess this or do you have any examples that you've happened to come across about that?

Mara Einstein [00:30:56]:

Well, the examples that I would use are multi level marketing because I spent two years studying multilevel marketing for the book. And so all of the things that you were just talking about is what happens in those spaces. And I think the statistics I read was something like 63% of Americans are somehow connected to multi level marketing because of people in their families who have been drawn into these organizations. What happens with multi level marketing is that. And I think a lot of people have had these, suddenly somebody contacts you on Facebook that you went to high School with that you haven't heard from in 30 years or 20 years, all of a sudden like, oh, it's great to see you. And then two seconds later it becomes, oh, try this product that I'm trying to sell. Whatever, whatever. And so that's one part of it.

Mara Einstein [00:31:53]:

The other part of it is people who get pulled into it to sell is they get found out on social media sites and the social somebody contacts them and says, oh I see, you're really great media, I have this opportunity for you. And they make them part of a group, like a chat group almost immediately. And so they just sort of suck them in. And then all of the most of the sales issues related to multi level marketing is exactly what you were talking about. It's the things that people have to do in order to be able to retain their sales status, the what they do in order to be able to get people to buy and then don't let them not be charged on an ongoing basis. All of that stuff starts to happen. What I will say about multilevel marketing, what's been brilliant about them is the anti multilevel marketing community has done an amazing job in teaching people who these companies are how to avoid a lot of their tactics and more importantly how to get people out of them.

Bryan McAnulty [00:33:06]:

Yeah, yeah, I think that's something really powerful. And most people either don't have the luxury or the time to be able to think very deeply about the impact of the thing that they're doing to try to make money. Most people, first they have to survive, they have to provide for their family and to think about how, how am I going to put money on the table and put food on the table. And so there is a situation I think that happens with a number of successful people in business, whether they're entrepreneurs in multi level marketing, in a position at a regular company where it's only so many years later that they get to realize, oh, actually this thing that I've been doing is really like not making a fulfilling impact. At the least it could be a much worse situation like what you talk about. But it's something where like I think the business that I talk about, I'm promoting myself here, I guess. But I mean I thought about this a real out myself that I want to be able to do something where I feel like it's making a positive impact and fulfilling because once you have enough money, it's not about the money, it can't be about the money. And people want to find what's that way.

Bryan McAnulty [00:34:16]:

I can make a positive impact and feel fulfilled and want to have that motivation to keep you going and, and see what you can do with it. And so being able to teach people something that provides value to them is such a great business to start because you are able to basically start it without money. You're able to do it in something that can make you money, and then you can create a good impact for people, too. But you don't have to do that. If, if you found this podcast, you're not part of our audience in any way and you found this, you don't have to do that, but I would encourage you to take some time to think about whatever somebody's telling you of that next business idea. There's so many ways you can make money. And so don't listen to it just because they're saying this is a way you can make money. Listen to it because you feel that is this going to be something that will be fulfilling to me? And I feel like it's going to make the world a better place.

Mara Einstein [00:35:08]:

Yeah. And I think because we are. Look, the trajectory for a long time has been away from copy to video, and it's really hard to be on video when you're not truthful because people can smell it and people can tell. And so that's why I was talking about in the beginning, understanding what your story is, what is your story, because you didn't come up with a business just out of thin air, right. There was something that happened. There was a problem. And marketing and products are about solving problems for your consumer. So how do you think in terms of, you know, did I have a problem in my life that this problem solved for me? And that's where I came to the idea of creating it.

Mara Einstein [00:35:55]:

And then tell people about that and come up with all the different ways that you can tell people about how this, how this idea came to you, how it's going to solve their problems, make yourself available to them. You know, maybe, maybe do something like, you know, once a week, do, you know, a half hour live on a social media site, or do a zoom call where they can ask you any questions they want or whatever it is.

Bryan McAnulty [00:36:22]:

Yeah, I completely agree with that. I think that's great advice. And as you mentioned before, that's something that as an individual entrepreneur, creator, like, you can do that, but a big brand can't really do that in the same way. And we saw also, we mentioned one idea about, like, how creating a community around things can be good. And there's, there's certain things that, like a cult might do, but when not taken to an extreme and used in a bad way, it can actually be something that I guess someone with good intentions would do. And we noticed that you mentioned in your new book the idea of, like, the charismatic leader, that occult has a charismatic leader. Like, is there anything else that you would say? Like, I think you're kind of connecting here already. And maybe you can expand on that of, like, how you can be maybe, I guess, the charismatic leader for your audience in a good way.

Bryan McAnulty [00:37:18]:

Like, what are some other ways that a person can market or act like a cult, but in a very positive way, right?

Mara Einstein [00:37:27]:

Yeah. I mean, you can be a leader. Look, charisma. And John Jalalich is the person who talks about this. She's probably one of the leading cult leaders, experts in the world. Not leader, but experts in the world. Charisma doesn't come from within the person. That's what we think.

Mara Einstein [00:37:48]:

It doesn't. It comes from us putting it on to the person and us believing that they have this ability to be able to sell. Trump is a great example of this. He's not everything that we think he is, but after years of coming into our living room with NBC and the Apprentice telling us that he was something else, we. We came to believe that. But you can. You can be the leader. You can be, you know, and look, any.

Mara Einstein [00:38:15]:

Almost any influencer is a charismatic leader on some level, because that's why people. That's why people are following them. But are you following them for good or for bad? And so, you know, one example, actually, that I give in the book is, is Misha. He's this gay guy who tells these stories. Anybody wants to go find how to tell stories, go look at his content, because he's the best storyteller I've seen on all of TikTok. He's also on all the other platforms as well. But he's. He's always talking about doing good.

Mara Einstein [00:38:49]:

He's always talking about doing. And he's got a huge following. So there's nothing wrong with. With being a leader and charismatic leader, where it starts to. Where it gets problematic is when you are presenting yourself to be the only authority, number one in the area. And number two, you are providing people with an overarching worldview that will solve all their problems, because that's the other key part of a cult. And one of the things that people look for, and particularly look for cults to solve for them is an answer to all their problems. And so, again, going back to Maga, Make America Great Again, that doesn't say anything, doesn't say anything about how it's going to happen.

Mara Einstein [00:39:39]:

It just says that they're going to do that and it's going to alleviate all your problems. All of a sudden you're going to have enough money for healthcare, your kids are going to get great educations, you're suddenly going to have a big enough paycheck. You know, believe it when you see it. But what all of these cult leaders do, MAGA or otherwise, is say, I have the answers for all your problems that are going to make your life better. And so come follow me. You could be a charismatic cult leader and a charismatic leader and never say all of those things because you're not going to solve all their problems. You're going to solve a little bit of their problem.

Bryan McAnulty [00:40:13]:

Yeah. All right, so let's say somebody's watching this and they hopefully feel a little bit more reassured that they can kind of just be themselves on social media, be authentic and, and that's what people want. But I guess is there, I think it's still possible that somebody can kind of accidentally go down the wrong path. Do you have any recommendations of somebody of like what they can do ahead of time to kind of understand or extrapolate? Like, okay, well if I, if I say this or promote something like this, then as it changes or shifts or grows, it actually turns into something that's not what I wanted it to be.

Mara Einstein [00:40:57]:

You can always change course, always change course, always say, I made a mistake. That is one thing that I learned when I studied cost marketing and corporate social responsibility is that brands who did it badly, but weren't doing it badly intentionally, like they, you know, they were trying to make, make it better. They were trying to, to really do some, something that would help the world. And, and it got screwed up. Toms is a great example. What they used to do, right, is you buy a shoe and you and another parachute would go to somebody in so called third world country. They realized what was happening or it was brought to their attention. What was happening was that they were ruining or hurting the economy in the places where they were doing the shoe drops.

Mara Einstein [00:41:50]:

And so they changed what they did and they apologized for doing that and said, you know what, we did this. We were on a learning curve, we screwed it up. So now they work with people in those countries to do the same thing. So they don't just come in and be the white savior kind of thing. They also have three buckets of causes that they promote to. And so there's so there's better ways to do that.

Bryan McAnulty [00:42:19]:

On the shoe side. They're then hiring people there to make the shoes. Is that how they're doing it now?

Mara Einstein [00:42:25]:

Right, right. So that they, you know, they don't come from the outside, so then they don't impact the economy in the same way. So same thing that. That's what Warby Parker does. So Warby Parker also uses the. The buy one, get one. But they all. They have always worked with, you know, opticians in the actual communities where the glasses are being given away.

Mara Einstein [00:42:47]:

And so what we found is, you know, when a company has done things badly, look, everybody's human. And that's what AI will never be able to do, is to go in and say, we were learning. We're a small company. We thought this would be the way to go. We wanted to support this group or whatever it is. We found out they're not who we thought they were. Mia culpa. We're going to pivot, and we hope you will come with us.

Mara Einstein [00:43:19]:

Almost everybody will buy that. If they've liked you up until that point and you're willing to stay honest and admit that you've done wrong. I think that's one. Personally, I think that that's been one of the most detrimental parts of social media and celebrity culture overall is that we don't have the opportunity to fail and we don't have places where we can just say that we screwed up. And I see this particularly for young people. You know, when we did stupid stuff when we were in high school, I don't want people, you know, I started drinking in high school. I don't, you know, you know, had. Had some nights that.

Mara Einstein [00:43:59]:

That I don't want to remember, but they didn't end up on social media. And that unfortunately happens to folks today, and it becomes really hard to live it down. I think for. For brands and for small companies, you know, use your smallness as your power. That's an incredibly powerful thing that you can own, that nobody else can use it to your advantage.

Bryan McAnulty [00:44:25]:

Yeah. And you have the ability to make changes if you realize something is. Had good intentions like that. Tom's example, I think this is a great example. If you had good intentions originally turns out to not work out the way that you want as an individual or a small team, it's so much easier for you to probably make that change, because it's not like you had tens or hundreds of millions of dollars invested in some certain inventory or whatever of how something's working that it's going to be this very complex organizational process to make something different happen.

Mara Einstein [00:44:57]:

If it's just you don't have to turn around the Titanic, you're just like.

Bryan McAnulty [00:45:00]:

If it's just you, you basically just have to say, hey, guys, I realize this. Like, that's not what I wanted it to be. Be like, here's what I'm going to try to do to fix it. And yeah, I agree. People will completely be on your side for that.

Mara Einstein [00:45:13]:

Yeah, absolutely, 100%. And if they don't, then, you know, they, they weren't a customer you wanted to keep in the long run anyway, you know, still true, right? 20% of your people are 80% of your, you know, 80% of your volume. So, you know, you want to find the people that are committed to you, who will stay with you, who love what you do and who you are, and get them to be the spokespeople. Right? They become your community. And there's nothing wrong with turning them into your community. If they really love your product, you're really doing something, they like let them help you promote. There's nothing wrong with that. Absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Mara Einstein [00:45:52]:

You know, given what's gone on in the last couple of weeks, what I've talked about on social media and I think it's really good advice for, for your audience is that I think because of all the consternation going on right now in social media spaces, it's time to really go to brass tacks and just say, okay, if I had never done marketing ever before, never thought about it before, let me throw everything down on the table. Start from the beginning and think about what is my product, who is my target audience and what is the best way I can super serve them and the best way that I can reach them in order to be able to do that. And maybe it is still being on some social media platforms, but maybe it's not. One of the things that I discovered in my research and I'm sure your audience knows this is the most used and most effective way for sales is email. It's more effective than influencers, probably less expensive. So yeah, you need to get them.

Bryan McAnulty [00:47:02]:

It's one of the ways that you truly own the audience. Because you mentioned before, like, and like, with TikTok right now, you don't know what's going to happen to the platform.

Mara Einstein [00:47:11]:

Right.

Bryan McAnulty [00:47:11]:

But with email, it's, you have the email list and you have the ability to email all those people.

Mara Einstein [00:47:17]:

Right. But don't slam people. Like, that's the one thing that does make me crazy.

Bryan McAnulty [00:47:21]:

Yeah.

Mara Einstein [00:47:22]:

You know, I just bought something from one company. I'm getting like two emails a day from them. Don't do that because you'll get. People will unsubscribe faster than anything. But, but really, because things are so in flux right now, it's a really good time to say, you know, where is the best way that I can do this? And in. I mean, I'd even look at like cable because it's gotten so inexpensive and maybe older people aren't your audience, but maybe they are. So, you know, I'd really be taking a look at all of that. I'd be looking at podcasts, I'd be looking at, you know, yes, look at digital spaces, but look at podcasts, look at radio, look at, you know, magazines.

Mara Einstein [00:48:03]:

You know, maybe it's too expensive for you, but maybe it's not.

Bryan McAnulty [00:48:06]:

Yeah, yeah. To the point about the cable, I guess. Yeah. Like, there's a lot of TV is like, through things like Hulu and things, like there's ads there. And I'm pretty sure you can buy ads, especially locally, relatively affordably. It's not something that's like, this is impossible for me. And in other terms of like, locally, like I've told course creators, like, if you're selling to people locally, it doesn't. Not every business has to be, oh, international, like, sell to everyone.

Bryan McAnulty [00:48:33]:

If you are selling to people locally, like, you can put flyers up and stuff in places and like, that can be really effective.

Mara Einstein [00:48:39]:

Right. And the thing is too, is, you know, look at, you know, if you're in a big market like New York, where I am, it's very expensive to still do things like cable. But if you're not and you're in a smaller market, you know who people like better than anybody else is their local TV anchors. They trust them. If they're watching the 10 o' clock or the 11 o' clock news, they love the anchors. They love the weatherman. I mean, Al Roker is who Al Roker is because people trust him as the weatherman. That still holds true now.

Mara Einstein [00:49:13]:

And so if you can be on those spaces or on their morning show and talk about your product, they're looking for that kind of content. Don't think you can't do it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:49:24]:

Everybody's looking for, like, what's the secret? What's the secret of how I can market myself? And I've realized, and it probably took me longer to realize than I would have liked, that there are no secrets. Like, there's certain different few things that you can do of how you can reach out to people and get in front of people and like, that's it. Figure out one. Start with one. Figure out a couple, maybe, but figure out one that works for your business and just do it and just keep doing it.

Mara Einstein [00:49:52]:

The other thing I would say, too, and it's always an interesting question I have with my students is we spend a lot of time talking about target audiences and segmenting and all of that kind of stuff. And then after we get through that whole section, I say to students, do you care about people who aren't your target audience? And almost inevitably they'll say, yes. And I'm like, no. This is the whole point of us doing this exercise. You do not care about them. And you will never be able to get the people. So that's also a key thing for people to remember. You are not going to be everybody's best friend and stop trying to do that.

Mara Einstein [00:50:29]:

You can't and you shouldn't be, and it's a waste of your money and your time to try and do that. You are talking to a particular group of people that may not be that big, but really love your product and that's okay, too. You don't have to be Coca Cola.

Bryan McAnulty [00:50:43]:

Yeah. For most people, if you had a thousand customers, like, that's everything you need to have an incredible business.

Mara Einstein [00:50:49]:

Yeah.

Bryan McAnulty [00:50:49]:

And I think, like, there's. There's real examples of this that you can probably point to, even if it hasn't happened to you directly, where you see a post on social media that, like, really exploded and it got out of its target audience and is now reaching this general population and everybody's angry about it or something for some reason. But it's not one of those, like, bait posts trying to make people angry. But still there's all these people arguing and discussing about it, and a lot of those people, like, they're not in the target audience and they don't have to be. They don't have to enjoy it. They don't have to be a part of that. You don't have to please them. So I.

Bryan McAnulty [00:51:26]:

I completely agree with that as well.

Mara Einstein [00:51:27]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's a rabbit hole that's easy to fall down. It really is. It's a trap that a lot of people fall into. So don't fail badly if you do so again, course correct. There's nothing ever wrong with course correcting.

Bryan McAnulty [00:51:41]:

Yeah. Any suggestions as far as maybe either becoming more comfortable with that or understanding if you really are reaching your target target audience? Because I think with algorithm driven Feeds like something like TikTok, where a post can suddenly do really well, or a post may not get many followers, not get many views or something. If it doesn't really seem to engage. How do you, I guess, feel comfortable with, okay, I made a post that got 200 views. Like, but somebody else down there, they're making posts and they're getting millions of views. Like, I'm. I'm not this famous person on social media. How.

Bryan McAnulty [00:52:22]:

How can you become comfortable with that? Because I would say, like, in some ways, like, if that 200 people is exactly your target audience, then, like, that's great. Like, would. Would you go and talk in a room, assuming that you're comfortable with it? Like, would you speak in front of 200 people? Like, would that be worth it to you for your business? Most people, I think, would say, like, definitely that. That would be great. Yeah, but everything's not going to.

Mara Einstein [00:52:44]:

I mean, but that's the thing about social media. Everything is not going to hit. When I used to work in advertising, we used to spend weeks developing content. They had to go to the client. The client would talk about it, they'd come back to us, we'd make the changes, go back to them. We put it in front of a focus. I mean, this is probably stuff. People are going, oh, my God, it took that long to do this.

Mara Einstein [00:53:09]:

It went in front of a focus group. The focus group would say, yeah, this makes sense. Or it doesn't. We'd have to send the scripts to the broadcast networks to make sure that they would actually air what was in the commercial, because a lot of them would not. I was working on one thing with Miller, and we were using this will tell you how long ago toned loke. And ABC came back and said, no, you're targeting underage drinkers. You can't use him. And so we had to change the commercial.

Mara Einstein [00:53:39]:

And we put in Clarence Clements, which was okay because I got to meet clothes. Clarence Clements, which was cool. And then we went back and we shot the commercial and, you know, and then it goes and all this kind of stuff, but it's very long trajectory, very long gauntlet that that creative had to go through before it ever hit air. Now think of that in comparison to when you're creating a TikTok. You go on, you put the camera on, you're talking to the camera, and you're done. Some of those are going to hit and some of them are not. And I've had TikToks that have gotten 200 views, and I've had TikToks that HAVE gotten over almost a million views. And I don't know, I mean, some of them that I think are really good and even kind of rage baiting have not done as well as I thought they were going to do.

Mara Einstein [00:54:29]:

So. Which is also a good lesson. Stick to your. I know it sounds really MBA ish, but stick to your knitting. Don't be myopic about what you are. Think about what you are and who you're serving as broadly as you can. But when it comes to actually what you do, stick to your knitting. Do what you do better than anybody else and tell everybody else why you're better at doing it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:54:51]:

Yeah. Yeah. And I think something that's really helpful in the creative process is just having a quicker feedback loop. And so the big marketing agencies are at a big disadvantage of having to go through all of that and then spend all this time and money only to figure out that campaign didn't really go like we planned.

Mara Einstein [00:55:09]:

Right.

Bryan McAnulty [00:55:09]:

But as an individual, you get to say, I'm going to post something today. Okay, maybe it didn't work. Now I'm going to post something tomorrow. But what, what's like your approach to that? Do you just say, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to post something every day? Like, do you plan it out ahead of time? What's kind of the strategy behind that?

Mara Einstein [00:55:26]:

I do, I do a combination. So right, right now I'm in book promotion mode, so I'm obviously giving more content to that. But there's five or six areas that I focus on. I focus on religion and spirituality, that is cults. I call it purpose washing. And so I try to talk about the difference between purpose and impact. So how companies can do impact as opposed to purpose, which is usually virtue signaling. I talk about higher education and how people are marketed around higher education.

Mara Einstein [00:56:04]:

I talk about politics, I talk about weight loss and talk about something else, but I don't remember what it is. And so usually what I do is sort of the more generic things on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, whatever. And then if something happens in the news, then I'll jump on and do an extra TikTok. And then Tuesday, Thursdays. Right now I'm focusing mostly on the books because I'm three weeks out from publication date. So I have a schedule about what I will talk about. But there's always flexibility in it to be able to add something in case something happens that is very news related to what I do.

Bryan McAnulty [00:56:44]:

Yeah, okay. And then like within that, those topics.

Mara Einstein [00:56:48]:

But I also, let me also Say, tied to calendars. Right. So students are going to start hearing from schools in April, and they're going to have to make their decisions in May. So April, I'll go back to talking a lot more about higher education. Same thing in September. So I also tie my content to things that are going on in the real world that people are going to want to pay attention to. So that's a really important thing for marketers. You know, what's going on in the real world or a day, you know, it's ice cream day, you know, is that related to your product? Look for those kinds of things because then you'll be able to tack yourself onto trends.

Bryan McAnulty [00:57:27]:

Yeah, the trends is really important because that's where there is attention right now, and there's demand for content that has to be met. And in my limited content creation, I'm noticing that myself, where I had a successful YouTube video last year that we aimed to get it out as quickly as we could about ChatGPT and its advanced voice mode. Because I knew all about how that was going to work. I was just waiting for it to come out. And then I showed people, well, here's some ways you could use it in your business. And like, that video got like 80,000 views on my channel. I guess more than that now. But, like, my channel has, like, at the time when I published that, my channel had like 200 subscribers or something.

Bryan McAnulty [00:58:07]:

And we. The rest of my views videos had like a couple hundred views. And so, like, tapping into that trend there was good. And I like the idea of, like leaving room to be able to say, like, oh, well, there's a new story or something that came out that's related to me. I should talk about that. But for the other, like, topic content where you've separated it into those buckets, do you just say, okay, today's this day and now you think of something, or are you, like, planning it out ahead of time?

Mara Einstein [00:58:34]:

I never script anything, and I. And that's just a. You know, it's just from having done this and stood in front of a classroom explaining difficult concepts for the last 25 years. I mean, that's just. That's one of my skill sets. But it should be that if you own a company, you should know your product and service better than anybody else. And so if there's something that happens that is connected to the product or service that you are selling, you should be able to do that, too. I mean, that's also the real value of the stop button.

Mara Einstein [00:59:10]:

And that's one of the Things actually, when I first started going on social media, what somebody explained to me is you want to act like you're editing even if you aren't editing. So get, you know, get to an idea. You create your hook at the beginning of the video, stop, take a breath, think of the next thing you're going to say. You know, say that, stop it, think about the next thing you're going to say and stop it. Usually I have a vague idea of what I'm going to say before, before you even start recording. But it's always good to create those stops in the video and then you can go back and edit it anyway. But yeah, I mean, go into the video thinking about a little bit about what you're going to say and then the rest will sort of fall into place. Because you talk about your product all the time.

Mara Einstein [00:59:56]:

You should be talking about your business all the time. And the people who you are presenting to in social media spaces aren't hearing you talk about it that way all the time. So just pretend you're talking to one of your clients or whatever. Yeah, you'll find a way.

Bryan McAnulty [01:00:11]:

Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. I think that's good because I've noticed myself, like my editor's giving me feedback too on like if I tried to do a video where it's something, it's still about the right topic, but like, it's not directly from like my train of thought and it's something where it is more scripted out. Like it's, it's obvious to him that like it was more scripted out even though I'm trying to like be more enthusiastic about it or something. Whereas like, if I just am saying the thing that I know it comes across way more authentic and real because it's, it's exactly how talk to somebody else. I was talking about it.

Mara Einstein [01:00:46]:

Yeah, well, it's really funny because recently I had somebody say, to say, comment on one of my, my posts. Just talk to us. What are you talking about? I am just talking to you. I haven't scripted, I've never scripted anything here. I don't know what, what do you want me to do? So you're always going to have the detractors and you. That's. I think that's also the value of the more you do it, the more you get used to seeing who, you know, one the bots, because they, you know, they'll appear, but also you know who is not part of your community. And that's what the block button is for.

Mara Einstein [01:01:21]:

The block button is your friend and Use it not unsparingly. But look, if there's someone who comes to your site with a. With. To your post with a legitimate complaint, that also can be a really great opportunity for you to learn, because I've also done that too. I thought somebody was a bot one time and I said, you know, can you explain yourself a little bit more? We actually ended up getting into a really good conversation when we started DMing each other and share and sharing information. So. So if you, you know, it can go. Can go both ways.

Mara Einstein [01:01:57]:

But if. If after two passes with someone and they're still trying to dump on you, that's usually when I hit the block button.

Bryan McAnulty [01:02:05]:

Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely not where you want to be. Not where it's worth to spend your time when you could be helping other people, just enjoying yourself in general in your life.

Mara Einstein [01:02:16]:

Yeah, absolutely.

Bryan McAnulty [01:02:19]:

Thanks so much for coming on the show. Before we get going, where else can people find out more about you?

Mara Einstein [01:02:24]:

Because everything's in flux right now. The best place to find me is my website, which is dramarainstein.com-r M A R-A E-I-N-S-T-E-I-N.com and as long as the platforms are around, I'm at Dr. Mara Einstein on all socials. I'm on TikTok. I'm on YouTube for right now. I'm on Instagram probably for a couple of months after the book comes out. I'm on Blue sky, but I'm not loving. I have to admit, I'm not loving Blue Sky.

Mara Einstein [01:02:58]:

So, yeah, I'm there. Come find me. Come interact with me. Come to TikTok though, because that's where I have the most fun.

Bryan McAnulty [01:03:04]:

Awesome. Mara, thanks so much.

Mara Einstein [01:03:06]:

My pleasure. Thank you. This was great.