Uncommon Advice
Business is a game you have to 'Play to Win' and it's the Uncommon Advice from Experienced Entrepreneurs that helps produce your winning playbook!
Uncommon Advice
Becoming an A-Player
Ever wonder what sets A-Players apart in business? We'll guide you through their high-performing, self-motivated traits, and how they proficiently steer tasks to fruition. We'll also explore how an A-Player's persona can vary based on their role and the business they're in, especially when they're in sales and marketing. To top it off, we'll discuss the three daily habits that every A player and entrepreneur should embrace for personal and professional growth.
We then switch lanes to the realm of content creation and curation. You'll understand how curated content can provide easily digestible information, fostering a brand personality that resonates with your audience. To wrap up, we'll discuss the significance of building business relationships by offering value to others. Join us as we dissect these topics and dispense valuable advice for both seasoned and aspiring entrepreneurs.
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But entrepreneurship is a game right and money is how people keep score. So the fastest way to increase your score is to have a bigger impact on others. Back at it. Uncommon advice, once again coming with some good stuff today, which I'm excited about, to dive into Talking a little bit about A players and performing and getting into some other cool topics on curator versus creator.
Speaker 2:How important is an A player in a business? Huh. Well it's key. It's like, yes, it has to be like, I think, probably one of the. I hear that a lot too. When I started working. It's like I need A players. That's always one of the first things I always hear. I need A players, and for me it's like what is an A player? I feel that A player is different to everybody, right, so whatever the need is in the business, but it's like what is a name player for you?
Speaker 1:Well, first off, a lot of people who say they need A players aren't A players.
Speaker 2:So they don't know what they need, right?
Speaker 1:So I think, and frankly I've said I need A players before and I was not an A player yet. And I might be not to sound cocky, I guess I'm just confident.
Speaker 2:But now I've grown into an A player over time.
Speaker 1:But there's times that I'm like I need an A player. I just didn't know. I just knew I wanted good people, but I didn't really know what it meant. So a lot of people say it. So to answer your question, you know, an A player for me is somebody who, self-motivated, performs at a high level. An A player, to me, action-wise, is more so is easier to see than define. An A player is going to make quick decisions. An A player is not going to sit around and twiddle their thumbs and go. I can't do this until someone tells me how they're going to figure it out. Correct, they're going to be competitive, right. So at the end of the day, an A player is somebody who gets things over the finish line.
Speaker 2:And you mentioned that a lot too in our business it's funny that Nate's saying this because, again, I work for Nate and he's saying what he's looking for. But no, you've mentioned that before that the whole goal, the whole struggle in the past has always been getting things over the finish line, and that's what you keep preaching on me and the team. It's like we got to, we talk, we sit here, we have great ideas, but now we just got to execute on it and get it over the finish line. And I guess for you that's what an A player does. Yep, but I've also heard A player in the sales world coming from what the other places I've heard A players is like when people look for an A player also, like I'm putting down the sales aspect of things, there's people who, who's the hunter, who's going to go, and it's like you're not given.
Speaker 2:You have to go find it, you have to go do the conversation. You got to do the hard work and stuff to get the reward later, which your reward in sales is your commission and hopefully a long lasting, reoccurring commission in that, in that aspect. But in that aspect is who's a hunter, who's the outgoing person, who can sit and have a social conversation when you really don't give a damn about the person across from you. You're just trying to get their money right. So there's there's different ways to define A players and everybody has a different definition to it. So I find that very interesting. I learned that as as I kept hearing more and more what people wanted in an A player for themselves.
Speaker 1:Well, an A player in a sales role for a marketing role could be two different types of personalities too, they are two different personalities, correct, kind of a the mold depends on what kind of position they're in and what you're looking for for that position, but I would say you know, boiling it down to some simple things it's self-motivated, highly competitive, wants to win, willing to get things done across the finish line, has leadership capabilities. And one thing I wanted to talk about today are actually three things that I believe entrepreneurs and A players do every day, or should be doing every day if you're striving to be, and number one is stretch and work out right.
Speaker 2:So physical, physical, I mean that in a while, I mean we'll give you yours, man, because you're out there playing pickleball and Pickleball and beach volleyball and beach volleyball, some pickup basketball right.
Speaker 1:So you're out there getting it in a different way, Right. And then also, I believe you know entrepreneurs and A players, they're going to read. They're going to write and read every day Something right, Right, and attempt to do this every day. And for me, I've always written down if I there's certain things that if I can do it every day, I know that I am going to grow, expand, get better and sharpen my, my skills right and writing. And coming down to storytelling, right, Not just tactical writing, but storytelling is a great skill set that A players and entrepreneurs need to have. So writing allows you to help, helps you develop that. Reading and stories and understanding it helps you develop that. And then the the third thing I think that they they should be doing is learning something new. So a lot of times, as entrepreneurs and A players, is if we stop learning, we're not striving to continuously be the best, right, and if we're not learning, we're not growing.
Speaker 1:If we're not learning, we're not. We're quickly becoming going, dropping levels. You can become an A player. You can sure as heck drop back down to a C player If you're not trying to improve yourself.
Speaker 1:So, these are kind of three things. I just want to kind of mention that I think If you're striving to be the best of the best, you're striving to the. These are three things that you can do outside of the tactical stuff you do within your job right and you're in your career that are going to help you just constantly get better.
Speaker 2:Well, it also shows a couple of things. It shows accountability. Right, if you're being consistent with this kind of things working out every day, stretching. You're reading, writing I know you've spoken about lately you've been getting up early. You're writing something, you're doing your walk and the last thing you mentioned which was what was the last thing you just mentioned Learn something new every day.
Speaker 2:Learn something new, which that's very, that's very important because nowadays you have all the tools in the world to learn something. You don't need to pay $555. You can go on YouTube and learn something new. You can even our social media platforms, which they get a lot of hate nowadays. Oh, social media has ruined this generation, this and that, but there's a lot of value that you can pull out of social media other than just watching LeBron James Dunk videos and stuff like that you can pull.
Speaker 2:There's educational stuff in it. I've seen and that's big on TikTok actually my TikTok, I go through it because of the algorithm. It's educational stuff. It's like real estate investments, how to sales, how to be in an interview, those kind of things. There's a lot of educational stuff on TikTok and Instagram and stuff that you can take advantage of and you don't need to be paying these courses. Yeah, I'm not saying they're gonna dive deep in and they're gonna go and show you everything, but at least it's the surface right. You're getting the mindset and you're just understanding it. So there's a lot of value in that kind of stuff. When you mean learning, there's a lot of ways to do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there's a couple different ways to approach the social media, as you mentioned like bashing on it.
Speaker 1:You can be the consumer or the creator. So a lot of times, people the majority of people on social media are just consuming and scrolling. They're not looking at how they can leverage what they're scrolling. So who you follow will determine the stuff that's in your fee, right, and the things that you stay in and watch. So if you're following the right people and you're consuming content, that's valuable, great. But the key is what are you actually taking that stuff if you're consuming and leveraging it and using it, or is it just going in one ear or not the other, right? So a lot of times, people like to use it just to do mindless stuff too. So I think that leads well into, kind of our next topic, right.
Speaker 1:I wanna talk about curators versus creators. So on social media, you're either a consumer or a creator. In my opinion, there's two of them ways to look at it. You're either they're consuming everything or they're creating for people to consume. But in regards to that, a creator when you start pushing content out, you can be a creator or a curator, and a creator is somebody who's creating original content podcast emails, videos, reels, and so original content A lot of what we do here at Uncommon Advice and this podcast.
Speaker 1:Everything is us talking about our views and topics of business world and given advice and our beliefs and stuff like that to help entrepreneurs, ceos and founders right. So with that there's also curators. So, for example, some of our newsletters, we're curators. Right, we're taking content from around the best content from around the web and reporting it back, curating it into a newsletter and putting it into our subscribers' hands so they don't have to go out and find the best news and spend instead of them spending an hour trying to search the internet to get the information that you need to know they get it from us and a five minute read.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and then being a creator. One thing that, going back to speaking about the social media, that I've learned is these people aren't consuming, and consuming is okay. I'm not much of a creator myself. I don't do a lot of creating. I'll be on the consumer side. You do a lot of creating yourself. You do a lot of videos, educational stuff, put it out there, but in the consumer side of things like, I bet you that what I consume is completely different than someone my age is consuming at the moment, there's a lot of people out there consuming highlight videos, this or that, where, Like I said earlier, I'm looking at investments, Like one person that he gets a lot of hate to people.
Speaker 2:It's like you know, but either you love him or you hate him, kind of thing. Is the Grant Cardone Like I've heard a lot of crap. Oh, he's a hard sale, he's a hard of this, but he has access, the guy has money, he's successful. So whatever bullshit he did, guess what it worked. Like you can't talk crap about it. People say, oh, he's a scam, he's this well become a scam. Then If he's such a scam, then why can't you do it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and people say that scam because they don't understand what he's doing. Exactly and it's easier to hate than it is to be excited for. Exactly Because a lot of times when people are, oh, it's a scam, it's because they don't understand it, they don't want to understand it and they just can't see themselves ever doing it. It makes them feel better by not doing it, by calling someone a scam, as opposed to just getting out their ass and doing something for themselves right, yeah.
Speaker 2:So going back to you, nate, so what got you in the creator mode? Have you? Because you haven't always been creator, right you? We talked in the last podcast. You were so entrepreneur, you've been an entrepreneur, but when did you really say it's like I need to start creating, like I need to start creating this content to give value to others?
Speaker 1:So, to take a quick step back, I've created content in the past. Okay, I've gone through ups and flows when I had my agency for nine years. The longer that went on, the less I created, the more I was behind the scenes. But then I was at hired guns so I wanted to launch the media company and I didn't want to be the creator at that time again. So what I did is I launched the media company in more of a curator mode right, we're curating content and stuff like that. I was not the face of anything. And then just recently, over the last couple of years, I started creating more content personally and it's because, for me, I had someone look at me and say, hey, look, if you've got knowledge, our job is to give you know, like one thing that we should be able to do is give because the more and we'll get into this shortly but get the value behind giving right.
Speaker 1:And he said if you've got all this knowledge, you're being selfish by not sharing it because there's somebody that you can help. And that's really when I started. Creating content was for one of that was one of the reasons was because, all right, well, call me selfish. I'm like, oh no, yeah, that's it. We proved you wrong. And if we go back to proving wrong versus being right but proving yourself right, so I started creating content in that manner to help others and that was my sole focus. There was no I had. For the first couple of years. We had no offer. Like there's no offer, there's nothing that we were offering to help people. At the time.
Speaker 1:I figured that would come over time. We'd figure some way of you know how can we help besides just content. You know, bring some other people in and help them at a higher level. And then the other thing was it became the digital footprint that I can leave my kids with many lessons, and it's content one of my goals. When someone asked me a while back, it was Sean Wayland asked this whole crowd of people. He's like what, what do you want, and you know, get clear. Well, I want to leave a good legacy. Well, what does that mean, right? So I started to finding I was like man I want to leave knowledge, content and positive experiences that outlist for my family and others that outlived me. And when I realized and understood that making content became easier because I'm leaving a digital footprint of content that are going to help people that my kids can go back to one day, my grandkids someday can come back to and see oh, when you know, grandpa he did, you know he left a lot of wisdom out here to help others, you know.
Speaker 1:So I think those are the kind of two things I do it for. But eventually, once you create content, grant Cardone's got offers, he creates content, he leverages that and grows his business. Now for us we just recently, after a couple of years of creating content, we just rolled out our million dollar newsletters workshop, and that's one way that we're helping people. It's like, hey, we're really, really good at building these audiences, building these newsletters. Why not teach a few other people to help them get their time freedom back right? So I think you know when you're creating content. When I got into it it was for those reasons, and now a lot of times some people get in it only to make money.
Speaker 1:And you know, I think that only lasts so long.
Speaker 2:So so you explain the creating content, now the curator, because people can look at this and say, well, you're just copying other news articles, whether this, what are the benefits or the I could say maybe the reason behind curating content now.
Speaker 1:Well, curating content, you don't have to be the expert, you can be the reporter, right. And so, with curating content, it allowed us to expand into different niches that we're not experts in, because being an expert takes a lot of time, energy and effort and you gotta get the knowledge right. So we became the reporters on that and we're in an environment today where people want stuff that's easily to can, easily. They want stuff done for them, they want it. People want things done in an easily consumable manner, right. So there's a lot of stuff that goes into it. And so for us, as the curator, we were able to get into the finance space, the health space I've, you know, I've dabbled in health and stuff, but I'm no expert and allow us to get into the sports space, which is, you know, I didn't, I wasn't a professional athlete or anything.
Speaker 1:But so we've created this curator environment to where we can really kind of bring news for specific people on a daily basis, for them, you know, curate a form, put it in their inbox. But we also do it not just like, click here, click here. We do it with a brand that people like can start identifying with, and a brand that has a character and a brand that has a personality almost with it. Right, you know. So, maverick, think about it. You know, with financial Maverick, you think of Maverick the movie or Top Gun and stuff.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like an edgier you know a little bit of a cocky kind of a little bit you know like, but confident, you know environment, you know newsletter. So we're delivering in that way. So that's one thing. With the curators you still got to kind of create personality with it. Just doesn't have to be yours.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because here in the office we have both right, we have the cure, in the newsletter side, we have the curator, but we also do our own articles. Yeah, like we also. Like we said, we also go in and do the dirty digging and write our own articles. So we live both of both. We live the best of both worlds, like we do both of them. So, yeah, I just wanted to myself just a little more on the curator side of things, and they probably did too.
Speaker 1:There we go so. So I got a quote here I want to talk about. So I want to get into this uncommon advice piece and this comes down to being a creator. It's a, so I posted this online. You can follow me on Twitter if you want to get these things before the podcast. But entrepreneurship is a game, right, and money is how people keep score. So the fastest way to increase your score is to have a bigger impact on others, and I wrote that and it's made me instantly start thinking of Zig Ziglar. I got to see him speak when I first started getting into the online business world. Amazing speech, but one of his famous lines is you can have everything in life that you want If you'll just help. If you'll just help enough other people get what they want. So a lot of times, people get into business because they, they are trying to, they want to get out of their nine to five, as they say it.
Speaker 2:They want to make a bunch of money.
Speaker 1:They want to make a bunch of money, they want freedom and with this and with that it's tends to be selfish reasons, but the things that make that business that you build go is the amount of people you hope. So. Another thing is I mentioned when I got out and that quote also kind of had me step back into the creator mode because I knew if I could help more people, everything else would work itself out right. Like you know, the money will come and you know we'll continue and actually, if anything, it forces being a creator, forces us internally as a team to build more things, to test more things, to get better at what we're doing. Right, because we're talking on it, we're leading on it. We need to be really, really good at it. Well, also builds trust.
Speaker 2:It builds trust right With those people you. You, if you're helping at that moment, you're not asking them for money. They're thinking why are you doing this, or why is he doing this, or why is she doing this? And it's building that trust. So when you do come to this point where like hey, I want to sell you this or hey, I have this offer, there are more than likely to be like you know what this guy did, help me back in the day. He's not, he's not trying to scam me or that kind of stuff, and they're more open to it. You're getting less objectives. I say back on that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:So it's the bank of goodwill, right? So a lot of times on the creator side, if you do have your own offer, you're putting into the bank of goodwill, you're putting value out, you're putting value out, you're putting value out and then you ask. So you need to put enough value out to where, when you have an ask, people are interested in it. A lot of times when people get into this it's it's always an ask and everything is an ask. So when someone's always an ask, then people stop listening because the value is gone, because the value has become about you and you getting something from them. You're always think about it when you have someone that comes to you and they're you got a friend, and every time they come to you or every time they call you they need something, you tend to stop picking up that phone call, right when you get tired of it, it's like you get tired of it.
Speaker 1:It's like so when someone's always asking and taking. It becomes something that you don't want to deal with. So, in the creator world, focusing on value first, knowing that eventually you'll have an ask, will help you down the road right, which all ties back to the newsletter audience.
Speaker 2:That you've done. You've always like your content's always been given, given, given. If you go into your Instagram, tiktok, you have hundreds of videos of you giving information and tips and stuff like that. And now is you're basically doing an ask hey guys, join the group, join the mastermind or the what'd you call it, the $10 New Year's orders workshop. Yeah, the workshop. So now you're asking after giving so much to the people for free, not asking for anything in return now is when you're asking. So it's basically what that quote mentioned. Yeah, pretty similar to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I know if we help enough people build enough of the gain time freedom back, make more money. We do all that stuff, we help them. You know everything in the back end will work out for us.
Speaker 2:So they I don't know if I've asked you this question before we jump off here so you, you're building this, this newsletter group. What is the goal? What is the goal with this?
Speaker 1:So I don't quite see the end game just yet. I think for me, teaching others one, there is a financial incentive. I do charge for it. I give a lot of great content for free in a group, but also to work and then you can also they build a company. You can work with me one-on-one to kind of launch your stuff and go through the workshop and whatnot. So that is what it is, but there's a price to that, because time is money and speed is money. But for now it's helping other people.
Speaker 1:The people that I'm helping, which I'm super excited about, are all high-level guys. They're A players on their own right and they know that this is going to help grow their business. So for me, as I help these people grow their business, a couple of things will pop up, I think, long-term down the road for me. I don't know exactly how to look, but one of them will be the ability to invest in those companies right, into products and people that I believe in, through optimized assets, which is buys and sells and investing companies right. So it'll give us that ability to do that and then it'll also create partnership opportunities that we can help take. You know, for me potentially being a board member on their company to help them grow faster. So I think opportunities for those things will pop up.
Speaker 1:What that looks like, I don't know yet. I don't have that answer. I'm just more focused on getting the result that people are. There's people investing in me to help them do it. So my focus is getting them the result, because if I can do all of this and if they don't get the result, it's irrelevant. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. None of those things will happen. So key number one is you know, first step was just keep giving value. Keep providing value. Keep talking about the things that we're doing and how we're changing the game in regards to business and newsletters and the things that we're learning. Keep talking about that. You know, have a few people that we work with one-on-one and help them build theirs and once they start having success, they start talking about it and then from there you know the next phase. Ideally, we can invest and grow in some of these companies, but we're not there yet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I want to put something into it, because you said you've had a good amount of high level people sign up for the workshop, but that doesn't mean a low level person can't Right. This is actually a great opportunity for someone who is not a high level to build those relationships, because you don't know where those relationships can. These people might be investors into an idea you have. You build these relationships, you work in this workshop. You can be an investor to someone who comes in who's not. You're not running a six, seven, eight-figure company. You might be a guy that, hey, I have $10,000. That's all I have. I want to learn how to do it, or whatever the cost is for the workshop. And they learn, they build, and that can be a relationship you build, because I know you said high level, so I wanted to make sure people knew that this is not just for high level.
Speaker 1:This is for anyone. Well, the people that understand what we're doing are high, have been high level. When I say high level, it's somebody who understands business, somebody who's made a crack at business, somebody who understands marketing. If you're someone who's like, if you're just looking for a business opportunity, that's not for you. I have no desire for someone who's to work. Frankly, if you're down to your last, like a few thousand dollars, and you're trying to invest in this, it's not for you. Okay, because it's not a.
Speaker 1:There's other things Like a lot of people will say oh well, you got to spend your last dollar to be able to make money and there's pressure sales guys that do that stuff all over the country. That's not us, man. Like you got to come in, you got to know exactly what you're trying to do. You got to have understanding of marketing, know that you're trying to build a business, understand it takes time, effort and money to do it. And if this is a lot of times, guys, will people like these sales people try and sell something and the person just is thinking when they buy it. This gets into buying psychology and all that that's a whole nother podcast.
Speaker 1:but if someone buys it, they feel like their life changed because they spent the money. We're not looking for that. We're looking for people that understand eight players that understand execution. Gotcha, you got to execute.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I can give you all the tools and teach you how to fish, but if you don't do anything with it, there's nothing I can do about it.
Speaker 2:There you go.
Speaker 1:So now you don't have to be the most experienced, but you got to understand it's a business in trying to grow a business.
Speaker 2:Correct, yeah, it's just not for Joe Schmo.
Speaker 1:This is not the next business opportunity that's going to save someone's life.
Speaker 2:Gotcha Okay. So just to make sure we got a good understanding out there. Yeah Well.
Speaker 1:I mean, I guess that's it, you know. Go ahead if you want to follow us online. We got all my handles are Nate Kennedy MD.
Speaker 2:Zinan zero three, 23 are all mine.
Speaker 1:Why zero, three, 23?
Speaker 2:You want to know something I have no. Well, three is my favorite number. I don't know the 23, though. I haven't thought it no idea. I think it was whatever Instagram suggested that day Was it LeBron or Jordan. Neither. Neither I'm a Dwayne Wade guy. All right From Miami, heat, dwayne Wade is my guy. That's why it's three. That's why the three to 23,. I think it was just a Instagram suggestion. I think I heard of.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, huge thought went into that branding side. Yeah, yeah and then. So anyways, yeah, give us a follow, and also on this video, man, make sure you like subscribe, get first notice when we drop more content. Appreciate you, thank you.
Speaker 2:See you. Hey, listen to this. I might have to take the uncommon advice.