Becoming An Influential Leader
Becoming An Influential Leader
PLUS: Our First Ever GIVEAWAY and Dealing With Burnout.
Hey, it’s Mike. 👋
Welcome to this month’s free edition of the VAMO Newsletter. We send weekly editions to help you market better, grow your following, and sell more.
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New podcast episode this month 🎙️
How To Build Influential Leaders | Ash Jones (Founder of Great Influence)
Charisma. We can all usually agree when someone has it and when they’re more boring than a falafel wrap.
This episode is an inside look at how Ash Jones has helped to build the brands of some of the UK's most influential leaders.
Give it a watch here 👇
You can also listen to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon and Overcast.
In this episode, we cover 👇
01:41: Why do already famous/successful personalities need to maintain their personal brand?
03:36: Do we post on social media because we want to be liked?
07:41: Cookbook personal brands don’t work
19:37: Can you rescue a personal brand when someone has f*cked up bad?
29:58: What is charisma and can it be taught?
43:12: Bruce the pug goes viral
48:00: Why all founders should have compulsory therapy sessions
53:44: Most successful personal brand story - Gymshark
1:00:35: Best boss ever - taking your team to Ibiza and company culture
1:14:10: Is it better to post frequently or infrequently on social media?
Production and marketing by: https://iamproductions.studio/
Does using cash giveaways to gain followers work? Or is it a big waste of money? 🤔
Everyone loves a cash giveaway, right? All you’ve got to do is hit that follow button and hand over your email address and you're in with a chance of winning some dollar. We’ve all been drawn to them as a user, but are they actually worth running?
On one hand you’re almost guaranteed to gain heaps of new followers to your socials, increase brand awareness and rocket your vanity metrics which in turn establish your authority, as accounts with larger following are taken more seriously.
But will these users stick around once the competition has finished? By running a giveaway that’s not directly aligned to your brand, do you run the risk of self sabotage?
With an influx of new subscribers potentially more interested in the cash prize than what you actually offer, this could damage your data in the long run, causing engagement rates and open rates to fall and a mass exodus of subscribers when the competition ends.
Well, as this is VAMO and we love a test, there was only one way to find out 👇
💸 IT’S CASH GIVEAWAY TIME 💸
£557 in total.
A handy sum to help with early Christmas shopping.
No catch.
You might be seeing this email for the first time because of said giveaway. If you are, welcome. We hope you enjoy the read.
If you’re a long-standing subscriber. Don’t worry. We’ve auto-entered you into the draw.
Only 3 rules to win the cash. You must be:
Subscribed to this free newsletter at the time of the draw ✅
Subscribe to the VAMO YouTube Channel 👇
One winner will be selected at random on the 25th of November and we'll report on how this went down in the next edition.
Good luck. 🤞
💬 Top community insight this month
Q: 🤯 I’m totally burned out running my agency. Any advice for getting my evenings and weekends back?
Oof. We’ve all been there. When a VAMO member shared that they were feeling burned out this month, the community was quick to offer support. Team VAMO loved this response from Vicki Peers.
If you're working evenings and weekends just to get everything done, 1 of 3 things is happening:
You genuinely have too much work to physically do for the team hours available - so you're not charging enough per hour/project. >>> Up your prices.
'Keep upping the price until it breaks'
You are wasting time during the day, which means it spills over into the night. Maybe you're procrastinating. Maybe you're doing too many non-income generating task (admin, unbilled work) or you're being interrupted too much and losing focus/flow.
‘Procrastination is your body's way of avoiding stress’
Work out what's actually causing the stress and delegate, delete or JFDI to avoid procrastination.
Look at the cost of a VA and add that to customers' bills so you can hire more staff/increase their hours.
Are you being interrupted because your team needs to feel more empowered, or do you need to set better boundaries?
‘When this door Is closed, f*ck off’
You are aiming for perfection or overdelivering.
This is inner work: 'I am enough'. Aim to stop people pleasing. You could re-read client testimonials to remind yourself you're amazing.
Finally, know your body/rhythms.
When do you do your best work?
What time of the day are you most creative?
What time of the day are you no good for anything other than emails?
What time do you want to start work?
What time do you want to stop?
Plan your days accordingly. I schedule downtime stuff into my calendar like I would a client call, so it's non-negotiable.
And I use the urgent/important matrix instead of to-do lists so when it's time to turn off the computer, I know I have done 'enough' for today and the rest is tomorrow's problem.
VAMO member reply: “Amazing advice - thank you for taking the time to respond. I am positive that I could be charging more also I'm going to bring back a hard switch-off time from tonight - really appreciated and I have taken nuggets of advice from everyone - what a great place this is! 💖”
VAMO Member Shoutout 🚀
Thomas Beresford takes the prize this month for implementing the profile advice shared by Mike and Dan in the community question section of VAMO.
Tom: After my LinkedIn profile was featured in the latest VAMO episode - I've completely altered my LinkedIn Headline and sought to apply the lessons from the Power Statement article too.
It's now simply: Thomas Beresford - Burnout and Stress Specialist
Blowing away B.S. from your workplace
No explanation etc - that will come during discussions and the content that I put out. This whole process has helped me simplify and brought me real clarity. The annual fee has paid for itself already! What do you think of it now?
We love seeing people try out the things we suggest. Not everything will work for everyone, but if you keep implementing one of two things you pick up in the group, you should sell more, market better, and grow your following. Just like Thomas.
That’s it for this week.
We hope you found it useful.
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