The Business Fixer Blog by Wes Schaeffer, The Sales Whisperer®

Leonard Kim Went From No Promotion To The King of Promotion

Written by Wes Schaeffer | Jun 14, 2017

Humanize and be yourself to maximize your promotions

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Sales Tips you'll learn in The Sales Podcast...

  • Branding, marketing, and startup strategist
  • But he struggled at first
  • He's "stuck in his ways since I'm Korean!"
  • He was running away from his fears but he didn't know what he was afraid of

  • Took shortcuts in everything...
  • Had to keep starting over
  • Had his electricity cut off and had to move back into his grandma's house
  • Had to recognize his faults and grow
  • Moved to his friend's sofa for $100/mo
  • Broke his ankle so he was stuck on a couch for three months so he reflected
  • You're where you are where you're supposed to be
  • He went back through his life and analyzed cause and effect
  • His business partner has a process for doing this quickly
    • Two sets of sticky notes
    • He writes on one set
    • Has his friends write on the other set...and people are honest and direct
    • Now you know what you have to work on
    • He had issues he didn't realize...he was scared of being hurt by people he helped
    • He had to accept and forgive
    • He accepted responsibility
    • His mom is a "great victim of everything" and she doesn't have joy in her life
  • 2011 he got an entry-level job
  • For two years his goal was to get promoted
    • He worked hard
    • He wore a suit
    • But didn't get promoted or a raise ($16.24/hr)
    • He could only eat one meal per day (Obamacare cost him his lunch money, literally)
    • People told him he was arrogant
    • He applied to 100 jobs, got three interviews and nobody hired him
    • Went back to school and it helped a little
    • He went out and shared his feelings and experiences and within six months he had two million reads on his posts
    • He wrote posts on his Blackberry on the bus
    • Within 18 months he had about 10 million reads and figured he should monetize it
    • He started on Quora and didn't have a website
  • Posted the same stuff on his site
    • About me page
    • Subscribe button (RSS feed)
    • How to hire him (for free...which was a bad idea that he quickly recognized)
      • Raised his prices
      • Doubled his rates and doubled his rates and doubled rates
    • Did sales in 2005-2006 he was in sales and understood it
    • Did some marketing from 2007 to 2011 so he understood it
    • All of the companies went out of business so his resume was "full of broken hopes and dreams"
    • So he started marketing himself
  • May 2013 and by Dec 2014 had 10 million reads
    • It's hard to master social media all at once so dive into one and master one 
  • Doesn't trust tools, he trusts people to do his social media
    • First, it was the 17-year-old sister of a friend
    • Then it was a friend who broke an ankle
    • Then it was an intern who got 2,000 retweets to be hired
    • #BruisedBananaEaters
    • He had Deborah create a PowerPoint based on his articles
      • One was like a college assignment and it wasn't "right" or "shareable"
      • Then she made it 10 times better
      • From there she got better and they tightened it up
      • Now she re-purposes his content
    • When one VA left he had her write up a list of tasks
    • Maybe 80% of his posts are branding
    • He does his own CTAs
    • Most of his content is evergreen
    • When you use current events you get a huge spike in traffic from people who don't care about you
    • Use BuzzSumo to create better titles, avoid controversy, replace the image, update links
    • His assistant works maybe 30 min/day after a month of getting up to speed
    • His Vegas assistant creates new content but this is her part-time job so it may take a month for her to get it done
  • Humanize yourself and be yourself
  • For example, a doctor
    • Maybe unapproachable...educated...aloof
    • Make them be seen as "just like me"
    • Tell their story
  • Hungry, Humble, Honest is how 17-year-olds should brand

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