Lessons - Building Community And Putting Yourself Out There | Ahmad Imam, Entrepreneur, Speaker & Influencer

Welcome to the lessons episodes of Success Story. These lessons episodes will be shorter clips from past guests, accomplished value community members, and myself. In each short episode we'll feature concise and insightful actionable conversations and tactics, providing you with real-world strategies and tips to help you achieve your personal and professional goals. If you're seeking a no-nonsense approach to growth and progress, you've come to the right spot. Settle in, take notes, and enjoy. And probably the strongest, most important one is building a community. So making sure that you're focused on building a community and showing love to the people that consistently support you. And it might start off with one person. And it might start off with one person that you consistently see support you on your post. It grows to two, three, four, all of a sudden you've got 50, 60, and they're constantly supporting you. That's your community. That's your tribe. And you've got to show us much love to them as possible. And that means support their work, engage with them, actually get to know them. Know what they do. And so for me, that was a very slow and gradual process. So I must say, and I'm sure for GaryVee, it worked the same way. And for me, like I said, it's on a very, very minor scale compared to GaryVee, of course. But at some point, you hit a tipping point. And from that point, things start to increase exponentially. I guess it's like anything life. I guess it's like compounding when we're talking dollars and property and money. It starts off slow in terms of your following being built up in a community that you build in an interaction and engagement that you're receiving. And then it reaches a point where you just start to increase exponentially because all of these people that are supporting you are now giving you access to their network. And a lot more eyes are on your posts and on your profile. And so for me, the journey hasn't been building a brand or trying to build a brand or trying to be this content creator, but it definitely led me on that path. And I realized that it was something that I was really good at. And now I take pride in putting out good quality, entertaining content, educational, entertaining, and different inspires people, which I receive feedback that it does. It just warms my heart as brilliant. And so if I can spread my message and share my story in the same way I'm doing with you now through my content, and that helps people, then brilliant. I love that. Now, this is like a LinkedIn masterclass and it's motivational for people I would hope that haven't really gotten into building out their own brand. I think there's a lot of inhibition. I don't think that a lot of people unfortunately approach life the way that you have in the sense that you're saying, I want to challenge my flaws. I want to challenge the things that I'm not good at. It's a very difficult mindset to use and it's a difficult lens to look at life through. So how do you make it a little less scary when you're first starting so that it's not this huge enormous, oh, 300,000 people, holy shit, how do I ever even communicate with 300,000? Let alone, let alone, let alone, 10,000, let alone 100, right? And it seems like it's like monumental task. It's like, oh, I, you know, posting five times a day or posting three times a day or I don't know how to write copy, I don't know how to do graphic design, God forbid, I have to make a movie or a film. So where do you start? What would you recommend? Okay, so I was spoken to a number of people and where they procrastinate the most or the thing that prevents them from starting is actually either a lack of confidence. As in a fear of being judged or a fear of putting yourself out there, what do I even talk about? Or they have a lack of content, ideas and topics and again, they don't know what to kind of touch on. Should I keep it simple? Should I keep it complex? They don't know how to edit content or what that even looks like. There's a number of reasons that people don't start, but majority of reasons surprisingly is actually just a lack of confidence in a relation to putting out content and what that would mean in terms of being judged and putting yourself out there, which I completely understand and relate to. My message is this, nobody actually cares what you look like and nobody cares what you sound like, but what they do care about is your message, right? So if you have a message that you know can actually help someone and it could be anything, it could be a message related to your niche, it could be a message related to confidence like I speak about whatever it is. If it's a message that you know can help someone, you've actually got the obligation to share it. And it was actually Tony Robbins that said, when you're looking through the lens and being self-conscious and worrying about the way people are going to perceive you, it's actually a kind of selfish thing to do. And if that's preventing you from spreading a message that you know can help people, then that's why you've got the obligation to share it. So my message is to actually share your message and focus on your message as opposed to focusing on yourself and what that might look like by putting yourself out there. And the best way to do that is if it's linked in, for example, you're looking to create content, speak to people in the same way that you speak to your clients. If you're having a one-on-one face-to-face coffee with one of your clients and you're just talking about you, your journey and the services and offering that you have, content creation is no different. Look to people as if you're talking to that person just one-on-one as if there's someone sitting in front of you having a coffee and you're just talking to them organically. And that's the way you actually connect. Now in addition to that, if you want to actually put something out with some substance, make sure you understand your audience. Who is your audience? Are you actually selling a local product or are you selling a global product? If you're selling a global product, building a global brand and audience might be nice for some dopamine hits, but it's not going to do anything for your business. So you've got to think about where your brand is and what your brand looks like in the future. My brand right now is global. And I want to target my audience globally. I've got a global offering in a number of capacities. So that's now important to me. So once you understand your audience, you'll then be able to, hopefully, understand their pain points, understand what problems you're trying to solve for them, understand what questions they're actually asking. And then you can put out targeted content that actually answers those questions as opposed to taking a blind shot in a dark and coming up with a content idea and going, yeah, I hope that hits the mark. You can actually do a lot more research. We've got the luxury of Google right now where we can literally type in anything and find out what people, your audience, your target audience are actually asking. So there's a number of ways to approach this, but to answer your question at the very beginning, if you're procrastinating because of a fear of being judged or a lack of confidence or whatnot, just focus on your message and keep that very simple. And I would also ask that you go through the process of articulating your values, your personal values. So for example, I went through the process of articulating my values with my business coach and I came up with my top five core values that literally govern everything that I do. So they govern the relationships that I build and foster, the business relationships I choose to get into, the friendships that I make, literally everything that I do revolve around these five core values. And for me, it's kindness, optimism, growth, integrity, respect. And I can rattle that off so easy because I know that that's at my core right now. And once you understand your core values, all of your content will revolve around that. Every single piece of content you put out should touch on one of those values, you don't have to mention those values, but people should feel that from you, from your content. And so that's an important exercise. Once you understand your values, then articulate your story, your brand story. I went through my story earlier because that's me. That's how I got to the point where I am now. And I like to say confidence is simply having the courage to speak your truth. When you can speak to your story truthfully, as difficult as it might be, and there are people out there with far more painful stories than I have, once you can speak the truth of that story and you got the courage to do that, man, it completely changes the game. And that's how you get people to know you like you and trust you. That just rings true with me. I appreciate you saying that the ability to sort of free yourself by owning your story, that line that gives me chills, I like it a lot. I really do like it a lot and I appreciate it because I think that's when you can get over that hump and you can just be 100% who you are. It's the most free. It is quite honestly the most free. And then you take that and then you're saying you're transposing that into the content. And that's what you pick up on. For sure, that's what people pick up 100%. And look, it's not an easy process. It took me a long time to start speaking my truth and being able to share my story without a fear of being judged by it or people having a wrong perception of me. And now I'm at the stage and I'm like, I don't care because it's my story. This is me. This is the reason that I am the way I am right now and what led me to it. And if I can tell that story and even one person feel something similar or is inspired by that, then brilliant, that's where I'm at. So that process is not easy and that's why I say confidence is simply the courage to speak your truth because it does require courage to just own that as painful as it might be. And I also think as you own that, you put it out there, you're doubling down on your own confidence, you have to be confident because you will be tested. When you put yourself out into the world, it's not naive to think that you won't be tested because you get a lot of positive, you get a lot of reinforcement, but there's also a lot of negative putting yourself out there. And that's something that I think makes you stronger and almost reinforces who you are when you can even with the negativity that comes with putting yourself out there. Trust me that the Gary Vs, Tony Robbins, Richard Branson, they have their share of trolls and haters online. I think most recently Bill Gates is getting the most hate I've ever seen him get, and I think his entire career, so it doesn't matter what level you are. It doesn't matter who you are, there are people out there who answer what you do that are just going to hide you for being you, which is a tough thing. But at the same time, you have to understand that for you to be honest, if you're doing things ethically, if you are doing things right justly, and people are still hating you for being you, you know what, at the very end of the day, there's nothing you can do about it, and you really have to be proud that they're taking time out of your day to even notice who you are, because that's a success, that's a win on your part, and it's just sad on their part that they don't have anything better to do. But if somebody is so angry with you being you, well, listen, you're doing social media properly, because that's the whole goal, you got to get out there. Yeah, that's very true. And look, that's an issue with them, that's not an issue with you. If they are that angry and spiteful of you just being you and all you've been doing is speaking your truth, then that's a brilliant way to filter out who is in and who is out of your tribe. So I've got no issue with that.