Rent the Attention, Own the Audience

Listen to the episode with Scott "Shalom" Klein

The short version

• Platforms are for attention. Email, SMS and your own community are where you actually reach people.
• The biggest operational mistake founders make is not posting enough, and only posting what they think is good.
• Buying is an emotional decision. Logic justifies it after the fact.
• Gary Club is a tokenized community with a market cap around 7,900,000, treated like an equity based membership you can buy with a credit card.
• I trained AI to clip, post and reply so I do not have to sit in the feed.
• One action this week: text five people a day, and send selfie videos.

You rent attention, you own the relationship

Scott opened with the thing most small business owners actually feel, which is that they are held hostage by algorithms and rising costs. My answer has not changed in years. You rent to get attention, but then you need to take those people somewhere you can reach them in case the platforms go away. We have all heard the stories of Instagram accounts or YouTube accounts getting banned and someone losing access to their entire platform overnight.

So use the platforms for what they are actually for. They get you attention. Post the clips, the short stuff, the content that pulls people in. Then bring everybody back into your email list, your community, your SMS list, your ecosystem, so it is your own data.

I think of that owned database as an ATM. Anytime you need to make a little extra money, or anytime you need to move a little extra energy, you can hit your own list. If you go try to hit the algorithms of Instagram or TikTok instead, you are at the mercy of them. With email or SMS you get directly into the inbox.

You rent to get attention, but then you need to take them somewhere where you can reach them in case the platforms go away.

The biggest operational mistake is not posting enough

Scott asked what the single biggest operational mistake is when founders try to scale from scratch. It is simple. They do not post enough. They only post what they think is good, and we do not know what is good. The algorithm tells us what is good.

For business owners the instruction is literally that basic. Open up the camera, look at it, just talk, and post. Then keep doing it. That gives you data and it gives the algorithm data, and data is the only thing that tells you what is working.

The other half of it is lane discipline. Gary Vee said this just a couple of weeks before we recorded, and I think he has 150 different social accounts now that he posts on across all kinds of topics. That is him. For everybody else, create a lot of content and stay in your lane. Do not get out of it. Stay right where you are.

They don't post enough. They only post what they think is good when we don't know what's good. The algorithm tells us what's good.

Tokenized community, explained without the jargon

Scott raised the move from broadcast marketing to decentralized creator economies and tokenized communities, and how a traditional business leader is supposed to adapt without drowning in vocabulary. We are a tokenized community. Our market cap is about 7,900,000. But I do not lead with any of that.

We treat it like an equity based membership. Instead of getting into NFTs and tokens and crypto, we just ask a plain question. Do you want to own a membership to our community? Here is the price. You can pay with a credit card. You own the token, and it is yours.

I think tokenization is the future, and I will also say it is still hard. Getting on chain and off chain is still hard. But the concept underneath it, ownership compared to renting, is the part entrepreneurs can put in their head right now and then decide for themselves.

And the honest answer is that it is not for everyone. For most owners, recurring revenue is better than an owned membership. For some communities, like a golf club, or like Gary Club, you want people to own it, take ownership, and help grow the value.

People buy emotionally, then justify it

The biggest thing to remember about marketing that moves people is that buying, or taking any action, is an emotional decision and not a logical one. Most people go in with logic and justify their price. It is x dollars, and here is why, you get this and this and this and this. That is not why we buy. We buy because it makes us feel some kind of way.

So build the thing that creates the emotional reaction. Content, trainings, webinars, whatever you use to present your offer. Then remember that the feeling is what they are buying. You still justify it with concrete evidence of the value, but the emotional transformation has to happen first or the whole thing does not work.

There is also a distinction people miss here. There is one kind of content that gets you buyers and a different kind that gets you engagement and a pile of followers. You have to be able to do both.

Biggest thing to remember is buying or taking action is an emotional decision, not a logical decision.

The moment I stopped building someone else's brand

Scott asked about the inflection point that pushed me out from behind the curtain. There were two things, and they are connected. I went through a divorce back in 2015. My business was doing great at the time, about 2,500,000 dollars a year in billings.

My divorce attorney told me I had no enterprise value in my business. It was me and my clients. Great income, no enterprise sellable value. That was a big opening moment.

One of my clients was Lewis Howes, and he was a big client paying me multiple six figures a year. Not long after that conversation I went to him and said I wanted to run a business podcast under his brand. He said no. He runs School of Greatness, that is his podcast, and he was not going to create a business spinoff and let me host it.

Fair enough. I told him no problem, it was time for me to go build my brand. I put in my resignation with that client and went and built it myself. So the sequence was realize it during the divorce, sit with it for a while, ask my biggest client to do it together, get told no, and then go do it alone.

My divorce attorney said, you have no enterprise value in your business.

I trained AI to do the work so I do not have to

Scott said he has been struggling with something as he talks to successful marketing people, which is that the work seems to demand nonstop energy and constant screen time. It does take a lot. So I trained AI to do it for me.

When I am done with a podcast, my AI clips it, my AI posts it, my AI responds to every comment. I am not there. My AI posts all my social content. It does everything for me.

That is what buys back the time to go live my life and stay in my unique zone of genius. I do not think entrepreneurs were put here to trade all their time for commenting back to someone on social media. But the algorithms greatly reward it when you engage with people, so the answer was not to skip it. The answer was to train AI to do the work so we did not have to.

I don't think entrepreneurs were put here to trade all their time for, you know, commenting back to someone on social media, but the algorithms greatly reward it when you engage with people.

Simplify, and be willing to pivot

When Scott asked about mentors, the first person who came to mind was my first business coach, Susan Evans. She told me to keep it simple and she taught me that I needed a package. At the time I was doing almost a million dollars a year, never broke a million, and had no package. I wrote custom proposals for everybody because I thought that is what they needed.

She said go build a package, deliver great results, and watch your brand grow. I did. We grew drastically. The brand grew, the impact grew, everything grew. She was the first coach who really stepped up and mentored me there, and we are still friends today.

The long game discipline is related. I was in SEO back when you could write your keywords in the same color as the background, stuff them, and get ranked. I never played those games. I looked at what I thought the algorithms actually wanted, which was quality content, a relationship, and people using their new things.

For an agency or any business, you have to innovate and adapt. Look at the big companies. LG was not a TV company, they became one. I think Slack was a gaming company before it became Slack. They all started as something and evolved into something else. If you are not nimble enough and innovative enough to pivot, you end up like Sears and you are not here anymore.

One thing to do this week

Scott closed by asking for one direct action for someone who wants to turn a passive following into paying clients. Reply to people. Reach out to people. I know it sounds strange in a digital world, but go through your phone and text five people a day.

My hidden trick is selfie videos. Open the camera, look at it, and send a short video to someone you have not talked to in a while who should be hearing from you. It gets a response a lot quicker than a typed message.

That is the whole thing in miniature. Platforms get the attention, direct contact keeps it, AI handles the parts that do not need me, and the human part stays human. Thanks to Scott for having me on Get Down To Business.

Questions people ask about this

What is the difference between renting an audience and owning a community?

Renting means the platform controls whether you can reach your people. Instagram and YouTube accounts get banned and people lose access to their entire platform. Owning means the contact information lives with you, in your email list, your SMS list and your community, so you can reach the inbox directly instead of hoping an algorithm cooperates.

What is the most common mistake founders make when growing their digital footprint?

They do not post enough, and they only post what they personally think is good. We do not know what is good, the algorithm tells us what is good. Open the camera, talk, post, repeat, and stay in one lane rather than wandering across topics.

How does Gary Club work as a tokenized community?

It is treated like an equity based membership rather than a crypto product. The market cap is about 7,900,000. Members are simply asked if they want to own a membership, they can pay with a credit card, and the token is theirs. For most business owners recurring revenue is still the better model, but for a community where you want members invested in growing the value, ownership makes sense.

How does Gary use AI to run his social presence?

He trained AI to clip podcasts, post the clips, respond to every comment and publish all his social content. The point is not to skip engagement, since algorithms reward it heavily, but to avoid trading all of his time for it.

Why did Gary leave his biggest client to build his own brand?

During his divorce in 2015, with the business doing about 2,500,000 dollars a year in billings, his divorce attorney pointed out there was no enterprise sellable value in it. He later asked Lewis Howes, a client paying multiple six figures a year, to launch a business podcast together under that brand. Lewis said no, so Gary resigned the account and built his own brand instead.

What is one action to take this week to turn followers into clients?

Text five people a day. Send selfie videos rather than typed messages, especially to contacts you have not spoken to in a while. It gets a much quicker response.

Watch or listen to the whole conversation

The full episode is on Get Down To Business, hosted by Scott "Shalom" Klein.