The Expert Is the Person Who Shows Up: How Coaches Become the Obvious Choice with Ben Kaiser

What if becoming the obvious choice in your market has less to do with expertise and more to do with consistently showing up?

In this episode, Cam sits down with Ben Kaiser to explore how coaches, consultants, and business owners can use content to build authority, strengthen relationships, and become the go-to expert in their niche. Ben shares his journey from growing a successful YouTube channel with more than 50 million views to launching Kaiser Media Group, where he helps business leaders create strategic content that drives visibility and trust. They discuss why most experts struggle to communicate their value, how narrowing your focus accelerates growth, and why the real goal of content isn’t virality but creating meaningful conversations with the right people. Ben also unpacks the impact of AI on content strategy and explains why the experts who win are often the ones who simply show up consistently over time.  

Biography

Ben Kaiser is the founder of Kaiser Media Group, a content strategy and media company that helps coaches, consultants, and B2B organizations build authority through strategic content. A longtime creator and entrepreneur, Ben has generated more than 50 million views on YouTube and worked with brands including ASUS, HP, Intel, AMD, and Best Buy. Today, he helps businesses leverage content, AI, and relationship-driven marketing to become more visible, more trusted, and more discoverable in an increasingly digital world.

Links

Connect with Ben on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bengkaiser/ 

Take the AI Visibility Audit: https://audit.kmgtools.us/  

Use code AC20 for 20% off Ninety: https://www.ninety.io/?utm_source=community&utm_medium=abl&utm_campaign=cam 

Join our free LinkedIn community: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/16297012/ 

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Welcome to the Ambitious Coaching Lab, powered by Nightmare. I'm your host, Dr. Pam Law. Each week we explore the real tactics, tough conversations, and breakthrough moments that drive coaching success. Let's jump into today's episode. Well, hello, friends. I am so excited about this episode. We have Ben Kaiser with Kaiser Media. He's the founder of an agency that helps business owners and coaches and consultants with their content game. That seems to be the uh thing uh nowadays that you got to play the game of. So Ben helps them get consistent and get quality content to help them grow their business. So, Ben, super excited. Welcome to the show, man. Yeah, thank you for having me on, Cam. Good to be here. Dude, well, tell us a little bit more about kind of your journey into launching a content organization. I would love to learn a little bit more. We actually met through a mutual uh guest uh through Forrest Durr had connected us, and then we were able to meet at the US conference. So would love for our guests to learn a little bit more about kind of how you got to the point you're at to today.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Yeah, I wouldn't consider myself an OG YouTuber. I came into the game in 2017. Um, so YouTube for the history lesson came out in 2005. A lot of the original YouTubers really got going and kicked off in around the 2010 era. And so I came in a little late to the game, but I joined into the tech niche, which is a pretty difficult niche to break through and then make money. There's a lot of competition. But what I found is I really like niche down what I call like the triple threat. So I was a tech YouTuber who reviewed laptops, who then reviewed laptops for creative professionals. And that's really advice I give to anybody who's like wanting to start building content is don't be a generalist, don't be a motivational speaker or a leadership coach or you know, anything like that. Like find your lane and then dig deeper into that lane so that you provide unique value that speaks specifically to an audience in a very tight way. That really is what allowed me to carve a path for myself inside of the tech niche. Uh, I've worked with Asus and HP, Best Buy, Intel, AMD. We've sold over $18 million in laptops, and that's generated me close to around $2 million in revenue for my business just from the YouTube side of things. And then that is how I've kind of ended up here today with over 51 million views on YouTube and 140,000 subscribers. But all of that was built one video at a time. And I think that's where people really need to learn the story, is just the reality of it, is you build one video at a time. And every video that you build, you learn from. I was my goal was to get 1% better every video. And so as I created content, I was like, okay, what what ranked? What got views? What got comments? And my favorite kind of strategy is test, analyze, repeat. And so you're just constantly seeing what works and what doesn't, not to understand the algorithm, but to understand humans. And right now, in this you know, onset of AI, like understanding humans is more important because humans are trying to replicate, sorry, AI is trying to replicate humans. Um, and I feel like people, a lot of people approach AI as like, how do I, how do I tackle the algorithm of AI? Well, that's the worst question because then you're gonna go down a rabbit hole of general vanilla content because you're not actually thinking to serve a human. And the way in which the algorithms work is they're trying to reproduce human as much as possible.

SPEAKER_03 3:29

Yeah. Man, that's good. So then as you kind of like started to get off the ground with this, I know you, I mean, this podcast is kind of geared towards business coaches, consultants, fractional executives, you know, all the things we didn't want to label it that. We just called it the ambitious coach lab. Um, but you know, tell me a little bit of kind of how you've niche down, or is what is your target audience of who you're going after as far as kind of the perfect, you know, client for you, if you will.

SPEAKER_00 3:59

Yeah. So that's kind of how I ended up here. Throughout the throughout my career as a YouTuber, I would have business owners come to me and be like, hey, I see you're doing this thing on YouTube. Like, how can you how can I do that too? And so that's where I started to help different businesses and even like consultants grow their audience on YouTube and on LinkedIn. And so throughout my season of building my YouTube channel, I started to help other businesses. And what I found is like I've enjoyed that more than just sitting in a dark room or with surrounded by electronic devices. This past year and a half is when I've actually turned that into a full-fledged business of Kaiser Media Group as an agency. The day one of opening my shop, I was just like, who can I help? I really didn't have a niche. I wasn't following my own advice. But you have to kind of explore to discover your niche. So I took on a handful of different clients, found which ones I enjoyed, which ones I really wasn't jiving with, and kind of have iterated from there. That's the same way I found my niche in YouTube, right? I like started creating all these kinds of different videos until I found something that stuck and something I enjoyed. I would say where I sit today, I am helping either consultants who have high ticket opportunities, whether it be, you know, integrating EOS or it be integrating like Vistage, or you know, you're consulting with your own type of operating system or strategy. And when I say high ticket, I'm saying, you know, you're charging seven, eight, fifteen thousand dollars a month for your services and you have multiple clients at a time. Um, or I'm, you know, talking to businesses that are $10 plus million dollars. And, you know, if they sign a new client, then for the year, that's $150,000,000, $300,000, $500,000 per client, right? The reason I have targeted this niche is because I want people to get the most value out of content. And for me, I believe that people who are B2B businesses who can nail those higher ticket sales through relationship style content. And what I mean by relationship style is you're bringing on your ideal customer profile to your podcast. You're walking them through a job site or your factory floor, and you're having conversations with them and understanding their needs and their desires. And through that, you're creating content, but you're also building relationships. And so my content that you see me post on LinkedIn and you see me helping my clients produce is very relational, kind of network-oriented content. Uh, but what we do is we help you through that whole process of strategy of who your guests are going to be, shooting that production, editing that post-production, and then getting it scheduled and sent live for you. And so you can focus on the guests, you can focus on nurturing them and really having the best guest experience and not worry about all the production shenanigans. Um, but in a nutshell, like that's that's the target that I'm aiming for because I believe that they're gonna get the most value out of content as a small business. Sure, the Nikes, the you know, JBLs, the whatever's of the world can spend a million dollars on a piece of content, hedge a bet against that, and usually make a make a payoff. Small businesses aren't going to. Right. Um, so small businesses really need to focus on the relationship building content that has back end content potential.

SPEAKER_03 7:11

Yeah, because I mean that fits so perfectly into, I would argue that business coaches, consultants, you know, fractional executives, any of any one of those, I mean, it's basically a their primary strategy is relationships, whether that's through referrals, whether that's through just connecting with people in their ecosystem or even in their their backyard. Um, and so I think that's such a big push. And then on top of that, you kind of touched on a little bit with the AI aspect, but I would also argue that I think we're seeing a shift where people are like, hey, we actually want genuine connections with other humans. You know, it's not to say just, you know, throw out AI, but it is one of those things where I think what's connecting with other humans is when a human connects with another human. That's ultimately, I mean, we have thousands of years of that. And so you're leaning into that through a strategy standpoint. So, I mean, let's talk. So, a lot of times I would assume coaches, I mean, they they got into the profession because of their expertise, right? Of what they can offer and their, you know, path that they went on or whatever. But a lot of times they I I've dealt with a lot of business coaches and most of them struggle with awareness, visibility, whatever you want to call it. They don't know how to kind of differentiate themselves. So, I mean, can we talk a little bit? You can take it broadly, because I mean, I'm sure whether it's working with a business or a coach, maybe a little bit of strategy difference, but talk a little bit about how you kind of work through one of your clients that is trying to grow that visibility or awareness in their market through content.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

I have coined this my pillar content flywheel. So basically, what that is, is it's each of the categories of content which you produce. Uh, we both know Forrester, you mentioned him, it's how we met. He called it Content Gumbo. And so now I jokingly call it the Pillar Content Gumbo. So basically, it's the collection of different posts, mediums that you use to distribute your content online. So we'll use Forrest as an example. He's a client. He has written posts and pictures, he has podcast interviews that he's featured on, and then he has video content, which he does with me. And within those three pillars, he's going to be able to distribute different types of content that make sense for the mediums. The written and the picture post are usually about things that he's doing. This morning he had a post about him sitting there with a cup of coffee and he was looking at Claude. And Claude said, Time to start the morning with Claude and coffee, right? Just like what he's up to is a super simple post. Um, other times it's a picture from his energy group. He runs an energy chapter here. He's the OG. He started energy about three years ago. And so it's a picture of his energy group. Next will be a video podcast of me and him talking about a concept around leadership. Then it'll be him on a podcast being interviewed. And then within that, you'll see little elements of his personality. I'm gonna pivot to a different person on LinkedIn because I think they do this really well. There's a guy named Bla Brad Luttrell, if I'm not mistaken on his name. And he posts a lot of like bass fishing, triathlon, uh, like all this random acts of content, as I would call it. However, it's on brand to who Brad is. Brad loves to bass fish, he loves to be to exercise. And he had uh almost an encounter with a brain aneurysm a couple of years ago. And so all these things are really close to his heart, in addition to his more strategic business content. You have to get committed to your shtick. That's really the biggest thing. Who are you? What can you be true to? And what is the message that you can communicate? I'm really focusing right now on like the fun standpoint. Then we shift over to like the business standpoint. A lot of people don't have no clue what they do or how to talk about it. It's it's really weird. Like they literally do the thing every day, but they have no idea when they go to explain it in a paragraph what it is. I was sitting down with um a PR agency. I mean, this is the PR agency for like some of the biggest companies in Alabama, uh, some of the actual departments in Alabama, like the Department of Uh Transportation and such. And I was asking them questions, and they were like, oh man, like I don't really know how to answer that. And this is a company that like knows story brand, that like is really tuned in, but they hadn't ever taken the time to be like forced on the spot to explain what they do. Um, so I took them through what I call my core 40. And the core 40 basically helps you build a foundation for the LLMs to find you. LLMs really respond to question-answer. Um, because again, it's trying to replicate humans. Humans ask a question, they need an answer. And so I built out these 40 questions that allow companies to build out a really strong FAQ page on their website through content. So we sit down, film a session, that produces this big master document, and then that puts put on their website and it can scrape it. And therefore, LLM knows what they do. Humans know what they do. So I really recommend people going through an exercise like that because what that will do is that'll clarify your future content. Okay, so you get down, you go through your core 40, you like have all these answers, you finally have clarity on what you do and who you're serving, and then you reference that doc every time you make a piece of content. And you say, Is does this align with the doc that I built with the core 40? People have a lot of times these different marketing phrases or ideas of who they're serving, but they never reference them when they go to make a piece of content. They do really, really audacious random acts of content. Something comes into their head, like, oh, I saw this post, this is funny, or oh, this is such a good business idea, or oh wow, look at listen to what Dave Ramsey said. But it has nothing to do with their business. Yeah. And that's where they get themselves in trouble. They don't align everything to their ultimate mission or the way that they want to communicate to people.

SPEAKER_03 13:09

Because then what that allows you to do, it's almost based on, okay, let me do the front-end work. Because I think it's so easy to see, oh, well, this campaign worked really well for this person. Exactly. And, or, you know, this specific video, like, let's replicate that. It's like, well, that may or may not be the right approach, you know. But let's figure out, okay, go through an exercise. I love the core 40 of like, let's get clarification on these core parts of who we are, who we serve, what we do, all those kinds of things. Who you get for? Right. Cause then that allows you to know, oh, maybe I shouldn't go on this podcast, or maybe I shouldn't do this thing. And so can you talk a little bit? So, like, so let's say we go through that, and then what does it look like when we start to build out almost the whether it's a funnel approach, or I think you mentioned like a flywheel, like what does it look like to where should I do a podcast? Should I start writing content? Should I, you know, how do I get LinkedIn? Like, how does all that start to like fit into places as you kind of move through into more execution mode?

SPEAKER_00 14:19

I think you can really go anywhere as long as you know your message. So I could go on like a Zen Yoga podcast. I could, because I have like principles based around like mindfulness, based around like consistency and routine. I've never done yoga in my life. I don't ever plan to do yoga. But I think there's a way in which, if I know my mission and I know my target audience, I know the way in which I will be able to tap into a handful of viewers on that podcast and create a valuable piece of content on the back end for my audience. And so I think like you have to set up your foundation first and then you know who to talk to and how to talk to them. Right. I can go and I could go on a health podcast right now, and I could bring value to that person about how different habits I have allow me to do X or Y. Or, hey, have you ever thought about making content? Um, you know, if you're a doctor listening to this or you're trying to do this or that. So again, when I know my audience and when I know my mission, I can really be anywhere. Now, there are certain things that you should do in the beginning to build a good foundation. That's why I brought up the core 40. Like you want to build a foundation so that way if you end up on a podcast, somebody plugs in your website into Claude or ChatGPT and says, tell me about this person, or hey, I'm doing research, or or hey, should I work with this person? It doesn't say, oh, Ben Kaiser is a YouTuber with 50 million YouTube views and reviews tech. That is not what I want people to know about me anymore. I don't even care if they knew that about me 10 years ago when I started my YouTube channel because that's all there's a difference between going online to make money as an isolated individual and be a consultant or a business owner who is a representation of their brand. My YouTube channel can live without my likeness or name. It's just my knowledge and my ability to synthesize what's the right computer for the right person. My Kaiser Media brand matters so much deeper than my YouTube like computer brand. And so that's why it's important to understand who you show up as on an LLM. Maybe your past life or your past business experience is being reflected currently, and it's not a rep a representation of who you are currently because you've never given the algorithm anything new or anything current. And so you're being served as this random person, YouTuber, that you don't want to show up as. And there's going to be work that you have to do to lay a new foundation and prepare for when you do start going on podcasts, when you do start putting out content on LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_03 16:51

Yeah. This ties so well into so at uh on with the Ambitious Coach Lab, we talk a lot about there's five competencies of being a successful, ambitious business coach, consultant, you know, all the things. And the first two, so I'll just name them all real quick. So first off, you got to be clear on your vision, right? You got to understand who you are, who you're serving, all of that. Then once you have that set, then you go in and build your offering. You package it together, you get it priced right. What are my different tiers? Whatever, all these things. Then once you have those two things, you go out and do business development, right? You got to sell something. Then once you do that, then you've got to manage your practice. Now you have a list of clients, right? You got to actually like run the business of being a business coach. And then on top of that, at the very end, not that it all, it all they're all interrelated, right? But from a linear standpoint, as we're talking right now, then mastery. How do I continue to level myself up to keep a competitive advantage, right? And so what I love about this is this taps into really a lot of these. But I think specifically what we're talking about right now kind of taps into the vision and the offering aspect, right? You're doing that foundational work. And I love that approach because I think a lot of business coaches will feel the tension of this because they had whether they were a successful entrepreneur or a successful VP or C level executive that transitions into coaching, and that's what they're known as. And so you do, you have to go through this process of figuring out who I am, who am I going after and serving. And then how do I declare that to the market to where they don't just see me? Because I feel that. I mean, I work for an organization that I had a lot of publicity at, and I'm still to this day known as that guy, which is fine. It's that just is a credit to the work that I did. But when you're trying to launch and go after and serve a new market in a new kind of lane, that is a little bit of a hindrance because people still kind of see as that. So I think I love that approach. And so when coaches are kind of building out their offering, the messaging for their offering and kind of the approach for that, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you see people make when they're trying to communicate that value in a way that connects with their target audience?

SPEAKER_00 19:14

They haven't asked enough questions, they haven't had enough conversations with that person. That was probably my mistake at first. Um, I've I know content. I know how to do content, I know how to get you views, I know how to get you relationships and put the right people in front of the camera. Um, but I didn't quite know how to communicate to that person because I hadn't talked with them enough. And again, this goes down to like finding your niche and finding your target audience. I worked for I've worked for over a year serving clients and talking to potential clients. And it's taken me over a year to really understand who I am and what I do and how it connects with somebody and what their ultimate goals are. Because, you know, deep, deep down, there's always more of an ambition than just I need to make money. Um, there's I want to be seen, I want to be the voice in my industry, I want to be able to have time off or work more or have more money, right? Everybody has different interests and different visions, but there is overlap. And I think over time you'll find that overlap. And this is why it's so important to niche down and stay focused, because if you have a five to ten different conflicting ideas about what your target client wants, then you're going to say nothing. You're going to be saying just a bunch of randomness. And so it won't start to align and connect with your audience over time. And so it's important to talk less in the beginning and listen more. I mean, it's it's operations 101. When I if you talk to Forrest Durr, he comes into a business and he doesn't say a thing for the first couple of days. He just listens because again, he doesn't know what area of the business he needs to make a change in the most until he figures out what's actually wrong with the business. And so I'm still in that phase of listening and learning. Um, I'm I'm starting to be able to shape a little bit clearer my messaging. Um, but I'm most interested in still having conversations because in conversations you find what the person needs, not by you talking. I can't pitch myself better than somebody can pitch myself back to me. Um and so I think the biggest mistake is talking rather than listening. And I I think it's just it's the nature of the beast, right? You have these high-level executives who have been, you know, the guy in charge, and they just half the time love to talk. And and God love them, but just shut up sometimes. You know, I mean, if you want to be successful, truly stop talking. Um, and I can say that because I'm not looking at one of them in the face, you know, I'm talking to you, but I hope that somebody hears that and and does. Um, because I can't tell you how many times I've been talking or I've been watching some. Somebody close to me who I do work with try to pitch and they're just going on and on and on. And I'm like, dude, did you hear five sentences ago what he said? Like that was it. You just all you had to do is ask a question about that right there. And you would have probably closed the deal. That's what mattered to him right there. And you're off on this rabbit trail about how awesome this part of your business is, right? And that doesn't matter to him. Uh, and so I think that's something I've learned from Forrest, and something I've learned personally, is just listen, ask, ask, ask. And that's why I think more founders should start a podcast, and more founders should know how to run a podcast effectively, which is you speak as little as humanly possible. You ask questions and you only clarify or add context if you believe that for the sake of your audience, because you know your audience well, um, it needs that context because of a prior few conversations you were happening or an episode earlier or whatever it might be. Um, but it will not only create a great show, but it'll teach you how to be a better founder.

SPEAKER_03 23:04

Oh, 1,000%. That that's such a good word because I think I I found that as I, you know, we're about, I think this will be right at 30 episodes. And I mean, that's just such a cool, you know, like that's 30 conversations, and you can listen back on some of them. It's like, oh my gosh, I talked way too much. Or I missed, you know, I missed this one thing that they said. It's like, oh, I wish I would have grabbed that. Yes. And but it's good because it's almost like watching game film as an athlete where you're going back and it's like, oh wow, they said that and I completely missed it. Missed it. Yes. And so that's where I think the the, if you will, icing on the cake or unexpected benefit of content is that you actually have a replay of the conversation where you can go in, and that taps into the competency of mastery, right? Where we're actually learning and reflecting on, okay, hey, I didn't take this opportunity or completely jumped in when this person clearly had more to say. And so you start to learn those things. And yeah, you're right. Because I think there are moments, and I can see this as like a sales guy, right? That I have gone to a script or I've gone to, you know, what my next agenda point is. Whereas they wanted to stay in their pain. And had I stayed in that pain, I probably would have closed the deal. But I wanted to get moving because I had things I needed to do. And so that's a really great, and I think in a relationship-heavy sales type motion with coaching and consulting, those kinds of deals, you have to. So I that's a it's a really interesting dynamic. So, what would you say as um, say someone challenges on, well, I don't have time for that. I don't have time to do the content game or do a podcast or sit down with stuff like that. What would you kind of say to somebody that, you know, is maybe on the fence about I just I don't have the capacity?

SPEAKER_00 25:03

My first question would be where are you spending your time? So audit your time. That's again something I've learned from Forrest and all this operation stuff, it's like all Forrest. It's so it's incredible to have him as a friend and a mentor and also a client all in one. It's it's incredible. But that's the thirst thing I would say, audit your time. You're spending time somewhere that's being useless. You're spending time somewhere that you might think you enjoy because it's comfortable. Um, you're you're sitting in spreadsheets because it's your kind of comfort zone. It may be not even be your happy place, but it's just a comfort zone that you have. And so that's something that needs to be on offloaded to an upwork worker or an AI process or an a virtual assistant, right? And then also think about like, okay, what is the value of conversation worth in your normal day-to-day operations? So when you have a conversation with somebody, do those conversations usually result in business? Yes or no? Yes. Okay. Well, then how much more valuable would it be if you had that conversation recorded with your ideal pro with your ideal customer profile? You could then post that. And so this person who you ended up closing a deal with had questions that your next ideal customer profile will have, and they don't even have to get on a call with you yet for them to know how you would handle that. But then that might spring up in them another question that they want to then get on a call with you about to then ask you more deeply about that conversation you were having. And so again, replay, as you just said, play back on your on your plays, on your conversations, how are you doing, content that goes out, and then deeper connections that are built, and trust that is built even deeper with your ideal customer profile because you invited them onto your podcast. You think they're valuable, you think they have something interesting to say. It creates a reciprocity gap that needs to be closed in some fashion or manner. If we're just talking straight psychology here. Right. You're creating something between them and yourself that is more valuable than just a quick phone call. Um, and so I would say just check, check your priorities, check where you're spending your time. I have found that it's been my most number one converting tool, getting people on video um in the past years and a half.

SPEAKER_03 27:21

It's amazing how even on top of that, simply the the staying top of mind. And I love the the angle that you said of basically, hey, I've got, you know, if I bring on my ICP that I'm talking to, most likely the conversation will go in a way that is very similar to the way a conversation will go with someone else who's maybe not on the show. And if we can capture that and we can put that on, that's a great way. All right, somebody has an objection or you know, a question around something and they can see how I answer that, and then that may save time. But then it also, and I would argue this has been my entire people always ask me, they're like, Cam, how did you know you got this massive LinkedIn, you know, following and whatever, and like how do you kind of stay on top of that? I'm like, look, my entire strategy is surrounded by staying top of mind. If I can put up a stupid post funny meme or a post of me with mud all over my face from when I worked in landscaping, like, you know, all of these things, I'm gonna stay top of mind. And I've started to drive business from that because people are like, hey, I saw that video of you playing soccer, doing a bicycle kick. That was crazy. Let's talk. Like, I would love to catch up and hear how you're doing. And then boom, that turns into an opportunity. Yeah. And it's simply because I'm staying top of mind. So I think the more you can get strategic and staying top of mind around your focus, right? Sounds like, you know, core 40-based type thing. Like that is where the the real proof and the pudding, if you will, becomes to where, all right, hey, now I'm putting super highly relevant content out that's around my offering and I'm staying top of mine. That's where you start to check a lot of boxes through one call it 60-minute conversation. I mean, it's interesting how it can start to like boil down. When I worked at an agency, we always push them to do long-form content because it was like, man, I could take a, you know, then you throw the transcript into AI or, you know, whatever your process is, you can analyze it. You start to have there's some quotes that you can start to utilize. There's probably five to 10 ideas for a blog post, probably 15 to 20 social posts that come out of a pile. I mean, it's just amazing. And then the clips, you get so much from one 60-minute conversation, it's insane. Yeah.

unknown 29:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:49

And the thing is that you have to be looking for is depth of content, not the virality of content. You're not most likely not going to go viral. You're most likely not going to become the diary of a CEO or the Joe Rogan of the world. It's going to be something that grows over time. But again, if you have a ticket price that is justifiable, then you're able to easily invest the time into this incredible medium.

SPEAKER_03 30:18

I would say most coaches want to be known as experts, right? They want to be known as experts in their field, right? The, you know, whatever, the uh the primary like leader of their uh you know geography in the like entrepreneur ecosystem. I'm thinking like specifically EOS implementers right now. It's just kind of who I have in my brain as this example. But in your experience, what does it take to like actually build authority and become the obvious kind of choice in a specific category? Like how do I differentiate from my competition in a way through content?

SPEAKER_00 30:57

So I think this is fantastic. Okay, so take let's take the EOS conference, right? The the the Mecca of EOS world. If you were to go on LinkedIn and you were to look up every implementer or integrator that you met, I bet you that 99% of them have only posted to LinkedIn a handful of times. And on top of that, they've only posted a handful of times of like something that is like relevant to actually to their actual service offering. I would also bet that every one of those would consider themselves having an edge or a desire to be the expert. Well, where's the evidence? I didn't I I don't consider myself an expert in computers, but I have 140,000 subscribers and I've made over $2 million talking about computers because I showed up. Like the expert is not the person who's the smartest or the most capable, the expert's the person who shows up. There are so many books that we've all read, there are so many YouTube videos that we've watched that we said, I've had that thought before. My in-laws, they they had this idea of water bot water in a bottle like years ago. And then like five years later, it kind of came out, and they were like, Are you kidding me? We thought of that, but who did something about it? And that's really the difference between expert and non-expert. It's just who shows up. And that's again why I encourage people. Hey, uh, I'll give an example. I have somebody who I just put out a bid to. She is in the medical device sterilization industry with a brand new form of sterilization. I did a lot of research on her industry. There's a lot of people who talk about medical device sterilization, but there's nobody talking about her form. And I pitched her, I said, Hey, you have the opportunity to become the person, the voice in the entire world on this. And so I have a pitch out to her. We're gonna have a podcast where we're interviewing industry experts, organizational boards, uh, ICPs, current clients, uh, manufacturing, all of it. And then in about a year, she will be the go-to expert. Anytime you search anything, her face will show up. Now, if she decides to do it, that's the question. And so that's really what it boils down to is who shows up long enough and looks stupid enough long enough to then become the expert and have something valuable to say. Because it takes time and it's hard work and you fall on your face a lot.

SPEAKER_03 33:26

Yeah. I mean, it I I'm a testament of that, of being the one that shows up and and I just out of simply showing up, have positioned myself as this like connector of the EOS ecosystem, which is kind of like how I branded myself.

SPEAKER_01 33:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:42

And now I once, twice a week get people like, hey, I've been curious about this EOS thing. I looked up somebody and I saw you were a connector in the EOS ecosystem. Can you tell me more about that? I'm telling you, probably two messages a week now. And I've had awesome conversations with people simply because I claim that and I show up every single day. Yep, yep, that's all I talk about. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, and so that's that's I I am a living example, like without even having this conversation of realizing that. And am I the like end all be all? Absolutely not. I have so much more to learn in that. Yep. But I'm simply just like, I put my stake down, like a little flag in the, you know, Sam where I'm like, this is this is where I'm I'm I'm gonna live and I'm gonna start talking about it.

SPEAKER_00 34:29

And what it does, and this is the cool thing about uh doing what we're doing, is that what it does is it forces you again to pursue mastery, right? My biggest fear is that my my clients don't walk away saying, wow, I got way more value than I ever expected. It's why every day I wake up and I try to create better systems, better processes, better tools uh that that create a bigger impact, right? So I could have just stuck in my lane of content. I could have just been like, you know what? I'm gonna film videos for you and whatever happens, happens. And you tell me what you're gonna do. But I was like, that's not good enough. Like, I wanna understand AI. I want to understand why people are getting surfaced. I want to understand how to help content that they film with me become a tool on which helps them be showing up in the LLMs. It's like that's like again, why I developed the core 40, why I built an AI audit tool so people could see where their current, where, where's your current standing according to AI? What does AI think of you? I built an audit tool for that. Audit.kmgtools.us, right? Like go run yourself and or your company, see what it what AI thinks of you. Uh, see where you show up, see where you have holes, and then work backwards and start filling those holes. So AI knows who you are, and therefore humans know who you are.

SPEAKER_03 35:40

Yeah. So this got my brain thinking about stuff that so I'm just gonna go down this path. Yeah. What I mean, there's been so much. I look back and even my life, right? I was born in 1992. So it's like feel like I was like right smack dab in like the middle of like just the amount of change that has happened in the world is insane in my life. And um, but the one of the things that I would say probably in the last, let's just call it five years, right? But let's just take COVID, let's just take six years. Like, there has been so much change in the world of new technologies. I mean, you know, even just a couple years ago, tools like Lovable and these vibe coding tools were I would I wouldn't have even been able to fathom that. Oh, yeah. And um, but I mean, on the topic of mastery, how have you been able to maintain an edge with the technological change? Now, it sounds like you had a little bit of an advantage kind of playing, at least in that space of just being a little bit more aware of things. But I mean, it can be a little overwhelming right now because I mean it's there's an AI tool for everything nowadays. And there are lots of different social media platforms, and there are lots of different, you know, technology. Like, how would you encourage somebody with like tech stack or like kind of managing and being a master of the like tech stack that you have to kind of push your offering and like content, if that makes sense?

SPEAKER_00 37:10

So all of my ideas start here. Right? And my reason in saying this is like the problem with tools is the same problem that people have when it comes to social media. Okay, social media is telling you how to live and how to think. Okay, so depending on what your algorithm is, will depend on who you become. And so if you're sitting on on LinkedIn and you see somebody talking about some tool, most likely you're going to think that that tool is relevant to you and you need to use it. And so I recommend writing out your workflows, writing out what you do in a day, how you do it, what needs to get done. And then go into Claude or ChatGPT or Grok or Gemini and just talk, start having a conversation with it. In the past, we didn't have that ability. We didn't know how to create workflows and systems. I know about code and I know how code works. I don't know how to code. I've spent years trying to figure out how to code. I just could never get the hang of it. It's not how my brain works. But I understand what how the finished result happens when I look at a code base and when when I understand databases, I understand how to query things, like I understand how it all works, but I don't know how to do it. And so for me, that's where the unlock happened with AI because I'm like, okay, now I know what pieces need to come together. I just don't know how to make them come together. And that's where something like Claude Co-work, writing code on my behalf, has been an unlock for me.

SPEAKER_02 38:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:41

Right. So start in your notebook, write down your processes, figure out your systems, figure out how you could bring more value, how could I bring more value? If, if, if, if skill was not a limiting factor, how can I bring more value to my clients? That's the question I asked. And that's how I got to the core 40. That's how I got to my audit tool. Because I didn't have to know how to get there. I just knew what I needed. And then Claude got me there.

SPEAKER_02 39:09

Yeah. That's really good.

SPEAKER_03 39:13

Let's say a coach is listening to this and they're like, man, I love this. Where do I start? Like, I want in in let's say 12 months from now, I want to have uh the new, you know, my my newly branded version of myself. Um, I want to be known for what I've launched into with my coaching offer. Like, where would you tell them to start?

SPEAKER_00 39:38

Yeah, I would tell them to start with some sort of framework that helps them understand better what they do. Um, so there's a lot of people who follow the story brand. Yep. There's a lot of people who follow a guy named Dice, D-I-D-E-I-S-S. Uh, there's a lot of people who follow different frameworks and structures on how to get clarity on your services, your offer. Alex Harmozy, $100 million offers. Um, that's my core 40, right? So I'd be happy to talk with you or go read one of these resources that that works. With the problem I find with resources, even for myself, Storybrand, I end up on like some ethereal path. Like Story Brand, I tried to nail it down for so long. I just kept getting stuck. I kept not getting clarity on my message because I was trying to get too complicated with my message. Um, and so that'd be my one thing I've been like kind of discovering recently about Story Brand is like I'm like, it didn't actually clarify it as much, but that's just a whole nother rabbit hole. Sure. Find a framework and focus on getting clarity in that way.

SPEAKER_03 40:42

Hmm. Makes makes total sense. Cause I think if you you don't have that and put that work in a front end, and I would probably say a majority of coaches can they just jump in. A lot of them are high, quick start individuals, and they're just gonna like run and go because that's how they had success. They're entrepreneurial, you know, figures, like they're just gonna go and like grind and make things happen. But I think with this specifically, given back to the first thing that we talked about, that this is a relationship-heavy motion. You know, you can't just jump into building relationships quickly. It takes time, it takes trust, it takes all these things. And so I think you have to be a lot more intentional about doing the work and listening, like we talked, you know. And so I think that becomes kind of the biggest motion.

SPEAKER_00 41:31

But I mean, let me let me let me just springboard on that. I would say additionally, like based on what you just said there, let's say you're not a coach currently, let's say you're still in a W-2 and you want to become a coach, like you're at the perfect point to start having those conversations. I don't think you should go out and start building out your messaging and your framework before you have the conversations. I just started trying to figure out my messaging. I didn't launch a website, I didn't even do a single post to social media that told people what I did until about a year into my new, my new business. Like I knew that I would screw up the messaging. I knew it because I didn't know what I was doing yet. And so that's where I think you go all in on like having conversations and figuring out your offer and all that. And then you go back to the drawing board and say, okay, now that I have have a handful of clients or I've had 30 conversations, now I'm gonna go back to the drawing board and start to kind of piece things together. Piece things together, get it somewhat workable, go out and have more conversations with that new structure. Have another 20 or 30 conversations. Okay, come back to the drawing board. Okay, let's piece things together. Okay, this didn't make sense, this needs to change, this goes over here. Okay, go out and have more conversations.

unknown 42:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 42:38

Take the feedback. All right, sorry, and then eventually you're going to have a million dollar offer. Now, my favorite line is don't compare your your beginnings to somebody else's middles. And that for me has always been a big unlock because I'm not Cam Lawson, I'm not Forrest Durr. Heck, I'm not, you know, some of the big podcast gurus on the space. And so I can't act like them yet. It it won't make sense. I don't have the backing, I don't have the like all the following. I don't have the responsiveness. You know, people a lot of times will like post a poll to LinkedIn and be like, oh, I saw this person get a hundred thousand views on is peanut butter and jelly or jelly better? And I got one vote. Yeah, duh, because nobody's following. Right. I've made that mistake too. Yeah. Like I'm like, oh, this worked, I'm gonna try it, and then nothing happens.

SPEAKER_03 43:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:28

So that's the one thing I would add to that.

SPEAKER_03 43:30

It's a good, yeah, it's a super good clarification. It is um everybody's on their own specific journey, but what we can control is how we show up in the moment and current place that we are. Are we going to own this specific thing and show up and provide answers and help people? That's what we can do. And so, dude, this has been an awesome conversation, man. I have enjoyed this tremendously. Um, I always like to ask guests. Kind of two questions on the tail end of things. So let's say you're looking back at your career, right? With all the knowledge and experiences and passions and mistakes that you've made, all that context, right? Looking back, what advice would you give yourself just starting out? Rookie Ben, call it.

SPEAKER_00 44:22

I would have been more present rather than trying to become successful. So I think my biggest downfall is that I've always tried to become successful rather than just becoming really great at something. Um and it's it's distracted me. I would do all the same things, I would just be more focused. Because what I what I would have is I would have that idea of Ben, you'll be successful. I was always worried about that. And so therefore I I didn't learn as much as I could. So you're gonna be successful, most likely, if you're if you're somebody who has that in you, if you're somebody who has been successful in the past, and you're somebody who is focused and does do good work. So just stay focused on the process so you're even better. I can't I now for somebody who's not gonna be successful, sorry, I don't really have advice. But like yeah, I you know, uh I think you're only if somebody who's never been successful, the only way you're gonna be successful is if you focus on the work. So I guess that goes that way too. So sorry if that was kind of negative.

SPEAKER_03 45:25

And no, that's so true though. Like, I mean, it's so true. Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's a good word too, because I think it can be, especially in today's world. I mean, there is uh our attention, everything is vying for our attention, right? It's it's like, oh, here's this thing, here's this thing, here's this thing, and it'd be so easy. And they're all not necessarily bad things. It's not like, oh, well, this is gonna lead me down a bad path. It's actually like they're all good things, but they're all shiny objects. And so I think that's a really good word that you will see that success probably sooner if you focus. And and I want to add one thing to that.

SPEAKER_00 46:05

You said like shiny objects. One thing I had a conversation at the EOS conference with a lady, she was a CTO of a of a big like pest company, and she made the statement don't look to AI for efficiency, look to AI for transformation. And that to me was a big unlock because I feel like another way people are getting duped by AI is these tools are promising all these efficiency gains when that really isn't the game you should be playing. You should be playing the transformation game.

SPEAKER_02 46:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:35

So here's an example I have like how can I transform somebody's presence on Claude, ChatGPT, social media not how can I edit their videos faster or make it to where my processes are simpler. Those are good things, but those aren't going to be the things that blow blow up my business and take me to the next level of being a truly valuable partner to a company. I can't sell my efficiencies, but what I can sell is greater transformation and greater impact for somebody through the content that I produce for them. And so that will also help you not get distracted with the shiny objects as well.

SPEAKER_03 47:28

Yeah, that's that's really good. So for this podcast specifically, we I have uh a person edit them. He's awesome. Shout out, Steven. Thank you for everything you do. Uh, but I actually hand pick all the short videos because I know my audience, right? Sure, I could lean into a tool that could do it for me and I could probably knock it out super quick. I mean, heck, Riverside does it for, you know, kind of put some stuff. But I've found a lot of them are not, it doesn't under it's taking a general understanding. And so there is a level of like, it is a pain in the butt to sit down and do that. You know, it's like, you know, it's a lot of time to get those, you know, minute, 90 second, whatever things. But I found, I think, by me doing that and being highly focused, it's reached the right audience because I know it so well and I've gone out. And so I think that that's a level of focus that you have to do. Sure, it would save me hours of time.

unknown 48:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:28

But you know, it's one of those things that's like, you know what? No, I want to do this the right way. I want to get the right content out there, and it's been rewarded because it's performing that way and I'm reaching the right audience. And so I think that's just a testament of being focused on things. Um, so I love that. Thank you for sharing that. The second question that I was like to ask to bring it more current, what's a lesson that you are in the middle of learning in this current moment?

SPEAKER_00 48:55

Being a business owner is more about developing great processes than developing a great business from an appearance standpoint. So I am late to the game on reading Emoth. And Emyth has a line and it says that great businesses are filled with extraordinary processes run by ordinary people, not ordinary processes run by extraordinary people. And basically what he's getting at is in order to keep extraordinary people motivated, you have to keep them excited, ambitious, you have to worry about them getting sick or not getting sick. Great processes really anybody can do. And right now, I feel like more than ever, we need extraordinary businesses for ordinary people because ordinary people are far more far more common. I'm I'm an ordinary person. I'm not extraordinary. I mean, there's people I meet all the time, and I'm like, how are you so smart? I'm just ridiculously persistent. I've just hit my head up against the wall long enough to finally be successful. I've posted over 2,500 videos to YouTube. I mean, that's how I've gotten to 50 million views. I didn't have, you know, 10 or 15 viral videos. And so I'm an ordinary person. And so what I want to see is more ordinary people doing great things through extraordinary processes. So that's something I'm in the middle of trying to develop, trying to learn, trying to build processes uh for my company.

SPEAKER_03 50:30

I love that so much. The the even the reflection that you're able to kind of see that is really powerful. Um, because I think you're right. I mean, that's the beauty of, I would argue, you know, structure is that it allows companies. That's, I mean, take the EOS system, for instance. Like that's what's really cool about it, is it allows business owners to get freedom and build the business that they dreamed of. And all it's done is you're managing human energy through process. Yes. And so that's what's really I I love that answer. Um, that's really timely, and that's that speaks to me too. Because I think in we can go and see the illusion of what social media offers of all the extraordinary people, and we think that that's normal. And it's not at all. It's not nope. And nope, I'll get caught up in it. Most of those people, it's just a facade of like, you know, of course. And so um, yeah, man, that's that's a really good answer.

SPEAKER_00 51:40

I appreciate you sharing that. Additionally, we are now in an age of systems and processes. You can build custom tools for any system and process. You don't have to come jerry rig a sauna or monday.com or any of these other tools. You get to, you can build, you can literally, instead of making a Google Doc, you can literally go to Claude and say, Claude, I want you to create a system to post to my scheduling tool from the time the final clip hits my inbox to through. And it and it'll create a full system with documentation, with tools. Now it's gonna take you three to six months to build it.

SPEAKER_02 52:16

Right. But you can but you can.

SPEAKER_00 52:19

And how long does it take you to play and train an employee? Imagine having to train an employee every single time. No more.

SPEAKER_02 52:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:26

You can train an employee in a week to use the system that is custom built for your company. Now, it's gonna take time, it's gonna break, it's gonna be a pain in the butt a lot. But ultimately, you're gonna have some incredible tools, and it'll in the end make your business more valuable. Think about that. Sorry, I'm going and on about this. You could then have a business. How much more valuable is that business if you go to sell it and you say, hey, we have all these built tools that work in our systems and processes and flows. Here's our guidebook on how they work. Here's how to talk to them if they break. Here's the secure servers that they live on and the security protocols that are in place. Right. So, like you could build a 10x more valuable company and never even sell the never even sell the software as a service.

SPEAKER_02 53:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:11

Just have software that you built for yourself. No. Right. It's a whole nother rabbit trail. But that's that's where I think business is going in the next decade.

SPEAKER_03 53:19

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it might be the next five years with as rapid as stuff is going. For sure. Um well man, Ben, this has been awesome. Thank you for having me for coming on. Yeah, man, of course. It's long overdue. Um, like let's say somebody is just intrigued with with all of this or or wants to start to open up the, you know, they they want to grow their their awareness and visibility through content. I mean, what's the best place to get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_00 53:45

I'm most active on LinkedIn. So you can get on LinkedIn, Benji Kaiser, and find me there. Uh, if you want to run your business through the audit, go to audit.kmgtools.us. That's a great place to get started. Test your individual self, test your company, whatever it might be. Start to get some visibility on how you actually show up in the LLMs because honestly, that's a reflection of how you're showing up to humans. You might think your message is clear. You might think you know you're saying exactly what you do, but the LLM doesn't lie. The LLM tells you exactly what the internet thinks of you because it's trying to replicate human beings. So those are the two things I definitely recommend getting you started uh if you want to kind of start working with me and get in touch.

SPEAKER_03 54:26

Yeah, I'll link out to all those in the show notes so people can have it uh super easy for them. But man, thank you again for for taking the time. It's been it's been fun. I I appreciate the the connection through Forest, and it's been fun to get to know you over the last, I guess, few months. Uh so but thanks again for coming on and thank you for for listening. We have lots more episodes coming your way. Take care. Thanks, Cam. That's it for today's episode of the Ambitious Coach Lab. My hope is that something here helps you sharpen your craft and keep building a coaching practice you're proud of. Before we wrap, a quick thank you to our sponsor, 90. If you're coaching leadership teams, having your clients run their entire world in 90 truly elevates your work. Vision, rocks, scorecards, issues, it all lives in one centralized place. The clarity keeps your clients aligned between sections and makes every conversation you have with them more focused and more impactful. I've used 90 with over 500 leadership teams, and I can tell you it makes great companies better and great coaches even more effective. Feel free to use promo code AC20 for 20% off. Again, that's AC20 for 20% off. Thanks for hanging out with me today. I'm Cam. Cheering you on as you grow your ambitious coaching practice. We'll see you next time.