As a good friend once told me in a world full of uncertainty, Be the Guide not the Hero. Tomorrow’s LiveTime with Alec will have a more in-depth look at what this means.

In this edition of LiveTime with Alec…

• Don’t be that person that humble brags on their videos
• Create that human connection and help those find what they need
• Validate others and it will come back tenfold
• Be the best “extra” in someone else’s movie.

Episode Transcribe

– What’s up everybody welcome to another LiveTime With Alec. 

I’m Alec and oh my gosh, this is gonna be, like I have notes today.

 Notes for you fools today, super excited to be hanging with you guys on this Tuesday. Whoo, happy summer, for those who’ve been homeschooling congratulations. First of all, if you notice there’s like a LiveTime With Alec and the logos over here. So I bought a green screen I was so excited, I was gonna do this like weird wacky green screen livetime today. It collapsed on my head, hung from the ceiling, I don’t know how to do drywall screws apparently. It’s right there in the corner, it crashed on me. So you don’t get the cool background today, you just get this. All right, dude, let’s rock ’cause this is a fun conversation today. Holy crap, if you were part of the podcast with Dave Savage, if you haven’t, and you’re not a subscriber to my podcast, how dare you! But if you are, then you know that he made some, he dropped a bomb on there that he’s been talking about for a while but I hadn’t really heard it yet or I haven’t let it like enter my psyche yet. Where basically he said be the guide not the hero. The world has too many heroes you need to be the guide and that to me was life changing in a lot of ways, number one I knew what he meant when he said that instantly inside my psyche and by the way hello YouTube, hello Facebook, hello LinkedIn if you’re watching this, I love you. I want to talk to you, I want to give you things, so type in #bypassed and I’m gonna send you a bunch of free stuff, you’re gonna chat with my bot too so be nice, he’s young and learning things. Alright, so Savage dropped this thing be the guide, not the hero. In mortgage sales, my people, man, we always wanna be the hero, we do. And let me tell you what I mean. How many posts do you see from loan officers and companies bragging about themselves? How many? Like seriously, it’s offensive. Stop it, like Chad, what’s up, thank you. Nobody cares, like okay, so again, remember, like think of this. It’s a humble brag, it’s my favorite one. My favorite one is everybody out there who is posting their customer service reviews of themselves. Like, I see it and I’m like, Mmm, mmm, this is the answer. This is the answer. Like those stats, your stats, your Zillow scores, you know, your five star service. Okay, number one, you’re not gonna like this, but someone has to say it it doesn’t make you special. See, here’s the reality. All humans, all of us, all of us demand, expect, require five star exceptional customer service from everything. Everything, that’s the mic, from everything. From frickin everything, what do you go to? And you’re like, if it’s crappy, it’s fine. Like, yeah. And yet, we think somehow posting my survey of myself, let me introduce myself, is somehow gonna make some be like, yes, oh my gosh of course. Like, I saw his five star service. Guys, stop trying to be the hero of your own story. Think about this for a second. I want you to do videos, I want you to write articles and produce content and show the world the amazing person you are. I want you to do that. But your scores, your survey stuff, that needs to, that’s somebody else’s job to brag about you. That’s not your job. Don’t make your content, your videos, your articles about you. Don’t. I heard this great. Great quote that just stuck in my head and I can’t remember who said it. Someone said it to me ’cause I don’t think I’m smart enough to invent it. And it says, at best, at best, you are an extra in the movie of someone else’s life. At best, you are an extra in the movie of someone else’s life. Maybe for your spouse, you’re like best supporting actor or actress. But that’s it. That’s it, everything else you’re an extra and yet everything we do is about us, me, me. Look how good I am, look how great I am. That’s not gonna land where you want it to land. How are you building community and connection with your posts? I want you to ask yourself right before you post something, who is this for? Who is it about? If you can answer that, you’re so much closer to getting what you want from your messages. You’re so much closer. So let’s talk about how you can be a guide, okay how can you be the guide for the people you want to influence and help and support, how do you be the guide? Well the first thing is you gotta make your content about them. About what they, and by the way the them, the they, that’s the people you want to help, influence, support, build community with, do loans for, right? Like be referred to from. That was a lot of like I got that one, I was right. But like make your content about them dude, Minh is a great example of this dude, this guy is out there every day putting out pieces of content for people, for them on how to help them navigate this crazy world of home financing. Tell stories about them. Tell stories about the people you are being the guide for, tell their story. I’m so shocked by people that wanna explain debt to income which is a very important thing. Debt to income its a very important thing. It’s in the news now non QM, QM its like. But what does that really mean for somebody? How did you help somebody structure their debt or restructure their debt to allow them to buy a home they could never have thought they could have afforded? And how many people have the same situation they’re going through, they’re looking at their credit card debt, their student loan debt, going man I really wanna buy, rates are in the twos, it’s amazing. If they see your story about how a person just like them, was able to be navigated through this. Do you see the connection you’re making? Let other people brag about you. You don’t need to brag about yourself. Put a sticky note right next to your computer, right next to the camera that says is this content about me or about somebody else? If it’s about you, change it. This is why I love podcasting as a content strategy. See, most podcasts are in this format of you, the host, and the guest. This is perfect because you don’t have to talk about yourself, you just talk about this person and what they’re doing with their life and their career. It’s a no brainer. It’s amazing, because now it’s about the guests. This is why I love Gary Vee. I have so much respect for Gary Vaynerchuk, so much respect, number one because, he puts out tons of content for free, he teaches everything he’s doing for free, he just gives it away and I love that because he lives in abundance. But think about Gary Vee what you know him for. See, this is what people forget so quickly, like Gary Vee has put out I think, forgive me, because I’m not like, stalk him, but I think he did three Superbowl commercials. Three companies that are spending 10s of millions of dollars hired his firm to do three Superbowl commercials and I think I heard him talk about it like twice. That’s pretty badass. Like you’d think he’d be like, aha I did three Superbowl commercials. My agency, yeah. And yet what is he doing right now, like this morning, right now what he was doing was Tea with Gary Vee. He gets on a live stream conversation like this, he brings on people, and they talk. And he answers questions, gives advice, gives feedback, doesn’t expect anything, he’s not charging for it. He livestreams it for frickin free for anyone else to watch it at any time. He’s being the guide. He’s being the guide. And I know, I know, it’s so hard to get out of being the hero of your own story. I know how hard it is because trust me, I wanna be my own hero, man. I do, I want, I do and I have to check myself all the time. All the time, like what messages am I saying, is this, who’s this for? Who’s this piece of content for? Why am I doing this? Who’s gonna listen to this? How are they gonna experience it? You gotta ask yourself those questions all the time. Or else you turn around and you realize it’s all been about you, and you wonder why your opportunity, your influence, your goals aren’t changing. Friends, if you’re posting on social media often and frequently, and it’s about you, you’re not getting what you want, you’re not going to get what you want. That is the truest message I can tell you. How else can you be a guide? Build community. How are you building community? Online, digitally and physically and locally ’cause things are opening back up we’ll certainly get out again, that’s really exciting. It’s like, oh my God, we might be able to go out again. I know there’s a lot of cautiousness out there, but it’s happening. How are you building community online? How are you pouring into other people? See, everybody forgets that the digital world is a two way street. It’s a two way street. I don’t care how many pieces of content you put out, how amazing your videos are, if you don’t actually connect and comment and engage other people. You’re like at a party or a networking event just galling about your own self. You gotta ask questions, you gotta ask comments, you gotta validate people. Brian Colby crushed on a podcast of mine where he was like, people just wanna be validated. And I was like, ooh, that’s so good. People just wanna be validated. What an incredible opportunity you have to validate other people. Its like “The Wizard of Oz”, the wizard, the man behind the curtain, what did he do at the end? He didn’t give anybody a heart or brain, he validated that they already had one. Oh, it’s so good. So when you when you have to realize that the digital community is a two way street, you have to give as much as you receive. Thank you, Derek. Bummed we couldn’t hang to the day, dude, but I wanna get together. When you realize you can give as much as you can receive, you realize Holy crap, here’s the power. Here’s the power, when people are actively giving and by giving don’t only mean making their own content, I mean by like talking to other people, encouraging other people, validating other people. All of a sudden, when they put out videos, when they put out stuff, everyone’s like, whoa, and it all comes reciprocating back and you’re like, there’s the Power. There’s the power of being the guide. When you realize me the extra in the movie of someone else’s life, you can be the best damn extra you can be. And you can radically change your results of what you’re trying to get at with your content. It’s the game dude. It’s the game, how do you be a guide? And here’s how I encourage you kind of as we wrap down if you guys have questions, I love this conversation, by the way if you’re watching right now, I got a few of you guys across some platforms, throw in a comment about where you’re watching from I’d love to connect with you. And if you hit, if you’re watching this in the future #bypassed type it in and you’ll talk with my bot, I wanna give you some free stuff, appreciate you guys but the question I always get Yeah, dude, Steve, thank you. Just be the best extra you can dude. You know, I always joke that I wanna be the Gandalf like the wise old wizard who’s like here and then gone and like I’m in your life but like i’m not, then I’m gone. I don’t know, I’m a dork. Hi Jennifer from Chicago really cool to talk to you thanks for hanging out. So how often should you be the guide? This is a fun one, Joseph in Dayton Ohio, awesome dude what’s up? Good to see you buddy. Here’s, how often should you be the guide, often. I think you should be the guide as often meaning how much should you put out your own content? How much should you share your own message, your own core values, what you do, how you help people you should do it often and often and often, daily, over and daily and daily. And again, and again. But you should do it as often as you are contributing to the general conversation and to other people in the digital world. Balance it guys, balance it. If you’re putting out a video every single day, you should be engaging other people’s content, supporting, validating, communicating with people every single day. But I think you should do it often and aggressively because if you don’t, I said this before guys, and I know you recognize this, we are an internet-first society now. When you want information where do you go? I’ma give you a hint, it starts with I or A you’re Android people, weird Android people. William, what’s up? my apartment in Irvine. We go on the internet. We go on the internet for everything we want friends. And so my question is if you provide a service or if you sell something or if you’re a consultant, or if you’re a realtor, or a mortgage professional, and you realize everybody’s going online to get information, and then you go, where are you? Are you there? Is the guide present in the place that people are looking? Man don’t be a secret agent. Is the guide present? Are you present where the people are looking for answers? Man, how freaking cool is that? How amazing is that? That you have the ability for free, to go hang out with people at scale online, for free, this is incredible. You don’t have to pay big ads, you don’t have to be in a Superbowl. This is amazing. You can find your own community online, you can actually go out and search for people and connect to them yourself. And then you can be the guide when they’re looking. So friends, as we wrap down here, please stop the humble bragging. It’s not, It’s not that you don’t matter. It’s that the content is not gonna land in a way that you want it to. Having exceptional five star customer service is an expectation and the fundamental its not a differentiator, it does not make you different it makes you in the game. Congrats, by the way, for those of you that are amazing, and you work hard at that stuff, you should. It’s important. And when someone wants to look it up, they’ll see it all and you’ve done the job. Please stop posting it. Please, no one cares. And stop being the hero of your own story, I know we wanna be the hero of our own story. I know it’s important for us to be recognized and validated as the heroes of our own story, and I’ll tell you what, to do that you validate others. You want validation. you validate others. It’ll come right back. It’ll come right back. Kaya, thanks for joining us on LinkedIn. Thanks for being part of the conversation. Man, be the guide. Be it often, be it aggressively. And remember as much as you put out, make sure you go out and you validate and you connect engage with other people and it’ll come right back. I appreciate you guys today. Maybe next time I won’t rip off my green screen and we can have a fun little interactive thing. If you’re watching this in the future #bypass, Let’s hang out, hashtag, my bot will send you some free stuff that I got cooking right now. I’d love to be a part of your guys’ life and journey as we are on this together to figure out how to navigate this new normal. Alright, if you got any content questions that you wanna see later in LiveTime send a note, comment on this one, I’m reading everyone, we’re engaged if you want other things you wanna talk about let me know. But this Thursday, I have to say this for those of you that tuned in this long, this Thursday is going to be incredible. Incredible. Okay, you can already see it on YouTube, on LinkedIn, we’re doing a social media collab from 10 to 1:30, We’re gonna be going through seven topics. Seven core professionals are coming on, actual loan masters and practitioners who are killing it in mortgage. And we’re gonna talk about mastering Instagram, mastering video, mastering podcast, mastering Tik tok, how to tell stories with video, how to build digital community. You’re gonna hear from seven really amazing people who are doing it right now, this Thursday from 10 to 1:30. You don’t wanna miss it, It’s super free. It’s just gonna be a bunch of people talking about how to be great in these spaces how to learn it together. Do not miss 2020 Mortgage Industry Social Media Collab, you guys will love it. At that, I appreciate you. Have a wonderful Tuesday.