153. 2021 Year-End Recap
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What can you learn from 24 guest episodes in a year? 🤓 A heck of a lot! In this year-end recap, brand strategists and hosts Phil and Lauren swap their favorite lessons from 2021 podcast guests. This episode is educational, fun, a bit silly, and packed with lessons that will kickstart your 2022 with a jolt!
Episode transcription
Phil
Well, hello there. Welcome to Brand Therapy. I'm Phil.
Lauren
And I'm Lauren.
Phil
And this is a podcast where we help you position, build and promote your brand. We're so happy you're here. Now this is a special episode. Special, special, special because we are going to do what we're gonna do today, Lauren, I think you do because it was actually your idea.
Lauren
Yeah, I know what we're doing today, Phil Pallen?
Phil
Tell us what we're doing.
Lauren
Today, in celebration of our final episode of 2021, Phil and I are going to share our top learning moments from guests on our podcasts. And we don't know what each others are, so it's gonna be a fun little reveal.
Phil
Fun little reveal. You know what is going to be interesting to see if we have the same choices.
Lauren
Yeah, yeah, I have no idea what yours are. And we recorded an episode every single week. Guess every other week?
Phil
Well over 50 episodes.
Lauren
Yeah. Yeah, lots of lots of possibilities here.
Phil
Who's gonna start?
Lauren
You can?
Phil
Okay. So, I've made my choice for one of my top.
Lauren
Okay, this is your number three.
Phil
Number three learning moment this year on Brand Therapy. The award goes to Episode 138 Tanessa Shears. Who taught us about biohacking. I had no previous knowledge on the topic. But I was fully engaged for that episode. You know, sometimes I zone out, sorry listeners. But I was fully engaged in this episode because I learned very simple and actionable biohacks. We got excited about it, like coming up with things. I mean, she was saying the importance of tracking things like our Apple watches, what they track and monitoring that and just simple stuff. Good reminder stuff. I really liked that episode.
LauREN
Her perspective on energy and entrepreneurship is fascinating, because for listeners who haven't heard the episode, she helps her entrepreneurial clients optimize their sleep, so that they can have maximum energy to focus and get their work done and go live their life. Really cool.
Phil
Loved it.
Lauren
Wow. I'm a little surprised. We do not overlap on that episode. Although now that you're mentioning it. I mean, all of our guests are really good. So it feels kind of weird to be choosing but here we are.
Phil
For sure. We are choosing, you and I do this with everything. We force each other to choose to pay for it. Favorite country for food? Don't you dare pick two.
Lauren
Yes, it must be one, or there will be consequences.
Phil
It makes no sense.
Lauren
Okay, so my bronze learning moment for 2021 is actually a recent episode, Episode 148 with Petra Zink.
Phil
Oh, I love that episode.
Lauren
Yeah, me too. Me too. It got me fired up. And what I loved most out of all the amazing things that Petra said is that her number one recommendation for getting engagement on LinkedIn was to actually follow hashtags andc onverse were conversations already happening. Genius. So often, we feel like, we need to be the ones to start the conversation on our channels. And we need to own that. But she says, just go where it's already happening. Start making connections. That way.
Phil
It overlaps with advice that my friend Lucas O'Keefe, who's also been on the podcast advice that he gives, which is like people get so focused on their own content creation, but really to grow, you need to be visible on other people's posts and threads and conversations. Totally in line with that. He's grown faster than anyone I know. And that's like the same advice, different platform. Love that.
Lauren
Okay, let's hear your silver.
Phil
Silver learning moment on Brand Therapy would have to be episode 126 with Kendra Reddy. Now, there's a double thing here because it's from Kendra where we learned I love the conversation with her and I think she's so wise. But she also taught me about the seven types of rests. Which I know she didn't develop that but she shared it. And then I shared it. And that has been incredibly successful. It’s one of my top Instagram posts this year was sharing essentially what I learned about the beauty of sharing knowledge on social media. And I chose this episode because it stuck with me. I think a lot, a lot about it now. And so her wisdom in that episode 126 paired with that really interesting methodology, I've even shared it on other podcast interviews.
I was recently on Inside Design with Kendrac and Kole. And they asked me about it. They're like, we saw that Instagram post about the seven types of rescue and you go through them like not my not my theory, but something that resonates with people. So I appreciated that conversation. So Kendra gets my silver medal.
LAUREN
That was great. She also said one other thing in that episode, which you shook me, it triggered an existential crisis, was that we should all ask ourselves, who am I when I'm not busy? That's my brain exploding.
Phil
It's a good question, though.
Lauren
My silver learning moment, Brand Therapy 2021 guest edition. Actually, no, it's just, it's just playing. We're not gonna do editions of this. This will be the last time we do this. Episode 108 with none other than Ashley Rowe.
Phil
Oh, good choice. Why did you like this episode?
Lauren
Well, first of all, love Ashley to pieces, can't get enough of her. But as a news anchor, who had to adjust to delivering the news at home live, she is such a resource and being good on camera. And for me in particular, there are two things she said that I loved. One, she said that your listeners are savvy people, so good lighting is critical. Basically, don't under-serve on the lighting front, because your listeners are going to pick up on that. And most people have ring lights at home. So that's the least you can do on camera. Really good.
And the other one is to not look at yourself when you're speaking in a zoom call. Look right into the camera. It is so hard to do. I actually don't ever do it, because it's so hard. But it's really hard to do. Good advice. Good advice for all of us.
Phil
Really good advice. I like the focus on just the style and the presentation and an episode. I don't think so. Usually it's like lumped into other conversations. But I love that that was what we focused on. That was a really good episode. Good choice.
Lauren
Thank you.
Phil
So I actually had to choose between the two. Oh, you know, I can never follow the rules. So let me choose one of my remaining two as an honorable mention, because it wasn't exactly a learning moment for me. But it was a powerful learning moment for someone else. And this is why it's almost like a tie. But I'll pose this as an honorable mention. That was episode 128 with Kate from A Sweet Whim that was probably my favorite moment on the podcast when we surprised her list. If you've not listened to that episode, it's so far. And that was just totally different for us. But we surprised Kate who listened to every week of our episode, I surprised her. I said, Hey, last minute, can you jump on a quick zoom call? And she had no idea. And then Lauren magically appeared and we hit record. And we turned it into an episode. And that was really fun. I don't know, it just felt like a cool moment for us.
So that was an honorable mention, because it wasn't a learning moment for me, but it was a learning moment for Kate. She was forever grateful that. We loved that moment.
So I have to give the gold medal to someone we had on our podcast this year, who's given me advice that has not only resonated with me, but it's made a serious impact on our bottom line and the direction of our business.
Lauren
Who is it? I don't know.
Phil
So that conversation happened in Episode 136 with Jenny Melrose, when we talked about getting sponsored brand deals as an entrepreneur. Jenny has so many amazing tips that for me, I started this year thinking they're not really relevant to me because I don't do brand deals and I'm not a blogger. Now, by the end of this year. I've made the equivalent of a healthy salary in brand deals by the end of the year and I always have Jenny Melrose in my head, giving me advice. You know, go in with a number. If they say yes too quickly increase that number. Things like if the budget is lower, then take things out rather than agreeing to a lower price, something I do all the time. She just gave such good advice, sage advice on brand deals and that's become significant for us.
Lauren
It was really good. The fact that she recommends to just send a letter to the publicist of whatever brand you use frequently, and basically say, pay me 10k because I'm passionate about your product, bananas,
Phil
And it works. And she told me success stories. And I consider myself one of them. I've taken her advice and we've been very successful this year in sponsored content. And I think more importantly, like, yes, we care about money, but I really enjoy the work. I really enjoy the work.
LAUREN
Just as a sidebar, though, I know it's not about money, but I still, to this day cannot wrap my mind around how much money there is to be made in sponsored stuff. I cannot fathom it. You throw out any number and the brain goes, yeah, here's four figures. For one post, like, it is so wild, that brands have a budget like that.
Phil
They want to throw money at you. They want to throw money. I know, because they do.
Lauren
They don't even ask for a guaranteed metric. That is what's so wild. It's no wonder why people buy followers because that's the only thing that these brands with money care about. They don't even care about engagement rate. Anyway, maybe that's an episode for another day.
Phil
Yeah. I mean, they track all that it's getting savvier now. So they use an interface, an influencer management interface that will calculate engagement rate for them. So it'll still determine whether or not you're someone they're going to reach out to. But the point is, once you're on the radar of brands, and you're in a few databases, and you get in those by doing your first few deals, even if it's an affiliate deal, or even if it's an exchange, or it's $100, whatever it is, just start. Yeah, you start to show proof of concept as a creator, as you as someone who's willing to partner with others. Super cool.
laUREN
Okay. My gold reveal, and I'll have you know before I name this episode, we have no overlaps. Completely unique. My gold trophy for learning moment of 2021 Brand Therapy is episode 132 with Sophie Coley.
Phil
Oh, good episode.
Lauren
And here's why. Sophie, as a search listening expert, brings humanity to the somewhat robotic world of SEO, which I love. There's a lot of psychology to the work that she does helping people understand their audience to drive traffic or achieve a marketing goal. And there are two points she made that were incredible.
First of all, she brought up the importance of knowing your audience, even down to the way that they spell certain words. She was helping a makeup company sell a product, and she realized halfway through the campaign, that the way the company was spelling smokey or smoky eye makeup was different from smokey that her audience was googling because some people use smoky Y and others use it EY why? Yeah, and both are correct. So that was fascinating.
And the other thing was, she was working with a winter sports company, I can't quite remember all the details. But she was trying to get search data for skiing and snowboarding, and she had this lightbulb moment where the person that they were targeting actually wouldn't be looking up tips for skiing or tips for snowboarding, they actually self identify as a skier or snowboarder. And again, it's just a little nuance, but just shows how those tiny details can make all the difference in a successful campaign or whether you're connecting with your audience or not. So there was a lot to learn from her.
Phil
And that was episode number 132. I was also fully engaged in that episode because I was learning on a brand new topic. She was someone that I followed. I follow her and so to have her reply to my email and say yes, I'd love to be a part of it. I was like, oh my god, fangirling was very exciting.
We had some really good episodes this season.
Listener. It's the holidays. If you have some downtime, why don't you take a little look at our little backlog, a little catalog of episodes this year. We shared with you some of our favorites. It was hard to even choose because I think honestly this year, we had amazing conversations. Go and check them out. Go and check them out. And let's continue the conversation online. I'm @philpallen
Lauren
I'm @thelaurenmoore
Phil
#brandtherapy to continue the conversation. And while you're at it, take a look at those last year's worth of episodes. Leave us a review in the iTunes Store, that helps people discover this podcast that we work very hard to create. And until next time, which is actually next year, oh I love it, we're looking forward to it. We've got a whole bunch of amazing episodes planned for next year. We can't wait to share those with you.
In the meantime, enjoy your downtime. Enjoy your holiday and your new year and we'll see you back here on Brand Therapy.
Happy Holidays