Unlocking Business Growth: Solomon Thimothy on Thought Leadership, Content Marketing, and Value-Driven Entrepreneurship

Unlock the secrets to scaling your business and generating genuine customer leads with insights from Solomon Thimothy, the mastermind behind 1IMS and Clix. Ever wondered how some websites convert visitors into loyal customers while others fall flat? Solomon shares his early challenges and pivotal realizations in website development and marketing, revealing that true success is all about growth and effective customer acquisition. Delve into the evolution of technology from the humble beginnings of website creation to the sophisticated AI applications of today, all while understanding the crucial role of community and engagement in modern podcasting.

Prepare to stand out in a crowded marketplace with Solomon's expert strategies on building thought leadership through content marketing. Discover why the key to captivating your audience lies in crafting content that provokes reactions and how publishing on major platforms like Forbes and Inc Magazine can enhance your credibility. Learn about the power of short-form video content and consistent high-quality insights to amplify your message across multiple channels. Solomon emphasizes the importance of storytelling and creating relevant, engaging narratives that resonate with your audience and boost your social media presence.

Solomon Thimothy is a highly accomplished entrepreneur with over 17 years of experience in marketing and sales. As the co-founder and CEO of OneIMS and IMS, two leading inbound marketing and sales agencies, as well as Clickx, he has helped businesses increase their revenue using the 10X Framework. Solomon is also an expert in lead generation and customer acquisition, as well as a USA Today and Wall Street Journal best-selling author.

In addition to his work, Solomon is also an angel investor and startup advisor. He has helped numerous startups grow and scale, leveraging his expertise in marketing, sales, and business strategy.

Connect with Solomon:
LinkededIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/solomonthimothy/
TikTok
https://www.tiktok.com/@sthimothy
YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/c/Clickxio

Chapters

• 0:04 Communication Strategies and Thought Leadership Podcast
• 10:04 Building Thought Leadership Through Content Marketing
• 15:25 Strategic Content Creation for Thought Leadership
• 20:16 Giving to Impact
• 29:58 Value-Driven Entrepreneurship and Thought Leadership

Transcript

Carl Richards: 0:04

Welcome to Communication Connection Community the podcaster's podcast. This podcast takes a deep dive into modern day communication strategies in the podcasting space. We chat with interesting people who make the podcasting and speaking spaces exciting and vibrant. We also dive into the podcasting community with news updates, latest trends and topics from this ever-evolving space. So strap in, it's going to be one amazing ride. Let's dive into today's episode. Our guest today is wow. I'm so glad that we're connecting with this individual. Solomon Thimothy is a highly accomplished entrepreneur with over 17 years of experience in marketing and sales. As the co-founder and CEO of 1IMS, a leading inbound marketing and sales agency, as well as Clix, he has helped businesses double their revenue using the 10X framework. Solomon is also an expert in lead generation and customer acquisition, as well as a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author. We're going to talk about thought leadership today and I'm sure various other topics will stem from that. Solomon, welcome to the podcast.

Solomon Thimothy: 1:11

Thank you so much for having me, Carl. This is exciting.

Carl Richards: 1:14

So thrilled to have you here, my friend. Let's give a little bit of your backstory, though. Whereabouts are you from? Give me that side of you.

Solomon Thimothy: 1:20

Absolutely. I'm originally from Chicago. I don't know if anybody wants to be there in the middle of winter right now, but other than that, it's a great place to build a business. There's a lot of talent. But I started building websites generally you've been living in. That was like new to me. You know communication.

Solomon Thimothy: 1:47

So this website world led me to what you were just saying about customer acquisition and lead generation, because my clients made it very clear to me, after charging them thousands of dollars to build a website, that they didn't get any customer. They made it very clear to me that either you fix my customer acquisition problem or else and really fast, I learned that I'm not in the website business. Right, like they didn't want another website, they didn't even know what to do with the website. Business cards didn't have a website address on it. Today you know. You can see a billboard. All they put is a domain name and you're supposed to like figure it out. You know what it's about. At that time nobody had a browser. That was a modern browser, so but yeah, that led me to today being a guy that only talks about growth. I don't talk about anything else, I talk about growth and we're going to get to some of those today and how speaking is, or thought leadership or content creation. All of this is kind of how my journey has evolved.

Carl Richards: 2:47

Well, solomon, that's a great story and certainly websites have evolved immensely since 2003. We could take a trip down memory lane, but I mean, I remember 2003 when I was toying with the idea of getting a website for business. I didn't even have a business then and I remember talking to a colleague here in Eastern Ontario and I said so, should I get a website? And I remember saying, sure, if you want, but what's it going to be about? I'm like, well, can't you write my content? And I had no concept right of what I was even doing. But and I'm assuming I'm not the only one but the evolution even with layout, graphics, funnels, all of those things that you know has not only have evolved, but did they even exist back in 2003,? Right?

Solomon Thimothy: 3:30

Absolutely so. I was one of those guys that was going around businesses in just my town. I mean, like we made lots of money in just one little town, right, like Chicago, it's like biggest, like third largest but we didn't have to go 50 mile radius to make the business happen, believe it or not because there was just so many people that didn't even have a domain name and I was buying them domain names and setting up their google apps, you know email address and things like that. Why? Because at the time it was. It is kind of the same thing that we're dealing with ai right now. Right, most people don't know what to do with it. They probably have the premium version of OpenAI, chat GPT, but they don't know what to do with it. It's like that, it's so new, they don't know how to incorporate it.

Solomon Thimothy: 4:13

And obviously, like I said, we did make money. That was my first flash in the pan, like oh, wow, like $10,000. This is really great and we'd learn how to build websites without WordPress and all that. I mean that was like. Later, that was like 6.0. We were just building very terrible SEO websites because there was no concept of SEO. But I learned that, no matter how much fancy of a website that we can give a customer and this is for anyone, all of us so you can be speaking on a stage. If we cannot, like get them the, if the needle is not moving, it doesn't matter, right like, that's how they measure everything, that's how you measure every organization. So then, all we did is we moved towards that and that's the beginning of Google ads and, later on, facebook ads, but it was not something that, like I said, we had a master plan or a business plan, 75 pages, saying we're going to create all this massive things. No, no, no. We were just trying to make ends meet.

Carl Richards: 5:19

Yeah for sure. And again about that evolution, too, of where things have gone. I remember when I launched my podcast and have helped other people launch theirs too that the original thought was well, just get a podcast and then get some listeners, and then, once you have enough listeners, you'll be able to get some dollars. Even that has evolved, because now it's less about that, it's more about community. It's not so much about what happens on the show, it's about what happens afterwards, the conversations that continue when the mics are off. That maybe you didn't even get to, but it's all those other things that we didn't even think about when podcasts came about back I don't know early 2000s.

Solomon Thimothy: 5:56

I agree, and it's certainly the case with building audience as well. Right, like, people want to monetize too early and I tell them that it's not about monetization. You can always do that. I have a mantra and I think this could be the thing that we leave our audience with it's value add, not value extraction. There's a huge difference between the two concepts. So what you're talking about like hey, we're going to make money from the podcast, we're going to do money from my YouTube, we're going to make money from whatever email list that we've been working so hard building the challenge is that the moment you turn to that value extraction mode, they all flock, they're done, it's over.

Solomon Thimothy: 6:37

When you live in the value add space, you will continue to grow, and I'll give you a perfect example and I mean it's probably an obvious one for everybody that is in North America is how Amazon doesn't stop building brands. Amazon adds some kind of a brand, like they add extensions, called brand extension, to anything. There'll be an Amazon pharmacy, right, like I don't know if it's probably there already somewhere. Amazon Fresh, amazon Prime, because I just returned something on Amazon today. It's like, obviously there's all these things. Amazon whatever, the Movies Network, I don't know, like I can't keep up. Right, there's Audible, the books, the Kindle, everything is value add. They've never said, hey look, we're the biggest bookstore, let's just charge people to put the book here. No, they're. Like, let's be the cheapest bookstore, let's get them to book the same day. Right, like, let's have the biggest book library. Like, how do we add value? And I feel like we as business owners, professional speakers, entrepreneurs, ceos, we have to figure out are we extracting value or are we adding value?

Solomon Thimothy: 7:48

And that's when we realized that we don't want to be in the website business. We still are, but only if it helps them create more customer base, only if it helps them move the needle, only if they're going into a new market. They have a new product, new service, new industry, and they don't have a page about that. They don't have any content. If you Google that service and that company, if nothing comes up, you don't exist. And so now we only do that.

Solomon Thimothy: 8:16

And guess what happens to all of our customers' revenue? We mentioned 10 times sort of that framework. Well, we're solving for that for my customer. How do we help you get a dollar in and 10 out? That's the best ATM machine there is If you can do that predictably and people do that and you probably heard them. There's lots of them on Wall Street they'd be happy with $2 out. They don't even care for 10. In a small business world, when you can actually examine your inputs and you can optimize the output, you could get a lot more out in a smaller number. When you're doing like Apple just had one more trillion dollar market cap, that's hard to 10x, but I can do that with a $10 million company or $3 million company because there's so much more market potential.

Carl Richards: 9:05

Let's shift the discussion into thought leadership and let's roll in communication, because I know, as we were just getting set to turn on the mics and have a conversation, we talked about thought leadership, and not just thought leadership in the way that most of us think about it, but thought leadership and communication in the sense of, if you're a thought leader and you're doing a lot of speaking, well, you should also be probably looking at this podcasting thing more seriously. So let's do a deep dive conversation into, firstly, your philosophies around thought leadership and then communication strategies maybe that, in your experience, thought leaders should be embracing.

Solomon Thimothy: 9:38

I think thought leadership starts off stage, not on stage, right, right. It starts every single day in your social media channel it starts. What kind of concepts and ideas are you putting out there? In other words, are you publishing things that are thought-provoking, that your your audience or the people that, like you, trust you want to do business with you? Are they engaging with that content? Like some of the things that I tell my.

Solomon Thimothy: 10:04

My social media team is like if you, you don't think people are gonna create some sort of engagement with this post, like comment, a like or dislike, they hate it, like they disagree with my statement, don't post it. This is like number one thing. Why? Because, like I said, the world doesn't need just more of the same stuff. So, in my world, what I did personally is that early, early, early on, I began to publish on Forbes, inc Magazine and all these other journals. Does that make sense? Huffpost, you name it. If I can post on it, I would just start posting on it. If there is a more crowded space than marketing, find me one. There isn't one, right? This is one of the most crowded spaces.

Solomon Thimothy: 10:43

How do you stand out, thought leadership? You can't stand out if you're going to be just like everybody else. There's a book called the Purple Cow. Right, like everybody gets that one. Why? Because it sticks out from the masses. So one of the things we've done is we just kept publishing content, kept publishing content, and one of the ways that you can actually become a thought leader today more easier than ever. I don't know how many millions of podcasts exist, especially like the one that you're doing here, carl, where you become a guest and immediately it increases your credibility and your authority in the marketplace. And maybe you have to build a page on your website that says here's all my podcast appearances, and that is the same as me writing the 500 Forbes article, and it's probably easier than writing one 800 word article for Forbes and do eight edits because they won't, let me use a word. You know something like that?

Carl Richards: 11:34

I think it's the movie Men in Black 2. And there's one of the arch nemesis guy on his shoulder basically saying everything to what the actual talking head is saying. I've been saying for a long time you need a podcast. Here's why it's an extension of your brand, your business, it's elevates your credibility. You're basically speaking what I've just been telling me.

Carl Richards: 11:54

So I don't know if you're the guy on my shoulder, if I'm the guy on your shoulder, but it's basically something I've been really trying to drill into Speakers, thought leaders, coaches, consultants that it's not just about that blog post. It's not just about posting something on social media the way everybody else does, or that spraying and praying technique that a lot of us until we become a little more season 10 to use. It's really about looking at it and saying, hey, yeah, this podcasting thing works. Or, if you are going to post to your point, if you're going to post something, you'll put something out there. It better be like you say. It better be the purple cow, because if it's just like any other post, it's not going to get seen. We're in this sea of professional resources, or we're just trying to be seen, but we're being seen as everybody else is seeing us, which is just like everybody else.

Solomon Thimothy: 12:45

Yeah, no, absolutely. So you're right about that. I think another piece that we can add to this, especially for social media content to really stick out, is short form video content, because, at the end of the day, people are more drawn towards that than anything else. So let's just talk about a busy professional, even a speaker, but they're doing some consulting call. They're doing something else. So let's just talk about a busy professional, even a speaker, but they're doing some consulting call. They're doing something else. They need to record themselves while they're doing that call and they're coaching the consulting whatever it is that they do.

Solomon Thimothy: 13:14

This thought leader that we're building right, like anyone, anyone who's a speaker, they should be creating content of the things that they do off stage and that becomes short form content to post, which will get them more bigger stages in their speaking career. You think about it, because the concepts are the same thing that you speak on stage, but they have to be created and you have to do that 100 million times on social media for people to like you trust you say you know what. This guy's absolutely right, or this gal is like she's got a great point, this is her point of view and you can listen to it and you would want to go listen to this person speaking or watch their YouTube videos because you will like what they're saying. But if you keep all of your top knowledge, your top secret, and no one's ever seen it, not even on social media or not on any podcast some of my favorite people I listen to if you ever listen to all their interviews they say the same thing. I'm like I already know the story. I know that joke too and I know what you did. But yeah, you still listen to it because why it never gets old, right? So like it's perfecting that message on all of these channels and then, when you get on stage, it's so easy for you.

Solomon Thimothy: 14:23

So I talk about 10 times growth. Why? Because I know for a fact that every entrepreneur wakes up in the morning wanting to grow their company. They have a $100,000 company. They want to make a million dollars. So they were never happy. Let's just be honest. They have a million dollar company. They want to make $10 million. It's always how do I make it bigger and bigger and bigger, bigger, bigger, and so I've been doing that for the last 17 years. I'm like the only thing I can tell what what gets their big smile going is I tell them like, hey, you're, you're about that. I was just hoping that we'll end at 10 million someday and sell it and be done with it. Now there is a bigger vision that we're all working towards, which is totally possible. Like you know what your mind can conceive, it can happen. So now they're like well, let's get a better system, better CRM, better everything, let's hire more A players. All of a sudden the whole conversation changes. It's easy for me, but I talk about it every day on podcasts.

Carl Richards: 15:25

The other thing that I've noticed and I've had a number of guests on this podcast talk about it is the power of story, and I'm noticing that story also coming out more usually with video, but also even with straight text. Savvy social media posters have, especially on Facebook, which I know isn't necessarily the best one for business, but there are still a lot of people who leverage Facebook and when they're doing their posts sometimes they'll write and give a good descriptive story and that tends to trigger. I don't know what the success rate is for them, but it seems to be working because they're still telling their stories and the stories are engaging enough to have you read through to the end and, oh, you always know there's something at the bottom of that post that will have you know there's a, there's a link or there's a something to find out more.

Solomon Thimothy: 16:12

Absolutely, and I think that's like you said when you post enough, you start to see what works, what doesn't. Pictures of people tend to do better than just pictures of you know whatever a graphic or something like that.

Solomon Thimothy: 16:23

Yeah, video tends to do better than just a photo, so it's always like what is going to work. We always say long form text is better than short form text because you can easily forget. But if it's, if it says read more, and then all of a sudden, now you've engaged with it and other people engage with it, that's enough for the algorithm to show it to more people, because they're all clicking that read more button. There's so many little nuances to this kind of content creation business. Again, I think we have to think about this. This is all competition at the end of the day, right? There's so much more content is created than the person's time on their feed.

Solomon Thimothy: 16:58

So you are fighting to get your message in front of as many people as you possibly can. The only way and Gary Vee says this the content is the variable. The quality of the content is the variable. It's not content, right. Everybody's posting content. Who isn't posting content? The thing is that what gets you to where you want to go is how much more effort can you put into it? That's where you come up with a really engaging story, and you see 82 comments is because they spend a lot of time writing this thing.

Carl Richards: 17:27

I think that's a very good point is that it's not just about posting content. It's about posting relevant, engaging content, because I could just go to my social media feed and say listen to my conversation with Solomon Timothy, Click the link here to listen to the show. That's not going to get me much response.

Solomon Thimothy: 17:48

That many likes.

Carl Richards: 17:50

No, but if there's an audiogram, which is also a video, but if there's also a video clip, if there's a long form story, then it's going to engage people or to entice them, not to mention it's going to. The algorithm will do something different, and I'm not a social media expert to know, but it's certainly going to increase my chances of getting the visibility that I want. I have a question for you, though, Solomon. I think I already know the answer, but I want to hear it come out of your lips, because I think it's going to sound better if it does. Does anybody or everybody who follows the right techniques, I guess you can say, can anybody be a thought leader? Do you think?

Solomon Thimothy: 18:32

The answer is yes. If you have what it takes to share that message, I think the I will go back to this. If you have what it takes to share that message, I think the I will go back to this. If you care enough, you can be a thought leader. You really have to care about what is it that you're talking about? What is it that you're fighting about? Right, I've probably been on I'm going to guess about 30 podcasts, and this started like Q4 of this this year.

Solomon Thimothy: 18:53

We were focused on a million other things. We decided that to build the you know, basically the authority thought leadership, all the things that we're talking about right here, we can obviously do that on our own right. Go build, create content, grow the channels. I mean, every speaker should do this regardless or you go help other people and and I said this to you, carl, I'm going to be the oil in your fire. I'm going to add more value to your community and to what you're doing, with nothing back, like I want nothing for it, like we want to serve each other and the community that you're building of speakers and so on. I can build my audience so much faster. I could have gotten all of these people, but it would probably take me seven years on my own and I'll spend less time because I'm so efficient.

Solomon Thimothy: 19:45

I spent 26 minutes with one podcast and the next one 37 minutes, but in 26 and 37 minutes I cannot go build what you've built in four years that you mentioned. There's no way right. And I've also added value to your world and your audience. I didn't extract anything. Does that make sense? Like I'm here? Like we did 30, 40, we did like two a day, right?

Solomon Thimothy: 20:09

right and the reason is we're like, hey, there's all these amazing podcasts out there. They all have loyal listeners. What can I do? I was on a travel podcast, but guess what? Travel agents are struggling to close deals when people's budgets are tight and cut and they're looking worse for ways to right, like to to get more sales. When people have less money thanks to inflation and everything else, they they want to go to a cheaper resort, but still want to go to a resort right, like, how do you get in front of those people and get those deals closed? Well, it is literally comes down to this how do you get their message heard? The same way, speakers looking to get bigger book book deal or bigger whatever consulting deal the same exact, a bigger stage how do you do that to get your message heard? So, if you care enough and you try hard, you can be a thought leader.

Carl Richards: 21:01

And I like how you mentioned too, solomon and thank you so much for again for being here and not expecting anything out of it and you know, really giving of yourself, because I think that's where a lot of individuals business owners they get caught up in this mindset of, well, I would go on a podcast or I would start my own, but I don't want to give away anything. Well, part of having your own show or even being a guest on other people's shows is giving away things, and I've even heard thought leaders say give away everything. Because even when you give away everything, number one people will not retain it all. There's no way they will.

Carl Richards: 21:44

But the more important messaging is you might give everything away, but there's still one thing people don't have and they don't have you. They don't have you. So if they really need what you have, even if you've given them everything, they're still going to reach out to you for your coaching, consulting, thought leadership, whatever it is. So don't be afraid to do just like what Solomon is doing right now. He's not giving everything away, but he's giving away enough that you're going to get some value out of that.

Solomon Thimothy: 22:17

That's a great point, and so our mantra, if I may, is to I'm a very impact-driven individual. That's how I grew up Everything's impact-driven. What does that mean? How many lives can we touch and how many people can we affect? And how do we do that?

Solomon Thimothy: 22:38

And so one of the ways that you can do that is one-to-one communication. Or you can do one-to-many. One-to-one communications. You're a great sales guy. You talk to one person, you close the deal, you'd go, do a presentation, do whatever. Or you can do one-to-many and the the field that I've chosen, obviously in marketing, it's one-to-many.

Solomon Thimothy: 22:52

I'm not a one-to-one sales guy. I do one-to-many. The website's one-to-many, the webinar's one-to-many, everything I do. The podcast one-to-many, the YouTube channel's one-to-many, and the reason we've done that is that it has the highest impact rate. Like I can make the biggest impact because I think about that. Like someday, when we're all dead, what is going to be said about Carl happening, what happens to carl's books and what you've seen over the years is that the greatest people in on earth after they died, their bookstops being sold, no one's buying it anymore, right? Or you can create something where actually you're making an impact, just like tony robbins is right now, even after he's passed, hypothetically. I'm giving you an example. So in order to do that, you don't hold anything back.

Solomon Thimothy: 23:37

Rule number one we're going to give it all away. It's going to be the biggest thing that we could ever do is to share as much knowledge as you possibly can with the world. Help somebody else out. Zig Ziglar said this best when you help enough other people get what they want, you get what you want in life. And if we're going to hold everything back and not help somebody else out, how are you going to get what you want in life? And so what we've decided to do is how can we give away as much information and knowledge as we possibly can is to share this on podcasts like this with folks that I may never meet, I may not ever get to work with, because we are very stringent about the quality and the.

Solomon Thimothy: 24:09

You know the kind of deals that we work with. It's not going to be a fit. I already know that it's not going to be a fit. Not every deal is a fit. Right, that's like sales number one Don't close every deal you get because it may not be a good fit, and make sure you only take the deals that are a good fit. Same with speakers Don't take every speaking engagement. It might not be a good fit, right? So make sure that, and when I do that, I'm actually making the impact that we solely really been wanting to do. But we decided that it's more better to go on podcasts and to create 2,500 episodes and spend all this money on ads or whatever to get the audience.

Carl Richards: 24:45

And I think that what you're doing, that evangelism, going out there and sharing what you have to share that's huge. And still, obviously, if you want to work with Solomon, you're more than welcome to do that. We'll make sure that all of his information is in the link and is in the show notes. You'll you'll have that opportunity. But you're right, if if it's not a fit, it's not a fit.

Carl Richards: 25:05

I turned down speaking gigs all the time. I turned down podcast guesting and guests on my podcast all the time because it's not a fit. I mean, I've turned down this past calendar year, I think I turned down a Red Seal chef or a Michelin star chef because it didn't make sense, it didn't fit and I've been scratching my head thinking was there a way I could have made it fit? And there wasn't, unfortunately, for this particular show. But, to your point, you're still going to where you can give as much as you can and then make yourself available, because you never know and I know that's why you're doing that you don't know where your next client, prospect, million dollar deals might come from.

Carl Richards: 25:51

That's very true.

Solomon Thimothy: 25:54

And let's go to that social media person who's like oh, don't share all of it. I think you want to do. That's my world. Against my opinion, yeah, take it for what it's worth. Isn't that what a book is about? When I write a book and I've written you know a couple of them I'm giving the best secrets that people pay tens and thousands of dollars and then one-on-one coaching. I'm like do this step by step. This is precisely what I did to get the success. You and I buy books all the time and if they didn't kind of give you all of it like it wasn't their best work, it wasn't their life's work, and I look at that in everything that we do. Is this everything that we can do? And I'll use Tesla as an example. Tesla is selling more EVs than any other brands, however, except there's one company in China, byd sells more cars than Tesla. Study this.

Solomon Thimothy: 26:42

But he made his charging technology, which is super private, ip, public. He said hey, gm, take my plugin and all this electric and whatever charging whole thing. Hey, ford, use it. Let me tell you something they didn't use it, and now they're finally getting around to making a universal charging. This man all along after he spent all his years and knowledge and all the IP and all the funding and everything, all this engineering. He's like take it, here's all the electric Walton right, the size, the measurement, everything. And then he's also used the supercharging network. He's making it public for any car charging company. Any company could come and charge it on their system, which could have been private, ip, super secure. You can't use my gas station kind of a model. So let me show you how did that help. They're still selling more cars. They didn't sell less cars by making their own technology public. They're selling more cars.

Solomon Thimothy: 27:44

So I believe in the more you give, the more you get model, rather than the more you give. You feel like there is some sort of a scarcity mindset that I'm going to lose out on it. I really really like I live it and I do it and I'm getting more podcast invitations than I can handle. People have given me like things that cost two and three thousand dollar membership programs for free. I'm like, hey, I'll be here all day, let's do eight podcasts a day, let's serve as many people as we can and I don't have to worry about my pipeline and my deal stages and my whatever. Do you see what I'm saying. I don't have that scarcity mindset whatsoever because I'm getting more every day than I could keep up. So I have to get it out of my surplus, give more.

Carl Richards: 28:28

That's a really good example. I love the Tesla example for sure. We have a Tesla Actually, that's one of the things that I said in the very beginning, because where we are, there's Tesla chargers and then there's all the other charging stations, right, and then there's still not a lot of them because they're still building the infrastructure to get on, get ready for the onslaught of, eventually, in the next 15, 20 years right, less or more like five right there needs to be that standardization.

Carl Richards: 28:58

you don't pull up to a gas station and the only the only two differentiations in the gas station are diesel versus petroleum. Those are the only two differentiations. So the same thing would make sense for electric vehicles. The other good example that comes to mind about trying to hold in your IP is the Sony Beta versus VHS, everything else, because that totally it did do one thing for Sony. It did allow for that higher quality to be used by studios and television stations and stuff like that for years. But it still eventually became obsolete and wasn't replaced. And VHS obviously became obsolete too. But that not selling, just holding that and keeping that private meant that something else was going to take over and it did and it totally decimated from a consumer standpoint that entire company.

Solomon Thimothy: 29:58

We need to be doing that and I really believe that if you've been given something, it's so you can give right. So knowledge, ideas, strategies, tactics because when I do get a client that I have this amazing idea for and I don't tell them about it, I'm like here, I'm here to 10x this thing, we're gonna try everything. Everything is going to be tried and we don't know what is going to work. And guess what One of those ideas will work. Partly it's the client's execution ability or the team or anything else, but at the end of the day, we're part of that winning team and that's really what matters. And I think, for the folks that are listening to this podcast and trying to get the bigger stage, trying to get the bigger book deal, the million dollar opportunity, what's holding us back is ourselves. Kind of the rule right, like we are too afraid, like what are we afraid of? And I think, if we have all these ideas and strategies and so on, why aren't we giving away the tools? Why aren't we giving away the thing that you charge $5,000 for a workshop hey, here's the exact same tool and then help them make more money with the tools that you now decide to give it away and they'll use that money to fund your program.

Solomon Thimothy: 31:12

At ClickX, we used to charge every month as a subscription fee to work with us. We do a lot of things with agencies and consultants. We decided this year to make our platform free. It costs nothing. When you buy a product or service, we make money, but if you don't have the money to pay for a platform, we'll help you make that money using our platform and you'll have the money to pay us. And so like. This applies to everything. It doesn't have to just apply to speaking or coaching or whatever it is. It applies to all aspects. Why not have a community level membership, a Facebook group? Give as much value as possible. Sit there and answer people's questions, like YouTubers do, and then you start building that community we talked about earlier, and that community will push you up. You see what I'm saying. It's right there in front of you. You have an iPhone. Make more videos.

Carl Richards: 32:06

People are looking for that social proof, now more than ever, that know like and trust factor, and it goes beyond the sales call, probably even before the sales call. It goes even so much as when you have for individuals that have podcasts, they've realized that it's not just about the show, it's what happens afterwards, it's the masterminds, it's the monthly meetups on Zoom or the conversations that happen in the Facebook group, it's all of those things that, as I said when podcasts started, mind you, this is going back, but that wasn't relevant. Now it's now more than ever, that community, that belonging and that. Do I have to pay through the wazoo to make this happen?

Carl Richards: 32:41

No, it's available for you and, obviously, when you're ready, we're ready to have a sales conversation with you, or, as I like to phrase it, a service conversation, because it's not about technically. Everything is about sales. But it's not about sales, it's about service. It's about how can I serve you, and if the best way I can serve you now is with a product that doesn't cost you anything, because that's where you're at, fine, no problem. I have products that will serve you immensely, just as you mentioned. But then I also have services that I can provide you when you're ready, if you're that next million dollar client, if you're that next $10 million client, we are happy to have a conversation with you. If you're that next million dollar client, if you're that next $10 million client, we are happy to have a conversation with you. Exactly.

Solomon Thimothy: 33:25

If you're ready yeah, going back to the website example where we started, as a consultant, a coach, a speaker, you should have so many free resources. That's how you stand out from the crowd. Yep, yep, right. That's why I said we don't build websites If it doesn't move the needle, if it's not a destination. A whole bunch of resources, whether it's videos, whether it's why not give them a free account and let them have the first four modules of your million dollar program? They're like oh my gosh, these four modules changed my life. I can imagine what the 40 would do. Do you see what I'm saying? Rather than saying, oh well, you got to have a meeting and I'm going to choke you for 45 minutes and try to make 10 grand out, like, no, nobody wants to go through that. They want you to like, give, like this is precisely kind of my policy is I don't want an opt-in. Give it to them for free Opt-ins when I'm doing the webinar and I need to send you a webinar link. Do you see what I'm saying? Make a free account, do whatever they need to do to get as much value as possible and let the value dictate how much money they spend with you. Right, like?

Solomon Thimothy: 34:28

I always believe in giving first before I can receive. I've I'm sure you heard this before knocks, knock and the door will be open. Well, if you don't knock, the door ain't gonna open. Right like true seek and you shall find, like, if you don't seek, well, I guess you're waiting. Some, it's not a deal's not going to fall on your lap. Um same exact way, if you'll ever listen to any of the entrepreneur stories, they'll always tell you the struggle, like I had to do this and I had to do that, oprah had to do this, or right. Like they didn't just become a million or billion dollar entrepreneur, big business, because they were just waiting on it. They had to work for it and then the door started to open. I just really feel that's, that's how I live every day.

Carl Richards: 35:09

Yeah, I think some people are afraid to knock on the door, though, because they're afraid of what it costs when that door opens. I think they're afraid of being, you know, hearing that, okay, well, the there's a cover charge once once this door opens and it's $10,000 or it's a million dollars, and not realizing that. Well, some doors it's okay, and maybe it's a lower level entry point, maybe it's, to your point, even a free entry point that gets you in the door. And then, once you're in the door, yeah, maybe there's some things you want to check out or that you need to do. But man, oh man, we can have a conversation like this all day.

Carl Richards: 35:43

I think and I think we're coming from a similar piece of cloth as far as values and what it really means to be an entrepreneur that thought leadership starts with you and that, yes, you can be a thought leader if you are positioning yourself properly to be. So, if you want to be, and if you want to be, you'll reach out to a guy like Solomon, for sure, and get some information from him. Solomon, how can people get ahold of you if they do have questions after today?

Solomon Thimothy: 36:12

They can just go to my website. It's timothycom but it's spelled T-H-I-M-O-T-H-Ycom. com. They can go there. Got tons of free resources. We try to publish short form content practically every single day. There's not a day we don't create content and again, all the content that we create aren't content that I created for creation of content. It's all me talking and just recording. Like content like this. My ideas and strategies are just sort of creating the short form content and that should inspire this audience so that they don't have to spend time creating content or making an impact. They're just amplifying what they already do, right, like they're already doing it every day.

Solomon Thimothy: 36:51

Solomon, Thimothy, has been my guest today. Before I turn you loose out of the world to either go record another podcast or whatever, it is your final thought. Yeah, no, I think we'll leave with that thought of value adding versus value extraction. I made this book for the digital marketing industry and I sell it for 99 cents on Amazon, not because we're going to make a million dollars for it. It's because I want them to get so much value out of that book that they would, you know, go make the $10,000 to cover the book is to go make 10 grand, and I think if they made 10 grand with the book, they'll definitely have some money to invest into our programs, right Like it's. So I didn't make the book unaffordable, if that makes sense. So it's constantly thinking of ways to do it and I have like three more books in the works. Why? Because I want to make as much impact as possible. So I think if we live in that kind of realm, the universe will get you whatever you need.

Solomon Thimothy: 37:42

Solomon, Thimothy, a good way to wrap it up. Thank you so much for being my guest today It was a pleasure being here. A nd thank you for joining us today. Special thanks to our producer and production Dom Carrillo lead, our Corigliour music c Nathan, nathan Simon, and the person who works the arms all of our arms, actually my trusty assistant, stephanie Gaffour. you like what you heard today, leave us a comment and a review and be sure to share it with your friends. If you don't like what you heard, please share it with your enemies. Oh, and if you have a suggestion of someone who you think would make an amazing guest on the show, let us know about it. Drop us an email, askcarl at carlspeaksca. Don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter as well. You'll find all those links in the show notes, and if you're ready to take the plunge and join the over 3 million people who have said yes to podcasting, let's have a conversation. We'll show you the simplest way to get into the podcasting space, because, after all, we're podcast. Solutions

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