PIVOT PLAYBOOK: Platform Shifts, Podcast Guesting, Creator Longevity (Ep. 014)

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Pitching yourself, borrowing audiences, and staying ahead of platform drama — this episode shows you how to diversify your reach and protect your brand. Plus, the latest on TikTok’s uncertain future and Taylor Swift’s launch playbook.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to use podcast guesting and collaborations to “borrow” authority and grow faster
• Why practicing pitching and content delivery beats waiting for perfection
• Ways to protect your business from TikTok’s turbulence and jump on trending culture
  
  

Timestamps:

 04:55 – Audience Borrowing: Leverage other people’s platforms
 08:20 – Pitching Yourself: Practice, iterate, improve
 13:40 – Facing the Cringe: Why bad content leads to better content
 18:00 – Presence on Camera: What your listening face says
 26:40 – Creativity vs. Views: Content that actually makes impact
 33:10 – TikTok Update: Algorithm shifts and platform uncertainty
 43:00 – Diversify Channels: Protect your business beyond TikTok
 44:30 – Taylor Swift Strategy: Album drops and cultural hijacks

References & Resources:

• Taylor Swift – Life of the Showgirl album launch
• Danielle Fishel (Topanga, Boy Meets World, Dancing With the Stars)
• Blue Sky Social & Skylight app

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📱 Social: @themichellepualani | @joanna_atwork
📩 Michelle: hello@michellepualani.com
🌐 Joanna: millennialmktr.com

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Transcript

Michelle Pualani: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome back to the Click Tease podcast, where weekly we discuss marketing updates, what's happening in personal branding and creating content that converts for your business and online brand. This week we're talking about how to diversify your channels, really understand how you're showing up on each platform, ensuring that you have a solid foundation for a business.

We're chatting about the TikTok update and how to stay abreast of what's happening in terms of your platforms and ensuring that you stay aligned with your messaging, with your marketing, and that you are protecting yourself from a brand positioning perspective as well as Taylor Swift's new album and update how she is the queen and ultimate.

Being able to keep people involved from a community perspective and engaged on what she's doing. I'm Michelle Pulani Houston, founder of To Be Honest Beverage [00:01:00] Company or a non-alcoholic functional spirit brand, as well as business coach and mentor to businesses and brands cultivating their own personal brand and presence.

Joanna Newton: And I'm Joanna Newton, co-founder of Millennial Marketer and Agency that helps creators create their own digital products. Let's dive in.

Michelle Pualani: So today I'm actually drinking a nice, cool beverage. It's still really hot in San Luis Obispo, California where I am. So we're starting to get like a hint of fall coming through, but it's also been like in the eighties some days.

So it's warm and we went for a lovely walk this morning. My hubby and I, we try to get out, we do what's called the promenade. We walk to a local park and it's got this really beautiful like circley place with like a bridge and green grass and trees and it's lovely. So we got outside today. I got sunlight in my eyeballs, which I need 'cause it's important for sleep.

And my sleep's been all over the place. Anyway, it's warm. I'm warm and so I'm drinking A TBH bevy. [00:02:00] Super simple. This is like one of the best ways to just have it, that I think it's got spin drift and I like grapefruit spin drift, and then just a couple ounces of my TBH, which is my non-alcoholic spirit brand.

Um, it's a little relaxation. The beauty of this thing is that you can drink at any time of day. It's not just an evening activity. It won't make you sleepy or anything. It just kind of relaxes, calms, and like focuses you in on the present moment. So cheers with with my Be

Joanna Newton: Cheers. I have to get myself some of your products,

Michelle Pualani: You do. I should

Joanna Newton: I should buy

Michelle Pualani: just send you some because

Joanna Newton: send me

Michelle Pualani: yeah.

Joanna Newton: I wanna try it. Um, that sounds really fun. We can drink it together on an episode. Um, today I just have a green tea. I just came from a dentist appointment. Not about you, but like after a dentist appointment, like I don't wanna eat anything or drink anything.

Like something about having all that stuff in your mouth that I'm just like over it. Um, so I didn't really eat anything and I just got some green tea [00:03:00] to sip while we chat.

Michelle Pualani: Beautiful. Lovely. Wonderful. I love it. Um, I just set up a podcast interview, which before on the podcast we've actually talked about how to kinda get yourself featured. So weekly we give you updates on marketing, branding, content creation, all of those things. But in addition, we have a deeper conversation about how to really expand and grow your business as a whole.

And ultimately, the digital presence is only one side of that. There are so many ways that you can organically via. Networking, one-to-one referrals or leveraging other people's audiences in which you can grow your brand and your business, make sales and have a very successful offer delivery, customer experience that is outside of your digital presence.

Right? We like to, and we often talk about like social media and uh, platforms that get you in front of people from an organic content perspective, but. [00:04:00] Recently I have been doing a ton of interviews on other people's podcasts, and so of course we have our own podcasts, and occasionally we have guests since we've kind of switched up this and pivoted the format to this more like intimate conversational.

Style. We used to do kind of a bit more teaching, and so now we do more just chatting weekly updates and giving you the lowdown on what's happening in marketing, you know, this week. So it's more topical, it's more relevant, which I think brings even just like a larger conversation of it's okay to pivot and it's okay to shift and change.

You know, the content with which you're talking about now in your marketing, your platform might change, your positioning might change, but you can. Be okay. Kind of finding that flexibility and finding that growth within your experience. Know that you don't have to like just stick regimented. We started with a podcast titled Her First, and now we're CLTs.

And so I think having that flexibility for evolution is really [00:05:00] powerful and one of the ways in which you can grow your own organic following. Is by leveraging other people's audiences. And so for me, right now with our business and brand, to be honest, we have a full organic strategy. We're working on our paid media right now.

But ultimately, one of the ways that I've seen very successful for us in the past is getting on other people's platforms and talking about our business, talking about our pr, pla. Talk, talking about our product and what you're doing is you're really borrowing the authority of that person that they've established.

They have created an audience, created a community, whatever that looks like, whether that's email, whether it's podcasts, whether it's social media, whether it's live events, whether it's a group or mastermind, that they have a bunch of people that are paid to be there already. You are taking the authority and the leadership that they've already cultivated in their brand and they're bringing you on as a guest, as an expert, as someone who's important.

That they're presenting then to their [00:06:00] community, and so their community is already primed and ready to listen to what it is that you have to say. So instead of on social media, you're trying to get out there and like essentially talk to strangers and say, Hey, I'm important. Hey, pay attention to me. Hey, buy my offer.

You're already getting like multiple levels up handout of. Borrowing that person's audience and community. So that's one thing that I've really been focused on and I just came off a podcast interview and I've probably done. I've been in communication with several 10 ish or so over the past week and have probably recorded at least three or four of them so far.

So this is something that can move really quickly and rapidly if you just put the time and energy to positioning yourself to getting on other people's platforms. So, uh, it's one of the main things that I wanted to talk about today, to leverage your marketing, to leverage your position and. Enable that to also help [00:07:00] you then better figure out your positioning and your messaging.

Joanna Newton: And that idea of audience borrowing, it can work on so many levels. Um, like you can go on someone's podcast, you can do an Instagram collab, you can do trading of email promotions, right? There's lots of ways that you can connect with other people and benefit and grow your audience. Growing an audience organically can feel really.

Flow. And then when you can connect and collaborate with others, you can really sort of like push that growth forward in a way that you never would just on your own. And I think sometimes we're so scared of our quote unquote competitors. When people do similar things to us, we think, oh, we can't like help each other.

We can't, um, collaborate. But a lot of times those people who do something similar to you can be a great way to help you expand your audience if you're not just. Scared of like, oh no, they're gonna do better than me or be better than me. [00:08:00] Um, and connecting with like-minded folks can just really help bring your brand into the forefront. The other thing that I think is really key here too is as a creator, as a CEO, as the owner of your business, you really have to per perfect your craft of pitching yourself and pitching your content and getting that messaging out there. And I know for me personally, I learned by doing. So if I were to sit in my office and plan and create, that is totally important and an important thing to do to like ideate, write your ideas down, put them all together.

But there's nothing for me like actually doing it, actually going somewhere and having to pitch myself, giving, you know, speaking in different platforms, right? I think we can get really comfortable with one format, whereas when we. If we think of all of these things as a learning experience, right? If you go on someone's podcast, you can then watch that interview, kind of critique yourself, say, what did I, where am I strong? Where am I weak? What do I [00:09:00] need to work on? To perfect your ability to let, to deliver that content. I know it can be, feel really. It can feel like the people who are good at it are just naturally good at it, they just get it right every time. But the truth is, I mean, sometimes there's someone who's just a total natural.

The the truth is the people who are the best at it, work at it. They practice, they analyze what they do, they think about how that they can improve, and they get a little bit better every single time they show up on camera.

Michelle Pualani: Absolutely. I think when I was first thinking about pitching, I wanted to be more like curated of like, oh, well, I've gotta only get on these types of podcasts and only talk with these types of people who have this type of reach. But recently, I've kind of let that. Go and ultimately given myself the opportunity to be like, no, I feel like this would be, you know, at least a, a good fit.

You know, topically relevant, I think is important. Right? Who's the audience that they're actually speaking to? And then, and [00:10:00] then what are they discussing? Like if you are a fitness professional and they're discussing. You know, AI software development, maybe not the best fit unless you, of course you're coming at it from like, okay, I'm talking to software developers and they need to up their fitness game and we wanna have this conversation.

You can make those connections, but find that topically relevant. Niche category podcast. Be okay with that, but don't worry so much about it. Oh, okay. Is this is gonna reach 10,000 downloads? Is this gonna reach a million downloads? Like don't worry about those types of numbers because I do think that the practice is very important.

You practice telling your story, you practice the way that you speak. You know, Joanna and I have now been doing this for a year and some change two years. Oh my God.

Joanna Newton: years. I know it's been like two years.

Michelle Pualani: amazing.

Joanna Newton: I, I got something that was like your two year YouTube anniversary, like last week or something.

Michelle Pualani: Look at us. [00:11:00] Go

cheers to that because you know, when you release something, we have never missed a week. And I am so proud of us for consistently delivering on this podcast. And like we, me, like I mentioned in the beginning, it started as something different and it's pivoted since then, but. Being able to show up in that consistency, like I'm actually really proud of that for two years.

That is something that has been so challenging for me in a lot of other areas of my business and content creation. And so just to demonstrate that it's possible is really powerful and you and I have gotten so much better at podcasting because of that. The way, like if you go back to our OG episodes and listen.

Joanna Newton: I.

Michelle Pualani: It's so different than how we are now and how we talk and how we engage in the way that we position. And so being a guest, I mean, I have. Been a guest on probably 20 plus podcast at, at like other people's podcasts, probably [00:12:00] more. I, I, I should probably do an actual count, but every single time I do it, I get better and better.

And I will say, especially in the beginning, I used to be so nervous. And then I did a podcast interview recently on this guy's platform. He has nearly a million subscribers on YouTube and I was. On his podcast and when I was thinking about it, I was like, oh my God, this is so much pressure and there's gonna be so, but.

I felt so great having that conversation and connecting and when you're there to tell your story and when you're, when you're there to talk about something that you actually care about and you're passionate about, like that comes across and it doesn't matter. You know, I, I used to. So often just discount myself and doubt myself because I felt like I didn't have enough experience.

I didn't have enough certifications, I didn't have enough training. I didn't have enough this, and like the list goes on in terms of the doubts and fears that I used to experience about myself and my profession, and the work that I was doing and the offers that I was creating and the services that I was [00:13:00] able to provide, that I limited myself in so many ways.

Didn't ask for opportunity and didn't allow myself to create in a way that reflected that confidence and that impacted my entire business and my ability to perform. And then even further than that, my ability to serve people who would've benefited greatly from what I was doing. And so, as you're listening, just think about all the ways that you probably are making excuses right now.

Holding yourself back from pitching, holding yourself back from creating the content, holding yourself back from sending the email is like. Figuring out what those things are, and then working through them, working around them, navigating that experience so that you can show up. Because you know, the more you practice, the better you get.

The same thing applies to your marketing and your messaging. It's like people are so afraid because they'll create content and it doesn't work, and I'm like, okay, great. How many pieces of content did you create? And it's like, oh, well I just put [00:14:00] out one video. I'm like, well. Yeah, no wonder it didn't work.

You put out one freaking video, like, or even 10 videos, like I am on day 70 something, 71. I think I'm on day 71 of my daily content creation, and I can't say that my content creation has been extremely strategic. It hasn't been as direct as I would like it to. I wanna sit down, I wanna put more mind, like mental acuity into it, but it is demonstrated to me that.

The more that I do something, the better that I get at it. The more that I practice at it, the improved experience, result, feedback I get. And so you have to give yourself the opportunity to be bad. This was one thing I posted about yesterday is like you have to trust yourself enough to try and you're gonna be bad at the beginning and you're gonna be, I like all this stuff on social that I'm seeing about being cringe is like.

Be cringe. Get through the cringe stage because on the [00:15:00] other side of that is everything that you want and everything that you're looking for. Because if you're in this game to like make it happen. If you're in it, to win it, to do it, to risk it to get the biscuit, then you get push through that difficult time like that.

Joanna Newton: to make that a sound on TikTok, like risk it

Michelle Pualani: from,

Joanna Newton: biscuit.

Michelle Pualani: that's from, um, oh my gosh. Fired up. Have you ever seen Fired up?

Joanna Newton: I don't

Michelle Pualani: All right. That's on your watch list. You will freaking love it. It is so funny. It is like a very underrated film and such a crack up. Okay. But you've got try, like, you gotta push through that phase and everybody has their cringey phase and everybody has their like.

This is not very good, but you, you gotta get, you gotta do it to get better. Picasso started somewhere.

Joanna Newton: Yeah, definitely. And I think realizing that you're. Always gonna be learning. You're always gonna be growing Is is key here, right? Because if you think you have to [00:16:00] wait till you're perfect, you'll never start. But you're going to get better and better as you go. One of the things I realized that I did, that I I'm working on and need to fix, um, happened when we switched the format of this podcast because in our old format when we edited the video version, we would only show the speaker.

We'd only show the person talking. And not like flip back and forth in the new version to keep it more, um, know, keep things moving and make it more engaging and feel more conversational. Will like flip to the person who's listening and I have the worst resting bitch face. Um, like the worst and. And like, so as the first couple of episodes edited came out, I was like, oh my gosh. Like what a horrible face am I, I'm making, um, and the truth is, it's, it's my listening concentration face, like I am for me, that is what I look like when I am listening and it is bad. And, and so I'm [00:17:00] working on just. Engaging more with my face and it actually makes me listen less. So I eventually, hopefully I can listen and make good faces when, when you're listening. But I think that's important. And so I think that's important for this podcast. It's also important for like, when I'm on Zoom calls and like that is a good thing to be able to give visual cues to someone that you're listening and that you're excited. what's really funny is, um, do you know who Danielle Official is?

Topanga. From Boy Meets World, so she's currently on Dancing With the Stars. Um, and so she's on Dancing with the Stars and she has since, you know, being an actress and all of those things, she's done a lot of podcasting. So she, she does all of this podcasting, a couple different podcasts. She has. And when I was watching Dancing With the Stars, 'cause it's something I do with my daughter and it's, it's a fun tradition when I'm watching Dancing With the Stars.

I notice that Danielle has this like. [00:18:00] Amazing expressions when she's not the one being interviewed. 'cause on Dancing With the Stars, if you've never watched the show, a lot of times they'll have like the main people being interviewed and then various people who are on the show just standing behind. Um, and she has this way of just. and making the right faces and getting her face on camera that like just draws me to her. And it's fascinating. Go watch a clip of it. It's on tonight. Watch a little bit of it and you'll see what I mean. And then I was scrolling the other day and I got a clip of one of her podcasts that she wasn't even talking and she just made the most. Centered like faces while she wasn't talking and I'm like, she must have worked. Like I'm watching. I'm like, I think she like worked on this, like she was intentional about her presence and how she shows up and it plays on camera so well.

Michelle Pualani: That's really interesting. It [00:19:00] actually makes me think of, so last week we had our major fundraiser for Women's Legacy Fund. So I sit on the committee for a local endowment that supports and benefits women and girls programs in our San Luis Bespoke community. And this year I was responsible for a part of, well, I actually built out the program with our team member and staff member for community Foundation.

And we did this other cool thing that I have to tell you about that I feel like is ways to think of creative explanation. So I'll tell that in a second. But ultimately, I was responsible for a portion of the PRO programming, speaking directly to the audience. And then I moderated a conversation with our grantees from 2024.

So we pulled up heads of organization from. Three grantees that we gave money to in 2024, because it's been a year since their programming was in place. So we got to talk about their programming, implementation and stories of the women and girls who were impacted by that programming. So I, we, I had, I introduced, had them on [00:20:00] stage, went.

We did, I introduced each of their stories and the programs that we supported, and then we did a little q and a. And so I moderated that conversation, got great feedback, and I will say that I would not have gotten as good a feedback if I didn't have this podcast and other opportunities to speak and be able to coordinate my voice and what I'm saying, cut out the ums, the ahs, the bubble, you know, that sort of thing.

Really powerful tool, not just obviously in this setting, but to build your authority to create that presence. If you're building your personal brand, you wanna speak on stages. If you wanna moderate conversations, if you wanna be asked to be on panels, you have to have a great delivery. And that is demonstrated like the more that I do what I do.

The more that I get asked for those opportunities and put into those opportunities. So something to keep in mind in order to grow that experience for yourself. Consider it practice for when you're in front of larger audiences, because that is [00:21:00] nerve wracking. It can be really challenging when you're put in front of three to 400 people and have to hold that space.

But I actually recognize that as well. 'cause my husband was there filming some parts of it and I was doing my best and we're outside under this big white tent and so it's kind of bright. So I can tell that I'm like slightly squinting, but I'm also kind of scowling 'cause of my face and I'm like, Ooh, I gotta pay more attention to like what my face is doing in those settings.

The other thing I'll share from that event is I always. Encourage people to think creatively about how they can better explain, represent, show, demonstrate, especially in our social media realm, the way that things are heading. There are talking head videos that are incredibly important, but how much more attention and how much more reach does something get?

When you actually have something that's visually demonstrating as an example, what it is that you're talking about much more, right? I love [00:22:00] those little, like, uh, you know, when someone's talking and explaining a concept and they're like physically drawing out the thing, like the idea bubble, then it goes to this.

I love those. I love watching those things. So when you can physically demonstrate something to someone, it creates so much more power in the messaging. So for this event. We are an endowment fund. So an endowment fund is something that money was put into, and then it's invested through an intermediary into the stock market and into places where it can then grow over time.

So the idea is to give in perpetuity. And then we grant make based off of the profits from that year. So we're in the 80. Thousand ish range of what we grant make every single year just based off what's in the endowment. And so our gains can be in the multiple hundreds of thousands every single year, feeding back into the endowment, into the holdings of it so that we can continue to give money without anybody from our local economy putting in a dollar.[00:23:00]

So that's the idea behind the endowment. Now the idea of collective giving, everyone contributing is something that we've wanted to demonstrate in a physical way at these events. So this year. We had the idea of putting together a puzzle. So we took a picture from one of our nonprofits and organizations of a mom and like teen daughter, and we gave that to a supporter of ours and she created like a visual representation art piece that was in our color palette and color scheme, but it was more, it wasn't like a cartoon, but it wasn't like a photo, right?

It was just this beautiful kind of art piece. It was four by four, so it was rather large, and we took that and we chunked it up. Into puzzle pieces, just squares puzzle pieces for 350 ish people, which is about how many people we had at this event. And so each person, when they checked in, they got a piece of the puzzle and then they had to come and they had to affix their piece of the puzzle to their, it was all numbered so they could easily find the spot, um, to it.[00:24:00]

And I recorded it, you know, in time lapse, the giving. And for people participating, it was like. I don't know what you know, I don't know what we're doing here. This is interesting. And then once they placed, and as the picture started to come into view, and then throughout the programming as we referenced it and explained that idea of collective giving.

Everyone's has a piece of the puzzle and we come together. This is what we create, and this is the impact that we have. It brought this beautiful realization and this sense of purpose and connection and community that we were really trying to communicate through this experience and through this process.

And so as you're thinking about your offer, your service, what it is that you bring to market, what is a creative, unique physical. Representation of what it is that you talk about and how can you demonstrate that in your marketing, in your messaging? Because what it also does is it plays on emotion and people buy off of emotion.

They invest off of emotion, and they justify with [00:25:00] logic, right? And so if you can. Play with those emotions. If you can tap into them, if you can help someone understand the emotional reasoning behind why they would buy your product and what they're gonna get out of it, that's where you should be setting yourself up for success.

That's where you should be thinking about, like from the inspiration, the motivation. And I talk with so many people and there's a lot of conversations about like, oh, well I don't know what to create. I don't know what to do. And if you can take a pause, take a step back and just. Let yourself play. Let yourself be creative.

Think through like, what could I do? What are the possibilities? How can I represent this? I think that's a really good place to just kind of start and start thinking, you know, outside of the box of how you can represent who you are, what you do, and what you bring to the market.

Joanna Newton: And I think a lot of times, a lot of content creators are getting away from being super [00:26:00] creative, and I, I was actually thinking about this throughout the week. I, I think one of the things that has killed creativity and content creation all of the gurus. Are on the internet telling you how to get views uh, I was, I, I saw this video of someone talking about these type of content creators that are like, this is how you get views.

Use this trending sound, use this hook, use this thing, use that thing, and are like telling you how to get more views. Calling these creators the, like MLM of our modern age because they are only getting views. telling you how you can get views and not all of these people are actually right about what they're saying.

So if you think about someone saying, Ooh, this is a trending audio, save it. So you can use that trending audio. It might not actually be a trending audio, but you save it 'cause you're like, this is a trending audio, I should use it. But is it [00:27:00] actually a trending audio that's going to carry your content through? And I think if we started thinking about what would some. How, how to make my content make impact versus how to make it get more views and, and relying on tricks to get more views versus actual content that's gonna say something, make an impact and get like an honest, real reaction. We all probably get more views, but instead we're thinking, okay, what is the best hook line?

I've gotta have a visual hook where I move my hand and a cup and this and that, instead of actually focusing on the content first. And I think if you focused on the content first thought about. tricks can you add to increase the views? You'd probably have like a better, better impact because if you get views and they're not like strategic and they're not your people anyway, it doesn't even matter, right?

Like I've gone viral for things that have made impact but didn't really [00:28:00] help my brand grow because they weren't something that like made sense for me necessarily. use to grow my brand. Um, it's fun, but it's not necessarily that it's also okay to just have fun, right? Like, I'm not saying you shouldn't just have fun with your content, but if we start thinking about, what can I say?

Do illustrate that's gonna make impact cause an action, make someone feel something first and worry less about the tricks. I think we'd all be more engaging and get more views.

Michelle Pualani: Yeah. I also think social media will be a better place. Like have you ever scrolled and just been like, oh, that's crap. Oh, that's crap. What is like, what is happening? Like, why are people doing this? And you know, you and I, we love to share things that are gonna be beneficial to people, but we're you and I are also really focused on longevity.

You know, there are a lot of people in the space who are just focused on short-term results, and those short-term results are sometimes based off of illegitimate [00:29:00] tactics, sometimes based off of just like misdirected, misguided intentions. And sometimes they're just kind of shady. And you don't like, you don't wanna participate in that type of business.

And most of our listeners in our community and what we are building are people with integrity. Like, for

Joanna Newton: Yeah.

Michelle Pualani: of a better word, is like people who actually care about other people who, people who care about the industry and what we're creating. I could create the easiest, cheapest THC type product with a shit brand.

Pardon my French. Um, we control this channel. We can say whatever we want.

Joanna Newton: we.

Michelle Pualani: With a terrible brand and market the crap out of it and not care. And not care about the customer service, not care about the consumer, not care about what we're putting out onto the market and dilute the industry as a whole. I just realistically can't do it, trust me, because of the money. I have thought to myself so many times, why can't I just do this?

Why can't I just like. [00:30:00] Buy crap products from in like India, China, and rebrand them. There are so many brands on the market who do exactly that and just mark it up and I get it. And I see it, and I understand that everybody has the right to do what they wanna do, but I just, I physically can't, like I can't with a good conscience approach, that type of deal.

And so when it comes to content creation, I have a hard time fitting into a lot of the molds that people are creating for themselves. But the further along I get in this process, the more that I recognize you really do just have to pave your own path. There's this great, I don't remember the creator, I'll try to link it in the show notes if I remember to.

I'm able to find them, but there's this YouTube creator who has a phenomenal amount of reach and views, and his videos are so poor quality, but the content of what he shares from a knowledge base and education based perspective, people absolutely love. They just like watch. [00:31:00] All of what he puts out because of the content.

And then you have content out there that's super highly produced, it looks professional, it looks beautiful, and they're just stating a bunch of crap and a bunch of fluff. And so you have to decide what type of business do you wanna be? What type of brand do you wanna be? What integrity do you wanna have when you come to market?

What personal brand are you creating and how are you gonna reflect and represent that? And I do think that when you lean into your own unique voice and quality, and sometimes it takes following trends to do that, right? Like follow some trends, see how that feels for you. See how the shoe fits, and then decide.

And then you can start to fit into like what really truly works for you. And that's kind of where I feel like. I'm getting closer to establishing as well is like, what do I wanna bring to the market? What voice do I wanna have in the community, and how do I want to intentionally create content that speaks.

To my person that is representing the narrative that I wanna have. And that's, that takes a while. And that's a powerful [00:32:00] conversation you can have with yourself. You know, not just to fit in. 'cause we know a bunch of people who fit into the mold and either hate what they do or just like, you know, people who burn out and are like, I can't hand the this anymore because they don't feel aligned.

They don't feel purpose driven, they don't feel passionate about what they're doing. They're just doing it for the likes, the views, the engagement, the reach and crash and burn. And so. You get to decide how you show up at the end of the day, and, and it takes time to sometimes reflect on what that looks like.

Joanna Newton: Yeah. And if, for those of you who don't follow us on TikTok, you don't know this, but we are going, I will call it viral for us. TikTok for talking about the TikTok ban. Um, or not, sorry, not the TikTok ban, the updates to TikTok and the possible TikTok sale. what's really interesting about watching this happen is when we switched over to Click Tees, we decided to add a Instagram and a Substack to a company, the podcast, podcast. [00:33:00] And then I was like, you know what? Why don't we off? Also tried TikTok and see if we can grow there as well to find people to join the substack and listen to the podcast. So we started posting there and it was slow to start getting results. Um, about a week ago, we were at 17, uh, followers on, on. TikTok, my brain is, my brain is failing me right now.

Um, we were like at 17, um, followers on TikTok, which like three of them were me. Um, and so, but we're just kind of posting, getting traction, and we had this one little clip from our show take off. Right now it's at about 31,000 views. It's gotten us about 60 new. Followers, and it's really fun to watch because you can see people like we get a couple more subscribers on YouTube.

We saw a big jump in our podcast downloads over the weekend. We got a couple new subscribers to our substack, so we were able to [00:34:00] use that energy from. Mini viral moment to actually grow the show again long term. 'cause our goal is to find our people that we can support. The business owners that need to be updated on what's going on in the world when it comes to marketing and are looking for the education are are also looking for what's trending, what's going on, what is changing.

And we were able to do that by, by having all of our profiles set up the way we needed them to, having the connection between it all and having a clear. Clear message and.

Michelle Pualani: So if you haven't yet, you can check it out in the show notes, but you can also subscribe to the Substack because even though these conversations that we have on the podcast are more casual, more reflective, more updates, more, you know, our. Experience and story related things, you'll get a weekly newsletter that's related to what we talked about, but more tactical, more tangible, more action items for you to be able to actually then implement in [00:35:00] your business because it's great to be able to listen stuff and there is no shortage of.

Conversations, educations, YouTube podcasts, webinars that you sign up for, things that you download, emails in your inbox. I know that you are overloaded by content on a consistent basis if you're in this field, if you're in this industry and you're constantly looking for more, to be able to add on and figure that out.

I'm actually like, my brand and business for Michelle Pulani is really pivoting to simplification. I think that we are inundated with so much noise and that makes us feel a sense of overwhelm or not knowing which direction to go, or going from this, to that, to this, to that, to this, to that, to this, to that without ever focusing.

And that's something I did for a long time that I always thought I was like, I was like not, not just trend chasing. I was essentially chasing the, the secret. You know that everyone's like, oh, well if you are not doing [00:36:00] webinars like this, then you're doing it wrong. If you're not doing a three day challenge, then you're doing it wrong.

If you're not doing this, you know, like, oh God, there's so much crap in the online space that I just like, I've cut out so much of that noise realistically and, and really focusing on like my voice, my message, and what I wanna bring to the world. And I pretty much know all the different. Formats that I can and create anything.

I was being asked on the podcast today about how I came up with the product for, to be honest. And I told him, I was like, honestly, the product and the format isn't the challenge. You can do anything. And I think you and I joined and I, we've talked about this, like having worked with so many creators, so many online business owners, so many service providers.

You can do a membership, you can do a group program, you can do a mastermind, you can do a PDF, you can do a webinar, you can do a workshop. You can do a course at this length. You can do video, you can do audio, you can do written, you can do morse code. Like you can do so many different types of things. And the medium of exchange [00:37:00] doesn't really matter, but that's where people get stuck.

They get stuck on the medium of exchange when really ultimately like. Everything that everyone says in terms of like, webinars are dead. This is dead. Oh, you should be focusing on this. This is the secret. It's all absolute bollocks. Like it's all crap. It's total bs. And so now that I've realized that, and now that I know and understand all the mediums of exchange, it's more about understanding like what again, is my message?

What is my voice? What's the offer that I wanna provide? What problem am I solving? Who is that person that I'm really talking to? And I can do that on any platform, in any way that makes sense for me in a consistent way that I can continue to show up. And like once you have that dialed. Yes, you can learn new systems like right, like when ManyChat got introduced.

Yes. That's a new beneficial platform that can help you exchange and communicate with your people and deliver in a [00:38:00] positive way, in an easy, efficient way. But it's, it's not a whole new mind blowing type of deal. You know, and that's something that I've just had to realize about this industry is that there's so much of that and you've gotta figure out how to sort through the noise.

Joanna Newton: Yeah, you have to figure out. Try what works for you? What feels right to you? What feels good and honest, and I think there are best practices that go along with any method. There's best practices that go along with them to make sure it's effective and impactful, but you have a lot of choice, and I think we're always trying to chase the perfect thing.

Well, the perfect thing doesn't exist, so you have to kind of make your own path and figure out what works for you. Look at the data. And adjust. One thing I wanted to make sure we chatted about today, going back to TikTok for a minute, is a quick update on what is happening with the potential TikTok sale. So [00:39:00] especially if you've joined and followed us because you want to keep up. Up to date, we'll try to keep a little update as things go, as part of our episodes throughout, um, throughout the next couple of weeks and beyond. The latest update in this whole saga is that Trump did sign an executive order to basically make the deal between the US. the US and China possible. Now no deal has happened. There is no timeline. This could actually not happen at all. There are plenty of people in our comments on TikTok that say this will never happen. There are people from China in our comments saying, um, the Chinese government will never agree to a sale. Um, do not use that as a real source because I have no idea who those people are saying those things. But keep in mind as this continues. To just keep an update on what's going on. It could change at any moment. The deal could happen. The deal could not happen. TikTok could go away. Like you [00:40:00] just have to be able to pivot with what's going on.

So if you create on TikTok some things that I think you should be doing and keeping in mind over the next couple of months as this story unfolds is continue create on TikTok because it could last forever. Don't give up on it if you already have traction there, but make sure you're also on another platform and make it.

Easy for your followers to know you're on another platform. You can link your Instagram account, your YouTube account, right in your TikTok bio so you can make it really easy for people to know where you are in case the platform does change or go away at any time. The other thing to do is. Just keep an eye on out for little algorithm shifts of what's working and what isn't on TikTok.

We'll keep you updated here if we see any changes, but a lot of times if you are able to adjust with the algorithm, you'll be rewarded for it. So if a certain type of content is taking off and it makes sense for you to make it, then. [00:41:00] Shifting in that direction could help you see actually, actually see growth in this sort of uncertain time. The other thing to think about is as the story develops, people could be jumping from TikTok and going to other platforms. One that I've seen a lot of people talking about is Blue Sky Social, um, and Skylight, which is an app that's created by the Blue Sky Social People. I created an account a while ago.

I don't use it, but. If you start creating on these accounts that people are talking about jumping to, you might be able to develop a following there early that's gonna help boost you when, like the whole, when more people flood there. So just some things to think about as the, like the future of TikTok is shaky, just to keep going, keep an eye on what's going on and we will make sure we keep you updated as things change.

Michelle Pualani: Also diversifying your channels and where you're driving traffic is always important to consider. We talk about this, that's the thing is again, from a marketing messaging [00:42:00] content perspective. That's only part of the puzzle, and so we want to ensure that you have a healthy, sustainable business behind what it is that you're doing and behind what it is that you're creating.

So where are you driving that traffic? If you only have a platform on TikTok and then you're directing people to your link tree that has an Amazon store or some affiliate links. You are not capturing their emails, you're not cap like sending them to a website that you own. That's a problem and it's a problem for your business model as a whole.

And so what we want to ensure is that you are protecting yourself in the event of things, perhaps not going so well on a certain platform. You don't wanna lose your entire business. So how can you think about where you're capturing people's information? Whether that is just traffic or whether that is an email, or even just getting into people's dms and having that conversation so that you can retarget if you want to grow on with ads at some [00:43:00] point.

You know, having all those things in place are so, so critical for the longevity of your business, for the strength of your brand as a whole, and for allowing yourself to not rely so heavily on one source. Right. So I think that's. Very important to consider, and if you haven't yet, go ahead and hit subscribe.

'cause on the Click Tease podcast, we give you these weekly updates and share the way in which you can really enhance your personal brand, grow your audience, and create that content that converts.

Joanna Newton: The last little quick update that I have for us to keep in mind for trends and things that I think will be coming very shortly on Friday of this week. Taylor Swift's new album is coming out, so the life of the showgirl releases like thir, well, Friday mor, Friday at midnight or Thursday night, depending on how you wanna think about it.

And what that means is the internet will be full of life of a showgirl content [00:44:00] starting on Friday and moving forward. Likely if you, if you're the kind of person who creates content with songs and music in the background, there's gonna be a slew of news Taylor Swift songs that are gonna be going viral.

Getting attention using those songs is probably a good idea, if that makes sense for your brand, and if there is a way to draw a connection between you and that album. I'd recommend doing it because it's what the internet will be talking about for Friday through, well, they're already talking about it.

It's already happening, but it'll be even more starting Friday and on Taylor Swift even released an entire launch calendar. She has this like what's happening this week and what shows she's going on and what she's doing, and I think it's Saturday night. There's a little thing that says, standby. Nobody knows what it is, but everyone's guessing what we're standing by for on Saturday night.

Um, so it's fun. It's fun to watch. But also know if there's a tie in for you, in your [00:45:00] brand to talk about the album. Use the music, follow the trends. That could be a way to help you grow this weekend.

Michelle Pualani: Oh, she is such the queen of surprise and delight and like seeding ideas. And storytelling with like teasers and things like that. I love the way that she approaches this entire process and everyone can become so invested in this release and in her story as a whole, she's just the queen of ensuring that you keep your audience involved and the transparency, you know, I think a lot of people are like, Ooh, I wanna surprise people, but we're in an era that it's really, really hard to get away with.

Not talking about something consistently. Tell people what you're doing. Be transparent in that. Tell them what you're gonna do. Tell them when you're doing it, and tell them that you did it. Like give them that information. We're in an era where people need as much as possible inundating them in [00:46:00] order to get something across, because you have to imagine as a consumer, we have so much noise.

We have such a high quantity and volume of content that we're consuming. Everything from TV shows to social media, to our email channels that. We are gonna forget what it is that you're talking about, and you are so inundated with it because you are the one who's the center of what it is that you're talking about.

But you have to remember that people are just getting a sliver, a very small portion of what it is that you do, and so you have to talk about it. Over and over and over again. Talk about it in your captions. Talk about it in your videos, talking about it in your stories. Talk about it in your emails. Put it on your website.

Shout it from the rooftops, and do it over and over and over again. So we'll go ahead and wrap it up on that note. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend, hit subscribe and we'll see you next week on the Click Tease podcast.