Grow Your Business on LinkedIn with Krista Mollion

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, linkedin, post, banner, profile, connect, podcast, title, comment, important, book, creator, grow, authority, business, content, monetize, put, genuinely, mode

SPEAKERS
Alastair McDermott, Voiceover, Krista Mollion

Krista Mollion  00:00

You have to find ways to be unique and memorable. So you don’t want to have vanilla content. You want to be a little bit polarizing, and a little bit opinionated and definitely figure out your own unique style.

Voiceover  00:18

Welcome to The Recognized Authority, a podcast that helps specialized consultants and domain experts on your journey to become known as an authority in your field. So you can increase your reach, have more impact and work with great clients. Here’s your host, Alastair McDermott.

Alastair McDermott  00:34

Before we get into today’s episode, I just want to briefly let you know about a free email course that is available at the recognized authority.com. It’s a free seven day email course on how to become a recognized authority. You can subscribe to that just by visiting TheRecognizedAuthority.com homepage.  So today, I am delighted to have with me, Krista Mollion. I hope I pronounced that correct, Krista, and you’re coming to me from the Alps, which is fabulous place in to be in France. I spend a lot of time in the Swiss Alps, actually. But welcome to the show, Christy, you have been an entrepreneur for 20 years, you’ve built successful agency and coaching practice before kids, you help experts to grow profitable online businesses on the platform for entrepreneurship that you’re building, you have a book coming soon. And you’ve just got you know, you’ve got huge amounts going on. And we’ll be able to hear that because your you got your kids in the background as well. Which is, which is great. So can you tell me a little bit because you’ve just been talking about social selling? Can you tell me a little bit about what you think, is really important for people when they’re trying to sell themselves on social media.

Krista Mollion  01:41

I think it’s very important to be as authentic and real as possible. People can see right away when you’re trying to be indirect. And they’re waiting for the sales pitch, it puts people on edge. So it’s a big mistake to talk about, how are you How’s business, how’s the weather, okay, now buy my thing, that just doesn’t work. And people see it coming, they feel that it’s going to come and they’re just like, I’m fine. And they’re waiting, they’re waiting. So that’s just definitely not a way to do it. The secret to social selling is to build relationships. And when I say build relationships, I mean, genuinely take the time to be interested in the other person. Instead of making it a race to grow, grow, grow, and collect connections, and sell, sell, sell, how about taking care of 10 people really, really well, so that they become lifetime customers lifetime advocates for you and your brand. They become your brand ambassadors, they become your best marketing weapon, because they will go and tell everybody just how amazing you are and drive traffic for you, instead of trying to go out and chase 100 people. When you’re a solopreneur, especially you have limited capacity. So I would rather invest deeply, then broadly. And by doing so, you actually end up getting the with as well, I’ve a I’ve been able to grow my account on LinkedIn, which is the primary platform where I do social selling b2b. Without doing much. All I do is show up, take genuine interest in people don’t pitch to them, and really take the time to get to know them understand their problems. And it works.

Alastair McDermott  03:43

Yeah, you have just under 70,000 people following you on on LinkedIn, which is an incredible number in itself. And so is that the way that you started, you started 10 at a time?

Krista Mollion  03:55

No.

Alastair McDermott  03:55

Just you know, you just started working with with a small group and you focus on that?

Krista Mollion  04:00

I made a lot of mistakes. So I have even more proof that things like this don’t work to collect connections. Because when I started I did all the bad things. I just connected with anyone and everyone I said I’m open to connect. I didn’t look at connection requests very closely. For me, it was just let’s grow. And I ended up paying the price because I didn’t connect with the right people who genuinely wanted to take the time to get to know me. And I ended up deleting 10,000 people off of my account and kind of trying to start over. And as soon as I did that my engagement went like that like skyrocketed.  Because the truth is you’ll hurt yourself by growing through devious means meaning you know, I wasn’t cheating. I wasn’t using any tools or bots like some people are but I was just connecting with too many people accepting too many connection requests. And you will hurt yourself because in the end, every time you post something, these people won’t really care about that post because they’re not interested in what you’re doing professionally, they don’t care about business. And so it backfires on you, you think that the numbers are good, but in the end, you have dead weight. And who wants that you can’t convert dead weight, and the algorithm notices, the algorithm will punish you because it will think, how come every time she puts out a post, she has all these followers, but nobody engages only a couple of people comment, the algorithm will think your content is bad. So it’s much better to stay lean and mean to keep your connections tight and focused and niche down on your ideal customer avatar.

Alastair McDermott  05:56

Yeah, I think that I can also provide some some backup to that, because I did use some of those automation tools. Now I was doing it in, in kind of in service of surveying, and I’m trying to get some response to to survey results, which did work really well. But the people who joined me, who followed me and connected with me as a result of doing that, they’re definitely not as engaged as other people. So I can see that in my in my connection. So yeah, I’m with you. 100% there. So let’s talk about, you know, for for somebody who is starting on is looking at you with 70,000 followers or me with 5000 followers, and they’re saying, you know, like I’ve only got, you know, 200, 200 or 300 people on LinkedIn. And you know, even if I write something, and people are really engaged me, it’s still going to be tiny numbers, like, how do they actually grow that following? And like, how does that start?

Krista Mollion  06:53

The secret is to stop being egotistical and start being a giver. So instead of going online, and posting and running, and thinking only about yourself, and looking at who commented who liked my post, if you show up on social media, on LinkedIn, or other platforms with a giving attitude, you will get tenfold back what I do every time I post, every time I log into a platform, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, I immediately go to 10 other profiles that are equally big or even bigger than mine. Find good posts of things that interest me, I’m never looking to comment on anyone’s post if the topic doesn’t really feel relevant or authentic to me. So I’ve made sure that I’m looking for those types of posts that I can add value to. And then I leave as thoughtful of a comment as I possibly can. It’s never a complimentary post, like wonderful post great job. It’s always well, I see you put out five ways to grow your account. How about I add to this with a six point, here’s my six point, you see.  So these value driven comments. And if you can do this in the first hour of the posts even better. So when you hit up those big accounts, you will see Gary Vee posted this 20 minutes ago. So if you’re within the golden hours, when I call it, your post comment has 10 times more chance to be featured. So two hours later, when he has 500 comments, you were one of the first to comment. And not only that, but you left a really good comment, you will probably stay at the top and more people will like your comment and go check you out and follow you.  Now imagine doing that daily, what happens. And I do this before I post my own post, my post is not important. What’s more important is my engagement with other people’s posts. And never pod friends never engagement pods. Because that’s just not the way to grow. The way to grow is to find who are the leaders. If you want to be considered a thought leader in the podcasting space, you need to find out who are the current leaders in the podcasting space, who have huge following who has massive popularity as a podcaster and I have a who’s who’s list. It’s an Excel spreadsheet that I give to my clients when I teach social selling and we fill out who are the we do our research who’s the brand authority in your niche. So whether that’s podcasting, health care, weight loss coaching, and then we can further niche down by geographical location obviously, although now we live in a global world so for example, you may be in Europe, but you may be targeting people in the States, then you want to look at who are the brand authorities in the States. But you definitely don’t want to be targeting people in Asia, if that’s not your, your ideal customer. And if you do that religiously, people will start noticing you.  And the other thing that happens is the thought leader themselves will start noticing you. I have been, I can open any door for you, if you want to connect with Richard Branson, which is, by the way, not him, because those big accounts are managed by a team. They’re not managed by them personally. But the point is, I can get in any door because I know how to talk to people. I know how to be a good cheerleader, how to show make them shine, and genuinely show up for them first, do they have a book? I’m going to buy the book, I’m going to leave them a review. Do they have a podcast? I’m gonna listen to the podcasts, I’m gonna leave them a review. Do they have a live stream show? I’m going to show up for three days in a row on that live stream show and leave the most comments that they’ve ever seen. And I’m really good at this. I even won a tripod last week on somebody’s podcast for leaving the best comment.  So become, instead of worrying about making these beautiful posts or figuring out do I need to do reels or short or long form? How about becoming an expert commentator First, figure out how to leave comments that stand out that people look at and say, Wow, that’s a thought leader right there. Even though we don’t know that person. So now you’ve created curiosity for me to go over to your profile and check you out. And if I’m following the person who you left a comment on their posts, maybe I should be following you as well.

Alastair McDermott  11:47

Really interesting. I love that become an expert commenter that’s a that’s a really great way to think about that. You mentioned having people coming over and checking out your profile. So we’ve we’ve left a comment. And now somebody’s coming to check out our social profile, be at LinkedIn or whatever social network, what should they actually see on our profile when they get there like like, like how how manicured should our profile be?

Krista Mollion  12:14

There’s only three things that matter. For the three second rule, there’s a three second test. And if you pass the three second test, you will get probably a follow. That’s the minimum. And that’s a very good thing to get. If you pass that test with flying colors, you may get a follow and they may look further into your profile and start reading some of your posts or read your about section. But I always tell my clients to focus on the three second test. So the three second test is photo, Banner, title. And those are the things that matter.  So your profile photo should always be centerfold, we don’t need to see your body, if it is a body shot, it has to be very, very well lit. So if I can’t see you, you’re obscure, there’s too much noise in the background, it doesn’t work. So it’s very rare that a body shot really works. So really good photo, I don’t really care if it’s an avatar or if it’s you or if it’s a stylized photo of you. Although it is been proven that dark backgrounds that are colorful backgrounds, orange, pink, yellow, will get more follows than if you have a plain background. I’ve tested this, it’s true actually works. Although, you know, doesn’t always motivate me to do that. But I’ve tested to see which colors people react to. Red, red is an action taking color.  The banner is a free billboard, it’s almost like LinkedIn told you, I’m going to give you free money to advertise. So you have to be really targeted about what you put in your banner. I like to develop with my clients a unique value proposition. A unique value proposition is a short half sentence that shouldn’t contain more than seven words. The words should be very simple, so that people can immediately understand what you do. And they have to be different than what everyone else is saying. So I’d love to come and see someone’s banner, and there’s something that catches my eye that I if I would hide your title. And I would just cover up your title, I could tell what you do professionally, just by your banner. And the second thing in your banner, it has to have a call to action. If you don’t have a call to action, you’re not using your ad space. This is free advertising for you.  So what could your call to action be? Of course the very simple one is just to put your url. But now that LinkedIn lets you put your url in your title, the banner It’s kind of a wasted URL because it’s not clickable. So instead of that, I usually put an arrow pointing downwards and say, download my free guide. So I always have a lead magnet, I don’t like to send people to my website in my title, because I think it’s also a waste, because they might just come do a quick 360 and leave. So I like to send them to one specific lead magnet, that could be the latest podcast episode that you’re that you just released. So every week, you put a new podcast episode, in your URL of your title. That could be an event you’re hosting, maybe you’re doing a paid workshop on podcasting, and you put that in there. I also use my banner for events or launches. So when I’m doing a LinkedIn bootcamp, that’s going to be a big program, you’ll see that during the week of the launch, when you can buy the program, I swapped my banner, from my normal banner to advertise to sign up for my LinkedIn boot camp, and that I take down on the day that the cart closes. I’ve also seen people who have memberships who put up there, only 24 spots left, grab your spot before it’s gone. And every day they’ll change it only five spots left grab it before it’s gone. So there’s very clever things you can do with your banner. Most people are completely ignoring that. And they’re not capitalizing on the power of the visual, right?

Alastair McDermott  16:36

Yeah.

Krista Mollion  16:36

Your video. Right now I’ve taken down mine, but I’m redoing it. So your profile photo also has a profile video, if you turn on creator mode, which you really should I can go in for another hour why you need to turn that on. But it will help you in so many ways. And what you want to do is record a short video that tells people why they should connect with you. And this is really what I would say is a mini elevator pitch like a 32nd elevator pitch. And most people aren’t good at those by the way, they say something really boring, like I’m a business coach. And no one needs to hear that I could find that out and what makes that special. So you need to think up something clever. Maybe you can create your own rap, or something that stands out or do something more interesting, or wear a funny hat. Because I will remember that when I’m looking through different profiles, I’ll remember that profile who had a funny video. And people will pay you for entertainment. And what I mean pay you is literally pay you because I’m I teach how to monetize on your content, right? That’s my specialty.  But ready, they will give you a follow if you entertain them and LinkedIn is edutainment, so you have to remember it is the new Facebook, it’s better than Facebook, because LinkedIn used to be this crusty boring job application place. And it was just almost like a marketplace for job seekers. And now it is completely a content hub. And so people want to see a really nice introduction video, they want to see a colorful banner, you don’t have to have a buttoned up suit and tie for your profile photo.  And the last thing that you need to do is make sure your title is good, because I said this is a three second test. So I checked your profile photo, maybe the video started playing that was cool. I looked at your banner, it gave me a good overview of what your value proposition is with a call to action telling me to do something. And then I looked at your title. And here’s what you want to do. Your title is like a mini website, you need to front loaded, like you have your homepage on your website, you should put all the best stuff on your homepage. So your title, you want to put in the first six words, the juicy part of what you really, really do. You don’t want to waste that real estate by putting something like I’m an avid cyclist, or I like to blow things up. That’s cool, but you’re not enticing me to ever understand what you do. So you need to make sure the first six words approximately tell me approximately what you do. And remember, this is SEO driven. So you need to have certain keywords in your whole title. Remember that to keep those keywords in there because sometimes we change the title and we forget that those those keywords really do matter for searchability. But especially the first six words because that’s how the algorithm works. It’s looking through the beginning. They’re not looking towards the very end.  And number two, in many contexts of when I’m looking at you I only see the beginning of your title, I don’t see the the title is very, very long. By the way, it’s much longer than Instagram or other plates, Facebook. So you can put a whole paragraph, I think it’s like 256 characters maybe even longer. And so, but in many contexts, like if you sent me a personalized invitation request, I would only see the first couple of words and your photo, and maybe your back your banner, right. So make sure that you really pay more attention to your title. And then the last tip I have is you have to stand out. So why it’s not enough to inform people. But you also have to figure out how to be a little bit different. And if you want to monetize, you don’t want to put yourself in the category with everybody else. And this goes back into becoming a recognized authority.  The book that I really love is called the “Blue Ocean Strategy” is one of many, many books, one of many books. But the Blue Ocean Strategy teaches you that you need to put yourself into a blue clean ocean. Because if you’re with everybody else, if you’re with all the podcasters, all the business coaches, all the marketers, then we’re all fighting for the same fish. And the ocean becomes red with, you know, bloody battle. And so to take yourself out of that is the goal. And a few people have been able to do this. And those are the people we consider now the authority in their field. So instead of following the crowd, think about how to get away from the crowd, what can you do different so if everyone’s doing tick tock videos, don’t do tick tock videos. If everyone’s speaking this gibberish, don’t do that. The thing I hate most is fluff. I think I’d like to simplify. I don’t like pretty packaging. I don’t like fancy titles. I don’t like fancy sales pages. I don’t trust you when you put all that stuff in there. I like to show me the value. So I’m looking for if I scroll down your profile, and I see six posts that you’ve posted, and I see you’re dancing on Tik Tok, you’re dancing on Tik Tok. Oh, you liked your dog. Oh, look, there’s your cute dog. This may make you likable, but it will never make me hire you. So you have to make sure you’re hitting the right blend of value and entertainment. So it should be 70% value 30% Entertainment.  So I like to see your dog. But I don’t want to see six posts of your dog if you’re trying to sell me a service, because that’s deterring me. So make sure that five of those posts are teaching me about your service and telling me tips how I can get better at podcasting, how I can monetize on my business, how I can lose weight, how I can stop smoking, how I can have a better marriage, and I will pay you back by buying something from you sooner or later. And in the meantime, I will already probably subscribe to your email newsletter, download your lead magnet, take action, go listen to your podcast follow you off to a different platform, because that’s the ultimate goal is to get people off the platform. So LinkedIn is only a redistribution channel. You should not be producing content on social media, you should be thinking of it like i My home is in this beautiful forest, it’s kind of far away, I have to go to the city to tell people how amazing what I can do come out to the forest, it’s a nice place to stay. So that’s how I see social media, you’re going to the city to get people and take them back to your beautiful Woodside cottage and show them a great time. So we have to remember social media is not the above all, end goal. The end goal is to get them to follow you back to wherever you want them to go.

Alastair McDermott  23:54

Right? And hopefully subscribe to email list, subscribe to your podcast, and eventually take some action and get in touch with you.

Krista Mollion  24:02

Exactly.

Alastair McDermott  24:03

Yeah. And Chris, thank you so much for that I didn’t want to interrupt you just gave us a 15 minute masterclass in LinkedIn. And I really didn’t want to interrupt while you were doing that. So thank you so much. You had a lot of really great points there. You know, the I love the idea of can you tell what you do if you hide the title, making sure you have a call to action using that video to talk about why they should connect with you. Let’s just there’s two things I wanted specifically to follow up on. And the first is kind of the majority of stuff so let’s ask about that. You talked about creator mode. And one of the things when we switch on creator mode is it is it turns off our Connect button and turns it into a Follow button. And that was a little bit off putting for me I’ll be honest, because I do like to connect with people and like I feel like the the Follow button turns it into something like you know, I’m too good to connect with you. It’s got a little bit of that vibe, you know, here just follow me and you can You can just, you know, watch my watch my videos and stuff. There’s a bit there’s a bit of an air of self importance to it that I’m not crazy about. So can you talk to me about why creator mode is important enough to push past that and just switch it on? Like, what? What does it got?

Krista Mollion  25:14

Okay? So creator mode enables you to grow your channels. That’s what it was designed to do. So LinkedIn, listened to many, many creators telling them how frustrated they were that they didn’t have really the ability to grow their channels the right way, they didn’t have any tools. And when you turn on creator mode, LinkedIn has given you specific tools that will change that for good, these are game changers. One of these tools I’m going to be using in the next 20 minutes, which is LinkedIn live. So when you turn on creator mode, you automatically have access to go live. And the other thing you can do is now for the past couple of months, you can do audio events. So you can create an audio room, you can’t do that unless you turn on the Creator mode. The third thing you can do is have your own newsletter. And people may think that the newsletter is outdated, but I beg to differ because it goes directly to your subscribers inbox. So it’s an amazing tool, a newsletter, and it also builds SEO because it is discoverable on Google. And if you know how to do really nice headlines and use EPS, SEO optimized keyword titles, I have found my articles by Google, that were actually part of my LinkedIn newsletter. So never underestimate the power of these tools. LinkedIn live immediately I grow my following LinkedIn audio events, immediately I grow my following. And how do I know that because immediately following these events, I see you have 20 new followers, you have nine new followers in the past 10 minutes. And it’s just after I did a live event or audio room. And so I think these tools cannot be underestimated. These are weapons. And just like I mentioned, the banner, when LinkedIn gives you something or when a social media platform gives you something use it, because they’re giving you a gift. The last thing that it gives you well, it gives you the few more features. But those are the main ones is the newsletter, LinkedIn live audio. The other thing that is super, super important that I need to mention is analytics tools. So prior to the Creator mode, analytics, we’re very, very limited on LinkedIn. And we complained we complain, there was a third party company created uniquely to provide LinkedIn analytics for private profiles for personal profiles, so that we could understand how our posts are performing. And as a content creator, analytics is everything I need to be looking at, where I performed better, why this post didn’t do as well, for myself for my clients. And when you turn on creator mode, immediately, you have a dashboard that appears that’s not there, if you don’t have creator mode activated, where it will show you your performance, free of charge, you don’t have to pay any other tools go offline. It’s all within your LinkedIn dashboard. So those are my reasons why you should turn on creator mode. In a nutshell. Oh, and the Follow button, I need to mention what you said.

Alastair McDermott  28:36

Yeah.

Krista Mollion  28:36

To address that. I actually have a very strong opinion about this. Because I think that you should not be connecting with everyone. And that is not a snobby thing. What you should do is define who are the people who you want to connect with. And I don’t just connect with people who are going to buy something from me, I want to call I want to connect with other content creators, even if they’re doing completely different things to me, I love to look at their style. I love to share tips. I love to get inspired. So I want those people in my connection. And I love to connect with, with with thought leaders, authors, speakers, if I see a TED talk, and I liked it, I’m gonna go find that person on LinkedIn. And say I want to have conversations with you. Most of my social selling happens in the DMS. So it could start in the comments. It could start in a personalized invitation request, but very quickly, my LinkedIn inbox is full, it’s full and I never neglect it. So I never let it fill up with things and many people complain about that. They say it’s full of junk, but it’s up to you. You need to connect with the right people. So why do I think is better to follow because it forces the person to take that one extra step. And when they take that one extra step, it forces them to be intentional about thinking, do I really need to connect with this person? Or is it just that I like their content? So if I just like their content, just like on another channel, like YouTube, I’ll just subscribe. I don’t need to actually speak with that person. When I send a connection request, it means that I want to go over to the DMS and start having a conversation, and there must be some reason. And so I really think that’s actually a good thing to make them think because like I mentioned in the very, very beginning, hitting that connect button is a little bit too easy.

Alastair McDermott  30:38

Right? Okay. Interesting. Yeah, it’s, it’s good. I like to have my thinking challenged on that. I think it’s, well, when I saw it originally, I thought, you know, this, it just seems very, a little bit like a snobby isn’t maybe the right word. I don’t know, something like that. But But I see your point it, it’s getting them to deliberately take an action so that they have to take an action if they want to actually talk with you. So that’s really interesting. Yeah.  The other question, I love the BBC moment with the toddler. Didn’t quite get it on video where that yeah, that’s the beauty of of recording. But that’s, that’s maybe a good segue to something else I want to ask you about, which is I just want to talk to you briefly, because I know we’ve got about 10 minutes left just about the concept of edutainment. It’s something that I’ve been thinking more and more about bringing entertainment and trying to bring entertainment elements into my education focused content. So can you just talk a little bit about how you think about that?

Krista Mollion  31:39

I think that it’s exactly like a good meal. You don’t go to a restaurant, uniquely for the quality of the food, you also go there for the experience. So think about social media, think about your podcast, your all your platforms, all your channels as a restaurant, and then you’ll realize that the atmosphere plays a big role as well. And when I go to a restaurant, I look at the front door, so the packaging does play a role. And then once I’m inside, it’s all about the experience. So what if the food is excellent, but the atmosphere is terrible. It just won’t sit the same. So it’s important to focus on a little bit of both. So for me, that the edge it’s edutainment, it’s making the meal substantial. So I, I’m well fed, I don’t leave hungry. I feel like I got a good meal. But also making the whole experience so pleasant that I want to keep coming back. And that’s what a lot of smart people forget. Smart people. They just want to spread the knowledge and like, here’s the knowledge, aren’t you happy? And that’s not how it works. Nowadays, people need to have bite sized wisdoms. They don’t need the whole platter delivered to them. In fact, if you do that, you will overwhelm people, and they probably won’t come back. So it’s better to keep serving up small plates, like Tampa’s. I like to think of it like tablets

Alastair McDermott  33:11

and make sure

Krista Mollion  33:14

we were to Spain, we’re having we’re and look, you just bought me a nice drink. I have some, some sangria or something. And I’m like, wow, this is the place I want to come back to. So consider your this is so important for content creators to realize that it’s not just the knowledge people seek. They want to have the whole enchilada, the whole experience with it.

Alastair McDermott  33:38

Yeah, I love that. And, I mean, there’s so many, there’s so many different aspects, that analogy that that worked for me. You know, just like a good restaurant, that it’s probably going to be specialized. They’re not going to serve like 15 different nationalities of food. If you saw that many on the menu, you’d probably turn around and walk out and look for somewhere that was more specialized. You know, we only do Italian but we do the best Italian we only do pie but we do the best I you know, something like that as well. So yeah, there’s a lot of analogies there that work for me. I really like that. I’m just a nice,

Krista Mollion  34:12

Concise, no, it’s important too, because people if you’re if your content is too bland, we talked about this in offline right is vanilla does not sell well. If you want to be memorable that people are like he’s the guy who always tells this funny joke at the beginning and has a yellow hat. Why they should come follow your podcast, just like you would explain your friend. Why do I like that Italian restaurant, you should go there because they make the absolute best. That’s homemade ravioli that stuffed with fresh ricotta. They have this beautiful bread basket with fresh bread smells wonderful. And the owners are just adorable. It’s this couple and they laugh with you and they might even have a glass of wine on the house with you. So I’m explaining to my friend why they should go to that Italian restaurant. Now think about that on your content, What would someone say why they should come over to your profile or your podcast. And when you do that, by default, you’ll start making these small adjustments to make it more stand out to be more memorable. And that’s how you become a brand authority.

Alastair McDermott  35:22

Really, really interesting. And that does get me thinking. It also makes me think I shouldn’t record before I have my dinner. So we’re almost done. But yeah, but but, ya know, but genuinely, yeah, that does get me thinking about, you know, like, what else should I be doing here? And, you know, I think about bringing in, like, shall I be bringing in stuff like story structure, three act structure, kind of bring in more humor into it and things like that. So you’re getting the getting the brain the cogs turning here. I do need to move on, though. I want to ask you four questions. First one is, what is the number one tip that you would give to somebody who wants to build their authority?

Krista Mollion  36:07

You have to find ways to be unique and memorable. So you don’t want to have vanilla content. You want to be a little bit polarizing, and a little bit opinionated, and definitely figure out your own unique style. That’s the secret to really becoming a brand authority.

Alastair McDermott  36:28

That’s it in a nutshell. Yeah, I love it. Is there a is there a business book or resource that’s been really important for you that you can tell us about?

Krista Mollion  36:38

This one’s really hard because I am an avid reader. I love love love books. But I decided to show you this book, which is the “Seven Habits of Effective People” by Stephen Covey. And this book means a lot to me, I’ve read this book at least 10 times. And I think this was the very first business book, personal development book that I ever read. And so these seven habits that he teaches, are literally the most timeless habits I’ve ever seen in any business book. And I think if there’s one lesson to take away, it’s that you really can distill the best of the best that is not trendy is not time based. And that is universal for millions of people across the world. If you go deep, and I think these habits, he he wrote them with a lot of thought, put a lot of thought into them. So that’s, that’s my favorite business book.

Alastair McDermott  37:45

Brilliant. What about fiction? Is there any fiction that you love, recommend?

Krista Mollion  37:51

Yes. So I really love Neil Gaiman and I love graphic novels. And I love fantasy. And the reason I love that is I think we all need a little bit of escapism, don’t you? So creativity is the number one skill that I tried to nurture in my life. And I think we should never get too serious and too down to earth, we need to escape into a fantasy world. And that’s proven when you see the success that he had with his books.

Alastair McDermott  38:26

Yeah.

Krista Mollion  38:27

We need that.

Alastair McDermott  38:28

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, well, thank you so much for your time. And for, for taking the time away from your kids. I really do appreciate it. If people want to find out more, where should they go to learn more.

Krista Mollion  38:43

You can go to just my name.com KristaMollion.com. I run an academy for entrepreneurs called from zero to six Academy, where I teach entrepreneurs my six step framework, so that’s why it’s called from zero to six, how to build a successful online business, monetize their content and become thought leaders.

Alastair McDermott  39:09

Awesome, that sounds that sounds amazing. Thank you so much. We will link all of that in the show notes. So wherever you’re listening to this podcast, you will find a link. So crystal Morgan, thank you so much for your time and for being with us today.

Krista Mollion  39:22

Thank you so much for having me.

Alastair McDermott  39:28

Thanks for listening. If you gained any insights or tips from this episode, please leave a review. It would really help us out. And it’s very easy to do. Just click on the review link in the show notes on your device and it will bring you straight to a page with options for the device that you’re listening on. Thanks. It really helps. It’s much appreciated.

Voiceover  39:49

Thanks for listening to The Recognized Authority with Alastair McDermott. Subscribe today, and don’t miss an episode. Find out more at TheRecognizedAuthority.com