The Compound Effect of Content with A. Lee Judge

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

content, podcast, people, business, post, create, linkedin, authority, talking, automate, episode, person, risk, clients, dj, listen, marketer, engage, terms, night

SPEAKERS

Alastair McDermott, Voiceover, A. Lee Judge

1. Lee Judge 00:00

Think about this. It’s almost like if you create good content, and you can schedule it to go out over time, even while you’re sleeping, you’re meeting with clients, your content’s out there working when you’re not.

Voiceover  00:11

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  00:27

Before we get into today’s episode, I just want to briefly tell you about a free resource that is available for you. It is a free ebook on how to look good and sound good on Zoom and podcasts. And if you listen to my episode with Professor Norbert Schwartz, you will know that that is really important in coming across an authority and having your work taken seriously having your opinions taken seriously. And sounding like an authority. It’s published by Oak Tree Press. You can find it on Amazon if you search for “look good on Zoom”, or search for my name. And it’s also available directly from the publisher for free in PDF and ePub format. Please listen to my episode with Professor Norbert Schwartz, which I will link in the show notes for this episode as well, because that will help you to understand just how important it is. Okay, thanks for listening on with the show.  So today, my guest is A. Lee Judge. And Lee is an executive level marketer with 20 years of experience in sales, marketing and customer experience. He’s the founder of Content Monsta, which is how I found him when I was looking for some advice about creating videos and podcasts. And I really love his content over there. And he has a marketing agency focused on b2b marketing, in particular video and podcasts. And we’ve just done a whole debug session for for the recording studio that we’re using. So yeah, we’ve been talking kind of technology glitches and all this kind of stuff, like the difficulties that people can have. So Lee, thank you for coming on, and for your patience and dealing with all of that.

1. Lee Judge 01:59

My pleasure, my pleasure.

Alastair McDermott  02:01

So the first thing I want to ask you about and I guess the thing that’s that’s really interesting to me is when people who are independent consultants are looking to build their authority by creating content. There’s so many different issues you have to take into consideration. Now we’ve just dealt with a whole bunch of like technical microphone settings and all that kind of stuff. But there’s the the larger issue of you know, trying to create content. In particular, when you’re in, independent when you’re on your own and you see advice from people, I have Marcus Sheridan on the podcast, Tom Critchlow and Mark Schaefer. And everybody is saying, you know, you need to be creating content. But bandwidth, like having, like having the time to do it is, is difficult. So what do you what do you say when when you talk to your clients about actually creating the content?

1. Lee Judge 02:49

Well, I think having content is a way to be ever present. I was consulting with someone last night, and she was a consultant on DEI, and she speaks to lots of Fortune 500 companies. And she wanted to know how to increase her brand and in course, getting more clients. But she did not know how to create the content. So I said to her, Well, think about this, it’s almost like if you create good content, and you can schedule it to go out over time, even while you’re sleeping, you’re meeting with clients, your content’s out there working when you’re not.  So you know, for my own content, you know, I do a podcast, I do video content. And that content is scheduled some time a year out to be going out there when I’m sleep, I wake up in the morning myself, and look at LinkedIn and go oh, what did I post this morning? Don’t tell me why I said that. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.  But the point is to have that content going constantly. And I think the biggest hurdle you mentioned earlier is they don’t want to deal with the technical part of it. But the way I see that, especially with the acceleration we’ve had due to the pandemic, think about a time when an executive or business person was really hesitant to use these computer things. Right?

Alastair McDermott  04:06

Yeah.

1. Lee Judge 04:06

They had their system down with their notebooks and their file cabinets. And I don’t need to do this hot this new fangled computer stuff. Well, what happened to them, either they adapted, or they faded away, they’re no longer they’re either obsolete. So I think right now, and this is seems kind of strange, but because of where we are, you can say is pay the immigrant not.  In order for someone to be ever present and to network and to be seen and to gain authority in a modern way, then they’re going to have to adapt, adapt some of the media technology. So it isn’t learning how to use a computer like it was in the early 90s. That was learning how to use multimedia. Learn how to use a microphone, a camera, learn something about placement of your, of your of your camera angles. These are all things that I don’t care if you’re an analyst or an accountant. You gotta need to learn some of these things. So that’s where we are today, people have to learn to create content to be to be known, to be present.

Alastair McDermott  05:09

I like the concept of, you know, you’re meeting people while you’re asleep, because your content is out there people are interacting with. So let’s talk about the different types of content, then, I mean, I think probably the easiest to create is if you just start typing in, you write blog posts and things like that, that doesn’t really require a whole lot more than a keyboard and a screen. Some people, some people love, love doing that. I love doing that. But I find it very time consuming. I find it quicker to record video. We’re doing this, we are recording this in the form of video. But it’s also going to be primarily it’s going to be put out as a podcast and audio podcast. How do you think about that, like combining the different types of the different medium, the different media, that we can produce this content? When you’re when you’re talking to your clients what would you think about with that?

1. Lee Judge 05:54

Well, I’m always very clear with him that there’s there’s two, two sides to look at this. First of all, there’s your side, what kind of content? Are you comfortable making, maybe more comfortable writing, maybe more comfortable on video? Where are you most comfortable at. And while you’re trying to figure that part out, think about your consumer, your consumers consume differently. For me, for example, in a spending, I was explaining this to her, to my person I was consulting yesterday. For me, for example, I would watch video first, then I would listen, then I would read. And then I would go into some deep research like a white paper. That’s just how I consume content. Because I’m been in media for a while, when I told someone that they said, You know what, I’m the exact opposite. I read that go through some deep research and read a white paper before I watch any video. And that just blows my mind, because I’m wired differently. But people are that way.  So you have to understand that your consumers are all those people. Some prefer deep detail content first, they want to sit down and turn pages, or scroll through words, some want to get a quick video, or they want to watch a long video, all those different types of consumers are there. And your target audience is a mix of all those kinds of people. So if you want to reach those kinds of people, you have to figure out how you can create those kinds of content.  Now, I’m sure the first thought is why can’t create all those different kinds of things? Well, there’s a strategy to that. For me, I create what I call big content. This is what my company Content Monsta has. We’ve niched down and focused on because we think it’s the biggest impact we’ve seen, it’s the biggest impact to create what we call big content. That’s video and podcast, because our clients are business clients, B2B. If they can create video, they can create podcast, we speak in words. And so the words write themselves, good conversation gives you good written, written text, good social posts. So if you can do video, and you can do podcast, and you’ve already done your writing portion.  So back to the individual person, there’s not a business, you start with what you’re most comfortable with. If you don’t mind picking up the camera and talking to it and do it if you don’t mind writing do it. The easiest way I think, though, is to document what you do. If you’re an expert. I mean, for me, I never do a speaking engagement if I can help it without a camera on, because I will collect so much content. I will say new things I’ve never said before. I will say things in different ways. I’ve never said before, the audience will ask me questions that I can answer, that never answered before. I never speak without a camera on and I try to avoid having conversations, even this podcast without getting a copy of it. Because it’s, it’s more content. And it’s, it’s much easier to do that than it is to try to create content.

Alastair McDermott  08:36

Right. Okay. So there’s a few different things I want to ask about. One thing that I’ve heard people say is I don’t want to sound like a broken record, always saying the same thing over and over again. That’s, that’s one thing I’ve heard people say about content in particular, like when they’re guesting on podcasts. And you know, people are asking the same questions. Is that something, is that an issue that you’ve heard before?

1. Lee Judge 08:59

That is an unfounded fear, I think, because if you’re speaking to large enough audiences, people will not hear you as much as you think they hear you. And I’ve done this before on LinkedIn. I could take one piece of content, post it four times, and my audience is about 18,000 people on LinkedIn, if I post it four times, and I get to 3000 views on each one, it may not be the same 2000 people, it would be difficult to get the same content in for the same people every single time. So if I post today, and you like it, then your audience is gonna see more of it. So if I post it tomorrow, someone else likes it, that’s a different audience.  So if you follow me on LinkedIn, the odds of you seeing in fact, if you do, please tell me if you listen to this podcast, and you follow me on LinkedIn, if you see my content more than once, or especially more than twice, let me know. Because I doubt you are and I post a lot of content and it does repeat itself in lot different times of day, different formats. And that’s not a concern of mine being seen too much. When I’m seeing too much, that’s a great problem to have. And in terms of saying the same things over and over, people won’t, if I go on 10 podcasts a day and say the exact same thing. Those are 10 different audiences probably.  So, again, don’t worry about that. When I began public speaking, I was worried about making a new speech every time until I happened to go to four conferences. One year, one of my favorite people was speaking at all three of those, maybe for them, and they gave the same presentation. And I was like, that’s how he does it. That’s how he can scale his speaking business, because he has maybe three things he does at a time. And he’ll run those same three speeches for months, if not years. And the greatest speakers do that. If you go to see anybody, even up to say, a Tony Robbins, he’s not writing a lot of new material. He knows the same thing each time. But it’s a different audience. So my answer to that, in short, is, first learn how to create the content and scale it up. And do not worry about saying the same thing over and over until somebody tells you it’s a problem.

Alastair McDermott  11:03

Yeah, I agree with you. I think it is an unfounded fear. One thing I was thinking about when you were talking about that is, you know, a lot of people talk about having a signature speech, as you know, your go to and like we wouldn’t even have that phrase, unless it was a thing that you should do. And the other I was thinking about is standup comedians, I think that if you went to see a stand up comedian, two nights in a row, you’d be very disappointed to find out that they’re probably using all the same jokes the next night.

1. Lee Judge 11:29

Yes, I used to DJ at a comedy club sometimes. And not only would you see you have to hit the same jokes three times at night, they would do three shows. You’d also see the comedian come back weeks later, the same set again, when we wanted to new jokes they working on any performance. So you mentioned comedian, that’s that’s any performer, right? Whether it’s a business speaker, or, or a comedian or a singer, they’re not writing new songs for every show, you know, and I think that’s probably the easiest way to communicate that to, to anyone is that think about a songwriter or a singer? You don’t go to a concert expecting to hear new material every time. It’s, you wouldn’t want to.

Alastair McDermott  12:09

Yeah.

1. Lee Judge 12:09

Infact. So imagine if every time that performer performs, if it’s a different audience, why would they want to do new music for different audience? So it’d be a great problem to have, if you you know, when you get to that point, then you have new problems worry about, but that won’t be one of them.

Alastair McDermott  12:25

100%. Okay, another thing that you mentioned back there was kind of repurposing that content, using, you know, using in different formats, taking your original audio and video and turning them into text, things like that. Can you talk about like, I’m just trying to imagine somebody who’s listening to this, who’s an independent consultant, maybe there’s somebody like me, they’re considering putting videos up on on LinkedIn and having a podcast. And they would like to have some blog posts every so often. What would you see as like a typical or kind of a best practice for the amount of content that they’re actually publishing? You know, on a weekly basis? What would look normal or look good to you for that?

1. Lee Judge 13:06

You mean, in terms of the amount of content published? I think it would start with how much content can you create or, you know, can you will you come up with I say, create carefully, because I like to say you want to document more than you create, but you’re creating content. So I would focus more on how much can you create, and then think about how to spread it out.  So for example, I’ll give an example I love to share, because it’s been worked out so well, for me small and personal case study, I was going into a podcast one evening, long podcast, and my co host will come over in the evenings to record this podcast. And we didn’t have a topic. And I’m like, Oh, he’s gonna be here in like, 30 minutes, I’ll have a topic for tonight’s show. So I just said, You know what, let me see 10 Things you need to know to do creative content, marketing, something like that. There’s a top 10 list. And I just wrote out the 10 things, not the conversation, just 10 things that I thought you really need to have for content marketing. So he gets here, and we just go through each one, we just talk about each one.  So that conversation was a podcast episode. We took the episode, transcribed it into an article, then we took that same article, and change it into an ebook. Now, we didn’t unpublish the article, it was already there on the website, if you look in the blog section, but then we made it out to an ebook of 10 things. We add a couple images to it, same text we talked about from our conversation, and we gated it on different part of the website, that little pop up, you know, before you leave, get the tin, whatever.  That was three or four years ago, that is still generating leads. Because we had an unplanned conversation, right. It was a podcast episode. It was a blog article. It was an ebook or you call it a white paper, whatever you want to call it. And from and then I think even after that, I’ve made a video using that those top 10 As a script for the video. And so that’s been the gift that keeps on giving. And to this day, like I said, it’s been generating leads. So, you know, and in fact, from that, I think there was a video and that video was a post on LinkedIn. And that post on LinkedIn lead back to someone coming to the website.  Right. And I think it’s a thing where, you know, marketers are always trying to find that attribution. But in reality, it’s all of these things go into the mix. And if you didn’t have the podcast, if you didn’t have that LinkedIn, post, any one of those pieces missing, and you don’t get that business. So I really liked the idea of what just so I know that there’s two kinds of different views of thought one is you should be everywhere, the kind of the Gary Vaynerchuk approach, which is nigh on impossible to be on every channel unless you’ve got a big team. Or the other approach is, well, you should be you should get really good on one channel. Or some people take the approach of having one primary channel and then one secondary. So am… So this, this whole chain of events, and I think marketers and business people, like, we want to think there’s one silver bullet that says, let me do this one thing. And it’s gonna, you know, have ROI. But what I’ve seen is the compound effect between all these things. So I reverse engineered a deal, once they found out they went to the website, and they filled the form out because they got to the website, because of a LinkedIn post that LinkedIn posts lead back was was from me talking about the podcast, and the podcast was the podcast. So you know, did the podcast cause the lead? Maybe. Did the LinkedIn post calls the lead? Do the form calls the lead? Did the website causley? All those things? Did, they were all pieces of content that lead to business? So to answer the question of how much content is difficult for me to say, because no one of those calls the business, it was being consistent enough to tie all those things together to make the machine to lead to business. That’s the way to go have your primary because what I do is I don’t try to be everywhere. But that model has changed a bit, I’d say in the past few years, because you can, you can repurpose or remix your content to be everywhere. So I don’t create content for Twitter. I don’t create content for Facebook. But the content that I create can be is this you know, it’s just the software click to change the format. So yeah, if I want to post on Tik Tok, I find content I’ve already created. That isn’t, you know, my, my clientele isn’t there so much. But when we create content, our content first for for content must be for my own personal brand is LinkedIn. But we always save the raw video footage version to repurpose it and reshape it however we need to. And if it gets to an extent where it doesn’t work for the other format, that’s where we drop off. You know, we don’t say we’re not gonna do it. We’re not gonna say we don’t do Twitter, because that’s too far, it’s being spread too thin. We say, if what we’re doing works for Twitter, then we absolutely do post there.

Alastair McDermott  17:56

Right, yeah. And so the way, the way that I’m looking at doing this, now, I have this primary channel, or this primary thing, which is the podcast. And now we’re recording this on video. And I’m hoping to come back and go back through all of the old videos that I have recorded and not used, not edited. And at the very least go back and play clips from those. And That’s what I’d like to do in the future. Since then, we’ve got two parts. So we release it as a audio podcast, we have video clips, maybe on YouTube and on social media. Then we have the the podcast post, which goes on our website, which is almost like a blog post, because it’s got some shownotes and some kind of takeaways on there. And so and then that obviously also goes on, well, it definitely goes on Twitter, because I’m usually on Twitter. I try and write a LinkedIn post every week for each episode. I don’t always do that. I need to get better at doing that. So that’s it. So that’s the way that’s the way I’m doing it as a podcaster. Is there anything that any feedback that you would have for somebody like me on what I’m doing there?

1. Lee Judge 19:06

Well, you’re doing I mean, you’re way ahead of most, so it’s hard to give you feedback that, you know, that you know you’re doing. But um, so as we mentioned before, I mean, for those platforms, you don’t focus on, you utilize what you have to also cover those platforms. You know, I’m I’m really big on automation. So and I mean automation in terms of content automation, not not spammy sales, outreach, automation, I mean more like, you know, when I have a clip from a podcast, for example, that one clip may be scheduled to post today, three weeks from now, three months from now, six months from now, a year from now, that’s four posts of that one piece of content. That’s just one. So then I take another one do the same thing. And over a course of a year, they compound. So the content you see on my social streams today, could have been scheduled a year ago, as long as you’re evergreen, they’re still posting.  And then the second component to that is I still engage with them. So if I look at my social content, and I see a new post from me, that was scheduled a year ago, I go in, and I engage as if I did it this morning. So it doesn’t look fake, it doesn’t look like it was automated, because it’s only the post is automated, not the engagement, I actually do engage. But what having the having the automation does is, it reminds me to. So if you open up LinkedIn and says, you know, hey, ask for your video just posted, then you go, Oh, let me go look at my video, which video did I post, and then you go and you comment, and you engage with people. But if it was up to you to do it yourself, you might not do it this morning, you know, because you got to get up and create the post and format and everything.  So in between the posts that I’m giving me all my, I guess inside secrets here. From what you see from me on social, I would say it’s about 70%, scheduled and 30% real time, okay. And so and then the engagement is real, I do engage with my own content, whether it was scheduled a year ago or this morning. But in terms of actually formatting it, the best thing about that is I mean, I’m not gonna get up in the morning at 6am and edit a video to go on LinkedIn. You know, that’s been done already. You know, I had a meeting earlier with my VA. And basically, we went through a podcast we went through, okay, what video clips do we have? We want to go on YouTube? When will the email go out announcing it? What would the text be? What would the head headlines be, we’d have went through the whole content process for this. And it has not been launched yet. But when it does launch, it’ll be pretty much automated for the next year. And all I have to do is catch it when it comes out and engage with it.

Alastair McDermott  21:49

Right. So one thing I know from producing this podcast, and it sounds like you’re doing this as well, is that having established workflows, and a kind of a standard operating procedure for for everything is is essential. Otherwise, you kind of get, you know, if you don’t have a checklist of some kind, then managing this becomes a nightmare, because it’s just too much.

1. Lee Judge 22:09

Yeah, that is key. That is key. I mean, my VA when she first began working with me, I was doing a lot of this stuff myself and hadn’t documented it yet. And so she’s like, Lee, you’ve got a lot of systems here, but they’re mostly in your head. So, and this was, you know, prior to content master doing so much for clients, imfact I had, I had systems for clients, but I didn’t have my own personal system for my own personal content. So I could tell you what we do for for a business, but I’m a personal brand, that happens to be, you know, the front of the business, but it still has been handled differently. A personal brands different from the company brand has been a lot more, you have to relate to people more you have to engage more than a company brand does. I can’t over automate it without engaging. And so I have to know when things are going out so I can engage. It has to be kind of in my tone, my language. It can’t be just from, you know, a person who just writes a post. In fact, what my VA did today was, we went through all those video clips, and she asked me, What do you think about them? How would you title this? What would you say here? Because they are my words, if it’s automated by a computer, or by her or by someone else, it’s not a great it’s not as great of a post. And even if I find one like that, that they someone’s done for me, I’ll go in and I’ll change it because it needs to be more in my voice. And that’s, that’s a key takeaway. That, you know, even though Lee says, Hey, automate, automate, automate, I’m also saying automate yourself don’t automate just robotic, you know, post and things.

Alastair McDermott  23:42

Yeah. So automate it in a in a personal way, where your voice is still, the still the voice of the post.

1. Lee Judge 23:50

Yeah.

Alastair McDermott  23:51

Okay. So I’m thinking now from the point of view of somebody who just wants to get started with this. Where would you say if somebody is thinking about, Okay, I’m going to take the plunge and start posting, I’m going to start posts on LinkedIn and places like that, like, if they’re starting to kind of do the content thing, where do they start? What advice would you have?

1. Lee Judge 24:11

I would say, you have these thoughts every day that you run through your mind that oh, you know what, that was pretty valuable or someone could use that or someone may ask you a question. If anyone asked you a question, because you’re the expert. Open up your notepad on your phone and write it down. You know, someone says, Hey, Lee, is it possible to track attribution when you have such a web of content? And I’ll answer that question: Wait a minute, okay. I didn’t catch it on video or audio. Let me at least write it down. And I’ll write it down. And that answer may be a video. And I may just later on wherever I’m at the airport or wherever, open up my phone and say, Hey, someone asked me this question today and this is what I think you could you could do to accomplish this. That’s content. But I’m calling with picking my phone up and talking to it though. Some people aren’t. If you’re not write it down.  So again, whatever your ccomfortable with. But the main thing is, if you’re an expert, you’re always given this information away, don’t let it just go into the air, capture it in words or in video, or in podcast, capture it somewhere. So that when you’re asleep at night at two in the morning, someone in Japan is watching your content, you know, so you can’t do what you can’t meet every person one to one, we all have the power now of mass communication. And it’s a shame for anybody not to utilize that.

Alastair McDermott  25:27

Yeah, well, well said. Okay, so when I’m when I’m creating this content, you gotta you got a suggestion for any questions I should be asking here?

1. Lee Judge 25:36

I don’t know. So there’s, there are a lot of fears in terms of the technical portion of it. And as we started out earlier, we’re talking about, you know, why, what can a person do who it isn’t their profession to do audio and video and content, but yet they need to. So I’ll just go ahead and say that, earlier I mentioned about, you know, there was a time when you didn’t have to use a computer, but you’re gonna have to. So now, if you’re a personal brand, you’re competing with people who are not afraid to use a camera, they’re not afraid to use a microphone, they’re not afraid to publish what they think. That’s what you’re competing with and it’s your choice. You can choose not to compete, you can choose the person in the 90s, who didn’t want to use a computer, you could choose not to use a computer today, you can choose that use a camera, but the fact is that people you’re competing with for, for the job for the speaking engagement for the new client, they’re out there, and they’re being seen. And at two o’clock in the morning while you’re asleep, they’re being seen, when you’re eating dinner they’re being seen, are you it’s up to you to decide that.

Alastair McDermott  26:38

Yeah. For me, what I like about this is, it’s actually making marketing easier, because all you got to do is switch on a recording device, and teach what you know. And it’s actually a really easy way to do marketing from my perspective.

1. Lee Judge 26:54

Yeah. You could take one point, you don’t have to write a long script, you know, just make one point, capture it, and send it to the world that is so powerful. I mean, it’s, if you think about it, if you think that you’re expert on anything, if you’re an expert on anything, share it with the world. Share it, and people will come to you as the next you know, the expert on that thing. If you’re an expert at gardening, and you see a flower that died, you know exactly why it died. Open your camera and say, Hey, this is a so and so type of flower, flower flower in it a die because the soil is too acidic, and want to put this into fix it, cut. That’s it, do that kind of stuff enough, whether you’re an analyst, or a florist, or a gardener, do that stuff enough, you’ll become the known authority in your in your space with that a lot of effort in terms with the exception of, as I say, just getting over the hump. That’s the hardest part. The hardest part is beginning, starting to create content, getting over the hump hump of turning on your camera, turning on your microphone showing up on a podcast. If you can get past that hump, then you’ve opened yourself to a whole world of possibilities. And being able to be the person who’s seen by someone, and you’re teaching someone while you’re asleep. That’s just simple, as simple as I could put it.

Alastair McDermott  28:10

Yeah, I love that. I love that analogy. So Okay, another question I have for you is what mistakes do you think people are making with this? Like, when you talk to your clients, what what are they doing wrong, typically, when they start this?

1. Lee Judge 28:22

They are planning way, way too much. And that’s, that has been looked at in terms of where you know what kind of, if this is a person versus an organization, but in terms of people, consultants, executives, thought leaders, etc., they’re the ones that definitely think too much, because they want to present themselves with the same level of carefulness that a corporation does. So if you want to publish an article, or a white paper from a corporation, a guy’s gonna be levels and levels of approvals to get right. But if it’s just you, just do it, just say those things. Now know, it’s complicated when you work for a large organization. And you know, if you’re Joe of Acme, then you may want to make sure that Acme is okay with what you’re saying, Joe, you know.  But if you’re Joe, the expert, then you can say what Joe believes in and put it to the world without having to worry about the whole long list of approvals. The problem comes in is when Joe’s mentality is still Joe of Acme and he thinks that well, this isn’t quite perfect, or my dog barked, or I missed one of my points, all that over planning happens. And what we’re seeing is that the better content even from the large organizations, if they’re able to relax a little bit and get over the perfection, it comes off as being more authentic, more personable, and it works better. But I get it organizations depending on their how conservative they are with their information in the you know what they care about their stockholders are going to say, they may be a lot more careful, that’s understandable. But I think as a marketer, you should push the button, push the limit for the company you work for, to try to get them to loosen up and make more effective content. And as a professional, whether you’re like I said, a speaker or consultant or executive, you should find a way to have a personality to remember that you’re not a corporation, you’re a person. And people do business with people, and they want to understand and see a little bit about your personality. You don’t have to say, whether you went to a rally or not, or whatever, you can just say, hey, you know, I believe this, I believe that. And you can set your boundaries, set your boundaries of what I will show and tell.  I mean, you mentioned Gary Vee earlier, his battery as he doesn’t involve his family. You know, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen his kids or his wife, he doesn’t he has a boundary. Now nobody documents more than this guy does. But he still has his boundaries. Right? Then you look at someone like a Grant Cardone, I’ve seen his his family all the time, his boundaries a little bit wider. So whoever you are, find out what your boundary is. But still, once you develop those boundaries, show your personality in there. Go ahead and loosen up a little bit. And that’s the mistake I see most people make.

Alastair McDermott  31:05

That is awesome. Okay, there’s another question I like to ask my guests, which is about their own mistakes and failures because I like to kind of bring the concept of embracing failure and just being willing to talk about it. Is there a business mistake or failure that you’ve made in the past? Could you tell us what happened and what you learned from it?

1. Lee Judge 31:24

Well, it’s, it’s yet to be seen how much of a failure it is. But I’m a very cautious person, I’ve seen times when I should have taken more risks. Even my mom at one point said to me, if all of all people who can criticize you, my mom says, you know, you really haven’t had it hard, you haven’t really taken too many risks. I’ve always had one foot in the knee into safety. I don’t just haven’t really jumped into things. So, and there have been times where I look back and go, Wow, if I had just taken that risk, what could have happened now, you know, I think many of us feel that way about, you know, the what if, but my wife’s tend to be around areas where I chose to play it safe. And so, yeah, if I could have named I don’t know what mistake that was. But I could say that there are probably times in my life where I could have been better off if I play a little bit less safe.

Alastair McDermott  32:16

Right. Interesting. So So you should embrace kind of educated risks a bit more.

1. Lee Judge 32:22

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, educated risks, then, you know, I might overthink it, and say, and, you know, where, as it may be, you know, 70% safe, I might have wanted 80% safe, you know, I got 80, maybe I said, How about 85% chance of success, you know, that kind of thing. So, yeah, probably stretched to the limit of what needed to be safe a few too many times. I won’t say too many. But there’s some times when I could have taken a different path, and maybe had a different level of success. If I had taken more risk. But you know, that’s that’s all speculation. You know, it could have been the death of me if I’ve taken that risk, you never know.

Alastair McDermott  33:00

Yeah, yeah.

1. Lee Judge 33:01

Yeah. Could have been the end of it. So you know, if I were to guess, in terms of any mistakes, you know, I’ve been very intentional about things. And so I was intentional about whatever that choice was. But if I look back, I could say I probably could have taken some more risks.

Alastair McDermott  33:15

Yeah, yeah. Well, I’ve seen your older YouTube videos. So I know you took some risks.

1. Lee Judge 33:20

Yeah, take some risk. And you know, and I think right now, you know, one risk that I took that was a great advantage was letting it be known that I was a DJ. That was something that was a secret forever, in my corporate where I was like, like Clark Kent and Superman, you know, Batman and Bruce Wayne, I was, they were totally separate lives. I didn’t let them mix at all. There were days when I would leave the boardroom, strip off my suit. And I’d have like a, you know, a football jersey and a baseball cap and gold chain or whatever not go to do. I would go on tour. I would literally leave some time and work on Thursday night, Thursday, take off Friday, fly to Europe, somewhere, do a tour of Germany or Europe, and fly back and be working Monday morning.

Alastair McDermott  34:01

And nobody knew.

1. Lee Judge 34:03

Nobody knew. If I said hey, I was in a nightclub in Switzerland last night. I’d like you to get out of here. But yeah, I would literally do a European tour over the weekend, be back at work on Monday, like nothing happened.

Alastair McDermott  34:14

I love it. And you have that saying you’re the guy that doesn’t take risks. I think that’s really interesting juxtaposition there.

1. Lee Judge 34:20

Because everybody has different levels of risk, right? But I never talked about that. Until this past year. There’s a video on YouTube. So I guess I call, I call it my coming out video. Because the video of splitscreen me talking to me. It was the professional me talking to the DJ me and the DJ me said Look dude, what are the things you know? Now, I told you, I told you personal branding. I taught you about business. I taught you about relationships, you know, all these things. I realized you know what I cannot and nobody should not utilize their past experiences that brought them to where they are. And so, so yeah, I don’t know where we’re going with that. But that’s something that I really have recently. I I’ve changed. And I just had a great keynote last year, we’re actually keynoted. On that topic. It was about it’s called the content remix, where I talked about paralleled, you know, Remix in your content to how, as a DJ, get the remix in real time and your audience, and your feedback is immediate. And so that’s something I think I’ll continue to show because that’s, it’s a parallel to me, there’s really real, having to create content for people in real time. And if your content flops in front of 1000 people, they’re right there to tell you that, you know, you don’t have to wait for Facebook to give a thumbs up, you’re looking at them, they’re right in your face, and they can do this right in your face. So that is definitely content marketing training right there.

Alastair McDermott  35:40

I love I love all of that. I love that story as well. But yeah, that’s real time feedback. Okay, so I’m gonna wrap it up, because I know we’re running short on time. Do you have a favorite business book, or some other kind of business resource that you’d recommend people?

1. Lee Judge 35:55

Wow. So, you know, along the lines, what we talked about today in terms of content, and you mentioned someone who was on my podcast as well, Mark Schaefer. One of his books called is called “Known”. And I had read his book a few years ago, and course, so that I was really honored to have him on my podcast, and we can call him a friend now. But that’s one book Mark Schaefer is known. And also something that I combined when I look at the how I create content, is I think it’s called “The Compound Effect”, I believe. And it talks about how little things done consistently, can compound into being powerful things. So I don’t remember the author’s name, but that’s another book that I refer to a lot that I really appreciate.

Alastair McDermott  36:41

And that’s by Darren Hardy. We’ll link to all of those in the show notes. And yeah, Mark was, is such a great guy to talk to you. I attended one of his events. It was the best virtual event that I attended during the pandemic. It was really brilliant. So, yeah, I love I love all of his books as well. And what about fiction? Do you read any fiction? Is that your thing?

1. Lee Judge 37:01

I don’t, I probably should, but I don’t. If I, I am a workaholic and information Holic. So I read a lot of books and things but it’s typically business related or marketing related, or I’m kind of boring in that aspect. With the exception of, if I have time for that kind of creative consumption is typically music because it was my background, so and I didn’t notice that when I didn’t listen to much music. I lost something in terms of just stress relief for you know, emotion, I realized I needed the music back in my life.

Alastair McDermott  37:32

So who do you listen to in terms of music?

1. Lee Judge 37:34

It’s all over the board, Dude. I, I don’t know if it’s because of my DJ background or just because of who I am. But, you know, I can listen to anything from Billy Joel to Migos. I mean, it’s just my musical tastes. And even as I did radio, I’ve done up in a personality on country stations, pop stations, hip hop stations, a tour as a hip hop DJ tour as an electronic DJ. So, you know, and my kids, my kids reflected back to me, because I’m like, Why are you singing Dolly Parton’s? Because you were singing yesterday’s like, wow, okay. You know, the company singing Jolene or, you know, Kenny Rogers and then the next thing you know, you catch me singing Drake or you know, little Wayne like just because I’m just eclectic like that, you know, listen to lots of different stuff. So I don’t know there’s there’s no way to pin down what I listen to.

Alastair McDermott  38:25

Awesome. Awesome. Love it. Lee, where can people find you if they want to learn more they want to find find you online.

1. Lee Judge 38:30

Everywhere to find me, of course, you’ll be on aleadjudge.com, with or without the period a.leejudge.com or alee– l-e-e judge.com. And then, you know, my podcast is on contentmonsta.com/podcast And of course Content Monsta with “a” so let’s see. Content M O N S T A — contentmonsta.com.

Alastair McDermott  38:52

Cool. And we will link to all of those in the shownotes! Thank you so much for being with us today.

1. Lee Judge 38:57

Great Alastair, has been great being on – thank you for having me.

Alastair McDermott  39:03

Thanks for listening. If you gain any insights or tips from this episode, please share it with somebody. It might just be the thing to help someone in your network. If you share the show notes link, a link to the podcast player and all the other information from today’s episode.

Voiceover  39:17

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