36. Slow And Steady Wins The Race

Burhaan Pattel: [00:00:00]
Hey, welcome to the podcast. Welcome to the Marketing Stack Podcast, to be more specific. And on this podcast well, we're talking about marketing. We talk about tools. We're talking about online apps. We're talking about all things, digital and systems and processes and things you need in your marketing so that you can actually generate leads and you know, get your business growing.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:00:22]
And I was having an interesting conversation with a friend of mine, Dennis, who was actually on the podcast a couple months ago. And Dennis and I were riffing on about this concept earlier today, about how everybody is, or there's a lot of people today who are just in for the selfish reasons of getting stuff for, you know, doing something for you for either for payment or for some sort of recognition or some sort of something.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:00:51]
And one of the things that's really interesting about the way that the world is and the way that people function today is everybody's on this instant coffee analogy, or everybody's trying to get things immediately, right. It's like do the thing today so that I can get this result so that I can get paid.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:01:16]
And we had this interesting concept or this interesting discussion, Dennis and I where, we, I asked him this question of, well, how does he overcome that? How does he, how has he managed to change his perception on that? Because for me, my backstory comes from you know, my parents were very, uh, sort of systematic in, in receiving thing, receiving money for, in exchange for a thing.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:01:46]
And you know, that was the whole, the whole principle of sales is you give value, you give a particular product, you give something physical to somebody and you receive money in exchange for that. Or it's this favor for favor, right? I'll do for you if you do for me. And in this creative economy or in this gig economy or in this online economy that we are currently functioning in and we have been functioning in, in, uh, in for a while now. It's this thing of you give value first, and then only later on, do you reap rewards, Gary Vaynerchuk? Uh, Tom Bilyeu.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:02:27]
A lot of the podcasts is a lot of Youtubers have operated on this principle of having a side hustle or having something going on the side where, you know, they can sustain themselves. They've been able to make money. And then being able to do free content, be able to give people value, be able to sit on people people's podcasts for hours on end talking about stuff and riffing off of ideas. And just being able to give people valuable information and tips and tricks.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:02:59]
Clubhouse is a prime example of that, right? Where people are sitting for hours and hours on clubhouse talking and having conversations. And going back to my backstory, like growing up in an environment where everything was paid for, everything was via payment. Right. We always received things if, or if we didn't do something, we were punished for it, you know?

Burhaan Pattel: [00:03:26]
Uh, did you do your homework? Yes or no? If you didn't, you go to the principal's office, um. Yeah, my parents were very big on like, get all your homework and get all your goodies done before you can actually have a chill day on a Saturday or before you can actually, you know, do something else. Or we could go for ice cream or whatever the case may be.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:03:47]
And I think a lot of people have operated in that way, all along. Whereas, you know, with, with this whole change that's happened. I myself have had to rethink how I do business or how I, am up am operating in this podcast, starting this podcast and actually getting guests on and having these con conversations or being open about how uh, things have changed and how marketing operates today.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:04:20]
Obviously with the Facebook ads and Google ads, and the way marketing works is there's always, there is this exchange. There's this, Hey, download my free ebook or download my free thing or come to my webinar or do do something so that I can eventually market to you or sell something to you later on.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:04:40]
And it's a very interesting concept that you know that we're we're facing because in this economy where YouTube exists, because of the ability for creators to create content advertisers, to pay Google for placement, and then have, you know, essentially the creators get paid via the community or via just being, you know, being relevant and being rewarded for content is a really, really interesting dynamic. And I know it's not new.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:05:20]
I know it's not groundbreaking, but this whole thing of producing content for a year to two years or producing two, three, 400 videos before you actually start getting traction, uh, giving first, is a very, very interesting concept. And, you know, Gary V talks about jab, jab, jab, right hook, where it's all about, give, give, give first and then asking for something or, you know, getting paid. Uh, he wrote a book also called The Thank You Economy where it's all about the, about the giving.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:05:59]
And this is something that I am obviously experimenting with, and it's something that I'm looking at. Uh, I've seen a lot of other creators do very successfully, uh, you know, pull us off very successfully with YouTube channels and Twitch channels and loads of other places like Tik Tok and Instagram and Facebook. And it's something that yes, we take the time to create value. We take the time to create the content. We take the time to help out other people.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:06:36]
And what Dennis and I were talking about and what, one of the things that I was talking about in terms of the shift that I think I need to make, or the shift that he helped me understand is that from a sales point of view or from a results point of view, you know, when there is a result. Then there's this expectation that something is going to happen. And what Dennis said to me was quite profound was that when he doesn't expect anything, when he doesn't care about what the outcome is, and Gary V also talks about this, then, then there's no, there's no need to hang up on the stress, hang up on the fact that we need to get a result.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:07:23]
Because if you really think about it, like we put out YouTube videos, the game is consistency. And so the result of each video, while we want videos to go well, we want our podcasts to be listened by more people to more. We want our podcasts to be listened by more people.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:07:45]
The fact of the matter is it's only going to gain traction once there's volume. And that's what these systems are all about. Right. When we're using an email marketing system or we're using an email marketing platform, maybe like Active Campaign or, or some other tool Convert Kit, maybe is where we have the ability to mass email or email many people at the same time, it's an efficiency system.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:08:12]
It's something that helps us create efficiencies so that we can plan engagements so that we can plan content and prepare or nurture a relationship. We don't have to email people one by one anymore because we can create an automation. We can create a system around developing that relationship. Of course, once people start interacting with us and once they start communicating with us and once they start commenting in the, in the descript below the description or commenting on or emailing us and saying, Hey, they got value or whatever the comment is.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:08:48]
That's when we can start getting a little bit deeper in the conversation. Maybe they buy a product, maybe they join a course. Maybe they jump on a zoom call with us. Maybe they do a podcast interview. That that then is a, is a further development of that relationship. And so we have the ability to use these systems, to use these tools without expecting a result by just being able to provide value by being able to record ourselves, being able to write maybe blog posts.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:09:18]
Or, you know, even if it's tweets on Twitter or LinkedIn or whatever the value is that we're going to give out to the world, to people that are on the outside that maybe need the help, or maybe they need the advice or maybe they need the education or maybe they need the entertainment, that's true. That's what these systems give us is the ability to communicate at mass.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:09:43]
And I don't know if you've heard me say this on the podcast before, but in reality, the internet is just a giant telephone. And when we can start crafting our messages to reach more people, create content that is actually interesting for people make, you know, tell better stories, uh, create some sort of a hook where we get people interested in what we're doing.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:10:09]
That's when we can start getting traction, but those are skills that we need to develop. And so the only way to develop that is to actually put the time in. And later on sure, maybe people would actually come to us and reward us. And so this is the, well, this is what's referred to as momentum. The, the, the word momentum by definition means that when you start pushing something, if I can use an example, when you start pushing something that's really heavy and really big, it starts off really, really slowly.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:10:42]
We can all relate to maybe when we need to jumpstart a car and we need to, you know, push the car along. So maybe the battery died or whatever the case may be. And so we need to push start the car to get the engine turning again. The first couple of seconds of actually pushing that vehicle is difficult. It's hard, but once we start getting momentum, then the it's, you know, the car starts picking up speed a little bit faster. And so that's what content does for us online.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:11:15]
That's what these relationships do for us, even in real, in real life. Not to say that online is not real life online is real life. It's just a different medium. It's just through a different device. So in the past we used to call each other frequently. We didn't have smartphone devices. We didn't have all of this technology around us. We had different forms of technology, which was more manual, which is more one-to-one.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:11:41]
And so the internet allowed us to start communicating to more than one person at a time with the hopes of one being able to sell more products. So that's what majority of people are trying to do, but two then this other sort of by-product of communication happened where, Hey, we can actually help people at scale.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:12:04]
And if you really, really, really think about it, books are a form of that, a form of value. Because in the past, before the internet, before any of this stuff, when, when authors published books and were able to get those books to readers. And people bought those books and they were publicized and they were available to people and they were published in many countries and published in many and, you know, put on in bookshelves in lots of different, um, bookshops.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:12:35]
That's how people, that's, how authors were able to build credibility and actually build scale into their businesses. And so it still exists today. The only difference is now we have the internet, which is actually even more revolutionary because now we can go to millions and millions of people and yes, it takes time to write a book.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:12:56]
Yes. It takes time to build up a YouTube channel. Yes. It takes time to build up an email list, but the years or months that you, we take creating those assets and building that skill and creating those relationships and starting to gain the traction that we need is the skill. It is the thing that I think all of us need to learn because in the future, or even in the, now this is the currency of the day: attention, relevancy, consistency and being able to be authentic.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:13:37]
I would say those are the four things that really makes or helps people stand out from the ordinary person who's just trying to pitch their product all the time. And if you look at Twitter, Twitter is a prime example of that. If you search any keyword on Twitter, there is probably 80% of people that are just trying to pitch.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:14:01]
You know, Hey, here's my YouTube video or, Hey, here's my product. Or, Hey, you know, pay me for this X, Y, Z thing. I made this thing for you because I want something back. The conversations that are actually meaningful that are actually valuable, that are actually worth getting into start off of people who are giving for the sake of giving for writing things because they just love the art of writing, for developing conversations, for developing relationships.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:14:37]
And again, this is something that I'm still learning to do. And if you're listening at this point of the podcast, I thank you because this is a hot skill and the podcast format, especially when recording alone has a very different dynamic to when you're having a conversation with somebody. And so if you're listening to this podcast and you're taking in what I'm saying, it's been a tough journey for me because coming from that give sort of take, take, take experience of growing up.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:15:06]
And I'm 40 now, living in Thailand trying to break into the U.S market. I've been working with U.S clients for ages, but in terms of content, in terms of being able to put my voice out there in terms of building a name for myself. Yeah. It's been difficult and 200 plus videos on my YouTube channel, and I'm still trying to gain traction on the other YouTube channel. All right. This is the, the, the, the marketing stack podcast, YouTube channel.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:15:32]
And on the other channel, my main channel Burhaan Pattel 200 odd videos up there. And it's been a grind. One because I just trying to figure out who the heck I am. And two, because, well, when you grow up in this whole sales environment and everything is about sales and everything is about profit.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:15:53]
And now you come into an online space and you start working on a, on a business, a digital business, a digital agency. Yes. There are a lot of clients out there who just want sales. There are a lot of clients who just want the results. They just want the conversions. And I've worked with those clients and some of them have been very successful.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:16:13]
Some of them haven't been, have not been. And for me at this point in my life, I think I'm, I'm working more on the long game. I'm working more on sort of, how can we create value in the world? How can we develop a long-term relationship where the result is the relationship. The result is the pursuit, or in Dennis's words, we don't care about the result.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:16:43]
We care about how we can reach people, how we can help people, how we can change their lives. And this is what I'm moving more into. And the 200 videos that I have on my YouTube channel are all about sort of helping out, some of them are tutorials. Some of them are, you know, explanatory or tips type videos.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:17:11]
And I think it's interesting because when we're creating content, we're trying to help out help people out. Yes. We've got to try to create attention. We've got to try to hold people's attention. We've got to make things interesting. It's a hard thing to do. It is a very difficult thing to do. And if you're listening to the podcast, I'm just being open about the fact that, well, my background has been mostly brought up in the sales environment.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:17:39]
And moving online and, you know, being working on online for the last seven years, it's a skill that I'm still working on. It's, it's a skill that I'm still developing this whole concept of putting out a video, not getting any leads from it. Not. Getting much comments from it, not like the pursuit of success in this era or this or this space is very different and newer people, younger people have the luxury or have the actual, I would say they have the pleasure.