How to Gain 400K+ Followers on Instagram with Dain Walker

Today I’m sitting down with Dain Walker, a Brand Strategist and Founder of Victory Front - one of Australia’s fastest growing brand design firms. 

Dain has worked with countless high-profile, multi-million dollar startups and well-established brands, creating go to market strategies that help them penetrate the market. He's known around the globe for his remarkable ability to put companies on the map at an accelerated rate.

Dain’s proven track record starts with himself. He began branding on Instagram and quickly grew his account to over 200,000 followers inside of 12 months.

I invited Dain to be a guest on my show to discuss branding on SM, specifically Instagram and LinkedIn. I also, wanted to learn more about his personal brand, and how a guy who was broke built a seven figure income in less than 2 years.

Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star rating along with a brief review.

About Me
Hey there, I'm Joelly - the Branding Badass. My badass superpower is helping you build a brand that matters. From branded merch to brand consulting, when you work with me, you get results!

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instagram - @Branding_Badass
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website - BrandingMatters.ca
email - jgoodson@genumark.com

Transcript

Joelly Goodson Lang: 0:10

Hi, I'm Joelly, your Branding Badass, and welcome to my new podcast. Branding matters. Today I'm sitting down with Dane Walker, a brand strategist and founder of victory front, one of Australia's fastest growing brand design firms. Dane is known around the globe for his remarkable ability to put companies on the map at an accelerated rate. And his proven track record starts with himself. Dane began branding on Instagram and quickly grew his account to over 200,000 followers. Inside of 12 months, I invited Dane to be a guest on my show today to discuss branding on social media, specifically Instagram and LinkedIn. I also wanted to learn more about his personal brand. And how a guy who was basically broke built a seven figure income in less than two years. Dane, welcome to branding matters. Thanks for having me. I'm excited.

Scott: 1:13

I'm excited to have you here. So before we get right into the questions, I just want to share with people that are listening how we connected because I love when things like this happen. I was following you on Instagram and one of your posts popped up. And I've mentioned brand and so it caught my eye and it was really bright. I don't even know if I actually told you this story. Have I shared this with you? Oh, this Oh, no. Yeah. So you so popped up and I was like, Who is this dude, and I checked out your grid. And I thought it was really cool. And I love what you had to say that was most important thing. And it was just around the time when I decided to launch this podcast and thinking of who I would have on so you know, you didn't know me from a hole in the wall. And I just reached out to you and said, Hey, I'm in Canada. Dane is in Australia, by the way people are listening, said I'm in Canada, and I'm doing podcasts and you don't know me. But would you want to be on? I didn't hear back from you right away, which wasn't a surprise. And then when you did reply back, you're like, yo,

Dain Walker: 2:07

you're like, yeah, so anyway, it was kind of funny how we connected. So I'm really happy to have you here. So thank you. Yeah, thanks for having me. No, it's, it's cool. I like the community. And I like Instagram. And it's been just a great tool to meet people. And I imagine if I was at a party can hide in the corner and put a parcel on the wall. And hopefully people walk over to you or you can go out there and engage with others and get to meet people. So I look at as a social setting. And I think that it's great. It's great to meet you as I'm happy. But I've met so many people through Instagram, it's been an absolute gift. I so I agree with you so much. So quick question for you. At the end, when you go to a party. Are you the guy that sits down on the corner? Are you the one that gets up and walks around and introduce yourself to everybody? Or do you wait for people to come to you, I'm the guy that eats all the food. I'm usually where wherever the alcohol and the beverages and the food is I usually hang out there, which usually means that I end up having conversations with other people. So when I go to a social setting, I certainly like to engage people, it's actually not my nature, my nature is to go hide and as always, like the shy kid that would hide and it's not my inclination to be that way. But I just know the value of getting outside your comfort zone and just approaching people and introducing yourself and the more you listen to someone, the more they like you anyway, so I just got really good at asking questions and listening and and made friends that way. Yeah, you know, that's interesting. I read somewhere that introverts actually make better networkers than extroverts. So would you consider yourself an introvert? Yeah, big time. Yeah. And that's the reason why because introverts are better listeners. And so when they go out in public, and they talk to people, they spend a lot more time listening and taking it in. And that's what makes them better at it. interesting is that, yeah, I'm way more excited to absorb someone and their thoughts versus projecting my own. That's one of the reasons why I did this podcast because I love asking people questions. It's a perfect setting, man. I know. And now you're in the hot seat. Okay, so let's get right to it. Okay, so Dan, you got 200,000 followers on Instagram, in under a year, there's a lot of people on Instagram, a lot of companies on Instagram, I'm on there. And they approach me and I'm sure they put everybody where they say, Hey, we can sell you followers for this amount of fee, we can get you this many followers, this amount of fee, and so on and so on. And then there's other experts and I use quotations that say, the best way to get a lot of followers is to follow other people comment on their comments, and unlike their comments, so did you use any of those tactics? And how did you get so many followers so quickly? Great question zero, those tactics were applied. Yeah, I personally have a pet peeve to what them and I certainly see all the possible pitches and offers like I still get them even daily, where they're like, Oh, we can crank the numbers up we can do this and that and I have had a lot of clients that have come to us that have had previously done that. And it's usually most often a horror story of my engagement doesn't work and I have all these followers but nothing's happening anyways, so the only good that stuff for is just making your page look like it's something that it's not my belief system is it's an integral, it's unethical. It's a lie. I don't want to try to promote myself as someone I'm not if I if I haven't already. It's fantastic. It's real. And if I don't, then I don't deserve one. That's just how I've always looked at it. I mean,

Joelly Goodson Lang: 5:00

I'm the same way with you. I've never done any of that. And the thing I would think is that then your feed is full of people a, you don't know B, you don't care. And then they're commenting. Like, there's just no connection. There's no relationship. There's no connection. So it's completely against being authentic and connecting with your audience. And it's, it goes against all of that. Yeah, I believe so. And I think that your intention is everything. And I think that if your intention is to have a vanity metric to say, look, I have 10 K, knowing the fact that it's not real, just because you want to swipe up, it's usually not the case. Usually, they want to appear as though they have leverage appear as though they have big PR and that people care, you know, you can suddenly architected, I understand why business owners value that and understand why having a business with a lot of followers is important. It's the same as like having a Google rating. If you have a five star Google rating, that's equivalent to having 10 k followers, it's like, this is validated, I'm worthy of what I'm promoting. But the challenge is, there's never a positive financial reward. And again, just from a human perspective, it's just unethical doing the wrong thing. You're lying to people. Why would you want to do that? Yeah, it's fake. As far as I'm concerned. It's fake. It's a lie. You don't want to build your business on an empire of lies. Exactly. Okay. So then how the hell did you get 200,000 followers? And under a year? Really great question. It's really hard.

Dain Walker: 6:15

I guess the simplest way I could put it is it comes down to branding. And I think you know, the topic about your podcast is perfect for this matter. But branding is feeling people get their experience, their journey, their belief systems, you know, alignment, like it's so many things and essence, Marty neumeier said it perfectly in it. It's the feeling you get in your gut when you're in contact with that particular company, or that individual or that brand. So I think a big reason that we've thrived is because we built something people cared about, we built a stylized form of content that was kind of not serious. It was like somewhat whimsical, kind of cheesy, we try to keep it simple. And we keep the content about what are the problems you're having. And one of the problems we're having. And together, let's try and solve them. When I started the page, I think I had 514 followers. And then I would put one post up and nothing happened. Nobody cared. And I didn't care. I put up a post the next day. Nobody cared. After two weeks of doing this people at work starting to be like, yo, Dane, like, what's this stuff you're doing on your page? What do you mean stuff on my page? What is it? I'm like, Did you read it? And they're like, No, you don't I mean, so people started to notice it. But they didn't really find it interesting. And I immediately realized I was like, you just know my audience. Like it's not for you, you're not interested in things I'm interested in. So I just kind of realized quickly that I'm like, that's not my target audience, like my friends don't care. So what I just started doing just out of interest was I started making friends. And then they introduced me to other people in it like that party, I'm just kind of working my way around the party getting to know people, then a few of them kind of like featured me in their stories set a little bit of attention my way. And once the crowd kind of showed up, it just kept growing after another two weeks of doing this really started building relationships and connecting with people, a little crowd just kind of jumped on my page every day, like the same people would jump on every day, because I posted every day about the same time. So every day, they would jump on or they would see my posts, then I would jump into DNS, we chitchat about business and lifestyle. And it was really like an interactive networking experience. For me, I wasn't looking at it as like, I'm growing my page. I was like, Man, this is fun. I like making content. I like getting my voice out there. And I like interacting with people. And I think that people picked up on the genuity of that. That's why I was doing it. It wasn't out of any necessity to try to sell something I was trying to plug anything. And then suddenly, again, there were other people doing it. But for whatever reason, the way I illustrate what I'm trying to say really seems to connect with people. That's a great answer for the listener who doesn't know who you are for that one person out there who may not know, Dane Walker, yes. So you decide, Okay, I'm gonna open up an Instagram account like all of us do. And then you decide, okay, what was your goal for going on there? And what were you gonna post? Oh, yeah. So 00 to 514 was just my personal lifestyle like me and my dog. Yeah. Yeah. All that type stuff. Yeah. And then you decided that you wanted to start your business. And so give it a little bit of background? Maybe because people don't know your background as far as how you got to where you are today and the content that you're actually posting on there? Yeah. Great. Great question. Yeah. So my background, you know, before any of this happens, if I also rewind, yeah, maybe two years, I thought was to go for years before this kind of happened. I was doing network marketing full time. So actually, that was, I would say, five and a half, maybe six years ago, I was doing full time network marketing, and it was a business. And basically what you did is you jumped in, you had a suite of products in my cases, electricity, internet, mobile phone plan, stuff like that, right. So I jumped in, I started to meet people, I started to recruit people. And I started to sell products. And I created enough energy inside of that, that it covered my income. And I got to the point where I was traveling around Australia. And speaking in front of rooms every Friday, every Saturday and every Sunday, I was in front of a room between 100 to 200 people in what we call a BLM, which is a business overview meeting and I will be presenting the products I wish big companies like Verizon and Vodafone and I worked with a couple different billionaires inside the industry, one of which was the CEO of Optus here yeah, the CEO of one of Australia's largest gym franchises came in to buy a machine to scrub the floors of his gym. And I just gave him world class service. I was just like, going above and beyond. I was like, yo, like, don't worry about cutting all this stuff back to the gym. I'll deliver it after work. And like, Man, you're awesome. So I went out on my own time to take all this equipment to the gym. And then when I got there, the CEO was like, hey, like, we don't know how to use this. Can you show us off how to use it, Mike? Yeah, no worries. I spent like two hours teaching this stuff, how to use all the equipment. And I was like, see. And two days later, his two IC came into the shop and she was buying something. And she noticed that I was alone. She's like, it's your boss here might know why she's like, you want to work it out? And I was like, Yes. I was like, I hate selling vacuum tubes. So I'm gonna jump in that gym. But I was just a sales rep. I was just selling memberships. My job was to call up people and try to get them in the gym. So I was really good at doing that. And there's a team of I think four people at that time crushed. It absolutely dominated the team. I like triple the numbers. And the CEO pulled me into a room. He was like, Hey, you want to manage the team? I was like, yeah, it's okay. Now you're the manager. I was like, rock on man. What I do now is like lead the team. I was like, great. So, you know, back to my network marketing skill set that came right back out of the bag. And I started teaching the team like stuff I never even experienced before. I can teach them psychology, motivation, mindset delegation, we would spend an hour a day training. And I got in trouble a few times. She's like, Man, you spent so much time training your team. And I'm like, Yeah, but we're getting the best results. You know what I mean? So after two weeks of training the team and literally smashed it number one in the nation. So how did you go from where you were to where you branded yourself on Instagram? Like, how did you come up with the business? Yeah, so it wasn't really formed. At that point. I knew I had skill set. So I did a stocktake of my skills. And I was like, Alright, I know how to do Photoshop. I know how to do sales. I know how to build rough website. I know how to do a logo. I know how to do some colors and know how to pick a cool typography. Like I kind of knew this stuff like this, that you learn that like, You matter. What's your background, a hobby, being a hobbyist? Like I never studied it. I was a part of warrior nation and I was running a creative department. So I was the one creating the banners, creating the signatures creating the artwork for that for their brand. I was pretty much their brand ambassadors, okay, your creative person. Yeah. And there was a community in the gaming community of people that would teach each other graphic design as hobbyist. None of these guys were specialists, they were all hobbyists, they all just did it because we were nerding out. And we would spend our weekends editing pictures of characters from Star Wars or cool backgrounds just because it was fun. Yeah, because I was 13. That was the thing. There's a lot of skill that got picked up there and a lot of passion, enthusiasm. And I learned a lot from people that were like 3040, and 50 years old, even as a kid, those people are way older teaching this stuff. So I always had that staple. I always had that background. And I think that when I started building the business, I didn't have an outset of what I wanted to do. All I knew what I wanted to do is I wanted to help people grow their businesses. I wanted to help people with getting attention and all the energy I had from the network marketing, the gym, and all the backgrounds, whatever I was doing selling vacuums, whatever else I was like, man, I got a lot of energy and a lot of ideas. I know I can help business owners really put their businesses together, which sounds arrogant because I hadn't really ran a business but I kind of been to sc in a few different scenarios. So I use that energy. And I put that into the content. what started happening as the content sort of rolling out, people started asking me can you make this content for me? And I was like, Yeah, and I put the process together. I started making content for a lot of other personal brands. And initially, it was my personal page I was putting this content on and I had the agency page. But I noticed very quickly that the personal brand exploded and the agency page didn't get as much attention because I figured that people will To I guess, connect with a person, not a logo. I very quickly just went all in on the personal page. And I noticed that Michael john christow, all those guys had personal pages, not agency pages. And I was like, okay, personal branding is the way to go, I started buying these books and devouring books about content books about brand new books about marketing, I signed up for courses, any cost to get my hands on, I would buy it. And I just started really spending all my free time learning and all my other time building content for other people. It got to the point after like three months, I was spending 18 hours a day making content for other people and raking in cash. And quickly realizing that I didn't want to keep being a pixel pusher, I didn't want to continue to create content forever. So I started to explore other ideas and other passions. And I'm like, man, I really love branding, like branding is really exciting, sexy, fun thing for me. And marketing is a close second, and then sales and business off of that. So the more I consume, the more I fell in love with it. And the more clients started asking about, Hey, could you do my logo to Hey, can you do my website, and then I started realizing that my content creation isn't really solving the biggest problem for these businesses, their biggest problem is getting their identity on the internet. So then I started to get contractors to jump in and help me websites and help with logos, it was kind of like us testing it out, and people going nuts over it. So then we just continued to sell branding assets. And it's kind of morphed itself into now it's a fully fledged branding agency. And we offer all branding solutions, you know, so now we specialize in logo design, we specialize in collateral, we specialize in typography, and websites and all these fantastic things. But the core of it is really the strategy. That's what's really allowed us to get a lot of great relationships with our clients. And to get people really excited about what we're doing is just helping businesses with legitimate strategies to get that branding in the right position. Okay, so let's talk about your personal branding right now. The internet and Instagram and all the social media. I mean, there's billions of people on there, and yet your brand stands out. So what do you think it is about your brand that stands? Oh, and how would you describe your personal brand? Yeah, great question. I think there's a hinderance with that content. There's an agenda at play. So most pages like 99% of the time I go to a page, I'm like, Yeah, they're trying to sell something, all this person cares about is pitching their product, or it seems like it's too self centric, and very infrequently, audience centric. I think that that's one of the first things you can identify the pages like, Hey, does it feel like this page is just trying to sell something? Or does it feel like they're just trying to help people and do something great. And I researched this, and I looked at other pages, like there's a page called people of New York, and it's just a guy going around with a camera interviewing people in New York. And that page is amazing. It's massive. Yeah. And I was like, this is just people find this valuable. So I think if you if you look at everything, you know, and this is why we were successful. And this is why a lot of businesses struggle, is maybe their target audience isn't even on Instagram, the real honest question you have to ask yourself is my business and the people that need my services, whether they typically hang out mine just so happened to be on Instagram, but you know, many businesses, maybe they're on Facebook, maybe they're on YouTube, we had a girl in our academy, she's teaching French. And it's very difficult for on Instagram, because not many people searching how to understand French on Instagram. But they're certainly searching for it on Google and YouTube. So YouTube search platform, right? So it's a matter of looking at who's your target audience? What could they potentially consume content wise? And how frequently could you create that content. And I think the brands that are really blowing up on Instagram currently are the ones that understand their audience, understand what they like, and put it in front of them. And I think eventually, when a crowd gets around what you do, that crowd is gonna grow itself. And what I mean by that is, if the content is good enough, those fans are consuming the content right now, guess what they're in connection with other people who think like them, who have similar interests to them. So they're going to feature your story in their stories, they're going to send it to their friends, someone's going to ask them a question and be like, I don't know, check out Dan's page, we've built a library on our Instagram page of content that solves problems. And I literally get notifications of people that scroll through my page, and frequently find pieces of content and send it to their friends. And then they tell me that they're doing this, they're like, yeah, just so you know, like, if a friend of mine has a problem, I'll scroll through your page, and I'll find something that's gonna solve their problem, and I'll send it to them. So even my old content still being utilized. But I think the reason our brand has thrived and been successful and stood out is the color psychology behind it is interesting, the typography that we've used, and I certainly use the image play to really spark ideas. Like if you scroll through a feed, typically everything's going to look very bland for the most part. If you see something that's like bright yellow with bold black text is a picture of like an eyeball on it, you know, you're gonna stop and be like, What's this about? Well, that's what I was gonna say is that a How important is color but b also, as far as your brand goes, I was thinking while you were talking, and one thing that your branding is, is it's fun. So you're getting that emotion out of people while they're learning at the same time, which I think is great. A lot of people take themselves too seriously. If you're brand new is always fun, and it is always educational, and it is always informative, and you do provide all that content, but what about a business like what about somebody who's starting off, and they want to go on Instagram. And the reality is like, they do want to sell something, give the answer to this question to Seth Godin who covered this fantastically. And for those that don't know who Seth Godin is, he's like the godfather of marketing, like, check the guy out. But Seth was asked a question, essentially, someone said, yossef, like, if you didn't have an audience, and nobody knew who you were, and you didn't have any money, how would you start over in today's society without any hesitation, he's like, I would create some type of social platform, I would identify who I was trying to speak to, like, who is my target audience, and he's like, I would provide some format of free value for that crowd for six months or more, without any intention, or any inclination to try and sell anything. And once I had fan base, and I had a tribe around me that were consuming what I had, and that found me valuable and that were connected to me in some emotional format, I would then plug, hey, by the way, I got this product, it wouldn't be the feature, I would just refer to it. And there's a perfect answer to the question. Because oftentimes, people go, here's my product, how do I sell it? Now? I have a book How do I sell it? Now? I have products and services. How do I sell it? Now? I see it all over Instagram. It's actually noxious. I find it is obnoxious. And it's like, yeah, it's like, it's like, it's belligerent. And it's blunt. And it's his great thing it's gonna happen is people just gonna run for the hills, like, you might as well just put a sign up. And it's like, yo, don't talk to me. Like, I'm not interested in anything but money, like you know what I mean, you might as well be honest about it. I think Seth now that perfectly. And that's provide value. And oftentimes, people are always looking for these keys and these, these methods and these tactics and these hash tag strategies and all this stuff. And it's all a waste of time. Best thing you can do is go Who am I speaking to? What matters to them? How can I creatively put it in front of them so much so that it creates some type of emotional reaction? And then enough emotional reaction that they want to talk to me? Because if you want a marketing blueprint for 2021, generate conversations, don't generate leads don't generate anything else other than trying to create some format, where people want to have a conversation? If you can have conversations? Yes, most conversations lead if you're crafty with them, you can craftily create a conversation that drives them towards what their problem is. Have them express. Hey, Dane, this is my problem. I don't have attention. My website sucks. I don't have a system. I'm by myself. I'm wearing too many hats. Right? Cool. I have a solution for you. Yeah. What's that brand strategy? Let's roll. What does that include? and includes all these things. I need all those things. Fantastic. When you want to start, start the conversation, not there. But like, lead the conversation to that destination? The conversation starts with like, tell me about yourself. Like where struggling like how can I help? Tell me about your family, your life where you from? What's important to you? What's your purpose? Those conversations get people excited. People like to talk about themselves and pick up a lending year and people trust those that listen to this suddenly gonna jump in and take your advice at that point, if they're open to it. Yeah, I totally agree. You know, I read somewhere once where it says before you post anything, ask yourself, so what if you ask yourself, so what before you post it? What's the value? And then you know, if it doesn't educate, inspire, or entertain, then what are you doing it for? Those are always the three things to have in the back of your mind. What do you think about that? Yeah, education, inspiration, entertainment, like they're the reasons people use social, I don't go on Instagram to buy things. I go on Instagram, because I'm bored. Do you know people do I have to argue, because actually, my boyfriend he buys me like every day, there's something you know, it's funny, he's on Instagram. He's like, hey, look at this, and that he's always showing me things. So. But I mean, again, it's how it's attracted people by those things that they value, and some people buy, he buys stuff he doesn't need but anyway, but people are online now more than ever. Okay, so let's talk about LinkedIn, because you're also on LinkedIn. Not that I'm stalking you or anything.

Joelly Goodson Lang: 23:40

Do you think that there's a different way for either an entrepreneur or business to brand themselves on Instagram versus on LinkedIn? Yeah, I have to pre frame this by saying I am by no means an expert at LinkedIn. But my observations I can give my observations from what I can tell from LinkedIn is that the dichotomy of how people interact on LinkedIn is different. So like Instagram, for primary factors for the purpose and functionality of the platform, at least in its original intention was to serve as a format of entertainment, and to serve as a format of people to be able to coagulate and congregate and hang out. So like Instagram is like a nightclub, you know, you're gonna buy cocktails and drinks, right? You're gonna go there to buy stuff. But for the most part, you want to have a good time you want to last you want to have enjoyment, you want to have some type of escapism, you want to forget your day, you know, like a lot of people go on Instagram to kind of get away from their day, people go in there for entertainment, primarily inspiration. And there's certainly a pocket of people that like are fanatical about education that wasn't there in the the original days of Instagram, but it certainly exists. And now like that tribe is in the 10s of millions. Now, if you imagine Instagram as a nightclub, I would say that LinkedIn is probably more of a corporate function or like a business luncheon or something of that nature, where people are there to rally business. That's the main reason they're there. They're like I'm going on LinkedIn because I want to connect. I need to get myself established I need to build PR I need to link in with

Dain Walker: 25:00

the right people. That's the name LinkedIn. So I think it's interesting because my observation of LinkedIn is it's certainly moving into the content side of the hemisphere. Whereas its origins were more about literally just linking up with people and connecting. So I guess the content side of LinkedIn is really interesting to me, because that's in its newborn phase. And I think that I've experimented that with carousels. And people really enjoy that I make it a PDF, and people can swipe through it on Instagram, you're limited to 10 pages on LinkedIn, and you can put 100 page document on there, people can swipe through the whole thing. So I certainly think that primarily from what I have seen, what I have observed is video content is awesomely important. on LinkedIn, it seems to be doing very well, from the clients we have, they seem to do great video content on there. And then they put in a lot of articles and a lot of deep, like, really deep insightful, like people will take time to consume that content on Instagram, they're flicking through the page really fast. LinkedIn, it seems to be slow paced, it seems to be more about really absorbing information and really self educating and really connecting with people. So my strategy for that, which we haven't launched yet, which we're looking into, is we're certainly going to look around what groups can we join to participate with other people? And how can we kind of spread our wings in the platform to get some traction? So that's our next phase. But I suddenly think that LinkedIn is a massive player, and it's certainly underrated. Oh, I agree. How old are you? You're 30. Right. Yeah. 30? Yeah, yeah, I'm a little I could be your monitor. Let's put it that way. But anyway.

Joelly Goodson Lang: 26:24

So I've been on LinkedIn for quite a while, actually. And I've always found the value in it just because of my business and connecting with people. And I have seen a huge increase in people and people reaching out to me, especially now since I started my podcast, people reach out to me probably daily. So I do see the difference. But do you post? Or would you recommend to your clients and yourself post something on Instagram? And you'd post something different on LinkedIn? Or do you ever post the same thing, I feel if you want to succeed on LinkedIn, I think you have to consider it. And it's our nature in the sense that gonna play by the rules. You can't go into a business luncheon with a whistle, and some glow sticks and a cocktail. Whoo, like you just left Instagram. You know, so the different the different worlds and they require different different audiences, different audiences, I would certainly love your ideas. But I think that LinkedIn is a great place to opportunities. I think it's a great networking tool, way better than Instagram. I think Instagram is more content oriented. But you know what I find the biggest thing about LinkedIn, I've actually done some presentations on LinkedIn, because it's underutilized in the sense that people think that like Instagram, where you just go on and post, that's how you're going to grow your business. There's so many incredible tools on there that you can use to connect with your connections, connections and be introduced through LinkedIn. And so there's so many tools people have never even heard about. I talked to people about it, and I go, so what do you do on LinkedIn? Like, well, I just post so if there's, so there's way more tools that it offers, which is cool. And I don't I don't work for LinkedIn. I'm not getting paid to say this, but I'm just saying it's really an underutilized. Yeah. It's way deeper. Like can't really manage LinkedIn properly on a phone. You have to be like, on a PC, really to use it effectively for my Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's like tabs everywhere. I feel like I'm in a cockpit of an airplane. Yeah, I can. I'll talk to you. I have some ideas for you. But let's talk you mentioned carousels. So what are carousels? Yeah, it's not an amusement park ride. I try to make it feel like one if I can. But yeah, the best way to think about it is it's like 10 swipes like it's like an image on Instagram, you swipe through 10 times, the way I view it is it's a micro blog, like that's all it is, it's a really little baby blog. And because people on Instagram have flying through the platform really fast, can't write a blog, and that people aren't going to take the time to read it. So you have to power phrase a concept or power phrase an ideal, or power phrase, something that is actionable that someone can apply. And this is the format I use it in it's 10 blank canvases, you can do whatever you want with it. But in my case, I use it as a tool to teach the function of it is I'm just trying to teach something and people can swipe through it and read one sentence at a time. Collect an idea, a concept, a tool, a story, something that has of some value to do with problems that my audience seems to have. I love them. Another thing I find on Instagram is that people try to put too much information. You know, when you're swiping you see tons of tons of copy. And again, maybe I'm older and my eyes aren't as good, but I can't read half the shit that's on there. Yeah, it's true. Like you just scroll through. I can't read it. People have all this information on their stories. Your carousels are short, bold. And you're absolutely right. They have an impact. I go through them. I'm like, Yes, you know, and of course, because you talk about branding, that's your big thing is that I'm learning a lot as well. So I love that they are really short and to the point and have a lot of impact. So I didn't know that that was called the carousel though. But now I know you're talking Yeah. Nice. Yeah, sorry. My apologies. I

Dain Walker: 29:40

assume everyone's in my niche for some reason, I guess.

Joelly Goodson Lang: 29:44

Is that a generational word? Is that like wack or something? I think carousel is just it's a new terminology for Instagram graphic design notes, if you will. They're fantastic. And if I was to add one more thing, it's the visual component because if you want to teach something fast, the unconscious mind doesn't learn in letters and in order

Dain Walker: 30:00

Do the unconscious mind absorbs immediately from pictures and from symbols and emblems. So I try to play tricks on the unconscious mind a little bit with symbolism, really try to use pictures to really try to get that message across fast. The only thing you do, which I think is a lot of people don't do is you're consistent. And that's a big thing about branding is it's really important to be consistent so people can recognize it. So you always use the same font, you always use the same color, why yellow, it's bold, and it's energetic, and it's disruptive. And it's sometimes a little bit cheesy, which I like about it. So the good thing about that from a branding perspective is you can see it right away, right, you're scrolling and you see your brand, you see the yellow you see the same font. So how important is consistency? Would you say when it comes to branding, everything. I think it builds trust over time. Imagine if Coca Cola all of a sudden had a billboard and it was blue, you know, like it was like, well, what's happened to Coca Cola like the same as McDonald's, if you drove in a highway, instead of sort of seeing a yellow arches or a blue arch, you just be like what? Like, I think consistency builds security builds safe, it builds bonds, people create a fondness to it. It's like when you see a cartoon or hear a jingle from your childhood, it brings back a flood of memories, you taste an ice cream you haven't tasted since you were three, like wow, like I'm getting memories back from when I was a little kid, you know. So I think that over time, you start building that into someone's unconscious mind, if they view something enough, and that's certainly going down the marketing route as well. But I think that consistency is going to build a lot of trust, it's gonna build bonds, it's gonna build you as an expert, and it's gonna make you seem an appeal as reliable as someone that's always there, that's not going to go away. And how important is color in that formula? Right, because it signals to the unconscious mind immediately. If you go back to tribal times of humanity, tribes would represent themselves as a color or colors of that nature so that they can identify they have pink feathers, and we have brown feathers with different props. Like I think intrinsically colors like part of humanity, people get all caught up like your red means this and pink means that and I think Yeah, people will have a general perception like in Japan, a black cat is good luck. In America, a black cat is like literally the polar opposite. So color like is dictated by culture is dictated by industry. It's dictated by personality. It's dictated by belief systems and upbringings and religion and color is caught hide from it something that's immediately going to grab your unconscious mind and send some type of signal to your emotional bias. I agree. So when you're developing your brand color is something you want to think long hard about definitely Yeah, you know, I wouldn't get caught up in like colors mean x when my fancy yellow and black like that stain stuff like that means edutainment we made a word that's between education and entertainment. edutainment. Look it up yesterday. It's official word. That's awesome. Yeah, great. Okay, so just quickly, what's your favorite color of the yellow? I really like purple. I don't know why. I just asked that. Actually, I was being a little cheeky, because you're all in black right now. No one can see you. But you have like a black t shirt on and a black hat. So black backgrounds and

Joelly Goodson Lang: 32:55

my color is red for my brand. Brand new badass. I like red because it fiery and bright and passionate. And that's how I think I am. So that's awesome. Yeah, that's fantastic. And, you know, your fans will create an affinity to that. They'll eventually see that Pantone of red and they'll start to go, Oh, that's Joey's content. Yeah, we'll see. Okay, so I want to talk about victory front. I think it's so impressive that you have grown victory front to a seven figure business in less than two years. Is that correct? Less than one year? Yeah, less than what? Really? Okay. Can you tell us how you did that? That's incredible. Yeah. So when I was freelancing, and doing all this by myself, creating all this content, I got a lot of DMS, a lot of inquiries from really cool people. And Carlos, who's who's sitting over here, actually, he sent me a message. He's like, dude, your website articles suck, can I please write some I was like, guard for a dude, like write some articles. He's out of writing some articles. And then it kind of morphed into this weekly catch up call, where victory front was this ideal scenario where we were like, let's build like a really fun, epic, Australian based branding agency. And let's have two edges of the sword, one edge that we're going to educate people. And the other side is we're going to build a forum. So we're gonna have two models, teach him or do a forum. And we can't find another agency that we know of that exists in our marketplace that does that. So we're like, this is really cool. This is our X Factor, you know, so we would catch up every week with the money I was making. I would outsource things to them. My contract is like, yo, Carlos, can I get you to help out with this stuff here, I'll pay you as a contractor and Jared was doing stuff and my friend Tyson was doing stuff. So I started outsourcing and delegating things because I couldn't get everything done. And then what happened was, I get to the point where things were taking off so fast, and there's so much momentum happening, that it didn't make sense not to put people on staff. So those who are joining our weekly calls to kind of just jump in and collaborate and just be a part of this community of like, Hey, we're gonna build victory front eventually, right? This thing that we were aiming at, and then one by one that we started putting people on staff full time. So now we have a full fleet of stuff. We have marketing specialists or branding specialists, design specialists, got people building websites, they're all professionals that that trade. So now as the momentum came from the page, basically, I leveraged all the

Dain Walker: 35:00

Attention for people asking me questions, the compensation piece, right 2021 how to market in 2021 conversations. So I started filtering all those conversations through sales calls. And I was selling packages like $10,000 packages, and people weren't hesitating to buy them, you know. So we just kept putting money in the war chest and kept growing the portfolio of things that we could create. It honestly started with me just doing it myself, I guess outsourcing some of it to consultants, and then putting people on staff and now we're just a fully fledged agency. It's official now. That's incredible story. Well, congratulations. So what markets are you currently in other than Australia, predominantly in America, we have clients in Canada, America, Europe, France, Sweden, London, we have a couple of clients in India, a couple clients in Nigeria. And we also have clients here in Australia, it is suddenly global, but by no means an Australian company. Yeah, it's exciting because I think being able to see people from different cultures and different walks of life, their belief system for American entrepreneurs, versus the belief system of Australian entrepreneurs is completely different. Americans are really fast to take action, Australians are a bit more apprehensive, and they take time. So it's really cool to see the dichotomy of how different markets interact. But the American markets fantastic, I seem to connect really well over there and in Europe, as well. So you are pretty grateful, I would say. So then obviously, COVID is a global pandemic, how is it affected your clients in the different market when I was doing content creation early on, that's when COVID came on the scene. And I have a lot of clients in New York, and I had a lot of clients in London. And as you know, things got pretty ugly in both those cities. So both of those clients, for the most part, I lost everything almost, which was really scary for me, because I was like, oh, man, if these guys toppled over, there goes my paycheck. And it was so unfortunate and really sad to see. But inside of that is really cool to see people lose a lot, and then just get right back to work and find a way to navigate around it. One lady I was chatting to, she had a wedding catering company. And then she just turned it into a delivery kitchen. And she tripled her profits. So you know, she's like, well, like delivery kitchens are huge now like because you know, people want to order from home. But for me personally, yeah, we lost clients in one pocket. And then we seen an outcry for people going, I don't care this is happening. Or this sucks, I get to put what resources I have into getting additional attention online. Because a lot of people were relying on face to face or retail or warm leads, like referrals or word of mouth, things like that. I think people quickly realize like, I have to get on digital, I have to get my website sorted out. I think people realize that they have to create these other mechanisms digitally, to get their businesses in a good place. So I would say that the side of the industry, like the marketing and branding and advertising side of the space, the money in the marketplace has shifted. But the demand is actually going up. I agree. Totally. So how do you think branding is going to be in a post corporate world? when this is all over? Do you think now it's changed forever? Because of what's happened? Do you think people are gonna go back? What's your prediction moving forward? Yeah, I think there's gonna be a portion of things that are gonna go, you gotta go back, of course, you know, things that, you know, intrinsically DNA, we like to congregate, we like to collaborate, we like to spend time with people. So I said, I certainly think that there's, I'm not saying that that's gonna be the majority. But there's always gonna be I think humans are always going to press into wanting to do that naturally by nature. But for the business world, I think that this has shifted and forced people to be a lot more nimble with the way they operate their businesses. So I have friends of mine that work in insurance companies, where there's like, 2500 staff, and they're all working from heart. So those companies, their protocols, and their contingency plans, were really tough for them, because all of a sudden, now their staff are having different emotional problems because our heart The kids are around the smoking. Okay, so more. I have to say this because you have a newborn, I can hear in the background. You mentioned kids are at home, being so good your face and I'm just like I it's okay, cuz I know you told me that she's like three months old now. But she, she's five months now. Five months, okay. Yeah, I can hear and you know, as a mother, I'm like, Oh, I can hear her crying. And I know, her being so good. You're like keeping a straight face. But you mentioned about people working from home with their kids. And, you know, this was a perfect example of how people are trying to conduct zoom and meetings and you have the family life going on trying to meld the two together, right? Yeah, it's it's tough. And one of my friends, she has two kids that are like, six and eight. She lived in Turkey. And like, there's a lot of stuff going on in Turkey right now as well, right? It's really tough. Like she's in a predicament where there's a lot of threat and literal physical, like you could die type political stuff happening her environment. So she had to move because of that. So that pressure plus she had two children. And I remember getting on zoom calls with her when she's trying to conduct business and they're running around throwing pillows at each other and stuff. And she's just like, at her absolute maximum stress wise, you know, like, she's just holding it. She's holding it together. She's like, shut up before we go. Dave, what's your mission? What's your mission in life? That's a great question. Yeah, for me, I really want to make an impact on people way I grew up was you know, without going into details pretty dark. And I think that there's a lot of challenges and I felt alone quite a lot of time and moving cities every three to six months was always a trouble and I think that when I was 1610 17 I was pretty wayward, you know, suddenly not investing my time in the right things. And I wasn't hanging out with the right people. And it was a really dark time in my life personally. And there was one particular individual that I guess you could kind of see, like, where I was at. and for whatever reason, he was like, Yo, man, like, things are really great for you, right? And I'm like, No, that's pretty crap. And I told him about where I was at, it's like, come hang out with my family. This guy just took me under his wing, he just kind of treated me like I was his little brother or something, just maybe a part of his family. You know, it was really interesting that he would mentor me, he would teach me about life. And you know, I get to hang out with his kids and hang out with his wife and go to events and conduct business with them. And just, yes, just be around them. Like, they just kept me around them for whatever reason. I remember, like, one day after, like, months of this happening, I was like, dude, I don't understand, like, Why do you care? Like he like, I'm just some kid, like, Why do you care about trying to improve my life in some way? And he just, he just looked at me like in the faces, like, because I want to, like because you needed it. And I wanted to, I wanted to help. And I was like, you don't want anything like you don't want like, I feel like I'm indebted to you. And, and he's like, no, I like I just, I just love seeing people have those moments where their life sucks. And then and then they can make things a little bit better. And I broke down and I cried. It's really emotionally traumatic for me, because like the build up of you know, how I grew up into that moment, nobody caring about me, no one really paying much mind or really just, Hey, man, how are you? Okay, like, you know what I mean, there was none of that for like, 17 years, there's a lot more into that story. But I guess to summarize, yeah, it was pretty dark. And then the moment that this individual expressed that they didn't want anything, they just wanted to help broke me down. Because I think as humans, we can put barriers up and we can can really shelter ourselves and really bury that stuff down. And I think that in one moment, like the Greg cutter moment, the guy just said this one thing and also emotion just came out and and I was healed in that moment. Cuz I was like, this is, this is also fantastic to get this off my chest, like, thank you for caring about me, like, this is what I didn't get as a child. I think children that don't get love and connection can it can really hurt them. So this is certainly gonna answer your question, what happened from there? I was like, This feels great. How do I do what you just did? Right? He's like, let me show you. So then from that day forward, since I was 17, I've always been plugging in and trying to find people that have shit, that's pretty rough, and trying to help them overcome it. So from the age of 17, till the age of 23, I spent a lot of my free time discipling and mentoring kids trying to get off drugs, teenagers that had had sexual abuse happen to them, you know, really traumatic stuff. And yeah, spent a lot like and I'm talking about, like, 80 odd teenagers that somehow help transition from a world of doctors to a life of fruition. And, and I still talk to them, and and many of them are now married and have kids and they run businesses, you know, that's really great to see not one of them, by the way, went back to where they started, every single one of them had moved on to better things. And I think that if you really connect with humans, and you really give a shit, and you actually pay attention to what's important to them, and help them understand what tools they need to get through the next steps, people don't forget that they use that stuff. So my purpose is to create that moment of clarity for as many people as I can. And I think Instagrams a great tool, educational contents, a fantastic mechanism to help people stop for a second and ask themselves a question, hey, I could do this. And I get a lot of DMS, and I can send them to you, or people that have messaged me, like, Hey, man, you inspired me to start my business, hey, you inspired me to take a risk to black horse to realize it or not to go to university, these types of things. And I've had hundreds of those messages. And that's what gets me excited when I get one of those. And it's like, deep and it's long. It's like yo do like, this is what you did for me, I relish in that. And I'm like, that's why I do this. And I think that there's so much value in human connection. I think that's so important. I think the world for the most part has lost that. And I certainly want to try and create that as much as I can in my life in as many ways as I can. That's amazing. Well, it shows you're very passionate person, obviously. And I think just knowing what I know about you, which is not a lot, you know, you've taken a really bad situation and you've turned it around, and now you're paying it forward. Right To sum it up is how I would look at it. That's a great, great analogy. Okay, so But before we go at, you know, if people want to learn more about you and about how to connect with you, what's the best way for them to reach out to you? Yeah, yeah. So you can, you can go to victory, fraud, calm, and book a meeting with me and my team, if you want help. If you just want to connect to reach out, jump on Instagram, and look up Dane Walker, and yeah, I'll actually reply to you and I will talk to you so he will reach out first is that? Yeah, okay, awesome. Well, thank you again, I really appreciate it. And good luck with everything. And I am so excited to watch you soar. Because I have no doubt you're going to be an amazing, you're an amazing host. I had fun, great questions and get to answer things that hadn't been asked before. And yeah, I love your energy. And I love your insight and how you bring in some stuff you already researched already. And you know, I do a lot of podcasts where they're just winging it for the most part. So it's really great to see you prepping and do an intro meeting. And I want to press record Hold on. I will watch this again.

Joelly Goodson Lang: 44:58

Yeah, well, I appreciate your feedback.

Dain Walker: 45:00

Yeah, yeah, it stands out like it. It stands out. Yeah, had heaps of fun and it massively stands out because a lot of podcasts are going that they're just winging it. There's like a and they ask a question, you know, so I think you treat it like it's your job. And I think that's very important. And I think you take pride in your work because scheduled it you did an intro meeting kept me in the loop kept contact flow in between you kept the line of communication for someone that's busy as myself like, I will forget. So those of you that are trying to get a podcast with me, like keep that communication, ARPANET harassment, I'm like, Oh, yeah, thanks for reminding me. I gotta make sure I plan for that for sure. Okay, I'll let you go. Thank you again, and I will get on this. I'm excited to launch it. I think it'll be a lot of fun, pop.

Joelly Goodson Lang: 45:42

And there you have it. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed the conversation and maybe even learned a few things to help you with your branding. And most of all, I really hope you had some fun. This podcast is a work in progress. So please make sure to rate and review what you think. And please subscribe to branding matters on whatever platform you listen to. And if you want to learn more about the branding badass, that's me, you can find me on all the major social media platforms under you guessed it, the branding badass. Thank you again. And until next time, here's to all you badasses out there.