Visit Omar’s website: https://www.nomadscast.com/
Instagram: @itsomarmo
Podcast: https://www.nomadscast.com/podcast
Katie Brinkley 0:02
Hi friends. I’m Katie Brinkley and you’re listening to Rocky Mountain marketing. This podcast is all about helping Colorado based small business owners, entrepreneurs, realtors and professionals discover the strategies and systems that take their marketing to all new heights. Let’s dive into today’s episode. Welcome back to Rocky Mountain marketing. My guest today is Omar Mo. Omar is a content marketing strategist owns a podcast marketing agency and is a digital nomad. He helps new and aspiring remote online entrepreneurs design their life to be happier, healthier and full of freedom. Omar, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Omar Mo 0:44
Thank you for having me. It is an absolute pleasure to be here with you, Katie,
Katie Brinkley 0:48
you know, we’ve had the opportunity to talk a little bit offline. And I know a bit of your backstory. But go ahead and tell us a little bit about what your life was like growing up for all of our listeners today.
Omar Mo 0:58
Sure. And yeah, I’ve spoken to you on clubhouse quite a few times, too. It’s always been exciting conversations with you. Yeah. So my background, I grew up in Houston, Texas. And I think like most people, I had no idea what I wanted to do for a long time grew up, I had a good head on my shoulders, I guess respectively, compared to your average person. I mean, I was pretty much just like anybody else. I went to school. And then I didn’t really find entrepreneurship for quite some time. I didn’t do the whole selling candy in school or anything like that. I instead I went to college, because that’s what people do whenever they don’t really know what they want to do. Right? took four years. And I did I graduated with a geology degree back in 2016, and of 2015. And then from there, I realized that I wanted nothing to do with geology, because there’s only so much that you can talk about a rock. So I, I decided to go on a travel trip, too. And it’s a bit cliche, but to kind of find myself quote unquote, and ended up traveling out to Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Vietnam. Yeah, I spent on that side of the world on the eastern hemisphere for quite some time for about three years. And during that time, in the beginning, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. So what I started doing naturally was just start interviewing people. It wasn’t through my podcast first it was just through friends or hopping on zoom calls. And this was a time when Coronavirus wasn’t even a thing, but I was trying to utilize remote stuff because a lot of people that that when they travel that there’s this term called a digital nomad. And that was the first time that I heard of that term, where you can go around and work off from your laptop and do everything completely remotely remote teams remote work, started interviewing people, and I met a lot of interesting people started off with referrals. And then I’d go in and say, Hey, do you know anybody else that I can interview and talk me to somebody else. And at this time, I wasn’t really recording any of these interviews when I look back. In retrospect, I think it was kind of dumb, but I learned a lot. I spoke to Buddhists and I spoke to millionaires. And I spoke to business owners and I spoke to a ton of digital nomads. And there’s always this common theme amongst people that I found that was that were successful. And that was they really wanted something and they chased after it right. And they were willing to take the risks to get there. Whether it was inner peace, or Nirvana, or whether it was a really successful business, they were all chasing after something that they really wanted to do and brought them fulfillment. So naturally, while I was traveling, I started enjoying myself a lot. And I was like, You know what, this brings me a lot of joy and fulfillment. And I started freelancing at first, which eventually evolved into an online business, which I’ve now had for about three and a half years. So I guess that’s a super quick elevator pitch on who I am as
Katie Brinkley 3:45
well. And you know, what’s interesting, too, is I think that, you know, before 2020 and when we all were given the gift of time to be at home more and work from home. I don’t think a lot of people really realize how you could work from home successfully, like how it could really be a doable thing. I know that my husband, for example. His business was very by the books, very old school and you know, he had to be in the office every day. If he wasn’t in the office, then it was a sick day. He had to take PTO time. And I think that, you know, like you said, digital nomad, that’s a term that I’m familiar with a term that you’re familiar with, obviously, but for our listeners that might say like, what is the digital nomad? Go ahead and explain that to them really quick for us, please?
Omar Mo 4:28
Sure. So a digital nomad. I mean, you can break it down to digital and Nomad, right. It’s essentially someone that works digitally and travels. So that could be an online business or freelancing or a remote job, or any sort of anything in between some mixture of two or three and travels while they do it. And there’s even smaller terms for that like I’m sure you’ve heard of the word expat before of their other terms like slow mad, which is someone who stays in a country for like six To 12 months at a time before they move on to somewhere else, that are the fast travelers that love hopping between countries between whether it’s days or weeks. And just anyone, essentially, to really put it vaguely is someone that works off their laptop or an internet connection and travels while they do it. And we live thankfully, in a world that’s incredibly possible, with all the Wi Fi connections in the world, really. And with starlink coming out too soon, as well,
Katie Brinkley 5:25
you know, and that’s one of the things I think that we’ve been given this, this gift to be able to work from anywhere. But you know, I want to talk a little bit more about you and what you do for business owners. So you had the opportunity to travel and kind of think outside the box when you started your business. I mean, you’ve been doing this for three and a half years. Now. If you could go back and do anything differently. What would you do differently?
Omar Mo 5:52
in terms of during my travel trip, or anywhere in my life,
Katie Brinkley 5:56
just for your business? I mean, because I think there’s a lot of us that are like, Oh, you know, if I would have known I could have started my business from my couch, I would have done a lot a lot sooner if I could have known that it would be this easy to do XYZ, I would have started it 10 years earlier. If there’s anything that you have now that you’ve started your business, your three and a half years in, if there’s anything that you could have done differently, is there anything?
Omar Mo 6:21
Yeah, I wish I knew sooner that you don’t need a social media following at all to really make money online. There are so many avenues and things that you can take. And everyone’s so focused on branding, first and foremost, because that’s how they think they can make money online. It’s because we look up to people like especially in the podcasting space, john Lee Dumas, Pat Flynn, all these people who built up a personal brand of Gary Vee, for example, before they started making any money, right, and they really worked at that they create a YouTube channel, they put content out there. And naturally, everyone tends to think that I have to put a bunch of content out there to really make money. Whereas there are so many different business models out there that involve no branding whatsoever to make millions of dollars online, something as out there as like selling websites and flipping that or flipping digital real estate or e commerce if you can use paid ads for or agency business models like myself that really involve more of an ABM strategy, which is more account based marketing, which is in traditional marketing, you have a bunch of traffic that comes in. And you can look at it like a pyramid like the normal funnel that you see right here, the top, mid and bottom. And for the top of funnel, it’s about just throwing content out there, whether it’s organically or paid, trying to bring people in to the second level where you can nurture them on an email or in your DMS or a phone call or millions of different ways to nurture people just putting content out there, whatever. And then from there, taking them to bottom of funnel where you then try to go for a close or try to convert them into a customer or try to bring them up the value ladder of possibly buying a lower ticket item go into a higher one. Well, there’s so many business models that rely on the other side of that which is more account based, which is you take a targeted approach. And it’s more of a proactive approach versus a reactive one. And if you take a proactive approach, things like cold email and things like a podcast, for example, is an excellent tool to be able to create a speed dating environment for relationships we can get clients in I mean, there’s so many different ways that you can take that are more proactive to make money online just as much as there are reactive ways, if that makes sense.
Katie Brinkley 8:29
It really does. And, you know, I think that what you said to I want to make sure that everyone really heard what you said, because I think that a lot of people think that they need to have hundreds of 1000s of followers on social media in order to make sales and that, you know, you can have 500 followers and make just as many sales as somebody that has 5000 or 50,000. If you have the right strategy. Now, you brought up podcasting. And I’m really glad that you did because podcasting doesn’t just need to be for marketers. I think that a lot of marketers see the benefits of having a podcast. But a lot of business owners really can have their own podcast to elevate their brand and their business. Can you talk to us a little bit about how we could use podcast as part of our business strategy?
Omar Mo 9:19
Sure. So I want to put this right away, I think you have if you have any sort of either a b2b business or medium to high ticket business, you are missing out on 1000s, if not hundreds of 1000s of dollars by not having a podcast. And there’s a simple reason why for that, and then I’ll touch on the branding aspect of it too. But the why to have a podcast for b2b and for higher to mid ticket. It’s because you can sit down with your ideal buyer persona and have a conversation with them. Where you start with a value first ask instead of trying to do a sales call, build a relationship with that person so that by the end of it they know like and trust you you Martin valuable marketing insights. And then at the end of that, you can try to push the relationship further on to where you either do a consultative sell or close in some other way. And you can get a lot of business just from using your podcast as a utility there. That’s a direct way of doing it, right? It’s very proactive, and it’s quite easy to leverage because especially in 2021, everyone’s used to having conversations online, in digitally. So it’s, it’s quite organic, and people love coming on podcast, right. So always give them a reason to show off their brand a little bit more to now, I even good go far as far as to say all b2b businesses should have a daily podcast. That way, you can have 30 of your ideal buyers a month coming on your podcast, and just being able to talk to them and possibly close deals as well. Now, on the branding side of it, a podcast is a pillar content, right. And for your audience who doesn’t know what pillar content is, it’s basically a base piece of content that can be repurposed and created into a bunch of other pieces of content for all your social media platforms, and to really have an omnipresent strategy across all your socials. If you have that pillar content, whether it’s a YouTube video or a podcast, it can help immensely with search ability and exposure for your brand and business across all platforms. So if you take a podcast, it’s literally the easiest one, I think, even easier than YouTube, by far, because YouTube involves video editing, and lots of scripting and things like that. Whereas podcasts are organic pieces of content that you’re just having a conversation with, somebody else might take an hour to record and then pick, then you can cut it up and use it the same way that you would a YouTube video when you cut up that and there’s just a lot less editing that goes into it too. So you can use a podcast is that pillar content to really give a lot of exposure to your brand as well. And then finally, and I think in 2021, the growing your own podcast is you can do it. It takes a lot of elbow grease to be able to grow your podcast and relying on other platforms will make your podcast grow faster. However, I think if you come into the podcasting space thinking, hey, I want to directly monetize my podcast with sponsorships and things like that. I just don’t think that’s the right way of looking at it at this point in time,
Katie Brinkley 12:06
you know, and you spoke to something that I think that a lot of businesses try to do, but they sometimes fail. And that is repurposing content that you spoke to the podcast being that pillar. So let’s say now, it’s actually great that you You and I are having our recording today because I just wrapped up a clubhouse room all about promoting your podcast on Instagram. And just the different ways that you can take that podcast and repurpose the content. How would you help someone take their podcast and repurpose it so they have enough content to maybe push out the rest of the week? Let’s say someone is like, Omar, I have a podcast today that sounds like a lot of work. I could maybe do one a week, how would you help them take their one podcast a week with their ideal client or customer and then repurpose it on social media?
Omar Mo 12:55
Right. So I would tell them first of all, to focus on the highest ROI things which on Instagram is Instagram reels on Tick Tock and YouTube shorts because 2021 is the year of vertical video. And there’s currently a kind of a war going on between these three platforms on trying to keep the user attention on their platform. Hence why they’re throwing out so much free traffic and organic traffic that we kind of haven’t seen since probably 2012 when Instagram was released to the end consumer to try to keep them on their own platform. And if you were to take your podcast and not even create any feed posts or stories or anything like that, even just as simply as cut up like seven nine by 16 vertical video clips from your podcast, which is easily you can easily do that from an 30 minute hour long podcast, you will have enough content to repost on those three platforms once daily. So essentially seven posts on Instagram reels that week, seven posts on tik tok and seven posts on YouTube shorts that week. I think that’s the highest ROI activity that someone could take right now in terms of repurposing.
Katie Brinkley 14:00
Yeah, and I think that you hit the nail right on the head, though, when you said that those three guys are kind of battling it out to see who’s going to win. And vertical video is everything 15 to 32nd video that people can hold right in their phone. That is what the battle is right now. So I love that. And I think that it’s so true, because I think that a lot of businesses might still just be posting a picture to the feed. And that’s one way to get your message out there. But you do have to try and hit these different ways that people consume content, right? Unless Omar said right now vertical video, is it. So you do need to try and hit all these different ways to get in front of your ideal client and customers. And if you can get the one in front of them with the way that they’re pushing out organic reach the most. Absolutely take that opportunity. So I was gonna ask you, go ahead. Go ahead.
Omar Mo 14:49
No, I was just saying that’s right. You’re hitting it right there. That’s perfectly perfectly said.
Katie Brinkley 14:54
So, you know, I do think too, like we had the opportunity again, you work with a lot of remote work. Record. And it can be, I think that a lot of businesses have a hard time kind of really accepting, like a remote team a remote VA to be a part of their team. How would you tell them? or What advice would you give them to that this really is a good investment for them to have a remote VA or to have a remote team for different aspects of their business that they might think that they might need to keep in house,
Omar Mo 15:25
I believe a remote team is a no brainer, especially if your job can be done remote. Now, construction, things like that naturally can’t be done remote. But if you have any job that can be done remote period, it is a no brainer. One, you’re going to be saving overhead costs, right? So it costs money to actually keep people in a building and actually have bathrooms and have all sorts of different things like that, where power all that keep the electricity you have to there’s so many different costs that go into keeping people in house right. So that’s the first thing. Second of all, people tend to think that you can’t build culture in when you whenever you have a remote team. And I don’t believe that at all, I have a fully remote team of 10 people and we have a very strong culture going in where people are friends with each other, and they talk to each other all the time. We have there are tools out there right now that the internet software, things like that, that the world offers that can really create strong culture within your team. And there are new tools being made every single day to help that. So it to me, it seems like a no brainer to really not have a remote team. Plus, there’s a whole minimalist side of it too, right. So whenever you have it in person, especially if you’re new, or even, like a new ish business owner for three, five years, however long you’ve been a business owner, you will not have the flexibility of being able to go where you want or do what you want. And a lot of people when they start their business is for some sort of freedom, right? Whether it’s financial freedom, or locational, freedom, some sort of freedom they start their business for, you won’t have that freedom. If you’re stuck in house with employees, you’ll need to be there every single day, you won’t be able to remove yourself from the business nearly as easily unless you hire an operations person for sure, who runs the day to day there. And even then you’ll have to show up to the office yourself in emergency situations, right. Whereas I can pop up in my zoom, I can send one of my team members a loom saying hey, I need this done, and then pop on them or get on zoom with them. 30 minutes later, get something taken care of and then get out right, it’s just so much more flexible to so flexibility, freedom, good culture, and less overhead is all possible with a remote team.
Katie Brinkley 17:31
I love it. And I big advocate too, I have a VA and I have a couple remote team members. And it’s true, you can have that team that culture, you can still have the effect of workers and I’m a big proponent for remote workers as well. So I mean, this kind of I feel like you alluded to earlier. But you know, one passion that so many businesses have is to build a business around their lifestyle. So it’s not the other way around. They want to have the freedom to come and go as they please. That’s why they decided to start their own business. How has that played out in your story and approach to running your business?
Omar Mo 18:07
I mean, that’s been everything that’s been my Northern Star since the beginning, right? Whenever I started my business, the entire The idea behind it was to always do it in a way that’s locationally independent and in a way that I can remove myself from the business. And that’s then through delegation, automation, and elimination, right? And that those aren’t my words, those are from somebody that one of the people whose content I consume Ravi ovalo. It’s automation, elimination, and delegation, right. So you want to be delegating things as soon as possible to other people. So you’re able to remove yourself from the business, even if that means cutting your margins a little bit because then you can focus more on growth. You want to be automating things that make sense to automate is automate first and then delegate. So things like Zapier things, like any sort of IFTTT is anything that you can do that makes the entire process a lot smoother, and saves you valuable minutes here and there, which really add up in the long run, and then eliminate anything that doesn’t need to be done right. So a lot of business owners when they first start, they want to offer 10 or 15 different things. And that really slows the business down unless you really refine onto one service offering to help one niche group of people, which then you can create slps and systems for and repeat over and over again, and then really remove yourself from the business that way. Does that answer your question?
Katie Brinkley 19:25
Yeah, I think that that is it’s so true. And I think that that is one of the biggest things for me when I decided to start my business was to have that freedom and that flexibility. But it wasn’t until I started delegating that I saw my business really grow and I think that it’s so true the stuff that you can delegate out the stuff that you can automate those that’s when you’re going to start seeing the needle move. And I know when also when I started I tried to be a Jill of all trades. I was doing WordPress websites, and I was writing blogs and emails and I was doing everything from the online standpoint. It wasn’t until I took a step back I was like so Social media is what I’m best at is what I’m most passionate about. That’s when I really started to see that my business grow. So I absolutely love that advice. I think it is something that a lot of people need to hear and maybe take in because it can be hard, it can be hard to be like, Oh, well, then I’d be losing less of my income if I pay someone else to do that. So I love that Omar, and I think it is very, very true. So you know that I was gonna say, what is the best piece of advice that you’ve ever received? And how has that impacted your journey, but I feel like you kind of gave us started giving us some some great tips there with the delegation, automation and elimination tips that you just put up put out
Omar Mo 20:36
to put in aren’t even a bigger or more outward level, to get the focus off more granular things, just, there’s this book that I’ve been reading called the slight edge. And I would say that this book that I’ve read, I’m still in the middle of reading it. But I would say, out of all the books I’ve ever read, this one’s probably the most life changing book. Simple, and it’s a very, it’s a very basic concept, right, the concept behind the book is do more of what works. And essentially, the way it talks about it, the way it portrays that ideal in the book is that you have three lines and on the top line, you have a success in the middle line is surviving. And then the bottom line is failure. And I think human beings, whether it’s in business, or finances, or relationships, or health and fitness, wherever you look, are constantly teeter tottering between the survival survival line and the failure line. So anytime they start going towards the failure line, they start realizing Oh, crap, like I’m about to fail, I need to kick it up a notch and it started going towards survivability, right. And they whenever they start seeing a little bit of success, they touch that survivability line, they self sabotage themselves and start going back towards the failure line. It happens all the time. It’s this constant, vicious cycle that people are stuck in. But they realize that they just put in a little bit more effort and they just consistently continuously did the same thing that was working for them before just more of it. Over time. You’re going to hit success in a way that you never thought you’d be able to hit.
Katie Brinkley 22:06
Omar. I love that. Man. What a great final thought to end our show on. This has been such a great conversation. I’ve really enjoyed having you on here and I’m so thankful that clubhouse has brought us together. How can our listeners get in touch with you and learn more about you and your business online?
Omar Mo 22:23
Sure, you can get in touch with me on Instagram at no mandibles and oh ma d a b l e s or you can go on my website nomads cast calm and oh ma DS CST. As you can see, there’s a strong nomadic theme and everything.
Katie Brinkley 22:39
I love it. Well, thank you again so much for coming on the show today. So many great tips I’ve really enjoyed having you on and I really appreciate you taking the time.
Omar Mo 22:48
Absolutely. Thanks for having me on. Katie.
Katie Brinkley 22:52
Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Rocky Mountain marketing. As always, I’d love to hear from you. You can visit my website at https://www.nextstepsocialcommunications.com/ connect with me on LinkedIn or check me out on Instagram. Let’s keep taking your marketing to new heights.