Sara Connell
Appearances
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
But you see someone, again, we're in the book space, right? And as a way to build the brand and thought leadership and revenue. And there's these younger... Sometimes on YouTube, I've seen a lot at the end of last year, they'd say, just let AI write your book in an hour and make $100,000 a month on book sales. I'm like, that is complete... I'm sorry. No.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
First of all, there's nothing in that book anyone wants. It's just not... The internet can only... ChatGPT can only pull what's already been written and by its very nature, then that book is not going to be like, unless it's a super basic how to, you know, manual, of course. But like that, there's no way you're doing a hundred K on book sales. I think I just have real suspicion.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
I think a lot of us have our version of suspicion about those things. Now we say, I want to see like the real things. You're going to hear people doing more like what Alex Ramosi calls W's and L's like the wins and losses.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
It's like the more vlog style, which is what we're doing a lot more of now, which is like, I'm going to take you on this journey of, you know, here's all the things that didn't work. And I'm going to show you the total fail and the, you know, not in like that boring, like, oh, my weakest, you know, my weakness is that I'm a perfectionist.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
Not that crap, but like really going, I'm pulling my hair out. This sucks. I'm embarrassed. this didn't work.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
I I'm scared about money because we launched and it didn't work in a way, but you know, like that's actually going to, I think create connection and trust as long as you still, of course can, you know, figured it out and give people the results versus before it was like, it was just fun to watch the show.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
Exactly. Entertainment. And would you buy from them is the question. And maybe you would, maybe you wouldn't, but a lot, especially for something like really high ticket, it's like, Ooh, I may not be signing up for that mentor if I don't think it, but I will definitely keep watching. Cause it's candy. It's fun.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
I think there's a couple key reasons, and I want to cave to it all the time, so that's why I'm just going to cop to it, right? Wouldn't we just love to say, if I just do my YouTube videos like this, Hook, what I'm going to deliver, call to action, you know, like, wouldn't that be nice?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
First of all, it's exhausting to think about with one more, all the stuff that we do as entrepreneurs and to think about, oh, and I've got to innovate a whole framework now. Like I can't even, it's enough to film the content with a template. that you've already done, right? Or do a DM in the kind of normal way, right?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
So the idea of innovation, it takes a lot more energy and we're already kind of tapped, right? So I think one is that. The second is it does require creative thinking. And in our world right now, I don't know about you, Ryan, like I feel like I have to fight for my own white space. I know, who am I fighting? Myself. It's my own crap, right? If it's okay to swear on this show, I didn't ask, right?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
But like, I... It takes white space, meaning thinking time, whatever we want to call it, visionary time, creative time, CEO time. That is space that we often, we've got this going all the time. We have a 2.9 second attention span. That's the stat of the average attention span right now in 2025.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
And so to actually get into a state where we are accessing new ideas and being innovative and creative is actually asking a lot of ourselves, right? So I think there's a, there's a, an undertow of just, oh my God, this is going to be, you know, tiring. It's going to take more time. It's going to, the fruits will be so phenomenal and it's so worth it. But I even know this.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
I mean, I, you know, teach creativity. We're creating creative thought leader assets. And I, I, I know how hard it is to do it, even when I know how valuable and crucial it is. Right. So if you're not even sure and you're just going, well, I'm going to use the templates. So I think it's the fatigue. It's the it's the also the fear. Like we're afraid. What if I can't innovate something?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
What if I'm not original? What if I don't have any creative ideas, right? That that's a real freaking fear that we can feel like, do I have creative ideas after just derivative rinse and repeat, you know, to sort of grab something. I mean, if you have to think of new concepts and film a day of videos, that's a big ask.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
Right. So I'll just, you know, I always experiment on myself. Right. And it's like, I'm the first one to say like, Oh God, you know, I have a creative idea ever. So a couple of hacks, I'm a big neuroscience person. So I love tapping in. So one of the things that I'm really big fan of is brain priming. If anyone's heard that term, right. We, it comes from neuro-linguistic programming.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
There's different modalities. And the idea is that everyone, I mean, Picasso said, you know, every child is born an artist. We are all creative. We all have access to what's called the genius zone. Right. I believe that about every human being. There is no exception in my mind, like having, you know, been in this work and I just I know that that's true. I believe it's true.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
So then the question is, how do we tap in? So, yeah, we can't control if we get a good idea at the end of the four hours. That's the rub. But you are going to get good ideas. If you keep making the space, the ideas are going to come. You're going to get that inspiration. I call them the downloads, right? You're going to get these downloads. But how do we brain prime ourselves?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
So one of the things I think you can start the night before, there's many different studies about you can ask your subconscious mind before going to bed. You could say, you know, while I'm asleep, give me some cool ideas for content creation or my book or, you know, email marketing. And, and really just start to prime your brain at night to work on it while you go to sleep.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
And I even go to sleep listening to, you know, different, you can get up free on YouTube, different hypnosis, meditation, things that I'll fall asleep to binaural beats. You know, there's all kinds of really cool stuff. It's all free. You know, you can just listen to that stuff. So you are really training your subconscious mind who has all the goodies, right. You know, to, to offer those up.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
And it's not that I wake up every morning, like, Oh, writing down, but throughout the day, they'll just start popping in. They'll start coming in the shower is another way. They call it the shower principle for a reason. You know, you're sitting there shampooing your hair. And, but I use that time very strategically. Like I'll sit there and really say, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to tap in.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
you know, to, to like, I'm going to let that be some white space instead of, you know, having a fight with whoever in your head or, you know, whatever other stuff where the mind might go. But then there's even, I record these for all of our clients, but you can, you can use different binaural beats to get into the genius zone simply as two brainwaves.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
You want to hit alpha and theta at the same time. We've seen pictures of that probably. And so just making that, that can be habit stacking. You know, again, we can have alpha theta stuff on while we're making breakfast or getting dressed and you're just getting the brain, you know, as primed as possible to get those ideas.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
I am downloading that the minute we get off this interview, I, cause I'm obsessed with all my little, you know, cause we record them. Like I have, you know, I still like put it to the music and we'll do ones for creativity, for thought leadership, for content create.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
I mean, you're exactly right because we can create a genius state in our, so we think it sort of happens sometimes wait to get inspired, but there's so much we can do. And then I think just really reminding ourselves, this is the mindset piece, right? It's just saying like, I write down every day. This is going to sound, this is very embarrassing. I don't think I've ever confessed this anywhere.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
So it's just coming. I'm going to say it. I write down, I do morning pages, like journaling in the morning. And it's just sort of free writing, getting all your stuff out. And I write down, I'm a creative genius.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
Every single day I write it out and you know, that can sound whatever, but the point is I'm reminding myself, like I have the ability to tap in to the same mind that tapped through Steve jobs and, you know, name your favorite genius, your Einstein, like, like that. like quantum physics has shown, like there's a field, right? We can tap into it.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
And so I think just reminding ourselves of that and getting, and then getting excited for the treasure hunt, you know, when does that nudge, like you said, I'm going to get down and watch this floor because that very Zen, like chop wood, carry water is going to bring in the ideas.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
And what I love, like you said, so many people remember my husband was just like, oh, the secret. I mean, there's just like it just made fun of it was just the work because, again, it didn't give the science. Right. And that's fine because now lots of people have. But what's really fun is even knowing because I think our rational brain wants to it needs to make sense of this.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
kind of thing instead of just thinking oh i'm in the shower saying i'm a creative genius what the hell is that going to do but the reticular activating system is even the part of the brain and it's like a dog that will fetch whatever toy you throw so if we throw the toy of like i'm overwhelmed i'm tired i'm broke that's what the secret was kind of trying to get at then it's not that it's doing some magical thing i mean even though it feels kind of fun and magic it's that
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
are we filter out 90% of everything that comes across our radar. We have to, because we're in, we get like hundreds of thousands of impressions constantly bombarding. So our brain has to filter out most of it. And then what we do, if we're conscious of it is we tell the reticular activating system, which is the filter, right? what to go look for.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
Like you said, if we say, go look for creativity, it's going to suddenly like, Oh my gosh, I feel so creative. Or you get invited to do a class or someone recommends a book and it's really inspiring versus like, Oh, I'm exhausted. I don't have time. You know, like it's, it's going to fetch whatever we feed it. It's just, it's just, that's what it does. It doesn't judge it.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
It doesn't think if it's good for us, it just says, I'll go get the bone you throw me. That's what we're doing.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
No, but I'm going to have an app and a book now.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
It's so exciting. Right. And this is what they talk about neuroplasticity. That's what is everything's revisable. And I love what you're saying, too. Do you know, even it goes a step further, which is which is so fascinating to me that our immune system, I think it was Deepak Chopra who first said this. So I want to, again, always give credit. Our immune system is eavesdropping.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
Whatever thoughts we're running all the time, our immune system, our longevity, like you're sort of, so our health or how long we're going to be on this planet, our finances, our happiness level, our influence or impact or success, whatever, you know, we want to call that piece. It's eavesdrop. Like, so your physical body is eavesdropping and getting the cues for how it should be in.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
Like you said, physicality. fit. You know, there's people that have struggled. I can't lose weight. I can't, you know, all this stuff. And then suddenly start working with this piece. And it's like, I didn't even try. One of our team members released 52 pounds in the last six months, like not. And she's like, I didn't go to Weight Watchers.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
I didn't, I mean, she did change her movement and her food, But it came from that level of identity, which is what you're talking about. So who do we associate and what do we associate as me? And she started associating as a fit, healthy, strong, you know, amazing, powerful woman that was, you know, and it wasn't people like, what did you do? Are you on Ozempic?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
Yeah, I think, you know, it's very easy to be reactive, right? It's very easy to sort of say, Oh, you know, what's going on in the world and what's happening in the economy. And there's, you know, we're at a certain as, as of the recording of this episode, there's just a lot of churn, a lot of uncertainty.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
She said, no, I didn't take anything. I just, you know, she had a new, she had a new idea. She was running a different program. And that's what you're saying. We run a different program. And that's what's so cool. This is available to all of us. It's here.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
I love this so much because we did it. We did a webinar once on is a book worth it. Right. And obviously, you know, it's like a book saved my life 20 something years ago. So for me, I've got a whole history with that. And, you know, paying that gift forward. That was my vow.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
Yeah. It's like, you know, just knowing that, that that was one of those, like we have these mission moments, you know, in our lives. Right. But here's, what's fascinating because you would think in a, I said earlier, a 2.9 second attention span world, why the hell would someone write a book?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
So I'm gonna, I'm gonna just, there's a lot of reasons, but I'm gonna give the three that are most important to me in this year, just for 2025. So the first thing is so fascinating is that the human brain, cause you know, I care about this stuff, can process in 1.8 seconds. They see your book cover, your name, your topic. So under the attention span barrier, that 2.9 seconds,
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
The human brain will process, oh, Ryan's the expert on this. He has my solution. We give authority, whether that's deserved or not, because there's plenty of crappy books. But like, you know, we think someone knows what it is. They have a system. So if you're unknown, the reason to do a book is that it's a flag in the ground in your niche and in your industry to say, I've got my unique take.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
on this piece. And I have a solution. And because of this trust issue, we talked about someone's going to get the ZMOT moment with you. You know, they're going to have that time and that intimacy because you took a time and you couldn't just whip out a video for one second on Facebook. It's like a freaking book, right? So, so that's one thing.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
Then what's fascinating is at the beginning of this year, I think Eckhart Tolle re-released a book with Oprah, Martha Beck, Mel Robbins, and Gabby Bernstein. If people know those particular thought leaders, They all did January books. And these are all women who've had multiple New York times bestsellers. They make many millions of dollars a year.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
And so I think that while people can feel like, Oh, what a drag, you know, you hear things like buyers, you know, clients are hesitant. They're scared to make investments. They're the trust recession has happened, right? Like there's this break in trust that people feel in themselves and in leadership and, at all kinds of things, right?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
They don't, it's not like they, their household names to many people in certain circles and personal growth. So it's like, why another one, right? This isn't even the first book, but it gives them a reason to go on all the shows and all the podcasts and be booked as the keynote speaker for their six figures that they're speaking fee commands.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
because the research is 80% of the time people that get invited on a media outlet, a podcast, a keynote stage, have released a book in the last year, right? Sometimes it can be longer than that, but it's so people keep writing them, whether you're really established or you're brand new, because it's a door opener to the visibility and the ability to get back and be relevant.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
So that top of mind awareness we hear about, like people will invest in one of the three people that last crossed their radar, right? How do we maintain top of mind awareness? The book still has gravitas. It still does no matter, even there's so many books, but it still does have this, this ability to say there's something new, something big.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
You've got a reason to go out and be visible and be top of mind again.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
And when I listen to people who've been around a lot longer than I have, and I'm not like a newbie to the world by any means, I've been, you know, coaching and being an entrepreneur for, you know, over 15, almost 20 years. And there's people who have, you know, decades more than I do. And when I listen to them, what I love is they say,
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
It's this year. It's going to be the micro to, to get someone intrigued. And then it's long form. Long form is King queen, wherever you want to call it long form, long form, but we need, you know, the micro is important, but the middle form, it's like just almost, I mean, no one, like you said, a sub stocks big, you know, there are different things going on.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
And, and I still think the shorts like in a moose boosh, you know, a little order of us on YouTube or something is worth, cutting the podcast that you already made, picking a nugget, a good soundbite, you know, having that short, but then the long form is everything right now. Yeah.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
Yeah, definitely. I'm a big YouTube fan. So certainly DM me on Instagram, just at Sarah Connell and I'm S-A-R-A-C-O-N-N-E-L-L. I know I don't have an H on Sarah and then, but our YouTube channel, we're doing a lot of cool stuff over there.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
And I don't know if you all have heard this, how YouTube is going to soon have what it was like in Facebook in the beginning, where you can really build community and have almost more like what Facebook groups that's coming soon on YouTube this year. And so it's at Thought Leader Media is where we are over there.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
every single situation we're in is an opportunity right we all hear that it's like find the gift and everything like really what if we believe that what if we practice that and so what i'm really excited about for 2025 is saying like what does this particular moment call us forth to become masterful in
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
Thanks, Ryan.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
If we've got to dig deep, if people are taking longer to buy, then how do we become masterful at building trust and playing the long game? Maybe as before, we've gotten really good at the mid game or the short game. And if people are feeling a trust break and a trust recession, how do we create a trust ascension?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
And so I think that the people who are going to, you know, win as in, you know, be fulfilling and make an impact and make profitable, you know, big numbers this year and things like that are going to be leaders who are willing to get really resourceful, get excited, even if we have to fake it, because sometimes I do, but like actually say, cool, like,
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
What what am I going to learn here and get to become really masterful? Because one thing is for sure that creativity and innovation do not come out of the comfort zone. They don't come out of like the in general. They don't really come out of the thriving economy either. It's usually when it's hard and or challenging. And I don't think this is only hard and challenging of a time.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
I'm having a great year and it's and it's wonderful. And there is a lot of people are just really in it, like they're just in a lot of feelings and overwhelm. So I think this is an exciting time.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
Yes. OK, well, I love it because this has been luckily, again, in our business, we've seen it less. And but a lot of people are either trying something new or in certain, I think, people who are running courses, things that have a less like relational aspect. So I think the first thing, is there a trust recession? Yes. In some industries. And it's again, it's not just, oh, Inc.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
magazine came out and said 94 percent of consumers right now don't trust ads. Like just don't trust like Facebook ads, television ads, you know, whatever it might be. There are trust breaks with people. They either feel like even influencers like that was such a movement for a long time. And I'll share something in a minute that I think is going to be really big for this year.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
That's sort of a cousin of the influencer and a way to overcome some of these. So whether you're experiencing it or you're not there, we can all agree. People do feel uncertain and it's harder to make decisions when they feel nervous about whether it's political, economic, whatever it is. So what I think we want to recognize is like leaning into that.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
Like I said, instead of being afraid and going kind of bunker mentality, like I'll ride this out till people want to invest more. It's like, what's really the opportunity? And I think a couple of things to create from a recession to an ascension. One is looking at how to be relational versus transactional. I think a big thing that happened last year, if 2024 had been sponsored by something like
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
It would have been like sponsored by AI, right? Like it was like the year, you know, and, and AI is awesome. There's so many cool things and ways to play with it. But what I personally, just a choice don't have it replace is real human contact. Like even in our marketing, even in, I write all my own books. I write, you know, it's like, I write my own emails because people can feel the difference.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
They really can. You can, you can make perplexity and Claude and chat GPT. You could do a lot of stuff. But like people know when it's a robot and when it's a real person.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
And so I think that people are willing to say, I know it's going to take longer and cost more, but there is like, so I think focusing on relationship versus transactional, but then using AI for automation, you know, using AI for systems and many different things. So I think like, but where does it make sense to be relational?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
It's going to go a really, really long way when there was this, you know, like sense of, of, I don't want to be with a computer. I don't want to be at the robot. Right. I think another, another opportunity is going to be how we can show people, people are investing, not just in the product or result anymore, but they want to trust the person behind it.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
So what you're going to see, I believe, is a lot of leaders, CEOs, entrepreneurs doing like what we're doing, having real long form unscripted conversations instead of just being behind a logo. So, right. You're going to see the seven Senate gave a famous viral TED talk a few years ago called many of you know it. It was about people don't buy what you do. They buy why you do it.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
And I think in 2025, people aren't going to buy why we do it. They're going to buy who they're buying from.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
And so really the importance of personal brand, the importance of being seen from behind, like people having a relationship and inside glance to things like our values and things we care about, even beyond the actual service that we provide or the niche that we're in is going to be a really powerful way to create that trust ascension. And then there's something called the ZMOT.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
Like I love nerdy stuff. So... You might know this, Ryan, a lot of you listening might know it's like the zero moment of truth. It basically says, right, you know, how people make a purchasing decision. So the way to build trust is to give people the 7-11-4, which are the coordinates of the ZMOT, zero moment of truth.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
So that's, you know, you know, the seven hours of interactive time, which is why long form unscripted or books or audio books or podcasts are so important. You know, the 11 different touch points and then four different places. So that's interesting, too, because if you're like, I'm always on LinkedIn. you know, being on multiple platforms.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
So people feel the sense of you being around you, you know, that omnipresence effect that we hear in marketing. So I think those are some of the things, but the really cool one that I'm obsessed with this year is called user generated content. So some of you may, you know, already, you know, think about this a lot, but Whereas an influencer or in an ad, it's very clear.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
Someone's being paid to market something, to promote something. We all know what that is. They can still work. But user generated content is where people who are like using your thing, your method, your book, your product in an organic way in their own lives and and creating content from that. So the big example that happened recently was the Philadelphia Eagles. I think it's the wide receiver.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
A.J. Johnson was reading or A.J. Brown was reading a book on the sidelines of the Super Bowl playoff game. And it caught CNN and all the people, what are you bored? Like, why are you reading a book on the sidelines of a Super Bowl? And he said, this book is what I use to get in the game. This book is what I use to get my mind right, to show up and make the key plays and get us to the Superbowl.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
So the book, you know, Jim Murphy's book went viral. It came out in like 2018, you know, the revised, but I've been talking with Jim a little bit about this because it's so, it's so cool as a book person, you know, it's what we do help people, you know, write books that help them do this.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
And so, so having someone using your thing in their real life to achieve in a result, I think is going to be one of those like Absolutely, it's going to skip the trust recession and build right to trust.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
Well, that's so interesting, right? I don't know as much that it's the tribe or the community, but now I'm going to give that a lot of thought because now I actually want to look at that and do some research and data on that. What I'm seeing it more is, you know, before it was really curated, you know, it was sort of like, I'm going to show sort of the dream life.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
And I still think you're going to have that. It's like showing people that like what they could be or what they want. I think that's still crucially important. But sort of if we're making a Venn diagram, I think that that Venn diagrams with people like more real talk.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
That's what I meant, like sort of the unscripted instead of just the perfectly filtered photographs, like really real, like more unvarnished, like the less like I'm going to show you my beautiful kitchen where nothing's out of place and showing the mess and not in a way that's like distracting.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
But it's like, yes, it's the dream and the result that you're going to get from this product program service. But it's also like, is this a real person or is this some kind of BS that someone because I think, again, that trust that trust meter is really high. Like people signed up for things and they kind of sucked, you know? So who is this person?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
So I think it's more for me, I think it's less who we're surrounding ourselves with and following and more, do we have integrity and do we, are we the real deal? And what is the real deal for each of us? You know, cause values, some people value, here's my Lamborghini and my jet and my, you know, and like, that can be really like exciting and sexy and cool.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
And other people value, like, I want to know you're not going to like sign me up for your thing and then not show up. And you, you know, you have a good, you talk a good game at the front, but the fulfillment's crap.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Branding Expert Reveals the Secret to Business Success in 2025 - Sara Connell
And so more stories, that's why I think the stories of people using the thing or doing the thing matter a lot more to people because they want like a real peek behind the curtain, not the perfect marketing.