Welcome to Season 2, Episode 22 of Meet the Expert® with Elliot Kallen!
In this episode, Elliot Kallen brings on Adam Torres, a Media Executive at Mission Matters, to discuss media marketing and his newest book series featuring Elliot, Mission Matters: World’s Leading Entrepreneurs Reveal Their Top Tips To Success (Business Leaders Vol.5 – Edition 8).
Elliot H. Kallen
Author, Wealth manager, registered principal
Elliot brings over 25 years of entrepreneurial business ownership insight to this book series. He provides an unparalleled insight into the world of finance, marketing, and motivation. Elliot has been awarded twice in International Who’s Who of Professionals, received the Ronald Reagan Gold Medal Award, and was named 2003 Business Man of the Year by the Business Advisory Council of the National Republican Congressional Committee. He also serves on several boards for nonprofit and philanthropic organizations.
Meet Our Guest
Adam Torres
Author, Speaker, Host, Media Executive, Mission Matters
Adam Torres is Co-Founder of Mission Matters Media, a media and publishing company dedicated to the needs of business owners, entrepreneurs, and executives. Adam’s clientele has included over 1,000 business owners and he has advised families with a cumulative net worth exceeding 500 million dollars. Adam’s success in publishing books and using them to brand and build his wealth management practice has led him to a new mission, to help other business owners, entrepreneurs and executives further their businesses by becoming published authors.
What is the mission of Mission Matters?
Elliot Kallen: Today is exciting, and it’s different! We are speaking with the Co-founder of Mission Matters, Adam Torres: a podcaster, blogger, and branding expert. Let’s talk about what Mission Matter does.
Adam Torres: First off, thank you for having me on your show, Meet the Expert®. I was excited to publish your work and bring your message to our audience.
At Mission Matters, we amplify stories for business owners, experts, and entrepreneurs. We want to make sure stories that need to be told are told and have a voice that carries them further.
Elliot Kallen: What does it mean to be a blogger and writer at Mission Matters, and can you tell us about your success there?
Adam Torres: One thing we all know is that it’s hard to break through the noise of media these days. It’s not getting any easier. I’ve personally recorded over 4,000 episodes. I host eight shows. As a company, we’ve published over 200 authors now. On our website, we’ve put out over 30,000 pieces of content over four years. Creating content is at the heart of everything we do.
What advice would you give to business owners and entrepreneurs?
Elliot Kallen: Let’s focus on a word you mention often, “content.” I like to think of content as the steak and potatoes, the real substance of what you’re doing. In the financial industry, there are some very confident people, but they are starving to death because they don’t know how to get their message out.
Many entrepreneurs have the same problem. They have a great core competency and are excellent at what they do, but they cant reach more people. How can they get that message out, that sizzle? What tools are available to them?
Adam Torres: In all fairness, it’s hard to create content and get your message heard. I’ll be upfront. I couldn’t do it initially. Those who have seen my past shows, know I come from a financial advisory background. I was in that business for 14 years. So, I had to make a choice and dedicate myself to one side.
Top Tips
- Discover what you already enjoy doing
- Decide what your platform is
- Decide where you’re going to be in the content creation process
- Create content every single day!
Whether you like getting in front of a camera, writing, or speaking, it’s about maximizing your time so you can do what you do best. From platform to hiring to time management, there are a lot of decisions to be made.
The most important tip, however, is to create, create, create!
When you wake up five years from now, you can’t just snap your fingers and create it then. Your competitor has years of content in their catalog by that time. Something to think about.
“Every day that goes by without creating content is a day you’re falling behind on your competition, the industry, and the times.”
What is the difference between content, advertising, and public relations?
Elliot Kallen: I would love for people to look at the content we’ve created at our Prosperity Financial Group blog and our 401(k) blog. There is some terrific information on there, but there is a gray line between content, advertising, and PR. How do you perceive the differences?
Adam Torres: Now, all of those are under the umbrella of content. Everything is integrated now. Let’s say you have a traditional ad campaign. That campaign can be steered across social media, blog posts, videos, or podcasts. An engagement campaign is now created for your audience. Now you can take that press release and repurpose it to create content in multiple forms.
“Gone are the days where you just do a press release, it goes out to the wires, and that’s it.”
- If your audience wants paper, you have a book published
- If they want to read online, you have a blog
- If they want to listen, you have a podcast
“The point is you’re meeting your audience where they are instead of forcing them to go somewhere else.”
How do you grow an audience, and what can you expect from the process?
Elliot Kallen: Typically we get five to 10,000 thousand viewers on my Meet the Expert® show which is pretty good numbers. How can we grow from a few thousand to a few million? What can we expect from the time frame?
Adam Torres: In terms of time and platform, it’s different for everyone. It can take longer now, as organic reach on platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn has gone down significantly. Organic reach means the number of people who see your post without any paid distribution.
Based on how the algorithms have changed, less and less of your posts reach people and now you have to pay to increase that number. The same holds true for podcasts. In response, you have to be thoughtful in terms of where you’re sharing it and the audience you want to hear it. I’d rather have 5,000 listeners who want to hear my message, rather than 100,000 that are disengaged or not in my target market.
“It’s not a sprint. It’s a marathon.
Focus on the community and that one engaging audience member.
The bigger connection you have with them the better.”
We can learn a lesson from the great musicians in history that treated every fan like they were number one, the fans that stood at the meet and greet. The keyword is consistency. One day you’ll wake up and say, “Wow! Where did this audience come from?”
“The fact that somebody listens to you and gives you their attention, that’s an honor.”
Top Tips
- Respect and reciprocate the relationship with fans
- Engage and reply consistently
- Focus on one fan at a time
The keyword is consistency. One day you’ll wake up and say, “Wow! Where did this audience come from?”
How can I stay authentic to my character when producing content?
Elliot Kallen: We are people who believe in our firm. I personally believe that character counts. It’s an old throwback that doesn’t mean as much as it once did, but it still does to me.
“Character counts. Ethics and personal credibility count.”
Your word is your bond, and my word is my bond. I’m a big fan of that. How does someone get that message out?
Adam Torres: If you’re on a podcast or video like this, we’re just having a conversation between human beings. It’s not scripted, and I hope that’s obvious to everyone watching us.
“The thing about character is, especially when you think about social media, you really can’t hide behind anything now.”
When people try to put something out there that isn’t authentic, it usually falls pretty flat. The more true you are to yourself and your character, the more likely it is for your audience to grow.
I’m not the best cook. I order in and eat out a lot. If I was hosting a cooking show called “Meet the Expert,” it probably wouldn’t do too well. It would be obvious to the audience that I’m not an expert, or I’m not authentic. If it was called “Meet the Novice,” now that sounds like it would take off.
What is your motivation behind the Mission Matters book series?
Elliot Kallen: Let’s talk about your writing and new book. The cover looks gorgeous. So, you’ve been on the Amazon bestseller list many times in your career. What is your motivation behind the books? What does it take to be an Amazon bestseller?
Adam Torres: Overall, the goal here is to amplify stories. This is a co-authored book series. We bring together an amazing group of authors such as yourself. We want to showcase them. We want to make sure their stories are out to the masses, and their message is heard.
These books came out by happenstance in a way, but does it ever really happen like that?
“When you’re drawn to something, you’re drawn to something.”
I wrote my first book when I was still a financial advisor and self-published it. It looked nowhere near as good as the one you held up a moment ago. It was my first shot at publishing. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I had more success than you think.
All of a sudden, I had speaking engagements. I was traveling. All these strange things started happening.
Then, people started approaching me asking if I could help them to publish their books.
Fast forward about a year later, we launched our publishing company and decided to use that platform for developing our marketing side and podcast. That’s when we started focusing on the stories of others.
What does it take to be an Amazon bestselling author?
Adam Torres: Number one, we put out a lot of content.
“Every piece we do is real.”
We spend a lot of time building the Mission Matters community. We spend a lot of time cultivating our relationships. It’s not this sexy, put your money in an advertisement, push this button kind of process.
We built a real audience and took the hard route.
We’re going on five years now. Five years may not be a lot to someone building their career for a long time, but putting out over 30,000 pieces of content is a whole other story. We’ve probably put in ten years of work into five, so our distribution can get stories out there.
What do you think about Elliot’s chapter in the book?
Elliot Kallen: What is your opinion on the chapter I authored, and what is the message there?
Adam Torres: Going back to what you said about authenticity and character, there’s a lot of different routes you could have gone. When you initially submitted from Prosperity Financial, I didn’t know if you were going to go for an on-point financial lesson. You decided to do more.
You talked about things like creating relationships with people. You talked about things like “people first.”
All of these things made the writing come alive to me and made the writing so it wasn’t boring. I’m not saying anyone is a boring writer, but even my editors make me sound better.
This is why your story is fascinating, and a few of the many reasons I think people should go pick up that book.
With exclusive content, a spotlight on financial industry veterans, and Elliot’s personal expertise, this is definitely a page-turner you won’t want to miss.
Make sure to grab your copy of Elliot’s book today!
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