đ±Navigating The Social Media Ecosystem đ With Whit And Cari Higham
How do you navigate the social media ecosystem? Grow, engage, promote, and appreciate. Adrienne Hill welcomes her good friends, Whit and Cari Higham, who are social media influencers and network marketing coaches. Whit and Cari talk with Adrienne that to grow your business, you need to engage and build relationships with people. Learn how to find and attract the right persons. And donât forget to appreciate the process! If you want more practical tips on how to navigate the social media ecosystem, you wouldnât want to miss this episode. Tune in!
#impactfulentrepreneurshow #guestinterview #socialmediainfluence
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đ±Navigating The Social Media Ecosystem đ With Whit And Cari Higham
Impactful Entrepreneur Show Guest Interview
This interview is very different and special. Thereâs a gift that comes with it. I have a story to share with you about that. In this interview, you're going to see me talk with Whit and Cari Higham about the social media ecosystem. When it came time to film this particular interview, we were unable to do it because Whit found himself in the hospital in a medically induced coma on a ventilator with COVID-19. What I did is I took an interview I had filmed with them in 2020. It's excellent. You are going to love it. I have repurposed it for this summit because I still want to include and honor them. They have much value to share. They are some of the nicest, most intelligent and kind people that I've ever met in my life.
I want to make sure that I honor them and that you get the value of understanding the social media ecosystem directly from them because there's no one better to hear it from. They are also friends of mine and my heart goes out to them at this time. He's been in the hospital for several days. As you can imagine, I'm sure the hospital bills are going to be extraordinary. Their gift is different. Instead of offering a gift, what I'm offering you is the first few people to grab Cari's You Got This Girl, the very first book she ever wrote.
Instead of being able to celebrate the launch of her book, she's with Whit in the hospital instead. It's not free but if you've ever wanted help with your mindset with getting your thoughts back on track, overcoming adversity and being rock solid mentally in your business, then this book is for you. It can help you. Every purchase of the book will help them. If their interview touches you, if it speaks to you in any way or if you simply have the heart to help this family get back on their feet, I encourage you to grab their book. I hope you enjoy the interview.
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I am here with Whit and Cari Higham. I'm so excited. They are the Founders of WhitAndCariHigham.com. They are experts in personal branding, attraction marketing and Facebook marketing. Welcome.
Thanks so much for having us. We're excited to be here.
We're appreciative of being invited to do this.
We're glad to have you here. You have quite the audience and list of followers. For those of our audience who maybe haven't met you yet, can you tell us a little bit about your story and what brought you here?
We got our start in network marketing back at the end of 2013, beginning of 2014. When we first started, we had lost everything. We were moving into my parents' basement because we couldn't afford rent. Whit had been laid off for the second time in our marriage. It was a stressful time. We started network marketing out of desperation. Not having a big network, we come from the same town of fewer than 5,000 people. No credibility, we were living in my mom's basement. We got started and failed miserably in our first six months. We enrolled zero customers and no distributors. It wasn't from lack of trying. We were talking to hundreds of people a month, messaging friends and family, doing all of the things that our upline was telling us that we needed to do to be successful but it wasn't working.
We spent two and a half years doing the same thing over and over again. Cari checked out our business at that point. It was in January of 2016. She looked at me and said, "Whit, if we don't figure out a different way to do this thing, we're not doing it anymore." That's when we got curious. We started looking around wanting to learn actual skillsets around our business. That's when we came into the online marketing world. We learned how to find and attract the right people.
That way, we were spending our time talking to everybody, but weâre talking already to people that were wanting what we have. That's the big thing that changed for us. Four years later, we've been able to build a massive network on social media as a result of this. Itâs one of the fabulous belts for doing what we've done for the last four years and being able to duplicate that through other people's, not just in network marketing anymore but also through different industries. It doesn't matter what they are a part of, we've been able to duplicate that process. That's where we started and where we're at.
For people who maybe have never seen a belt quite like this or maybe they don't know what this is, it's all about attraction marketing. I can see the little magnet on there. Itâs one of the companies you're involved with. What does this belt represent? What did you have to do to get this thing?
It started with one of our mentors. A couple of years ago, he went and did a big mastermind weekend with some pretty successful people in Facebook marketing and learning strategies when it came to Facebook advertising, and building networks on social media and those types of things. There was a competition where a belt was the prize that was given away. No one wants money when you can win a cool belt.
It was something different. It was more of just sitting inside of this mastermind. Everybody made money. Money wasn't the issue at this point. It was more of a pride standpoint of, "I'm doing something better than you." People are taking pictures of us all the time. Security asks me to go to the scanners. They did that. He came and taught a class that we were a part of about some of the strategies that he uses and brought the belt. He started using it as a propaganda piece, getting people curious about the reason that he had won it so he could share his method of Facebook advertising.
At this workshop that we went to, I remember looking at Whit saying, "I want a belt." I want something that represents that level that we've reached where not only have we made money but we're good at helping other people make money because we duplicated it. One of the big things was not just getting a lot of leads, making a lot of money and enrollments but teaching others and helping other people get that.
He brings this belt and everybody wants it. We won it.
You Got This Girl: Overcoming Obstacles, Smashing Goals & Creating An Abundant Life
That's the true measure of a leader. Not just learning how to do it yourself but learning how to help others succeed. When I say they're experts in attraction marketing, I'm not kidding. Tell us a little bit about the primary elements that build the foundation of attraction marketing.
I'm going to throw in the fourth one here at the end because it's something that's overlooked when you get into the swing of things, you start growing, finding those sales, making money and having the success that you want. The last thing that we're going to talk about the foundation of this is is something super important.
Number one, keep yourself grounded, humble and respectful of your craft. Being in this industry, there's a lot of inflated egos. Cari and I have always tried to avoid that as much as we possibly can. If there are any two people in this world, we wanted to win this because we wanted to say that we rubbed shoulders with some of the best, and even competed against some of the best when it came to doing what we did. We accomplished that. At the same time, we wanted to be humble and not be like, "I got this belt. I'm better than you." It had nothing to do with that.
Keep your ground and stay humble and respectful of your craft.âŻ
Attraction marketing is based on four basic principles that we teach our team in network marketing and throughout our entire brand. The first thing is to grow. You've got to know how to grow effectively. Not personally but if you're looking at growing a business, "How do I find people? How do I grow my network and influence?" Secondly, âHow do I engage with that influence? What does that look like?â Engage with those people and build influence over those people. That way when you're promoting to those people, which is the third thing, they want to jump on what you're doing because you have much influence over those people.
The last thing is you got to appreciate that process. Grow, engage, promote and appreciate. That is the thing that we teach throughout our entire brand, inside of our team, and the people that we work with. If you're good at those things, the last thing I love the most is they appreciate the process because I don't think we spend enough time appreciating what we've been able to do and what other people have been able to do for us.
Appreciate what youâve been able to do and what other people did for you.âŻ
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I see you every day appreciating the process in small ways, but also every person that you've made connections with along the way. For the folks out there, you're probably noticing a theme now. All these experts all come down to relationships. It's real people meeting real people. I'm one of the people who I ended up meeting through social. We became friends and we're doing a summit together. There are a lot of people out there who've been working hard to build those relationships, their influence and presence on social. One of the questions I get all the time, at least when it comes to Facebook and I know you are experts there, is how should you handle branding differently between your personal page versus your business or fan page?
This is a question we get asked all the time. It's funny because every expert that you asked this question to is probably going to give a similar or maybe even a completely different answer because everybody has their way of doing things. When it comes to Facebook, especially it's got its own ecosystem. You've got your Facebook business pages, personal pages and groups. The thing is that when it comes to attraction marketing, all three of these things work synergistically together.
They are all on the same platform. They are going to work hand in hand. There might be a little bit of different content that we post in different places but they are going to work all the way together. When Cari and I first started doing this, nobody was teaching from a personal page standpoint. There wasn't a lot out there.
Years ago, it was taught that you do not grow your businesses using your personal page. You stay away from that.
Itâs only on business pages. Now it's starting to creep in a lot more on personal pages. We got to start focusing more on the business page side of it. That's where we started. As we started to grow, we noticed that our business page was starting to leak into our personal page. People wanted to get to know us a little bit more. Who's Whit and Cari? What is their life like? They say they have kids but we never see them. What do they do with them? They want to see some of that stuff.
One of the things that we always follow as we're doing this is a personal page is a great way. For example, in the network marketing world that we're a part of, we're looking for ways to duplicate ourselves for the 90 percenters. Who are the 90 percenters that are going to be able to duplicate what we do? Not at the higher-level marketing stuff that we know because it's technical and complicated. Honestly, how many entrepreneurs are going to be willing to learn the process and get through the learning curve? Itâs a very small percentage. We want to be able to duplicate something. A personal page is a great way to grow your network and stuff.
It's all organic. It's a great way to get in front of people and build a stronger relationship with your audience. The cool thing is even though we use automation to target people on the platform, organic is a great way to do it too. You can get very targeted with the people. To answer your question of how we distinguish the two, and what content should I be posting on there, you can have the same content that you're posting there. You might just do it backward.
For example, on my business page, they are looking for skillsets and training, so 80% to 90% of my business page is going to be about what they're looking for. Whereas when they start to leak over to my personal page, they want to get to know us a little bit more in detail. I flipped that, where 70% to 80% is going to be about Cari, I and our lifestyle, what we'd like to do, and who we'd like to be.
The cool thing about that is I can plug my business into the other 20% mixed in with the 70% to 80%. I can show the lifestyle because of what my business created. I can influence at a more personal level because I can show people that this is what we do daily. That creates curiosity in people. We're from the same town of fewer than 5,000 people. They see us go out and do things with our kids while they don't get to experience that as often as we do. I get around them and thatâs what they're doing. They are asking questions all of a sudden like, âWhat is it that you do? Do I want to go and do this?â
There are a lot of people that tend to focus on one or the other. Probably for the majority of entrepreneurs getting started on things, depending on the industry you are a part of, a personal page is going to be the place for you. If it's more of a direct sales network marketing and stuff like that, that's where most people can start money-wise, investment-wise, and learning for themselves. Don't get me wrong, business pages are very powerful if you know how to leverage them.
Social Media Ecosystem: Many times, it's not that people say no to you. They're just saying no to whatever it is youâre trying to promote right now.
It's the place where you're going to be able to scale and scale quickly because you're using money and skillsets that youâve paid to develop to be able to grow and scale at that pace. It's understanding that each page has its own function but they all work together to grow your brand and audience.
You're putting 80% business and 20% personal on your business page. Putting 80% personal and 20% business on your personal page. Once you're finding techniques that work well, you're putting them on your business page and putting some money behind it. I love that.
Put fuel on the fire. What that money does is take something that's working. You put money on it so that it works faster.
One way or the other, you are putting yourselves out there. You're showing up and sharing yourself, whether it's your business or personal life. A lot of people are showing up and putting themselves out there. That's the hard part. People are afraid of rejection. Can you talk a little bit about the deeper reason why people are afraid of rejection and putting themselves out there?
When it comes to rejection, it's one of those fears that is developed from when you're a little child. No one wants to be rejected. Imagine a little child playing with their friends on the playground and maybe they start to be left out. It's those little things that caused that. As people grow up and get older, those little experiences tend to hold us back. Itâs that fear and it can sabotage a lot of people.
A lot of times with adults, it's not like playing on the playground anymore. It's not, "I don't want to play with you." Maybe they're busy. It's not that they're saying no to you. They're saying no to whatever it is that you are trying to promote. Very rarely in the last few years that Whit and I have been doing this has there been someone openly nasty and mean towards us.
Ten out of ten times, if somebody is going to get nasty with you, it's on them. They're going through something. When it comes to this fear based on rejection, itâs not necessarily that people are telling them no because we get told no all the time. We're used to being told no. They just don't want to try because itâs like, "Who am I? I'm no expert. I don't have anything to show that I've had success or anything like that." Even when Cari and I were building our business for two and a half years. When we decided to go online and build our business, we asked ourselves, "Whoâs going to listen to us? We have nothing."
I was talking to a lady who called us because that was her big fear. She's like, "You share your story and it's so great." I'm like, "It wasn't always great." We share a lot of that story. I realized that the analogy that we love to use is, "The 4th grader is a God to a 2nd grader." There's not a lot of difference between the 4th grader and 2nd grader. The 4th-grader has a little bit more knowledge, maybe a little bit more life experiences for a couple of years.
I take a look at this and say, "How come the 2nd grader looks at the 4th grader and says, âI can't wait to be as cool as you and to be there.â" I like to take a look at it as if you're afraid of rejection, just say that there's somebody who hasn't taken the first step into taking a look at what you're doing. You're here trying to figure it out and they haven't even started to try to figure out because they're like, "I don't know where to start." You're always going to be a 4th grader to a 2nd grader.
Even us, we look at some people that are a few steps ahead of us and we go, "I can't wait until we get there." It's the way that it is. One other thing that can make rejection worse is when people's lists start to disappear. They've talked to so many people and all of the sudden they're like, "I'm running out of people." If you have a way that you're constantly growing that audience, which is one of those fundamental pieces of attraction marketing, rejection doesn't hurt as bad because you have so many other people lined up.
You're not always worried about one person.
It's like if three people are left on your list and one says no, you're sweating. If you have 500 people on your list and someone says no, you're like, "There are 499 other people."
Some of our early mentors in this process, thatâs something that they talked about a lot. You got to focus on growing first before anything you thought is going to happen because you're always worried about the one person. There are a few things that play into the rejection piece. A lot of it has to do with insecurity, people not believing in them or them not believing in themselves. Theyâre like, "I don't want to go through my list because I'm afraid that I'm going to go through all of it and nobody's going to do what it is that I'm doing or buying my product or service."
You learned through building a network marketing business but you also do a lot more than that. These skillsets you're talking about of attraction marketing and building an audience, does that only apply to network marketers? With the things that you do and teach, can that apply to any business?
That's the cool thing about this. It's any business but especially businesses that are online-based. The skillsets are foundational. They can be transferred into other industries and businesses. I'm looking at pivoting a little bit to create another income stream of eCommerce. We're using the exact same skillsets that we've developed to grow, be engaged, promote, and then the appreciation.
The cool thing about online businesses is that the skill sets are foundational, so they can be transferred to other industries.
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Social Media Ecosystem: You have to focus on growing first before the youth is going to happen.
We see real estate people getting more into this. I always talk to people that do insurance or real estate. I've been trying to talk her dad into it because he's been in the insurance and financial advising for twenty-something years. I'm like, "You're still old school. You could be doing this and getting in front of a lot more people faster."
I watched these small little businesses open restaurants and stuff. They go and start a fan page. They go to their personal page and invite everybody they know to go to that fan page. It then stops. You never see it gain another person after that. They launch and nobody shows up. I'm like, "We live in a town of 5,000 people. I could show you how to spend maybe $40 and hit all of those 5,000 people multiple times, and a lot more people showing up to the opening of your brick-and-mortar business." It works across the board. If you're trying to find customers, the process is the same. It's just marketing.
The process is the same regardless of your business. If it works for network marketing, it can work for anything.
Network marketing is one of the toughest ones out there. People donât have already a preconceived notion about, âYou can make it work.â
It's been fun being connected with you. Everyone is going to love what you shared here. Thank you.
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About Whit & Cari Higham
Whit & Cari Higham got their start in the home business space in 2014 after Whit was laid off and they found themselves losing everything including their home.
Jumping into Network Marketing, they moved into Cari's parentâs basement because they couldnât afford rent and began to build their business old school with belly to belly meetings.
The problem was, they had no network, no credibility, and started putting all of their
travel expenses on credit cards...And after 2 years they were still living with parents, were over $30K in credit card debt, and their residual check was stuck at $80 a month.Frustrated and burned out, they were determined to figure out a way to build their business onlineâŠ
And in April 2016, they discovered Attraction Marketing and Social Media BrandingâŠ
Less than 10 months later, they rank advanced, built a multiple 6-figure income, and became the #1 producers in their affiliate companyâŠ
Whit & Cari are authors, speakers, and trainers and have a passion for helping others get unstuck in their own businesses as they rise up to live freedom filled lives.