The Candid Creative

On this episode of Candid Creative, Antonio speaks with Rhonda Glynn, a small business strategist, and coach who works primarily with female entrepreneurs. To begin, Rhonda discusses her career in the aviation industry and how it has prepared her for a customer-centric world.

Aviation is not a physical space, she says, it’s a doorway into people’s lives. Travel can be motivated by tragic events or a desire for pleasure. That’s why it’s essential that airlines base their branding on their customers. Everything else is secondary.

For so long, businesses have been focused on the transaction, not the value. They provided a product and the relationship quickly ended after that.COVID-19 changed the landscape overnight. Due to a loss of capital and the impossible nature of uniformity, a movement has begun to understand the ‘why’ of what’s happening, rather than the ‘how.’

Unfortunately, customers can still be lost in a value market. When creatives compete with each other, they tend to focus too much on vanity metrics, instead of a central message that leads to change. The most important way to create loyal followers for your brand is to show up as yourself. “People buy from people,” and authenticity is key. All of us are constantly evolving and accepting which leads to a greater level of success.

The other event that has affected branding in 2020 is the Black Lives Matter movement. Rhonda explains that a tipping point forced individuals and companies to reckon with decades of injustice and shift to a more genuine model. People began to see ‘people of color,’ not other colors, and realize that we all need to understand and be understood.

However, not everything you see is genuine. Some companies, such as Amazon, continue to operate in a ‘sweatshop-like’ environment while putting on a good face for the public. No matter what shape business takes, data informs strategy and change will come whether it is universally accepted, or not. Companies must, and will, adapt to survive.
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Follow Antonio on IG: @imantonioruiz.

Visit Rhonda at https://www.rhondaglynn.com/

Follow Rhonda on IG: @zoma.business.solutions

On this episode of the Candid Creative podcast, Antonio interviews SuperManny, a videographer and content creator.

• Manny got is start on YouTube putting together compilations of sports highlights, which was also his first experience with video editing software.
  • He watched a lot of videocopilot.net tutorials
  • He started out using After Effects, but now he uses Premier or Final Cut
• When he started publishing his own content, he focused on motivational content, usually just talking about something he had recently read or experienced.
  • He found that this content was valuable to his users and he was fairly consistent with it
• Manny really enjoys lifting other creators up, encouraging them to get their message out there even if they aren’t confident at first.
  • Most users just want to see genuine lifestyle content, not highly-produced scripted shows
  • He wants to start putting more behind-the-scenes content out there because it resonates with a lot of people
• There have been many impacts on his content creation process.
  • Manny grew up in the U.S. but also lived in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic for a good period of time.
  • His multi-cultural experiences have opened his eyes to the type of content that people need and he hopes to encourage specifically users and creators of Latin origin to break the barriers that have been embedded in them and use their ingenuity.
• Manny has also realized that he wants to publish Spanish content, and this conversation is a reminder that he really needs to just do it.
  • The Spanish audience could benefit from more straightforward motivational content rather than just entertainment or humor.
• He recognizes the importance of speaking out about injustices and other current events.
  • While everyone may not have the same opinions, it is important to speak the truth and be united against the wrongs that come about.
• Manny provides 3 pieces of advice for people starting out as creatives:
  • Do it for yourself or what you believe in
  • Do it with what you have
  • Focus on the community; get to know people

Follow SuperManny:

IG: https://www.instagram.com/supermanny54/?hl=en

Twitter: https://twitter.com/supermanny54?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Twitch: https://m.twitch.tv/supermanny54

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdBMCEk8PF4rpRmxF-Jhwpg

Follow Antonio on IG: @candidwithantonioCandid Creative on IG: @candidcreativela

On this episode of the Candid Creative podcast, Antonio talks with the team at Drop Music Branding about audio branding. Drop Music Branding is run by Mauro González, Dalmiro Lacaze, and Gabriel Agüero. Dalmiro and Gabriel met in second grade and shared music as a common interest in high school. They met Mauro when they went to Buenos Aires to study at the music academy. They did music and advertising for different companies and now focus on sound design and audio branding.

Antonio and the team discuss what audio branding is and how prevalent it is in today’s audio/visual culture. They also point out the importance of connecting with your audience through sound and music, and the importance of making sure you know your audience, so you make the right choices with your audio branding. They emphasize that repetition is the strategy and that the actual sounds you use are important. The team strives to improve the world with their sounds, not add to the noise pollution.

The team goes on to explain how important audio branding is in creating a brand that is recognizable and that people trust. It is important that the sound is unique so that it will be easier to remember and recognize. The more people recognize it, the more they trust it and the brand is more successful. They share a few stories about how they have such a desire to create unique sounds, that represent the company well, that they have even used a company’s products, and recorded the sounds the products made in order to build the audio assets. Learning all about the brand and what the brand sells, and the brand’s mission and strategy is a very important part of building the audio assets and brand.

The team also talks about the difficulty of dealing with opinions and personal preferences when it comes to audio. It’s important to consider what is best for the brand, not the personal music preference of the client. It can also be challenging when the client doesn’t know what they want and they just want many options so they can choose their favorite one. The team is trained to put aside any of their personal preferences in order to best serve the clients and therefore best develop the brand. They also go on to explain how audio branding is not just about music, but it’s also about advertising. You need to consider both in order to be successful in audio branding. The team ends by explaining how valuable it has been to work together, as a team, instead of doing audio branding alone.
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Follow Antonio on IG: @candidwithantonioCandid Creative on IG: @candidcreativela

Follow Drop Music Branding on IG: @dropmusicbranding

Visit https://www.dropmusicbranding.com for more information
Our intro, music, and audio assets used in the podcast were created by Drop Music Branding.

On this episode of the Candid Creative podcast, Antonio talks with Michael Aubry, creator and founder of Story Creator, an “After Effects for Dummies.” Michael talks about how he came up with the idea and shares how all of his previous experiences have led him to where he is today.

Michael started hacking on things when he was 17-18. Bored with pirating video games in his youth, Michael started pirating $500 Adobe editing software that gave him a technical edge over his peers. He used his access to this software to learn how to code and make money online. Kicked out of his mother’s house and living in his friend’s basement, he started work at Verizon.

Eventually making his way to the incubator at Hacker Dojo in Mountain View, CA, Michael networked and met the people he needed to grow his vision. He met the founder of XY Gaming and started hanging out with people who understood the art of building businesses. Michael was 23 when he moved to San Francisco, and in that time, he worked at three startups and gained the experience he needed to build his own platform. He would not trade in that time for anything.

Discussing the conception of the Story Creator idea, Michael thought that this was the coolest tool (with the biggest market gap) available. After talking to people about the project and listening to their problems, he started to get customers. April is really when things started to kick off. Juggling all of the sides of the business has been Michael’s most difficult challenge.

At the end of the day, you need to make a decision and execute it. It’s okay if it doesn’t work, Michael says. When talking about feedback, you want higher-level, not specific. You really just need to be able to face the truth, which is going to get the results you want in your life. If you can put in the due diligence, it will play out well for you to not take feedback personally. It’s just something you have to work on.

He thinks the best thing you can do is follow-through. Decide what you’re going to do and do it. If you really want to do it as a career, you need to determine why you’re doing this in the first place. Establish it early on and be committed.
Interested in exploring Story Creator App?
Click here to get started
Follow Antonio on IG: @candidcreativela

Follow Michael on Twitter: @michaelaubry. He’ll give you a follow!

Email Michael: [email protected]
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This episode of Candid Creative is all about LinkedIn. Antonio is joined by Shraddha, as they discuss the increasing value and importance of the platform. Shraddha works full time as a digital media manager, while also working for several clients. She has a Master of Business Administration in Marketing. It took Shraddha a while to find what she loved, but she has finally found that in digital marketing.

She first started using LinkedIn during the final year of her master’s program. She enjoyed how professional everyone was on LinkedIn and she always felt positive after spending time on that platform. Through LinkedIn she was able to find leads. After her internship, she got a sales job and continued to use the platform as a way to get leads for her job.

Shraddha shares that the most important thing to do to be successful in posting content on LinkedIn is to just keep posting. However, engagement on those posts is important. She suggests focusing on original content, not photos or links. Another important thing to be careful of is the number of hashtags you use. It is important to use no more than four hashtags, and they should be keywords that show what you are focusing on. Also, it is best to focus on the biggest hashtags, not a variety. As an entrepreneur, you should first create a soundproof profile, a profile that shouts what you are about, then you need to connect by following the sixty-forty ratio.

In regard to building a good bio section on LinkedIn, do not start with your name or what you offer, because people already know that information from your profile. It’s important to start with something unique or interesting. While LinkedIn has not been as popular as Facebook, Shraddha believes in a few years it will be the next Facebook. What she values about LinkedIn is the ability to get organic leads, without paying lots of money. When starting out, she recommends getting a good headshot, and deciding why you want to be on LinkedIn, what your purpose is on that platform. Once you’ve found your focus, be consistent for at least three months. Another advantage of LinkedIn over other platforms is that you can still get new engagement on old posts. While it may take some effort to learn LinkedIn, Shraddha enthusiastically recommends putting the work in and being present on that platform.