00:00 Sending random rants, reconnecting with authenticity. China.

05:31 Embracing ignorance, shifting perspective, and embracing fun.

09:13 Balancing organic and paid traffic for brand.

11:49 Challenges with apps integration, user demands, burnout.

15:38 Frustration with big companies and their rules.

17:23 Generic ebook platform with AI and marketing features.

22:43 Seeking genuine connections, not just building tools.

23:53 Favor real connections over forced opt-ins.

29:14 Long journey to clarity and productivity.

32:46 Custom GPT creation for sales page writing.

33:34 Task manager helps stay on track, API potential.

38:28 AI tool not useful, unclear beneficial use case.

42:15 Draft article based on conversations, structure content.

44:29 Focus on actionable, personalized content for improvement.

49:51 Simplify your website strategy, focus on writing.

51:10 Newcomers face overwhelming and confusing landscape.

53:54 Big platforms need better customer support. Thanks!

Kim [00:00:00]:

Hey there. It's Kim Doyal, and welcome to my show where digital marketing meets real stories, experiences, and strategies. You'll get a behind-the-scenes look at what's working and not working in my business, as well as other experts who show up and share their stories. As much as I love talking about tangible marketing principles and tactics, we'll dig a little deeper with mindset and explore what's required to create a business you love on your terms that also supports your life. I wanna help you understand the why behind the how. Whether you're a seasoned marketer or just dipping your toes in, remember that marketing is a journey, and the goal is to enjoy it. My desire is to guide you on your journey and remind you that no matter what life throws at you, you've got this. Hey.

Kim [00:00:44]:

What's going on, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Kim Doyal Show. It's been a while since I've done a I was gonna say live interview, but it's live for us. So we'll go ahead and run with that. And I'm excited because I think this conversation is gonna go in directions that neither of us are really aware of, but it's gonna be really fun. My guest today is Addison Best. So first of all, Addison, thank you so much for being here.

Addison [00:01:06]:

Well, thank you for having me, Kim. It's I think we talked about a little bit before this started. I haven't spoken to anybody in, I feel like, a decade. I used to have an English learning podcast with my brother, but that was all audio. Now, I'm just looking in my camera, and I feel like a deer in headlights, and I'm just kind of like, oh, wait. This is how I look? And I'm kind of freaked out, but I'm gonna try to calm down and carry on, I guess.

Kim [00:01:30]:

Yeah. Well, you know what's funny is it's almost like because I wanna do the eye contact thing, I'm like, well, I'll just go ahead and look at the camera and not worry about seeing myself or whatever. But, yeah. No. This is gonna be fun because first of all, for a little backstory about, you know, Addison had reached out to me. And this just goes to show you guys in the fall, and I was not getting the notifications from Gravity Forms. So it was like, oh my god. I've missed all these but before we get into a lot of the meat of what we wanna talk about, which we're gonna kinda go down this AI and and the impact it has on content and email, I love the backstory, Addison.

Kim [00:02:12]:

So if you could share your backstory with listeners, that would be great.

Addison [00:02:14]:

Well, it's funny. Yeah. I've been sending Kim, random emails that are kinda rants recently, so I didn't even know if she was getting it or she thought this guy's a bit nuts or whatever she was thinking. But I do it anyway because I'm trying to get back to my roots and being authentic and just having fun with different people and thinking and hoping that maybe they feel the same kind of thing. Specifically, my backstory, I guess, was in 2003 or so, I graduated university in Canada, and I went to visit my older brother in China, and I ended up staying for 14 years. That's the short end of the story. And then, of course, I got into a bunch of digital marketing and things since being there, and now a couple decades later, here I am.

Kim [00:02:57]:

Okay. So I just have to unpack a couple things. First of all, can you speak fluent Chinese now, I'm assuming?

Addison [00:03:02]:

I wouldn't say fluent. I lived in Shanghai, but, of course, you need to speak at a certain level to get by, and nobody like, taxi drivers, which you take everywhere, don't speak English and stuff like that. You have to my wife is Chinese. I moved back to Canada 5 years ago or so. And, of course, I have to speak to some level of Chinese. And, yeah. And but I think also if I knew I was gonna be there for 14 years, I would have learned it even more. It was almost like I kept extending my stay for 14 years, and somehow I ended up staying for 14 years.

Addison [00:03:39]:

You know what I mean? It wasn't a plan, if that makes any sense.

Kim [00:03:43]:

No. It totally does. Well, you know, after almost 2 years in Costa Rica, I am not fluent in Spanish, but I've decided to move back. And I'm, like, girl, come on. And the the tough thing there is that everybody not everybody, but most people speak English. And then, of course, you have Google Translate now. So you can speak to, you know, people that you need to. But, anyways, god, what incredible experience though.

Kim [00:04:05]:

I I just you got into digital marketing then and at in the early stages. Right? So it looked really different when you were getting started compared to now. And I always tell people, I'm like, on one hand, I feel like it was easier because there wasn't as much competition. On the other hand, to get up and running, you can do it quickly today. So I don't know. What are your thoughts on having been through that, a, in a foreign country, and, b, just this whole, like, let's just see where this takes us.

Addison [00:04:33]:

Well, yeah, as I said, I was in China. I didn't really know what I was gonna do. The 1st venture I did in digital marketing was create an English learning podcast with my brother in China. Part of the reason we did that, there was a super popular one, for Chinese learning in our city in Shanghai. And we just thought, Oh, wait, why don't we do that? We went even to their studio, we saw what equipment they had and we're like, whatever, we can buy a few microphones and just put up a podcast. And then of course you think, once you have a podcast, you're going to make a website and try to monetize it in some way after that. And so we just kind of dove into it, not thinking about it, which was great, I think, and a good attitude to have. I learned a lot, I think, from doing that, and I actually, to be honest, I'm trying to get back more in that mentality now, So, you know, looking back what I did, I actually think I was on the right track in a lot of ways.

Kim [00:05:31]:

Well, we talked a little bit before, so and and this is something that is super near and dear to my heart, and that is just kinda ignorance is bliss, but also not being so concerned about, you know, anything external. You just put it out there and you publish and you see what works, you know. So if you could talk a little bit about what's brought you back to that place of why do I care so much now? Like, you know, and shifting back because honestly, I think with where with where everything is today, there's so many you know, this is what you need for a brand. This is what you should do on this channel. This is what you should on that channel. I think people are just sick of it. Like, there is a little bit of there's market maturity so people can like, people can see a launch coming a mile away, right, versus, like, just genuinely connecting and and going back to roots and and having fun and testing stuff out. So, I just would love for you to go a little bit deeper into your own thoughts and realization of where'd that guy go?

Addison [00:06:29]:

Well, yeah. I had mentioned that a little bit before the show, and I just, went on YouTube. We had a an English learning podcast, so at that time, there wasn't even really YouTube. So that was a video that I saw later, But it was entitled Saturday Night Drinks, and I just I had a vodka Red Bull with my brother on a couch, and we talked about some English learning material for slang spoken English. And, I mean, obviously, I didn't give a shit about what people thought. It didn't even make any sense, but I read the comments, and they were amazing. People loved it. And then I think now the vanilla stuff I'm, like, putting out there, and I'm thinking, why am I doing that? And certainly, nobody cares about it if you have go down too far in that mentality.

Addison [00:07:12]:

But at the same time, when you get older and, certainly, you have more of a professional, maybe a brand, you might kind of revert back and think, oh, now I have I can't say this and I have to act in a certain way. But I think that's where shit, to be honest. And that's why I wanna get back into being a real person and having a real following, if if I can. We'll see. Maybe I'm a dinosaur, and I'm just gonna, like, fall on my face. Like, I don't care. That's the thing now either, and I'm not gonna pretend like I do.

Kim [00:07:41]:

Leo, dinosaur. I think I'm probably about 10 years older than you. Sorry to interrupt. There might be a bit of a delay here, but I feel like people are craving that though, Addison. I think people are, you know, it's like, we're when it comes down to it, and I keep quoting doctor Seuss, but it's like, no one is youer than you. And, like, we are the only differentiator. Especially with AI, like, you know, you can create massive amounts of of content and it's a race to the bottom. So if you wanna differentiate yourself, then, of course, you need to be uniquely yourself.

Kim [00:08:13]:

Right?

Addison [00:08:14]:

Exactly. And what I realized, I like the simplicity, as you mentioned before back then as well, there weren't so many tools, there weren't all these social media platforms. You could build a simple HTML website or like a simple WordPress one. We had a simple email box collector. We made partnerships with real people, and we were collecting hundreds of emails a day from all opt ins. And, like, I made my own email server, and I just kinda went with it. We were sending out hundreds of thousands of emails to people. And it was that kind of mentality, well, what's wrong with that? And the answer is nothing.

Addison [00:08:52]:

I mean, that's it's pretty good. If if you just have a simple strategy building, collecting emails, emailing that group, selling them something else, and then giving them the content that they want as well, and then reaching out to people and making partnerships. And if that's all you do, I mean, you don't really have to do much else, and there's nothing to think about.

Kim [00:09:13]:

Well, completely, especially today where you look at, you know, organic social, it's like, I don't wanna spend that much time to master a specific platform. At the same time, like, it's still I mean, my brand's been around for a while now, so it's it's still obviously drives traffic. But a perfect scenario for me would be creating content. And then I have no problem with paid traffic, like getting a really solid paid traffic strategy down. And I just get to create and connect with people I like, And then the traffic engine is running, you know, like, Oh God, I do not want to spend all day mastering Twitter templates or X or whatever the hell he's calling it. So okay. I wanna pivot to some of the the content that we wanna get into. But before we do that, I would love to hear just one of the things with the backstory piece that I think is fascinating is the pivots and and kind of trajectory.

Kim [00:10:07]:

So I would love to hear kind of your journey. Like you sent me some dates and steps along the way, because it wasn't just, oh, I just launched this, this English, you know, learning channel podcast, you know, and that blew up. It was you you definitely had some, you know, your own path there. So if you could share a little bit about that, that'd be awesome.

Addison [00:10:24]:

Right. So it's not like I've only done that. That was my 1st start into internet marketing and just doing stuff online. Since then, I've done a lot of consulting and, you know, working on different startups even and just different projects. One of the things, I own a health supplement brand. I sell physical products. I sell 1,000,000 of dollars a year in that. And even 8 years ago or so in China, kind of at the end of my time there, I started making Shopify apps with a friend, and we had about 8 apps.

Addison [00:10:58]:

And they started getting a bit of traction, but then, you know, through some personal issues, and some other reasons, we ended that. And I'm kinda going back into a similar thing, which was LeadSlide was created then, and that's my I made an AI ebook creator software marketing funnel platform recently, and I kinda wanna go back and do the things I was doing then, but do it in a way that makes sense for 2024 as opposed to 2016. And I learned a lot from doing that and I made a lot of mistakes, so basically I wanted to not do those anymore hopefully.

Kim [00:11:40]:

Yeah. Okay. Well, not to to get super personal, but, like, what would you do differently. Right? And and what does it mean to do things differently today?

Addison [00:11:49]:

Well, I'll give you an example. We had, I think 8 apps, and again, I like collecting emails, so part of the reason some of them were freemium, we collected a lot of emails every day, we didn't have to pay a lot for advertising, and that was amazing. And we started doing too many integrations with the platform. And so what happens when you do that is themes and other things start breaking, and then your apps don't work anymore, and then you create a bunch of headaches. So it sounds like a good idea to listen to your users and give them whatever they want, but what ends what ends up happening, especially in a small team, is you got shitty software and nobody wants it, and then you're just like, why am I even bother doing this anymore? And then on a personal level, my business partner was going through a divorce, and I was getting ready I was busy with other projects and moving back to Canada at that point, so it's just kind of fizzled out, and that's the main reason what happened. But I mean, nothing earth shattering that happened, but it's just like, I don't want a simple solution now. I don't want to waste my time dealing with all this horseshit either. So, like, I'm trying to go back to, like and that's what I was saying.

Addison [00:13:01]:

The English learning strategy was simple. We collected a lot of emails. We sent emails. We made partnerships, and we made a podcast. That's all we did, and it kinda worked. So

Kim [00:13:13]:

Well, it's it's funny I just

Addison [00:13:14]:

to that. Yeah.

Kim [00:13:16]:

People, I was just gonna say I have a kind of a mini mastermind with some friends, and I emailed them yesterday. I'm like, alright, you guys. I said my focus on on on simplifying. I wanna simplify, meaning whether just because I've created it doesn't mean it. Mean I need to keep selling it. I don't need to use this tool. Do I need that tool? Whatever. Just because and maybe it's a stage of life for me, but I'm like, I want more free time.

Kim [00:13:37]:

I want what I'm doing to afford me more free time as well as it's a whole lot easier to grow 1 or 2 things versus 10 or 15 with focus. Right?

Addison [00:13:49]:

Absolutely. It gets confusing. You start, thinking about, you know, why am I not doing this? And then you look at your week, and it's like, did I even make anything? I didn't even make any content this week. I didn't produce anything. I didn't collect any emails, but you felt like you were busy the whole week. You can have that. You can just feel, like, anxiety and feel feel terrible the whole week, and it's like, wait a minute, it's Friday, and did I do anything? The answer is often no, I think.

Kim [00:14:18]:

Mhmm.

Addison [00:14:19]:

And I don't wanna be caught in that trap and just feeling kind of just, I don't know, residual guilt and like angst and like, why am I not doing this? I just don't want to feel that way, and that's partly why I want to simplify it as well. It's not necessarily to make the most money. It's like, I don't wanna shoot myself in the head at the end of the week.

Kim [00:14:38]:

Yeah. Well and the other thing is that that feeling then, all of a sudden, when you look at the end of the week and you're like, I didn't produce anything or, you know, you took care of stuff, it's like then I start feeling like I'm behind. And I don't want that. I'm I'm not. You're you're never done in this space. There's always gonna be more to do. And I don't wanna feel like, oh my god. Now now I've got it.

Kim [00:14:58]:

I have to work this weekend to get this done because I didn't do this. And I don't know. Like, part of why I love what I do is because I can take the dog for a walk in the afternoon or, you know, when I'm in a warmer climate, I can go hang out in the pool and read a book for a little bit, like walk. I those are the things that I wanna do. And so it's it's I've always said this. There's a big difference between productivity and activity. And activity can take over pretty quickly if you're not super diligent about your time. You know, so I totally got that.

Addison [00:15:27]:

No, absolutely. And and I find sometimes you focus, or I I focus sometimes too much about pleasing algorithms and things that I don't wanna be pleasing, and I don't give a shit

Kim [00:15:38]:

what

Addison [00:15:38]:

Google thinks, and I don't think what care what Amazon thinks. Sometimes you end up sometimes it's working well and you think this is great and then something shitty happens, like you lose all your traffic randomly overnight with SEO or something like that, and you get so stressed. So at least if you're building an email list and partnerships, you're not gonna lose that part of your business, you know, and you can keep some level of sanity, and that's part of it. And I think that part seems to be getting worse in my feeling and just dealing with big companies and they're always changing the rules and like changing things like, Now you gotta pay for this and that, and this doesn't work, and you have to act this way. You're not allowed to say this or that. And it's like, sorry guys, I'm gonna do it anyways. So just, I'm tired of listening to it. And so that's part of it.

Kim [00:16:28]:

I totally agree. Yeah. Well, it's like I've kind of been ranty about I don't know. When I was a WordPress chick, WordPress content was very easy to rank for. It was like 2008 to 18 or what. And it was like, it was, it wasn't, I...