Unlocking Social Media Success

Okay, guys. This one was incredible. We went deep. We learned a lot of actionable stuff, and you absolutely, for no reason, should miss this podcast with Michelle Berman Michael. She's a nationally recognized keynote speaker, founder of Berman Media PD, and creator of Beyond the Method. She teaches realtors and loan officers to leverage social media as a powerful prospecting tool, prioritizing utility, over virality and general real scalable results.

She's into the real stuff. Michelle helps professionals unlock the psychology behind connection to build credibility, deepen relationships, and dominate local markets without chasing vanity metrics. No BS with this girl. She's the host of Coffee and Questions podcast where she interviews top business minds.

Her upcoming book, The Black Line, explores strategies for sustainable high performance. You are gonna love her just like I did. Here's Michelle.

Well, hello, everybody, and welcome to the Power Up Your Life podcast. I'm Kelly Resendez.

And I'm Mandy McAllister.

And we have Michelle Bierman McAllister here with us. So excited just to really have her share some of her amazing wisdom with you today. So, Michelle, with that said, give us a little smidge of your history so that everyone knows about you.

Yeah. I mean, I don't even know where to start. Right? There's so much stuff, but where what I can tell you just very quickly for everyone listening, I'm a mom, I'm a wife. I live in Clarksville, Tennessee. So I I love to kind of just say I'm born in the South, live in the South. And when I say South, I mean, I was born in Southern California, so that doesn't count. Right? But I am a I'm a Tennessee transplant, and I love living here now.

But as far as, you know, the career side of things, I really got started in the Instagram space actually way back in 2014, pretty much when it was brand new on the scene. And what I was doing at the time was I was actually buying and selling and flipping Instagram accounts like you would buy and sell real estate and flip it for profit. It was a very interesting dynamic for me for many years. But what I can tell you, and I hope this is a no BS place for us, but what I can tell you is I got very, very good over the years at sniffing out the crap. Right? Fake views, fake followers, fake all the things, which unfortunately is still a major cancer today, even with some of the big leers that we all see on stages. Right? It's very sad, but that's the world that I was in. So I studied it and I studied it some more and got very, very good at seeing it even from miles and miles away.

And then in 2018, I went through, a life storm that led me to a business coach for the first time in my career, which was really cool, right, typically how that happens. And I ended up in The UK for eight days mind mapping out what is now known as Beyond the Method, which is the name of the program that I built in the 2019. And my thought process when building Beyond the Method was, I want to solve this problem. And I don't think the world needs another social media coach because there's a bazillion in one of them. But what the world does need is the a solution to if I'm putting time and energy and effort into social, how do I actually make money off of this?

And I I hate to burst anyone's bubble, but it's not by going viral. It's not by getting another follower. It's not by getting more likes, but it really is about how do you actually have better conversations in your DMs and how do you outbound prospects, which I'm sure we'll talk about and kinda dissect. But, how do you outbound prospect through the social channels? You know, and I'm here with you ladies because that's exactly what I did to ultimately end up on this podcast with you all. So, outbound prospecting is the source of how we create ROI for ourselves. It's how we build leverage. It's how we create influence. It's how we do all of the things, and vanity is very seductive. Think of it as like a dopamine hit. Right? It makes us feel real good for the moment, but it doesn't last.

And I can tell you that in 2024, so the latter half of last year, I decided that I was gonna write a book. My voice finally felt big enough, I guess, if that even sounds right. It it felt confident enough, clear enough, I think is a better way of describing it, that I knew I had a message that needed to be shared and it was time to share it. However, in November 2004 or sorry, November 2024, I lost a baby. And what happened in the middle of doing that was not only did my world shatter. Right? But I think the other side of it is I got kind of thrown back into, hey, if you wanna survive this personally, professionally, your p and l wants to survive this. How do you do that? Right?

And I think, you know, a lot of originators and even just any business owners, regardless of who you are, or what kind of business you run, when our backs up against the wall, do we rise or do we fold? Right? And so for me, I had no choice but to go back into it and prove to myself that I could still do what I was telling everybody else to do. And so that is where the black line was born and the name of the book was ultimately born. And it's, really just powerful. It just officially released, for preorder, and my first 650 book order actually ships August 21. So, amazing to be able to say that.

But hopefully that answers your question, Kelly. Oh my gosh. I like the chills. I wanna cry. I wanna, like, scream in excitement, like all of the above. The emotion I think that probably everyone just felt as you were sharing this.

You know, you've had a pivot, you've built a business, you found, you know, this recipe, you survived, you know, something that I think none of us, like, unless you've gone through it, would even know how to how to how to feel.

So, you know, with that said, like, do you when it comes to the resilience and the courage that it must have taken for you to move on, you know, I'm sure a lot of people that are listening, whether they're going through something right now or go through something in the future, like, what would you say really was the underlying,

you know, power that got you through that? Oh, man. I'm probably gonna cry telling this story because it's a hard one to say, but, you know, I have a four year old. His name is Knox. He's he's about to turn four, I should say. We're currently planning his monster truck birthday party, but,

we'll come.

We, you should totally come. Please, I'll come pick you up at the airport. But, you know, I think for me in November, you know, doctor's appointments nonstop off and on for six weeks. I ended up, getting my blood drawn a little over 24 times, and then ended up, the final one when my son was with me for whatever reason.

I I don't know if school was canceled or something. There was whatever the reason was, Knox had to be with me, and I was getting my blood drawn and the the girl who was doing the blood draw kept missing. And, you know, anyone who's seen me in person, I have a huge tattoo on my left arm, And my right arm was really bruised from having my blood drawn so many times, so she tried my tattoo arm and for whatever reason, just kept missing. And my son in the middle of it looks at the nurse and just says, you have to stop. You're hurting my mommy.

And at that point, I just had her take the needle out, and I said I was, I'm done. I'm not doing this anymore. And, you know, God's got a bigger plan than I do. And if this baby's gonna live, this baby's gonna live. And if this baby's not, then this baby's not. Right? And ultimately, you know, just a few short days later, we ended up officially finding out that we had lost our baby.

But what I can tell you is you have a little advocate, right? As a business owner, as a mom, and as a wife, you have this like little person that's running around telling you, mommy, I wanna go do this. Mommy, can we go to the park? Mommy, can you do this puzzle with me? And it's like, well, I can't give up because of that. Right?

And, the other side of it too, not just my son, but my husband is retired special forces. That's part of why we live here in Clarksville, Tennessee. And, he was working for the military at the time as a contractor, and I'll just say it nicely that the working for the army freaking sucks. Right? And he was really struggling with it, and really wanted to build his own business. He really wanted to be home more. And we had talked about what that would look like for our family.

Me being, you know, kind of the quote breadwinner of the family meant that there was gonna be a lot more on my shoulders for the time being. But we made a decision after losing the baby that we were just gonna retire my husband as soon as possible at the very latest by the end of of twenty twenty five. And I'm really happy to report that because I got back to my own black line at the end of last year, my husband retired full and is now full time home building Transcend Endurance, as of May 1.

So, I'm I'm not I'm lying if I said it was easy, but, you know, the the beautiful side of it is, you know, my school's about to start. My husband gets to help drop knocks off to and from school. He gets to be a part of t ball practices and, you know, the things that he was missing. And so to me, you know, the storm, I could have let it win or I could have let it win the whole thing, but I think at the end of the day, I just had two people and a life ahead of me that God really wanted me to to live.

Mhmm. And he really wanted me to walk in all of this. And I and I believe that the book being born is a direct reflection of my favorite one of my favorite quotes, which is I'll walk by faith and not by sight, which is actually what is on my arm.

Oh, Michelle, I the the layers in that story and where you've come from. And, I mean, I think, you know, anyone listening, I know Kelly and I have had our deep holes that we've been in, and not just like it it closes my throat to to think of all the things that you've been through.

And I I think that it's it's not an uncommon thing to to feel like you wanna stay in bed and cry all day. It does like, whatever that hurt was that got you there, like, that's not a super uncommon feeling in the world. And like you said, some people choose to let that win, and some people choose to to, you know, figure out a way out and a better path.

And one thing you said that I loved was to prove it to myself. So, you know, talk to a woman who is in a hole right now and who needs to take just that first baby step. What is something what is that conversation she should be having with herself to move in the direction

of out of the hole? I would tell her for at least for me, you know, coming from a place of faith, the story in Matthew comes to my mind every time, right, when Peter gets out of the boat and he and Jesus says come walk to me, and he takes his first couple of steps and he's doing and he's walking on water, right, and then all of a sudden he looks down just for a split second and he falls. And so the idea there, right, is in kind of the bigger story there is that God wants us to trust him and he wants us to instead of lacking faith, he wants us to trust that, or to to let go of the doubt, Right?

And I think every woman, no matter and, honestly, men too. Right? But especially women, we have burdens that we don't talk about. And and for whatever reason, we don't feel safe talking about them sometimes, and I'm not sure why. But what I can tell you is your story, whether you feel alone, whether you feel like, why am I one of a million people going through this no matter what side of that you're on, somebody needs to hear it because they're going through it. Right?

So I had I can't even tell you ladies how many people said how proud they were and how just amazed they were that I shared my miscarriage story, and I said, you know, you know, I miscarried it just under ten weeks, which isn't crazy, right, in comparison to people who have had to deliver stillborns and all kinds of things. And I have girlfriends that have had that experience. But what I can tell you is it doesn't make my story less than, and it certainly doesn't make their story more impactful on them than it was on me, right, my own on me. And so I think you have to look at yourself and say, what is in me that can save someone else? Because I truly believe that I saved other women by being willing to talk about what I was going through, because and even men, I I will never forget this.

I got a message from a originator, who heard me on another podcast, and he said his wife, and him had had recently miscarried, but their first doctor's appointment, they were so excited to go, got a great heartbeat, whatever. But for whatever reason, they couldn't actually see the baby on the sonogram, and they ultimately ended up finding the baby in his wife's fallopian tube. So not only did they have to take the baby, they also had to take her fallopian tube, and he said he just didn't know how to share this story. He thought people would look down upon him and say, like, you know, why are you looking for empathy or sympathy? Right? Why are you posting this?

And he said he heard my story, and he and he decided right then and there he was gonna share it and get it out into the world. And he did. Literally an hour after messaging me on Instagram, he posted his own story, and he also told, the amazing side of it, which is that his wife is now pregnant again, which they told her would never happen because she lost one of her fallopian tubes. So pretty much guaranteed she'd have to do IVF or, some form of fertility treatment, and they got pregnant naturally. That's amazing.

I'm gonna shift gears a little bit, so I can get the tears out of my eyes. But I gotta be able to talk. You know, we we have so many business owners that are listening, and you nailed it. Like, you know, when we look at social media, it's like counting the likes. There's a lot of comparison that's happening. You know, why is this person more influential than me? Whether we're judging them. I mean, a lot of them, I'm like, who the frick's gonna watch that? But, apparently, everybody loves it.

So, you know, how would you guide a business owner that really wants to maximize, you know, their their strategy when it comes to driving revenue in, how would you how would you really guide them on utilizing social media to be a funnel?

You know, one of the things that Mandy and I coach to in GoBundance Women is that you should have multiple revenue streams where you know where, you know, your business is coming from, what those conversions are so that you have some consistency in in what you're doing. And so tell tell the audience a little bit about what what it would look like to work with you on this strategy.

Yeah. It's super simple, and it's not, you know, rocket science, but at the same time, it takes a lot of work in in a good way. Right? So I'll I'll try to dissect it as simply as possible. But your outbound effort every day needs to be one single message to someone that you do not know. So I'll say that one more time. You're sending one single message to someone that you do not know through the social channels. Right? Whether that's Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn. That's your one daily action that must be done.

Now where that action comes from, right, meaning the source of why you're sending the message needs to be in, I have four buckets, some people have three buckets, some people have five. You know, it it really depends on meeting the client where the client's at, what is their business model. You guys are teaching multiple revenue streams. So if they know they have multiple revenue streams, for example, right, that one single message that they send every single day needs to earn them one of those things. So think of it as my one app gets me one of these three, four, five buckets, whatever it is. So for me, you know, getting on podcast is one. Speaking in person at big events is is another one. I do a ton of webinars. So those are my three big buckets. So when I send a message every single day, my intent is getting one of those three opportunities.

Now what do you say? How do you say it? What's the structure of all of it? Right? That's, gonna take longer to explain, but what I can tell you to simplify is leverage is your best friend when it comes to social. Not how many followers you have, not name dropping, how many connections you have. Right? Oh my god. I have 30,000 connections on LinkedIn. Like, good for you. Right? That doesn't mean anything. But what does is who are you connected to and who are they also connected to that you don't know. Right? So leverage is your superpower when it comes to social, meaning who do you have a relationship with that you can name drop confidently to build a bridge between them to someone that you don't know, right, meaning to the next opportunity and to the next person that you want on your calendar.

So just this morning, right, I sent a message to someone who I did not know. She's the VP of marketing for a company, that I have been wanting to work with for a while. And I saw that she recently did an article in a podcast episode back to back with the same individual. This individual I've had on my podcast at least once, probably twice. I don't honestly remember. I've had probably 10 meetings with him. Right? So I have a really good relationship with this individual that she just interviewed. So I took that as I'm going to name drop this individual and use him as my lever to get to this person who I've been wanting to and kind of slowly paying attention to to get the opportunity.

So that's how that works. Right? Your one daily action is an outbound message to someone you don't know. You're doing it. The vehicle of how you're getting there is through leverage, and your goal on the outside of or on the flip side of that single message is to get one of those three things in my case, which is podcast, webinar, or speaking gig. That's it.

Well, it sounds like you're targeting is I don't know if you've read the ultimate sales machine, but Amanda Holmes, it's the dream 100. Like, have your dream 100 clients or the dream 100 people to reach out to. I think that lends itself very well to to what you're talking about.

Well, one thing that's been super common in our community and, you know, many busy business owners is this idea of outsourcing stuff. Mhmm. You know? So my my ad is a lot of my posts. Right? So I I I want to know your advice to lots of busy busy business owners and how that might hurt them, where they could use automation or help from virtual assistants or otherwise. Tell me a little bit about that.

Yeah. You cannot use an any form of VA or any form of automation to do your outbound prospecting for you. And if you say you don't have time, I disagree.

Right? Because we're getting Starbucks in the morning. We're dropping our kids off or, you know, in the line for whatever restaurant we're stopping to get fast food from. Like, yes, you can send one message to someone you do not know every single day and do it through leverage coming from your message, from your mind.

Now here's the best way for me to explain that to both of you ladies and to everyone listening is nobody knows the relationship that I have with the person I'm using as a lever better than I do. Right? So for example, if I told you girls to think of your your favorite friend growing up, the one girl or or guy that you could remember from when you were kids and tell me the story. Right? How easy would that be?

Now imagine telling or trying to hire a virtual assistant and trying to get that person to help you articulate that story to get new relationships with people that you don't know by bringing this individual, like, you can't do that. It's not gonna work. Right?

If I meet Kelly or if I meet you, Mandy, at an event or at a conference, I'm gonna have my own unique relationship with you that I'm coming home with. And how do you articulate that to a VA?

You can't. Right? I think that's such a key point. Right? That there's the the personalness of of whatever you're doing in on social is what makes it, you know, that BS o meter kind of curtailed. So I think that's very an important point to, you know, if you're gonna automate making a post, fine, but it's the outreach is the thing where the dollars are.

I'm also curious, what is the biggest mistake? I'm pretty sure this is a solidly big mistake that that using a virtual assistant. But what are what's another huge mistake that you see business owners, committing?

With their content on social specifically or just in general? In general. Oh, on social media specifically in your wheelhouse? Yeah. I mean, I would say the word indifference comes to mind. Indifference, if you guys understand by definition what that means, you know, I don't know what the Webster definition is. Doesn't matter. But my definition is, people don't care enough to say yes. They don't care enough to say no. So, therefore, they don't really do anything. Right? So if our content does not drive or create emotion, it doesn't create any form of action.

So if you're using in house marketing content, if you're buying the $60 a month subscription where you get your content emailed to you every single month and posting it, you're gonna have a problem. Right? So indifference is where we want the easy button. Hey. Can somebody just post all this for me? Yeah. Great. Right? Again, it saves us time, but all it does is ultimately check the I posted box instead of actually creating any form of emotion in our audience. So I always kind of say silence, not sales, is the outcome of indifference.

So if you're struggling with why you're not making any money on social, most likely you're either creating too much indifference. You also are probably not the one creating any form of relationship in your in your inbox, AKA in the form of messages. So therefore, both sides of the coin, right, are not operating. If you guys have ever heard of the flywheel effect by Jim Collins, the book Good to Great, one of the best books I've ever read still to this day. He talks about this. If you take one of those prongs off of the wheel, what happens? It doesn't do what it's supposed to do. So, indifference is is really a major problem in all form of content.

Slow down, post twice a week. I don't care. You don't need to post every day. That's that's a total farce. Right? I don't care what any viral person, social media influencer tells you that my p and l does not reflect whether or not or change whether or not I post four days a week or two days a week. It doesn't. That doesn't matter.

Yeah. Michelle, you talked about making money on social. Can you define what that means? Because I think for a lot of people, they're like, oh, am I gonna be sponsored or whatnot? But you can also be driving clients into your overall business. Right? So can you define that a little bit more?

Yeah. For me, a great question. So for me, the answer of ROI, right, comes down to book calls on my calendar that earn me webinars,

earn me speaking opportunities to be in front of a one to many crowd, right, or, even podcasting. So I actually have studied my analytics. So I know that if I do five webinars a month, for example, there is no way that my p and l is not green for the next three months unless I royally mess up every single one of those sales calls, which eleven years in, I don't really do. Yeah. Right? But it happens. Right? I mean so I understand the math behind I need to be on a certain number of podcasts. I need to do a certain number of webinars per month.

If I speak one at to one or I'm sorry. If I do one in person speaking gig every month with a one to many, my calendar, right, the booked calls on my calendar will create the revenue I need for sales, in this case, you know, coaching, or will create the speaking gig opportunity because somebody will hear me and say, hey. Can you come speak here, which creates speaker fees, right, for me?

So and then now with the book, right, I can actually drive individual book sales,

which puts them at the top of the funnel into sort of the beyond the method web, if you will. Yeah. No. That's amazing. I wish we could talk all day. Like, I seriously could, but we try to keep this just a little bit shorter.

So first of all, how I met you was I had a friend, Lynn Sansom, who saw you on stage. And my understanding, she she basically, like, you knocked her socks off, and she, like, messaged me right after and was like, I know you guys are gonna be fast friends. I don't know why you need to connect, but I know that you're going to. So just super grateful because that's how it works.

Right? I think that, like you said, it is it is getting that event, going, you know, guesting on podcast, doing some of the things that are really just gonna create that overall strategy to drive more revenue in your business.

So there were so many nuggets that you dropped today. You know, I would tell you that one of the one of the greatest things that you shared was this transcendence of pain is knowing that other people might hear your story, and and that's going to give them that support and that, you know, that hope that they too can get through whatever it is that they're going through. So that was my you know, there's so many takeaways from this, but I think just just, you know, knowing too that, like, whatever we've been hearing about social media, like, 90% of it's BS. And so really working with an expert like yourself at Beyond the Method is is is gonna really help somebody move the needle on this.

You know what I can say quickly just for sake of time. I know we're in a hurry.

But what I can tell you is having other people in your court, though, that that I know that that's super cliche. Right? But at at the end of last year, I had women who were reaching out to me, mentors who I love to death. Kelly, you probably recognize the name. Her name is Cindy Yurtman. Right? Oh my god. Love Cindy. Yeah.

She called me the day after I officially found out that I had miscarried, miscarried, and it was one of the most influential conversations in the middle of all of this because the day after I'm sorry. The day of the morning of the of the actual appointment that confirmed it, I had gotten a call from another company that basically they chose another speaker over me because he was part of the boy the boys club. Right? Somebody that he had known for a long time.

And I actually wrote about this in the in my book because it's one of those, like, light my fire type pissed off moments. And it was one of those, like, the whole company, all the C suite executives are saying, hi, Michelle. And the guy who was put in charge of the event basically said, no, I'm gonna go with my buddy who I've known for five years, whatever. Right?

But so I call Cindy in the morning, and tell her what had happened. I call her after the miscarriage later officially, confirmed later in the afternoon. And she just goes, Michelle, she's like, you know what? Sometimes when you can't get something, it's not a matter of what can't I do. It's a matter of what can I do? And it was one of the most important statements I've ever heard in my life. Right? It's not what you can't do, it's what can you do.

So even if something gets taken away from you, in this case, a speaking gig and a life, right, for me on the same day, right, it was a matter of, okay, well, all of that's happening to me, so what can I do? And and that was that came from someone who knew me, who saw me, who loved me, and who trusted that I could do what she was asking me to do,

and I think you have to have people like that in your life without a doubt. You abs well, that is kind of the whole thing Kelly and I bang tables over at GoBun as women. Right? It's this good old girls club of women rooting for women and pulling each other up. I say, well, you get two arms for a reason. Wanna pull yourself up, but wanna pull other people up with you. And I I think that that focus is really important.

My favorite thing that you said is really focusing on the things that drive your p and l. You know? Because you can do a lot of stuff that feels awesome and then be busy, and that fools you into thinking that you've done the right thing. But if you're doing the right thing of messaging one person a day and keeping it simple, that's the stuff that really drives the P and L.

So, you know, you've given so much. You do so much. You've been through so much. One question we love to ask of big givers like you at the end of every podcast recording is what can we do for you? What is, you know, one thing, an introduction,

or a resource that would change the ballgame for you so that we and our listeners can can support you? Yeah. I mean, I think I appreciate that so much, and I appreciate both of you. This is something I've really been looking forward to. And I I will tell you that the best way people can some more support me right now is to buy my book. Right? I think buying the black line, is one of those things where I just know that if it gets in the right hands, it's gonna change their life, men or women, right, for that matter. But, my hope is that it gives that sort of blueprint. It's 2399, right, so they're not breaking the bank if they need to watch what they're spending coaching wise, but it's going to give them the blueprint, and it's also going to show them that, hey, storms happen. But the funny thing about storms is that depending on how we use them, right, magic happens out of it. And my favorite quote in the book is God gives you a mess to give you a message and it's up to us to fight it, right? So what is the message

in the mess? And I think many of us, all of three of us and everybody listening, we've all got messes, man, We've all been through them. Some of them some people listening are probably going through it right now. Right? Yep.

And then there is a very special epilogue at the very end of the book that I encourage everyone to read. Love it. We'll make sure that we get this in the show notes.

So, Michelle, you have been absolutely fantastic, and thank you for everybody listening. If you love the episode, share it with your friends. Reach out to Beyond the Method. Check out what she's got to be able to support you and your business growth.

We also have a new announcement. We just launched our Power Up Your Life Now platform that really enables us to support your business growth as well. So we've got a lot of things for you there. We're gonna be sharing a little bit more on on that in the future.

But, again, just thank you for joining. If you want more information on GoBundance Women, head over to goabundancewomen.com. We'd love to support you and your business growth. And, again, Michelle, you've been an absolute fantastic guest. Super excited to just continue our relationship with you in the future and just sending you so many blessings for for your life and for your business and your family. So thanks again, everyone,

for joining. See you next week.