A while back, I had an interesting chat with Martin Bamford, and I felt it would be interesting to outline some of the points in blog form. The main themes we discussed were my time within the financial industry and my program, Content amplifier.
The financial industry and its lack of innovation
One of the first things we discussed was the lack of innovation in financial services.
The nature of my position meant that more often than not, I was driving more than an hour to see clients.
This was followed by extensive sessions with them, before driving back.
This doesn’t take into consideration that some of the applications could fail, and at this point in the process, you still wouldn’t have been paid.
Frankly, I was left frustrated, and as someone fresh to the industry, I felt as though change should be viable.
As I sat mulling this over it struck me. How is it that a life insurance application only takes 15 minutes, and a mortgage application can take over 5 hours to complete?
Why wasn’t a more efficient process in place before I came around?
Reflecting on it now, I can say that there wasn’t enough encouragement.
With the concrete reality of regulations, it can stunt the possibility of innovation.
An example I can remember was talking with a senior member of the F.C.A. We were discussing the viability of online signatures.
The reality of a written signature (easily forgeable) being preferable to date, location, time-stamped digital signatures (verified by the passport office through disclosure of your driving license number) is simply astonishing.
So where does my work come into the picture?
Disclaimer… I’ve always loved technology. The gadgetry marvels that have come out of the last 10 years have always captured my interest (drones, raspberry pi, and Chromecast to name a few).
But I never thought to discover the inner workings of these machines.
With some time out of mortgages, it allowed me to delve into the mechanisms behind the software and coding languages that subtly operated the digital portion of my role.
Cut to finishing a proof of concept software called ‘Mortgy’… in layman’s terms, it was a lot of third-party software interconnected through an API (a system that supports interactions between multiple software applications).
This allowed me to have informed conversations with my audience/clients online whilst I was completing the applications.
In turn, this produced interest from those in the industry, and this attention took the form of potential investors. I eventually took a contract with a mortgage company in London to rebuild the A.P.I to a higher spec.
Content Amplifier
In the last 10 years, social media/digital content has transformed radically, and the rate of this change doesn’t seem to be decreasing.
There’s one thing however that hasn’t changed. The purpose from a business perspective has remained the same, in that it’s directed towards the consumer’s benefit.
Ultimately these days, it’s not the quality of the content that you produce, it’s the quantity.
I’ve calculated that 90% of my revenue comes from social media… It’s a big deal for both myself and my company.
A few years ago, a client of mine wanted me to create a training e-book for his Facebook group of a few hundred people to work off.
This gradually evolved into a regular adaptation of his content, which usually came in the form of short videos.
This could emerge as free giveaways, downloadable from his website (frankly, the possibilities were endless for what we could do with his content).
Cut to the present, where he now steers a seven/eight-figure business.
The one thing that always fascinated me was the light effort he put into his content, and the significant output he would see from said efforts.
From this example and my own time in the industry, I realised that if someone created a short video, they could pull out a mass of content.
Many people know this as the Gary Vee content model.
Educational/value-led content to publish to your audience e.g., a giveaway or invitation for audience participation in whatever you’re doing.
The content amplifier was created to get this content on a multitude of platforms.
On the surface, this process puts content on multiple social media platforms. For instance, you repurpose the content from a video into 5 different media types (video, audio, text, graphic, and picture).
The magic of this is the sheer diversity in platforms you can post it on.
Spotify to LinkedIn.
Facebook to Pinterest.
Ultimately, there’s no limit to the utility of this process.
The input you give is exponentially amplified.
Thinking about the half-life of social media posts, one can often wonder about the upper limits of posting on social media.
People don’t realise that there isn’t one.
The more posts on your audience’s feed, the more engagement you’ll enjoy.
When I launched the content amplifier, I was posting 15 times a day.
Even with this amount of posting, people still came to me stating that they ‘saw something but didn’t quite catch it’…
So, to conclude, there’s no limit to how many posts you can put out there.
I enjoyed the talk with Martin about reminiscing and reflecting somewhat on my past, present, and future in
business.
