

5:00am Wake up. It’s always better to jump out of bed before the sun does. Toilet. Teeth. Deep breath. Glad to be alive. 22 minutes of transcendental meditation to get my head clear, then it’s time for community management across my brand’s social channels, particularly Facebook and Snapchat.

Get a message from a guy in New York who implemented a suggestion I gave via a video on Facebook which got him a big deal over the line; he’s pumped and very grateful.

Gavin had been trying to sell a $65K USD service offering to a company for the past three months and they had been stringing him along telling him they were considering but not making a decision. It was clear he was desperate and in his mind they were the ‘prize’, and as such he was diminishing his authority and acting weak.

I told him to call a meeting, position himself as the guy to do the job and demonstrate his ability, then announce if they couldn’t make a decision he was no longer interested in working with them.

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I told him to say: ‘If you couldn’t make this decision how could you make even bigger ones when we work together?”. Gavin said he told them, verbatim, and they signed on the spot. He even got a 20% deposit. Boom. I didn’t make a cent but the feeling I got while hearing him almost tear up as he told me was worth it.

After all I only sent him 7-8 snaps. Great ROI for 80 seconds of advice.

6:30am Open a fresh bottle of my home brewed Kombucha. But I only get through two mouthfuls before I’m overrun by my little man, Noah. We play cars and trains and talk about planes for an hour and a half before I drive him to school. On the way he points out every garbage truck, crane, bus and excavator he can find. There were plenty today!

8:25am En route to work. This is where I film my new social series on Snapchat ‘In the car with Kerwin’. Ever since I launched ‘The Social Experiment’ and began producing heaps of social content for my consulting business, I’ve been doing everything I can to come up with new content ideas that give value to my audience.

I’ve found that when you get heaps of valuable material in front of an engaged audience, they’re more likely to want to deal with you in a business sense. This new content series is all about solving the problems of my customers – they message me a business problem via Snapchat and I respond with advice.

Today I respond to Jack Zuvelek from The Body Consultants – he wants advice on how to structure a strong JV. Analyse. Think. Respond. Clarify. He’s pumped.

I advised him to identify the best buyers, identify their spending habits, identify other businesses where money is being spent, create mutuality and a beneficial proposition, then approach multiple companies with a proposition framed in a no-brainer way.

I love working with people who follow through. After 16 years in the game I’ve learned each day is generally all about solving other people’s problems. Problems are the greatest opportunities for growth so I don’t shy away from them ever. If you don’t have problems you aren’t pushing hard enough.

8:48am Arrive at work and huddle with team. Go review yesterday and plan for today. I do this every day – it’s important to stay connected with my team members and with every aspect of my business. In the huddle everyone is equal.

Turns out events team is behind the eight ball. A venue for an upcoming business education conference I’m running is double-booked and we got the shit end of the stick.

I don’t get mad, I get new suppliers. Need new venue for event in three weeks for 300 people in peak time for events. The documentary filmmaker I’ve hired to follow me around for social content starts his filming for the day. Love his work.

In addition to solving other people’s problems, I still have to worry about my own – after all, I need to keep the wheels turning. This year I’ve been focusing on marketing through social. It’s all about the content and a lot of it. Give, give, give to your audience before you ask for anything in return. But we need a solution to this venue problem?

I think about reaching out to my network and catch myself procrastinating so I say out loud – with enough volume to scare the shit out of my filmmaker “just do it now!”.

I laugh, he’s not quite used to my quirks yet.

9:30am Sit at desk, upload first social video for the day ‘Dealing with Failure’. Advice for small businesses on, you guessed it, dealing with failure.

My perspective is my most valuable ally so I share it on a subject that I know very well. Share it across to my personal profile, and all my groups, across all my social channels. Promote on Snapchat and Instagram. Create an email promoting the video and send to database. It’s not just about creating useful content, it’s about distribution as well.

10:30am First meeting of the day with a prospective social media manager, this is the 15th person I’ve interviewed. It’s a short interview. Can’t believe how few people in Australia truly understand social.

What I would give to find a social media manager who genuinely knows social. It’s not that hard really. Strong ideas, strong content, strong engagement, and strong analytics. It wouldn’t hurt if they also understood the impact of organic reach on paid ads. And why do so many want to use scheduling tools when the impacts on reach are so blindingly obvious. Native content all the way. How come no body knows this shit? Hope I love the next one. Until then, I’ll have to keep doing it myself.

11:30am Breakfast. I have an intermittent fasting schedule where I only eat during eight hours of the day, between 11:30am and 7:30pm. It keeps my metabolism running high, helps my brain cells, too. They tell me it helps to prevent Alzheimer’s. I have three brain injuries from a stroke, a skydiving accident and 20 years of Muay Thai kick boxing, so anything to keep the wolves at bay.

I value the speed at which my mind is able to process things and am always looking to tweak it. Being ADHD I have a serious advantage, as I have hacked this for my personal gain.

12:30pm Film 10 videos back-to-back with the help of my Swedish filmmaker Mattias (I call him ‘chef’ because the kid knows how to cook up great content). These are business insights videos for my social channels. A couple of my favourites are ‘The truth about motivation’, ‘Can anyone be an entrepreneur?’ and ‘How to overcome your fears’.

Did eight out of 10 in one take, so feeling pretty good. Again, the key to my content marketing is valuable content. And lots of it. It’s called the mere exposure effect – the more exposure people have to my content, the more they connect with my brand, the more likely they will want to have a business conversation.

I’m thinking what do they already watch, what will make them share, comment and react positively. I’m always thinking about how I can stack the deck in my favour so I reverse engineer the outcomes I’m chasing.

2:00pm Calls with clients. Each day I make time for client calls. The glitz and glam of the company may be all about our marketing image, but the foundation is the clients. They pay the bills. Remind myself to never forget that one fact. Talent and clients, then my marketing image … in that order. Talent and staff are not the same thing.

3:00pm Deliver webinar for clients about the talent attraction method, as my filmmaker catches all the excitement. Still getting used to having someone follow me around with a camera. Weird. Now know what it feels like to be a Kardashian (not). My webinar focuses on holding onto good talent – one of the many essential elements to running a good business.

3:30pm Shit, we really need to solve this venue problem. Running out of time and distractions are a killer. Jump into a meeting with the events team. Discuss possibilities. Have to think outside the box as the usual suspects are booked out. Come up with the option of the Maritime Museum. Execute. Not ideal but we’ll make it work. Not every solution will be perfect, but a solution is better than an unsolved problem.

4:40pm Lunch, then steal 18 minutes in the car for meditation.

5:30pm Head home. Start prepping dinner. Marinade some chicken, put on the quinoa, roast some almonds on the stove and make magic in the kitchen with some other choice ingredients. I love to cook. It’s a form of meditation. Cooking is like business: if you love what you are doing it always produces a better finished product.

6:00pm Dinner with the family. Bathe son, water everywhere, and I now have a bubble beard. Bed son; I am the puppeteer and bring out Kenny the Koala as there is non-stop giggles, until mum tells us we need to calm down for bed. We keep going anyway. Boys will be boys. The love I feel for this child in incomprehensible. I want to eat his feet!

7:30pm Watch Suits with my wife Kristen. I want to be Harvey Specter when I eventually grow up, because he oozes stamina and really knows how to control a situation, even when things aren’t going his way. He’s a closer, I’m a closer and I wonder if he wishes he were me, too?

I turn to my wife and profess my love for Harvey, she just laughs and asks if she should be jealous.

8:45pm See the half empty bottle of Kombucha that I forget to drink this morning. Think to myself ‘What a waste’. I hate waste. I drink half and pour the rest down the sink. Open computer, two minutes of planning for tomorrow. Close computer. Shut down.

Kerwin Rae is an entrepreneur, investor, international speaker and author of The Entrepreneurial Apprentice