Marketing Experts Reveal Top Strategies To

Arlen Robinson ([00:03].041)
Welcome to the Ecommerce Marketing Podcast, everyone. My name is Arlen and I am your host. And today we have a very special guest, Aj Kumar, the “Digital Maestro,” is the founder of The Limitless Company, a studio system for influencers. AJ and his team are on a mission to help entrepreneurs in the Creator Economy build for-profit human-healing brands. Aj has helped corporate brands like Salesforce, Mint, Intuit, and industry-leading personal brands including Neil Patel, Nikki Haskell, Nontoxicdad, and Kimberly Snyder. Welcome to the podcast, AJ.

AJ ([00:45].964)
Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Arlen Robinson ([00:50].049)
Yeah. And thank you for joining us. I really appreciate you coming on and I’m really excited to talk to you today. You know, we’re really going to be covering a few areas, a lot of them, which are going to be part of your, your bread and butter, but we’re going to be kind of diving into personal branding, influencer marketing, and organic social media. And you know, how do you leverage these areas in order to grow your e-commerce brand? Because that’s

That’s the bottom line. When I talk to e-commerce companies all day with, uh, my our main business, uh, which is OSI affiliate software. That’s, that’s, that’s always the, on the forefront of everyone’s mind is that growth or growth strategies? What, what do you need to focus on to take things to the next level? So that’s, um, a lot of what we’re going to be talking about today. Uh, but before we do get into all of that, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about your background and how you got into what you’re doing today.

AJ ([01:42].476)
Yeah, sure. And yeah, you’re right. It is a topic that’s on everybody’s mind right now. Everyone is thinking about how they could leverage their personal brands and grow themselves online. So I’ve been in digital marketing for over 15 years now. It’s been it’s been a minute. I originally got in because of a friend of mine named Neil Patel. He was one of my original mentors and he taught me digital world skill sets and you know, everywhere from blogging, SEO, social media.

copywriting and I kind of ran with it. I originally had an SEO agency in San Francisco called Single Grand and that’s where I had the chance of working with all these really great companies, primarily with SEO. I started shifting my focus though from working with corporate brands to working with personal brands around 2012. I partnered up with a woman named Kimberly Snyder and she was a celebrity nutritionist and I helped her by taking these corporate marketing strategies.

Arlen Robinson ([02:24].857)
Mm-hmm.

AJ ([02:41].484)
and applying it to a person, right? And helped her take her blog from 30,000 visitors a month to 500,000 visitors a month. And all that attention that we created, we were able to monetize in a variety of different ways. Everything from selling digital products, physical products, to helping her become a New York Times bestselling author. And that was really when I first understood and developed like a playbook.

that I pretty much got from looking at other influencers out in the traditional media world. You know, the Oprahs, the Ellens, and Martha Stewart. Not that Kimberly was at Oprah level. She was like a mini version of that within her own niche. And then by taking that playbook, I started doing that with other clients, television stars, and other people that are essentially experts that are successful in the industry and help them leverage the internet to…

Arlen Robinson ([03:21].913)
Mm-hmm. Sure.

AJ ([03:39].212)
you know, become famous for their expertise. And that’s what led me to where I am today, which is Limitless Company, where we’re doing that as an agency and we’re helping them leverage social media to do that.

Arlen Robinson ([03:41].482)
Okay.

Arlen Robinson ([03:50].589)
Yeah, that’s good stuff. And I know it’s an area that a lot of businesses, specifically e-commerce brands need guidance in with social media, just because of it’s almost like the wild west. I mean, there’s so many of these platforms, they’re changing all the time. We just mentioned before we started recording, as you talked about, tick tock shop is was recently launched allowing

influencers and brands to have their own online shop within TikTok. And so, you know, you really do need some guidance. If you’re a business and you’re really trying to navigate these waters and figure out what’s going to be the best strategy and tactic and platform for your business. So it’s, it’s good to know we’ve got, you know, companies like yours, limitless that are helping brands out.

AJ ([04:37].196)
Yeah, I mean, a lot of people are really good at what it is that they do. You know, they’re in their zone of genius. And when it comes to then, Hey, I got to create a brand and I got to monetize that brand that just requires a ton of other skillsets and that’s what we allow. These creators to do is that they focus on their creative genius. And then we do all that hard work for them, at least like 90, 95% of it.

Arlen Robinson ([05:01].361)
Okay. Right, right. Exactly. So still got to be a little bit of work that the brand has to do on there and for sure, you know, as far as getting things structured and, you know, messaging stuff like that. But yeah, it’s, you know, good to know that you’re leveraging a lot of the work for them. Now, one I wanted to kind of start off with was respect to, you know, personal branding and

AJ ([05:11].788)
Yeah.

Arlen Robinson ([05:27].217)
speaking of, you know, yourself actually, and so, and even the limitless company, how have you really leveraged, um, personal branding to build, not only your personal brand, but the limitless company’s brand. And, um, if you can share any insights on, on how you were able to really leverage your brand to help grow your business.

AJ ([05:47].564)
Yeah, totally. So you know what, the funny thing is, I didn’t start working on my personal brand up until like a few years ago. For most of my career, I’ve focused in most of my efforts on building someone else’s personal brand. I was always the guy that was behind the scenes. And then at some point I wanted to scale because working on somebody’s personal brand just requires a lot of time, effort and energy, requires a team and that effort was just going to.

Arlen Robinson ([05:56].142)
Okay.

AJ ([06:15].884)
doing it for someone else and it working, right? Like these people were getting these multimillion dollar businesses. And I wanted to figure out a way to scale it. So eventually I started taking everything that I knew and putting it into these core four functions. And once I was able to systematize content creation for my clients, I was like, wait a second, I have something really great here. So when I realized that, I changed from just having a.

a referral business model to then now promoting myself and promoting pieces of content that I’ve created, whether it’s on entrepreneur.com, articles that I’ve created, or now I’m doing videos, which really just allows me to get in front of more people faster. And look, I’m not doing it at a big scale yet. I personally don’t have hundreds of thousands of followers or millions of views, kind of like some of my clients do, but it’s not what’s always needed.

Arlen Robinson ([07:00].633)
Hmm. Mm.

AJ ([07:14].188)
Right, like it just depends on what your goals are. So as I’m growing and as I’m building my platform, it’s working like I’m starting to get in front of more clients. I’m starting to get more people interested in wanting to work with us and utilizing our services. And this is literally what I teach people and help other people do as well.

Arlen Robinson ([07:28].683)
Mm-hmm.

Arlen Robinson ([07:33].225)
Okay, okay. Well, yeah, that’s some good stuff. Yeah, it’s, it’s always a I think a juggle for me when I talk to brands when they are when they hear personal branding and they’re trying to figure out. Okay. Yeah, I can, you know, work on my personal brand, my social profile, I can kind of push common content in my personal brand that it’s related to my business. But I think sometimes it’s a little difficult to see how to

I guess you could say kind of merge these worlds of your own personal brand with your company’s brand. And let’s say that it’s an e-commerce brand.

AJ ([08:11].82)
Yeah, and that is the conversation that a lot of people have in their mind right now of should I build my personal brand, should I build my corporate brand? And really it comes down to both because as you grow your personal brand, as people pay attention to you, you could wield that attention and take it towards all of your different projects, whether they’re articles that you’re posting, videos that you’re posting, or if it’s companies that you’re.

promoting, whether it’s your company or recommending other services, right? That is all part of your ability to develop that influence. Because people could pay attention to somebody and it could be millions of people paying attention to somebody, but if that person doesn’t have real influence, then what value is that attention?

Arlen Robinson ([08:48].493)
Mm-hmm.

Arlen Robinson ([08:57].665)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Now it’s speaking of influencer influence or influences, right? They, um, you know, in the context of just e-commerce, how instrumental do you feel that influencer marketing, uh, has been for your business directly? And if you could share a specific example of a successful influencer marketing campaign that you’ve executed.

AJ ([09:20].3)
Yeah, I think influencer marketing is a really key component. Now I come from the world of helping influencers build the business that’s vertically integrated, where they own it from end to end and all of these clients essentially have some kind of product or service that they’re selling, whether they’re, whether they’re services to where they’re working with clients or their customers that are buying their physical products or digital products online. But.

developing your persona and developing your influence, your ability to actually convince somebody or to motivate somebody to take out their wallets on the internet and make a purchase decision. A lot of that comes from the value that you’re giving them and the consistency of the value that you’re giving them. So for example, with Kimberly, we built up her brand, we built up a website, got a ton of traffic going in there.

And then we converted that traffic into email subscribers. And then as people subscribe to those email campaigns, we start sending them more emails that continue to build that relationship with Kimberly. What occurs is a parasocial relationship. And it’s us positioning Kimberly in their minds as the authority, someone that’s credible, someone that has real experience that they would want to listen to. And then as we develop that audience, and as we understand the needs of that audience, the issues that they’re going through.

Arlen Robinson ([10:28].91)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

AJ ([10:48].62)
whether they’re having digestive issues or skin issues or whatever it was for her, she’s a plant-based nutritionist that was also in the realm of spirituality and yoga. And as we figure out what those needs are, then we could develop products accordingly. And now we could build up our e-commerce website and have one signature product and push that signature product out there. And as people like it and use it and feel the transformation from it,

Arlen Robinson ([10:54].981)
Sure, Mm-hmm.

Arlen Robinson ([11:12].962)
Yeah.

AJ ([11:16].364)
It allows us to then expand into other product offerings.

Arlen Robinson ([11:19].605)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. It sounds like one key thing there also that you mentioned is you took her followers and you got them opted in to her list so that you really have more of a control over the data and the relationship and not really relying on these third party social platforms for the communication, whether it’s just the posts, whether it’s the comments, whether it’s direct messages.

because, you know, as you and I know these platforms, you know, they can come and go and, you know, if, if one day, you know, tick tock shuts down, you know, there was rumors, uh, you know, last year or the beginning of this year that tick tock was going to be banned in the U S if that happens, then it’s like, you’re, um, you’re kind of out of luck. If they’re controlling your customers, um, and these prospects that you have, anyone that’s, you know, following the influencer.

AJ ([12:12].62)
Yeah, I think you said it, you’re 100% right on that. It’s, you know, a lot of these platforms, especially social media platforms, they’re rented, right? What’s owned is your brand. And that’s something that you could get people to see frequently enough to where it gets placed in their mind and then you own that. And then whatever platforms you go on, they potentially could be following you, right? Just depending on the kind of relationship that you have with them. But kind of like what you said, Arlan, I think it’s important to…

Arlen Robinson ([12:24].453)
Hmm. Mm-hmm.

AJ ([12:42].956)
however you’re building, whatever you’re building, your shop, you do own that because if you started building on other platforms, you know, TikTok shop is great right now, but you don’t really have much control over it. Yeah, it’s driving a lot of traffic, views and customers, but as that gets more saturated, then if you put all of your eggs in just building that on TikTok’s platform, it’s gonna put you in an uncomfortable situation once that platform changes.

Arlen Robinson ([12:52].312)
Yeah.

Arlen Robinson ([13:09].103)
Hmm.

AJ ([13:10].988)
which it will, just like everything all other platforms are gonna change.

Arlen Robinson ([13:12].225)
Yeah. Right, right. Exactly. It’s it’s not if it’s kind of it’s when we already know it’s going to change. It’s going to pivot. You know, it could be here today as far as that component and it could be totally different. You know, tomorrow next year, you never know. So yeah, that’s very important. And speaking of these different social media platforms, you know, with influencers like the one that you mentioned and several others I know that you’ve worked with, of course, they’ve

probably amassed amount and even brands, they’ve probably amassed amount of followers just organically from people just interested in them or maybe it’s their customers. Maybe it’s just people that are just interested in what they’re doing and they’re following them just organically. They come across them on these platforms. So all that is great because that’s just organic people just naturally finding you like what you do, purchasing your products or consuming your content. So that’s awesome. But there’s also

paid efforts, paid promotions that you can do on these social platforms. And so how do you really balance the two? And do you find any, what do you find most effective when you’re trying to drive, you know, organic traffic, as well as do the doing these paid promotions?

AJ ([14:29].772)
Yeah, so I think it’s a really good question because we’ve come to a point in the world where you can essentially see that there is this advertising ecosystem where this direct response world exists, where this concept of return on ad spend ROAS exists, and it was very black and white and it was very easy to understand. You know, in the past decade or so, most people saw social media, the internet as kind of a novelty.

And that’s why it was such a wild wild west and people were making tons of money, selling stuff on Facebook or Instagram or just everywhere. Whereas now we’re about to enter a cookie list world. Next year, Google plans to take care of that because now all these companies, all these brands are prioritizing privacy because now people are realizing, Oh, all that fun novelty that I was just playing with. I was actually being harvested for a ton of data. So now that privacy is more of an important factor.

Arlen Robinson ([15:25].297)
Hmm.

AJ ([15:27].82)
the game is going to change. And most people get that advertising ecosystem, but they don’t realize there’s also an organic ecosystem, which I call reality, right? It’s just default. It’s before it was Google and it was search engines. And if you want to see if something’s legit or not, you Google it, you research it. Whereas now you have also social media organic. And in the past five years, as TikTok introduced

Arlen Robinson ([15:29].058)
Yep.

Arlen Robinson ([15:38].639)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

AJ ([15:53].484)
short form video at mass scale and how all these other platforms started copying that as well. The concept of vertical short form content is a game changer, right? People are spending 2.5 hours a day on average on social. And that means within that period of time, a person could be consuming hundreds of different pieces of content. So when it comes to like what that balance is, I call this

Arlen Robinson ([16:04].896)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

AJ ([16:22].54)
I call this a 3C framework, content and commerce in concert. So content is something that you always want to put out there. It’s value, it’s what people are going to pay attention to. And pay attention is the key word here. Because when people are paying attention to you, they’re creating this relationship with you, they’re liking you, and hopefully at some point, they start to trust you. So as that relationship develops, and as people start getting your content, and you start delivering that value in the sense that

Arlen Robinson ([16:26].853)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

AJ ([16:51].02)
you’re solving their problems. Because that’s what really marketing is about, solving people’s problems. And it could even be the problem of a person being bored, right, there’s an entire massive industry, the entertainment industry, that is solving that problem of people just being bored all day. So if you’re solving problems and it’s working, people are gonna start to pay attention. And as that happens, you could start to commercialize some of that content. So with a lot of clients I work with, we post content.

Arlen Robinson ([17:15].045)
Hmm.

AJ ([17:18].156)
frequently, sometimes daily, sometimes five days a week. And then some of those slices of time, we commercialize it, whether it’s with brand deals, maybe it’s a, like, you know, if it’s a chef client, then it could be a cooking product. And we introduced that as product placement, right? A lot of the rules that have applied in TV land and movie land are essentially the same rules that work in creator land, in, you know, in the online system.

Arlen Robinson ([17:26].624)
Yeah.

Arlen Robinson ([17:34].456)
Mm-hmm.

AJ ([17:47].916)
So it’s about making that content interesting and fun. Like we just had this brand deal for one of my clients, her name is Nikki Haskell, and she’s 83 years old, and she’s the grandfluencer. We’re absolutely killing it with her. We’ve been averaging like four or five million views per month. I just saw a video recently that was like 13 million views. So it’s like…

Arlen Robinson ([17:54].286)
No.

Arlen Robinson ([18:02].03)
Mm-hmm. Wow.

AJ ([18:13].036)
It’s doing so well and now we’re getting all of this interest from brands that want to be in front of our audience because she’s even though she’s 83, her audience are our Gen Z women, you know, and in millennial women as well. So now we’ve worked with a shoe company and when we’re creating ads, when we’re creating, when you’re trying to commercialize their content, it’s not just like, Hey, buy these shoes, but it’s us creating something that is fun and interesting and gets the audience to want to engage.

Arlen Robinson ([18:41].337)
Mm-hmm.

AJ ([18:41].516)
So I think the future of being able to blend content and commerce comes down to creating content that feels native to the brand, right? Not just like a random sponsored ad, kind of like how you saw on commercials, right? When you’re flipping through and you’re just seeing random commercials. But the more relevant you can make those ads to your audience, the more native it feels like, meaning that the influencers involved in the process, the more effective it’s going to be. Like one of my, Neil.

Arlen Robinson ([18:49].39)
Mm-hmm.

Arlen Robinson ([18:53].249)
Yeah. Right.

AJ ([19:10].988)
runs one of the largest advertising agencies in the world called NP Digital. And he’s been saying this for a long time, that a lot of influencer marketing campaigns, the biggest thing that they’re doing wrong is that they’re only leveraging the influencer on the ad. Meaning that once the influencer clicks and goes to a landing page or goes beyond that ad, it doesn’t feel connected, right? So a strategy that they used a lot is putting the influencer on the landing page of the product.

Arlen Robinson ([19:33].311)
Mm-hmm.

Arlen Robinson ([19:40].066)
Right.

AJ ([19:40].716)
And just that small change increases conversions, right? Because that’s what, the game is ultimately about touch points on different channels. And it’s not about just limiting yourself to one channel, or it’s not just about just doing organic and not paid, or just paid and not organic. It really comes down to having this omni-channel approach. Your customers are on a lot of different platforms. And if you’re able to get those touch points in where they see you, they hear you, they experience you.

Arlen Robinson ([19:43].598)
Mm-hmm.

AJ ([20:10].412)
And then even getting those micro touch points in. By micro touch points, I’m talking about these little like ways for them to engage with you, whether it’s like buttons or share buttons or say buttons or even commenting. All of that contributes to them getting in a relationship with you and then buying things from you and then increasing the average order value or increasing the lifetime value. Like all of these business metrics that you want to grow, start to grow.

and that happens as a result of your efforts on social.

Arlen Robinson ([20:43].286)
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I think one of the key things, as you mentioned, is just making sure whatever you do from the promotional standpoint on your social platforms just is, you know, feels organic as possible to your followers, because it’s like you said in the traditional TV, you know, back in the day when, you know, you’re flipping through channels, you get these random ads that, you know, have nothing to do with you. You know, I can remember the ad.

AJ ([21:06].092)
Yeah, it’s that 2 a.m. ad. Yeah.

Arlen Robinson ([21:09].973)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I mean, I can remember watching these ads when I was when I was younger, there was a some type of medical alert device. It was a classic ad with the old woman falls down and she says, I fall in. I can’t get up. You know, I’m a I’m a young teen and I’m watching some show or whatever. And then why is this ad being served to me? You know, that’s something that, of course, maybe my grandparents could utilize, but not me. And so, you know, it’s just not targeted there. But these days, I think because of the data

aj ([21:22].764)
Yeah.

AJ ([21:32].78)
Yeah.

Arlen Robinson ([21:40].273)
Um, the brands are more intelligent enough to know, okay, who are their followers and then what would be appropriate to, um, you know, to, to market to them and what really just makes sense for, you know, the, the sets of, of people that are, you know, kind of in our funnel or in our ecosystem, um, rather than just kind of, uh, blindly throwing products in front of them that, you know, they have no interest in. So yeah, very.

AJ ([22:01].42)
Yeah, willy-nilly. Yeah. Yeah, like it’s gotta be more calculated. It’s gotta be more strategic, right? Cause like internet makes everything transparent. People could see, people could research and everybody’s connected socially. So if you screw up or do something like tricking people or whatever, like it’s eventually gonna surface. So really, really right now, you know, we’re all in the business of creativity.

Arlen Robinson ([22:24].558)
Yeah, yeah.

Arlen Robinson ([22:30].786)
Hmm.

AJ ([22:30].796)
And if you could create cool content that’s entertaining, that people could, you know, like experience, right? It’s a viewing experience. Cause everybody just has content you’re watching on this flat screen device and they’re just mindlessly scrolling. But if you could create an experience for somebody to have, then they’re more likely to go into your world and pay attention to advertising that is in your world for your products, whether it’s your products or products that you’re recommending.

Arlen Robinson ([22:57].462)
Yeah.

Yep, exactly. Exactly. Now I’m a huge advocate of just really learning from past mistakes. Cause I think that’s where you really, where the really learning really happens from, you know, the lessons learned, the mistakes that you’ve made. And so I wanted to see if you could share an instance where, you know, personal branding or influencer marketing strategy just didn’t go as planned and you know, what lessons did you learn from it and how did that shape you moving forward?

AJ ([23:21].42)
Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good question. I remember a time where one of my clients partnered up with a company called Burt’s Bees, which, and you know, this person was in the natural wellness kind of space and Burt’s Bees was acquired by a company called Clorox. And since this person was in the natural wellness space, she did this thing with Burt’s Bees and then the audience found out and realized like, hey, why’d you do that? Like, you know.

Arlen Robinson ([23:33].825)
Mm-hmm. Great.

Arlen Robinson ([23:42].262)
Mm-hmm.

AJ ([23:55].116)
the parent company is Clorox. Burt’s Bees wasn’t always like a company owned by like this conglomerate that, you know, a ton of people like or don’t like or have strong opinions about, but that resulted in a bit of a backlash. Like the campaign occurred and it happened and the results were fine, but then this influencer’s audience got really upset. So.

Arlen Robinson ([23:56].833)
Mm.

Arlen Robinson ([24:20].203)
I see.

AJ ([24:21].772)
One thing to think about is when you are parking up with the brands and the money could be attractive, I think for that person it was like a six figure brand deal at that time. So it’s a very attractive brand deal. So when you do get these really attractive brand deals, you gotta think about the unattended consequences that could occur because of the brand’s relationship with the world, with your audience, right? Because that’s a little bit harder for you to control.

Arlen Robinson ([24:31].329)
Mm-hmm.

Arlen Robinson ([24:47].309)
Yeah.

AJ ([24:48].012)
Now, if that does happen, because it does happen and people want the money because people want the money, like, how do you turn down a six figure brand deal? It you start to get into this, like morals game and like, it gets pretty wild. So you just have to be careful of that. And, and if that does happen, the good news is, is that people typically forget, you know, the news cycle was pretty fast these days. So as long as you’re communicating to your audience and

you and they understand and they get it, then it will be a lot easier to move forward from that.

Arlen Robinson ([25:22].773)
Yeah, yeah, very, very true. Um, now as we get ready to, to wrap things up, I wanted to see if there’s some, any advice that you can give to any e-commerce business that’s looking to build their, uh, you know, their personal brand, whether it’s the owner trying to build his personal brand and then help grow the e-commerce brands, you know, brand by doing those both simultaneously. Um, if they’re trying to do that, what advice could you give if they’re looking to leverage?

influencer marketing specifically for the first time, because I come across a lot of brands that you know, have constantly heard about influencer marketing know that it’s something they should do, but they don’t quite know how to get into it, how to really initiate that process.

AJ ([26:07].276)
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense for the founder to essentially become the first influencer for their e-commerce company. Right. And by them doing it and then demonstrating it, it becomes a lot easier for other people to see, oh, this is how this person, this is, this is the person that’s behind this product or these products, and this is how they’re talking about it. And it’s not just about making it so product first focused, which I think a lot of people make that mistake. They just put their product up front and this is what it’s about.

Arlen Robinson ([26:14].873)
Right. Mm.

AJ ([26:35].884)
You got to start thinking a lot more creative creatively when it comes to the type of content you want to create. So if you’re the founder, then there’s, there’s all these different narratives that you could talk about, whether it’s how products are created, why they’re created, what kind of solution these products are solving the founder story in itself, like that all becomes really interesting content, and then it makes it a lot easier for when you are trying to expand you and you do want other influencers to start promoting your product.

Arlen Robinson ([26:58].401)
Yeah.

AJ ([27:05].996)
that there’s something beyond just this e-commerce store with a bunch of SKUs.

Arlen Robinson ([27:11].817)
Yeah, yeah, very true. Yeah, that really rings true to me and a lot of people that I talk to when you’re exploring, let’s say a new brand. I think most people these days, a lot of people these days, if they’re like me, are always concerned about what’s behind the scenes of that brand, the owner, their mission, their story. So a lot of times if I’m exploring a new brand and I’m going to first…

You may check out their home page for what they’re offering. Once I find out what they’re about, I immediately usually go to their about page and figure out, okay, what’s the backstory? Um, because, you know, nine times out of 10, the product that they’re selling is like, you know, you know, thousands of other products, you know, they may have found a little niche there, but it’s, it’s similar. So a lot of times, you know, I’m like, okay, what’s their, what’s their kind of take on this? How did they get started? What was their journey? You know, I’m always really.

AJ ([28:02].188)
makes them different. Yeah. Every, yeah, everything in the world’s practically commoditized to where, you know, everyone’s selling every same thing repackaged, repackaged that. So a lot of what stands out today is, is where you could blend in your areas of interest, you know, because that’s how social media algorithms work. They’re just areas that they’re just spaces of interest in the on the digital landscape.

Arlen Robinson ([28:03].273)
Yeah, what’s the difference between them and somebody else?

Arlen Robinson ([28:14].37)
Yeah.

Arlen Robinson ([28:20].771)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

AJ ([28:29].292)
So by presenting yourself and bringing your other areas of interest, you just humanize your brand. You make it more real, relatable, approachable, right? Easier to connect with a person than just.

Arlen Robinson ([28:38].73)
Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

AJ ([28:44].748)
Aloha.

Arlen Robinson ([28:45].697)
Yeah, for sure, for sure. And I really like what you said about how a brand really has to have the founder be really that first influencer. I think that’s an excellent starting point. A lot of times I think brands don’t really think about that or they kind of downplay this whole story and the journey of the founder. But essentially, yeah, that can really, really push.

the brand forward because that really should be the first influence of the brand. And then after that, then I think you’ll be able to kind of see, all right, what other influencers may have had a similar story, similar journey, or at least have a similar mission or at least promoting products that have that similar mission. And then it’ll make it easier to kind of line up who you select to be that influencer for your brand.

AJ ([29:36].972)
Yeah, I mean, if it was like back in the days and it’s like Ray Kroc or the Wendy’s guy or whatever, you know, visionary founders from the past, if they had access to social media, they’d be on that thing promoting their business like crazy. Right? They did it their own way and and they were the the cream of the crop that rise to the top. Now it’s a lot easier for anyone to be able to accomplish that, you know, so it’s both an easier thing, but it’s also a hard thing in a way as well because

Arlen Robinson ([29:46].757)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure.

Arlen Robinson ([29:57].082)
Hmm. Yeah.

AJ ([30:06].316)
everyone has access to the same playing field.

Arlen Robinson ([30:08].981)
Yeah, yeah, very, very true. Uh, well, AJ, this has been an awesome conversation. I definitely have, uh, loved talking to you about this. I can go on about influencer marketing, personal branding for, for hours and hours. But, um, you know, I’m sure our audience and our listeners and viewers have gotten a lot out of this conversation. Uh, but, uh, I always like to switch gears here before we close things out. So if you don’t mind sharing one, one closing fun fact about yourself that you think we’d be interested to know.

AJ ([30:37].932)
Uh, I love playing with the Rubik’s cube. A Rubik’s cube is something that I started playing with a few years ago. Something that I always knew about wanted. And then it was a couple of years ago, I think it was during the pandemic, I got bored one day and went to Target and I was like, Oh, I remember one of these. And I figured out how to solve it. Now I could solve it. And like, I can always do it in about a minute 30. I’m trying to get it around a minute.

Arlen Robinson ([30:40].791)
Okay. Mm-hmm. Okay.

Arlen Robinson ([30:59].873)
Oh, wow. Wow, that’s awesome. Yeah, that’s really quick. Yeah, my business partner’s son is a fan of Rubik’s cubes. He has different shape cubes and he’s solved a few of them, the ones that have kind of had the odd shapes. But yeah, the standard cube is, I know, the one that’s really, it’s really challenging. But yeah, that’s amazing to see that you’ve got it down to a minute.

AJ ([31:10].028)
Yeah.

AJ ([31:21].996)
And it’s cool and like the reason why I love it so much is because a lot of the stuff that I do is so cerebral and it’s so heady that it’s kind of cool to play with this thing that has this logic to it that I could just physically do and complete, right? Because when it comes to internet projects, they’re always, always on forever, nonstop.

Arlen Robinson ([31:27].861)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Arlen Robinson ([31:37].283)
Yeah. Right. Exactly. But yeah, with the cube, there’s a beginning and end, you know, you have the exactly you have the scrambled version halfway unscrambled and then, you know, totally, totally unscrambled, which is, you know, I’m sure that’s satisfying once you kind of get through it.

AJ ([31:48].876)
A beginning, a middle, and an end, yeah.

AJ ([31:55].532)
Boom. Yeah, and you know, and relates to social media, just like how most people are unscrambled with their brands or scrambled with their brands and I help them unscramble it.

Arlen Robinson ([32:10].698)
Yeah, very true. Well, good stuff. Well, thank you for sharing that AJ really appreciate that. Uh, lastly, before we do let you go, if you don’t mind sharing, um, one of the best, any of the best ways for our viewers and listeners to contact you, if they want to pick your brain anymore about personal branding, influencer marketing, or anything under the sun.

AJ ([32:27].596)
Yeah. Yeah. Best place would be on Instagram. My username, my username is AJ the digital maestro. And I’m in LA. That’s probably why there’s all these ambient noises back there, but AJ the digital maestro.

Arlen Robinson ([32:32].76)
Okay? Okay.

Arlen Robinson ([32:41].145)
No problem. Okay, awesome. Yeah, that’s an awesome handle. We’ll definitely check you out. We’ll have that handle in our show notes, AJ the Digital Maestro. Definitely encourage people to check you out on Instagram and see how you can help them out. Well, once again, thank you AJ for joining us today on the eCommerce Marketing Podcast.

AJ ([33:01].004)
Thank you for having me.

Arlen Robinson ([33:01].989)
Sure.

Podcast Guest Info

AJ Kumar
Founder of The Limitless Company