SFR 144: Josh Forti Shares Today's Social Media Essentials...

Social Media is constantly evolving. Listen and learn about what it takes to make it as an Entrepreneur in today's content saturated world...

What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen, and you're listening to a special episode of Sales Funnel Radio. I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today, and now I've left my 9 to 5 to take the plunge and build my million-dollar business. The real question is how will I do it without VC funding or debt, completely from scratch?

This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me and follow along as I learn, apply and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels. My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.

What's up guys? I'm super excited for you to be here. This is going to be a massive treat for you. I've got to tell you, the topic we're going to go through today and frankly the person that I've brought on today, at first this topic I discredited just a little bit. I'm not going to lie, which is shame on me, poopoo on me, right, but I'm very excited for you guys to learn more about this. The longer I've been doing this game, the longer I've been part of this, the more I've looked at what this person's doing, it's just with sheer awe.

I cannot believe everything that he gets done, and I'm very excited. I'm super honored, actually, to have him on the show. It's going to be great. Anyway, I want to welcome to the show, though, Mr. Josh Forti. How are you doing man?

Josh Forti: Hey Steven. Good to be on here. Thanks so much for having me on. I appreciate it.

Steve Larsen: I'm super excited. I was thinking right before you got on here, I was thinking through kind of the different times we've brushed shoulders.

Josh Forti: Yeah.

Steve Larsen: But not really actually spoke. You know, I know you came to the Viral Video launch. You had an invite for that for sure. I saw you over there taking pictures with Gary V., and I was exhausted by the time that event came up.

I barely remember anything. Everything was hazy...

Josh Forti: I got roasted by Gary V. at the Viral Video event.

Steve Larsen: I remember that. He was standing right there.

Josh Forti: Remember that?

Steve Larsen: Yeah. He roasted you hard, man.

Josh Forti: That's right. That's right. I think you handed me the microphone for that, too.

Steve Larsen: Yep. Yeah. I had no idea we'd work this much together and have you on the show.

Josh Forti: Who knew, who knew?

Steve Larsen: Who knew? Yeah. And then it was really, right, we did that Mastermind together.

Josh Forti: Yeah.

Steve Larsen: And I heard you speak and I swear gold was just spraying everybody in the audience, just all over the place. I could not believe what you were saying. It was amazing. It was incredible. This whole other side of the funnel where the person is the funnel and really diving into personal branding.

You're clearly, in my mind, I actually believe that you're like the foremost expert on personal brand creation. I'm just so honored to have you here...

Josh Forti: Oh man, well I really appreciate, really appreciate that, and I don't know if I'm the number one, but I certainly try to be. Yeah, we've had a lot of fun with it.

Steve Larsen: I'll say it for you.

Josh Forti: Okay. You can say it for me. I like that. I like that. Yeah. We've had a lot of fun with it.

Steve Larsen: Honestly, it was when we were standing outside right after that Mastermind and I saw not just that you were like, I mean, dude, you're very smart. You get a lot of stuff done. You're a go-getter and a hustler, but then also you're intent on helping the world. That's when I was like, man, I've got to get close to this guy. That wasn't long ago. That was like a month ago.

Josh Forti: It feels like it. It was a little longer than that. I think it was, back in January. That was in Vegas.

Steve Larsen: Oh, that's true.

Josh Forti: Right? That's when that was. We spoke there. That's when we first officially met. We had brushed into each other like you said, but we officially met. We spoke on the same stage. I remember at the event someone was like, Steven Larsen's going to be speaking. I was like, well, if it's good enough for him, it's good enough for me. So, I'm super happy that we got to meet up there and, yeah, form a friendship that eventually led to us speaking together again down at the Mastermind before Funnel Hacking Live.

Steve Larsen: Oh, yeah, that's right. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. You know, so for those in the audience who may not know who you are, how did you actually get into this, this area of personal branding? I think the area, like I've had such an issue with it just because I've not ever known really what it is. It seems a little bit fluffy and you're so clear on how to do it. How did you get into this?

Josh Forti: That's a great question. So, actually I grew up through high school, I was home schooled and I grew up on a farm. I had no online presence at all. In fact, I wasn't even allowed to have texting on my phone until I was 18, so like really knew nothing.

Steve Larsen: Right.

Josh Forti: I got into insurance. Long story short, dropped out of college, got into insurance sales and realized that the internet marketing space was this huge trend that a lot of these businesses that we were working with were totally missing out on.

And so I went from there and I was like, man I've got to start studying this, so I started studying e-com and started studying all the different things and blue like several thousand dollars with no success, no results whatsoever. I was like, man, it can't be this hard. I mean, like I've got to figure out a way for me. How I started into it was I was just trying to figure out a way to grow an audience so that I could test like landing pages.

Even if I was giving it away for free, I just wanted to be able to test it without having to pay for it...

Steve Larsen: Right.

Josh Forti: And get the audience's response. Tell me what I was doing right, tell me what I was doing wrong so that I could service them better without having to pay thousands of dollars up front for not getting any results. So, I actually started on the Instagram platform. I thought that was, for me, the fastest way to like grow an audience.

I didn't really understand Facebook at the time. We hear all the time, organic range on Facebook is dead...

Not entirely true, but I started on the Instagram platform and played around with just some different accounts. I bought a course on it. I loved the Instagram game and I loved everything that was there. It is. It's a game.

Steve Larsen: Sure.

Josh Forti: Just finding the little trends and pieces there. I launched a company with a business partner of mine, and together we grew and managed several million followers on the Instagram platform. aCtually, it was just the beginning of last year we decided we had kind of different visions for the company. He wanted to go kind of more the agency route and specifically just servicing that, and I really wanted to hel...