The Finance Bible

ZG #9 - Becoming the Expert with Katrena Friel

• Zeke Guenthroth and Oscar Don

Share episode

Becoming the Expert — 7 Income Streams & Personal Brand Power w/ Katrena Friel

In this high-impact episode of The Finance Bible, Zeke is joined by Katrena Friel — award-winning author, international speaker, and founder of Becoming the Expert. With 25+ years of business transformation under her belt, Katrena reveals how to turn your life story into a seven-figure personal brand.

We dive into:

  • The 7 income streams of a personal brand (author, speaker, trainer, coach, mentor, facilitator, consultant)
  • Why shame-filled stories are actually your strongest assets
  • How to turn your book into a year’s worth of content and a $10K product
  • Why being ‘spirited’ as a child is often the trait of future leaders
  • The difference between activated and dormant learners
  • How to monetise attention and authority, not just followers

Katrena shares her entire framework for building a personal brand from scratch in 90 days — the same system that has helped corporate professionals and thought leaders become high-ticket experts.

Listeners aged 30–55: This one’s a wake-up call. You’ve got the runs on the board — now it’s time to capitalise.

🔗 Book a free session with Katrena: https://becomingtheexpert.com.au

🎯 Connect with Zeke: @zekeguenthroth

Did you like this episode?

🎧 Enjoyed this episode?
Follow us on Instagram @zekeguenthrothofficial @oscardonproperty and @assetroad for daily insights, property breakdowns, and behind-the-scenes updates.
Explore more at www.assetroad.com.au

Disclaimer:
The information provided in this podcast is general in nature and does not constitute personal financial advice. It has been prepared without taking into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. Before acting on any information, you should consider the appropriateness of the advice, having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs. Asset Road Pty Ltd recommends you seek independent financial, legal, taxation or other advice as required. All investments carry risk. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Zeke Guenthroth:

Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Finance Global Podcast. Today's a special occasion. We're actually joined with a special guest who's an award-winning author, an international speaker and a mentor on pretty much all things business. Please welcome in, katrina Friel from Becoming the Expert. Hey, nice to have you.

Katrena Friel:

Thank you.

Zeke Guenthroth:

No worries at all. Yeah, look, let's just jump straight into it. No need for long-winded introductions. Tell us a bit about, ultimately, to start just yourself, what sort of things you do, and then we'll go where we go.

Katrena Friel:

Yeah, absolutely. So I've been around for about oh, it's over 25 years now, but I'm going to just cap it at 25 and just keep saying 25 years I've been doing this, where I was sort of out there on the circuit doing training and coaching and speaking and stuff, and everywhere I went there was always one person that would come up and say I want to do what you do. And I wondered well, how do I do what I do and how did it all sort of happen? So I started to reverse engineer what I was doing, get rid of all the extraneous and all the errors and all the mistakes and whatnot, and came up with becoming the expert. And that was sort of evolved over decades.

Katrena Friel:

And now I take people from corporate and create their own personal brand business and give them seven streams of income. I can build all the assets in 90 days and then the rest of the 12-month program. We're sort of working on hand-holding and developing the skills that they need to be an author, speaker, trainer, coach, et cetera. Yeah, so it's gone from a soup where I was doing groups right down to it's now a very refined source where I work only one-on-one with people and I just feel the done-for-you model is now coming up as a tactic that people understand is valuable. I think people are sick of just going from program to program and getting a bit here and a bit there, and a bit here and a bit there, and a bit here and a bit there. I put it all into one program so they get everything they need end to end full transformation, get it all started and off we go, whereas, yeah, this you know on your own, by yourself. Online programs really hasn't. The statistics are not great.

Zeke Guenthroth:

Yeah, absolutely. There's just so many different options out there and people are just buying one thing, then buying another, this doesn't work, that doesn't work, and so on. And I think in today's world, like probably more so than ever, you've touched on something really important there, which is the personal brand. I think personal brand in today's world is we're in a stage where that's really more important than actual company brands, in my opinion. Anyway, like you, you know you go and look at what's an example like l'oreal I don't even know how you say it, it's a beauty product, so no surprise.

Zeke Guenthroth:

But like with tendril jenner being the face of their whole thing, it's like that's a person. And then there's a brand behind the person. You know, road with hayley beaver, who she's just sold most of it anyway, so she's not even actually the owner anymore. And then if you go to just like simple advertising with any brand, like athletes and that kind of thing, it's like that athlete is that brand. So, yeah, personal branding now is what I'm seeing more important than ever and actually arguably more important advertising for companies and revenue creation.

Katrena Friel:

Yeah, yeah, and every CEO has a personal brand and a thought leadership piece that they need to put together. And so come right down to every person has the opportunity to not leave money on the table and they can create a business out of their own story. And so what I do when I first get together with somebody is they usually don't know their life purpose or their soul purpose or their direction. They're a little bit stuck because we can't see through our own weeds. What's easy to us seems worthless, whereas actually what is easy to you is really what you should be offering to teach people. So, in my view, I think everyone has the opportunity to build a personal brand and everyone should create a business out of it, with seven streams of income, and that can be put together reasonably easily. And you know, get out there and start to practice it.

Katrena Friel:

And you know, everyone's got a book in them. I think everyone's got 12 book series in them, because within your philosophy story, that should be your first book. And so what I do is I sort of look at the clues and the crumbs that they've left me throughout their entire career and I go and pick up all those crumbs and I can actually see a theme and I can see what it is that they should be offering their world. I call that their medicine. So what is the medicine that they want to give to the world? And it could be anything. It's amazing. The world we live in now is just completely magical in my view.

Zeke Guenthroth:

Yeah, well, you're exactly right. When you take, like, any individual in the world, it doesn't matter where they're from or what their story is, what their background is everyone will have a story that's interesting. Like, no matter where you're raised or how you're raised, there's going to be those things that go wrong, those things that go right, the things you can do, can't do, and so on. And then if you're able to kind of compile that into a neat story and make it something intriguing and turn it into revenue, then it's such an easy thing. You've already got it all there. Why wouldn't you do it?

Katrena Friel:

Yeah, yeah. It just sort of takes often a business mentor to sort of see the diamond in the rough and that, luckily, is my sort of genius zone, so I'm able to do that within about 15 minutes, work that out just by listening to their story and where they've been, and it comes to me quite quickly and people go, wow, how do you do that? And it goes well, everyone's got their genius zone, everyone it just this happens to be the muscle that I've built over many, many decades of listening to many, many stories and seeing how fascinating it is how people's careers have developed and how these opportunities have arisen and why that's happened to them versus happening to somebody else. So I think within the most traumatic parts of your life, that's where the good stuff is.

Zeke Guenthroth:

I completely agree with that. It sort of shapes and moulds you into something and that's like the intriguing point of your story, like where things go wrong is normally like. Even if you take a look at movies with heroes and stuff, it's like something goes wrong, there's a problem, and they turn that into their superpower at the end of the day. That like shapes them and builds them into that better, better final character. Now with our, with our listeners, we have a lot of people who are probably looking into personal brands, like with instagram being what it is nowadays, and a lot of our listeners are, you know, between that 20 to 40 year bracket.

Zeke Guenthroth:

The question that I've actually come across a few times from people that have, you know, um, in previous episodes have talked about personal branding and what it is, given a bit of a background but never really going to the nitty-gritty of like you know how do you actually do it and that kind of thing. One question that keeps arising for people is they struggle with understanding with their personal brand that they are actually their personal brand, like you are the brand, so you can't be you over here and then your personal brand over here. They are one and the same. Do you want to provide a little bit of guidance on how to kind of manage that and make sure that you are portraying basically an authentic part of yourself?

Katrena Friel:

Well, the first thing to really understand is that your brand walks through the door before you, and so that's made up of many, many, many different things of what people have experienced about you. Or maybe they've stalked you on social media and they've got a bit of a taste or a bit of a sense of who you are. So that walks in the door ahead of you, and then you're there to either increase trust with people once they get to meet you or decrease trust when they get to meet you. So you're constantly building your brand or tearing it down, and the funny thing about brand is that it can be torn down in what? Five seconds recently with the guy at the concert who was having an affair.

Zeke Guenthroth:

Yeah.

Katrena Friel:

That was a personal brand of two people that have been destroyed within five seconds. Now where do they go from there? They have to start from ground zero and build their personal brand, but it's against the odds because they have to trudge through all the. You know all the way people think of you after that. You know Having an affair. What does that say about you Cheating on somebody in public? What does that say about the way you respect your wife? I mean, it just says so much. And so he particularly has to walk through that mud and saying sorry is not enough, and getting divorced or separated is not enough. His brand walks in the door before him.

Zeke Guenthroth:

Yeah, that's right. And then that's something that's happened to him like while he's already got the brand that he started. Something I've noticed other people struggle with too is actually I can use myself as a prime example here because it makes it easy and relatable for everyone. So when I was starting my personal brand, something that was and it's the same for everyone it's like a problem at the start is people in your circle. They know you for who you've been, right, they know you throughout your life and they have a preconceived perception of what you are and who you are and how you act and that kind of thing.

Zeke Guenthroth:

So when you decide this is what I'm doing and you make that commitment, it can actually have the impact of people going well, hang on a minute, that's not who I knew or that's not what I know him as, and create that resistance there. And then people get scared of you know making that shift or jumping into that because like, oh, there's a skeleton in the closet, like there's something bad in the past or or whatever like for me it might be. I was a brat throughout school. I was an a-grade menace and I caused a lot of trouble and that's part of my story. So, you know, there's probably people out there that are seeing what's going on and they're like, well, hang on a minute, this guy was a great asshole back in school and like he can't be doing this, he's a terrible guy. So you know, there's those things. What would you say to help people kind of establish, when they're establishing their personal brand, like how to kind of handle that in the best way possible or just keep pushing, or what do you think?

Katrena Friel:

Oh, so good. Look, I could say so much about that, but let's try and keep it brief. But look, first of all, you're allowed to change, you're allowed to evolve and you're meant to. As a young adult, you're meant to transform. Over time, in fact, every sort of seven to eight years, you'll be taking a giant leap of evolution, and so who you are at eight, 18, 28, 38, 48, 58, and so on is completely different. But what isn't different is the fundamental nature of who you are Now, when we look at naughty children or rebellious children, or menaces, or whatever you call it, when you look at it with the lens of an adult and somebody that I can look at you now, not as your parent, but I can look at you and see that you were spirited.

Katrena Friel:

So when I look back at you in the past, I actually see spirit, and I see spirit and I see a strong nature and a strong sense of self and a lot of confidence, somebody that's willing to go out on a limb and be crazy and while as a child that's not appreciated by the police or the parents or the whatever, at the end of the day there is spirited children. Now, those spirited children go on to end up being very, very influential adults, and so when I'm coaching parents, I'm saying to them look at this behavior through the lens of them as an adult, and all you see is a leader. It's just we don't brand it that when they're a child, because it's in that context. So, that being said, let that land for a second. The next thing I want to say to that is you are allowed to evolve, and what's going to happen is people that can only see you one way and will not allow you to evolve and keep trying to drag you down and make you remember when you did this bad thing and that bad thing, and remember when you pulled your pants down and mooned the whole school. Or you did this or you did that. You've got to look at it from their perspective. What is their intention in not allowing you to move on and not just simply being proud of you going wow, look at you, look at you. Then Look at you now. Look what you're doing. Isn't that amazing? Now, the ones that really love you and the ones that are truly your friend will allow their growth and you will do the same for them. The ones that will keep dragging the past out and won't allow you to evolve. They're the ones that are jealous of you and they're the ones that really need some therapy and they've got self-esteem issues and so on.

Katrena Friel:

So the third part of this is that you want to kind of see it as a way of kind of like using the stories to your advantage, and that's strategically bringing out the stories. So, for example, when I got expelled, I make sure that when I got expelled does not stay in shame. I actually have brought that out into the public and I make fun of it and I love it and it's part of my story and it's a way of me showing that I've got chutzpah, I've got spirit, and so you know I can use that story. But you just don't want to keep things in shame. Anything that's in shame that you wouldn't dare say on a podcast or you wouldn't dare say in a speech of some sort, then you've got to go and do some work on that. That's therapeutic work, to turn shame into a story, shame into your hero's journey. So that's sort of.

Katrena Friel:

The third piece is how do you take the old stuff and make it work for you now? And so one is there's a story where I had a miscarriage and I left my corporate job for the last and final time, and you know I've turned that into a story. And then there's a really naughty speech that I do called. You know, what does the bad girls do? That the good girls never will, and so it's turning my bad girl reputation into actually. It's made me the strong, independent woman that I am today, and often women stuck in this good girl, people-pleasing inability to say no, with no confidence and no assertiveness, can you see, that's actually a problem. So while it looked bad when I was a kid, it actually serves me with great power today, and the trick is getting rid of the shame around any of that. And so you and I are both menaces.

Zeke Guenthroth:

Yeah, no, that's exactly right. That's what I normally say too. It's like when you have that part of something where you can kind of turn it into a positive, like turning it from a negative to a positive quote one of my favorite people in the world, people but ultimately that creates that effect of if you can poke fun of it, like you said, and turn it into that storytelling, you can find a way to kind of rotate the narrative and go yeah, look, you know this is what was happening and this is what's happening now. Like you know, that is normally those things that you're like they're questionable in public. That can then prompt you to create the life changes and have the skills and the talent to do what it is you do.

Zeke Guenthroth:

And so now what's going to happen? Yeah, it is amazing. And now what's going to happen is people are going to be like, okay, well, you know, maybe I'm not so scared to start a personal brand. You know, I can get these skeletons out of the closet, have a bit of a laugh about it. I don't have to keep hiding it and now create a personal brand. The trouble they're then going to face is they're going to be in a position where a lot of people go wrong creating personal brands, where they just do it. They create the brand. They don't really know what they're doing or how they're going to monetize that. You know, they might just go uh, what's an example? I've seen a lot of people create brands where they'll they'll be like creative in the fact that they can go and create great content or something on Instagram. They can generate a lot of attention. And then what happens is they kind of go well, I've got all this attention, but I've got nothing to actually monetize.

Zeke Guenthroth:

And a friend of mine from Sydney his name's Alfie Robertson Anyone listening can look him up on Instagram. He's got. Alfie Gets Hard. He can look him up on Instagram he's got. Alfie Gets Hard. He's got. Alfie the Creator he's got Amplify, he's got Pure Body, he works with Elastiboy, which is Jake, he works with Medical Mars, which is Marley, and they're just a group of young blokes like myself, not much different.

Zeke Guenthroth:

You know, they love to go have fun, or used to have fun, and they basically just rotated that from. They were changing their lives, they documented changing their lives and now they're in a position where they they just show what they've done. They've created brands off it, personal brands of them just being like health freaks and working out and doing business and that kind of thing, and their product now is simply helping other people do the same. You know, whether it be health and fitness, whether whether it be creative, like creating a brand or whatever it is. So they found a good way to monetize it, where a lot of people get it wrong and just create it and go cool, like what now? So when you're kind of guiding people through creating their brand and you're thinking of, you know, the seven income streams, what are you actually saying to them to sort of go look, when you're doing this, you need to have a plan in place for monetizing, and how do you actually go about that?

Katrena Friel:

Well, the first thing I do is I have a free discovery session first, and I like to start there because what I'm doing is trying to find my projects and people that I want to work with in a subject or a topic that I'm interested in. So that starts there, and so we're not going to just take anybody who wants to start a chemist or be a PT or whatever, because they're a dime, a dozen. You know it's not very interesting to me. So I'm really looking for those projects that I can really sink my teeth into and create a four and a half grand a day type product. So four and a half grand a day is the day rate that we want to sell them for. So that's kind of the level that we're looking at, not somebody that just wants a $50 collaborative fee or a $500 collaborative fee or a $5,000 collaborative fee on social media. That's not the kind of thing I'm looking for, because to me, those brands will come and go and the best ones will evolve it over time.

Katrena Friel:

And I'm not an influencer, personal brand expert. That's not the area I'm in. What I'm in is I'll sit down with them, have a look at their career, and it could be 10, 20 years of stuff that's gone on. They are the expert. They just don't know they're the expert. And so what I do is I position them as the expert, package them as the expert and then price them as the expert so that they become the expert. So becoming the expert is the name of the business. So from there, once we've determined that we want to work with each other and we've determined that it's a great product and we know the thing that we're going with, then we sit down and do a full business plan from year one, year two and what the million dollar model looks like, and so that they know what I'm building, why I'm building it where the money is, where the money isn't, and so that one day, business planning strategy day is like the greatest thing since sliced cheese and I make strategy and business planning fun and interesting, and the day goes like half an hour, but it's a full day in it and we do a whole bunch of things about their brand and what we're doing.

Katrena Friel:

And then the second day we do in this is in the kickoff. So the kickoff is a two-day process. The second day we pull out of them their philosophy and that philosophy becomes who they are and what they stand for, and it also creates the book outline. So we create the book outline, each chapter and each sub-chapter, and then at the end of that, if we've got time, because that's taken a day usually then we put a little bit of meat on the bone. So when they go home to their writer's retreat and I want them in writer's retreat at home for the next seven days the book writes itself, essentially because it's already inside of them. It's really now they've got the outline to draw that out.

Katrena Friel:

And so once we've created the book and we've gone number one bestseller, the book cover then dictates the brand look and feel, because we don't do the brand first, then do the book cover. We let the book cover guide us as to what the website and the brand's going to look like. So then we do the branding, then we do the website, then we set up all the social media and then we create the TED Talk, the 20-minute speech that's going to whack people in the head with their philosophy and make people go oh, I never thought about it that way. And so from there you get your leads. So if you don't speak about your philosophy, you don't get any leads. So you need to speak. So the book opens doors for you to speak. The speaking gives you the leads and then the leads allow you to. Then what we do is create a signature program. So we turn the book into a live, transformational signature program that you can sell for $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 or more, whatever. And then the signature program is what you rinse and repeat sell, sell, sell, sell.

Katrena Friel:

And then, once people have had your training, then, and only then, can you coach them, because now they've got the basis of what you are and what you stand for and they've got the foundations from which to work from. They've got the language. Before they didn't know what they didn't know. Now they have the language for it. And only now can you coach them one-on-one at a more advanced level, because they've got the basics in place, they've got the language in place, and so, author, speaker, they've got the language in place. And so author, speaker, trainer, coach they're four revenue streams that you've got.

Katrena Friel:

And then in year two clients want more. So let's assume you're really good at what you do. They then want the mentoring, facilitating and consulting. So that's the other three streams of income. But that all falls out of the original signature program. So it's very exciting that I have this process that just gets done easily and effortlessly. And there's certain work that you have to do, but a lot of the heavy lifting is done by me at the very beginning and they love that. First 90 days where it all gets built, and you walk away at the end of 90 days where it all gets built and you walk away at the end of 90 days with your $10,000 signature program ready to go, with your website, your socials, your book, your keynote everything's already set up, ready to go. So you know who you are, what you stand for and what you need to be talking about. Specifically when you go on the stage or on podcasts around the world it's exciting. When you go on the stage or on podcasts around the world it's exciting.

Zeke Guenthroth:

It's such a good way to do it because you basically help them take what they've got, bundle it up into one step, two steps, three steps, four steps, as opposed to just spinning around in circles with your hands up going I'm an expert, but I can't. I'm not an expert. So, no, it's a really good theory and even practically doing that step and developing the program and all of that. I think the talking part of it is probably the major actual selling point there, because so many people now, like you know, you've got YouTube, you've got TikTok, you've got Instagram, that speaking thing, the amount of content that's being consumed worldwide every day. That's the kind of thing that's going to help you trigger the morality and, you know, basically get you well-known in the industry and even more so than you already are. Like, if you're an expert, you probably well know that you're a little niche group, but getting you out there further and then being able to propel that into creating you know, essentially, your brand and monetizing it is just a great way to do it. And there's so many people out there that would be in the position where you know they're an expert in whatever their industry.

Zeke Guenthroth:

Is that just from doing this one little thing and it is a little thing at the end of the day, like, yes, it's a lot of work, you know, as you mentioned, it's a 90-day program, but realistically, grand scheme. If you're an expert in something, you've been doing it for quite a while, you've spent a lot of time there. That one change three months of your life. Which grand scheme is literally nothing. It's changed your whole life. It's common sense. Nothing to change your whole life like you do. It's common sense. Also, I find as well that actually you go ahead.

Katrena Friel:

I was just going to say. I like to think that I save people five years and $75,000 because they're all getting this bit and that bit and this bit and that bit and then not actually knowing what bit to do first. That's part of the issue around business is there's actually a process to it. There's a step-by-step thing that you do to build your brand, and so what people do is everything out of order, and every time you do another program with another mentor, they've got another point of view. So you get spun around again and everyone's program is to tell you that their bit is the silver bullet bit and there is no silver bullet. It actually is a matter of bringing it all together at the right time in the right order. All the bits there's no one silver bullet.

Katrena Friel:

The book on its own is a waste of time. Speaking on its own is a waste of time. Having a signature training program is a waste of time. You actually need the book and the speaking and the training program and then from there you need the coaching program. So to me it all makes sense now. It's taken me 25 years to refine it to the level that it is now. I make it look easy, but, geez, if you are on your own trying to do this, there's literally no way to work it all out. It'll take five years and $75,000 worth of wasted time and effort and money. And who's got that sort of money to waste? Nobody.

Zeke Guenthroth:

Yeah, that's right, you need one thing to propel the next, to propel the next, and then so on and so on. And even just the simple things like you saying, yeah, sure, you say it's five years of time People are probably going to look at that and go, well, hang on five years of time, like I could go and whip all this out in a year very easily. But no, what I think people wouldn't understand is if you're trying to set yourself up as an expert, even just something like a book, doing that and getting it right with the structure, the tonality, basically what image that creates, that can be a two, three, four-year process on its own, just the book. Then you add in creating that speech, the TED Talk that we mentioned to basically get everything going.

Zeke Guenthroth:

A 20-minute talk is a long time and the content that you need to have within that to again tonality, delivery, the words involved, what sort of outcome? Otherwise, you're literally just doing one thing, one thing, one thing, one thing, and we call it throwing shit at a wall and hoping it sticks. Exactly Like it's not going to happen. You're going to be doing all the right things in the wrong order and doing them all at 80% efficiency and it's just not going to work. It's not going to get you quite the results that you need.

Katrena Friel:

The book itself has got so much within it Within the book. What we do is we strip the book at the end and we get a year's worth of social media out of just the book content, because that's all your quotes and so you don't have to think about social media. That's all done for you at the end and all scheduled ahead of time and you don't have to worry about it. And then every time you speak, we record it so that becomes your content, and so not only in full, so we put that onto your blog, that becomes your news, your latest interview, but also we can strip that down to 100 little video vignettes and that becomes more content. So we don't focus on content in isolation, we just automate all that and get you back out there doing the big things and closing the big deals, not hoping to God somebody finds you on Instagram randomly. It just doesn't happen. It just doesn't happen, like not in a proactive way, it's a reactive way, like imagine if I just sat back and went oh, I just hope Instagram does good for me this week, hope, hope, hope.

Katrena Friel:

No, I can't build a business like that. I go out proactively and bring my leads back into my business. I don't wait around the social media to give me that. And even if it does give it to you in the short term, what's happening in the medium term? What's happening in the long term? And what happens when the algorithm changes? And what happens when they shut you down for no reason? What happens? I mean, it's just going on all over the town and it's terrible. So never hang your hat on social media. Use it in conjunction with a much stronger sales strategy. That's underpinning that that you have control over. And so my sales strategy is speaking. So I'm out, live speaking whenever I can and I bring my leads back from that, and one speaking gig can give you a year's worth of leads. It's not an issue, it's quality leads, a whole core audience, not all the gump for people that just scroll past you.

Zeke Guenthroth:

Yeah, it's creating that organic content and the organic lead generation. Even people in just a regular business, for example, let's get a person in the room for a minute and just talk about what sort of company can we use? A plumbing company selling tap filtration? So what they might do is they will need a brand, obviously, to generate organic leads and organic reach. We need to be promoting an area they specialize in or whatever it is. Of course, what they might do is go out and spend $100 a day on meta-advertising and it's like, okay, if we target this area, we can get X amount of leads and we can prospect them and close them and so on. But what happens when you're not doing that? Where are the leads coming from then?

Zeke Guenthroth:

So you, using this personal brand example, with the speeches and that kind of thing, you're generating that organic lead. When you're not out there paying for advertising, you're not out there scrapping and fighting to get leads that are poor quality and then prospecting them and trying to close them. You're generating actual, qualified leads, most of the time with a high level of interest that you can just go sit back. They already know you, they already want your product, they're already meeting with you, they're at the talk or they've watched your 20 minute long form talk, which is a lot of content for someone to sit down and watch when you know there's 10 second-second clips on TikTok getting 50 million views, 100 million views, 1 billion views.

Zeke Guenthroth:

Or what was that girl's name? Leah Holton or whatever her name is, the Melbourne girl. The video where she's driving her car and literally has a video on her Facebook eight seconds got 1 billion views. Like that's the kind of stuff you're competing with. So if you can get them to watch that long-form content, you know you're winning at the kind of stuff you're competing with. So if you can get into what's that long-form content, you know you're winning at the end of the day, absolutely.

Katrena Friel:

Look, there's horses for courses and social media, and seo for certain businesses is absolutely key.

Katrena Friel:

I mean, that's a whole world that needs to be conquered.

Katrena Friel:

But in the personal brand business, when you're an educator and you're educating people about something that's interesting, then, speaking really for that one moment in time, you are important in their world and of the 50 billion trillion things they could be looking at and listening to and learning from, in this one moment in time it's you, and once you leave that room, they are back out there with all the distractions, so you are forgotten. So, for that one moment, you want to capture that lead, and what I'm looking for is a certain quality of lead, not just some rando thing that doesn't suit me and is going to take up a year of my time. So, yeah, to me it's quality, quality, quality, quality, quality all the way, and really finding a way to get those leads coming in. No matter what that's quality and I find with Google, the quality is atrocious and Facebook is atrocious. What you get from them is just a whole bunch of shit, and probably AI shit and probably bots, and you know like you don't even know. So I just like to go out.

Zeke Guenthroth:

Yeah, I can attest to that.

Katrena Friel:

Yeah, and I worry because they're taking our money and not delivering quality. So I just don't know how long people will really cop that. So I've got my ear to the ground on the social media advertising realm. I've got clients in that space and I must admit I tread very, very carefully and I do what I call experiments very, very carefully and I do what I call experiments. And with AI now it's just going to change the game. So we've got to scrap everything we've done and start completely from scratch, with AI now at the helm. And what is that going to deliver? Who knows?

Zeke Guenthroth:

Exactly, yeah, but you're touching on as well, two of the most important things there which you instantly generate with doing a talk like that, is driving authority and driving attention. They're probably the two most important things that you can generate to actually monetize anything, because attention is everything and if you've got an authority like if you looked at as as a position of authority then you can't really drive that selling force. But, yeah, the Google, the Facebook, all of those advertising you get some interesting results of that. Obviously, it's a part of most businesses, but that shouldn't be anyone's prime focus. Ultimately, you need, outside of that You're doing it with a bit of personal branding. You get a little bit of business advice too. Yes, I think anyone out there that's sort of stuck in their ways, like if we're talking about experts in the industry, you know we might be dealing with there's definitely dinosaurs and we're not even going to talk about them as in. Yeah, these fossils have just been around forever and they don't even know how to use a computer. They never will.

Katrena Friel:

They'll never think about it.

Zeke Guenthroth:

But yeah, people who are, you know, maybe in their 40s, 50s, you know they've been.

Katrena Friel:

Have entered. You enter your peak at 40, the beginning of your peak. It's not the peak If you look at it as a bell curve. The beginning of your peak. At 40, you've earned. Prior to that, you've earned three stripes and only now, after you've earned those three stripes, are you actually interesting. So at 40, I want everyone to understand that you're beginning your peak. So this is not the end of days. This is the beginning of your mastery and your monetization and you becoming the wise person.

Zeke Guenthroth:

You know you becoming the, you know the wise person in the village about this thing, whatever, the thing is Exactly what I was hoping you'd say, because there's so many people in their 40s, 50s that are like they've been doing it for so long. There's so much there and they're at a point in their career, normally, where they're what they would refer to as successful. You know they're, they might be in a higher role or they've been in their company for 20 years or whatever it is, and it's like they're comfortable, they've got a comfortability. You know they're not young enough where they're uncomfortable and chasing things. They get to that point where they're like, yeah, I've got my family, I've got my job, I'm an expert, everything's good. At that point in time, that's when you've got the background to flick that switch and just derive it even further. So you know, I'm glad that you just jumped straight into that. That's exactly where I was going.

Katrena Friel:

Talking to that, there's 90 percenters. So I call them 90 percenters. They're lifelong learners. They're going to learn and grow by default, only if they have to, you know, and they just get on with it. And quite their worst thing is that they're comfortable. No one's successful because they're comfortable. Most people do very, very well because they're starving. So what I'm looking for in somebody is that failure isn't an option. So I want people that are hungry, that failure isn't an option, and so you look for those driven people. They're the ones that are the most successful, not the comfy ones. They are institutionalized, their mindset is fit for comfort and they don't want to rock the boat or muck anything up. What I'm looking for is the activated lifelong learners. They are 10% of the world's population and they are proactive with their development. They're listening to shows like this to see what they can pick up and learn very quickly, and it all just goes in. They're a learning machine and they're very activated. They're on, they're switched on, and so you and I are activated lifelong learners.

Katrena Friel:

Don't bother talking to people that are just lifelong learners, just the 90 percenters. They are people you won't understand. You won't understand that they've got the house, they've got the two cars, they're married, they've got the kids. We want people that are at that point going is this it? Is this all there is? And they're the people that start to reach out to people like you and I and go this can't be it. Tell me, this can't be it. And at 40, you tend to start thinking that way. You start to go oh shit, this is boring. Is this all there is? Like, is this all I'm capable of? Is this? Have I even touched my full potential? No, you haven't. You are unlimited potential. And you're driving a Ferrari that you've never even turned on the engine. Get ready to turn on the engine and let's drive this thing home. That's what it's like to live in a world of freedom and lifestyle that you create, and that's what it's like being an activated lifelong learner. You're asking questions like oh my God, is this it? This can't be it. People are idiots.

Zeke Guenthroth:

Yeah, that's something that we've been trying to drive home as well on the podcast lately.

Zeke Guenthroth:

Or, oscar and I, when we're in business or meeting with clients that are like, you know, at that stage where they're taking that leap of investing in property or something which is one of our businesses that we work in, and it's like the people you meet, the people that are like I think that's just a bit too much of a risk for me and it's like, okay, let's have a look at, like your actual life.

Zeke Guenthroth:

Like let's take a zoomed-out approach and look at what else is going on in your life. Like obviously, yes, you can start investing, but you're in your role, like there's so many different things you could be doing and there's so much improvement that you could be doing. You're just scraping along the surface, like just sort of comfortably gliding through life, but it's like you could really change everything in a quick three months and your life would be different to anything you've ever known. Your friends would never see it coming and then, two years later, you're gonna look back and go shit, I was wasting that much time. I was just sitting there when I had all of this in me and I didn't even know. So hopefully people listening to this podcast, um, that might be feeling like that, get a bit activated and go okay, hang on, there's actually so much more I'm going to be doing and take that step and take that leap.

Katrena Friel:

Yeah, yeah, and that's my job Every time I get up to speak. A third of people are going to love me, a third of people are going to hate me and a third of people don't care. So me. A third of people are going to hate me and a third of people don't care. So I'm talking to the third of people that love and can engage with what I'm saying, and within that, there's the 90% who are not switched on yet. So my job in that speech, whenever I open up my mouth, is to switch people on and to go. Oh, I never thought of it that way. Oh, really, there's more. Switch people on and to go oh, I never thought of it that way. Oh, really, there's more. Yes, there's more. Come on, let's go, let's drive this Ferrari, because who wants to have a Ferrari in the driveway and never actually drive it? It's crazy, and that's what we're in Our bodies, our human meat suits are an incredible, priceless type machine.

Katrena Friel:

We need to use it, and particularly our brain and the way our brain is capable of, and now, with AI, ai is going to relieve us a lot of the noise. It's going to relieve us of a lot of the noise, and so it's going to give us back time, and that time is for creative thinking and creating our life and our life that we want to live. It's up to us to co-create with the universe. The universe is not creating for us. We are co-creating with the universe and we have a whole blueprint ready to be ignited if we allow it to, but with the destructions, the way the world is set up for you to be ignited if we allow it to, but with the destructions, the way the world is set up for you to be destructed, with social media, television, drama, fear, all the things.

Katrena Friel:

If you're on that, then you have been taken. You've been taken and it's very difficult to get you back from that. Whereas you and I are not distracted by those things, we are distracted by some good, juicy things that we use to build and drive our Ferrari. So, yeah, it's exciting times, but you can't convince anybody of that. They're either in the 10% and want to come over to the 10% or they don't. Don't stand your mind to people that never will see it.

Zeke Guenthroth:

It's either they're already thinking differently or they're not, and that's all there is to it. If you're at a point in your 30s, 40s, 50s where you've never thought differently, reshaping that mindset is going to be very, very tough, very tough.

Katrena Friel:

If you're still in your parents' programming at 30, you've got a lot of work to do and that work often never gets done, whereas for me, I was activated at 25 because I was a seeker, and so if you're born a seeker, you're constantly seeking and the teacher appears at different points in your life. And for me, thank God, 25, I was activated and boom, the rest is history. Like I was on from that moment and I remember I'm feeling activated right now, like the tingling sensation when you're activated and you can be activated in conversation. You can be activated with people's lives. You can be activated by just listening to a podcast or an audio book or reading a book.

Katrena Friel:

I mean, these things are there to activate you and each little thing is activating you and pushing you along your path, and you don't even know it half the time, whereas for you and I, we're doing it proactively and we're doing it consciously, whereas other people they're just being pushed along and they feel at the mercy of the world and it's like no, no, no, you can actually take the reins here. You can come to the front of your bus and you can start driving it if you want to. It's your choice. But most people are not awakened. They're not awake and they're just asleep at the back of the bus and going. Well, this is bloody boring. I know what I'll do I'll self-medicate, I'll drink, I'll smoke, I'll eat, I'll shop. I'll do all these distractions and all these things, because what else am I going to do?

Zeke Guenthroth:

Yeah, absolutely.

Katrena Friel:

So simple.

Zeke Guenthroth:

Even people that have goals and stuff. What I've started to notice is, you know, their goals will be so limited and short-sighted. Or, you know, even if you go a step further and people are like, yeah, the sky's the limit, it's like, well, it's footprints on the moon, the sky's not the limit anymore. So there's so much more out there that people can have. If they just actually get activated, I should say, and chase it like just be a, go, get a put in the effort, go, do it. And you'll know, like, if you're, if you're listening to this and you're feeling a bit like revved up, then you probably are one of those people that are activated. Or if you walk down the street and you see things and you go really like people are doing this or people are doing that, and you're finding yourself questioning other people or society, trends or cultures or whatever it is, or just general things, you sit back and take a look and you're like what, why? Then you're probably one of those people, right.

Katrena Friel:

Yeah, you're a seeker. Yeah, I say attention, seekers, attention.

Zeke Guenthroth:

Yeah, that's right.

Katrena Friel:

I call you in. I call you in. I call you in, come, come, come and look. Quite frankly, zeke, if people are having a good time today and they're enjoying our conversation, reach out. I'm happy to have a free discovery session. You never know what I'll be able to unpack for you within a very short period of time. It's the free discovery session is like an hour if it's interesting, but within the first 15 minutes I'm going to have a bit of a dig about and see straight away where the problems are.

Katrena Friel:

What's holding you back? Whether it's a mindset issue, it's limiting beliefs, it's programming from your upbringing, all these things that are holding you back. Let's remove those things. I call that therapeutic coaching, where we remove all the gumph and then we set you free so that you can actually think straight about you and what risks you're willing to take. As you say, some people aren't willing to take any risks. Well, life is a risk. Getting in a car is a risk. Going on a bus is a risk. Going to Sydney yesterday was a risk. Everything's a risk. It's just how much are you willing to stretch outside of your comfort zone to go and discover just how green the grass is over there? Well, most of you will never know.

Zeke Guenthroth:

Yeah, I don't think people realize how risky things like life actually is and how lucky they are to be in the position they're in. Like, realistically, if you're 30 years old, you you're well abled, your body works, you can walk, you can move, you can talk, you can understand things, you can listen to this podcast and actually think about it. There's so many people that don't actually even have that opportunity, like the fact that you've merely made it to that point in time when you could have been stillborn. You know you could have been born with severe issues and a whole bunch of other things you could have been, you know, run over at three years old. There's that many things happening and so many people don't make it that far, but you are that lucky to take the risk.

Katrena Friel:

Yeah, we are truly. And look you, and I don't even call it risk we're saying that word risk because that's the word they understand, but really it's not a risk, it's a strategy, and if the strategy….

Zeke Guenthroth:

For us, the risk is not doing it.

Katrena Friel:

I mean, it's not like we're stuck in any one paradigm. We can go anywhere we like with it and as long as you're learning and growing, you're doing your life's purpose. Your life purpose is to learn and grow. What 90% of people are doing is just learning and growing really slowly and in a very boring way, whereas activated lifelong learners are learning and growing in a very fast pace. They love to learn fast and fail quickly and move on. So it's a very different experience when you're activated and very boring.

Katrena Friel:

I reckon if it was the other way around, I would just want to stick a pen in my eye and kill myself.

Katrena Friel:

Seriously, I wouldn't want to live like that and I remember what it was like to hang around people like that and I find it very draining and I just cannot at 56, I just cannot waste any ounce of my energy anymore hanging around with you know energy drainers and just so you guys know, at 30 you will shed people, you will outgrow people. You will have to have some very harsh discussions on occasions with friends and family because as you evolve, they don't get you anymore. You are not playing the same game that you used to play and they don't like that. So that you can get attacked along the way. So anyway, just know you will lose friends, and that's why we call it lonely at the top, because you haven't got the amount of people that you used to have. Now you have quality and hopefully you surround yourself by the five people that will take you where you want to go not where you don't want to go Exactly.

Zeke Guenthroth:

Yeah, I always say show me your friends or I'll show you your future. Yeah, it's actually a good illustration. I was thinking of this. I can't remember the exact wording so I'm probably going to misquote this, but it was something to do with you know someone, a regular person out here, catching a bus, and the bus has like 30 people in it and obviously there's a socioeconomic level of that by looking at it, and then when they make it to the top, they're driving a Ferrari. The Ferrari's only got two seats. Why is that? Because you cut so many people off. You take that step, you're now driving it with your one mate who's driven you the whole way, whereas those other 30 people were holding you back on that bus. So now you've got the Ferrari, you've got the friend, you've cut that and you're ready to go. I think there is going to be people fired up about this and ready to sort of get in touch with you, even just for a conversation. So, katrina, what is the best way for people to actually get in touch with yourself?

Katrena Friel:

Just jump online to becomingtheexpertcomau and click on the free discovery session and book in yourself my mobile's there. You could always ring and leave a message and we can do it manually if you prefer. But while you're fired up, take action. This is the thing. In an hour you're going to be having a coffee. You won't be thinking about this anymore. So take action while it's hot.

Katrena Friel:

And that's the difference between activated and just being a normal person is that they don't take action. They poo-poo everything, they roll their eyes in every meeting they've ever been to, whereas activated lifelong learners, we just get on it and we can't wait to get on it as quickly as bloody possible. So for those 10% listening to this that can feel that it's time to have a chat with Katrina, who's going to sort them out, then jump on it, please do, and don't feel like you're wasting my time or anything. It's not about selling you anything. It's about me showing you within 15 minutes, your worth and your value and how I would, if given the opportunity, would position you, package you and price you in your field of excellence. Go get it.

Zeke Guenthroth:

Exactly, exactly, yeah, no, I always say to people book the meeting, have a chat, and the worst-case scenario is you walk away from that going. Wow, I could be doing so much more. Yeah, that's literally the worst-case scenario. Worst-case scenario 100%. I think I'll also put your details and the link to your website in the show notes, but before we go, do you have any final piece of advice or any final guideline, or even just a funny story to share to wrap up the podcast today?

Katrena Friel:

Gosh, I just don't think most of us are actually living. I really don't, and I think we're just plodding along, waiting for the next day and the next day and the next day. What I really want for people is to know what it is to thrive, and to know what it is to live in full color, full out, and to die knowing that you really understood the edges of your potential and what that could actually look like. So, yeah, it's time just to start living and get rid of all this shit that's grabbing our attention. It's not real. It's not real. That's to keep you where you are, so our job is to get you out of that. So, yeah, I really just think it's time to start living in full color. That's magic.

Zeke Guenthroth:

Yeah, that's exactly right. Everyone's built life in them, everyone's living life, but they're just not actually. They're letting life live them. They're not living life. And I think that when you take those steps, you go be a go-getter. You'd be surprised at what you can do. And life is such a high, it's such a drug when you're doing it right and you know what's going on and you become I'm smiling just thinking about it because I'm in a position where I can actually enjoy life and live life as opposed to letting life lead me. So when you guys are in that position, you're going to love it.

Katrena Friel:

Yeah, we can say welcome to the Activated Lifelong Learners Club. It's good over here yeah that's it.

Zeke Guenthroth:

Welcome, yeah, with open arms. We love that. We love networking with like-minded people. So anyone out there that does want to get in touch. You heard it go to becomingtheexpertcomau, and then there'll be a link in the show notes as well. Otherwise, katrina, it's been an absolute pleasure having you. Thank you very much.

Katrena Friel:

Thank you. It's been so fun talking to you. You're amazing. Appreciate you Likewise. Cheers.

Zeke Guenthroth:

Cheers.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Oscar Don

Co-host
Head Shot

Zeke Guenthroth

Co-host