Evan Sanders's Blog, page 97

The Next 200ft: Rocket or Dud?

Life can be pretty darn scary when you are in the fog. But the most important thing about piloting your life when you’re in the fog is in fact admitting that you are flying in fog. If you don’t, things can get dangerous.

Life is a series of going the next 200ft. Most of the time you have absolutely no clue what is going to happen after the 200ft in front of you. But that’s where faith comes in. That’s where belief comes in. Without that, you reluctantly travel into the current landscape you can actually see because you are afraid of not knowing what the future brings. God have I been there. I’ve been there so many times. Not trying as hard as you can now because you are unsure of where it is going to take you. Marianne Williamson said, and I’m paraphrasing here, it is our light not our darkness that most frightens us (maybe that was word for word). And it’s true. At the end of the day, what we can do scares us to death. We already are so familiar with what we can’t do – our mind shovels that junk into our head every single day. But what we can do…what we are capable of…what our potential is…now that is some heavy stuff.

So what can you do? Believe. You have to believe that whatever you are doing is the right thing for you and you just have to go for it. Put those rockets under your butt and push the ignition button. I would 10 times out of 10 rather be a rocket than a dud. You can course correct along the way if you feel like you are a bit off. But the cool thing about being a rocket is that you have to only make the smallest of course corrections in order to make the biggest of differences. That’s what traveling at high speeds does for you. Little tweaks here and there and you arrive at where you would like.

Put in the effort. There is no substitution for effort. But you better love what  you are doing or else you are going to put a whole lot of effort into something that is going to break you down. As a young man who is starting his own business, I know how hard it can be to bet on yourself. But the lessons you learn in the end are invaluable. You learn to trust your gut and really get after it. Because if you don’t put in the effort, nothing will ever happen. It all rides on your shoulders.

Will you be a rocket or a dud?

- Evan Sanders

You Might Just Have To Paint The Wall

Last night before I went out I had a bit of a…quarter life crisis. It sounds ridiculous…and parts of it were, but nonetheless the crisis ensued and I began to rattle off some pretty serious questions.

“Am I really supposed to be doing what I am doing?”

“Am I even supposed to be here in LA?”

“What is the purpose of all of this?”

There were more I promise you, about 20+ of them…and if we are gauging by quarter life crisis statistics and common behavioral characteristics of your mid twenties youngin struggling with some big questions…it comes out to be a fair number. But it really all came down to one thing: doubt. And there’s been a lot of that around lately. Trying to start my own business. My health and fitness. Housing. The Better Man Project. There’s just been a lot of “what ifs” lately and it hasn’t really rendered me paralyzed, but more self-destructive. I’ve started and stopped doing this more times than I can imagine in regards to specific goals. And to use the finest language I can possibly muster up: it sucks.

But here’s the thing. When you have a resilient soul, or you just decide that resilience is a characteristic you would like to build for yourself, you continue to get up after you have fallen – despite the fact that is has happened hundreds to thousands of times. And if you think about things a little bit differently than you did when you started, well you are going to offer up some different actions that may just be what you need to finally make something stick. And that’s why I put the picture above.

Once in a while you might have to paint the wall instead of painting the canvas.

And this thought brought me back to one of my favorite stories of all.

In the 1500′s Hernando Cortez was the captain of eleven ships with more than 500 soldiers headed for Mexico to conquer the Aztecs and bring back gold and treasures. As you can well imagine, after his ships arrived in Mexico, the sailors and soldiers were not in the best of shape. Some of them fell ill on the journey, some had lost their motivation, and their quarters were not exactly shipshape. Several of Cortez’s crewmates wondered what would happen to them in this strange new land. If they faced challenges or resistance, how would the crew return home? The crew asked Cortez what the plan would be to get back home. The captain had the perfect response: He burned the ships

There was no going back

The only direction to go was forward

The old way of doing things were about to be rethought.

In fact, there were no more “old way of doing things”; a new way had to be defined.

So I burned the ships – metaphorically that is. I am defining new ways of doing things and trying some stuff out that I have never done before. Out of this quarter life crisis came something that hasn’t been prevalent in the past few months: certainty. With the help of some friends, I realized that what I am doing right now is precisely what I am supposed to be doing. I am supposed to be writing every day. I am supposed to be inspiring others with my words. I am supposed to constantly strive to elevate myself to do greater things, not only because it’s what I want, but because I am giving others to do the same as well.

So I drew a ship on the inside of my wrist with a pen and plan on redrawing that little guy every day. Life can be a massive struggle sometimes. I know this to be a fundamental truth. However, it doesn’t have to be that way all the time. You’d be surprised by how much stress you are creating for yourself because you’re not in alignment. When the mind, the body, and the soul are all out of wack, you become this gigantic confused mess. And I’ve been there a lot. But out of these times always comes a clear vision…so I am thankful for the balance that life delivers. There’s no doubt in my mind that I am constantly being taught lessons.

Burn the ships

- Evan Sanders

I’m Taking A Stance On Bullying

For the longest time, I tried to be anything but myself. I know exactly when it happened as well. When I was young, around 3rd or 4th grade, I remember having that first feeling of not being good enough to fit in with other kids. I had my friends, but at the same time was made fun of for being different. I was different because I had problems understanding things and often my mouth would run off sentences that ended up not making sense at all. Others thought I was being slow and stupid – unfortunately, they also made sure that I knew it. I remember I stopped saying what I wanted to say for a long time and quieted down because I was afraid I was going to spit out something else dumb and get made fun of for it. I remember making that decision in my room one day. But it continued nonetheless. It wasn’t loving jeering either – they were the types of jabs that someone does to make themselves feel bigger and better than someone else. I think we’ve all felt that.

It all carried on through middle school. I just felt like I didn’t fit in. Sports helped – being part of a team. But in all, I just didn’t feel like anyone really had my back. There are some painful memories of being outcasted – some that I will keep close to the chest because they remind me to never make anyone else feel how I did. I felt disconnected. It was as if the world was moving around me. It wasn’t that I was moving against the current…it’s just like I was standing there facing the other way and everyone else was moving around me. I felt cut off.

Then I found music. Whenever I could, I put in my headphones. I remember my first CD player. In fact, I still have it in my old room. I remember that Eminem CD. I remember pressing play and closing my eyes and mouthing the lyrics with him to the beat. It helped me escape. His words, the anger….the fight in him – that fueled me. That got me going. It helped me feel like I could stand up for myself. And eventually I did. Eventually that skin turned into rock. That hard exterior would come back to hurt me though. I knew that everything on the inside was still hollow.

The years went on, and they didn’t get any easier. As you get older, the stakes get higher. The pains hurt a little bit more. And they did. I continued to change and morph myself into what I thought other people would like. It never worked. The problem with being anything but yourself is that other people always sniff b.s. no matter what. But I couldn’t just be myself. I didn’t know who that was. I was defined by things I did not by the type of person I was. I was one big reactive tornado. If you got in my path when things were raging inside, I either shut down or destroyed whatever was in the way. Most of the time, to save whatever I had around me, I just turned myself off…and continued to walk around feeling misplaced and alone.

I knew I was differently wired.

I found out years later as an upperclassmen in high school that I actually had a problem with processing . My performance scores for everything were in the 98th percentile, but when it came to processing, I scored very very low. Essentially, it would take me 3 times longer to process something than someone else. So it finally made sense to me why I had some problems in the past. But combine that with a general inability to get a grip on my mind and you have a walking disaster that continues to build upon itself. While you are trying to clean out all the hay from that gigantic heap that represents the perfect fire hazard in your barn…the side of you that you refuse to acknowledge, that dark side is secretly piling on more flammable material.

This process continued for years. I tried to figure my life out but I continued to drown from the pressure piling up on my shoulders. If you wait long enough, eventually something breaks. And it did. Originally I thought it was just the pile of hay that burnt down. But now, thinking back to it, the whole barn burned down. Everything. It was as bad as you could possibly imagine.

And that night defined the rest of my entire life.

But that night taught me something. You can’t be anyone or anything but you. You have to love yourself or else you’re a disaster waiting to happen. That “fire” in my life left me with an opportunity to rebuild things exactly the way I wanted them. For me, it was a blessing in disguise. I began writing what was in my heart and years later here I am making a life for myself and in general, happy as can be. But we shouldn’t have to let people get to that point of breaking down before they can truly learn what it’s like to depend on oneself. But how?

Bullying is a problem. But it goes beyond the word “bullying.” It’s about something more universal. It’s about a massive lack of love in our world today. And it starts with our children. I know there are children out there walking around with pain in their hearts because of what other people have said to them. I know they feel horrible about themselves. I know that they feel like they can’t fit in. I know that they are just looking for someone to love them and stand up for them and support them. I know this because I was there. I was that kid. That kid that walked around with a big hole in his heart knowing that something was wrong. That feeling lasted until I was 22. And I consider myself lucky. Because I know there are a lot of kids out there right now as I am writing this wishing they would rather not be here on this earth because of the things they have to go through every single day – and I consider myself lucky because I was handed an overflowing amount of resilience that kept me fighting, scratching, and clawing through it all. Some are not that fortunate.

We shouldn’t have to see our children walk around with the Black Dog nipping at their ankles. They shouldn’t feel like there’s no one in the world for them. It may not be the reality – that no one supports them – but the feelings are there and they need to be handled with care. The problem stems out of love. It happens because we are not loving each other enough. We aren’t telling people how we feel, we aren’t showing our gratitude, we aren’t taking the time out of our day to make in impact in someone else’s life because we are to focused on ourselves. We are focused on how many likes we got on our Facebook photo, on the party we are going to, on our upcoming gym session, on our problems – that for many of us, aren’t really even big problems at all. Thinking that “someone else will take care of it” or “I think they know how I feel” are just two examples of ways that we are massively disconnected with one another.

Never before in history have we been able to connect the way we can now – but at the same time – we have become more distant in a variety of ways.

So I’m making a stand. Not against bullying – because that will only create more bullying. But for love. Ridiculous, warm, outrageous, unconditional love for those around me. We tend to fight war, fight bullying, fight crime instead of stand for the positive. And for me, as I look back at the younger years of my life, I realize how important those moments where I felt really loved were. Those moments kept me going. They kept my eyes looking for light despite seemingly overwhelming amounts of darkness.

We have to put our opinions, politics, and preferences aside and open ourselves up to loving others just because they are here walking on this earth. Those type of actions create change. And you never know what your actions may do for another. They may just fill up another persons heart and be the fuel they need to love others themselves.

 

- Evan Sanders

 

 

 

You Are The Result of Results

There is truth to be found in being lost. If you listen hard you will be able to hear things you’ve never heard before. When things are going strong, life is easy. You can step on the gas and go a little bit faster. But when you come to a screeching halt, pull off the road, and get out of the car to walk around a little bit…that’s when things can get pretty interesting. Those are the moments when you really need to listen to what is going on inside.

Sometimes you have to disconnect. We live in a very busy world. There is a ton of information, massive amounts of media, and opportunities to forget what truly matter in this life (at least from what I’ve found). Sitting down and connecting with others and talking about things in real life has become more and more rare. Being able to sift through the b.s. takes more than one rake. Maybe even more than ten rakes. And the opportunity to listen to yourself has been muddled by persistent calls from the outside world. Sometimes, you have to turn off your phone, close your computer, and take a walk by yourself. You have to tune in. You have to breathe.

Life, as you know it right now, is a sum of all the of the decisions and events that have ever happened to you. The body you are in, the mind you have, and the life you have is a result of consistent results over time. While this may be an exhausting idea, it is also an incredibly liberating idea. The fact that you are the result of results means that you can change at any given moment. Yes there is a lag to this because all things worthwhile take time and effort, but nonetheless, you can change the course of your life. If you want something different for yourself, you can create it. If you want a different mind or body, you can form it.

The challenge comes in being able to continue through the struggle. Those times when you want to give up and quit are exactly the moments when you have to act with purpose. You have to have intentions behind your actions when things are difficult because to go in the direction you want to go takes a massive amount of effort, concentration, and willingness to continue repping it out through lives heaviest weights.

I have struggled through these times significantly. I really have. Being able to see the dreams written on paper in front of me, with the plan, and not being able to muster up the courage to really go after it has been difficult. It’s been difficult in the way of knowing you can, and at the same time, doubting that same knowledge. But I think that’s the point. Confidence has a sliding scale. You tip one way and you tip the other. You have to ride the wave of the times when you are in action and you have to pull yourself out of the mud when the scale tips the other way. You have to find ways to motivate yourself. True, motivation from another person helps a lot, but being able to get yourself out of it when you really need to is invaluable. You can take that to the bank every single time.

You are a result of your past actions. If you want something greater for yourself, then create different actions. I am. I am going to start doing things very differently. And hell, we will see what happens.

What is  your biggest goal?

- Evan Sanders

Back to the Roots

The world needs better men.

I sit here mashing at the keys in no way a perfect man.

“But I digress. This blog is my 30 day attempt to break all the bad habits I have ever had. Each day, I will go through one thing that I believe that is crucial to my development as a man, and hopefully along the way, you will get something out of it too. I have always wanted to write down the things that matter to me most. Trust me, I’ve been through hell. I can show you vouchers. But there is something very calming about being able to look back on the times when you thought you weren’t going to make it out alive and realize that you did. When I was going through the worst of it, someone once told me “God only gives you as much as you can handle.” This one phrase kept me fighting for the duration no matter how tough it was…because I knew, that this was my test, my challenge, and I had to get through it.”

Those words above were the words that began it all. And here I am, just over 1,000 days of this project in…and I am going to say them again. I sit here mashing at the keys in no way a perfect man.

It is interesting for me to look back on it all. The hours spent at the keyboard. The lessons I have learned. The things I have accomplished. My failures. You might think it would be a blur, but instead, it is all almost crystal clear. If you picked out a post and asked me about it, I would be able to tell you exactly what it was about and what was going on in my life at that time. I’ve always had a visual memory, so going back in time really has never been that difficult for me. However, being able to unravel your mind like a movie reel has its downfalls. Things often come back to haunt you in vivid color.

In recent times I have looked at this project (and this is dead honesty here – hard to admit this) as a bit of a right. What I mean by right is that it is always going to be there and I can do with it as I please. That really isn’t that attitude that kept me writing, or even helped me start in the first place. I started writing to save my life. Straight and simple. It wasn’t a right, it was a privilege to come and sit down every day and pour my heart out and talk about what I had learned as a developing man. I didn’t take it for granted. Somewhere far far down the line that changed. Not entirely, but there was a little hint in there of “you can take a day off, look at what you have created.”

And yet, there is that battle that goes on inside that urges me to write because I know, like I said before, in no way am I a perfect man. There is a lot to be worked on. A lot. So here I am being vulnerable, one of the first lessons I had come across when I started writing. And here I am looking a bad…and not being scared to. I love this project, I really do, and I am going to start appreciating it more. Because it is not a right. One of my philosophies is to never take anything for granted. That itself came through this project. Yet, I took this project for granted.

So, I am going to challenge myself. I am going back to the beginning. Back to why I started. Maybe I can do it with some better writing, but hell, let’s take it all the way back to its roots.

 

- Evan Sanders

Looking for Freedom

The weight of the world on my shoulders

It may take everything I have

It may put cracks in me

But it will never break me

Tears may come

I will ask for help

From left and right – and above

And walk all over the enemy from below

I’ll never know how you manifested yourself in me

How you made your home in this mind

But it’s time to go

Time to move

Out you go

I challenge you

And I’ll take my mind back

I’ll take my body back

From the clutches of your painful grip

Yes, I shake in front of you

Yes, you scare the hell out of me

But that resilience – the one that has always been there will never be put out

Don’t mistake the fear in my eyes for anything but a disguise for the courage behind them

—

I’m looking for freedom

—

Evan Sanders

On The Beauty Of Women

Before I start this, I want to make something clear. This post is not coming from a man who has had an easy time his whole life with women. In fact, I have had my heart broken more times than I care to admit. I have shed tears, been betrayed in the worst of ways and have been made to feel unimportant, almost to the point where I thought I didn’t exist. And even through all of this, I can still put my heart on the line for women because I believe in one fundamental reality.

Women are beautiful.

Last night, one of my best friends sent me an article and asked for my thoughts. So I opened it up and read the first line. “I’m just gonna come out and say it: I love insecure women.” I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and continued reading on for the next 10 minutes. After I finished, I shut my computer screen  and sat there with my hands over my ears and closed my eyes. In those moments I sat there thinking, I took a brief trip to my past to attempt to give this man who had written one of the most hate filled articles I have ever read the benefit of the doubt, and to try to understand if there was any truth in his obvious anger.

Aristotle once said, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” So I entertained his assertions for a few minutes and began to feel this emptiness inside of me. Everything was cold. And of course when you read hate, you feel that inside. His following conclusions are what made me feel sick to my stomach.

Most girls have done nothing to deserve self-esteem

Insecurity is integral to femininity

Women don’t want to have high self-esteem

When I was a very young boy, my grandfather sat me down, one of the handful of times we talked one on one, and said, “Evan, you make sure you treat the women in your life well. And if someone hurts your loved ones, you make sure they never do that again.” I can hear his words echoing in my ears right now. Maybe that is why I am writing this piece, not because a woman in my life was attacked. No, because I feel like every woman in the world was attacked by generalizations, unfair judgements, and shallow absolutes. So here I am, a young man who wears plenty of scars from the opposite sex, writing down what I truly  believe. And I will say it again.

Women are beautiful.

Some of the most meaningful, trustworthy, passionate, vulnerable, loving friendships and relationships I have had and still have are with women. In fact, I know for certain that if it wasn’t for a few select women in my life, I probably wouldn’t be around. My relationships with women have taught me how to dive into the emotional side of my heart, how to be gentle in a world that is incredibly rough, how to take care of another, and most of all how to deeply and passionately love others. These relationships have helped me grow into the type of man  I can be proud of. It doesn’t matter if many have come and gone, or if the relationships ended poorly for one reason or another. The important thing is that I learned – from some of the best people I know or have ever known – how to be an authentic and caring human being.

Are there women in the world who are insecure and have self-esteem issues? Absolutely. Are there men who have the exact same issues? Of course. Because at the end of the day it doesn’t matter if you are male or female when you are looking in the mirror and the negative side of your mind is out of control telling you that you’re too fat, you’re not pretty enough, your eyes are too far apart, or that you don’t have glowing skin. Your gender doesn’t truly have a say when the negativity spreads throughout your life like a virus and you become filled with anxiety, depression, and fear. Every person on this planet battles with the same issues. Are there some issues that happen specifically to a woman more than a man and visa versa? Once again, absolutely. But every human being has felt insecure, worthless and pathetic. That is a part of life. These emotions are at the opposite end of the spectrum where happiness and joy spend their time. And to experience one you must experience the other. Life is incredibly balanced. It gives you a taste of feeling horrible about yourself so you can truly experience the warmth in your heart when you are living in the present and enjoying the path you are on.

Our greatest joy comes from deeply loving others, male or female, gay or straight, short or tall, fat or skinny. It’s about seeing someone as exactly who they are and who they aren’t, and learning to love an imperfect person perfectly. Light comes from being vulnerable with people, by trusting in the goodness of their hearts, and by giving yourself to your family, your friends, and to your significant other. Life is not a male vs. female issue. It is in fact a person to person collaboration. I think we have lost sight of that. We have lost sight of the fact that our material world is special because it is filled with unique individuals who all have the capacity to love one another deeply and to shine light in places of darkness.

I’m no fool, I know that there are people in the world that do terrible things to others and hurt people deeply. However, we can’t make generalizations about an entire gender or  anyone else for that matter because we happened to have certain events occur throughout our lifetime. Our life is not the life of others. If we continue to focus on what makes us different we will never be able to relate to each other. The exact same event will never happen in the exact same way to two people…ever. However, if we decide that it is more important to feel empathetic towards others and to connect with them on an emotional level, that is where the true magic happens. That is how relationships are built, walls are broken down, and love infectiously spreads into the deepest darkest cracks of this earth.

The choice is yours: to love or to hate. The most crucial question you can ask yourself is what type of world do you live in?

I choose love.

-Evan Sanders

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What I Wear On My Sleeve

Relationships can be funny. But there’s one thing I know for sure, and that is a feat in itself – never assume the people around you know exactly how you feel about them. You know those things inside of you that make no sense like 95% of the time…emotions? Yes those ones. You may feel them, but no one else around you has any idea what is going on inside of your head and heart. So after plenty of lessons in this I made a decision to wear my heart on my sleeve. Sure it has some negative side effects, like anything in this world, but people get to see something that they weren’t able to see before – authentic Evan Sanders.

I have said it a few times before, but the most authentic way I can express myself is by writing things down. So that is what I have done a couple times before, which is write everyone letters in my life who mean an incredible amount to me. I feel that there is no better way for me to tell someone how I feel about them than to write it out. I do love telling people to their face, but there are just so many things that get in the way of conversations (those damn emotions) that sometimes everything doesn’t get out properly. So I write…and boy do I write.

So do yourself a favor and write to the people you love in your life. Tell them just how much you care. Tell them why you care. Life can be incredibly fickle sometimes and you never truly know how long people will be around. That’s just the name of the game. And it loves to teach you lessons when you start taking advantage of the gifts you have been given. You are standing on one gigantic rug…and life will rip that thing right out from under you when you start getting arrogant and unappreciative.

Sometimes the rug getting ripped out from underneath you is the best thing that can happen to you. It keeps you grounded. It makes you appreciate what you have. It also gives you a heavy dose of humility. So if I had one piece of advice, it’s to love as hard as you can. Give today everything you have. It’s better to feel worn out at the end of the day from being the best person you possibly could have been than calling in for a mediocre day.

- Evan Sanders

The Secret of Change

Your world and how you perceive it to be is going to be the fundamental driver of all your actions in this life. That concept will govern everything you do. But I don’t want to talk about that as much as I want to talk about what to do when you are really struggling. When you find yourself in a rut and you can’t get out of it. When you feel bad about yourself, your life, and what you are doing with your time here on this earth. Is there a secret? Maybe. But I want to share with you something that I have learned over the past few years and in writing many many times about the dark times.

Responsibility

What truly changed my entire life was realizing that I was indeed responsible for my own life. Of course there will be things in life that are completely out of your control. You have no ability to see them coming and when they happen they completely pull the rug out from under you. Were things truly turned around for me was when I realized that I had the power to act…not react. Action: the difference between movement and progress. I can tell you, there were moments that I thought I really wasn’t going to make it out. I would say to myself, “I don’t foresee any possible solution to this. How is this going to turn around.” Well it did…but that only came with the realization that taking responsibility for my own life was the only answer. The only way I could get myself into a better position was to create it. The only way to get to where I wanted to go was to build a foundation based off of my pride and determination. It’s in that moment when you bet on yourself when the script is flipped. Tighten your belt and string up your boots.

I’m going to give you an analogy.

And here comes another baseball analogy. When you are reacting to life…you are standing at the plate, bat on your shoulder, watching the balls and strikes come in…and waiting to be walked or struck out. You don’t swing…you just let the pitcher determine whether or not you are going to be successful that game. You are just watching and your reaction will be whatever the pitcher decides its going to be. However, when you are in action, you are sitting on your pitch and adjusting your strategy as the at bat moves along. You are waiting for your moment, hands ready, and when that pitch comes you try to make the best contact you can.

Life works in a very similar way. If you wait for your pitch, and you are prepared to hit it, you increase your chances of doing something great. But if you sit around and wait for things to happen, that is exactly what you are going to get: a lot of sitting around. I believe that whatever may be above us is watching to see what we do with what we have been given…what we can create…what we can make with our minds and our hands. Because those are the two greatest tools that we will ever have. We have the infinite capacity to either love or hate. We have the ability to send out incredible amounts of positive energy into this world…or choose to darken it…to dim the lights…to spread pain.

Life becomes a series of actions then…and with every action there is a result. When you choose to text someone and tell them that you miss them and that you care about them…you are doing out of love. When you choose to help someone in need, or pick someone up when they are down, you are making a choice…a positive choice. And that love and those choices have a ripple effect on the rest of the world. If we can all make those positive choices, starting with taking responsibility for our own lives and the things we decide to do – that is when this ship is going to truly set sail for a better place.

I choose, and I hope you will join me, to spread love every single day. I chose this path because that is what was done for me and brought me out of the worst. If you make that choice…you will become infectious – and for the best reason in the world: love.

- Evan Sanders

Professional Social Media Building

A Little About Me

 “Draw a line. Live above it.”- Unknown

I live to inspire. My true passion is to help people lead powerful and bold lives and to express themselves in the most unique ways possible. And what better way to do that than support them in building their personal brands to capture the attention of the masses. So that is exactly what I do – I create focused, engaged, and kick-ass communities on social media.

After partnering with Nick Venezia, a social media expert who has been widely recognized by the social media community, I began creating on my own brand, The Better Man Project and in three months I grew my Twitter account from 1,500 unfocused followers to over 13,500 focused and engaged users. Today, The Better Man Project has a combined following across all networks of  55,000 and continues to grow. (Instagram: 22k, WordPress: 17k Twitter:13.5k Facebook: 2.2k)

Social media presents itself as an incredible opportunity for those who have brands as you are able to present a consistent flow of quality content to a mass amount of users who are ready to engage, listen, and share. With follower retention at 70-80%, industry leading click-through rates and users who are very likely to make purchasing decisions through the medium, social media channels outperform many traditional advertising methods. The benefits of building a loyal and long-lasting following as well as putting forth quality content will yield significant benefits for your brand.

If you are looking for a way to boost brand awareness, build the clientele of your business, and create an active and responsive community around your content, properly utilizing the social media community is a crucial tool for your success.

- Evan Sanders

The Social Media Hive

Imagine for a second that your account is a beehive. Inside of the hive is a Queen, Drones, and Workers. The Queen (content) is responsible for creating more Workers (fans). However, what is often overlooked in many marketing efforts, or simply cannot be found, are the Drones (brand evangelists) whose main purpose is to share content consistently and engage with the Queen (content) loyally in order to allow for the production of more Workers (fans).

Social media works in a very similar way. If you create captivating content and display it in front of ready eyes at the right time, your account will thrive. Everyone knows that great content is a critical part to winning the game, but how do you actually find these die-hard brand evangelists within a sea of millions of users who are guaranteed to engage, interact, and share your content? That’s where I come in. Call me the Bee Keeper.

Using a list of 3rd party services, unique criteria and a tested algorithm, I am able to sift through millions of  users and create lists of leeds backed by available data. These users, if found and engaged, become your lifelong fans and solidify your core base. With them, you can build a significant amount of buzz around your brand.

Specifically, I create focused communities based on location, keywords, interests, activity, wealth, occupation and many other  criteria that are built from available data.

The Winning Formula

 If you aren’t discoverable or effectively seeking out brand evangelists, you are leaving the success of your brand up to chance. You have to be able to control the controllables.

Further, what if you could manipulate your marketing efforts throughout the product cycle and appeal to different characteristics of different types of customers? We can also create these time specific lists.

A Brand Transformation

 

Imagine

Loyal brand advocates who engage in a two-way conversation that creates common ground and mutual understanding.

Engagement

We can create cost-effective strategies and campaigns that evolve from the bottom up, evoking deep personal loyalty and long-term relationships.

Access

With one message you could engage interested and loyal customers and influence their purchasing decisions.

Hive Building

As brand evangelists grow, engage, and share your content, they will attract others to the account and it will grow over time through the networking effect.

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For rates and inquiries please email thebettermanprojects@gmail.com

Look forward to talking with you!

E.

@BetterManProj / IG: thebettermanproject