239 – Yoga and Messenger Marketing – How does that work?: Tom interviews Nahaku McFadden

Episode 239 – Nahaku McFadden
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody it's Tom here with episode two hundred and thirty nine of Screw the Commute podcast. I'm here with Nahaku McFadden. And check this out. She's a 30 year veteran and she's advised generals and she's currently a messenger marketing and social media expert. You don't see that combination every day. I'm going to introduce her to you in a few minutes. I hope you didn't miss episode 238. It was ask Tom a question and get loads of people send me questions and and I answered them all on our Monday training, which on Mondays I do an in-depth training on something that either made me a lot of money or saved me a lot of money. And on Wednesdays and Fridays, we do interviews with great entrepreneurs like Nahaku. Now make sure you grab a copy of our free automation e-book. We sell this for 27 bucks, but it's yours free for listening to the screw the commute. Check it out at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And just one just one of the tips in this book has saved me seven and a half million keystrokes. And that's not an exaggeration. We kind of estimated and figured it out one time and that was as of like two years ago. So that's probably way more than that now. Also, while you're over at screw the commute. Grab a copy of our podcast app at screwthecommute.com/app. And you know how a lot of people you download an app and you can't figure out how to use it. There's no decent instructions. They just expect you to figure it out. Well that's not us. We have a whole bunch of screen captures and instructions to show you how to use it. You'll just love this this app so you can take us with you on the road or on your cell phone and tablet. Now, our sponsor is a great Internet marketing retreat and joint venture program. That's where I'm broadcasting from today, where myself and my staff work with you for a year to either get you started in an Internet business or use the Internet to take your existing business to the next level. So check that out at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com and everything we talk about, including the links to Nahaku's stuff will be in the show notes for episode 239. And whenever you want to go to an episode, you go to screwthecommute.com and then the episode number slash 239, screwthecommute.com/239.

[00:02:53] All right. Let's get to the main event now. Nahaku McFadden is a messenger marketing and social media specialist, helping veterans transition from corporate or government service jobs to owning their own online businesses. She's originally from Hawaii and currently lives in Washington, DC. There's a different culture shock right there. I'll tell you. Nahaku is a national speaker, international master trainer, and she is a board member of this. She gonna have to tell you about this. Vetoga is the name of this organization she's involved in. And I can't wait to hear what that's all about. And she has transitioned from the military and made the decision to bring her talents and vast knowledge to help veteran entrepreneurs be even more successful with social media and to become their own CEOs. Nahaku, are you ready to screw? The commute?

[00:03:47] Aloha!

[00:03:47] That's the first answer I've got to that question I've never had that before. So how are you doing?

[00:03:56] I'm doing amazing. Thank you so much. I'm so honored to be here.

[00:03:59] Oh, it's my pleasure. And we thank. We really love our veterans on this show. We do everything possible to thank you for all the service, 30 years. My goodness. You you only look like you're 12 years old. That's that can't be right.

[00:04:14] Here's the mahalo. So. So tell me. Well, let's just jump right in the vet. Toga. What the heck is vet toga?

[00:04:24] Well, vet toga is a nonprofit organization that helps veterans, first responders, military members and their families with free yoga classes and meditation to help with PTSD. And ultimately, our goal is to decrease the suicide rates among veterans and not members.

[00:04:46] No, wait, wait a minute. PTSD. I mean, I've always heard of PTSD. But is that the same thing or something different?

[00:04:53] The deep portion, which is, you know, usually called disease is where we're transitioning from that in the or, you know, to help more people understand, because maybe they may not. Associate them selves with having it, but they may have trauma sort. And so that's what we're doing is to help through the healing art of yoga and meditation, to help more veterans and those who suffer from different types of trauma. To help lead better lives.

[00:05:26] So PTSD then extends for post-traumatic stress. And then you just stop that or post traumas. What's that actually?

[00:05:34] Yes, that that's exactly correct. And. But the disease portion, you know, everybody has a lot of stress. So whether or not you've been in combat or you're at home because you have financial stress or health issues and different things. So we're really trying to encompass it all and just help those who need it. Basically, how we do that is through yoga and meditation.

[00:06:02] Nancy, I'm having a hard time picturing some of these big strapping ex-military seals and everything and little like leotards doing the work. Do they really participate?

[00:06:15] Absolutely. I used to teach at the Pentagon yoga classes and 90 percent of my classes were made of males. Yes and no. They don't wear leotards. They wear shorts and whatever is comfortable to them. But the fact of the matter is, you know, we're changing that thought process so that, you know, it is available to everyone that yoga can be different things. Most people think of it as just the awesome us or the movement portion. But yoga can be a more encompassing than just that. And what we really focus on is then transitioning from the movement, which will help you to get your body flowing, your move, your blood flowing, etc. so that you calm your mind. And at that point, then you can better go in. And then hopefully he'll yourself through getting back in touch, because that's what happens when we're in certain situations that are our veterans after they come back from combat or wherever they've been in high stress situations. And the fact of the matter is that they don't turn off. And that's where things happen within the body and whatever issues that may have gone on, wherever you may have been serving. This is just a way for them to be able to come to a place that is safe, that people have been in the same sandboxes where they've been. So there's the trust factor there that we understand. We have the same lingo, the same kind of language. And that way they can then, you know, better relax. And then at least start the healing process. Well, that's their goal.

[00:08:12] Yeah, I totally believe there is a big mental part to this, but I have known a lot of guys that totally pooh-poohed yoga. And I go, man, that's nothing. And then they come out of one of their first class and they could barely walk. And they got a whole new respect for muscles they didn't know they had. I guess.

[00:08:32] Yeah, that that does happen quite often. So there's different ways to be able to be able to participate. And with that Toka, the nonprofit is helping to train more veterans to become yoga instructors. And that way we go out into the community. And then we turn around and give free yoga classes because yoga as a organization or a service in the United States could be quite expensive. And that might not be available to some of our military veterans and family members.

[00:09:10] It's a nation nationwide thing or you're expanding or how big an organization is is.

[00:09:17] Yes, it's in over sixty five cities across the nation. We have over one hundred and five instructors that are out there making a difference in other people's lives. And that's what we're the toga does, is it fundraises and helps to bring down the cost of an instructor because it's over three thousand dollars usually for someone to become a yoga instructor. So this way we fundraise, we provide top notch teaching and it's goes it's very in-depth, it's very encompassing and it's just an amazing organization. And if anyone wants to know more about it, they can go to the vetoga.org.

[00:10:06] Yeah, and I was going to ask if if someone wants to maybe a deal. Call your affiliates chapters or what if somebody is in a city that doesn't have one? What would they do to get involved?

[00:10:20] If they want to get involved, there are events on the vet toga Facebook page that they can look to see where perhaps some of the free classes are being offered if they want to become a yoga instructor. Then they can go to the Web site and sign up and then we will help them through the fundraising process so that they can then turn around and become yoga instructors when we host are currently twice a year training. So there's different types of training that usually can go on with yoga. Yoga, teacher training. Usually it's maybe once a month for most studios and it's like a whole weekend or so hours as a as 12 days. And it's an intensive so that you can get your training. There's homework before you do your. Intensive training and then you go home and do a little bit of homework after that. And then you submit for your application to become a 200 hour teacher with Yoga Alliance. And Yoga Alliance is the governing body within the United States that focuses on yoga and meditation and different aspects of that self.

[00:11:42] So can they then use that in a commercial fashion for nonveterans and then still maybe host of a toga chapter in their area?

[00:11:50] They do, yes, absolutely. That's exactly what they do. So the yoga, the karma we call with Gera is our give back. They can do it as often as they choose. And then what we offer is to have those who attend to be able to give if they choose to or just enjoy the yoga. And so that's our our offering to those who come to participate in our classes.

[00:12:19] Amazing. Amazing. So thrilled. Thrilled about that. Anything we can do to help our veterans, I'm all for.

[00:12:26] Except I doubt if they'd want me as a yoga teacher to find my other ways to help veterans that they'd see me going in.

[00:12:37] Like what the circus is irrelevant came in the room.

[00:12:43] So let's switch gears to your commercial venture, your messenger marketing.

[00:12:48] And you know, I've been preaching chat bots for a long time, but at a fairly low level and getting people used to using chat boards. And so it'll give them a little primer, what they are and then what's in the future, because there's major changes coming in this field.

[00:13:07] Yes. Let's start off with most people probably don't even know what messenger marketing is. And then we can discuss what checkbox are and how it fits in with messenger marketing. Messenger marketing is basically just a way for businesses to be able to communicate to their potential clients and or customers to automate the responses and have better customer service because customers want to communicate with businesses and they want it fast and they want it now.

[00:13:43] So this is a really easy way for you as an entrepreneur to be able to reach out to those who are looking for you and be able to respond back. So Messenger Marketing is currently has over 40 million active businesses messaging people across the globe and people and businesses are exchanging over 20 billion messages every month. So this is something that if you're not using it, you really need to be thinking about how to get messenger marketing as a tool. So you might be wondering, well, what's messenger marketing versus perhaps maybe e-mail marketing? Messenger is is just another tool like email marketing is that differences is the open rates are much higher. People are opening and being able to respond through messenger really quickly. So messenger is like a platform using like text messaging. And so people will respond to their text messages much faster than they do their email messaging. So if you kind of just consider that that's one of the real big reasons why any entrepreneur and business owner would consider adding messenger marketing in as a tool box because it allows you to take one too many conversation and make it where it the person that you're communicating to feels that it's one on one.

[00:15:18] And people are easily able to move along your sales process or your funnel much quicker. And Messenger is one of Facebook's primary initiatives moving forward.

[00:15:34] So, you know, if if you're using either Instagram or Facebook as your platform for social media, then I would highly recommend that this is something that you start adding into your tool box.

[00:15:50] Yeah. And I read recently that by the end of this year, 85 percent of customer service will be done with bots. And and that's just amazing to me. It's probably better because but we'll do a better job than a lot of the people they're hiring to do.

[00:16:10] Right. Yeah.

[00:16:11] And what I kind of like about it is there's no email filter at this point. I mean, I'm sure there's some filters for really, you know, nasty language and so forth that could be installed. But pretty much the delivery is going to get there rather than email. You hope that it's going to get there. You don't know if it's gonna get there.

[00:16:32] You got to worry about the filters and everything. So it's not anywhere near like that. And that's in part why the open rates are better.

[00:16:42] That's correct. And so just to kind of go back to what's what is messenger marketing versus chat bots, chat bots are basically the how. So the platform to be able to communicate. That's what chat bots do. They are the technology that makes messenger marketing piece happen.

[00:17:07] My chatbots name is Screwy. For screw the commute. He's actually a little avatar. Looks like my my logo. So because, you know, you're giggling and I'm giggling. But, you know, this is a different different kind of means. I mean, you can use emojis and make it fun to write.

[00:17:26] Yes, absolutely. You wanted it to feel as if it's a conversation, because that's what people are looking for. They want to have the quick conversations, their questions answered, but they don't want it to be robotic or, you know, because it is too much of that. And this is a way for you to be able to bring it down to that one on one conversation. However, you don't have to have that one on one conversation. You can have it started with your screwy or your chat bot icon and or representative, because what they do is to be able to automate that response in a quick manner.

[00:18:11] So it's some of the things that you can easily connect to your customers with is that you could have make reservations. You can get customer support or frequently asked questions answered. You can set appointments. There's so many things that can be done very easily through the bot for executing your messenger marketing strategy. So that's what's really interesting about messenger marketing, is that this is just one more way for you to be able to provide top notch customer service without having additional either people on your team and or your time involved with.

[00:18:58] Always been on because you know, we're humans when we need to sleep. But guess what? Your chat but doesn't. So 24 hours a day support. And it is going to be able to help you to be able to reach the people who are looking for you.

[00:19:14] And then if they still want to talk to a person, you can still have that as part of your response capability. And. But at least you have that initial conversation, the initial touches that will allow them to make their choices. And what is great about messenger marketing is its permission based. What do you mean by that? Well, that means that you cannot communicate to your customers or potential customers unless they ask for it. So as they engage in with your your chat bot or your your program there, then that's how they will ask for. They allow you to then turn around and communicate with them. So this is a really great opportunity.

[00:20:03] It is not a push like email is usually just a push to everyone. And it's you mostly a one way conversation. This is a two way conversation and it allows your your future customers to be able to choose their their journey. You know, with you you can offer different questions and whichever pathway that they need, they can go down that pathway and be able to get the support they're looking for. And people who want and need that there, that's what they're looking for. They want to make sure that the people that the businesses that they want to reach out to. They feel much more better about doing business with with businesses that they can communicate with. So right now, customer preferences are changing. Seventy five percent of people say they prefer to message a business over other types of channels, like phone or even phone calling.

[00:21:04] You get put on hold and then you get to the wrong different divisions and then you still have to. And then you need a lot of it's automated where you're just sitting there for a long time. They want to be able to use messenger marketing and chat bots to be able to communicate to a business in about. Sixty six percent say messaging a business makes them feel more confident about their business. So they have that conversation.

[00:21:33] Yeah, like like if you go to Facebook, my Antion and Associates page, you can click message. So you're messaging me. So that's turns this thing on. Right. So, you know, you said it was permission based. So they're messaging me ask, you know, wanting something. So then Screwy comes up there. And also by having these, you get that notice from Facebook that says answers immediately. People love that, right. Instead of answers within three days. So nobody like that. And then I have already people know certain stuff that I do. So I have screwy asking him questions. Do you want information on entrepreneurship? Do you want information on public speaking or whatever? And they if they say yes on that one, then it sends them to that area to show all my stuff. So it's all automated. And then if it's none of the above. They click none. And so I ask him some more questions of what they want. And then and then if all that fails, I get the message and then I can contact them directly. So and then and then they can they can click, stop or, you know, unsubscribe or whatever. And then security comes on and says, well, I'm crying and I'm gonna get rusty.

[00:22:48] But I guess you're going to leave me this. It could be a fun anyway. And some people, because of that message, decided not to unsubscribe.

[00:22:59] They just have it's fun to deal with it. And it's and they get what they want it fast.

[00:23:05] Absolutely, you can make your icon or screwy have a personality right and make it fun, and that's what people are excited about when they're using messenger marketing, when they're reaching out to businesses and they're really excited about how this new technology works. And on as an entrepreneur, if this doesn't get you excited, I'm not sure what will, because this is so much easier than having a full on campaign for your email processes, et cetera. Now, I'm not saying that that's dead.

[00:23:41] Well, yeah, we make our fortune on email, but this is just another channel that you can have a database of people. Tell me about the. There are limitations, though, because Facebook doesn't want Messenger to end up like e-mail where everybody spam and everybody. So tell them some of the limitations and then tell him some of the upcoming changes.

[00:24:03] Right now you're able to broadcast to your list and send pretty much messages as you choose. That is the major change. That's coming up very shortly. We're in January right now. Twenty, twenty. And as this goes on, we're looking at March timeframe as right now where Facebook is going to implement changes, where basically de-legitimizing the responses of businesses and keeping everyone on the same playing field and keeping spammers, in essence, from being ruining this platform. And what you will have to do is to be able to ensure that the communication is with in a certain time frame, which is 24 hours. So as soon as somebody engages your chat or your your messenger bot, what they want, they as in Facebook, wants you to respond. They want good customer service. They want a great feeling that people enjoy being on the Facebook platform. And one of the ways that they're going to assure that is that you have a 24 hour window to be able to send any type of response back to your person who has engaged in. What I mean is that you can include promotional messaging, sending them to coupons, to an event that you might be hosting, sales pages, etc. After that 24 hour window, you still will be able to communicate with those on your messenger list. However, you have to do it in a non promotional way. So you want to update them saying there's been a change in the calendar or maybe the event is has a time that might be changing or the weather has gone bad and you want to ensure you communicate that something might be closing.

[00:26:15] You know, there's different things that you're going to have to be able to ensure that you meet the requirements. And that's all laid out. And that's part of what I am offering and we'll be helping people through is to understand what you can do within your business, how to setup, message your art, how to create them, and then stay within the terms of service that Facebook is requiring. Because if you don't, then, you know, you might see people not following it at first. But there is going to be a time, there's a lot of people that then their accounts are going to get shut down. And the whole thing is you don't own your Facebook business page. All of those transactions, if anything, exchanges that still is within Facebook's purview. So that's why what's great about email marketing and moving them onto your your own platforms is to ensure that no matter what happens with any social media platform, you still have the ability to communicate with those who are looking for your services and such. So you want to make sure that you always remain within Facebook terms of service. And that's how we can help you to be able to execute your messenger marketing strategies and and be able to communicate to those who are looking for you. For you.

[00:27:45] Yeah. And that's why I've been teaching for years, ever since this social media started. To me, it's a necessary evil and it's an inch. It's good that you can reach people. But my whole goal in all the social media stuff is to get them the heck off of there onto my email. As soon as Zuckerberg turns a dial. Boom. Everything's changed because like you just said, they they own everything. So I use these tools to get them off onto my email list. And then if something happens, I still have the ability to contact those people. So so that's that's cool. So how do you work with people?

[00:28:24] I am currently hosting a live event and I also have some courses that I will be creating. But for the most part, I work with veterans and military spouses through coaching programs and cetera. So that's how I am able to help them to transition to owning their own digital online businesses and to figure out how to transition from the government service or corporate America to having their own becoming and own their own CEO.

[00:29:02] Yeah, yeah, that's that's really great. When you started your own business of this coaching have 30 years in the service. Did you just did you started before you retired or did you save up money or do you get it? How did you find answers start up? How long did it take you? What was that transition period like for you?

[00:29:23] Well, that's a very interesting question, because as we are in the military, you know, we have our our positions and such. So I was the public affairs advisor to the three and four star generals. And as I was being that that's how you learned all the news, social media.

[00:29:45] You know, became a big thing, you know, so we transition from, you know, printing newspapers to everything is now online and then having to help our senior leaders understand the power of social media and to be where are our members are. So they had to learn and transition as well through over these past 20 years and specifically the last 10.

[00:30:14] They become very comfortable with social media. But in having military members be able to reach them through social media and becoming more of a two way conversation, and that's was a very interesting process. But as I knew that my time for serving was coming to an end, I began to take classes, online courses because I wanted to ensure that my skill sets were relevant, that I was going to be able to do what I wanted to do when I got off of active duty and becoming my own digital CEO. And, you know, the whole your your podcast, your screw the 9 to 5 was definitely in my line of sight because I did not live in the D.C. area. I do not want to be in traffic.

[00:31:14] It's a commute. Yeah. I mean, I lived up there, too, for 13 years, long time ago, and traffic was bad. Now it's like, you know, it's just one continuous car all the way around the bell.

[00:31:27] I was tired of that. I just said, there's no way. I appreciate your offers because the only things that were being initially brought to me by relationships that you build throughout your your career is either becoming a government service or going into contracting. And I appreciated everyone's thoughts, of course, have their serving 30 years. And and being at that level, then that is you do meet quite a few people. I appreciated it, but I knew that that wasn't for me anymore. I wanted something different. I wanted a better life. I wanted to be able to help more veterans. And so it took me a while to figure out the how, you know, how am I going to do this? Figuring out what venue, how, you know, through social media, which types of courses, what am I going to offer? All of these different things.

[00:32:25] So it takes a while as you're transitioning to kind of figure out who do I want to serve and then how do I want to serve them. So the thing is, we don't learn that while we're on active duty. We've we learned to think for ourselves. We learned to lead to do all kinds of really wonderful things. But being an entrepreneur is not one of them.

[00:32:52] Yeah. So it took a bit to figure that out. The great things are there is there are many government. There's a lot of service organizations out there, non-profits.

[00:33:04] To help with the initial foundation of understanding and learning, and that's part of what I help as I'm working with different veterans that perhaps are not ready for me, you know, I'm taking those who are at the next level to a higher level. But if you're just transitioning straight from the military out, there's a learning curve and there are organizations that help with that level. And then what I do is when you're ready to to now understand that you have your foundation set, you know who you want to serve, you know how you want to serve them. And maybe that's still a little fuzzy. I can I help to clarify that, but then we build it from there and take it to the next level. But as a messenger marketing expert, I help the businesses to be able to create a chat box or I can help them to also through my courses to build it themselves so that there's going to be veteran.

[00:34:08] No, it does not have.

[00:34:10] Veterans. Great. So how did they get in touch with you?

[00:34:15] Well, I do have a free workbook that anybody who's interested in learning about what messenger marketing is and how they can apply it to their businesses. So I'll be giving you that link, it will be bit.ly/12smartstrategies. Yeah. So I wanted to make sure that if you're interested in learning more you have that available. But you can also just check me out at veteranceos.com.

[00:34:56] Yep. And then we also have is it vetoga.org?

[00:34:59] Yes, vetoga is the nonprofit that I support and it's vetoga.org. And it's a wonderful way to give back if you want to serve or become a yoga instructor.

[00:35:14] There we go. All right. Well, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us today in the open, opening eyes to these folks about messenger marketing and chat bots, because it's like I said, what I just recently read, 85 percent of customer service people are getting more comfortable using these. And in fact, they expect them and they want things now. They're not going to wait till to day. It still cracks me up. You hear a voicemail? Yeah. We'll get back to you within 48 hours. Or I could be dead in 48 hours. Dolgov. So. So this is this is it more than the wave of the future? It's right now. Businesses should be taking advantage of the hawker's training. So thanks so much for coming on.

[00:36:00] Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And I had a great time. Thank you.

[00:36:06] All right. We'll talk to you soon. All right, everybody. We'll catch you up on the next episode. See you later.

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