Episode 12 | Zach Benson | The Incredible Instagram Influencer

GFEP 12 | Instagram Influencer

 

The instantaneous nature of Instagram has helped make it one of the world’s biggest platforms. But this week’s guest has figured out that instant doesn’t mean random. Instagram influencer Zach Benson has devised an imaginative and impressive way to use Instagram to build a shared network of 220 million followers. Enter Assistagram, a marketing agency that leverages the power of that massive following to drive brand awareness, leads, and sales.  Far from flashy and certainly not privileged, this week’s Game Face Exec is humble, scrappy, and a respectful caretaker of his clients’ brands. From being a global breakdance instructor with students in 40 countries to becoming a worldwide marketing influencer, Zach Benson sure does know all the moves. Listen in as he spills it all on the show with Rob Cornilles.

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Watch the episode here:

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Zach Benson | The Incredible Instagram Influencer

Maybe you’re not on Instagram. Facebook, yes, LinkedIn, sure. Instagram is for a demographic that doesn’t fit your profile or you think it’s a time sink that you can’t afford to get caught up in. I get it, but that doesn’t negate the stunning rise of our Game Face Exec, Zach Benson. A small-town Iowa boy who was bullied in school, Zach took an unconventional route of becoming a professional dancer competing on national TV and then parlayed that to instructing breakdancing in 40 countries. Most impressively, he further went on to become a worldwide Instagram expert, who’s built a network of more than 220 million followers. You’ve got to read his story.

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I am grateful that Zach Benson is with us. Zach, it’s been a long time that I’ve wanted to talk with you on this show. You and I have become friends and more aware of what each other does. My readers are going to be fascinated with your story and with your accomplishments, your achievements. Let’s start with that. I’d like you to help us understand what Assistagram is and then we’ll talk a little bit about the story behind it.

Think of Assistagram like your own personal virtual assistant that’s hyper-focused on your Instagram account, doing hundreds of thousands of manual actions every day. It’s a whole lot of human power. We don’t use any bots or any software to grow people’s accounts. It’s the real human being interacting and doing all the things that you need to grow your account, creating content for your account, optimized hashtags, engagement groups, posting for you seven days a week. It’s having someone handle it 24/7. That’s what Assistagram does. We specialize in Instagram campaigns reaching millions. We help people build a brand around Instagram and then monetize it.

It’s an amazing service. I don’t want to give it away. I want you to share the number. How many followers does Zach Benson have on Instagram?

If you look me up on Instagram, you’re going to find @ZachVacay and that has 70,000 followers. Collectively, I own over 40 accounts. I have a six million travel network. With Assistagram, all of our influencers and celebrities signed with us, we have a network of 220 million on Instagram. It’s big. I have accounts in the travel space, fitness, beauty, health, motivation, entrepreneurship. Pretty much, we’re doing it all.

All over the world.

[bctt tweet=”The biggest risk of all is not taking one.” username=””]

Normally, I’m in another country, another culture every single week. I’m in good old Iowa where I was raised and grew up and went to high school and college here. It’s nice to be home. It’s good to spend time with family. I’m at my parents’ house on their sun deck.

Zach is taking his last rest before he hits the road again. I know you’re heading overseas. You’re heading back to the US. You’ve got a couple of events going on in the Midwest and on the West Coast. You’re heading to Asia, to Korea, and you’ll be there for some time. We’re fortunate that this is your last chance to interview with a podcast such as ours. We’re grateful that you took the time to do this, Zach. I want to go back and ask you a little bit about Assistagram. With all the social media platforms out there, why did you select Instagram as being the one that you were going to focus on and explode for your own business?

I got into this in 2014. The same guy who got me into dancing called me up, and he was like, “Zach, you’ve got to get in on this. There’s a massive opportunity here. Me and my brother are making a ton of money growing all these people’s Instagram accounts.” I bought into a 400,000-follower account. What we did with the account was we promoted and advertised on that account and promoted other people’s pages and rinse and repeated the process. Back at that time, we were growing thousands of followers per day, almost 8,000 followers per day. It was crazy.

The reason why I picked Instagram is because I saw it growing fast. It started in 2012 and I saw that every single year it was growing by 100 million users. Now it’s over two billion active users. With all the stuff that’s happening with TikTok and TikTok maybe getting banned and shut down, everyone is going back to Instagram. It’s where all is happening. I saw some different things that Facebook was doing. Of course, Facebook owns Instagram. I was like, “If I don’t get on it, then I’m going to be left behind.” I might as well take a first-mover advantage, take it seriously and go all in. It worked out pretty well.

I know you’ve invested a lot of time building your business. You’ve also invested a lot of money, which is an important point. For those who want to go big, you have to spend big. You have to spend money to make money. Was that ever difficult to put your trust into a social media platform, mentors, or consultants who were pushing you to make these huge investments and these huge commitments? I know you’re that guy who says, “I’m going to announce to the world what I’m going to do. I may not always win. I may not always succeed, but I’m going to tell everyone what I’m going to do and I go in all the way.” That’s Zach Benson as I know you. Talk a little bit about the mentality that’s required to be that person.

In 2008, I did an internship with my college president at the time, Dr. David Grow. This guy was amazing. He went to the National Academy. He was General in the Army, CFO of Texas Instruments, and a White House fellow too. He became my president and I was like, “I want to learn from you. I want to learn leadership and how to speak on stages and be a great speaker like you.” He took me under his wing. What I learned from him was the biggest risk of all is not taking one and that hit home with me. I’ve always been a go-getter. I see something I want to do, I take action, initiative, and I go for it.

GFEP 12 | Instagram Influencer

Instagram Influencer: Instead of thinking about what you can get and take, think about what you can give to those people that you’re interacting with.

 

I’m not one to think about things a lot. I take that leap of faith and see what happens and I try to make the most of it. That’s my mentality with everything in life. If I see a person I want to connect with, I do my homework, research them, buy their products, and then connect with them. Some people say no and sometimes it doesn’t work out, but I’m always thinking, “What if?” I always see everyone as a potential friend. I always am thinking about what I can do within my power and my network to help others and to give freely. That’s how I’ve been able to build my network fast.

To answer your question about investing in myself and investing in masterminds and training and mentors, it was scary. I remember paying my first $5,000 to attend events and then I figured out how to 5x it. Every time that I do it, it’s a little bit scary because I’m worried. I’m like, “What if I don’t meet anybody? What if I don’t get any business?” I realized that I was operating out of the wrong mindset. I was operating out of a transactional mindset like, “If I pay this, then I want to get this.” That’s what everybody expects and wants. Instead of thinking about what you can get and take, think about what you can give to those people that you’re interacting with. I switched that. I paid $100,000 for a mastermind and that was scary. That was 2019. I have 2x-ed it. We’ve only had one event because of COVID. It’s worth it because mentors shave time off your learning curve. Instead of doing that, you go faster.

I’ve always referred to that in that same way to mentors or trainers. They accelerate your learning. I’ve often said that you can go through the School of Hard Knocks and figure it out on your own or you can find the right mentor, the right trainer, the right coach. That person can accelerate your mistakes and accelerate that learning curve. Why go through the School of Hard Knocks when you don’t have to? There are many capable people out there, such as yourself, a common friend that we have. In fact, the person who introduced us, Trevor Crane, has been a terrific resource to me and to you as well. He’s the kind of guy that you’re describing as someone who gives. There’s a cost to it, but he always makes sure that we get our money’s worth.

I always operate from a beginner’s mindset. I’m always questioning to learn and to understand people and to understand things and life better. Also, I’m a firm believer that you can learn something from anybody. It doesn’t matter if somebody is a billionaire or multi-millionaire or they’re homeless on the street, even handicapped. You can always learn something from somebody. Everybody is important as a human being. You have to express a genuine interest in others, ask questions, listen, and learn.

I like that part about listening. Don’t ask to ask but listen. I was listening to something you were saying, Zach. You slipped in there that you were a dancer. That’s not what we would have expected to learn on a podcast about someone who’s got tens of millions of followers. Tell us the backstory on you being a professional dancer.

Before all this marketing stuff, Rob, I was a breakdancer. I danced and taught all over the world. To take it a step back even more, I was born in South Korea and adopted by my parents in the States, and then I grew up in Iowa. Growing up for me was hard because I had a speech impediment. I never talked. I never participated in class. I had a 1.6 GPA in school. Life was bad. I had no friends, no confidence until I found dance. Dance changed my life. It became something I was passionate about. It became my fire. That same dude who got me on Instagram got me into dancing and he gifted me this breakdance DVD, How to Break Dance by Mike Garcia. He was like, “You’re the Asian sensation. You need to live up to your Asian-ness. You’re the only Asian kid in our school who can’t dance.” I watched it, fell in love with it and I practiced.

[bctt tweet=”You can learn something from anybody. You have to express a genuine interest in others, ask questions, listen, and learn.” username=””]

I kept practicing, working hard and started a crew, and eventually made it on TV. I was on this TV show called So You Think You Can Dance. You can barely see me because they only show the crazy drama and crazy people and the good ones. I never won the show, Rob, but I advanced to the fourth-round finalists in the LA audition and that was enough to help me teach dance in over 50 countries. Towards the end of my career, I was making towards $1,000 an hour teaching dance workshops around the world. A lot of people were like, “How did you do that?” I figured if I can choose three different age groups, three classes, two hours each, $50 per student, ten students minimum, give $5 per student to the studio owner, then I can do that. Normally there are 20, 30 kids per class and age group. I did that every single week. I started in Iowa, Midwest, and all around the world and I did that for several years. It was fun. Teaching is my passion.

Teach us a little bit about the following subject, Zach, and that subject is influencing. As you know, at Game Face Execs show, we like to focus on the power of persuasion and the role of influence and inspiration plays in our lives, both as recipients and as givers of persuasion and influence. We hear a lot and we’ve been hearing it for years about influencers. I was wondering if you could describe for us what an influencer is in your mind. How do we know if we are an influencer? How do we know if we’re interacting with one?

What is influence? People like John Maxwell says it’s like leadership. Each one of us has value and worth as a human being and value and worth to offer others. Each one of us has a little bit of influence over our peers, friends, and family. To me, influence is impacting people in a positive way so that they come to you and they ask you for advice. They ask you for help. They ask you for your take on life and take on a situation like, “What would you do, Zach, if you’re in my situation? If you were me, what should I do?” That’s influence. It starts out small like that. As you grow your audience and you start to dominate a platform, it grows a lot bigger. You’re sharing your message on Facebook, Instagram Lives, through Instagram Stories and you’re impacting thousands to millions of people.

With that, many people are learning how to monetize their influence. I would ask you, what is your purpose of having tens of millions of followers who are obviously influenced by your message, by your story, by that which you teach? What’s the ultimate end game for that? Is it to build up a bank account? I’d ask what you think it is for you and then what you’re also seeing out there, other examples of people who have used their influence for a particular purpose.

Why I do what I do is because it goes back to my dancing days when I was traveling the world. I met other dancers, other amazing artists all over the world like in Morocco, India, and all over Europe. These people were way better than me. Skill level and talent-wise, they’re a whole other dimension, whole other level. I was like, “What’s the difference?” I’m able to monetize because I know about branding, PR, scaling, building, and growing businesses. These people are better than me. Why can’t they monetize?

The reason why I wanted to get into Instagram and grow this 220 million-network is that I wanted to help others do more of what they love every single day. When they’re doing that, when they have that one hour a day or two hours a day, four hours a day for some, they’re doing that and it’s what makes them happy. We can make the world a happier place by helping those people. That’s what I do with my influence. I like to see others succeed and reach their goals and their dreams and help support them. When you do have more influence and power, you can use that for good to open up doors for people or to help them along their way towards their dreams.

GFEP 12 | Instagram Influencer

Instagram Influencer: Influence is impacting people in a positive way so that they come to you and ask you for advice.

 

I can get on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook and I can see people who look like everyday folks. If you will, they look fairly young. When our parents and grandparents were in business, were going up the corporate ladder, you couldn’t have influence unless you had some gray hair or some wrinkles. It seems different today. Young people, if I can use that term, people in their 20s, 30s are grabbing influence and spreading it throughout the world as you have done. Should we feel that they have taken shortcuts that they haven’t deserved that moniker of influence? Have they simply learned how to use tools or resources that technology has provided? They’ve exposed good and value that they have that in previous times we never would have recognized.

When I think about that, a couple of things comes to mind. Everybody wants to go viral but going viral is hard. When some do, it can reach millions and millions of people and they might have that one moment and know how to leverage it to their advantage, open up more doors, get more publicity, PR, more buzz and more business. Some people don’t. Some people know how to crack the code and they’re growth hackers. They’ve done hard work to figure out what types of content has viral potential, what types of content they need to create to potentially go viral and reach millions of people and other growth hacks to crack the code and the systems to grow their audiences in the millions.

There are people who take the fast track. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. It can be a smart thing too. We live in a fast-paced, smart world and things happen instantly. Some have marketing minds and they know how to sell themselves. They know how to be on stage and close to people. Some people have it and some people don’t. That stuff can also be learned. You can also pay others to do it for you to take the fast track path. When I first started, people were like, “You’re everywhere. How did you get everywhere?” I don’t feel like I’m that high level. There are many other people bigger than me.

They see me on all the stages with Tony Robbins, Russell Brunson, Sylvester Stallone, all these people. They’re like, “How did you do it?” I hustled. I worked hard for years before I made $1,000 an hour. I was barely getting by. I was struggling. I was about to quit. I did quit several times. I even almost shut down Assistagram a couple of times. How I got all of my press and my PR and built my brand, I didn’t take a fast track. I hustled. I found other ways to get my foot in the door. I used one article and one news interview and got some more. That’s how I got my first Forbes article. It was all through connections and relationships and it wasn’t paid for.

It sounds like the old adage, “It takes ten years to become an overnight success.” You’re a living testament of that. It took a lot of work. Back in the day when I was young, Zach, it seems like a lot of people wanted to go to Hollywood and become movie stars or television stars. You’d look at some of the people who made it and you would think, “How did they make it? What was that little something that they had?” Sometimes it was luck. As a casting director or a director or a producer, they had that something that was hard to identify, hard to even explain. To me, in today’s world of social media, those who are going viral, sometimes it’s good luck. Right place, right time, right video, right message, perfect timing because the world needs to hear it or see it at that moment. Most of the time, it’s strategic. It’s well planned. It’s thoughtful. That’s what you’re describing for us.

Let me break it down, Rob, of how I did it. I was a breakdancer and I wanted to get on TV. I saw this weather lady do a weekly workout and she traveled to different gyms and yoga studios and tried all these different types of workouts. I saw on one of her episodes that she did a pole dance class, a pole studio. I knew the lady who owned that because I did workshops at her studio. I was like, “Can we do something special? I’m going to do a free class and give you all of the profit. I’ll give my time for free. I’ll make you money.” I want to do something fun for that weather lady. She was like, “Sure. Why not?” I made it happen and that’s how I got on WHO TV. I was a local Iowa celebrity. I used that same video link when I reached out to other studios and news stations.

[bctt tweet=”When you have influence, you can use it for good to open up doors for others and help them along their way towards their dreams.” username=””]

When I went to Kansas City and taught a workshop there, I reached out to FOX 4 Studio. It was huge. I was like, “I did this with this weather lady. Why don’t I do the same thing with you? We can do a fun little thing and I’ll teach you how to breakdance on live TV.” She thought it was sweet. She was big into fitness. I kept on using it. For my Forbes article, I did a Facebook Live in 2016. There was one like on that video and there were 100 views, but then the replay happened. One person who was watching, she had a big PR agency and she was like, “Zach, I want to travel the world for free like you. I want to buy an Instagram account from you and teach me how to travel for free.” I gave her a fair deal. I was like, “Here you go.” She felt loved and respected from that.

I went and over-delivered and she’s like, “You’ve got to meet my friend, Jules Schroeder. She’s got this podcast called Unconventional Life. You would be a good fit.” At that time, every person that was on Unconventional Life Podcast got a free Forbes article because she was a Forbes contributor. She wrote Millennials, Here’s How To Use Your Instagram Account To Travel The World For Free. It was on Forbes and it went viral, and that’s when I got major clients. It was the right timing, outreaching to people and not being afraid of being rejected, relationships, charging fair prices for my services and not overcharging. Making people feel loved and respected with a fair price and luck.

People say that luck is more likely to come the harder you work. There’s so much I want to ask you about what you related to us. First of all, you keep referring to the fact that you have to have a regard and love for other people. Where does that come from in your life? You were born in South Korea. You were adopted by an American family. Where does that feeling of love come from? I don’t mean to get too personal with you or to presuppose anything with you. I would imagine that some adoptees feel the opposite of love when they learn about their past. Maybe they were abandoned or someone didn’t love them. I’m not saying that’s ever the case for any one particular person. It would be natural to feel that way. Where did you get this spirit of love and wanting to do good by other people?

I owe it all to my family and God. I was blessed. I’m grateful for my family here in Iowa. They supported me through it all, even my darkest and hardest times where I was pretty much failing out of school. I was always getting in trouble, getting bad grades, getting in fights. They thought I was going to be a juvenile delinquent, end up in jail my whole life. I struggled in school. They helped me with everything. My dad was spending every single night with me after school, helping me with my math homework because he’s in accounting and stuff and a math whiz. My mom was always helping with English and homework and stuff.

My grades started to get better when I started to take it more seriously. I started to realize how they went through life without complaining. They were caring to everybody, not only me but also people on the streets and random people and all their friends. I learned all of that from my parents. My faith as well, I did this program called Mission Year in 2009. I lived on $2 a day for food a year by choice because I wanted to learn how to live on less so others could have more. This guy named Shane Claiborne wrote this book called Irresistible Revolution. It was about how he and Mother Teresa worked together and helped people in Kolkata. They served the dying and the sick.

I got him to come and speak to my college and then I was like, “I want to live like you. I want to give back. I want to serve.” He’s like, “You can.” He touched me on the shoulder and he was like, “You’ve got to connect with my friend. He’s got this urban ministry program called Mission Year. I highly recommend that you do it.” Right after college, I graduated and then I told my parents this and they’re like, “We spent all this money and you’re going to go live on $2 a day for food? You’re not going to get paid. You have to raise $12,000 to do it. That’s crazy.” I was like, “Yep. That’s what I’m going to do.” It was life-changing. It taught me a lot about others. It taught me to see people as people and treat everyone as an important human being.

GFEP 12 | Instagram Influencer

Instagram Influencer: You should be on top of mind for everyone. You want everyone to endorse you and sing your praises.

 

I haven’t met your parents yet. Hopefully, someday I will. They sound like unbelievable people, sweet people who obviously had a great influence on you. As you describe yourself to us, Zach, your background, and some of the things you went through when you were younger that you had to overcome, a few years later, you created a personal brand that’s unmistakable. People who know you, people who follow you, they understand who Zach Benson is. How would you define personal branding? I know that’s a big part of what you teach. It’s a big part of the service that you provide your clients. What is personal branding and why is it important?

I had a chance to meet Gary Vee in 2016. He’s a big influencer in the marketing world. He got almost ten million followers. We spoke on this influencer marketing panel together in Hong Kong. He’s like, “If you want to have a successful business, you’ve got to be everywhere. You’ve got to work hard. You’ve got to grind. You’ve got to travel. You’ve got to speak. You should be top of mind for everyone.” When they think of Instagram marketing agencies, they should think of Zach Benson. When they think, “Who can help me create a big personal brand and help me monetize it?” they should think Zach Benson. You want everyone to endorse you and sing your praises. I worked hard on that and double down on that. I took his advice. That’s it.

Is there a difference between personal branding and corporate branding? When you work with your clients, are you working with individuals primarily? Do you also assist brands themselves?

Assistergram, that’s our new company. I think of it like this, your name is your most important asset. I read that in a book one day. I forgot who said that. You are the business. You are the commodity. You live and breathe it every single day. I think that they go hand in hand. If I had to choose one, I choose to focus on you. That’ll spread and the word will get out. I don’t know if I answered your question well.

You are answering it. Let me go a little bit further with it. Let’s say that I’m a corporate brand and we feel our brand needs some improvement or some polish. Are you suggesting that it starts with the individuals within that organization that they need to develop a positive image reputation or does it start from the top down? I can see the advantages of either. One of my concerns, starting with the bottom up, is that someone within my company may develop a great personal brand but then they leave and they take it with them. I’m left with my old, raggedy brand on the corporate side and I have to start all over. If you’re talking to a corporate entity, a decision-maker who wants to hire you and Assistagram for your services, what are some of the initial steps that you would encourage them to take?

It could go both ways. The founder and the CEO, we get them on more TV, podcasts, and WordPress and get more of their story, their vision and missions out there. Let’s say we work with Ritz-Carlton. They’re big, but they have many properties all over the world. We’ve worked with a lot of them. We’ve worked most of them in Asia, Hong Kong, and Thailand. What we’re helping them with is their content for that particular resort go viral to drive more tourist visits. Great content leads to more growth and exposure and potential customers. That’s what we’re focusing on. It’s the content, the storytelling, the messaging, the videography, all of that, and then using our influencer network to get in front of everybody that they’re targeting. That’s what we’re doing for Ritz-Carlton.

[bctt tweet=”As an influencer, your name is your most important asset. You are the business.” username=””]

It’s about taking that brand and finding the sweet spot as to what their story is. What is their message? What’s their differentiator? Making sure that’s communicated through content that we might find on Instagram to make sure that cuts through the clutter of all that there is out there to look at. Am I interpreting it correctly?

Yeah. We want to get their message, values, principles, services, and experience out to the world. The best way to do it is through social media. What does everybody do as soon as we wake up every day? We no longer wake up to an alarm clock. We wake up to our phones and we begin scrolling and consuming content. If you don’t have any epic content that’s going viral and reaching millions and millions of people, then you’re going to go out of business. It’s how it works. Instead of being a consumer yourself, think about how you can be a creator. Pump out content and be everywhere. That’s the goal. That’s what you’ve got to do to stand out.

Does the content have to be perfect?

Not at all. That’s the thing I learned with breakdancing. I was never the best dancer. Some people are good freestylers. They listen to music and they react. Some people are good at following choreography. You know this. In sports, some people have amazing hand-eye coordination. They can follow patterns. Other people got to work a little bit harder and they’re more freestylers. This is like everything in life, freestyler or a combination of both or the other. When you’re freestyling, you’re listening to the music and simply reacting and moving. How I feel in my music is different than how you feel the music. Every person is different and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s a good thing to simply feel it and groove and put it out there.

A lot of people get stuck because they’re afraid of what others will say. They’re afraid of looking bad, getting made fun of, and looking silly. You’ve got to get over that. That’s what I’ve learned through my dance career. I’m not the most eloquent speaker and best grammar and stuff. I have an expert writer that sometimes writes some of my stuff, but it’s my personal stories and experiences and some of my statuses. There are some statuses that I feel it, I post it, I write about it and that still goes pretty viral. It’s being vulnerable, authentic, genuine, showing people the times when you lost a big deal and the times when you screwed up and made a big mistake. Stuff that you look back on and you’re embarrassed, but you share that with people on social media and you tie it back into business, it’s something that people can take away. People will resonate with that.

I’m thinking about the type of client that Assistagram takes on. You answered the next question I was leaning towards and that is, what is a good client for you? Also, what’s a client that probably won’t work with you well, meaning it won’t work out? Let me see if I can answer it and then you correct me. A good client for Assistagram and Zach Benson is one that’s willing to take some chances, one that’s willing to be raw, authentic, spontaneous, and also vulnerable.

GFEP 12 | Instagram Influencer

Instagram Influencer: Influencer marketing is a $15 billion industry and is rapidly growing. If you’re not taking it seriously, you’re going to get left behind.

 

A bad client would be one who’s always preparing to get ready. They’re always waiting for that perfect moment, that perfect word choice, that perfect message and they’re not taking advantage of the opportunities that are there every single day. Every single moment of every single day, people are doing what you said, they’re scrolling. They were on Instagram ten minutes ago and they get back on it right now. They want to know what’s happened in the last ten minutes. Am I describing your ideal client and then the client maybe that you probably would pass on?

Yeah. The thing is that we also are perfectionists. We like making things look good and people look good. We prep you before you go on an interview or a TV show. Our design team is insane. We want to make sure that your content looks the best from a design perspective because that’s important to me as an artist. You’re right, Rob. We like to work with people who trust us and trust the process because we’re the experts and we know what we’re doing. At the same time, we’re open to advice and changes and willing to let the best idea win between us all. That’s how we work. People who like to move fast and puts stuff out there. You summed it up pretty nice.

Give us an idea. What is social media and Instagram, particularly what does it look like globally? For those of us who don’t have a lot of exposure to it, tell us how it is evolving. Frankly, tell us how it’s changing the world.

It’s 2020. This has been a crazy year. Social media-wise, the biggest thing was Instagram rolled out Instagram Stories. It pretty much shut down Snapchat. TikTok is about to get shut down by the president and it’s crazy. Everybody is shifting again to Instagram. Overall, influencer marketing is a $15 billion industry and is rapidly growing. More and more brands, companies, and people are getting onto social media, investing lots of money to get their products and services seen and known and heard all over social media. If you’re not taking it seriously and investing in growth and investing in content and trying to make that go viral, you’re going to get left behind. Social media is how we communicate. It’s how we do everything.

Before someone might hire Zach Benson and Assistagram, I know you’ve got a book coming out. It’s called Reach. I was wondering if you could share with our readers a little bit about what we will gain from obtaining the book Reach? How soon can we get our hands on it?

We’re taking our time with this. This is going to be out in 2021. Reach, it’s how to connect with anyone, how to build your influence and create a lifestyle business. The main takeaway is it’s about connection and how to find creative ways to stay in touch with people, how to get the top 1% in your industries singing your praises, endorsing you, and helping you create that lifestyle business. It’s teaching you how to work from anywhere and have fun while doing it. The biggest takeaway is that life is all about people. It’s teaching you ways to create deep relationships with others that can open up doors. It only takes one person and that one person could lead to multi-millions and millions of dollars.

[bctt tweet=”Life is all about people. It’s all about connections.” username=””]

I was talking about this with David Woodward who’s the Chief Business Development Officer of ClickFunnels, Russell Brunson’s company. He interviewed me on his podcast. He was like, “All it takes is that one relationship, that one connection. That could be 5, 10, 15, 20, 100x your business right there.” What we’re talking about in the book, Reach, is how to reach up, reach out, serve, give back, and also reach within and learn how to make people and companies that you work with better.

It’s a great message, Zach. I’m an admirer of yours and also grateful for the work that we are doing together and we’ll do together in the future. I can’t wait to get a copy of Reach when it’s available. I appreciate the fact that you’re taking your time on it. Good things do take time. I appreciate also your time with us amidst your busy schedule. We’ll make sure that our readers know how to reach you. Are there any questions, Zach, that I didn’t ask you that I should have asked you in this time together before we say goodbye?

Honestly, Rob, this was one of the best interviews ever. I mean that because you did your research and homework on me. I was also surprised by some of the questions that you asked me, they’re good and thought out questions. I enjoyed this interview. Thank you for your time and for giving me this opportunity. I would love to connect with all of you. I’m happy to connect and I would love to hear your story. Feel free to reach out to me on Facebook and Instagram, @ZachVacay. Our website is Assistagram.com if you need help with any of this stuff. More than that, I love to connect. Don’t be afraid to reach out. Thanks again, Rob. This was awesome.

Thank you, Zach. Take care and safe travels.

Thanks, Rob.

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About Zach Benson

GFEP 12 | Instagram InfluencerI’ve lived on $2/day for food, searched and reunited with my birth mother, volunteered for refugees, and traveled the whole world. My experiences have taught me to see equal value in all human beings, and to celebrate each moment as if it’s the last.

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