LinkedIn Wealth And Impact With Marcus Bell

Posted by John Livesay in podcast0 comments

If there is one platform that has proven to be helpful for businesses and individuals to connect at a professional level, it would be LinkedIn. But how do you really get started on it? Marcus Bell—an American music producer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, singer, social media influencer, activist and entrepreneur—joins John Livesay in this episode to share with us what they are working together geared towards helping entrepreneurs create a more positive impact as they build wealth: LinkedIn Wealth and Impact Bootcamp. They give us a peek into the tools they can offer at your disposal that will help not only yourself but also others to live their dream of doing something that is impacting the world. Follow along to this conversation and discover the possibilities for wealth and impact, all within LinkedIn.

—

Listen to the podcast here

LinkedIn Wealth And Impact With Marcus Bell

Our guest on the show is Marcus Bell, who was a child prodigy in music and has worked with every imaginable star, including Beyonce. Find out how he has taken his skills in music to conduct and create an entrepreneurial journey that allows people to monetize their LinkedIn profile even if they’re not looking for a job. When you figure out how to create content that is as meaningful as a hit song, you become irresistible. Enjoy the episode.

—

Our guest is Marcus “Bellringer” Bell, who is an American music producer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, singer, social media influencer, activist and entrepreneur. He’s marketed, promoted, produced, remixed, written for, mentored and developed some of the world’s superstars and brands. His list of credits include Nicki Minaj, Snoop Dogg and Beyonce, as well as Discovery Network, Amazon and Warner Bros., just to name a few.

He published on Amazon a number one bestselling book titled Bellringer Branding Bible: The 5 Musician Branding Principles for Singers, Rappers, DJs, Music Producers, Composers, Writers, and Recording Artists and all kinds of people, not just those in the world of music. He has an amazing background being the son of a National Tennis Champion. His father was an entrepreneur so we’re going to ask him to take us on that little journey. He, along with Daniel Burrus created the show called LinkedIn Wealth and Impact Bootcamp, which I’m very excited for you to know about what we’re all doing to help other people. Welcome to the show.

John, thanks for having me on. It’s so good to be here with you, being able to share stories with you and share some value for your audience.

One of the things that you say when people ask you, “Tell me about yourself,” has to do with dignity and compassion. Let’s start there. How did that come about for you as your stake in the ground of who you are?

The thing that is so important to me is my activity of life coming from a foundation of what I truly value for myself and others. I stand for dignity and compassion for myself, others, the planet and all of humanity. There are these isms that create tension in the world. I’m up to transforming those conversations around ageism, sexism, racism and all of that because if one holds dignity and compassion for another, then the isms start to disappear. That’s important to me.

I wake up every day with that on my mind. How can I be more compassionate towards the people I care about, love and don’t know that aren’t like me? People that have a different worldview and different frame that they’re living their lives from? How can I hold compassion for who they are as human beings? Not so much necessarily all the things that they do but who they are as beings.

That goes back to your youth and your parents. I want to hear the story of how you were in high school and led a demonstration to prevent the demolition of your high school.

[bctt tweet=”LinkedIn secrets revealed.” username=”John_Livesay”]

I had an unusual high school experience. I went to three high schools at the same time. The first high school was called Churchland High School in Portsmouth, Virginia. That high school had advanced placement courses. I would go in the morning to that high school to get those advanced placement courses for college and then I would leave that high school. Someone would transport me before I could drive and then when I could drive, I would drive myself to the predominantly African-American high school which Missy Elliott, people like Ruth Brown and other well-known people in the world went to because it was the only African-American high school that was pretty much there and the only option in that area.

When I was a sophomore, I became the youngest student government president of the school. On my watch, the city decided that they were going to close the school down. That school is I.C. Norcom High School in Portsmouth. The alumni association, my mother and my uncle went to that high school. They were tennis champions at the high school. A lot of historic greatness came from that high school. We held press conferences and pulled the community together to support saving the school and its history. Sometimes decisions get made inside of city governments that don’t necessarily take into account the history and the stories that exist that somehow has to be preserved.

Fortunate for us, the city decided to do the opposite of closing it down and investing and building a new building. They spent over $2 million on maintaining I.C. Norcom High School. Every time I’m in Virginia and I drive by that school, I feel overwhelmed with gratitude that we were able to pull together enough support. If I think about the work that you do, John, in crafting story, we had to sell the story of the school and why it was important, meaningful and necessary to keep it in existence. There are many different places that we can apply storytelling.

A good song is a story that touches your heart. A good song like a good story is memorable. There are lots of overlapping here of your passion and the kinds of people that you have gotten to work with and produced. We know you have had this amazing career in the music business but I want to jump ahead to 2012 when President Barack Obama was running for reelection and you get this call to do a song for flash mobs. What was that like? How did that happen?

Someone from his campaign reached out to me and said, “We’re planning to do all of these different culturally relevant actions to get people involved in the campaign and make it exciting.” That’s the thing about Obama’s campaign. They were using a lot of innovations in terms of how they were reaching the public, galvanizing and organizing. I played a small role in coming up with a song that was used for flash mobs across the country. It took on a life of its own.

I would imagine there may be some people that have not heard of flash mobs but behind the scenes, there’s a video put together to music with the choreography and then different people, whether it’s the general public, learn the routine and organize in a public place. They may rehearse somewhere else, go to that public place and pretend as though nothing is going on. They’re acting businesses as usual and then all of a sudden, music happens out of nowhere and then people start dancing doing the routine. In this case, people will come up with the Vote for Obama signs at the end of it.

Everyone whips out their cellphone who’s not involved because they’re so shocked, feeling like they’re part of something that looks spontaneous but lots of hours in rehearsal went into it. We jumped from one interesting part of your story to another, which is if I’m doing the chronological order, wasn’t it around 2018 when Beyonce was doing the On the Run II Tour and she ended up performing one of your songs that you produced. How did that happen?

LinkedIn Wealth: If one holds dignity and compassion for another, then the ism starts to disappear.

I have to take it back years before. I’ve been in the music industry my entire life. I started playing piano when I was two years old. When I was nine, I produced my first song for money. It was $120. I’ll never forget. Someone gave me $120 for replaying a Whitney Houston song that they couldn’t find a karaoke for. In that moment, I said, “I can make money.” $120 was a big deal for a nine-year-old, even now, that is the case. They can buy a lot of toys and so forth. For me, I was more about buying instruments than anything else.

In terms of my music journey, I’ve been producing and started a record label when I was twelve years old. When I started that record label, I started hiring my teachers to be my backup musicians. I had a bit of a child prodigy upbringing. I ended up going to Berkeley College of Music in Boston. Around early 2000, I got a call from Jam Master Jay from Run-DMC. They said, “Is this Bellringer?” That’s my artist-producer name. I said, “Yes.” He’s like, “This is Jam Master Jay.” I was like, “What?” He’s like, “I’m here to listen to your music. Did you produce all of this? Did you write these songs? I want to bring you out to New York to work with me.”

I fly to New York and start doing work with Jam Master Jay. This was around the time that I was working with him. He had done a label deal with Virgin Records. I was in a studio with him frequently. He wanted to throw me on everything that he was working on just because I’m a multi-instrumentalist. I can work in a lot of different genres. I can vocally produce and engineer. Someone can come to me and get everything done. I work very quickly because I’ve been doing it for so long. In four hours, we can go from nothing to the radio and that’s happened.

One day, I decided to go and visit my family in Virginia. When I was on that trip back home, I get a call saying, “Marcus, where are you at? Jay just got murdered.” At that moment, I decided, “I think I’m cool on hip-hop for a second. I’m going to take a pause in the hip-hop community.” I started doing country music and went down to Nashville. I started doing some gospel things and a lot of international work.

Inside of the international work, I went to India and I spent six months there with an artist named Shakti. When I was in India, I was working with a lot of Bhangra music and Carnatic music. We were using all these different instruments. It was the world of that. I immersed myself into the culture as well as did a lot of collaborations.

One day, I get a call from someone saying, “I’m in the Beyonce concert and I’m hearing your music inside of the performance.” They had combined Baby Boy with this Indian song I had done back in the early 2000s. That’s how that came about. They found a way to integrate some music I had done and some world music that I was involved in. It was a hip-hop Bhangra music and that ended up on that tour. That’s the origin of that one.

You’ve taken all this incredible experience and impact into being an entrepreneur with a lot of success in your businesses, as well as a huge social media influencer, which has led to you creating an experience for certain kinds of entrepreneurs that want to learn how to have wealth and impact in their careers, especially that you partnered with Dan and invited me to be part of this concept where LinkedIn becomes the core platform as a launching pad. Can you describe what gave you and how you reached out to Dan? Tell us a little bit about who it’s for and how it all started.

[bctt tweet=”How to reach for something bigger.” username=”John_Livesay”]

I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was nine. I’ve gone through the entrepreneurial journey on the music side. I have a company that supports 450 writers, producers and artists, getting music placed in TV and film as a sync licensing company. I’ve been in the entrepreneurial spirit. For many years, I’ve been supporting as a mentor, advisor, coach, celebrities, music celebrities, as well as politicians and CEOs of companies. I decided some years back to start doing a group of people because I wanted to be able to impact more people at once. I started the Wealth and Impact Bootcamp for that purpose to take some of the distinctions that I’ve learned around building wealth, entrepreneurship and make an impact with your message and the thing that you care most about.

The way the LinkedIn Wealth and Impact Bootcamp came about was I was in a conversation with Daniel Burrus, who is a New York Times bestseller and amazing entrepreneur as well. He said, “We’re six successful businesses and exits.” He consults the LinkedIn C-Suite as well as the Microsoft C-Suite. He and I have been buddies for several years. We were thinking about how we could create an offer of value that was unlike anything in the marketplace. The low-hanging fruit, which people don’t understand how important and the opportunity that exists for is on the LinkedIn platform.

We both have large social media followings but Dan amassed over 1.2 million followers on LinkedIn. Not only that, he has been doing upper six figures on LinkedIn since week two that he was on the platform. When we were in conversation around that, I said, “Let’s help people with that and have an offer of value that is helpful for a group of people that are about uplifting the planet. Let’s train them in how to use the LinkedIn platform to better communicate and articulate the offers of value in the marketplace, monetize their missions and make the impact and difference that they want to make.” That’s how the LinkedIn Wealth and Impact Bootcamp idea got cited.

Who is it designed for? Is it designed for people in the music business, someone who is a coach or a financial advisor? Do you have a particular ideal person that this works best for?

Coaches, entrepreneurs, wealth financial advisors, people that have companies, offer book, authors, speakers and not just music artists. There is a way for everyone, no matter what their offer is, to find their ideal customer on LinkedIn.

Normally, you either have to pay advertising on Facebook or you wait for referrals but you’ve created a way for people to create content that’s engaging. Certainly, with your music experience and background in producing, that’s part of the secret sauce. It’s creating relevant content that other people want to share.

There’s a secret sauce inside of our LinkedIn Wealth and Impact Bootcamp system. You’re a part of the secret sauce, John. The other way that’s a unique way we’ve designed this is we’ve reached out to people that we love, care about and have a relationship with like you, who have specialized knowledge in areas that are important for the success of the participants. You are the master storyteller.

LinkedIn Wealth: The key to success is confidence. The key to confidence is preparation.

As we know and as you say, “The sale is in the tale.” That’s a piece of the secret sauce. If the secret sauce was a mixture, it will be a mixture of your distinctions, my distinctions, Dan’s distinctions and other collaborators’ distinctions. We’ve also invited some guest appearances and superstar guests like you to come in, contribute and bring their specialized knowledge, whether it’s understanding the algorithm, sales strategy or video content creation. All of these things coming together create the opportunity for someone to create wealth and impact using LinkedIn specifically.

A lot of people say, “If I need help in this area, my branding, I’ll go to this person. If I need help with my storytelling skills, maybe I’ll work with John.” What I see here, which is so fascinating, is that your success as a producer for so many years requires a lot of skills and a lot of talent being pulled. You need the best person on drums and horns. You need the best process for people to go through and they’ll show up on time, the promotion of the music and the packaging of it all. You have created a one-stop-shop for people who’ve already created something that knows people are willing to pay for and they need. They’re just missing this secret process because no one else has done it the way you’ve done it.

They’re like, “If I need help in this, I have to go keep finding all these individual people who have expertise in something but then I’m still stuck on my branding.” You have assembled much like a music producer. This world-class group of talent that allows people to be shepherded through first, will fix this and then once you’re there, it will smoothly go into the next level. That’s the whole experience of getting someone to become aware and engage with you. If you’re helping people with their brand so that they stand out and then create the content, which then would ideally generate people wanting to have a conversation with them, that’s where I would enter in and say, “Let’s make sure you’re telling the best possible story that makes people want to buy or hire you.”

You’ve anticipated every single problem that people have or maybe don’t even have an offer yet but they want to do something entrepreneurial. You even can help them with that. It is comprehensive. That’s why I was so impressed with the thought and the strategy that went into it to help people go, “I can take a breath. I’m in good hands.”

I’m ringing the bell on you because that is the best articulation of how I think about things. There’s an orchestra. You have an aim and this song that you want to create is called wealth and impact in your life and in the world. Each section has a melody and it connects harmonically with all of the other sections. What happens is people want to create this great piece of music but they’re missing the drums, the timpani or the xylophone or they have the drums, xylophone, tuba section and French horns but they’re missing the strings. The strings are what pulls at the heartstrings.

When you learn how to tell a story that tugs at people’s heartstrings, they open the purse strings. There’s another analogy to the music part.

The way I view the LinkedIn Wealth and Impact Bootcamp, everything that I’ve put together in terms of courses and things like that, I look at it from that lens like, “What is this piece? What is needed for this piece to be a harmonious, beautiful piece of music for someone’s life?”

[bctt tweet=”The sale is in the tale.” username=”John_Livesay”]

Let’s paint the picture for people who say, “This all sounds really interesting.” Is there a little story of how this has worked for someone? What is their life like that they have all this tuned up, that everything’s in sync, on the right song page and working together? What happens for people when they’ve got the right song, brand and message at the right time but they’re not spending a lot of time wondering why the ads aren’t working or they’re struggling to get people to understand what value they have when all that gets fixed?

The name of it is LinkedIn Wealth. Obviously there’s money, but I want to also hear about the impact part. It’s not just you’re making a lot of money for yourself but you get to help people live their dream of doing something that’s making an impact in the world. That’s what differentiates what you’re doing and who you are as a man as well. It’s all so heart-centered and therefore, this is for heart-centered people.

There’s a participant and her name is Sharon. Her cause is around diabetes and educating people around that. She’s taking some of the principles that I’ve shared with her that’s a little piece of what’s in the LinkedIn Wealth and Impact Bootcamp program. She’s creating these events and being called on to platforms to talk about Type 2 Diabetes. She’s sharing her specialized knowledge as a nurse that supports people in that area.

There’s Brazos, who’s one of the participants in LinkedIn Wealth and Impact Bootcamp. From a wealth standpoint, he’s inside of my programs, done over $500,000 increase in his net worth but he also has a movement around longevity and living to be 120 years old. His mission is to help bring forth that narrative that it is possible for you to live longer in a healthier lifestyle. He’s bringing that forth into the world. As he does that, he’s making a tremendous impact because he’s been able to attract more people into what he’s discovered.

What you’re also helping people become are thought leaders. If they’re already a thought leader, you take them up another level where the authority is there. Let’s say if you’re a speaker and you’ve got X number of followers but after this whole experience, people are going to find you and hunt you down, instead of you having to pitch yourself to get hired as a speaker. With the content you’re creating and the impact it’s having, they’re going to want to say, “That’s the kind of speaker we want to have come and speak here.” All of that is full circle and dovetails together again much like a great song that people go, “I can’t wait to share this song with my friend.” It helps things get shared. When that happens, then you’ve got more money and the offers coming in than you could’ve ever imagined.

Across the board, I see people getting requests for speaking engagements, being part of book projects, hired for their services and asked to come on television. I’ve seen all kinds of things and movements start to get created for each person. Every business different and everyone’s aim is different. What I see is people being able to use the tools. The tools are values neutral. Any tool can be used for good or for other purposes. What we do is provide a way to use the tools that are available that a lot of people don’t know about that exist on LinkedIn.

I’ve seen you and Dan share some of these tools and you’re like, “How did I not know this was possible?” If you want to be perceived as a thought leader, you have to be at the forefront of using new tools. You want to have that wow factor. As a virtual speaker, I use ECAM and special effects. It gives people a little bit of a wow factor. Arthur Ashe, who I know is near and dear to you with your mom’s connection as a professional tennis player, is always talking about the key to success is confidence and the key to confidence is preparation. What you’re doing in this bootcamp is the preparation that an athlete does to be successful.

LinkedIn Wealth: Help people be successful, but also have significance.

Maslow, who’s the famous therapist that came up with the hierarchy of needs, has this great quote, “If the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer, you tend to go around looking for nails to hit,” which from a selling standpoint, if you only have a hammer and you’re trying to get people to buy from you, then you’re hammering away. “Do you want to buy?” When you have all these other tools at your disposal, such as storytelling and the quality of the content that’s engaging people to come to you that are already pre-sold, that’s where it all comes together in this beautiful song.

I want to underscore something that you mentioned and that is thought leadership. There are a lot of people that have thoughts but don’t necessarily embody leadership. There are a lot of people that are successful but what we’re aiming to do is help people be successful but also have significance. Inside of that significance, there’s a bigger context. The words that Dan Burrus likes to say is, “Talk about the bigger big.” There’s something bigger for your life. The thing that you think is big is not your bigger big. There’s something bigger. We’re operating the LinkedIn Wealth and Impact Bootcamp program on the bigger big level. What is it that you can create that does way more than what you’ve been doing?

If people want to find out more about you and this LinkedIn Wealth and Impact Bootcamp, where should they go?

They go to Wealth and Impact Academy. That’s the best place to go for the LinkedIn Wealth and Impact Bootcamp.

Marcus, thank you so much for bringing all of your talent, kindness and compassion to the world and to this episode. It’s been a pleasure.

John, thanks so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure interacting and sharing some value with you. I’m excited about you being a part of this LinkedIn Wealth and Impact Bootcamp.

Here we go. Success and significance, everybody.

Important Links

• Marcus Bell
• Bellringer Branding Bible: The 5 Musician Branding Principles for Singers, Rappers, DJs, Music Producers, Composers, Writers, and Recording Artists
• Daniel Burrus
• LinkedIn Wealth and Impact Bootcamp
• Wealth and Impact Academy
• http://www.WealthAndImpactBootcamp.com
• Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course

Wanna Host Your Own Podcast?

Click here to see how my friends at Podetize can help

Purchase John’s new book

The Sale Is in the Tale

John Livesay, The Pitch Whisperer

Share The Show

Did you enjoy the show? I’d love it if you subscribed today and left us a 5-star review!

• Click this link
• Click on the ‘Subscribe’ button below the artwork
• Go to the ‘Ratings and Reviews’ section
• Click on ‘Write a Review’

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!

• Here’s How »

Join The Successful Pitch community today:

• JohnLivesay.com
• John Livesay Facebook
• John Livesay Twitter
• John Livesay LinkedIn
• John Livesay YouTube