Go With the Flo

During this time of the coronavirus and mandatory quarantine, we were given the opportunity to sit down with Dan Berei - the owner/founder of Combat Flags in Davidson, North Carolina - and discuss his time in the U.S. Army as a Sergeant in Psychological Operations and getting deployed to the Philippines twice, how he started Combat Flags after 6 years in the military, his passion for Stop Soldier Suicide, and many other topics such as: - Where his passions to join the military came from - How his grandfather helped shaped the man who he is today - His role in Psychological Operations and Operation Enduring Freedom - Philippines - The biggest difference from military life to civilian life - Why he chooses to donate 50% of his profits to Stop Soldier Suicide - His perspective on purpose and self-awareness Let us know what you think of this interview by sending us a DM on Instagram @gwtfpodcast

To kick start our new year, we interviewed Three Farmers CEO, Natasha Vandenhurk, to talk about her experience of successfully getting an investment on CBC's Dragons Den for her company, and many other things such as: - How growing up on a farm made her who she is today - What it's like scaling a business in Saskatchewan, Canada - The process of going onto Dragon's Den - How she balances work life and family life - What a day in the life of being a Three Farmers CEO looks like Let us know what you think of this interview by sending us a DM on Instagram @gwtfpodcast

A few months ago, we interviewed Steve Babcock, the CCO of Vaynermedia, who has been included in industry lists such as, Forbes’ “30 Most Creative People in Social Media” and XYZ’s “Top 25 Young Creative Professionals,” to hear his story of becoming one of the most influential + leading creative directors in the marketing landscape. In this interview, we discuss things such as: - Growing up in a creative family in small town Idaho - Starting a production company at a young age - His career path to becoming CCO of Vaynermedia - The difference between working with small brands vs big brands - Typical day in the life of a CCO of Vaynermedia - His perspective on digital agencies in 2019 Let us know what you think of this interview by sending us a DM on Instagram @gwtfpodcast

There's a big trend among entrepreneurs and "fast money searchers" when it comes to finances, and that thing is "passive income". So in this episode, we wanted to dive into the world of passive income and discuss exactly what it means and find out if it's even possible to achieve. We share our thoughts on that and a few other things like: - The truth about passive income - Why real estate is the best investment - How knowledge is useless without execution - The simplicity of getting an interview with a someone famous We think that there's a lot of value in this episode for every listener and we would love to hear what you think is the best investment for your money by tweeting @jojomerta!

WARNING: THIS EPISODE IS MAY BE VERY CONTROVERSIAL In the last few weeks, we've mentioned in our podcast that we want to share our thoughts on more "controversial" subjects and help our audience better understand who we are and how we think. So in this weeks episode, we wanted to discuss our viewpoints on why we think having a free market is crucial to our survival and few more rabbit trails such as: - How a free market increases our quality of life - Why Marxism is nearly impossible to achieve in our society - The reason why communism always fails - The downsides of government run programs We know that this is a controversial episode and are aware that not everyone will agree with us, but we would love to hear your perspective on these topics and have a discussion by sending us a DM @jojomerta on IG. Note: we respect everyone's opinions and have nothing against anyone who disagrees with us. Let us know thoughts on this episode!

Over the past few years, the e-sports industry has been gaining more and more traction, gathering the attention of big name investors such as Drake, Scooter Braun, and other major VC firms, but the only problem is that the industry is in a bubble right now and it will soon be collapsing. So in this episode, we talk about several topics such as: - How the e-sports industry is a bubble - Why most e-sport teams are valued way higher than they should be - Thoughts on sponsorship's - Why influencers are so powerful for local brands We'd love to know if you think the e-sports industry is in a bubble right now by tweeting @jojomerta! Let us know!

To complete our goal of helping our listeners understand who we are, Levi interviews Josiah in this episode, and talks about his past growing up in a "cult", being a young entrepreneur, his experience being home-schooled, and how hitting rock bottom in life helped shape who he is today. We hope that these 2 recent interviews help you, the audience, learn more about who we are and where we're coming from when we share our thoughts on this podcast, and also bring value to someone in some shape or form. We'd love to hear your thoughts on these interviews and what you took away from them by tweeting @jojomerta!

In our efforts to help our audience understand who we are, we interview our co-host Levi "Sidekick" Harder, and discuss his childhood growing up in Lloydminster, Alberta, what made him the person he is today, how his brother is one of his biggest role models, and much more! Let us know what you think of this interview by tweeting @jojomerta!

With Facebook recently announcing their new cryptocurrency, Libra, we wanted to share our point of view on this business move and how it could potentially make cryptocurrency a practical thing in our society. We discuss various topics such as: How Facebook can make crypto practical by pushing it through their Facebook Marketplace Blockchain taking out big banks Why real estate investing is a smarter investment than stocks Our thoughts on private services vs government services Let us know what you think of this episode by tweeting @jojomerta!

Space exploration and the aerospace industry are both things that we have always found fascinating. So in this episode, we discuss: NASA using private aerospace companies to fulfill their missions Elon Musk innovating the airline industry How SpaceX might become an internet service monopoly with their Starlink satellites Let us know what you think of this episode by tweeting @jojomerta!

I know we've talked about this in the past, but I don't think enough people fully understand how fast the world is moving towards audio, and if you can start a podcast or build an Alexa Skill sooner than later, it's going to tremendously help your business in the next few years. When you consider that Amazon has sold over 100 million Amazon Alexa's, and Google has sold millions of Google Homes, I think it's important to do some research on the audio-first world and how you can implement a podcast or Alexa Skill into your marketing strategy. If there's anything I want you to take away from this podcast, it's this: Please go do your homework on voice devices (Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Apple Homepod) and go learn how to start a podcast for your business or personal brand. The sooner you do it, the sooner you'll be ahead of your competitors and gathering a lot of attention as the world fully transitions into audio space. Tweet at me @jojomerta and let me know your thoughts on the world transitioning over to audio!

This is another week of just winging it and seeing what subjects we touch on. So in this episode you can expect: Our thoughts on monopoly's How quality is subjective Why followers a bad social media metric Let us know what you think of this episode by tweeting @jojomerta or sending us a DM on Instagram @jojomerta!

As marketers, it's our job to adapt to new changes in algorithms and find the best ways to distribute our content in an online world. Lots of people are upset that algorithms are "interest-based" and not chronological, but I think this is a good thing because it's only going to show you content that you care about. What are your thoughts on interest-based algorithms?

In this episode, we interview Brendan King, the CEO of Vendasta in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and discuss his childhood, different business ventures, rapidly scaling to 275+ employees, and much more. Let us know what you think of this interview by tweeting us @jojomerta! Subscribe to Go With the Flo: www.youtube.com/channel/UCcbpzfr6G1iMH819fc9lqtw Go follow Brendan's social: Twitter: www.twitter.com/brendanking Instagram: www.instagram.com/ceovendasta/ -- Follow Josiah's social: Instagram - www.instagram.com/jojomerta/ Twitter - www.twitter.com/JojoMerta Medium - www.medium.com/@jojomerta LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/josiah-merta/ Follow Levi's social: Instagram - www.instagram.com/levi_harder/

How much content should you be posting on social media? My opinion: as much as you can while still creating relevant content for your audience. In 2019, the more content the better. If you can post 2-3 times a day while still delivering interesting content to your audience, the more engagement and exposure you'll get. That's just the way the algorithms are working these days. In the end, if you're not capable of pushing high volumes of content, just remember that 1 > 0 and you always have to start somewhere.

As technology advances and artificial intelligence becomes more powerful, it's going to start replacing jobs that humans would normally do, and people are getting worried about that. From texting, to Facebook, to AI, humans are scared of change and are hesitant to adapt to new technologies, and in today's episode, we share our perspective on why we think it's important for us to embrace innovation and show how it always leads us to a better quality of life in the long-run.

Lately, the Instagram organic reach has been going down and when something like this happens on a social media platform, lots of people start to freak out. So this week, we wanted to create a video that explains why the organic reach goes down on social platforms and what to do when something like this happens. Here are the 3 main takeaways: 1. Organic reach goes down because the business wants you to buy more ads in order to reach your audience. 2. Just because the organic reach goes down, doesn't mean that the attention has left the platform. 3. Adapt. Don't complain about it going down. You just need to adapt.

Tik Tok has started to make a name for itself in North America in the past few months, especially right after it acquired Musical.ly at the end of 2017, and we think that people need to pay attention to this platform. Just like how Instagram and Facebook started off with a younger audience and eventually gained the attention of adults, Tik Tok is doing the same thing and it would be smart to get on the app early and test it out before anyone else does. So in this episode, we talk about why Tik Tok is becoming a major player in North America and the reason businesses should take it seriously, and then we discuss what you should do when you encounter a weakness in your life. Should you work on it until it becomes a strength, or should you hand it off to someone else and focus on your natural talents? Let us know what you think of this episode by tweeting @jojomerta

When companies post on social media, most of them do the exact same thing all the time: they promote their services/products, post motivational quotes, and sometimes showcase some testimonials. This is almost the exact opposite of what they should be doing... People want to see the culture of your company and follow your "story." They want to know more about your employees, how your products are made, company events, behind-the-scenes stuff...things like that. So we wanted to touch on this subject a little more and explain why showing off your culture is more important than always promoting your products, and hopefully bring a new perspective to your social media strategy. Let me know what you think by tweeting me @jojomerta

After Disney announced their new streaming service, Disney Plus, their market value increased by $23 billion dollars, while Netflix decreased $7 billion dollars in one day. This has caught a lot of people off guard and wondering if Disney will surpass Netflix and become the leading streaming service. This week, we give our perspectives on who we think will become the dominate streaming service and explain why this will be a huge win for the consumers, regardless of the outcome. Next, we discuss why iconic brands such as Blockbuster, Sears, and Toys R Us have gone bankrupt within the last 10-15 years and share the number one reason why more big name brands will be going out of business in the near future.

Buying fake engagement on social media is way more common than most people think. I understand why people do it, but I don't believe it's a good strategy to build a real fan-base on social media. I'd prefer to attract quality engagement instead of paying for some service that deceives people into thinking that I have a large following. This is only my two cents on this topic, and I would love to hear yours! Tweet me @jojomerta

Without developing content creation systems for social media, you will never be able to push out high volumes of content consistently. Period. You need to take the time to figure out content systems for your company in order to have a solid presence online and stand out against your competition. So in this episode, we share some helpful tips on creating consistent content for your business and showcasing your company culture, and we would love to hear your thoughts on this topic by tweeting us at @jojomerta :)

The faster you move in business, the better, but in order to move fast, you need to be unemotional towards your company. What does that mean though? Well in this week's episode, we explain exactly what we mean by "unemotional" and how it will help you make important decisions faster and become a dominate player in your industry. In the end, if you can't make decisions fast enough and are always dwelling on the "what if's", you're never going to move your business forward and will get passed by your competitors. We want to hear from you though. Do you agree with us on this topic? Let us know! -- Follow Josiah's social: Instagram - www.instagram.com/jojomerta/ Twitter - www.twitter.com/JojoMerta Medium - www.medium.com/@jojomerta LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/josiah-merta/ Follow Levi's social: Instagram - www.instagram.com/levi_harder/

In this interview, we sit down with Jeff Bradford, a retired U.S. Army soldier, and discussed how he sold everything he had after 20 years of service in the military, and pursued his desire of starting a YouTube channel and learning the art of beer, wine and spirits. Jeff's story on how he transitioned from life in the military to being the host of Beer, Wine and Spirits is a fascinating one, and we would love to hear your thoughts on this interview! Subscribe to Go With the Flo: www.youtube.com/channel/UCcbpzfr6G1iMH819fc9lqtw Subscribe to Jeff: www.youtube.com/c/BeerWineandSpirits Go follow Jeff's social: Website: www.jeffbeerwinespirits.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/beerwineandspirits/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/beer_wine_spirits/ -- Follow Josiah's social: Instagram - www.instagram.com/jojomerta/ Twitter - www.twitter.com/JojoMerta Medium - www.medium.com/@jojomerta LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/josiah-merta/ Follow Levi's social: Instagram - www.instagram.com/levi_harder/

In 2019, branding is everything. I firmly believe the best way to build brand is by pushing out consistent content online and delivering value to your audience for free through platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. We go into a variety of different topics in this episode, but I think there's a lot of interesting perspectives on things like respect, branding, content creation, and branching out into different industries. I hope it brings you value.

In this episode of Go With the Flo, we interview the founder of Valuetainment, Patrick Bet-David, and discuss his life as a child in Iran, fleeing to Germany as a refugee during the Iranian Revolution, the transition of moving to America, enlisting into the U.S. Army right out of high-school, and the story of how he started both PHP Agency and Valuetainment. Patrick delivers a ton of value in this episode and we'd love to hear your thoughts on this interview! Buy your ticket to The Vault Conference: www.valuetainment.com/vaultconference/ Go follow Patrick Bet-David: Website: www.patrickbetdavid.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/PatrickBetDavid.Valuetainment/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/patrickbetdavid/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/patrickbetdavid LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-bet-david-3731553/ -- Follow Josiah's social: Instagram - www.instagram.com/jojomerta/ Twitter - www.twitter.com/JojoMerta Medium - www.medium.com/@jojomerta LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/josiah-merta/ Follow Levi's social: Instagram - www.instagram.com/levi_harder/

This episode is a passionate one for me and Levi... There's a huge trend happening in the world right now where it's cool to be an entrepreneur and run your own business, and there's countless online business "guru's" that make you pay for their course to learn how to make $500,000/month by running a Shopify store or creating social media ads for clients just like them. Here's the catch though: they're fake entrepreneurs who have never built a profitable business and scam people into buying their courses, and show off a fake lifestyle of private jets and sport cars to trick people. It's the same thing every time: first they start off by deploying ads on Facebook or Instagram saying that: if you join their "free" webinar RIGHT NOW, they can teach you how to make millions of dollars without working many hours...and then they completely disappear after a couple months and no one hears from them again. So in this episode, we explain exactly why this happens and expose these types of individuals by telling the truth about how these "entrepreneurs" are trying to "fake it till they make it" and why it never works in the long-run. Our desire is that this podcast will deliver some value by shedding light on the reality of becoming part of the top 1% and hopefully help people see through these online scams in the future.

Establishing yourself as "THE" local podcast in your city for your specific industry will start to become more of a common strategy in the business world as our culture transitions over to audio, and filling that void space before your competitors will give you a huge advantage in the long run. So if you haven't tried it yet, start working towards becoming the local podcast that everyone listens to in your city for your industry, and watch the positive impact it will have on your business.

In this episode, we first explain exactly why video content is king and how you can leverage it to create the ultimate social media strategy for your business and start building your brand online. So if you haven't integrated video into your marketing strategy yet, now is the time to do it. Next, Josiah shares all the "secrets" to digital marketing that most agencies and "guru's" make you pay thousands of dollars for, and explains the most effective way to create content for your business in 2019 - all at absolutely no cost. There's so much value in this episode of #GoWithTheFlo, it's insane. So please test out the information we share in this podcast and see how good the results are for your brand. We hope this will help many of you.

Hip-hop is now the most popular genre of music by far in the 21st century and has become a huge part of our culture. We talk about artists like Russ, J-Cole, and Joyner Lucas, who have all come up in the rap by using the internet as their main source of distribution and didn't rely on labels to help them succeed in the music industry. We discuss why most artists don't know how to brand themselves in 2019 and still chase after record label deals, when they should be trying to reach out to streamers on Twitch and vloggers on Youtube who will play their music in their videos and gain exposure that way because that's where all the attention is. We talk about that and much more in the latest episode of #GoWithTheFlo! Hope you enjoy.

In this week's episode of GWTF, Levi and I discuss who we think will be the first to commercialize space travel to the masses between SpaceX and Blue Origin. Will we agree on the same company, or will our opinions differ from each other? We then talk about how Uber could potentially compete in the aviation industry with their plans to use drones as human transportation, and maybe even completely change the car industry forever. This episode has some interesting points of view and I hope it can bring value to someone.

So many people are focused on their follower count and base their online success on how many followers they have, and I think this is one of the worst mindsets you can have when it comes to your social media. The fact is that, when the organic reach on social platforms is incredibly low, the follower count becomes less and less valuable. What's the point of having 10,000 likes on your Facebook page when it'll only show your post to 1%-2% of them? The best strategy is to create contextual content that is either entertaining and/or valuable to your audience, and listen to the community's feedback, and then adapt to it. If you do that, your follower count will start to increase naturally, but you're also creating posts that your audience will be interested in, which then exposes your post to more and more people.....because that's just the way most of the algorithms work these days. So please stop focusing on how many followers you have, and go all in on creating either entertaining and/or valuable content for your audience, and see how much better the results will be.

In today's episode, we talk about how the internet has the ability to completely replace the traditional university through online education websites such as Masterclass and Skillshare. As these type of websites start to become more popular and fewer companies require post-secondary education, the value of a degree will start to decrease tremendously because there will no longer be a good reason to pay thousands of dollars for a degree that will teach you the exact same things an online course will, but for a fraction of the cost. We also discuss how you really don't need a degree to become successful in today's world. When you have individuals such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg who dropped out of college to pursue their dreams and become some of the richest men in the world, it goes to show you that a degree need to be involved in order to have a successful career.

With the launch of social media, there have been a lot of different online personalities popping up in the world, and in this episode of Go With the Flo, we talk about exactly who some these people are and explain how they got to where they're at in their career. These individuals come from different backgrounds and have become successful in different ways. Some share their entire lives with the world through vlogs and some others deliver value by recording educational videos for their viewers, and we discuss some of the key points that led them to their success and how you can implement those same strategies in your own career.

In today's episode of Go With the Flo, we discuss how Twitch could potentially take over the sport networks on TV and why Facebook Watch could compete against YouTube in the video space. Lastly, we talk about why it's so important to not be fancy about where you distribute your content and why you should push out as much video content as possible in 2019. As a bonus, we explain how video content can give you all 4 forms of marketing: video, audio, pictures, and the written word, and how it can be your ultimate content strategy.

In this episode of Go With the Flo, we introduce our new co-host, Levi Harder, and talk about how the internet has opened up a huge opportunity for building your personal brand, and why social media and voice platforms are your keys to succeeding in this space. We also discuss why universities will eventually lose their worth in the next economic collapse, and why the internet will decrease the value of degrees because of free/cheaper online education.

Coming to the end of the year, we wanted to discuss our thoughts on what marketing looked like in 2018, and our recommendations on how to brand yourself going on into 2019. Voice is a major factor going on into 2019, and if you don't have something like a podcast or Alexa Skill, you're throwing away a huge opportunity to grow your business and bring attention to your brand. This is just one of the topics we cover in this episode, and we hope you find value in it.

Lots of businesses these days use Facebook and Instagram ads as a way to market themselves online, but the majority of them fail at deploying those ads effectively. So in this episode, we tackle why it's necessary to contextualize your ads to gain more quality engagement, and how that will help achieve your business' online marketing goals.

In this episode, we talk about the importance of testing out your content in order to understand what your audience wants, and to maximize your results. This is a crucial step for any business trying to develop a strong social media presence, because without it, you're just wasting time and money. Hope this brings you insight.

In this week's episode, we address how too many people get lost in the number of followers they have, and don't focus enough on the quality of their followers. Gaining quality followers is the key to having a successful social media campaign.

Here's a little 1-minute segment talking about why you need to stop questioning the effectiveness of social platforms, and start creating content at scale for the mobile device. Hope it brings you value.

In this week's episode of #GoWithTheFlo, we explain why you should be creating content for the mobile device, on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, or risk your business becoming irrelevant. And we also talk about how voice is quickly becoming the next marketing opportunity for your business and why you should be paying attention to it.

There was a recent update to the Instagram algorithm in June, and in this episode of Go With the Flo, we explain exactly how it works and address some rumors surrounding it. Hope it brings you value!

This is the first episode of the Go With the Flo podcast by Flo Media! In this episode, we explain our goal of bringing you marketing insights and updates on major platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, and also bringing on other entrepreneurs and marketers for interviews, so that they can share their own story and insights with you. Our mission is to have a weekly podcast and touch on subjects that you'll find useful. We hope that you'll follow us on this journey and that we can bring value in each episode.