Motivational Speaker, Erik Qualman’s Digital Success Story

Welcome to the Marketing Growth podcast. This podcast episode is sponsored by Ahrefs. I’m your host, Shane Barker, and my guest today is Erik Qualman, the five-time best-selling writer and motivational speaker. Erik is also the creator of Social Media Revolution—the most-watched social video globally. His company, Equalman, produces digital leadership materials and disruptive video stories for businesses.

In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about his digital marketing journey and learn more about how he comes up with his groundbreaking books, videos, and resources.

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All right, you guys, we got Erik Qualman here today. I’m super excited about this. Most of you on the podcast already know who he is, but if you don’t, we’re gonna spend a few minutes getting to know him. If you haven’t seen him on stage or read his books, you’re gonna have to—especially during COVID times, you’ve got plenty of time. You need to go out and buy his books. We’ll talk about that—the books he’s had out, including his latest, The Focus Project. Thank you so much for sending me a copy, Erik. I just started reading it this morning and realized I need to focus in my life. It’s like, I’m gonna have to read your whole book in one shot just to show people I can focus. That’s the goal.

So, Erik, where did you grow up? Give us a little background here.

That’s awesome. And so how big of a family did you guys have?

Nice, nice, nice. And so give us an interesting fact. I know you grew up in Detroit, so it was like everybody was in the car industry—I think it was illegal not to be in the car industry if you grew up in Detroit. Got any interesting facts about your family, anything nobody’s heard, or maybe some interesting, crazy stuff?

So, wow, you sacrificed your teeth for education. Yeah, sacrifice them. My son’s in college right now—I wish he would do that, because it would save me some money. I’m not saying I don’t want him to have his teeth, but I’m just saying that would be awesome if he would. I guess then I’d have to pay for his teeth. Maybe we’ll just do the college thing; we’ll just pay for the college. There we go. So, I mean, who needs the lower teeth, right? People really care about the upper teeth, don’t they? And so you went to college—you went to Michigan, right?

Yeah, you were Spartans, right?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

That’s crazy, and I know you got there on a scholarship for basketball. How tall are you?

Yeah. So 6’6—and the green glasses don’t give you weight. You’re currently in Austin, right? Do you live in Austin?

So you can’t avoid it—you’re 6’6, 6’7 on a good day, probably 6’9 if you have heels on, which I’m not saying you wear heels. But my point isn’t with the green glasses; there’s just no getting away.

That’s exactly it. Yeah, I tell him, if you do the same exercise for two years, you’re not going to see any progress. You gotta shock the muscles. And it’s the same thing with the brain, right? I think that’s what you guys are pitching—if you’re comfortable, you’re not growing. You gotta be uncomfortable.

So let’s talk about this. You talked a little bit about working with Cadillac, and I think you worked with Pontiac as well—there were a number of car dealerships or big car manufacturers. Is that how you got into the digital space? So, right out of college, did you just jump into the digital side by working with automotive companies?

Yeah, for sure. So, tell us a little bit about when you started Equalman, rhysy.com. Talk to me about that—when did you start it? Honestly, I looked at your bio and what you’ve done, and I could probably interview you for 20 to 30 hours and it still wouldn’t be enough time. I kind of think we should talk about what you haven’t done too, because there’s a couple of things there. But let’s focus on the website. When did you guys start it, and what was the reason for starting it?

Edutainment—education and entertainment combined, huh? And as of today, you’ve spoken in 55 countries and reached 50 million people. I mean, that’s huge. My speaking is nowhere near that—I think I’ve only been to about four countries. So I’m really on your heels; be very careful. But tell me, how has the pandemic changed things for you in terms of speaking events and all that you do?

Seeing that, it’s funny. We had a similar situation where, all of a sudden, speaking stopped. Everything just halted. And you’re like, “Man, now what do we do?” But I tell you what—it helped us really focus on our business. Before, I was traveling and running around, and you get very busy. There’s only so many hours in the day, and something has to drop. It helped us really evaluate our business expenses and the things we were doing, like the speaking gigs. They were great and brought in some money, but we weren’t really getting enough clients from them. So for us, it sucked at first—you suddenly have to figure out how you’re going to pivot and make the best of it.

For you, it’s like, “Hey, we can focus on the videos and production work you’re doing for Disney.” I mean, you guys have done some really big videos on that side. I think that’s awesome—that you actually had a chance. For me, it was like, “Now I’m at home. I’m grounded. I actually have some time to focus on things I haven’t put enough time into.” So it’s kind of a blessing, for sure.

Yeah, that’s awesome. We did, I actually on a different level did something somewhat similar. Long story short, we have the SBA—which has given all kinds of money to small businesses—and I started working with them to help businesses transition from offline to online. That’s been kind of my focus. It’s not like I make as much money doing actual consulting, but we’re able to help more people, and that’s what’s needed, right? I mean, it’s this crazy time with social, websites, e-commerce—like, “I’ll work on that in six months,” or something—and then COVID hits and you’re like, “I’m way behind. I need to do this tomorrow.” So I think it’s awesome. We looked at it like, “How can we help people?” Because this is a crazy, unprecedented time. Everybody’s asking, “What do I do?” Like, “I’ve been in brick-and-mortar for 30 years, I finally got it to where I want to be, and now I want to sell it in five years and retire.” And now I’m like, “Festivals are gone, restaurants are questionable every week—who knows if they’ll open back up?” So yeah, it’s kind of crazy times. But once again, I think because of that, some opportunity will happen as well.

Thanks, Erik. It was great talking with you—from digital nerd to proclaimed keynote speaker. That’s one hell of a journey, and your COVID survival strategy really blew me away. But folks, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Erik has a lot more secrets up his sleeve. Hopefully, he’ll reveal them in our next episode. So stay tuned to Shane Barker’s Marketing Growth podcast.