Bosco Anthony | The Dos and Don’ts Of Content Marketing

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And now your host,  Joel, Mark Harris.

Hello and welcome to the Publishing for Profit podcast. This is your host Joel, Mark Harris. We are on episode number 13 is lucky. Number 13. I can’t believe we’re already 13 episodes deep. so this episode, we have an amazing guest Bosco, Anthony. He is a digital marketer. We talk a lot about content marketing, how to do content marketing, what not to do some of the pitfalls.

We talk about branding, how to think about branding. Bosco is also a TEDx speaker. He tells us about how he prepared for the role, how many hours went into, preparing and rewriting his speech and practicing and performing, and then how life has changed from after. It’s been a very interesting journey for him to hopefully enjoy this episode.

Joel: Hi Bosco, and welcome to the show.

Bosco: Thanks for having me, buddy. It’s been a while, but here we are.

Joel: Yes. So I want to start off. You were a part of a documentary and it was called ‘Our Beloved Country.’ Can you tell me what inspired you to participate in this documentary? What your role was? And I guess where we’re, how far along are they in, in completion?

Bosco: So, yeah, I was, it’s a good question. I was, involved in an advisory board for a couple of people who I now call friends, that were. Doing a lot of initiatives, charitable foundations and initiatives in East Africa, specifically in Kampala, Uganda. And they were doing what we call a couple of missions down to in Kampala, where they had some space creative space for youth and young people in Kampala.

And, I was a digital advisor, help them with their brand. At one point their websites, digital representations, and they were basically wanting to feature some of the stories that they captured from Kampala, Uganda. And they wanted to create what we call a digital docu-series called our beloved lab.

And, So they had an idea to have this published and digitally publicized. And so we help them with their narratives, their stories, and, and capture the message that they want it to have. And we used it in different various formats. We use it as part of what we call it digital distribution strategy.

So we had it on YouTube. We used it as part of a launch. We had, , people come together. We showed the movie out to friends and people as well. so we had a, we use it as a launch, but more importantly, we repurpose that content with the intention of support, donations, crowdfunding.

It was a strategy that was sort of grassroots. And it’s one of the many digital initiatives, storytelling concepts that I’ve been involved in my career. it was, it was a really good time and it was a really momentous occasion for them as a group to tell their story digitally.

And we’ve all matured our career. Some of them have gone to work for agencies. Others have gone back to Africa to do some more work. and, and it’s one of the many different causes that I believe in. And I worked with, over the top, over the time and period of my career before I moved to Australia.

And it’s one of those initiatives that make you feel good. Another one that I was involved with was the ugly Christmas sweater party, but you probably are aware of. So you’ve seen things on social and I sat on that board for two years. And in that was two years, we were able to generate over 5,000 pieces of content, micro-content, videos, photography.

And we were totally able to revamp the brand and we tell the story, which was, which was important and amazing to do. And we went from, from, one wish to granting five to six wishes. So most of the storytelling’s that you’ve seen that have been publicized really are for the common good and for a better purpose in life.

And I feel like. , it’s prepared us for where we are now in time, with the current sentiment that’s going on around the world, I think Will Smith said it best. He said racism has been going on for a while. but we’re just capturing it now and we’re just, filming it and archiving it.

I think we’re going to see a lot of storytelling, for different causes for different initiatives for different voices. and I feel like having been in the trenches in the grassroots all those years ago, it’s allowing us now to understand what the craft of storytelling is and the message and the purpose you get from that. I want to remind everybody too, that, one video sparked everything that you see right now one digital video.

Joel: I think that’s a really important point, actually. Yeah, you’re right. There’s just one piece of content that was disseminated across the world. And, and now this whole movement has, again, the movement was there for awhile.

But it’s definitely gained some traction, some more traction and. So I think that, yeah, it’s, it’s important too. To remember that it, it just takes one, one camera to start something.

Bosco: Yeah. And it’s a, it’s a conversation that needs to happen. I think I wrote a piece on it because people were asking for my opinion and where I stood with it.

And I shared it on Facebook and I called it a tale of many narratives, and there’s so many narratives going on. There’s so many different lenses and viewpoints, and there’s really no right or wrong and people’s choices in the matter because everyone’s entitled to their own feelings and they’re, everyone’s entitled to, to how they want to.

Process this and take from this, but I feel like we have to go back to the roots and we have to really honour the history of where we are and where we’ve come from. And it’s, it’s an amazing part of history that we will look back and always remember. And the conversation is happening.

Whether you choose to blackout your comments or whether you choose to mute yourself. This compensation is happening.  We are in a historic time in history where digital storytelling and narratives are crafting it and coming from either a place of love or fear.

Joel: You’ve mentioned a couple of initiatives that you’ve done. What are some things that you get excited about? What is what does it take for Bosco to say yes to an initiative?

Bosco: It has to align with my purpose and I’ve been fortunate, to find and discover my purpose at a very young age. I had a mentor when I was 19 that stayed with me through most of my twenties in my thirties.

His name is David Reeves from Unleash Culture and David and I have worked together in various capacities. There’s a kinship. There’s a bond that he’s like my second dad, my council and vice versa. We’ve helped each other navigate through many channels. And so I established my purpose as empowering digital brands and leaving them better than I found them.

And I have four values that feed and fuel that purpose. and so. Before I take on any client, not even just to, cause I have to do an internal reflection and see if my values are aligned with the people that I’m working with.  I’ve made decisions based on that I’ve said yes, I’ve said no. And walked away.

I’ve changed my mind based on that value and belief system. So what gets me excited every day is, am I living my purpose? Am I really living life by design? And it’s one of the many reasons. That led me to where I am today. So I think my purpose and values really impact the decisions I make

Joel: So you recently moved to Australia in December. Can you tell me what went into that decision and your, your journey? You’re just telling me that, before we went on air that you had to get your business up and running again and kind of get yourself aligned and, and comfortable, I guess, in your new surroundings.

So what prompted this decision?

Bosco: That’s a good question. I think the choice to live life by design for one, many reasons, but, I think there was an evolution of my career. There was an evolution where I was personally in life and where I wanted to go, everything from my own personal wellbeing, the relationships, friends, tribe, all of that stuff, evolves.

And so Australia was calling for a few reasons. but I have a digital mentoring practice. I basically am in a situation where I’m fortunate, where, during this, this year’s events, especially during the pandemic and the covert era, I was busy, people were contacting me wanting to talk to me about digital migration and transitions.

So the choice to come to Australia was a personal choice at first, but then it became a professional choice over time, wanted a change of scenery. I wanted to, move somewhere that it was part of the blue ocean strategy. I read this book, the Blue Ocean Strategy. Great book.

It talks about chartering, uncompetitive waters and I have done everything I could do in North America. I moved into Canada in 2002. Done the immigrant playbook and, life was, was, was great.  I still have my parents and my sister and my nephew there. and, and I, I still miss my friends and the relationships and friendships, but I’d been there for quite some time and it was just time in my life to evolve my thinking and challenge myself some more.

And I wanted to really explore. And sometimes in life, you ask yourself, What would you do if you couldn’t fail? What, what if you didn’t have the ability to fail? How would you approach the lens? And so there are many perks to living in a new country. There’s many perks to immigrating, but having done it in Canada once it’s a lot easier to do it again.

And so, coming here and Australia, I’m lucky and fortunate to come in here just before. The world went apocalyptic and there was a shortage of toilet paper.

Joel: Toilet paper there too?

Bosco: Oh, Joel. It was everywhere, everywhere. I mean, there’s the shortages of toilet paper everywhere, even in Tanzania where I’m more recently.

Four of them. And so it was an interesting time, it was an interesting aspect and a great learning experience and, unfortunate, I’m really fortunate and lucky to have an amazing tribe. And, I can say, I can say honestly the best lesson, my mom and a bunch of other people have ever thought me is no matter how bad you think you have it in this world, there’s someone else that might have it even more, and less unfortunate.

So, so I’m thankful and I’m grateful. And, I’ve learned a lot about myself, a lot about the world, or it’s a lot about business, during this time. And it was just time for change and I embraced it and my values and belief system said,  it’s time to live life by, by design as opposed to default and that’s why I’m here.

Joel: You’ve been in the digital marketing space for probably some time. Now, can you tell me about your evolution To where you are now and how did you get, from where you were to now?

Bosco: So I come from our computer engineering background. In a course I taken when I was in Tanzania, my mom wanted to notice that I had a talent for computers when I was at a very young age, not just computer games, but I could do quite a bit when it came to networking and hacking into things and, and I have, what they call raw talent.

She wanted me to do good with the knowledge. And so I went and got Microsoft systems, surface certified engineering course done, and then got certified. And then when I came to Canada, I, number one, Microsoft was outsourcing stuff to other countries and I just didn’t feel like that was something I wanted to do anymore.

I moved into the corporate world and had to deal with everything to do with tourism and hospitality. And I did that for five years. I started off in sales, training and development, moved into corporate leadership, and I went to,  do a lot of night schooling. And, a lot of accreditation’s both certified and through universities and after five years, I realized, like I had done everything I needed to do in that industry.

And I wanted more in life financially. I wanted more life experience-wise. I got headhunted to go work for the internet marketing center. And that was where I got my digital marketing roots.  If you talk to some of the service providers in Vancouver, a lot of them got their starting foundation from the internet marketing center and into the market center is sort of the original gangster.

If it’s in that marketing, it was the pioneers of offensive that marketing. We were part of the Dan Kennedy era. We were part of the era of Corey Rudel and Jay Abraham and Brian Tracy, and Zig Ziglar.

That’s where I got my foundation and, and the cool thing was I was an affiliate manager and then working my way to directing over 6,000 super affiliates. And I was reporting to a guy named Chris Reynolds and an awesome really awesome guy. We had a lot of things in common sports and, and we had a lot of fun jiving together.

And I learned I just absorbed and learned from a lot of people there. And I got on the seminar team. And, I was, I was working with some amazing speakers, Jason Bax, and John Yurik, who basically were travelling all over the US the UK Australia. And I really just absorbed everything I could from these guys.

We were an Edmonton one day and, one of the speakers got sick food poisoning and, and I went up and did my part. It was either that or cancel the event. And so we all pitched in and I loved being on stage and I loved the feeling when I got when I was on stage and it was sort of an accidental speaker, moment.

I want to really learn more and went through that roller coaster ride. And it was amazing travelling around the world. But, I got my grassroots from the internet marketing center and then when the recession hit, I went and built my own boutique agency and I made every classical mistake.

You could make every startup mistake you can make, and started from like humble beginnings. But I had some great context that I had built. I had some work for first 6 to 12 months and I really just hustled and that allowed me to then meet some amazing vendors, grow my business, build a virtual agency to date we’ve done over a thousand digital projects and, I’ve been fortunate to be involved in over 90 different marketing verticals.

and then I, I basically went from the agency world to the corporate gig sector where I was a digital strategist for many brands. I had some very loyal brands that I’d been part of. My, my longest service contract was about 11 years in the gaming industry.

And, I just finished that in December and it was time for a completely different change in direction. So, today I have a mentoring practice with 300 clients all over the world and it’s digital virtual, and my grassroots still are fondly remembered at IMC. And I have some amazing bonds and friendships from people from there.

And we proudly look back at that time and go, we were part of something really cool. and for me, the full circle was when the CEO of that company had me as a guest on his podcast. , Derek Hills, an interesting cat and I really enjoy jamming with him on the podcast, but when that happens, you’re doing something all right.

Joel: You talked about some mistakes you made initially starting up your business. Can you elaborate, on some things that people could potentially avoid?

Bosco: Yeah. So I’ll give you, I’ll give you a personal and a professional mistake. the professional mistake is trying to grow your brand on your own. , There’s only so much time in the day that you have, and for the listeners that are small business owners or you’re doing it yourself, you can’t really wear all those hats.

And when I got into the business of mine, myself, I realized that I was doing everything. I was doing sales, I was doing the delivery. I was doing operations and I had strengths in every single one of those areas. But also I had a ton of weaknesses because I didn’t have much time to get things done. So, the classical mistake you can make professionally is, is doing it all on your own.

And so you’ve got to build your tribe.  I’ve learned how to white label, my services, collaborations and partnerships and business partnerships have been amazing. Lots of lessons there, how to pick the right partners, how to keep your partners motivated, how to work with your partners, how to get the best from your partners.

I could write a book on partnerships and, I made all those classical mistakes so that it allowed me to find better partners. personally, I think it’s all about your lens and, and, and your mindset. When I was younger, I tried too hard. I wanted to hustle because I felt like I was already at a disadvantage.

I’ve always been an underdog and I got my grassroots being an underdog. I got became a speaker being an underdog.  I hustled really hard and sometimes,  personally that can be a little bit too much where it can come across too strong. So the biggest lesson I learned in the first three years of starting my business was really just changing the lens and changing the.

Authenticity and the approach of why we do things and it goes beyond profits. It goes beyond numbers, it goes beyond accomplishments and accolades. It’s about meaningful connection. It’s about aligning yourself with other people’s values. and it’s more importantly about perspective and, and, and ha, and having respect for the hustle.

Right. But more importantly, having more empathy to the approach. You can have the best hustle in the world, my man, but if you don’t have the right approach, you are lost and, and it sends people the wrong message. So, I wrote a book called immigrant hustle and we finished editing it last year.

It’s 76,000 words, 12 chapters, and I’m hoping to publish it this year, but I took a while and I wanted to, recraft the message. And I’m okay with that. So sometimes it’s not about just the launch. It’s not about results. Sometimes it’s just about feeling it and making sure that the people that you’re working with are feeling it too.

Joel: One part of the digital marketing and digital strategy is obviously branding. How do you think about branding and how do you mentor people in branding?

Bosco: Branding is a big beast. I think for personal branding, I think it comes down to storytelling. I mean, it comes down to the, the passion, the purpose and the values and beliefs. And then how do you transcribe that into the story and with any brand personal or professional or bigger brand, it really comes down to, to embracing the origin of your stories.

I had that situation that happened to me where I had to change the lens. I’m fortunate to have written a book and, and speak at a TEDx platform. I started writing the grassroots of what my talk was going to be and what my book was going to be. And I ran into a friend of mine who calls himself Dreama.

He was a storyteller. And he said to me, he said, Bosco,  you really need to get back to the roots of your story. You really need to go back to the origin. And he said otherwise it’s just a book. Otherwise it’s just a talk it’s otherwise it’s just a keynote. You’ve got to really go back to the story, to capture the audience and then give them permission to come in and a, that.

That piece of advice changed my life.  It helped me craft a better TEDx talk that I could have ever imagined. it gave me the foundation to approach everything with a new lens. So for me, I would say personal branding is all about crafting that story and inviting people to come in. and then it’s about.

Transforming that content across different digital verticals and platforms and channels. I really pay attention to the story side of things, before I do anything else.

Joel: So what are, if somebody who doesn’t know their story and hasn’t thought about this story, what is a good place to start and how should they think about their own story and use that for their own message?

Bosco: Good question. I’m not going to give you a conventional answer to promoting a software. I’m going to say you need to start with the heart and you need to start with yourself and self-reflection. So I’m a big fan of introspection and reflection. And the questions that I ask myself is who am I?

What am I becoming where my from? and so rather than telling people to go to a certain place to, to figure out that story, I really want them to dig deep.  I want to know the sentiment of the voice of the brand. and that comes from within and I just had a really, really cool session yesterday with one of my clients, in the yoga wellness space.

He explained his logo and he said this is why I created this logo. And it contains three elements, the elements of me, the elements of my clients, you, and the elements of us. And as soon as he said that, I was like, I got it, I got the story, and, sometimes there’s, there’s meaning to it.

I’ve got a podcast that I’m going to be launching very soon and it’s going to be called the one tribe podcast. And, I was working with a design team and they said, what’s really important for you. I said, well, I want to embrace my African roots and I want to build a tribe. And, the local came through and the logo is a podcast mic inside an African shield.

It’s original. It’s my identity. And more importantly, it speaks to what I’m trying to build is empowering conversations and build a strong digital community of people that are in a safe space, a creative space and have space for people to nurture their talents and come together. And it’s not going to be a podcast about business or marketing or just those elements because those elements are great.

But it’s about conversations. It’s about life elements. It’s about life alignment. It’s about our bigger compensation than just business and marketing and, and having been in business for so long. I don’t come to a podcast with the intention of just spraying and praying on digital elements. I like to really get outside the box and really not promote myself because I feel like when you’ve hustled as hard as I have you’ve hustled so that everybody in the room knows your name at that point.

And so, , there comes a piece and element where you want to look back and go, what’s the legacy you’re trying to build? and that’s where I’m at. That’s the space that I’m at right now is, is what can I do with intention that can leave a digital footprint? That’s what’s worthy.

Joel: Okay, For the research for this podcast I came over a talk you did about, content marketing versus context marketing. Can you talk a little bit about what that is? What the differences are between the two?

Bosco: Yeah. So, content marketing is the element too. To either, promote your content or, or, or distribute your content in a marketing format context, marketing is what is the message of that content?

What is the direction and the story and the visuals and the audibles so that people can understand what clarity through the different mediums. Now, I feel you need to contextualize your content before you actually give away that content. And so I’m, I’m, I’m big believer of contextualizing great content, but there’s an X factor and the X factor is this your content and your storytelling is as good as your distribution.

Right. Your distribution is where your content strategy gains or fails. And most people in business and especially small businesses, they get two things, right? And those two things are, I’m going to take my content and I’m going to put it on all my social channels. And I’m going to create this organic traffic to my website, which is great.

Like those are the given rights that you’ve been given digitally, but there’s six other elements that are the X factor. When it comes to content distribution, there is paid media there’s exposure points of people that can take you to even a bigger, wider audience. There are influencers. There are partnerships.

There is targeted integrated campaigns with multiple elements and Reaper, and finally this repurposing of content, not many people do that, , and I’ve been a strategist for 10 plus years. I can tell you right now with ease that if you don’t have a content distribution strategy, your message is going to maybe one 10th.

Off the potential audience. and a classic example is my own work. , I did a TEDx talk in 2016 and I’ve created this really strong, organic strategy that I’ve had for the last three years. And it’s one of my most successful personal, content pieces that I have steadily promoted over the last three years.

And I’m already close to 670,000 views on YouTube.  It lives on YouTube. It lives on the TEDx channel. It has nothing to do with my own personal assets, but I’ve leveraged that content I’ve helped get it out there. I’ve used a distribution strategy and I’m still using a distribution strategy.

And my personal goal is to get a million eyeballs organically. Or through my own, through my own ways of getting eyeballs and, and intentions, but it’s not a vanity stat for me, for me, it’s about the quality of traffic. Now, some of my speakers paid for bots, some of my speakers paid for fake traffic for vanity stats.

I don’t believe in that, not what, not with the TEDx message. I had an intention and a meaning for it. So my strategy was to build a speaker kit, a digital and print. My strategy was target institutions, speaker, organizations, conferences, and leverage that talk. And I use these eight different pieces except for paid media.

I didn’t know. I felt like I could do more organically without paid media. And I recognize that I could get to my number lot quicker if I use paid media, but I chose not to. I promised myself that I would get to a million views through my own means without a marketing budget and three. I celebrated my four year anniversary for speaking at TEDx just, just recently and I’m really close to 700,000 views. My goal is to get to a million and then I can shake my hands off and say, I’ve done it. And so when it comes to content marketing, the X factor is distribution.

Joel: I want to highlight two things you said there. Cause I think they’re really important.

I don’t want to gloss over them. One is that people seem to think that they just need to pump out content, new content, but they forget about the old content. And the second thing is that it doesn’t have to be on your platform. It doesn’t need to be something on your website. It could be a piece of content that’s on another platform on, yeah.

On YouTube, for example, it’s somebody else’s channel. Right. So I think those two things are super important, too. In addition to what you said.

Bosco: For sure. It’s a great observation, Joel, and I think you were involved. I think in some, some elements of, for that, for that event in my life.

Joel: the content for that one.

Bosco: Yeah. And I remember you and I reaching out and I think you, I think people, I think heard of my brand because it was a bunch of people involved in the marketing. All of a sudden they saw traffic and ticket sales. And a lot of people were using my, my, my affiliate promo during that event. And I think that’s how you and I started talking as well.

I learned three things. Number one is the reason why that TEDx talk is still getting organic views is because we optimize that talk and we had some strong keywords and I was able to create an inbound channel. My email address is on the description of that video. I, I can honestly say with no bias that I’ve managed to receive paid speaking events around the world, through that YouTube talk.

And it doesn’t exist on my channel, but my email does. And so people reach me through that channel. People research me, I spoke for the tourism association of Utah and here’s a great story. I’m in Australia and I get a call and a voicemail and I get on a phone call, a Skype call and I speak to the organizers of the tourism conference.

They asked me to come speak to them in Utah and it was awesome. It was a great experience. I didn’t know anything about Utah and I flew in salt Lake city and it was really cool. I got to go see the dinosaur parks and I got to see the fossils because I didn’t realize that Utah has a lot of archaeological fossils around that area.

And a lot of dinosaurs, bones and everything else. It was a really amazing trip and an amazing experience. And it came from someone watching that YouTube talk. It doesn’t have to be on your channel and I’m a student of that game, but most importantly every day is launch day.

Every day is promotion day. Every day is repurposing of content day. I could tell you right now that when I go into business meetings when I go into podcasts when I’m going in putting bids in for co large contracts, I’m leveraging my TEDx talk that was done four years ago. I’m planning a new TEDx talk.

I’m planning to go to other countries and do another TEDx talk. And, and the goal is, is to always create, but at the same time, Always repurpose what you have and give it a different style, a different flavour, and I’ve been interviewed about, the experiences of TEDx in so many different contexts, what it was like to go in before it, how has it impacted my life after it? And so you can still rely on great content that you’ve produced and repurpose it.

Joel: So I wanted to get to your TEDx talk in a little bit but first, I still want to keep on this, this content marketing train anyway. So what are some ways people fail at content marketing? I mean, how do people do it badly?

Bosco: I think personally, there’s three key reasons why people fail. And the first one is ineffective planning.  I think people in a rat race to just produce content, they don’t do it really well. and so you need to have a content distribution strategy and that requires planning that requires, foresight and insight.

That’s the first element. The second element is people tend to go down the free route or go down the classical area of I’m just going to do it myself. You can’t. This is a, this is a world that requires networks and an ecosystem of connections and partners. And the brands that I work with spend months to build relationships with even a PR database to the point, like,  what, we’ve ugly sweater party.

It took us months to build relationships, but then when we got it really done really well, the second year, everybody that we had built relationships with were already ready to go. So when it was time to promote and launch, we had a partnership base that was amazing. The Ugly Christmas sweater party has had over 6,000 mentions in PR in different formats.

We were on Breakfast Television, and we did a lot of really cool things. We had a lot of partnerships as well, and that wasn’t one person doing that was a team. So the second classical mistake is lack of resources and networks, and that’s why they fail. And the third is you got to hustle sometimes and add some money to make some more money.

That requires a paid media budget. I’m not against it because at the end of the day, where in the era of paid media and I was one of those guys that leveraged. Content marketing before advertising, before paid media. So it was even hard for me to adjust and go.  We need to really change things.

Now, some people will, come from a world of, well, before we tap into paid media, let’s leverage our own networks and that’s great. I recommend it. But longterm, you do more with paid media and that’s just the fact, that’s the era that we’re in right now. So you either embrace it or you don’t

Joel: For solopreneurs like myself. How do you build a team to get that content out there and to leverage those partners?

Bosco: I go back to purpose and values. If you’re working with vendors, do they have similar beliefs? Do they believe in your growth? Do they want to grow with you? Right now we are going to see an emergence of entrepreneurship paid training is going to be huge.

We are, having migrating workforces that have been displaced. So there’s a lot of manpower and women power that exists right now. And there’s a lot of people that are, are looking to thrive digitally. So your tribe calls for it, but I think it’s about alignment. It’s about beliefs and where you are, where you’re going, who you’re becoming.

And if people believe in that journey, I’ve been fortunate. Like some of my clients became my vendors, some of my attendees and audiences approach me to do business with me. I’m reviewing rate cards and portfolios almost every week now. but I also have done this for a long time and sometimes if you read the blue ocean strategy, sometimes you have to go to the opportunity.

Sometimes you have to go to other people that have networks and either work and white label yourself or be part of something. So it takes time. It’s not an easy concept, but I think that the universe does deliver some elements. You’ve also got to show up.

Joel: Alright. So now let’s switch over to the Ted talk that you gave.

I know you did a whole bunch of preparation to be on that stage. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Bosco: Let’s start off with the universe passing me a message. So I started doing a lot of keynotes and a couple of people from the audience keep coming back to me and going: you really should do a Ted talk and you really should do a TEDx talk. You should really write a book. And so I didn’t even know what a TEDx talk was at the time. And I had to Google it and I was like: Oh, this seems like the Oscars of speaking. And I was like, I really think that I have something that I could potentially go up there. And so I went for the big boy on campus and applied for TEDx Vancouver.  When I got to the TEDx Vancouver elements, I would always compete with like a final candidate that was a bigger celebrity than my status at the time. I lost out to a journalist during the Arab spring. I lost out to a captain for an MLS soccer team and I kept going back to the organizing and going, is it my message?

And they were like, listen, we need to sell tickets. That’s the harsh reality of it. And so we sometimes bringing in celebrity speakers to sell those tickets and it was recommended for me to try TEDx Stanley park that was just moving to the Queen Elizabeth theater with a 2000 person audience.

And it turns out that I knew the guy that ran that space. A good friend of mine, Roger Killen. Yep. And then it was out there in Vancouver. He has one of the largest meetups in Vancouver and so I had a conversation over coffee and I was late for that meeting. I was stuck in traffic and, and good old Roger waited for me at a coffee shop.

I was so apologetic and we had this conversation and Roger said a critical element: “I’ve seen you speak. You’re good digital speaker. I’ve seen the props. I’ve seen the videos, but this is nothing like that. This is a totally different ball game. You can’t rely on anything. You are telling your story for 15 to 18 minutes, and I’m not going to make it easy for you.”

And I remember saying to Roger: “Give me everything. You’ve got.”

And, it was one of the hardest preparations I’ve ever had in my life. I had four different coaches with four different messages at the time. We had20 scripts. I can’t even remember how many dress rehearsals now, and it was 360 hours of preparation and I was practicing every morning in the shower every night in the shower. I was rehearsing, because again, that’s what they wanted you to do. And they wanted you to know your scripts from the heart.

And it wasn’t something that you could wing. It was the standard of the chapter. I don’t know if every TEDx speaker goes through that or went through that, but we certainly did. And Roger’s standards were very different and Roger was infusing elements of other speaker associations and other speaker training.

And so when you have four different coaches, everyone’s got an opinion on what your message should be, but here’s the reality of it. The day. I was getting ready the last day before the TEDx talk. We were told to go to the Queen Elizabeth theater. And there was different speakers practicing, and the ones who had been confident in their scripts and confident in the training.

I got to see them break on stage. They, their fears because it’s one thing to speak, but it’s another thing to actually speak on an, on a stage. Unfortunately, I had some experience on that area because I had done so many conferences prior to this. And so that’s where my experience kicked in.

And I remember Maureen, who is, I think she’s a news anchor on our show that she does.

Joel: She was a sex therapist on CKNW.

Bosco: Maureen’s an amazing person, amazing human being and, she got to see me rehearse and she gave me the validation that I needed.

She said: I’ve just listened to you speak. She’s like, you’re going to nail this. And it looks like you’ve done this before. And, that was validation for me. That was validation for me because someone in my speaker group heard me and said to me, you’ve got this. And I’ll always be grateful.

I don’t know if I’ve ever had this conversation worried, but I always be grateful for her validation because she came from a place of meaning and the support and love. And I got to hear other speakers and Maureen was one of those people that I knew would have a great talk. And the ones that I thought were really confident were shaking and forgot their script and were nervous.

And I remember going to one of them and putting my arms around them and say, it’s going to be okay. And I remember saying: It’s important for all of us to have this moment and to do what well. It was important for all of us to nurture each other and really support each other. And I went home that night and I was really calm after that, after that rehearsal I was really happy.

I was really like accomplished because I felt like I was broken a few times before there was the times when I wanted to throw in the towel. And when you had three different coaches, tear your script apart and give you three different areas of critique that are conflict each other. I call my mentor David and go, “David, I feel like just giving up.”

And David’s like, “Dude, you got a few more weeks. Just see it through.”

And David was my voice of reason. He was my compass and, and I credit a lot of my elements to get there because of my tribe. So 20 minutes before I go up on stage, I look at my script and I go, this isn’t my voice. And I take a pencil and I start changing things, figure it out.

And I was like, I’m not going to tell my coaches because this is my message. And as much as I’m very grateful for their coaching some of the coaches were amazing. I learned a lot about body tonality messaging, pacing and, speaking with clarity. But the one area that I felt I owed it to myself was how I wanted to craft my message.

So I made some changes to the script 20 minutes before I went up on stage. And these were small little things that you see on the actual talk and it’s moments when I am playing with the audience it’s moments. When I say things on the audience starts laughing and it was a risk, but it was a risk that was well-taken.

And I was happy with it. And I remember all the coaches were amazingly happy except for one. And he knew I flipped the script and he knew I changed the script and I didn’t care. I didn’t care because as much as I was appreciative, I knew that I owed it to myself to tell my story and the way it was positioned.

I wasn’t really happy with that script. So. I told my script in the end, and I was fortunate to get applause and a standing ovation, but more importantly, it impacted my life after everything changed. It opened up so many opportunities. I really don’t think I would have been in Australia if it wasn’t for that moment in time as well.

So I’m forever grateful for that moment. It’s a defining moment that I chose to say yes to, and it really has impacted my life.

Joel: Were you a keynote speaker before?

Bosco: Yes. I was a digital keynote speaker. Before that, I had done a bunch of other conferences. I had spoken at social media cap, local and internationally.

I’d done a bunch of other events, but once you speak for TEDx or TED, it elevates your career. , the paid speaking opportunities really start to elevate at the time, the problem that you have right now, like anything else is that market has ruined everything. So, unfortunately, there’s a lot of people that look at that and go, Oh, I’m going to go do it.

I’m going to do this because I’ve seen somebody else do it. And I feel like it’s permission for me to go ahead and do it. So. I can’t judge every TEDx, but there’s some TEDx elements that are really high standards. Rogers definitely has very high standards, theme, and process, but there’s others that have deleted messages and you can see that in the production value. You can see that in what people are saying on stage.

Some people use it for marketing and for me, it wasn’t about embracing marketing myself. I’m a digital marketer that talked about life alignment. I talked about how to live life with purpose and alignment and how to feel that, and that had nothing to do with digital marketing or my trade because Roger didn’t want that project, he didn’t want a promotional talk.

He wanted something that was turning ideas into action. So credit to him and what was interesting was I went in with a completely different topic that I put a lot of research into and it turned into an accidental product. Part of my mentoring practice today is about helping people with life alignment, helping people and companies and belief systems with values and improving culture.

I sit on boards because of that.  As much as I have a digital background, the accidental universal sort of ask from people is, can you help mentor me? Can you help work with me? And I work with leaders today and I am almost a business therapist because of that. So that was an intention for me when I got on stage.

Joel: So for people who have not done a TEDx, how can they become a keynote speaker? If that’s something that they want to do?

Bosco: Preparation, coaching, messaging, in a little bit of outreach. There’s different elements. I mean, being a speaker. Has like anything else is a craft that takes time and it takes practice and there’s a science to it.

And , for me, the classical mistake I made when I, when I first did my first keynote, was I overstuffed at, with contents, , there was bullet points and sentences and 50 slides. And I remember going through this whole thing, so like passionate, And the audience was exhausted. They were just like, this is a lot of content, but it was just like someone had just put the hose and it was like flushing out water.

And I was like, Oh, wow, this was awesome. But I looked at the audience and they were exhausted. And, it’s taken me a while to become what I call an experienced speaker. I’ve learned about storytelling. I’ve learned how to present content in the, in an icon and a very shorter way of doing it.

I’m not a big PowerPoint fan. I use Keynote. Now I do a lot of videos to pass my message. I create emotions. Laughter, fear, sadness, inspiration. I I’m a storyteller. But the biggest lesson I can tell you is to go see other speakers. So the best thing that I’ve ever done in my career at a young age was I went and saw other keynotes and I observed, and I took.

I asked myself three questions. What did I like about it? What didn’t I like about it? And what am I going to apply to my message? And so when I became what I would like to say a better speaker, I got to go see and do the research and, and become a scout. And there’s different speakers that had different elements that I would just.

Take different ideas and implemented and make my own voice. And so if you look at my keynotes, it’s a black background, typically with circles of icons and one word for each of those icons, there’s videos and images, there’s pauses, there’s less, , less is more giving people a takeaway, but those things take time.

And so I think, I think coming from a good intention and a good place as if it starts to become a speaker.

Joel: You talked about this a little bit, but I’m wondering if you can elaborate on how did the TEDx talk, change your life and change the way, I guess you experienced things.

Bosco: How does someone’s life change when they win an Oscar?

How does someone’s life change when they are publicly recognized? How does someone’s life change when they win an award? It’s an absolute privilege to speak for TEDx and I. I know from the heart that people view you differently when they see a TEDx talk that they believe in, and it’s not just saying, Hey, I’m a TEDx speaker, but it’s actually having a good TEDx talk and sometimes you’re going to have people that are going to troll you.

You’re going to have people that are going to have negative comments and that’s okay. , I respond to every comment on YouTube, on my talk, good or bad. Unless they don’t understand what the common is. I feed the drills as they say, but I also compliment the complimenters and, and I thank them.

And the, the most powerful two words you can say to someone that gives you hate is thank you for watching, , the thank you is basically the best thing you can say. So. I think that professionally and my career was impacted because people value the hard work it’s like saying you’ve written a book and publish publicize it or publicize it, sorry.

it’s when they see your message through different storytelling. So it gave me permission to embrace who I am, but more importantly, psychologically. It changed my hustle. My hustle became more strategic. My hustle became more leveraged. I played the long game, but it’s no longer about proving myself.

It’s no longer about getting to a destination because you are now at that area that you wanted to be. And so you have to play a different space and people are attracted when you have a detachable format. And I think that’s the biggest lesson for most people in business today is, we read Gary Vaynerchuk books and we read the crush it books, and we read and watch these things about hustling like there’s no tomorrow.

And we are inspired by the sales of Grant Cardone’s messages, but here’s the thing. It’s important and it lasts for the first few years when you’re starting out, but that’s not how you play bigger in a bigger landscape. , when you’re dealing with corporate markets, when you’re dealing with people who are already established, they, they don’t care about the hustle.

They want to see value and it’s about the value you bring to someone. So your lenses changed. And for me, the TEDx talk has had so much impact professionally, but it’s allowed me to go on this journey and travel all around the world. And it’s brought me to Australia and it’s changed my relationships and my tribe.

It’s evolved myself and my way of thinking it’s allowed me to sit on boards of advisory. every aspect of my life has changed from this one moment. And I genuinely meant this. When I, when I wrote this on my social channels on the May 28th, four years ago, my life changed.

It was a defining moment. And there’s this thing that says when a defining moment comes knocking, it either defines you or you define it. And, I think both happened for me.  And so, I could, I could sit here and give you a whole podcast episode on every element and aspect that changed, but I can tell you this with, with sincerity that, it has definitely evolved me as a person.

Joel: And so you mentioned that you’re writing a book. Can you remind me of the name again?

Bosco: Yeah. So I’ve, I’ve written the book it’s called Immigrant Hustle. I took a, took a year to really line up the chapters and if you’re writing a book, the best thing to do is build a skeleton. So for me, it was the chapters and then I basically, edited, it took another year for that. And I’m 37. Someone gave me validation to write the book at 30 on my 30th birthday. I got a card that said the most powerful and most interesting book you’ll ever read is the one you write. And that’s a friend of mine, Christine, who wrote that.

And I decided to write the book. Once things are stabilized and set up here. I think that they will be a moment in time where I will be making an announcement about the book being published, but, it’s, it’s done, and so the books all about my immigrant experiences and business lessons, business lessons from each of those experiences and, , it’s 12 chapters, 76,000 words, and I fallen in love and hated the writing and gone back to it like every writer does. And I can honestly say I’ve done everything I need to do with the book.

Joel: Can you tell us a little bit about your writing process and, and what, what does that look like?

Bosco: A creative space and embracing the creative time. So for me, it’s all about making the creative time. The key thing that people think about writing is, we have to first write this book and everything else. The key thing is you’ve got to create the space and energy for it. So I made a lot of mistakes, like picking the wrong time to write a book when I’m too tired. so know what time you’re, you’re most creative.

And getting to writing the book is the biggest challenge, because most people procrastinate, everybody’s writing a book, but finding the time to actually do it and be creative and have the energy for it was the biggest lesson that I’ve learned. And for me, it was typically either in the mornings or in the evenings when I wasn’t on my phone or on email.

But mornings was when I had the most amount of energy.

Joel: And what do you think about when you sit down at your desk to write.

Bosco: I look at my vision of what I’m trying to create, look at the chapter outlines. And so,  one chapter was on purpose. I go back to the storytelling concepts, the origins, and then I basically just process through my brain, what I want to talk about.

What’s the giveaways, what are the lessons? What are the experiences? And so I really just get into it. I silence everything else and just focus on the, on the writing.

Joel: Is there one book that has influenced you? I know you talked about the blue ocean, maybe that’s the book, but what book has influenced you the most in your life?

Bosco: I think I’m a reader and I read every day. and I have a collection of books, so it would be really unfair to say that one book has really impacted me, but I will tell you this. I started reading at a very young age. One of the first books I read was ‘Treasure Island’ by Robert Louis Stevenson.

I was an adventurer because of the Jules Verne’s books ‘The Journey to the Center of the Earth’ and ‘20,000 leagues Under the Sea.’ I’ve read the book, watch the movie, taking the postcard. And so, I’m not going to give you a business book because at the end of the day, I think those were the books that gave me permission to read, but more importantly, Changed my mindset to become a traveler and also be an adventurer as well.

I think those books are the ones that really gave me the grassroots of wanting to read and made me fall in love with reading. but I read everything that I just finished Dan Brown’s ‘Origin Book, which was great. It was fiction. I’m just finishing up tribe of mentors. I’m the kind of guy that has six books on the go and placed strategically all over my apartments in place.

And depending on the mood, that’s what I do.

Joel: Well, Bosco, thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate you taking the time. Where can people reach out? Where can people find

Bosco: Thanks for having me, Joel. I really appreciate it. everything is Bosco Anthony. I think I’m on the first 30 pages of Google but if you want to find me socially through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, everything is just at Bosco. Anthony.

Joel: And, on your, on the TEDx, channel.

Bosco: Yes, yes, absolutely.

Joel: Well, thank you so much, Bosco and yeah, again, thank you for being on the show and do it. We’ll talk soon.

Bosco: I appreciate it, man.

Stay safe. Thank