RV (00:02): I love Michelle Poler. Oh my gosh. That was an awesome interview. And I am doing the recap for you solo today on the interview that I just completed with Michelle poler and I have become a quick fan of this woman. I just think she’s cool. I think she’s fun. I think she is funny. I think she’s got a great story and what an awesome, I mean, so many lessons came out of that conversation. I mean, we’re, we’re titling it around how to build a legendary speaking career in five years because her story is amazing. Like she has gone from, I’m terrified to be on stage two. I’m one of the busiest, highest paid speakers in the world in five years. And that’s a pretty, you know, rapid transformation. And hopefully that gives hope to you. Like if you have that dream of saying, Hey, I want to be a speaker. RV (00:56): Then, you know, it shows you that it’s like it can be done. There’s, there’s a system to all of this. There’s a process. And that’s my first takeaway actually was very much in that vein of how she built this, this very legendary speaking career in five short years, because if you’ve spent any, any time at all around brand builders group, either as one of our members or gone through any of our free trainings or, you know, watched any of our, our, our, our free online summits, et cetera, et cetera, that we do, you know, that we are big believers, big believers, that if you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. So what do we teach people? Well, the very first thing we do in finding your brand DNA, which is our phase one course, one curriculum is we help them figure out what problem do they solve in one word, we then help them figure out what is their one business model. RV (01:47): The one way they should focus on making money. And then we have them focus on what is there. One message. Michelle is a great example of that, right? Like she has one problem, fear, one business model speaking. She has this, this one message about doing what is uncomfortable. And then she did exactly what we tell people to do, which is show videos of you doing what you do. Use video marketing as a way to just showcase and demonstrate what you do so people can sample you and they can see you doing it. And that’s what she did. I mean, in her case, she was actually overcoming fear. So it was entertaining as well, but that’s all you’re doing on social media. And video is just giving people a chance to sample you, like sample your expertise, teach them like, if you want to change lives, start changing lives, like push the button and let’s go hit record and let people see you do what you do. RV (02:52): Give them a 62nd sample, teach them, inspire them, educate them, you know, help them. And, and that is what she did. And she did it consistently. And she did it for a few years. And at first it was small and a few years later it was big. And that’s the nature of this. Most people just won’t stick with it for a few years, but if you start now, I mean, think about it in five years, you could be a legend doing something that you haven’t even started yet five years. Like that’s super powerful. So I, I just love that part of the professional story of, you know, what Michelle has been able to do in her husband. Her husband’s awesome. We of course, got to meet with them backstage at the global leadership summit last year, as we had one of our friends Jamie Kern, Lima was speaking there and I had spoke there the year before. RV (03:42): And one of our other friends, several of our friends have spoken there and you know, Michelle was there. And so that’s how we met and just absolutely love it. So that was my first takeaway. One, one problem that you solve one business model do one thing at a time and use video to show people a sample of what you do. Couldn’t be more textbook brand builder type speak. So that’s it. The second takeaway was hit me powerfully personally. So here’s what she said. She said, every decision that you make is either comfort based or growth based, which are you choosing like any decision or choice that you faced there is going to be a comfortable option or a growth option. There’s going to be a safe, familiar thing, or there’s going to be a new, scary, risky thing. Which one are you doing most of us by the default. RV (04:44): And you need to understand this. This is the default design of the human brain. This is neuroscience. The default of your brain is not designed for success. The human brain is designed for survival. The number one function of the human brain is to keep you alive. And so what happens is you will automatically always default to safety, to comfort, to familiar, which means you’re not growing. You’re not changing. You’re not evolving. You’re not adapting. You’re not learning. You’re not pushing, you’re not stretching. You’re not accomplishing something new. All of that requires deliberate, intentional focus to say, yeah, this is scary and I’m going to do it anyways. It is what we talk about and take the stairs. The story about be the Buffalo, or if you’ve ever read my story about do it scared. And this idea that you’re, you are scared and you do it anyways. RV (05:44): That is the essence. And so I, one of the things that I did is just like a little practical challenge because I was inspired by the interview with Michelle was I made an Instagram real where I did live singing, which I’d never done. I don’t, you know, I don’t do much dancing. Most of what I’m doing is content like teaching, right? That’s most of what my social strategy is and what I’m doing. And so I thought I’m going to do something fun that I’ve never done. And this is a secret skill that many of you probably don’t even know that I have, but I’m, I’m quite handy at rap lyrics. I can hear the lyrics really well and I memorize them. And so what I did was I took the song from the sound Disney soundtrack, marijuana, the song that, that the rock Dwayne Johnson sings called your welcome. RV (06:34): And I wrapped it and I put it on social media, which was way outside of my comfort zone zones. I think I would never, ever do, but I did it just for fun. And just in honor of Michelle. So Michelle, there you go. That, that is my, my homage to you. My, my Dwayne Johnson lip singing rap Instagram real but it was, it’s such a simple thing because it’s like, there are so many other ways just since my conversation with her, that I have realized, wow, what’s the safe decision. What’s the risky decision. And we are deliberately more and more starting to choose risk, you know, calculated risk, calculated risk. I would say to use a term from Adam Grant’s book, originals calculated risk. I really love that concept calculated risks cause I I’m risk adverse. Because I’m, you know, I’m really logical. RV (07:27): And also like you, I have a human brain that’s designed to keep me safe, but being an entrepreneur, being successful, being an influencer, like being a mission-driven messenger, changing the world, all of those things, making more money, making more impact making like all of those things require comfort based decisions. They require stepping out of your comfort zone, doing things new. And that leads me to my third takeaway that I walked. I walked away with, out of that conversation from her, from, with Michelle. And this was also so practical was, you know, I was, I’d asked her the question, obviously go listen to the interview if you haven’t. But when I asked her directly like, you know, give me one tip for overcoming fear, like give me one practical tip for overcoming fear. This is so simple. Here’s what she said. Just ask yourself, what do I need to learn in order to be able to do that thing? RV (08:23): What do I need to learn? Right. So the fear is in doing something that you’ve never done, a huge part of that fear is just not knowing what does it take to do it? It’s the uncertainty. It’s, it’s the incompleteness of the story in your head, right? It’s it’s like, there’s a, you can see a finish line, but you have no idea what the journey is. It takes to get there. So you kind of know like, well, I don’t know if I could get there. It’s kind of scary the thought, but when you go, what do I need to learn in order to be able to do that thing? It’s now very controllable. It’s very concrete, right? It becomes more pragmatic. It’s like, you can get your hands wrapped around. It is. Oh, well sure. It would be scary to, you know, write a book. RV (09:11): But if I learned the writing process that authors use that wouldn’t be a scary, right? So that’s like what we teach in captivating content or in our bestseller launch plan. The one of, so in that, in that curriculum, we talk about how to become a bestseller, not the writing part, but the marketing part. And one of the things that was huge for me was just learning how the bestseller list worked. Right? So the very first time I ever thought about, I want to be a New York times bestselling author one day, it was terrifying. It was, it was, it was impossible. Like I might as well have been saying I was going to be LeBron James or the president of the United States or Warren Buffett. Like it couldn’t have been something any further away from my reality at that time. But I started moving in the direction. RV (10:01): I started learning about it. And one of the things that I learned was, oh, each of these bestseller lists obviously have some function that they use to determine what makes something a bestseller and they’re all different. That’s one of the things we had to learn. One of the things that we teach now and going, oh, if, if I can sell this many units over this period of time, that is what makes someone a bestselling author. And just learning that changed everything. Just like learning that one piece of information, because it went from this very obscure kind of like, oh, I can never do that to, oh, how could I do that? And in take the stairs in the buy-in principle of commitment, we talk about how most people allow their, their creativity to move in the direction of the, the neutral, which is, can I do this? RV (10:58): Is this possible? Should I try? Do I like it? Do I agree with it? And neutral always becomes negative. Neutral, always eventually becomes negative. But to the person who in what ultra performers do is just one degree different. They don’t say, can I do it? Should I do it? They say, how can I do it? And the moment you ask the question, how everything changes, because now you’re, you’re just going, oh, well, what would it take to pull that off? How could I meet that deadline? How could I hit that target? How could this become real? How could this become true? And that changes everything. It moves it out of this, this fear-based uncertainty and to this very like pragmatic, practical process. So whatever it is that you’re wanting to do with your personal brand or just in your life and your business in general, just first of all, kind of go, all right, well, what’s the comfort based thing. RV (12:02): In other words, what’s the word? What’s the thing. What’s the decision that scares me and then immediately follow up with, well, what’s, what’s the one thing I need to learn in order to be able to do that. And if you can answer that question, the fear will go away. And the likelihood that you will achieve that thing will go up exponentially. What do I need to learn in order to be able to do that thing? Hopefully you’re learning here every single week, how to build and monetize your personal brand, how to extend your reach, how to grow your impact, how to grow your influence and how to grow your income. That is why we are here. If you’re learning stuff from us, would you do me a favor and just share this podcast out with someone who you think needs it specifically this episode and maybe the episode the interview of course, with Michelle so that they can listen in and just go, who in your life is over, you know, struggling with something right now. And they’re, they’re facing fear. Just send them these two, these two, these two episodes say, Hey, I thought you might like this. That would be a super helpful to us. Make sure we can keep providing awesome content and great yet. Keep getting great guests for you so that you can keep learning so that you can keep conquering your fears. Thanks for being here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.