RV: (00:01) Welcome to the special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. Man, I love Ed Tate. I’m so glad that you got to meet him and I’m excited to break this down for you. It’s sort of fitting that I’m filling in for AJ doing this recap just by myself, but because I’ve known Ed for years and, and in fact I’ve known Ed longer than I’ve known AAJ and he was one of my early mentors and you know, we honestly hadn’t had a conversation about the business about like how to grow your business and build, build a business in recent years because we just kind of become friends and usually catch up about friends’ stuff. And so I am honored that we got to see us to do that with you here as a part of the podcast. And so this is our recap, right? RV: (00:51) So what we’re doing is, is I’m going to share with you the big highlights, the big takeaways, at least that, that I took away from this interview, especially again, having known Ed for so long. And I think hearing his mentality and his outlook on business affects me differently now than when I first started. And the first thing that he said that really stuck with me that I think is super important for you, right, is he said, there is business in every economy as long as you reach outside the walls every day. So what he’s saying there is, look, the economy’s always changing, right? Sometimes there’s great market economy, sometimes there’s down economy, great Mark is bad markets. Yeah, sometimes there’s like a virus that breaks out and that affects the world. Or sometimes there’s a natural disaster, a tsunami or a, you know, there’s wildfires. RV: (01:51) Like there’s political elections, there’s Wars, there’s all of these things that are constantly happening in the world, constantly shaping the market or the landscape, new competitors, new technology, et cetera. But, but what he is saying is so critical and it’s like, if you don’t believe this, I don’t know how you can succeed longterm. And what he’s saying is that you have to believe and you have to know that there is business in every economy, every market, every, every condition or circumstance by which the world can be operating or what’s happening around us in the world. There is always business to be had because if you are an expert, if you really know something that can help people, people are always going to struggle with problems. They’re always going to struggle with motivation. They’re always going to need somebody to help them grow and develop and improve, whether it’s great economies or bad economies. RV: (02:54) And the key thing though is that you have to be willing to reach out. You have to be willing in all markets, good and bad to tell people about what you do. And I think Ed said something like, you have to have 20 different ways that people can find out about you. And I think that is is true. You need to have lots of ways that people can find out about you. I mean, generally speaking, we love to, you know, one of the things we do at brand builders group is we help people get really clear and phase one, you know, so we’ve got these nine essential phases. And the, the in phase one brand identification we talk about, you know, getting clear, we talk about getting clear on one message, you know, one audience, one business model and one medium. Meaning that those are your primary focuses, but almost always you can repurpose the content that you’re doing and ultimately in many different places and as long as you’re just repurposing things and spreading it across multiple mediums where people can find you. RV: (03:59) Like you got to have a lot of, a lot of you’ve got to have a lot of fishing poles in the water so to speak. Like you got to have a lot of, a lot of things out there. I remember hearing a speaker one time say you need to pump intellectual property out into the market as fast as you possibly can. You need to publish everywhere as much as you can. Publish audio, video, the written word, the spoken word, like publish on social media and white papers and blogs. And I don’t think he was advocating to say, look, it, you have to do all of these things to be successful. What he was saying is the more that you can systemize and habitualize and, and operationalize the idea of your ideas, getting out there, your outreach, your message, your movement, your, your brand, you’ve got to get it out there. RV: (04:51) And if you do that, you’ll survive in any economy. Like there’s, there’s businesses that do well in every economy. And so that was just a fresh reminder for me. And I think really just important because, and it is also to every experience level, right? Like some of you that are our clients, right? Like you might be listening in and maybe you’re earlier in your journey and you think, Oh my gosh, you know, I’m competing against all these more experienced people. But I’ll tell you on the other side of that, I’ve got tons of friends who’ve been in this industry for 20 to 25 years and they’re battling because there’s all these new people coming up into their fee range and stuff, and so they’re having to kind of battle to stay at the top. So everyone is battling, so to speak. But as long as you are believing in what you do and you’re pumping out content and you’re helping people, you can win and in any, any market. RV: (05:48) So that’s, that’s really good. The second thing from ed, which I thought was related to this, and I never actually heard him say this before, is he has this, this philosophy that he says, never put up a zero. Never put up a zero. In other words, on any given day, you can’t let the sun fall without having done something productive that moved your business forward right there. That even if you don’t make a sale per se, right? Like, even if you don’t get a contract, even if you don’t get a new customer, you should always, you should always go for at least one new piece of business every day. That’s what he was saying. I thought, I thought that was powerful. And it’s interesting because we used to teach sales so much and it’s been almost two years since I’ve taught sales specifically and it’s going to be a little while before we get back into teaching some of that. RV: (06:44) But to hear Ed talk about, Hey, don’t let the day end without getting a new piece of business. That’s a great mentality or mindset. But, but, but the part that I really loved was that he followed that up with at least get a new appointment. Right? If you can’t get a new customer, at least get a new appointment. If you can’t get a new appointment, at least get a new contact to follow up with. So there’s, there’s something that you’re doing on any given day that that is advancing the business. There is, is, is some marketing acquisition that you’re doing. And even if you can’t generate the revenue, you should be getting appointment. If you can’t get an appointment, at least talk to somebody new every day. And again, I haven’t been able to talk much about this over the last couple of years. And so it was interesting to kind of have someone else talking to me about it and was really, really good reminder. RV: (07:40) Now the last one I think honestly, I think is the most important one. I really do believe this and this take away [inaudible] one of the reasons I believe it’s true is because when I look at people like Ed, I see this habit in their life. [inaudible] When I look at our most successful clients, right? Like people who we help at brain builders group and I, and, and you know, we’ve had some really great wins in the, in the last year we’ve had, we’ve had clients hit number one, Amazon bestsellers. We’ve had people get on the today show we’ve had people grow their, their, their social media followings by over 50,000 people. Like we, we’ve had some clients that have really had some massive wins just here in like our first year of working with people. And you know, I see this to be true in them. RV: (08:35) And then when I look in my own life, I see this to be absolutely true. And when you hear it, it might sound like a marketing ploy, but it’s really not. It’s if you could just like put your, put your defense mechanism down for a second, like put your wall down for a second and just, just hear this Ed said, is you have to invest in your dream. You have to invest in your dream. Like you have to spend money on your dream. You have to spend time on your dream and look, even if you never buy anything from brand builders group, that’s totally fine. But understand this truth. In fact, Randy gage said this to me one time when I was younger and this always stuck with me. He said, you should, you have to be the number one investor in your own dream. RV: (09:27) Like, if you wouldn’t invest in you, why would anyone else, you know, I think about shark tank, like these people who go on shark tank and they’re asking for all this money. And one of the questions the sharks always ask is they say, how much money have you put in? Because they want to see that you believe in your own dream to the extent that you’ve put your own money. And that’s what winners do. That’s what ultra performers do. That’s what multipliers do. That’s what influencers do. That’s what hall of fame speakers in New York times bestselling authors and world champions of public speaking and, and you’ll huge celebrity followings. They invest in their own dream. And I think so often we’re reluctant to invest in our dream because either we think it’s stupid or we’re not sure it’ll work out. Or you know, honestly, sometimes we’re skeptical because we feel like, Oh, I don’t want someone to take advantage of me. RV: (10:18) And it’s not that at all. Like, look, doctors spend more money than anybody else in their education, right? Like they spend tons and tons of money on education. It should be no different for entrepreneurs. It’s just that your education happens in a different place. It doesn’t happen in a traditional school because traditional schools aren’t really set up. Most traditional schools, there are some, but most of them aren’t really set up for the entrepreneurial environment for like a small business environment. That’s just not the way the institutions are typically structured and most of the professors and things don’t have that kind of experience. So but it’s the same truth. It’s the same path. And so that’s just a question to think about, right? Is are you investing in your own dream? Like are you actually willing to put your own money where your mouth is? And if you’re not, then that should tell you something. RV: (11:16) You know what? What I think it says is I think it says this is a still a, this isn’t even a dream. This is a fantasy, right? This is something that is like this figment of your imagination that you kind of would love to be. It become true, but you haven’t actually backed that up with commitment. You actually haven’t gotten to the point of believing that maybe this could be a reality. You haven’t stepped forward with dedication, you, you, you haven’t actually added the element of even making this dream a possible reality. The moment that you invest right moment, you say, all right, I’m going to put some money in and it doesn’t have to be your life savings. You don’t have to mortgage your house always, right? Some people do that. You don’t have to do that. I’ve never been the guy who’s is mortgaged my house. RV: (12:04) I’ve always been the guy that was like, all right, I’m going to go generate some revenue. I’m going to go acquire a customer and then I’m going to invest most or all of that right back into the business and get the next one and then reinvest and get the next one and keep my lifestyle low, right? While we invest in the next thing. And, and that’s, that’s why brand builders group is set up. Like, look, I’ll just go ahead and share this with you. I know people see brand builders group and they see, Oh, you guys work with Lewis Howes. And Julie Solomon and Kevin Harrington from shark tank and Suzanne Hendricks, right? Like she’s got a million followers like, and people think or, or Mike Johnson from, from The Bachelor, right? So, Mike recently was one of our clients came to one of our events, right? RV: (12:52) And people see that we’re working with these and they assume that everything we do is expensive. One of the reasons why brand builders group is set up the way that it is is yes, we do some very high level one-on-one stuff for some high level entrepreneurs. These are people that make real money, right? They’re, they’re high six figures, seven figures, multi seven figures, eight figures. We have clients that have nine figure businesses. Like we have clients that do hundred million dollars in revenue in their, in their real business, and then they’re building their personal brand. But we will always as a company be set up to offer a low price point product. And we like our lowest price point product at this point is a $99 a month subscription. And the reason is, is because when I started my dream, I didn’t have any money. RV: (13:44) Like when I started, when I, the first time I said, I want to be a professional speaker. I didn’t have any money. I spent like the last $600 I had flying to take a humor course from Darren LaCroix, who’s one of ed Tate’s good friends and they’ve been business partners and joint done lots of joint ventures and things together because I identified humor as a place that I needed to get better. And that was like such a huge amount of money for me. And so brand builders group is always going to have something for people who are just starting out. And you know, at $100 a month, it’s gotta be something, right? If it’s $5 a month, it’s not enough to make somebody care. It’s not enough to make somebody show up. And, and frankly, I, I firmly believe that the education that we are providing to people is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars that is available for $99 a month. RV: (14:39) And again, I’m not, I’m not making a sales pitch here for our service. I’m, I’m trying to illustrate this point though, that the people who break through the wall believe in themselves and, and one of the ways you know that you believe in yourself, like you have to give yourself a chance. And in one of the ways that you know that you’ve actually given yourself a chance is that you put some money in. Like you went to a conference, you’ve read some books, you’ve taken some classes you’ve learned from some people. And that is something that, like I said, I have done, these are our most successful clients have done. And I don’t mean with us, I mean with they got to be successful before we ever even saw them. They were investing in all sorts of things. So you got to invest, you got to believe in your own dream. RV: (15:25) You got to at least be willing to give yourself a shot to give yourself a chance and say, you know what, if there’s one thing I’m going to invest in, if there’s one thing I’m going to put my money and it’s not real estate. It’s not a market, it’s, it’s not. It’s, it’s in me, it’s in my brain. It’s that I’m going to say that the most valuable asset that I can invest money into is my own brain, my own mind, my own personal development. And that is something that winners do and we believe it’s so much that we will, no matter how famous our clients are, are. And no matter how big our client roster is, we are always going to have something. For those of you that are just starting out, no, our goal is going to be to escalate you, right? Like our goal is going to be able to help you learn enough that you can make money so that you can reinvest that into doing more with us because we want you to grow and we can’t, you know, we can serve you at a deeper level, right? RV: (16:20) Like our virtual training is, it’s education, it’s education directly from me and AJ and all of our senior strategists, but we know ultimately our goal is to get you into a one on one coaching environment with one of our strategists and to get you to our live events because we know that that’ll serve you faster and in a deeper way, but not everyone can start there, but whether it’s with us or whether it’s with somebody else, you’ve got to invest, right? Like you’ve got to place that bet on yourself. Don’t be afraid of losing. Don’t be afraid of failing and don’t be afraid of being taken advantage of someone. I can say firmly, I’ve, I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on my own education and there are certain types of education that are better than others. There is no doubt about it, but I have never invested in any program where I didn’t at least learn enough to get my money back. RV: (17:19) Right? Like there are some where it’s like, man, that that experience could have been, they could have charged a hundred times what they were charging and I would have paid for and I would’ve got my money back. And that’s what we strive to do at brand builders group. But there’s never been one course that I bought that I didn’t at least learn something from or one conference that I went to that I didn’t at least get a great idea from. But you got to take that shot and no one else can do that. And, and if anyone else gives you the money, it’s not the same. It’s not the same as you betting on you, right? So again, I don’t care who it’s with, but if you have this dream, if you have this calling, if you have this message inside of you, then you have to take a chance on you believe in yourself, make that investment of money and time and work. Never put up a zero and believe that if you just do all of these things day in and day out, ultimately you, well, when that’s all for this one brand builder, we’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand podcast.