Author: AJ Vaden

Ep 584: Unlocking the Power of Brain Health for Personal and Professional Success with Dr. Helena Popovic

[00:00:00] AJ: Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast, AJ Vaden here. And [00:00:05] I am so excited, uh, to get to spend the next hour listening to the [00:00:10] amazing accent of Dr. Elena Vic. And, uh, she is [00:00:15] actually joining us from Australia, which we were just catching up about. I had the [00:00:20] amazing opportunity to live in Australia, uh, right as I was graduating college, and it’s.

[00:00:24] A [00:00:25] very near and dear place to my heart. So, uh, regardless of what I’m talking about today, you’re [00:00:30] gonna get to enjoy this amazing accent. Uh, not to mention amazing knowledge, [00:00:35] uh, from Dr. Helena and y’all as I normally do. I kind of give you a couple of [00:00:40] reasons of why this episode is important to stick around for, and I always find that it’s [00:00:45] important you know, what you’re about to get into so that you can commit for the hour.

[00:00:48] And if it’s not [00:00:50] for you, I’ll tell you, but there are some episodes that are just for everyone. And [00:00:55] today is one of those episodes because we’re gonna be talking about something that you will [00:01:00] have for the rest of your life and you need to know how to take care of it, how to nurture [00:01:05] it, uh, and how to support it.

[00:01:06] And it’s your brain, right? Like we need our brains. [00:01:10] Um, and so we’re gonna be talking a lot about brain health today, because that is her area of [00:01:15] expertise and specialty. So here’s what we’re gonna be talking about and why you should stick around understanding the [00:01:20] impact of brain health on your success.

[00:01:22] Okay. And, uh, that doesn’t matter if it’s personal or [00:01:25] professional, but brain health matters for longevity and a healthy longevity. [00:01:30] At that, we’re gonna talk about some importance in, uh, proactive measures that you can take to [00:01:35] prevent cognitive decline. And then also, uh, some practical strategies, which is what [00:01:40] I am most excited about, uh, for enhancing mental performance.

[00:01:44] Uh, I [00:01:45] actually selfishly shared with her, I’m gonna talk to her about how to get rid of brain fog, um, [00:01:50] at AKA. Mom brain. So if she can solve that problem for me today, it’s gonna be a [00:01:55] major win. Uh, but that is why you need to stick around for this entire episode, ’cause we’re gonna be covering [00:02:00] all of that and so much more.

[00:02:01] But let me formally introduce you to Dr. Helena and [00:02:05] then we’re gonna get to the goods of this interview, which is actually why you’re here. So, [00:02:10] Dr. Vic, uh, you have done so many things. You are a renowned doctor. [00:02:15] Speaker, you’re an award-winning author specializing in brain health, positive aging, and I [00:02:20] love that term, positive aging, but also with a heavy emphasis on dementia [00:02:25] prevention, which is a big part of your story and I’d love to hear more about that.

[00:02:28] Uh, but here’s, [00:02:30] here’s one of the things I think is really important is that you’re on a mission to empower people at any [00:02:35] stage of life on how to boost, boost brain function. Right [00:02:40] now, I don’t imagine that you’ve started out. Your professional [00:02:45] career post-college in academia with that? How’d you get into this?[00:02:50]

[00:02:50] DR HP: Well, it was rather circuitous route, um, in 2010, so that makes it [00:02:55] 15 years ago, shortly after my mother passed away with lung cancer, I was there with [00:03:00] my father and I happened to open the fridge and find a box of a medication called [00:03:05] tig, which is sometimes prescribed for people with Alzheimer’s disease.

[00:03:08] Hmm. I found it in the butter [00:03:10] compartment of the fridge, and I thought. I don’t know anyone with Alzheimer’s disease. So I asked dad, [00:03:15] who’s this medication for? And he said, oh, your mom said it was good for my memory. [00:03:20] Um, so I stick a patch on every day. I don’t think it does much good, but happy [00:03:25] wife, good life.

[00:03:27] That was how I first discovered that my [00:03:30] father had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease because I’d been living a thousand miles away [00:03:35] from my parents. So I only flew. To live at home again, to look [00:03:40] after my mother, after her diagnosis. Um, and so I had assumed that dad’s [00:03:45] confusion and depression obviously, and withdrawal, they were all symptoms of grief [00:03:50] because in an older person, grief, depression, [00:03:55] dementia, very similar symptoms, and it’s hard to tease apart.

[00:03:58] So I’d assumed it was grief, [00:04:00] but when I tracked down my father’s gp. Doctor, he confirmed the [00:04:05] diagnosis. And here’s the thing, such was the stigma around dementia in my [00:04:10] Serbian family of origin that my parents had not even told [00:04:15] their only child me. Wow. Their devoted daughter who also happened to be a doctor [00:04:20] that her father had Alzheimer’s disease.

[00:04:23] And so, and, [00:04:25] and in every, you know, when, when I found out about it, everybody said, oh look, just. Go back to [00:04:30] your life. There’s nothing you can do to help him. Put him in a nursing home and [00:04:35] don’t waste your time because there’s nothing you can do to help. Wow. There’s not like, there is no [00:04:40] cure. And yes, my medical training says the few medications that are [00:04:45] around are not really doing anything.

[00:04:47] Um, and there’s nothing you can do. But [00:04:50] I just didn’t accept that because there’s also something else we’re taught on day one of medical school, and that is [00:04:55] half of what you learn. In medical school, we’ll be out of date by the time [00:05:00] you graduate. The problem is you won’t know which half because that’s how, that’s a [00:05:05] scary thought,

[00:05:05] AJ: isn’t it?

[00:05:05] Isn’t

[00:05:06] DR HP: it a scary thought? But it is. It’s actually been, you know, [00:05:10] pushed me to, to keep learning because there are so many things that are just so out of [00:05:15] date that I learned, okay, it was a while ago, but nonetheless. So anyway, I thought, no, not good enough. [00:05:20] So I did a really deep dive, learned every, like, read all the papers I could from.

[00:05:24] [00:05:25] All, all corners of the globe about brain health and dementia. And I discovered something [00:05:30] that changed my world, and that is that just because something doesn’t come in a pill [00:05:35] doesn’t mean it isn’t powerful. Mm. Sleep, [00:05:40] stress management, food, exercise, music, art, social [00:05:45] stimulation, time in nature. I could go on and on.

[00:05:47] All of these things are medicine for our [00:05:50] mind as well as medicine for our body. Mm.

[00:05:52] And

[00:05:52] DR HP: so I applied all these things to my father and [00:05:55] I was able to look after him, keep him at home for 10 years. Wow. He passed away peacefully in [00:06:00] his sleep, shortly before Covid and people, you know, when people thought, but how come [00:06:05] he’s not getting worse?

[00:06:05] Dementia is supposed to get worse. He’s still recognizes you. He’s still [00:06:10] independent. His memory, he short-term memory was very poor, but mainly he just needed [00:06:15] supervision, whereas people forget how to eat, forget how to talk. Mm-hmm. Uh, can [00:06:20] no longer verbalize, can no longer dress themselves. None of that happened to dad.

[00:06:24] And so people [00:06:25] start asking me like, what are you doing? Do you think it’ll help me?

[00:06:29] Mm.

[00:06:29] DR HP: And I [00:06:30] said, absolutely. Well, there’s certainly, well, all the evidence suggests that at [00:06:35] any age or stage of life, we can and should be boosting our brain. Because [00:06:40] here’s the thing from our. The, the brain changes that can lead [00:06:45] to Alzheimer’s disease start 30 years before we get any [00:06:50] symptoms.

[00:06:50] Mm-hmm.

[00:06:50] DR HP: So you’re never too young to start boosting your brain and thinking about brain [00:06:55] health, but not only that, then it’s gonna help you be more productive, um, better [00:07:00] thinking, more creative. During your working life and everything you do [00:07:05] now will also go a long way to helping you prevent dementia as you age.

[00:07:09] So [00:07:10] I’m on a mission, I love that to, to send this message to everybody. Don’t be [00:07:15] complacent about your brain. Don’t believe any doctor, neurologist, [00:07:20] geriatrician who still say to you, you know, there’s nothing you can do. Get your affairs in order. [00:07:25] When you start to show signs of cognitive decline, because.

[00:07:29] You know, I’ve written [00:07:30] two books now on all the things that you can do and, and people, you know, have [00:07:35] written back and just gone, I’ve got my life back, you know, I’ve got my brain back.

[00:07:38] AJ: Okay. This is gonna seem like an [00:07:40] overly simplified question, but what is brain [00:07:45] health? Right? And I think that’s like even just asking like, what is brain health?

[00:07:49] Because I’m sitting [00:07:50] here going, I read a ton of health books. I’m very into nutrition [00:07:55] and sleep, and. Kind of on a health journey of myself and it’s like, I could not [00:08:00] tell you now. Yes. It’s like, yes, be outside and keep your brain active and keep it, [00:08:05] you know, eat healthy. Sure. But I don’t recall any time I’ve ever [00:08:10] been to my doctor and the history of my 42 years on this [00:08:15] planet, almost 42 of having a conversation.

[00:08:18] Let’s talk about your brain [00:08:20] health today, aj. So. What is brain health and just kinda like walk us through [00:08:25] like what are the simplest, most proactive daily things we can do to keep our brains [00:08:30] healthy?

[00:08:31] DR HP: Okay. Firstly, your doctor hasn’t talked to you about it because it’s not at the [00:08:35] forefront of their mind.

[00:08:36] They’re not really trained to think about it. A lot of [00:08:40] this information is very new. We probably learned more about the brain in the last [00:08:45] two decades. In, you know, this century than we did in all the previous centuries [00:08:50] combined.

[00:08:50] Hmm.

[00:08:50] DR HP: So it is a new area. Well, it doesn’t feel new to me ’cause I’ve been doing it for a couple of [00:08:55] decades, but still a few decades is still a very new area.

[00:08:57] So that’s why your doctor’s not [00:09:00] talking about it. And probably because you looks at you and go, you’re young, you don’t have to worry about it yet, because people [00:09:05] don’t realize how early those changes start taking place. So that’s [00:09:10] why people don’t bring it up. And also, uh, they just don’t wanna know about it because it’s so [00:09:15] scary.

[00:09:15] Dementia is more feared than cancer, and in fact, not in your country, [00:09:20] but in my country, dementia is the number one cause of death in Australian women, in [00:09:25] UK women. I think it’s maybe number three in this country, but yeah. [00:09:30] Wow. So, so it, it is a big deal. What does brain health mean? Well, it, it [00:09:35] actually means that everything we do.

[00:09:38] Everything we eat, [00:09:40] everything we experience actually leaves an imprint on our brain. And that can be [00:09:45] a positive imprint or a negative imprint. And what I mean by that is [00:09:50] we, you’ve probably heard of the term neuroplasticity.

[00:09:53] Mm-hmm.

[00:09:53] DR HP: Our brain [00:09:55] changes in response to each different activity performs. [00:10:00] And what that means is we can grow new brain cells.

[00:10:04] [00:10:05] We can lose brain cells. You know, you have an alcohol binge and you [00:10:10] know, you’ve, you’ve damaged quite a few brain cells. You know, you go for, [00:10:15] you know, you go for an intense exercise session, you know, a hit, [00:10:20] um, high intensity session. You’ve built a few brain cells so we [00:10:25] can make new brain cells, we can make new connections between brain cells.

[00:10:28] You do some really [00:10:30] intense, um, learning. Challenge yourself. Learn something new. You can. [00:10:35] You, you actually make new, new connections between brain cells. We can establish whole new circuits. We [00:10:40] can even change which cells perform, which functions, and this has revolutionized things like stroke [00:10:45] treatment.

[00:10:45] Mm-hmm. We used to think if somebody had a stroke and damaged part of their body, if they didn’t [00:10:50] get matter after a few better, after a few months of rehab, they probably never would.

[00:10:54] Hmm. [00:10:55] We

[00:10:55] DR HP: now know that with a specific intense form of therapy known as CIT, it stands for. [00:11:00] Constraint induced therapy cells from undamaged parts of the brain can be [00:11:05] recruited to take over the loss functions.

[00:11:07] Wow.

[00:11:07] DR HP: And I’ll give you an example of how they do that. It, it’s [00:11:10] relevant because you can extrapolate this to improve any brain function if you think you’re not [00:11:15] good at it. So basically they’ll get, say this is, say you’ve got, uh, the [00:11:20] left side was undamaged by the stroke, and the right hand is paralyzed. So they’re gonna [00:11:25] strap up the left side and say, you can’t use it.

[00:11:28] And they’re gonna put a glass of water, a [00:11:30] few millimeters in front of the fingertips of the damaged hand and say, try and touch the glass. [00:11:35] The person’s gonna go, I can’t. It’s, it’s paralyzed. Well just focus and try, try, try. And, [00:11:40] because it’s so close, they touch the glass and as soon as they’ve touch the glass, they push it a little bit further [00:11:45] away.

[00:11:45] They try again. And they practice this for several hours a day. But over the course of a few [00:11:50] months, they will regain the use of that paralyzed limb. And here’s the thing, even if your [00:11:55] stroke was years ago. You can still regain function. Never too late. It doesn’t [00:12:00] seem to ever be too late.

[00:12:01] Hmm.

[00:12:02] DR HP: Um, and when they scan the person’s brain, what’s [00:12:05] happened is cells have been recruited from other parts of the brain [00:12:10] and grow new nerve fibers.

[00:12:12] Fascinating. Isn’t that wonderful? Fascinat. So, so don’t ever [00:12:15] think that you can’t improve something, because in my experience, there’s always [00:12:20] something you can do to make, you know, to, to improve a situation [00:12:25] Now. There is no short answer to what are all the different things we can do to boost our [00:12:30] brain, because I’ve just said to you that everything we do has an impact on our brain.

[00:12:34] You know, [00:12:35] you, you wanna, you, you wanna bullet train to dementia, then drink to excess [00:12:40] smoke and vape, um, do no exercise, spend all day [00:12:45] indoors and just do, learn nothing new. Mm. I mean, that is a bullet train to [00:12:50] dementia. So. Let’s flip it around. I mean, in my, in my latest book, I’ve got 80 different ways that you [00:12:55] can boost your brain.

[00:12:56] I don’t think we’ll get through all of them today, but, but [00:13:00] it, it’s even hard to tease out which are the most important. But I’m [00:13:05] gonna start with cult, probably one that will, may surprise you. Culture cultivate [00:13:10] good relationships. Mm-hmm. Good relationships aren’t just a feel good thing. And, and I [00:13:15] mean, with family, with friends, with neighbors, with colleagues, clients.[00:13:20]

[00:13:20] Everyone you come in contact with, because good [00:13:25] relationships are the number one thing that will [00:13:30] boost one of the number one things that will boost your brain. [00:13:35] But it is the number one thing that will keep you healthy, happy, and live the [00:13:40] longest throughout your life. So why do you

[00:13:40] AJ: think that is?

[00:13:41] DR HP: Because good relationships [00:13:45] lower production of the hormone cortisol, which is our stress hormone.

[00:13:49] Reduce [00:13:50] inflammation, strengthen our immune system, make us feel [00:13:55] safe. Mm-hmm. Release a cocktail of feel good chemicals. All of these things are essential [00:14:00] for good brain function and good body function. You know, you want a strong immune system. You don’t want inflammation. These [00:14:05] are two main drivers of chronic disease.

[00:14:07] If good relationships are an antidote to that. [00:14:10] Then they’re gonna go a long way to preventing those diseases.

[00:14:12] AJ: Hmm. So I have a question for you [00:14:15] because as you’re talking about that, I can’t get it out of my brain. What you said earlier [00:14:20] about the number one leading cause of death for Australian women, and [00:14:25] you said another country as well, the uk.

[00:14:26] The UK is dementia.

[00:14:28] DR HP: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:29] AJ: Why [00:14:30] is that? I, is that connected to a lack of strong relationships in community? Like

[00:14:34] DR HP: what we are [00:14:35] not a hundred percent sure. That is still a big area of research. Several reasons have been [00:14:40] postulated. One is the estrogen hypothesis.

[00:14:44] Mm-hmm. [00:14:45]

[00:14:45] DR HP: When, when a woman hits menopause, there is a very abrupt drop in estrogen [00:14:50] levels.

[00:14:50] Estrogen is a really vital, um, hormone for good brain [00:14:55] health. Yeah, on a lot of reasons. You know, estrogen helps us use [00:15:00] glucose for energy in the brain. Estrogen actually, uh, [00:15:05] helps to keep nerve cells healthy. You know, brain cells healthy, [00:15:10] uh, helps to eliminate toxins. So you suddenly lose that hormone. You [00:15:15] suddenly lose a lot of protective functions in your brain.[00:15:20]

[00:15:20] Um, what we’ve found is that women who have. Early, you know, [00:15:25] premature menopause, which means a removal of her uterus or [00:15:30] ovaries significantly increased risk of dementia [00:15:35] unless they get hormone replacement therapy. Interesting. [00:15:40] So it does seem to be there, there may be an estrogen connection. [00:15:45] Um, and a couple, yes.

[00:15:49] AJ: Gotta [00:15:50] cut this. I got

[00:15:53] cough jobs

[00:15:53] AJ: for you. I swallowed the wrong [00:15:55] way. Hold on.[00:16:00]

[00:16:02] I was trying not to cough and swallowed and then I made [00:16:05] it worse.[00:16:10]

[00:16:13] Okay. I’m gonna pop [00:16:15] this in just to make sure I don’t cough anymore. Okay, hold on. Now I have watery [00:16:20] eyes.

[00:16:23] All right. [00:16:25] All right. So I want you to start back up with [00:16:30] when, uh, women start, like early menopause because they [00:16:35] lost an ovary or the uterus. So can we start right there? [00:16:40]

[00:16:40] DR HP: Yes. Okay.

[00:16:41] AJ: Ready? Go.

[00:16:44] DR HP: If a [00:16:45] woman has premature menopause, in other words, she has her uterus removed or [00:16:50] ovaries removed, usually for good reason, not just willy-nilly, um, that significantly [00:16:55] increases her risk of getting dementia because it, it’s an abrupt [00:17:00] cessation of estrogen production.

[00:17:02] So there, there really does seem to be an [00:17:05] estrogen connection there. Other things have been postulated. Um, [00:17:10] when a woman sustains a head injury, she doesn’t. Recover as well. As a man, [00:17:15] we are not sure why, possibly because men tend to have stronger neck muscles, so maybe [00:17:20] when she has head injury, there’s more rattling of the brain, more, more damaged [00:17:25] connections.

[00:17:25] There could be. In the past, women were less [00:17:30] educated, had less stimulating work, so they didn’t get the same mental stimulation. [00:17:35] That men did.

[00:17:36] Interesting. Um,

[00:17:37] DR HP: perhaps women are less physically active and, [00:17:40] and, you know, apart from relationships, physical ex, you must move [00:17:45] for your brain. Forget the, you know, I wanna go to the gym to lose weight.

[00:17:49] [00:17:50] Who cares? That’s the least important reason to go to the gym. But for brain health, it’s for brain health. And it’s [00:17:55] not, it’s every aspect of physical exercise. Sorry, I’m transitioning very quickly from [00:18:00] relationships to exercise, but, but. You have to move if you wanna maintain your brain [00:18:05] health.

[00:18:05] AJ: Like how much movement.

[00:18:07] DR HP: Okay. Firstly, I’ll give the three [00:18:10] types. Aerobic exercise, endurance training, strength training, [00:18:15] strong muscles equate to a strong mind and balance [00:18:20] as well. Good balance. So it appear, it [00:18:25] appears that, you know, the 150 minutes per week is probably. [00:18:30] Probably o you know enough, but if you can do a bit more, that’s great.

[00:18:34] Doing [00:18:35] high intensity interval training is really good, is better than just low level. But, [00:18:40] but let me just say, I don’t wanna put people off. Any movement is better than no movement, even five minutes a [00:18:45] day. So, for, and, and the reason, okay, people go, but why is exercise so good for the brain? [00:18:50] Yes, we get more blood flowing to the brain.

[00:18:53] More oxygen, more nutrients. [00:18:55] But there. You’ve heard of the gut brain connection? Sure. There’s a muscle [00:19:00] brain connection. When we move our muscles, they produce a cocktail of chemicals called myokines. [00:19:05] Scientists have tried to bottle these, but there’s too many of them and they have too many complex functions.[00:19:10]

[00:19:10] Myokines circulate in our blood to go to all our organs and keep our organs [00:19:15] healthy in various ways, particularly in relation to the brain. We produce a chemical when [00:19:20] we exercise. Whether it’s weight training or whether it’s, um, sprinting or [00:19:25] jogging or cycling or swimming or dancing, we produce a chemical in the brain called [00:19:30] BDNF.

[00:19:30] It stands for brain derived neurotrophic factor, and [00:19:35] this neurotransmitter actually stimulates the growth of new brain cells and new [00:19:40] connections between brain cells. And here in the states, they’ve actually done, um, studies [00:19:45] on school children where if they do. Um, exercise before their [00:19:50] exams, before their harder subjects.

[00:19:51] They do better because our brain does perform at its [00:19:55] best in that first hour after we engage in any sort of physical activity. [00:20:00] So, mm.

[00:20:01] AJ: So I have a question for you then.

[00:20:04] Yeah.

[00:20:04] AJ: [00:20:05] Knowing that we have this sitting epidemic Mm. Um, behind [00:20:10] laptops and behind screens and just very sedentary professional [00:20:15] environments for the majority of the days, including in school.

[00:20:17] Yes. Right. Specifically our [00:20:20] elementary and middle schools, which is just devastatingly sad. What are [00:20:25] the, the quick things to do if you’re, you know, at a desk all day? [00:20:30]

[00:20:30] DR HP: Couple of things we can do, but number one, I I, I wanna just acknowledge that sitting is the new smoking. [00:20:35] Mm-hmm. That people who sit for more than 11 hours a day, and that sounds ridiculous, but I [00:20:40] have colleagues, you know, people with desk jobs that drive an hour to work, sit at their desk nine to 10 hours, that’s drive [00:20:45] an hour back.

[00:20:45] That’s 11 hours. That person is at 40% increased risk of early death [00:20:50] from heart disease, stroke, cancer, complications of diabetes, [00:20:55] dementia. So it is a serious issue and it’s dose dependent. The longer you sit, the worse you [00:21:00] are. Why sitting so hazardous? Because whenever we sit, there’s no electrical activity in our [00:21:05] biggest muscles, which are our quads and our glutes, and.

[00:21:08] Uh, and we [00:21:10] also produce, and, and that sort of means the fats and the sugars stagnate in our blood. Mm-hmm. But also we [00:21:15] produce the opposite of mykines. We produce cytokines when we just sit. [00:21:20] Cytokines are pro-inflammatory molecules, and it means we’re [00:21:25] in a low level state of inflammation. So that’s not good.

[00:21:28] So what can we do? [00:21:30] Couple of things. Number one. Unfortunately, even if you flog yourself at the gym for an hour a [00:21:35] day, you’re not undoing all the damage of prolonged sitting. Some, but not all. [00:21:40] The simplest way is to just break up the sitting time every 20 to 30 minutes. Just [00:21:45] stand up for two minutes. You don’t have to go skipping a rope, but that would be great if you [00:21:50] did running up downstairs.

[00:21:51] But just stand up every 20 to 30 minutes and when I’m writing my books. [00:21:55] I have a timer that goes off every half hour. It’s just easier every half hour.

[00:21:59] Hmm.

[00:21:59] DR HP: And I [00:22:00] have a little standing, just a cheap little standing desk. So quickly move it across and [00:22:05] just type for a little while standing. ’cause I don’t wanna lose my train of thought or whatever.

[00:22:09] Sure. But, so [00:22:10] you just interrupt that sitting time and you know, all my lawyer friends break out in a cold [00:22:15] sweat because every six minutes is a billable unit, Uhhuh. And they don’t wanna lose. [00:22:20] Billable units. I said, but it’s not dead time. You can talk on the phone, you can read, you can still type. So just break [00:22:25] it up.

[00:22:25] AJ: Okay. So, I mean, I think that’s, I think that’s a huge thing because like even on days like [00:22:30] today I am doing several different interviews back to back to back. And it’s like, [00:22:35] I know that it, like during my quick breaks, it’s like I have to go and stand ’cause I can must, I can literally [00:22:40] feel it. Yes. Like kinda like stagnating.

[00:22:42] Yes. So what would you say. Um, [00:22:45] and people are

[00:22:45] DR HP: more tired when they sit all day than when they break it up.

[00:22:48] AJ: Yeah. And

[00:22:49] DR HP: they think, you just [00:22:50] think sitting, prolonged sitting is one cause of brain fog. But go on. I

[00:22:53] AJ: interrupted. Oh, and ’cause I [00:22:55] would love to talk more about this brain fog. So I’m curious to see what do you think are some of [00:23:00] the trends in workplace environments?

[00:23:02] Um, have you seen anywhere they are [00:23:05] doing more standing desks or like, my big Christmas present this year was a standing desk and [00:23:10] a walking pad. Right. So like yesterday I broke, I have to brag on myself ’cause I [00:23:15] broke my stepping record. I did 30,000 steps yesterday. Wow. Because it’s like for five [00:23:20] hours.

[00:23:20] Yes. I’m just like, yes, it’s low speed, it’s low impact, but I’m just like, f calls all [00:23:25] day. Might as well just step it out. Um, but there are so many work [00:23:30] environments where like you could do that. But yet we’re not. Have you [00:23:35] seen any trends in any countries or any companies where like they’re really bringing this in, [00:23:40] not just for the health, the, like the personal health, which is vitally important.

[00:23:44] We [00:23:45] gotta own that as individuals, but to hear everything that you’re saying, like, Hey, it boosts creativity, it, it boosts [00:23:50] productivity, like all the quote unquote corporate benefits that this [00:23:55] has. Surely companies are taking notice

[00:23:57] DR HP: nowhere near enough. There was a trend. [00:24:00] Uh, maybe a decade maybe. Yeah, maybe.

[00:24:03] Five, 10 years ago. Yeah, people started to get [00:24:05] standing desks and have meetings on the move. And meetings are so much more [00:24:10] productive if you’re standing or if you can, you know, have a rooftop, the garden or do it outdoors [00:24:15] or in nature, so much more productive. But sadly, people sort of [00:24:20] start and then it peters out and it hasn’t been kept up nearly enough.

[00:24:24] AJ: [00:24:25] Well, I, ’cause you said something is, I know some

[00:24:26] DR HP: companies are doing it,

[00:24:28] AJ: but not enough. But not

[00:24:28] DR HP: enough.

[00:24:29] AJ: But you, because [00:24:30] you said something and I brought this up before this started, this quote unquote mom brain, our brain [00:24:35] fog. And what I have noticed, at least for myself, I’d be curious to hear from like an actual [00:24:40] doctor on this.

[00:24:40] It’s like. The longer that I’m just sitting doing the same thing, it’s like the foggier my [00:24:45] brain gets. Mm. Like, is that just me? No. Or is that like a real thing

[00:24:48] DR HP: that, oh, that’s definitely a [00:24:50] real thing. You need to break up your focus. Um, so [00:24:55] again, if you want to sort of clear your head especially. Okay. [00:25:00] I’m gonna backtrack just a little bit.

[00:25:02] A major cause of brain fog for a lot of people is just not getting enough [00:25:05] sleep.

[00:25:05] Hmm.

[00:25:06] DR HP: Most people need seven to nine hours. Most people are not getting seven to [00:25:10] nine hours. I, I get it that the demands of life are great, but you’re just not gonna be [00:25:15] firing on all cylinders if you don’t get enough sleep.

[00:25:17] Sleep is when our brain detoxifies [00:25:20] magic happens. When we sleep in our brain. The spaces between our brain cells actually [00:25:25] expand and what’s known as glymphatic fluid. Flushes out the [00:25:30] toxins.

[00:25:30] Mm.

[00:25:30] DR HP: And if you are not asleep for long enough, you don’t get rid of the toxins. And those [00:25:35] toxins then build up over time and create more and more brain fog.

[00:25:37] AJ: So why aren’t people getting enough sleep? I’m, [00:25:40] I’m one of those few people where I sleep nine hours.

[00:25:42] DR HP: Fantastic. But

[00:25:44] AJ: my husband [00:25:45] is, has convinced himself that he only needs six hours. And it’s [00:25:50] like, I think you’re wrong. But I’m not a doctor.

[00:25:53] DR HP: Okay. 3% of the [00:25:55] population have the short sleep gene and they can get away with less.

[00:25:59] Whether Rory [00:26:00] is one of those, I don’t know. Most people overestimate that they have the [00:26:05] short sleep gene, so I’d be wary about that

[00:26:07] AJ: because he says he, he’s like, I literally can’t [00:26:10] sleep longer. Okay. And so I guess for me, like, why aren’t people sleeping like. [00:26:15] Because they’ve, they’ve got children and

[00:26:18] DR HP: jobs to hold [00:26:20] down and, and there’s definitely the children part for sure.

[00:26:23] Yes. Just because they’ve [00:26:25] put just modern living. Mm-hmm. So many demands. Getting children to [00:26:30] school, getting self to work, preparing meals, just getting [00:26:35] everything done. I think people tell themselves that, that. They’ve just got so much on their, they

[00:26:39] AJ: [00:26:40] deprioritize sleep to get the rest of life done. Yes.

[00:26:41] Basically.

[00:26:41] DR HP: Basically it’s deprioritizing sleep, but we have to, I mean, we [00:26:45] make the worst decisions. We eat badly when, when we wake up sleep [00:26:50] deprived. We will have high levels of the, of the hormone cortisol throughout the [00:26:55] day. Cortisol, remember the stress hormone? That means we feel stressed before anything has even happened.[00:27:00]

[00:27:00] Mm-hmm.

[00:27:02] DR HP: Sleep deprivation, um, [00:27:05] dampens the hormone leptin, which makes us feel full and, and increases [00:27:10] levels of the hormone ghrelin, which makes us hungry. And not only that, we don’t not, we’re not hungry for [00:27:15] Brussels sprouts. We’re hungry for junk food, for sugar, for quick fixes. [00:27:20] You know, we, we are more angry.

[00:27:23] We, we snap more just. [00:27:25] All the things I, I, I can just tell you an example of something, um, that happened in Australia, in [00:27:30] Brisbane. Um, there was a big event, a lot of police involved. And, and on the last day, a young police officer [00:27:35] was asked to take a bag of guns back to the police station, and we got, when he got to the police station, [00:27:40] he realized he’d forgotten the guns at the train station.[00:27:45]

[00:27:45] And, and there was this major like investigation. How on earth could a [00:27:50] police officer do something so stupid? Simple answer. He was really, he’d been work, he’d [00:27:55] done, I dunno how many days in a row, sleep deprived and it was sleep deprived. Mm-hmm. We do really dumb things when [00:28:00] we’re sleep deprived, so, so I think chronic sleep deprivation, you know, [00:28:05] contributes to brain fog, dehydration, and especially if you’re sleep [00:28:10] deprived, you need to drink more water.

[00:28:12] Again, it’s ’cause of a hormonal thing. I’m not gonna, well, the

[00:28:14] AJ: [00:28:15] detoxification right. Like the more water you drink, does that help? Just deep talk. That too. But it’s,

[00:28:19] DR HP: it’s [00:28:20] also, well just, just dehydration. Your brain needs water. Um, so the longer you’re awake, you just [00:28:25] need more. That’s right. Yes, exactly. Um, and taking [00:28:30] micro breaks, even just, you know, every 40.[00:28:35]

[00:28:35] Minutes to an hour. Don’t leave it much long. Don’t leave it more than more than an hour. [00:28:40] Take micro breaks. And what I mean by that is shift your focus from your desk, from your [00:28:45] computer, preferably just to nature.

[00:28:48] Mm.

[00:28:48] DR HP: Go and find a garden, [00:28:50] a go to garden. If nothing else, just see if you can get a picture of [00:28:55] nature.

[00:28:55] Looking at an urban environment isn’t as rejuvenating, but going for a [00:29:00] walk in nature, nature nurtures us. That is another thing that. [00:29:05] It heals our body, heals our brain, be for for many reasons. Number one, you’ve heard of the [00:29:10] microbiome, which is the trillions of bacteria in our gut. There is also an [00:29:15] aero biome, trillions of bacteria in the air, in nature.

[00:29:19] [00:29:20] When we inhale them, not just the bacteria, but also [00:29:25] chemicals called phyton sides, which are produced by trees, they strengthen our immune [00:29:30] system. They lower our blood pressure. They lower levels of the hormone [00:29:35] cortisol. Nature will energize us if we are tired. Nature [00:29:40] will calm us down if we are stressed.

[00:29:43] A bonus tip for you, if you’re ever in [00:29:45] hospital, ask for a room with a view of nature because hospital patients that [00:29:50] look out onto nature heal more quickly, need fewer painkillers, get [00:29:55] out of hospital sooner.

[00:29:56] AJ: Wow.

[00:29:57] DR HP: Prison. If you’re ever in prison, ask for a cell with [00:30:00] a view of nature. Let’s hope

[00:30:00] AJ: I am. Never in prison.

[00:30:01] No, but

[00:30:02] DR HP: just, just in case. Prisoners who look [00:30:05] out onto whose cells look out onto nature, they get sick less often. They better behave. They get outta [00:30:10] prison sooner. Phenomenal.

[00:30:12] AJ: Okay, so I, I have to stop because it’s like [00:30:15] these are seemingly so simple. Simple that we [00:30:20] ignore them.

[00:30:20] DR HP: Yes. Yes. That is the danger of this.

[00:30:22] That is the problem with this. It’s like, [00:30:25] yeah, I know I should eat better. I know I should exercise. I know I should get out into nature. By the way, [00:30:30] just to complete that 17 and a half minutes a day, 120 minutes a week, [00:30:35] they’ve done studies in England to find how much you need, how much nature you need to stay [00:30:40] healthy.

[00:30:40] So 120 minutes a week, combine it with [00:30:45] exercise, and you’ve killed two birds with one stone.

[00:30:47] AJ: Why don’t we do it? Like, I mean, these are [00:30:50] things that’s like, none of this is necessarily revolutionary. We all know it. [00:30:55] Uh, we know that we need to sleep, we know we should eat healthy. We know [00:31:00] we should drink water.

[00:31:01] Uh, most of us know we should spend out time outside. Most of us [00:31:05] know we should be moving. We’ve been hearing this for decades now, that sitting [00:31:10] does damage long term and yet we’re not doing [00:31:15] it.

[00:31:16] DR HP: Not a strong enough. Why Friedrich Nietzche. He who has [00:31:20] a powerful why can conquer any unknown how? Mm. I think it’s just when people are not sold [00:31:25] enough that this makes enough of a difference and it makes a huge difference.

[00:31:28] But I, I think [00:31:30] people don’t realize that it makes that much difference and it’s like, [00:31:35] oh, I just can’t be bothered. It’s, it’s sort of a, a negative perpetuating spiral. If you wake up [00:31:40] tired and sleep deprived, you’re less motivated. You don’t have the energy to exercise. It’s all too, [00:31:45] everything’s too hard.

[00:31:45] So it kind of starts with that. Then exercise [00:31:50] actually energizes. If you’re sitting all day, that comp, that makes you even more tired, so you’re even less [00:31:55] motivated. Then, um, you know, you have a sugary breakfast, like another big brain [00:32:00] booster. I’m sorry, quit the Coke and sugary beverages. Every [00:32:05] soft drink is a bullet to our brain.

[00:32:07] Unfortunately, fruit juices as well. [00:32:10] Because it’s a massive hit of sugar in a very small amount of time. Even if it’s

[00:32:13] AJ: all natural, no sugar [00:32:15] added it correct. It’s still so much concentrated. If you like fruit,

[00:32:18] DR HP: eat it. Don’t drink it [00:32:20] because how much, how, how many apples would you, you eat in one sitting? [00:32:25]

[00:32:25] AJ: One.

[00:32:25] DR HP: One. You can’t, not 20 not, but in a little apple juice, [00:32:30] minimum, three, four apples. That is a big, it’s just too much, too [00:32:35] much sugar. Now why is sugar damaging to the brain? I’ll spare you all the biochemistry. [00:32:40] Suffice to say, um, sugar is sucrose two smaller and it’s [00:32:45] made up of two smaller sugar molecules, fructose and glucose.

[00:32:48] The fructose [00:32:50] molecule is the more damaging when it hits your brain, it actually [00:32:55] to break that molecule down. It drains your brain cells of energy.

[00:32:59] It

[00:32:59] DR HP: does [00:33:00] not, fructose does not give you energy. Glucose does. But too much of it is a bad thing [00:33:05] too. But fructose actually drains brain cells of energy. It impedes [00:33:10] communication between brain cells, fructose messes with genes in two [00:33:15] really important areas of our brain, the hippocampus, our learning and memory warehouse, and our [00:33:20] hypothalamus, which regulates all our hormones.

[00:33:22] So you drink that [00:33:25] massive dose of sugar, and it’s like machine gunfire to your brain. And [00:33:30] yeah, you’ll get that initial high for a short amount of time ’cause you get that glucose, but then you [00:33:35] get that massive crash and then you’ve gotta start all over again.

[00:33:37] AJ: Because I have a personal question ’cause I have two [00:33:40] little boys who are ages five and seven.

[00:33:42] Um, so all things kid related are [00:33:45] just very top of mind for me, 24 7. Knowing everything that you’ve just [00:33:50] said, why do all of these companies then create [00:33:55] all of these things that you’re just talking about and gear them to children?

[00:33:59] DR HP: [00:34:00] Profit over people.

[00:34:01] AJ: I mean, it’s

[00:34:02] DR HP: absurd. It is absurd. Uh, it it [00:34:05] because it’s a trillion dollar industry.

[00:34:07] Let me just give you one thing, just just as an [00:34:10] example. If you changed nothing in your life but you decided you’d add one [00:34:15] small can of soft drink, I think, I dunno how many, we have three 30 mils, I dunno what [00:34:20] you’ve got here. Eight ounces. Eight ounces. That’s all. You just added that to your life. [00:34:25] You changed nothing else.

[00:34:25] By the end of the year, you would be six and a half to seven kilograms heavier. Just from that [00:34:30] one can of soft drink. You’d have a 22% increased risk of diabetes [00:34:35] and your risk of all chronic diseases will have skyrocketed and you are [00:34:40] eroding your brain function. Now, if you are a young, you see all the [00:34:45] studies they do on soft drinks, where they go, they don’t do any harm.

[00:34:48] They do them on young [00:34:50] fit, super athletic men. And they tell them to sip that soft drink [00:34:55] over an hour or two. Nobody sips a soft drink over an hour or two, [00:35:00] and so they can fudge the results. So I’m really, you know, I’m not a [00:35:05] conspiracy theorist. However, money talks, you know, fast [00:35:10] food companies like. Uh, quit all the junk food mm-hmm.

[00:35:13] Out there [00:35:15] because our body and brain was not designed to handle all these chemicals. Mm-hmm. [00:35:20] We simply weren’t. What’s my best dietary advice? It doesn’t matter if you are [00:35:25] vegan, vegetarian, omnivore, or carnivore. It doesn’t matter as long as you eat food that’s from [00:35:30] the land, from the sea, from the sky, or from a tree, not from a packet, not from a tin.

[00:35:34] If it [00:35:35] comes in the box, I’d throw it in the bin. I listen to your, uh, that’s so good. I listened to your, [00:35:40] or most of your podcasts, but, but, um, co Dr. Cody, Dr. Cody Goldman [00:35:45] Coleman

[00:35:45] AJ: mm-hmm.

[00:35:45] DR HP: Where you said, oh, I don’t eat sugar. This is, I get this all the time [00:35:50] with my patients. I don’t eat sugar. How did I get diabetes?

[00:35:52] When I don’t eat sugar? I do [00:35:55] the same thing. Go through your pantry and do an order. It was frightening. And it’s, it’s, it’s [00:36:00] terrifying. It was frightening. Every, everything from everything savory has sugar in it, from mayonnaise to, I was [00:36:05] shocked. Bread crackers, frozen meals, teriyaki sauce, sweet chili [00:36:10] sauce, salad dressings

[00:36:11] AJ: everywhere, everywhere.

[00:36:12] Just everything. Sugar and oils. Whereas in everything, [00:36:15] I could not cottage cheese, weave my own eyes. I, it was in everything.

[00:36:19] DR HP: It’s in [00:36:20] everything. So, so sugar is in everything and it’s, so, it’s hidden. That’s right. [00:36:25] Today. By the time a child is eight years old, they’ve already consumed [00:36:30] more sugar than the average person had in their entire life a century ago.[00:36:35]

[00:36:35] So it’s. Birthdays happen once a year for a reason. So you eat sugar once a [00:36:40] year?

[00:36:40] AJ: That’s right. That’s gonna be the new policy at my house. Sugar once a year. I mean, I’m not, [00:36:45] but I mean there’s plenty of natural sugar you can eat. Absolutely. In,

[00:36:47] DR HP: in, in your

[00:36:48] AJ: fruit. I mean, you get a good, ripe [00:36:50] piece of fruit and it’s like, it is a burst of sugar in your mouth.

[00:36:53] Burst of sugar.

[00:36:54] DR HP: Especially [00:36:55] if you’ve eliminated all the added sugar, you actually taste it more when I eliminate and that’s what

[00:36:59] AJ: it is. Our [00:37:00] taste buds have been so. You know, hammered. Yes. They’ve been so like [00:37:05] tapered down by all this other stuff that we can’t even taste the goodness of real whole food.[00:37:10]

[00:37:10] DR HP: And here’s the other problem, people don’t realize just how harmful junk food is and how [00:37:15] harmful soft drinks are there is. They go everything in moderation. No, no, no. We’ve lost touch [00:37:20] with what’s moderation, right? There is some work. Would you eat chew polish in moderation just because it tasted good. [00:37:25] So I put, would you smoke in moderation?

[00:37:29] No, you wouldn’t, [00:37:30] because there is no safe level of cigarette consumption that is so good. There is no safe level of soft drink consumption. [00:37:35] I’m sorry. There just isn’t. And there is really no safe level of junk food consumption. That doesn’t [00:37:40] mean you never eat cake or you never had B biscuits, but it just means [00:37:45] it’s a.

[00:37:47] Special occasion thing. Mm-hmm. And guess [00:37:50] what? Not every day you will enjoy it more. When I was a child, [00:37:55] Serbian sort of tradition, we had only a particular cake that you would eat, [00:38:00] um, at Christmas and at name day and at Easter. [00:38:05] And boy, I so looked forward to it. Mm-hmm. And boy, I savor it. And [00:38:10] you know, I wouldn’t have my whole piece today, so I’d have some more tomorrow and it would just last longer.

[00:38:14] Mm-hmm. [00:38:15] People don’t look forward to any food anymore because it’s every day. They can have [00:38:20] anything anytime, any day. You actually enjoy your food more [00:38:25] when you have it less often, and when you really savor it, um, [00:38:30] we don’t overeat because something tastes too good. We overeat because we’re [00:38:35] not paying attention to what we’re eating and we’re overeating because it’s not really satisfying.[00:38:40]

[00:38:41] One way, I, one thing I do with my patients too that go, ah, I just, this. [00:38:45] I could never give up X food. Let’s say it’s Krispy Kreme donuts, but I’m just using that as an [00:38:50] example. I go, okay, next time, please bring in a Krispy Kreme donut and we’re gonna eat it together. [00:38:55] And they go, what? Bring in a Krispy Kreme donut the next visit.

[00:38:59] So they do, and I go, [00:39:00] right, you are gonna eat this donut. Like you’ve never, ever, ever eaten it before. [00:39:05] Smell it. Don’t, don’t even eat. Just look at it first. Smell it. Take in the take in [00:39:10] the scent. Just, you know, what sort of flavors are you smelling it? Take a [00:39:15] bite, really try and absorb all the flavors. So eating really [00:39:20] mindfully after three bites, it’s like I’ve had enough

[00:39:23] Mm

[00:39:24] DR HP: I, [00:39:25] I can’t eat anymore.

[00:39:25] It’s too sweet. But you never paid attention until now. [00:39:30] And once you get rid of all the artificial, I say [00:39:35] artificially sweeten. I don’t mean using artificial sweetness, but that too is not good for a different reason. [00:39:40] But once you acclimatize your taste buds to real food. [00:39:45] Cashews and macadamia. Nuts are sweet.

[00:39:47] Milk is sweet. [00:39:50] Like, it’s like I don’t often drink raw milk, but occasionally I’ll just have a, [00:39:55] it’s thick and cream, it’s really sweet. And, and, and don’t get me started on, [00:40:00] um, the, the plant-based milks. Nothing wrong with almond milk [00:40:05] except that they add sugar, sunflower oil, artificial colorings, flavoring.[00:40:10]

[00:40:11] I had a girlfriend come and stay with me once who only drank soy milk. Nothing wrong with [00:40:15] soy milk. I went to the supermarket. My husband was just over it ’cause I was half an hour [00:40:20] reading all the labels trying to find a soy milk that I could morally buy for her. And not [00:40:25] po feel I was poisoning her. Um, I finally found one and ’cause all I had is soybeans and [00:40:30] water uhhuh.

[00:40:31] So I brought, I was so proud of myself. She said, I’ve never tried this [00:40:35] brand before. Tried nearly spat it out. Said, this is the worst soy milk I’ve ever tasted. [00:40:40] I said, that’s because it’s only soybeans and water. Yours probably has sugar, added sugar. [00:40:45] Um, most of them have, what else? Some kind of oils. Anyway, all I’m saying is [00:40:50] we don’t realize how damaging the food is because safety in numbers, if everybody’s [00:40:55] doing it, it should be fine.

[00:40:55] It should be fine, but you are too young. But doctors used to [00:41:00] advertise their favorite cigarettes. We get it wrong and we’ve gotta admit [00:41:05] that, you know, when we got it wrong with cigarettes. We’ve got it wrong with soft drinks and [00:41:10] juices and we’ve got it wrong with junk food. It is really harmful.

[00:41:13] AJ: You, my [00:41:15] friend, need to be plastered on billboards all across the world saying this because it is the [00:41:20] truth.

[00:41:20] And honestly, what we’re not hearing right now is truth. That’s right. Right. We’re hearing [00:41:25] a whole bunch of stuff. Uh, now here in the US you probably don’t follow as much of the [00:41:30] politics. Uh, but it was fascinating just a few weeks ago to hear the [00:41:35] American Heart Association. Mm. On the stand [00:41:40] saying that they disagreed with a lot of the new Make America healthy [00:41:45] again, you know, bans and practices and it was the American Heart Association and [00:41:50] going, well, we just don’t agree and we’re just sitting here going, look, watching this court appeal going, [00:41:55] what do you not agree with?

[00:41:56] No, I was gonna say, what do they not agree with? That all of the artificial [00:42:00] foods, uh, have a negative impact on heart Help. [00:42:05] But they, it’s, but they do. They do. They do. And it was just [00:42:10] fascinating to listen to these representatives going, well, there’s just not enough proof for us to make an [00:42:15] official stand.

[00:42:15] There is, there is, but at the end of the day, it’s like, who are they funded by? [00:42:20] Who are they funded by? Exactly. And so, uh, I was gonna tell you this quick, uh, thing because, [00:42:25] uh, it’s a, ever since I have. Radically become aware of this in my own [00:42:30] life and throughout all the package things, and read labels like a crazy person takes me two hours to go grocery [00:42:35] shopping every single time.

[00:42:36] Yes. Which is why you just stay and we call it perimeter shopping. Yes. So we [00:42:40] never go down the aisles. No. It’s just perimeter shopping. Um, but I give my kids an opportunity [00:42:45] every single time they go to the store with me, and here’s their opportunity. I’ll buy [00:42:50] anything that you want, as long as it has less than four [00:42:55] ingredients and less than four grams of sugar.

[00:42:57] DR HP: Wonderful.

[00:42:57] AJ: And if you can find it, bring it to [00:43:00] me and I will buy it for you.

[00:43:02] DR HP: Great.

[00:43:03] AJ: And you know what, they’re always [00:43:05] like, mom, that doesn’t exist. There is nothing. And I’m like, yet there [00:43:10] is, it’s called a banana, an orange, an apple. It’s called broccoli. It’s, [00:43:15] and it’s, it’s been fascinating for my kids because then anytime that we’re out, they’ll just [00:43:20] ask, does this have four grams of sugar?

[00:43:22] And so it’s

[00:43:22] DR HP: like, it’s so good,

[00:43:23] AJ: but it’s, but it. It [00:43:25] is that ’cause

[00:43:25] DR HP: because a child shouldn’t be having more than four grams of sugar a day sugar. And it’s like if I has more than four

[00:43:29] AJ: [00:43:30] ingredients, sugar, and if I cannot pronounce them, we cannot buy them. Mm. Right. We cannot. Fantastic. [00:43:35] I’ve become my, Rory teases me, he goes, baby, you’re just one step away from full blown hippie right now [00:43:40] because I bought my own almond milk maker.

[00:43:42] Wow. Right. The almond cow. Highly [00:43:45] recommended, uh, no affiliate fees, just really like it. And uh, you add almonds and water. [00:43:50] Fantastic. And then. Voila. Overnight, you wake up and you have fresh [00:43:55] almond milk and, but it is one of those things where it’s like, there’s so many tools at our [00:44:00] disposal to make it just as easy.

[00:44:01] Like, I’m not saying it’s just as easy of buying a carton from the [00:44:05] store, but kind of it is. I buy a bag, it’s a vomit, I throw [00:44:10] it in, I add the water, I turn it on, and I walk away. But it, it’s a mindset, [00:44:15] it’s a choice. And I’m only so passionate about this because a year ago I woke [00:44:20] up to. All the lies that I had been fed and was believing, which is [00:44:25] I’m healthy.

[00:44:26] Mm. And I wasn’t like I was facing [00:44:30] chronic illness with gallstones and my gallbladder disease and I wasn’t healthy and, but I thought I [00:44:35] was. Yes. And that was the problem. And that is the problem. That’s the problem. I thought I was, people

[00:44:39] DR HP: aren’t in enough [00:44:40] pain uhhuh that that’s the problem. And, and. People don’t [00:44:45] realize how good they can feel.

[00:44:47] People don’t realize just how much more [00:44:50] sharply they could think, how much better they could concentrate. You know, the norm is to [00:44:55] feel tired and run down every day, and so people have forgotten. Just [00:45:00] how healthy it’s been. Normalized it’s possible to be

[00:45:02] AJ: sickness has been normalized. Yes it has. Right?

[00:45:04] Foggy [00:45:05] brain, mom brain. I remember, um, you know, after children as I kept saying like, [00:45:10] oh man, mom, brain is real. Um, and what it, I didn’t click to me as like, no. What’s [00:45:15] real is sleep deprivation. Yes. Right. That is real. And because of that, I have, [00:45:20] quote unquote mom brain, foggy brain. A couple of things I want to,

[00:45:24] DR HP: uh, [00:45:25] address on that.

[00:45:25] Number one there. A [00:45:30] mom brain, your the brain changes a bit because now your priority is your children. [00:45:35] So if you would ab observe yourself, your brain is [00:45:40] actually sharper in relation to anything to do with your children.

[00:45:43] Mm.

[00:45:43] DR HP: Uh, in terms of [00:45:45] hearing Oh, absolutely. Your, your, your hearing is sharper in terms of [00:45:50] recognizing in the distance that your child is crying.

[00:45:53] Um, [00:45:55] so there are certain. That’s true. That’s true. I haven’t been a mother, so I don’t know all the details, but I [00:46:00] do know that the brain changes in a positive way in order for you to protect your children. [00:46:05] But what we notice is the ne because [00:46:10] that’s just how we program. We notice more that, that, you know, we are more tired.[00:46:15]

[00:46:15] Um, we tend to multitask more. Mm-hmm. Which drains the brain of energy, which increases the [00:46:20] brain fog as well. Mm-hmm. Um, another quick way to brain fog is to multitask all the time. [00:46:25] Now we, there are times when you have to multitask and there are two different types of [00:46:30] multitasking, by the way. There is multitasking where one thing is automatic, [00:46:35] like you can walk and talk that’s multitasking, but you don’t have to go, I have to put one foot in [00:46:40] front of the, that’s right.

[00:46:40] Other, so there is type, that type of multitasking is fine, [00:46:45] but it’s when you’ve got highly cerebral mm-hmm. You know, mentally [00:46:50] demanding tasks, the brain is not able to multi. Focus. [00:46:55] Mm, that’s good. The brain is only able to focus on one thing at a time. So if you’re multitasking, [00:47:00] you are very rapidly switching your attention from one thing to the next, to the next.

[00:47:04] Mm. And then back to the [00:47:05] first thing. So that means, you know, if you are talking to somebody on the phone, but also reading an [00:47:10] email at the same time, uh, then you are gonna lose. [00:47:15] Information one way or the other. Yeah, you’re gonna pick lose information from that email. You’re not gonna pick up [00:47:20] everything that the person’s saying.

[00:47:21] You’re more likely to make mistakes, you’re more likely to feel stressed, and [00:47:25] you’re more likely to feel tired after that conversation. Uh, and they’ve actually done studies where they’ve compared [00:47:30] people and they’ve said, you’ve gotta get these five tasks done. You in this room [00:47:35] multitask you in this room, must only do one thing at a time.

[00:47:38] And they time them. And then [00:47:40] they see who makes more mistakes and they just sort of question them afterwards. Now the people who multitask [00:47:45] think Uhhuh that they’ve done better a hundred percent of the time. [00:47:50] The mono taskers, do it faster, do it better, [00:47:55] make fewer mistakes,

[00:47:56] AJ: you know? And I love what you said, it’s not multitasking, it’s your brain can’t multi [00:48:00] focus.

[00:48:00] That’s

[00:48:00] DR HP: right. We can multitask. We can’t multi focus.

[00:48:02] AJ: That’s so good. All right, so Dr. [00:48:05] Elena, I could spend. The rest of the day having this conversation with you because this is, [00:48:10] this is the part that fascinates me. And I think it was like the moment that I hit 40, something [00:48:15] clicked in me and it’s like, Hey, are you, are you preparing your body to [00:48:20] live another 40 years?

[00:48:21] And it, I don’t know what it was, it clicked in me, why stop at

[00:48:24] DR HP: 40,

[00:48:24] AJ: [00:48:25] right? Or yeah, another 60, 70 years. And, but there was something that clicked and it, [00:48:30] I have been on this journey of like, no, I, I won’t be able to control all the factors in my life. [00:48:35] I won’t be able to control it. If I get hit by a car this afternoon, I won’t be able to control so many [00:48:40] things.

[00:48:40] But what I put in my mouth and what I do for myself are things that I can influence [00:48:45] every single day. Right. I can influence when I go to bed. I can influence keeping my brain active. I [00:48:50] can influence being out in nature. I can influence standing up. Right. And that’s why I thought this was such a [00:48:55] worthwhile conversation to share.

[00:48:57] It’s ’cause everything you share today are things that we can do. [00:49:00] Mm. Right. They don’t cost money. Right. These are things that we can do. Um, and so [00:49:05] first of all, I just thought this was amazing and such a a, it was a breath of fresh [00:49:10] air to be reminded, right? We can do things proactively to protect our [00:49:15] minds to, you know, prevent cognitive decline to, to stay healthy.[00:49:20]

[00:49:20] And so I wanna encourage everyone, um, this is not. The only thing, [00:49:25] uh, that Dr. Helena talks about, um, she’s got two amazing books. Um, she’s [00:49:30] got all kinds of information on her blog, and so if you go to. Her website, [00:49:35] Dr. Helena Popovic, P-O-P-O-V-I-C [00:49:40] popovic.com. We’ll also put that in the show notes, but dr helena popovic.com, uh, [00:49:45] you can access her blog, you can learn about her books, you can learn about all of her work and her studies and her [00:49:50] research.

[00:49:50] Um, not to mention, uh, all of her speaking engagements, uh, all around the world, and [00:49:55] so highly encourage you to go check her out. Learn more about the things that you can [00:50:00] do to stay sharp, uh, and stay healthy. Right. All right. Last top, last two [00:50:05] questions. Yes. Before I release you, what is your morning [00:50:10] routine?

[00:50:10] To have a happy, healthy brain.

[00:50:13] DR HP: Okay. I wake up, [00:50:15] I. My, the first thing I do is exercise, whether it’s, um, aerobic [00:50:20] exercise or strength training, which we didn’t talk about. So I could just quickly mention that. Um, the stronger [00:50:25] your hand grip strength, the stronger your mind get your hand grip strength tested because it tends to [00:50:30] reflect your overall body strength.

[00:50:31] And whenever we, um, work out build [00:50:35] muscles, we are actually building brain. So from our mid thirties onwards, we lose about [00:50:40] 5% of our muscles every decade. That means mid thirties to mid seventies, we [00:50:45] could lose. 20%. One fifth of our muscles. Wow. People go, I don’t care. I don’t wanna be [00:50:50] muscular. It’s not about your muscles, it’s about your brain.

[00:50:52] Mm-hmm. And also losing muscle means we want [00:50:55] more frail, more likely to have falls. All of that. And also, sorry, I [00:51:00] just have to get these few things in. Um, maintain good balance. People are having poorer [00:51:05] and poorer balance with with time, because we are less physically active because we spend [00:51:10] so much time sitting because we’re losing muscle mass, we should be able to stand on one leg.[00:51:15]

[00:51:15] For 60 seconds with our eyes closed, try it. Okay. Okay. So, so that one, and that’s because [00:51:20] balance, um, is, is uh, coordinated by part of the [00:51:25] brain called the cerebellum, which also regulates our thoughts and emotions. And people who have poor [00:51:30] mental health tend to have poor balance. You improve balance, you improve their mental health.

[00:51:33] Fascinating. So that’s a really [00:51:35] fascinating thing. That’s another whole other story. Um, so, so I go to the gym, but [00:51:40] while I’m going to the gym, while I’m driving to the gym. I practice gratitude because one [00:51:45] topic we didn’t cover, which is also really important, is that feeling positive emotions [00:51:50] boosts our brain and our body.

[00:51:52] That’s a whole other topic. Why? [00:51:55] Because when we feel a positive emotion that strengthens our immune system. They’ve [00:52:00] actually measured studies that, that they’ve done it on actors where they spend a whole day [00:52:05] working with depressive depressing scripts.

[00:52:08] Mm.

[00:52:08] DR HP: And then they actually take [00:52:10] blood samples.

[00:52:11] They’ve lowered their white cell count, which is part of their immune [00:52:15] system. And when they test the function of their white cells, they’re more sluggish responding [00:52:20] to bacteria and viruses. So back on the other hand, when, [00:52:25] when, when you have actors working with uplifting, happy scripts, their immune system stays [00:52:30] strong, there’s, there’s no change.

[00:52:31] So, so I practice and one of the, some, and people go, oh yeah, [00:52:35] and, and your, um, one of your other interviewees, Jason. Only a couple of weeks ago [00:52:40] said, oh, positive thinking doesn’t work. I’m, I’m not suggesting you force yourself to be positive if you are [00:52:45] not find back doors mm-hmm. To, to improving your [00:52:50] mood if you’re feeling flat.

[00:52:51] Gratitude is a fabulous one. I start every day with reflecting on what I feel [00:52:55] grateful for. I love that it’s, look. It could be shocking things going on in our lives, [00:53:00] but there’s always something we can be grateful for. I always think about this at an airport when people get [00:53:05] irate, impatient. You know, are you, why do you have to check my language?

[00:53:09] And I’m [00:53:10] thinking, the fact that you are at an airport [00:53:15] able to catch a plane, you are part of the privileged few in this, in this world. [00:53:20] Do you know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Not of all the people. If you can catch a plane. [00:53:25] Be grateful that you are in that. Minority of the world’s

Ep 583: One Leadership Principle You’re probably Ignoring: Self-Talk | Ian Koniak Episode Recap

[00:00:00] Anything that we want in life follows something that I called in my Take the [00:00:05] stairs book, the Creation Principle of integrity, which is that you [00:00:10] think it, then you speak it, then you act, and then it happens. And that the [00:00:15] premise here is that all of creation from this beautiful hotel behind [00:00:20] me to the, to the camera, I’m recording this on to the screen that you’re watching and to this, to this [00:00:25] chair that we are sitting in.

[00:00:27] Starts and follows the same creation [00:00:30] process. You think it, you speak it, you act, and it happens, which means that the [00:00:35] spoken word is the genesis. Of all creation. And [00:00:40] if that is true, that the, that the, the spoken word is the first time when I [00:00:45] say something, that’s the first moment that something exists. It can, it comes out of my [00:00:50] mind into the world or through the written word or the spoken world.

[00:00:53] And it, once it’s out there, now, it [00:00:55] can impact others. And, and it, and I, it can be adapted and edited and molded [00:01:00] and shaped and, and so the spoken word is really important. That’s where creation comes from. And. [00:01:05] And the life that you have, hopefully is one that you [00:01:10] have created, or at least the life that you’re going to have.

[00:01:14] [00:01:15] One day is one that you realize that you are creating now. And if at, if at least [00:01:20] that is true, that the life that you’re gonna have one day is what you are creating right now, then [00:01:25] your words matter tremendously because. They [00:01:30] mark the onset. The genesis of creation is the spoken word, and, and [00:01:35] so here’s the question and here’s the dilemma.

[00:01:38] What are you telling [00:01:40] yourself about yourself? What are [00:01:45] you, what are you saying to yourself about yourself? [00:01:50] I’m not even talking about or touching on or addressing all the things that other people [00:01:55] say about you or the movies that you watch and the music you listen to and, and, and the books [00:02:00] that you read, and how much that Im impacts you when I’m just talking about here is what do [00:02:05] you tell yourself to be true about who you are?[00:02:10]

[00:02:11] Because whether you realize it or not, you are creating [00:02:15] through your own words who you are. [00:02:20] And here’s the part that is so heartbreaking, [00:02:25] and this is something that we have found to be, be so true [00:02:30] for those of you that have kids, or for those of you that are [00:02:35] married, you have a spouse or you have a a, a, a, a partner, a boyfriend, or a girlfriend.[00:02:40]

[00:02:40] Most of you would never let someone talk about [00:02:45] your kids the way you allow yourself to talk [00:02:50] about you. Many of you would [00:02:55] never, ever accept someone talking about your spouse or your [00:03:00] partner the way that you allow yourself [00:03:05] to talk about you. I mean, [00:03:10] if there’s on on no day, would it be acceptable [00:03:15] for for you to allow someone to talk about your parents [00:03:20] the way that you talk to yourself every day?[00:03:25]

[00:03:26] That is heartbreaking and it’s, it’s taken me a long time to realize that for [00:03:30] a lot of us, we struggle with this of, of just the, the tape that’s going on [00:03:35] in our head. And, and sometimes it’s ’cause we don’t realize it and a lot of times it’s ’cause we think it’s [00:03:40] true. We think, gosh, I really am stupid or I really am, you know, gonna be poor.

[00:03:44] I [00:03:45] really, you know, my ideas really don’t matter or my voice is insignificant. And [00:03:50] why do we believe those things to be true? The reason that we believe those things to [00:03:55] be true is not because they’re true. We believe what we hear most [00:04:00] often. That’s it. You don’t believe what is true. [00:04:05] You believe what you hear most often and what you hear most often.

[00:04:09] [00:04:10] What you hear more than anything else about yourself is what [00:04:15] you tell yourself about yourself. So [00:04:20] if you would never let someone. Talk to your parents [00:04:25] that way, or you would never let someone talk about your partner or your [00:04:30] spouse in that way, or if you would never let someone [00:04:35] talk about your kids in that way, [00:04:40] then you better not allow yourself to talk about yourself [00:04:45] in that [00:04:50] way.

Ep 582: How I Built a 3 Million Dollar Coaching Business in 4 years with Ian Koniak

[00:00:00] Rory: [00:00:05] Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand [00:00:10] podcast. This is the place where we help mission-driven messengers, just like you [00:00:15] learn how to build and monetize your personal brand. My name is Rory Vaden [00:00:20] and I’m the co-founder of Brand Builders Group, a hall of fame speaker, and New York Times [00:00:25] bestselling author.

[00:00:25] And this show is to help experts learn how to become more [00:00:30] wealthy and well-known. I know you’re gonna love it. Thanks for being here. Let’s get started. [00:00:35] One of the great privileges of my life is when our clients [00:00:40] succeed and getting to feel like we’ve played a small part in helping [00:00:45] somebody do something awesome in their own life.

[00:00:47] And we never get to take credit for it ’cause it’s [00:00:50] not our credit to take, it’s their credit to take. But this next gentleman that you’re [00:00:55] about to hear from is one of my favorite success stories, one of my personal [00:01:00] friends, mine and AJ’s. We’ve known him for a very long time, and you’re gonna hear some [00:01:05] of that story.

[00:01:06] And he was one of our very first brand builders, group [00:01:10] clients. Um, early on. He, he knew us from our former life. [00:01:15] Um, and so a couple years into Brand Builders Group, he joined us and, [00:01:20] uh, I’ll give you the formal bio. Okay. So Ian Cognac is our longtime [00:01:25] friend, but he is the president and he is the founder of Untap Your [00:01:30] sales potential.

[00:01:31] Which helps sellers go from good to great by [00:01:35] mastering mindset, habits, and skills needed to perform at the highest level in sales. [00:01:40] He has sold over a hundred million dollars in revenue in his career and he is the [00:01:45] former number one enterprise account executive, uh, for [00:01:50] salesforce.com. He is also, uh, also worked in the Dean of Pavilion’s [00:01:55] Enterprise Sales School.

[00:01:56] And he’s a speaker, he’s a coach, he’s an expert in sales. That’s [00:02:00] where we met him years and years ago, over decades ago at this point. And, [00:02:05] uh, Ian leads sales training workshops for Fortune 500 companies. He [00:02:10] speaks on stages. Uh, he, he appears in the media with several, has been on several [00:02:15] of the top 100 podcasts.

[00:02:17] And, um, I’ll go ahead and just spill the [00:02:20] beans. He four years into his business, so he started with Brand Builders Group about four [00:02:25] years ago. His fourth year in the business, he did three and a half [00:02:30] million dollars in annual revenue. He is [00:02:35] qualified for the Inc 5,000 list in his first year of eligibility and is [00:02:40] just someone that we kind of hold up as a model to go look at what’s possible.[00:02:45]

[00:02:45] So with that, Ian,

[00:02:46] Ian: welcome to the show. So good to see you again, man. It was [00:02:50] great to see you briefly in LA and I’m excited to dive into the story and, and [00:02:55] how, how we built it.

[00:02:56] Rory: So, yeah, just for people who don’t know, so we [00:03:00] met you through aj, aj, uh, ran a sales training [00:03:05] workshop for your sales team back in 2008.[00:03:10]

[00:03:10] Yeah, it was right

[00:03:10] Ian: when, before he wrote the book, take the Stairs. So, okay.

[00:03:14] Rory: [00:03:15] So it would’ve been, that was probably more like 2010, 2011, 2010, something like that. ’cause the book came out [00:03:20] in 2012. So, but over a decade ago. So we met you in a former life, [00:03:25] became friends, uh, and stayed in touch. Then we [00:03:30] exited that business, started over with Brand Builders Group, and then a couple years later we [00:03:35] reconnected.

[00:03:35] Mm-hmm. When did you start untap your sales potential? [00:03:40]

[00:03:40] Ian: I started, I launched unap Your Sales Potential in May [00:03:45] of 2022. Okay. I originally had started a business called Ian [00:03:50] Cognac Sales Coaching after starting with Brand Builders Group, and we had focused on [00:03:55] doing business to business training. So we’d go to big companies and we trained their sales team, and I [00:04:00] quickly realized I was trading time for money and that wasn’t gonna scale.

[00:04:03] And so I decided to pivot [00:04:05] from B2B to B2C and sell directly to. The individual [00:04:10] sellers who are there are millions of them, and, and create a program that, that had, um, [00:04:15] a combination of, of one-on-ones, but also group coaching and online, online training as [00:04:20] well, via a course. So we, we started, we launched in May of [00:04:25] 2022 was our first launch.

[00:04:26] I had already been on my own for about a year, had [00:04:30] left Salesforce for about a year at that point.

[00:04:32] Rory: Okay. Yeah. So, so you joined us [00:04:35] around 2020. Something like that. A couple years after started it was, it was [00:04:40] 2000.

[00:04:40] Ian: It was 2019 to 2020 in that range. Before I had left [00:04:45] Salesforce and when I was building my business, while working still at [00:04:50] corporate is when I worked with Brand Builders.

[00:04:51] And then I stayed with you guys to do several workshops [00:04:55] where we did, um, you know, content workshop. We spend a two day with, with Jeremy and the team kind of [00:05:00] thinking about the structure of Run Top your sales potential. And I continued to work with your [00:05:05] implementation team on building out the portal and Kajabi and, and, uh, really [00:05:10] getting the infrastructure set up around the LMS and, and everything that went along with [00:05:15] that.

[00:05:15] Rory: Yeah. So it’s just, I, I want people to know that because it’s like, it’s a [00:05:20] amazing, first of all, congratulations on three and a half million dollars in annual revenue in [00:05:25] your fourth year. Thank

[00:05:26] Ian: you brother. And, and I’ll say we’re running about 60, [00:05:30] 60% margin. We just got the p and l. So really good margin on, on the business as [00:05:35] well, um, after, you know, cost of delivery and payroll and whatnot.

[00:05:39] So [00:05:40] it’s a profitable business. It’s not just revenue.

[00:05:43] Rory: Yeah. And I want to, I want to hear about the [00:05:45] business model, but I just for, for those of you listening to go, you know. E [00:05:50] Ian started with us and it didn’t really, it not like it necessarily took [00:05:55] off in those first couple years. You were working at your corporate job, you were posting videos on [00:06:00] LinkedIn, but just to fast forward for everybody to go, if you knew [00:06:05] that five years from now.

[00:06:06] If you followed a system and you worked the plan, and you [00:06:10] did the things that we told you to do and you executed, and like, if [00:06:15] you knew that in five years you would generate three and a [00:06:20] half million dollars, would you be willing to pay the price for five years? Like, [00:06:25] would you be willing to make the sacrifices?

[00:06:26] Would you invest in the training and the coaching and, [00:06:30] and making the videos? So take us back in to. Your [00:06:35] first video’s on LinkedIn mm-hmm. And how you started [00:06:40] there. So

[00:06:40] Ian: this is a real important point for all the, for all your audience [00:06:45] is when I launched Untapped Your Sales Potential in 2022. Okay. I did a [00:06:50] launch that was six figures.

[00:06:52] Immediately it was like two 50, 300,000 [00:06:55] for in a day or two since launching to the point where PayPal shut me down, [00:07:00] Stripe shut me down. ’cause they didn’t know if it was real or not. So I had to be submitting docs in the middle of the launch to [00:07:05] let them know, Hey, this is legit. Um, because we. You know, the, the cards weren’t [00:07:10] going through ’cause they, they, they stopped us.

[00:07:11] We were doing so well. And I, and I share that because that [00:07:15] was a result of the, the prior three years of building a [00:07:20] brand and building an audience and building trust to the point where I had a big wait list, I had [00:07:25] credibility. So when I finally had a product on top of your sales potential, the demand was [00:07:30] literally seeming, and, and that is really what you’re asking about is how did you get to that [00:07:35] point?

[00:07:35] ’cause the revenue comes. Uh, as a lagging indicator of the leading indicators that you [00:07:40] do, the KPIs that you’re doing. So my journey started with brand builders. It really started, um, [00:07:45] with you, Rory. You were just starting the company and we had our call and, and you said you came at the [00:07:50] perfect time, but I didn’t.

[00:07:51] Near death experience in December of 2018. And, [00:07:55] um, it, it was, uh, I won’t get too detailed, but it, it. It [00:08:00] helped me realize that my life had been very self-serving. It had been very [00:08:05] focused on me and what I could do for myself and and my family. And I was really focused on money [00:08:10] and recognition and a lot of the things that sellers tend to tend to focus on.

[00:08:14] And I. [00:08:15] When I was, the

[00:08:15] Rory: culture encourages you to focus on those things. On the sales culture. It’s

[00:08:18] Ian: a performance, it’s a [00:08:20] performance culture and leadership. And that was the world I lived in for, you know, for my whole life. [00:08:25] And so, um, what happened is I got stuck upside down on a rollercoaster and hung up there for [00:08:30] 30 minutes.

[00:08:30] No way. Yes, yes way. And in my life flashed before [00:08:35] my eyes. I thought I would die. And what I realized is I. Had, if I died, all of [00:08:40] my wisdom, all of my knowledge, all my gifts, all my lessons would’ve died with me and I wouldn’t have [00:08:45] made a legacy and helped other people. And I, I promised to God when I was hanging up, I said, I [00:08:50] will not wait any longer.

[00:08:51] I don’t know what it’s gonna look like, and I promise I [00:08:55] will start serving people now. And at that moment, the ride took off and that was my [00:09:00] origin story for my business and shortly thereafter. I called you and you said, [00:09:05] Hey, I’m actually started. We just started this thing. You’d be perfect for it. And I took the leap of [00:09:10] faith.

[00:09:10] So at that point, I had no plan. I had no business model. I did [00:09:15] not have a way to monetize. I just had you as a mentor

[00:09:18] Rory: and FYI. [00:09:20] Yeah, so, so like, yeah. So that, that’s amazing. That’s amazing. [00:09:25] Okay, so that is, you’re upside down on a [00:09:30] rollercoaster. You decide I’m gonna do this. Then what happened? So [00:09:35] then you found us.

[00:09:36] Ian: So then I found you right when, when the, when the, the student is [00:09:40] ready, the teacher will appear. And you had had all that stuff go downward. Now brand builders had [00:09:45] started and it was like divine time. It was perfect. And I, I flew out to [00:09:50] Tennessee and went to the finding a brand DNA workshop. And one of the things that.

[00:09:54] We [00:09:55] discussed is, is just building an audience and, and I decided to do what was called a [00:10:00] 365 day challenge, and every day I was gonna post a video, one [00:10:05] minute or less, a short video, giving a tip and giving some help in terms of. [00:10:10] Either personal development or sales, or mindset or habits or just kind of sharing my, my [00:10:15] playbook, my secrets to, to being successful that I had kept with me.

[00:10:18] And the goal simply was if I [00:10:20] died, at least I know I was helping people. And I did that on Instagram. I, I, I spent every day [00:10:25] building on Instagram and I built a good following on Instagram. And what [00:10:30] happened was, um, like how

[00:10:31] Rory: many people. Like when you say good following, this is not millions of people. I want [00:10:35] people No,

[00:10:35] Ian: no, no.

[00:10:35] It was like thousands. It was like five, 6,000 and yeah, it was [00:10:40] engaged. The videos were getting hundreds of views each time. But you know, I had a lot of people that loved the [00:10:45] content and that. Was not how I got [00:10:50] my business monetized. What what happened was, um, I [00:10:55] was building all the infrastructure for my brand at Brand Builders [00:11:00] during the year.

[00:11:00] I was also posting a video a day. So when I say infrastructure, what I mean is, [00:11:05] um, I was building my content. I was building my presentation, I was structuring [00:11:10] what I was gonna teach. I was, um, looking at the website, the logos, the, the [00:11:15] actual. Um, copy for, for my site, ev everything that goes into the [00:11:20] foundation I was building while doing these videos.

[00:11:22] And so I spent a year building all this, [00:11:25] call it the newsletter, the infrastructure, the website. And then what I realized [00:11:30] quickly is that Instagram wasn’t where my people were. You know, I, I, it [00:11:35] was great for me getting comfortable being on camera, and it was great for me [00:11:40] learning to be consistent and have discipline around content creation.

[00:11:44] [00:11:45] But what I ended up doing in January of 2020 was I took all of [00:11:50] that strategy that I had on Instagram. I launched my newsletter, I launched my website, I [00:11:55] launched my blog, and I moved it over to LinkedIn and that’s where my business started. I. [00:12:00] Really exploding as in 2020 when I changed platforms and went to LinkedIn.

[00:12:04] [00:12:05] ’cause the people I was talking to were all sellers working at tech companies and they were [00:12:10] on LinkedIn, they weren’t on Instagram. And so that was really what, what [00:12:15] ended up happening is I built the muscle of content creation and video creation and communication [00:12:20] on Instagram. That was my, my beta. And then when I moved to LinkedIn.

[00:12:24] Um, [00:12:25] now I had a, a way to capture all of the, the, um, audience via my newsletter. [00:12:30] So I started building up this newsletter in 2020 and, and built that pretty [00:12:35] substantial for the next, I’d say two years. And on LinkedIn, once [00:12:40] I started PO posting, I would get a lot of dms and people would, would say, Ian, can you, can you, [00:12:45] uh, coach me?

[00:12:45] Do you coaching? Can you help me? And I started doing one-on-one coaching as my [00:12:50] initial revenue stream. And, and that was really. Um, we made about [00:12:55] $70,000 while I was at Salesforce in 2020. And then I would do a couple keynotes to a [00:13:00] few businesses, and that was really the year. I’ll, I’ll take one more step back.

[00:13:04] [00:13:05] Um, I had some personal challenges where I was going through all this, but I was also [00:13:10] living a double life and, um, struggling with addiction,

[00:13:13] Rory: which I wanna, yeah, I want to talk to you about that, and [00:13:15] I wanna talk to you about that in a second. I want, I wanna, I wanna rewind though, just to. [00:13:20] I think so many people go, oh, well Ian got lucky.

[00:13:23] He went viral, built millions of [00:13:25] followers, and I, and it’s like, that’s not the story here. No. The story is you had [00:13:30] five or 6,000 followers, but they were legit followers on [00:13:35] Instagram. And then you moved to LinkedIn, you said you build your newsletter. Did that, did that mean [00:13:40] you had millions of people in your newsletter?

[00:13:42] Oh my God. How, how many today? How many? I, I, I, [00:13:45] I hope you don’t mind ’cause I just, since you’re one of ours, I’m drilling under the details. Yeah, please, please. How big was [00:13:50] your newsletter at the end of that first year on LinkedIn? I.

[00:13:53] Ian: Maybe a thousand [00:13:55] people. Maybe. I mean, it was very slow in

[00:13:57] Rory: the beginning. A thousand people.

[00:13:58] Yeah. So you said I built it [00:14:00] substantial, which, and I just, I want to clarify for people, ’cause some people [00:14:05] think, oh, substantial. Is James Clear? He is got 3 million people on his email list. We’re talking. A [00:14:10] thousand, but they were a thousand real humans. They were all

[00:14:14] Ian: sellers, all [00:14:15] target audience, all ICP and my LinkedIn following by the end of that year was [00:14:20] probably 5,000.

[00:14:21] So again, very small at this point before going [00:14:25] full time. Because it wasn’t about the following, it was about the content creation, [00:14:30] about the program creation, the system creation, and, and it was about getting money. So these, [00:14:35] these folks that were following me, they were reaching out, they were highly engaged, and they were willing to pay [00:14:40] for one-on-one coaching with me.

[00:14:41] And for me, that was really. Um, [00:14:45] validating that I had a business model that could replace my Salesforce income. ’cause I was one of the top reps at Salesforce. I [00:14:50] was making great money. I was the sole breadwinner for my family. I wanted to know that if I was gonna go and [00:14:55] do this full-time and run my brand and my coaching business full-time, that I could replace my [00:15:00] Salesforce income without skipping a beat.

[00:15:01] And so,

[00:15:02] Rory: and we still, to this day, we still teach the fast, what we call [00:15:05] the fast cash formula, which is posting, posting a video every day. [00:15:10] Asking your friends and family for referrals offering one-on-one coaching. And it’s like we teach all the like [00:15:15] templates and everything to this day, and it’s like, you, you did that.

[00:15:19] Mm-hmm. [00:15:20] And then you scaled. Okay. But there’s a big part in between that I want to talk about, which [00:15:25] is maybe not so pretty because we’ve got, here’s your origin [00:15:30] story and now we see you today and it’s like three and a half million in revenue. But [00:15:35] there’s a big part of your journey that happened, Ian, that I also want people to [00:15:40] know and I, whatever level of truth.

[00:15:43] You feel [00:15:45] comfortable sharing, but I want people to know the real story of what happened [00:15:50] in your life because it was not sunshine and rainbows. It was not viral. It was not. Oprah [00:15:55] discovered you, it was not. You gotta, you hit it big on the lottery [00:16:00] like so can you tell us like what was going on? I would wanna.

[00:16:03] Ian: I would love to, and I [00:16:05] wanna, I wanna for, for the audience listening, um, this is heavy and it’s, [00:16:10] it’s very real and raw. Yeah. A bit

[00:16:12] Rory: of a trigger a warning here too. Just like if you have [00:16:15] little baby ears nearby, like, probably this, this is adult. We’re gonna have adult conversation for a [00:16:20] minute.

[00:16:20] Ian: Yeah, so, so here’s what was going on.

[00:16:22] I was a very high performing [00:16:25] seller, and I was a high functioning addict. So I had struggled with [00:16:30] addiction my entire life. Um, drugs, alcohol, and sex. And, and those [00:16:35] things were, um, a big part of how I got validation and how I [00:16:40] coped with the stress and the overwhelm of the pressure I’d put on myself. And, and just the, [00:16:45] the general, um.

[00:16:47] I would say excess. I was living in, in [00:16:50] flesh and desires of the flesh. And in, um, in [00:16:55] 2020, you know, after a year of being in brand builders, what I started, and I say it’s, it’s [00:17:00] God’s grace, and it, it was a sign from God. But I started realizing that I had a [00:17:05] double life, and here I was trying to coach and trying to train and be this role model.

[00:17:09] [00:17:10] And in, in, um. In my personal life, I was hiding, I was hiding secrets [00:17:15] from my wife. I was going to strip clubs and massage parlors, and I was, um, [00:17:20] I was watching pornography and I wasn’t telling my wife any of this stuff, and I [00:17:25] decided I wanted to confess to my wife in 2020. It was February, [00:17:30] um, 13th, 2020.

[00:17:31] This is the exact date. I had a guilty conscience. I [00:17:35] knew that I could not be the man that I proclaimed to be publicly if I had [00:17:40] private secrets and if I wasn’t living in full authenticity and full truth. And [00:17:45] I, I give full glory to God with, with this because it wasn’t me. It was, it was a [00:17:50] calling, it was a deep moral calling of, you know, living a righteous life.

[00:17:53] And I wanted to break free of [00:17:55] this. And I had tried on my own for many years and just continued to, to slip and, [00:18:00] and, and. You know, compartmentalize this activity. And, and [00:18:05] rationalize. And rationalize stands for rational lies because they’re rational, but you’re lying to [00:18:10] yourself. And any addict or anyone who struggle struggles know, knows what I’m talking about.

[00:18:14] Um, and [00:18:15] I couldn’t do it on my own. So I decided to confess to my wife. And, um, [00:18:20] I told her I was, I was, uh, specifically I was going on webcams. I, I didn’t tell her the [00:18:25] full extent of what. What I was doing, but I said, I’m watching porn, I’m watching webcams. [00:18:30] And she’s like, what’s that? I’m like, well, it’s, it’s basically women who are, um, [00:18:35] now unfortunately, it’s, it’s more rampant than ever with OnlyFans, but it’s, it’s [00:18:40] webcams of real women.

[00:18:41] And, and I said, I know how you feel about porn. I know how you feel about strip clubs. [00:18:45] You know, I just wanted to tell you I’m doing this and get your thoughts. And, um, [00:18:50] she, she collapsed. Uh, she, she fell to the ground. She was four months pregnant and she, [00:18:55] hmm. Started, um, trembling and shaking. Um, and then she started having [00:19:00] labor contractions and we thought we were gonna lose the baby.

[00:19:03] So I, I went and [00:19:05] rushed, rushed to the hospital. Um, and the whole way to the doctor, I’m [00:19:10] praying, I said, God, I don’t know what I’ve done, but please don’t take this baby. I promise I will change. I [00:19:15] promise I will get help. Please don’t take this baby. And we get to the. He puts [00:19:20] the ultrasound and it was the longest 30 seconds of my life.

[00:19:22] I’m hysterical. [00:19:25] And, um, he looks up and he said, there’s a heartbeat. The baby’s okay. And I said, [00:19:30] thank God, thank God. He’s like, what were you cheating? What’d you do? And I said something like that. I’m like, does this [00:19:35] happen a lot? He says, I see it every week. Wow. Women coming in because they’re men [00:19:40] are hiding and living, um, a lie or keeping secrets from their wife.

[00:19:44] [00:19:45] And that to me was the beginning of my rebirth. That was when I found God. That was when I found [00:19:50] Christ. I was baptized in, uh, last year after five years of studying and. [00:19:55] Um, I got into recovery for addiction. I stopped my personal brand to, I [00:20:00] stopped brand builders and I said, no matter what happens, the most important thing in the world is to keep my [00:20:05] family together and to break this generational curse that was, frankly, [00:20:10] um, long before me, before I was born.

[00:20:12] This has been in my family and I was exposed to things at a [00:20:15] very young age, and, you know, I, I, I, that was the. That was the, the [00:20:20] life I inherited. And, and I’d made a decision that this would stop with me and my kids would not [00:20:25] inherit what I did. And, and I devoted myself to recovery. And that was my focus [00:20:30] for 2020.

[00:20:31] Um, and I, I, I share that because [00:20:35] that was necessary for me to get where I am today. And it was part of my [00:20:40] brand building. Um, it, it wasn’t just sales training, I was talking about. [00:20:45] Authenticity and integrity and all the things that I had to do in order to get to a [00:20:50] place where I would attract people from a place of truth and, and from a [00:20:55] place of love and service.

[00:20:56] I had to face my own demons first before I can do that. And, [00:21:00] and I’ll just tell you this, while my brand is focused on helping sellers untap their [00:21:05] full potential, the amount of people and men specifically who have reached out [00:21:10] that have struggled with similar afflictions is. More than I can ever [00:21:15] even think was possible saying Me too.

[00:21:18] I’ve been doing this in secret [00:21:20] and, and I’ve helped a lot of people get into recovery for a very taboo [00:21:25] addiction that I don’t think anyone really talks about, but is rampant in our society with the. [00:21:30] With porn and with the access that we have. So I, it’s been five years and, and [00:21:35] by God’s grace, I, I am living a life of honesty and integrity with my wife and [00:21:40] been sober for five years.

[00:21:41] And, and I, I, um, I’m very proud of, of [00:21:45] those changes. And that’s been part of my, my story is sharing some of these very personal [00:21:50] things. And in the process it’s attracted a lot of. Sellers who, who tend to [00:21:55] struggle with some of these areas and some of these addictions. Um, it’s very [00:22:00] common in that business and sales space and, um, a lot of people have come to me [00:22:05] because of that, because of my faith, because of my battles with addiction and A DHD and [00:22:10] all the personal changes I’ve made.

[00:22:12] And speak to, it’s attracted a lot of [00:22:15] people to my, my business and my brand. And that’s one of the main things they cite as a reason they’ve [00:22:20] signed up is that vulnerability and that story.

[00:22:22] Rory: Yeah, I mean that’s a, [00:22:25] uh, that’s a crazy story. Um, yeah, [00:22:30] thank you for sharing that. And I, part of, [00:22:35] there’s so many powerful parts of it.

[00:22:38] One of the [00:22:40] connections I want people to make though is [00:22:45] on the surface, you would think that sharing all of those [00:22:50] things would destroy your personal brand. I. You would think [00:22:55] it would eliminate people from paying you. [00:23:00] You would think you would just get trashed and you, you know, [00:23:05] ha ha havoc and like, you know, trolled online about all of these [00:23:10] things.

[00:23:11] And I’m sure you’ve received some of those, which you will [00:23:15] receive anyways. You receive some of that anyways, but [00:23:20] sharing the hard parts of your story.[00:23:25]

[00:23:25] Doesn’t usually hurt the business. It usually [00:23:30] helps the business long term because people go, oh, Ian [00:23:35] is a real, he’s a real dude. He struggled with real [00:23:40] things and he is really willing to like lay it all out there [00:23:45] and. You know, I’m not saying that that would be the strategy everyone [00:23:50] should follow that you would just like take all of your darkest secrets and lay ’em out on the web.

[00:23:54] And I [00:23:55] also don’t think you’re saying that you did that right away. There was a no, you shared it with your wife, [00:24:00] you dealt with this. You went, you went to recovery, you healed from it, you moved [00:24:05] on. And then later it, it’s, it’s like you don’t, you don’t share your [00:24:10] hurts. While it’s an open wound, you, you share it once, once it’s a scar.

[00:24:14] Not, and not [00:24:15] even, you’re

[00:24:16] Ian: in a healthy place and you’re out of it. I mean, you’re never entirely out of [00:24:20] addiction. There’s always, you know, temptation. But, but fundamentally, you’re, you’re spot on. Like I [00:24:25] wasn’t when I was in it, I was. Saving my family and my marriage, and more [00:24:30] importantly, like living a life I could be proud of and God could be proud of.

[00:24:33] And I share it now because I [00:24:35] believe it’s part of God’s will to talk about the things no one else is willing to because [00:24:40] I. People need to know they’re not alone. And especially men who, who struggle and shame with, [00:24:45] with some of these activities and married men who are hiding, um, secrets from their, their partners.

[00:24:49] No one, [00:24:50] I don’t know anyone that talks about this personally, and I just think it needs to be done. Whether or not it [00:24:55] stains my brand, whether or not people, you know, don’t wanna work with me is irrelevant. I’m doing in [00:25:00] my mind God’s will by helping people have loving, honest marriages. [00:25:05] Which you’re best positioned to serve the person you once were.

[00:25:08] And that was me [00:25:10] hiding. So that’s what I’m saying. Hundreds of men have come out to me and said, Hey, me too. How [00:25:15] can I get help? And that’s, that for me is the most fulfilling, even if I’m not getting paid for it. [00:25:20]

[00:25:20] Rory: And that, you know, I want people to also know, like. That is all a part of why [00:25:25] we’re proud of you.

[00:25:26] Right? We’re not only proud of the, the mission driven messengers who have led a [00:25:30] perfect life and grown their business. It’s, it’s the, the part that makes me so [00:25:35] proud of you, Ian, is the part where you just said, where you said, I don’t [00:25:40] care if it hurts my brand, I don’t care if I lose revenue over it. [00:25:45] I’m doing this to help people.

[00:25:48] Yes. And that’s like, [00:25:50] that’s the. That’s the part where you go, I’m willing to risk [00:25:55] whatever it is about me, if it’s in the service of others. [00:26:00] And you are most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. Right. I mean, that’s why [00:26:05] we say it all the time and you go and it’s amazing. You know, you talk [00:26:10] about God, like God specializes in resurrections.

[00:26:14] [00:26:15] Right, like God, God specializes in redemption. God [00:26:20] specializes in using broken people. God specializes in using people who [00:26:25] aren’t perfect and, and, and you go, you know. You look through the Bible, [00:26:30] whether it’s, you know, Moses who was a Hebrew, you talk about, uh, you know, [00:26:35] David, who was a shepherd, Jesus who was like literally born in a [00:26:40] stable to a poor family.

[00:26:42] Like, uh, Paul, who was a murderer. [00:26:45] Like our God specializes in using broken [00:26:50] people and, and making things beautiful. And I, and I think one of the reasons why he does [00:26:55] that is because that’s part of how he gets the glory. Is he [00:27:00] gets, he gets the glory in those redemption stories to go, how [00:27:05] could you survive this?

[00:27:06] How could your, your, you and your wife, you and your wife are happily [00:27:10] married, you have multiple children now you, here you are talking on a podcast to the [00:27:15] whole world airing your dirty secrets, so to speak, and it’s like. How [00:27:20] could that happen? Because it’s like, ’cause God is blessing it. He’s redeeming it.

[00:27:23] Now. I [00:27:25] do wanna make sure people know you don’t do this when it’s a scab. You do it once. It’s a [00:27:30] scar. That’s kind of like the general rule of thumb that I, you know, try to [00:27:35] delineate. It’s like you cannot do this while this is fresh. You have to, like you said, you have to be in a place where it’s [00:27:40] healthy, you’re past it and that’s when you, then you talk about it.

[00:27:44] Um. [00:27:45] But Ian, what a beautiful

[00:27:47] Ian: redemption story. I’m getting. I’m getting emotional, man. It, it’s, it’s [00:27:50] such, it’s so spot on. It’s like everything we go [00:27:55] through, right? Everything we’ve been through that we can’t fix on our own, [00:28:00] strengthens our faith and strengthens our connection with God. And, and that’s the cornerstone of my [00:28:05] story is I can’t, but God can.

[00:28:07] And, and my story is a glor [00:28:10] glorification. Amen to God. Amen. Because everything that. Brought me to [00:28:15] a rock bottom and brought me to that place of full surrender. Brought me to Christ, brought me to [00:28:20] to my faith, and, and, and it’s, it’s still ongoing. It’s, it’s like when you [00:28:25] think you can, you’re humbled and, and it’s always to lead us back to God and I.

[00:28:29] [00:28:30] Ironically, you just said, make, do, do this when it’s your scar, not your scab. [00:28:35] Our next theme of our next mastermind in which we have 80 people coming together from our community, from around [00:28:40] the world is make your scars, your superpowers. Mm-hmm. That’s the theme of our [00:28:45] next mastermind. So yes, we’re a sales training, but we’re gonna go deep in terms of [00:28:50] bringing out things that people may be ashamed of that are holding them back is once you’re.[00:28:55]

[00:28:55] Free. The most free person in the world is the one with nothing to hide, and [00:29:00] that’s been the genesis of my brand is once I had nothing to hide, once I put it [00:29:05] all out there, I was free to serve. I didn’t have this baggage and this heavy weight [00:29:10] that I was carrying because I truly was in service and I was leading with spirit.

[00:29:14] And, [00:29:15] and, and I say that because, um, it’s such a blessing to have gone through this [00:29:20] and it is such glory to God. So I’m really glad that you see it the way, that way. That’s the way I see it [00:29:25] too. And it’s not something to be ashamed of. It’s something I’m proud of more than anything, is saving [00:29:30] my marriage, keeping us together, and living a life of honesty and integrity in a world where.

[00:29:34] [00:29:35] So many people are lost and so many marriages end in divorce.

[00:29:39] Rory: Yeah. Ab [00:29:40] absolutely. I, I, um, one of our family philosophies is to live a [00:29:45] life that would stand up to the scrutiny of transparency, right? Just live a life. That would be like, if [00:29:50] everyone saw everything, you know? ’cause people can say bad things, they can make stuff up.

[00:29:54] But [00:29:55] like ultimately if you’re just living that life where you go, come audit, like, come audit, [00:30:00] right? Like, um. That’s super powerful. And, and, and one of the things my [00:30:05] pastor says, um, is, you know, he told [00:30:10] me that a, a mentor had shared with him is that your influence will never grow wider [00:30:15] than your character runs deep.

[00:30:18] Your influence never grows [00:30:20] wider than your character runs deep. And the work that you did of. Healing your [00:30:25] character and solidifying your character and cleaning up your [00:30:30] character and, uh, creating a rock solid character [00:30:35] then became the foundation that was so solid that boom, you put, you put that [00:30:40] together with the vulnerability, the solid character, and then your normal ex, your, your [00:30:45] actual expertise and work ethic and, you know, maybe some coaching along the way and just like.[00:30:50]

[00:30:50] Boom, here you are. A completely changed life. [00:30:55] Um, it’s really, really inspiring, Ian. It’s really, every part of [00:31:00] this to me is inspiring. Um, thank you and we’re really proud of [00:31:05] you. Where, where should people go if they want to learn, uh, more about you and, and what you’re [00:31:10] doing and like, uh, you know, especially if they’re like in sales,

[00:31:14] Ian: and I think, I [00:31:15] think you just nailed it, right?

[00:31:16] You can’t build your brand from a shaky foundation. You can’t build [00:31:20] your business unless you’ve done the work on yourself. Because once you’ve done that, [00:31:25] it will shine through your content, through your energy, through you know, your [00:31:30] transparency and, and through your stories, frankly. ’cause you’re gonna have the stories that really people connect [00:31:35] to in, in a place of authenticity and truth and vulnerability.

[00:31:38] And so. [00:31:40] Um, that’s right. Once that was, that once that work was in a good place, I could focus on [00:31:45] the brand. I left Salesforce, I put in service and the rest was history. I went from [00:31:50] 5 33 in 2021 to one, five to two, five, and last year to three five. And it’s [00:31:55] been a steady, progressive growth. But it all started with doing the work on myself.

[00:31:59] And I, I [00:32:00] just encourage anyone listening to face your demons, face your fears, be [00:32:05] honest, be truthful, do the inner work ’cause it’s gonna help you. Ultimately, um, in your [00:32:10] business, you can’t be one thing in your business and be something else in your personal life. And, and I [00:32:15] think that’s something not a lot of people really speak to, and it’s really important.

[00:32:18] So if people [00:32:20] wanna follow me, um, there’s really three channels that I, I’m on. Uh, you can go to untap your [00:32:25] sales potential.com. That’s where if you wanted coaching or. Any kind of [00:32:30] support with your business, um, in, in the sales capacity, uh, that’s the best [00:32:35] place to go and talk to my team. Um, YouTube. I have, uh, over 500 [00:32:40] videos posted now.

[00:32:41] Mostly sales training. I, I post on mindset habits [00:32:45] and selling skills. I’ve been doing every single week a new video and then we cut up, we do some shorts, but [00:32:50] I’ve been doing that, that content diamond for, for the past.

[00:32:53] Rory: Well, baby Content [00:32:55] Diamond. Shout out to Brand Builders Group following the system.

[00:32:58] Ian: Every week without fail [00:33:00] posting twice a day on LinkedIn and, and doing a new video every week, um, via newsletter. So [00:33:05] YouTube is great. LinkedIn’s where I kind of live from a social standpoint, not Instagram or [00:33:10] TikTok. I’m on LinkedIn, Ian Cognac at LinkedIn. And uh, yeah, I have a newsletter as [00:33:15] well where I send out a new video training every week.

[00:33:17] And we just launched a free course. It’s a 12 week [00:33:20] course. Um. It, it’s called the Fundamentals of Elite Tech Sales. If you wanna [00:33:25] Google that, you can get that as well for anyone listening.

[00:33:27] Rory: Yeah, that’s really cool, man. I, I, [00:33:30] um. I love, you know, I love [00:33:35] seeing the fundamentals as part of this story, right?

[00:33:37] There’s this whole personal aspect, but there’s another part that’s just [00:33:40] like getting clear on your brand, your brand positioning, who your audience is doing the content [00:33:45] diamond. Well, starting with one-on-one coaching, like so many of the things that we teach people to [00:33:50] do and go, you know, you don’t have to be, be a believer in God to like learn from Ian’s [00:33:55] story about what has happened.

[00:33:58] But man, if you’re not a [00:34:00] believer. You gotta see the, you gotta at least go, what a powerful redemption [00:34:05] story of like, you know, you going to the rock bottom. And I think that’s what I think [00:34:10] that’s, sometimes I think we experience rock bottoms because that’s, that’s when [00:34:15] we start paying attention to God. We start paying it.

[00:34:18] We, we, we really, we [00:34:20] really, in our lives, we really start paying attention to God. [00:34:25] We have no other option. Like when we’re out of hope, when we, when we, once we’ve [00:34:30] exhausted everything else and we’ve tried all the different things, then we start paying attention to God and [00:34:35] it’s like, and he’s there and he will be there and he will meet you and you’re just, you’re a [00:34:40] real life living example of that redemption story.[00:34:45]

[00:34:45] It’s inspiring and it’s hopeful, and it’s powerful and it’s [00:34:50] courageous. So thanks for sharing it buddy, and thanks for being a, being here. And [00:34:55] thank you for the privilege of letting us be a little part of all you’re doing.

[00:34:58] Ian: Thank you for your [00:35:00] mentorship, your guidance, your example. Thank you for putting out your faith and, and [00:35:05] your channels.

[00:35:06] And, and it’s, um. It’s admirable and, and I, I just love what you’re [00:35:10] doing as well and I’m grateful to be part of it, so thank you so [00:35:15] much.

Ep 265: Finding an Aligned Business Model with Jesse Terranova | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):
What a blast getting to talk to Jesse Terranova, one of our very own brand builders. You know, we actually have a lot of our clients come on the show. And you know, this one was interesting a lot of times cuz we knew them before, you know, and were aware of their work before. And then, you know, they become a client because we’re helping them on some piece of their business, something. But with Jesse, you know, specifically he won the chance to come on, which was really fun. We gave us away. You know, we did this as a, as a drawing AJ, it was AJ’s idea for the 12 days of Christmas that you could win a chance to come up here on the episode and to get to hear Jesse and see, you know, his powerful, personal story. Such a great example of someone who’s taking their own pain and, you know, turning it into something beautiful for other people.
RV (00:51):
And, and just a living example of everything that we talk about, like with, with someone who’s a brand builder is realizing you’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. We say that all the time and see story is a great example of that. And so to see that happening and get to talk to someone who’s like earlier in their stage, but also when he was on his retreat, getting his, his, his first customers, you know, delivering to his first customers. So, so wonderful. And it reminded me, you know, we got a chance to also do some live coaching. This is something that we’ve thought about. A few times is going, I wonder if we should do more live coaching on these for our podcast so that you get a chance to sort of like listen to us, coach you know, people who have questions about, about their personal brand.
RV (01:44):
So, you know, let us know what you think about that. It’s just, you know, send me a leave me a comment on my Instagram or shoot me a DM. You could always write in info brand builders, group.com or something, but like, I would love to hear your feedback on on that if, if, if to say, would you like to hear more that were live coaching where we just did like live coaching with guests. So in this case, Jesse is already a client. So there’s already a little bit of a background, a lot of, bit of background of, you know, some of our framework and content. But anyways, that’s what we’re thinking about. So all right. My biggest takeaways here. So first of all, with, with Jesse and for, in something we are often referencing and telling people all the time is once you figure out the, the, who, everything becomes clearer, like once you know, who is the actual other person that’s listening on the other side of your microphone or on the other side of the camera, if, if you’re talking about social media, the other side of the pen, if you’re a book things really become clear.
RV (02:51):
And yet a lot of our, our members, a lot of our clients struggle to narrow down exactly who they wanna talk to. Right? And they go, I wanna help everybody. Well, it’s not only, it’s not only a bad strategy from a marketing standpoint, but it also, it, it makes your content very weak. It dilutes your content because you can’t, you can’t speak directly and powerfully in, in a deep. And so, you know, here’s, here’s the, the big lesson that I think is a, is a good reminder and takeaway. And I think, you know, Jesse in many ways is doing this well, is choose the audience that you can serve in the deepest way, choose the audience you can serve in the deepest way. That is the, the fastest place to start. That’s the most obvious place to start. It’s the, the best place to start.
RV (03:40):
It ties in with what we’re always saying. You’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once work, right? So if you don’t know what, where should I start? Like that is a place to start because that’s where you can get traction and you can get momentum and leverage, you know, unless for some reason you just really, really don’t wanna do it. Then there’s, there’s maybe some tertiary or tangent, tangential you know, topic that we would pursue, but it’s, you’re always going to, to be able to speak most directly to that person. So think about that. The, the, the second big takeaway, which is related to that is design your, your business model around the, the actual needs of your clients, design your business model around the actual needs of your business clients. So, or of your actual clients. So what a lot of people do is they say, you know, they kind of come up with a, a medium like mechanism.
RV (04:42):
They’re like, oh, I wanna write a, I wanna write a book or I wanna release a speech, or I wanna have a video course or a membership site. And that’s fine. Like it’s not bad or wrong to like, pursue that. But even in the context of pursuing that, or in the, especially in the absence of clarity about how you should structure your offer or how you should structure your program, or like what you should include, make it less about what do other people do, like other people in your space, or just other personal brands in general and orient it. And, and, and also, I would say less even about what you think it should be like, what you just do and orient it more specifically around what do my clients actually need in order to succeed. Like, what is the, the best way to organize the delivery of the information, the continuity of the experience, the, the connection in the collaboration, the feedback, the accountability like between, and, and, and really make that the primary focal point.
RV (05:53):
And because if you can orient to that, they’re gonna succeed faster and you’re gonna succeed faster because they’re gonna get results. And they’re gonna tell people, and you’re gonna have great case studies and testimonials. And so too often, we just go, you know, like we’re scrolling on Facebook and we see an ad that says, yeah, you know, how do I make a million dollars coaching people? Or how, you know, how, how do I make a million dollars doing Facebook groups? What, like, whatever the thing is. And, and they’re not, they’re not bad. They’re all, they’re all good. They’re all workable. They’re all, they all can contribute, but it’s, it’s more, it’s less of that. And it’s more of just orienting yourself based upon the person you’re trying to serve, orienting your entire brand, your entire perspective, your, your consideration of the type of content you create, the, the amount of money you charge, the, the deliverables, the frequency in which you communicate with them, the, the, the environment of, in which you communicate with them, you know, can it, some of it be virtual or all of it be virtual, or can it be in person?
RV (06:54):
Does it need to be live? Can it just be broadcast? How much of it needs to be communal, like all of these decisions go into a business model. It’s not just like, oh, wanna launch a podcast. So that’s what we’re gonna do. You know, it’s more about actually assessing what is the what is the best and highest use of your time for your clients? Again, it goes back to what we were saying earlier, choose the audience that you can serve in the deepest way. That’s where you’re gonna get the most momentum, because you know that person, how do you know that person? Because you were that person. So nobody is gonna be better suited to serve that person than you, because you were them, you know exactly what it is. This is why brand builders group exists. Right. We know what it’s like to be an aspiring author or right.
RV (07:44):
And go how do you go from, I don’t even know what the difference is between a self-published book and a New York times bestselling book to, to being a New York times bestselling author. I know what it’s like to sit in an audience and go, how do you get to be the person on stage in front of 10,000 people? And then getting to do that. We know what it’s like to go, am I capable of creating a coaching program and then turning that into an eight figure business? Like, so that is just, these are the things that we know about, or building a, you know, the building, a personal brand in general, that’s, you know, a social media following the podcast and all these things that we’ve done. It’s because we know you, like, if that is you, like, we know you, we know exactly what you need and people go, oh my gosh, your curriculum is amazing.
RV (08:27):
Like, it’s exactly what I needed. Yeah, of course it is why, cause it’s what we needed. Like, it’s what we wished we had. So that’s the same way that you would wanna design things for your pro aspects and for your clients. And you’re, you’re, you’re most able to do that. And it’s most efficient for you to do that around and in the cases of people that are the people who you once were, or people who, you know, really, really, really, really well. So design your business model around the needs of your clients. And, and the question is not so much, what’s the easiest way to make a lot of money. This is another distinction here, right? People go, oh, what’s the easiest way to make a lot of money. That’s the wrong question. The right question is to how can I serve my audience in the most meaningful way? Not how can I make money the fastest? How can I serve my audience in the most meaningful way?
RV (09:25):
It’s not wrong to also consider what would be profitable. And, and it’s definitely not wrong to structure. How do I need to structure this in order for it to profitable? Because if you’re not profitable, then there’s not gonna be any sustainability to your business, which means you’re not gonna be able to serve anyone. So it’s, it’s not that we’re against money or profit by any means. It’s just going the lead decision shapes, the trajectory like of the whole future. If your business is just going, like, how can I make a lot of money that sets you on a course of a whole series of decisions that we believe are going to lead you off track it, it, because you’re gonna burn out or people are gonna sense it, or you’re gonna get tired or bored. That’s totally different than going. Who do I wanna dedicate my life to serving?
RV (10:17):
What are they really struggling with and what do they need? And how could I put that together for them that send you on a completely different path? It it’s a whole, it’s a, it’s, it’s two different trajectories. Ironically, that is the one that will lead to the most scalable long-term income. The problem. Sometimes it’s not always the most immediate short term income. And so you sometimes have to balance some of that and do some things in the short term to make it all work. But if you just chase the money, it’s gonna break down, you’re gonna break down. You’re gonna burn out. You’re gonna go. Like, you’re gonna look up in three years, maybe sooner, maybe a little bit longer and just go, like, I don’t even enjoy what I’m doing anymore because it’s not aligned. It’s not aligned, right? This is about finding an aligned business model.
RV (11:06):
And it’s, it’s not the same as what the person next to you would do, or the other person in the industry or what the legends have done. It is all about your uniqueness. When we say exploit your uniqueness in the service of others, a huge part of that is, and selecting, and then deploying the proper business model strategy that is life giving to you, life giving to your clients and profitable enough that it is sustainable. For every, for you to continue doing that work and to continue providing careers for other people and advancement for them and to support them and their families. But it’s not just going, how do I get my hands into people’s pockets? How do I get money out of them? What’s the fastest way to just like, take their cash. And, and I think, you know, Jesse’s a great example of somebody that’s that, right?
RV (11:53):
He’s going, what’s the problem. He solves loneliness. He had such clarity about that. And it was so powerful when, you know, when he said loneliness is a greater killer than stress or obesity. Like, I mean, that really rings powerful right now that, you know, I don’t know if it’s statistically true or not. How would you measure it? But in a COVID world where people are isolated and the mental health is, is just like at all time, like really devastating level, you go, yeah. Loneliness is a big deal. So, so how did Jesse construct his business model? It’s about bringing people together. That makes sense, right? It makes sense that he would do that and not go, let’s launch a video core about how to overcome loneliness, that you’re gonna sit and watch, you know, in your room late at night, when you’re all by yourself, like, what do they need?
RV (12:41):
And, and, and if you’ve been that person, you’re gonna know what they need, and you’re gonna know because you’re gonna, it’s gonna be what you wish you would’ve had. And then finally, the, the last little, you know, thing or big thing that we talked about there with Jesse, which I find this becoming more and more, a part of our regular conversation with our brand builders members like your next client. Like if you’re earlier in your brand, your personal brand journey. And again, we, we define personal brand is the digitization of reputation, the digitization of reputation. So you have a reputation, but your personal brand might be early, meaning you don’t have a lot of online strategy or digital representation of your reputation going on. So if you’re, if you’re earlier in your personal brand journey, let me talk to you specific. But I would say early could be 10 years.
RV (13:40):
Like it could certainly be three to five years, but if you are in that mode, there’s something that you wanna realize, because this is different from the facade that you see in the world. And from what most of the people who are online, who have established personal brands will teach you. And, and that is this, your next client is not going to come from strangers on the internet. Your next client is much more likely to come out of the cell phone of your current customer. Your next client is not likely to be a stranger from the internet. Are next clients live in the cell phones of your current clients. Let me break that down. What am I talking about there? I’m saying that we’re all so consumed with finding strangers on the internet to like us follow us, share us and buy from us.
RV (14:33):
But that’s like walking down the street, like being in New York city and, and to it’s like walking in times square and just yelling out like with a megaphone and thinking that people are gonna gravitate to you and buy. It’s not that it can’t happen. And over time you end up owning your own little kind of corner of the street. And you’ve got a lot of people there listening. And so people do come and buy. But, but in the beginning, it’s gonna happen through relationships, right? You revenue happens through relationships, revenue, customers, transactions are about trust and trust often takes time or trust is transferred from other relationships. So your, your, your fastest path to cash, like if we wanna talk about that and go, what is the fastest way to make money? It’s likely not posting on social media and starting a blog and a podcast.
RV (15:30):
And, you know, building funnels and doing all of those things. That’s probably not the fastest path to short term cash. Now, long term, those are very scalable things. Those are things that push personal brands to a whole nother stratosphere. Those things can completely change your life. They can change everything, but they take a long time to develop some. They take a long time to build. They take a long time to develop. They take a long time to develop trust and, and for money to actually start to show up. So start on those as soon as you can. I mean, if you’re a brand builder, you’re going through our process, we’ll teach you exactly the order and the sequence of, of when this should happen. But like, it’s, it’s a little bit different for everybody. So you wanna start building those things. Those are good things, but they’re not the things that are gonna make you millions of dollars overnight.
RV (16:22):
I mean, it’s the law of AJ, right? AJ Vaden, you don’t need millions of D millions of followers to make millions of dollars. You don’t, you only need a couple. I mean, for most of us, we only need like a thousand customer and that would be a huge amount of money, right? You might not even be able to handle a thousand customers. You might not even be able hundred 50 customers, like depends on what your, what your business model is. But like, those people are, are likely to come faster through referrals and recommendations and introductions and, and relationships of people, you know? And so don’t step over all of your past client. I mean, here’s a question when’s the last time you talked to all your past clients, like how often do you talk to your past clients? How often do you touch base with them?
RV (17:08):
How often do you ask ’em what’s going on? You say hi. And if you don’t, if today is your first day in the company and you go, I don’t have any past clients. Great. How long has it been since you you’ve talked to all of your past friends and your past family members and your relationships, the people who trust you, cuz that’s where you’re gonna start. Like you don’t try to sell to the people who know you, you ask the people who know you for referrals and introductions, and that’s how you start. And you, you build the snowball, you build, you know, you build out from there. So I just want to make sure that if you’re anywhere early in your journey and honestly, even later, I mean, most of our clients right now come from either our current clients or they come from longtime friends and longtime colleagues, right.
RV (17:58):
They, they, they do, do we get clients who have never heard of us and stumble across this podcast? Of course we do, but it’s way less than you would think. And it, it usually takes a really long time, right? Like they have to listen to, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know what the number is. It’s different for everybody, but often they gotta listen to 10, 20, maybe 50 episodes before they really develop that trust. Right. Or they have to like go to YouTube and watch all our YouTube videos or go to Roy vain, blog.com. And they, they watch, you know, these tra these in depth trainings. And at some point they cross the threshold that go, okay, I trust you. Now. It takes a long time though, because they’ve never met us in real life. And they don’t, they don’t really know anybody who has met us.
RV (18:45):
If they, if, if you found us as a stranger on the internet, right. It doesn’t mean you’re or less valuable to us by any means. We, we love everybody, but it’s, it, it typically means it takes you longer to buy from us because you’re still getting to know us. Versus if we go on a podcast like, you know, whoever Lewis, how Sean Cannel Shalene Johnson, Donald Miller, any of these, you know, a lot of our top affiliates are our friends and relationships, right? Because we go on there. And when those people say, here’s the experience that I had with brand builders group, you’ve spent time trusting them. And then that trust transfers to us. Or if your, you know, your friend, your sister, your brother-in-law, your best friend said, Hey, you gotta check out brand builders group. And they said, you know, go to free brand call.com/podcast request a free call.
RV (19:39):
If your friend was like, dude, you have to do this right now. These people are incredible. Go to free brand call.com/podcast, which is our, our real URL, right. Go there and do a call with these people because you wanna build your platform. You’re trying to become more well known. You wanna make more impact in the world. You you’re trying to figure out what the system is to, to you know, manage all of your content and social media and technology and, and books and speaking, and using all of those things to drive your business. And these guys are the math, right? Like if someone told you that, that, you know, you would do it in a heartbeat and, or, or, you know, and so that’s what happens. And that’s part of why you go, we, you know, you go do interviews on other, other places, but even now those clients come from existing relationships that we have.
RV (20:29):
And a lot of those relationships are developed offline. Even if it’s a podcast we’re on. Most of that relationship happens in real life, not through comments and DMS and shares it. It happens through real life conversations, real life work we’re doing with people, or we’re doing work with someone they know, or, or, or someone they respect is one of our clients. Your next client is not likely to come from strangers on the internet. It is way more likely to come from the cell phones of your current customers. They’re the people who already trust you. So are you talking to ’em? Are you, and are you asked and are you letting them know what you do and that you’re available? And then you’d love to be introduced to some of their friends or friends of their friends. Anyways, couple big ideas applicable, you know, good reminders for myself, hopefully for you, hopefully most for Jesse, right?
RV (21:26):
And, and a great is to talk through and, and thank you Jesse, for coming on and letting us dig in a little bit to your business model and seeing where you’re at on your journey. We look forward to following you and continuing to pour into you and to see where you end up here over the next few years. It is our honor to work with you as all of our brand builders members and our honor to have you listening to our show every single week. If you do wanna request a call, go to free brand call.com/podcast, talk to one of our strategists, let us earn your trust. I promise we are really, really good at what we do. And what that is, is helping you find your uniqueness so that you can exploit it in the service of others as Larry Wingett says. So keep coming back in the meantime, we’ll be here. We can week out on the influential personal brand podcast.

Ep 264: Finding an Aligned Business Model with Jesse Terranova

RV (00:02):
Well, if you’ve listened to this show for a while, you’ve probably picked up the theme that the influential personal brand podcast is all about sharing the stories of people who are influential personal brands and how they got that way. And so, you know, we interview New York times bestselling authors and seven figure entrepreneurs and people with millions of followers. And I, and, and then we’re trying to glean the wisdom that we can. Well, one of the things that my wife, my co-host, our CEO, my business partner, AJ did over Christmas was she did this thing called the 12 days of BBG Christmas. And it was filled with lots of bad singing for me and her. And, you know, some mediocre prize is of brand builders, group swag. But one of the things that we thought would be cool was to highlight one of our real life clients who is on the journey right now of building their personal brand.
RV (00:56):
Since, you know, so many times you hear the story of somebody who like, you know, made it so to speak, but, but we Don have that many folks that are going I’m, I’m living it, I’m working it right now. And so that’s how we got to meet Jesse Terranova, who you’re about to meet. He’s an awesome guy. We’ve been working together for a few months at this point, I guess several months you could say, and we’re just gonna talk to Jesse. You’re going to hear a little bit about his story. And I think my hope is that you’ll be encouraged as you hear the, the path that Jesse has been on and maybe it will help highlight some things for yourself on your own path. So Jesse, welcome to the show, man.
JT (01:40):
R it’s a pleasure. Thanks for having me here.
RV (01:43):
So I wanna start with how you, you heard about us because that I’m always, you know, the marketing person in me is always like, okay, what are we doing? That’s working. How are people finding out about us? And, and then, you know, I just love the, almost like the spiritual side of me loves looking at how our intersect with people and what relationships that we have bring us to, to, to people. So how did you first, how did you first find brand builder’s group?
JT (02:16):
Yeah, that’s great. Well, actually from Louis, which I know Louis House which I know is a big big kind of yours, a good friend of yours. And so, yeah, I believe it was back to in 2017. I first was introduced to Lewis, listening to his podcast, reading a couple of his books and he absolutely transformed my life.
RV (02:36):
Wow. So you, you were, you had never heard of him before that. And then what does a friend send you like his podcast or a book, or do you even remember?
JT (02:45):
Yeah, well, I’ve always, I’ve been a very curious person by nature. And so I’ve, I’m big into self betterment and improving my life and, and I’ve always kind of been that way. And so when I started looking into podcasts Lewis’ came up pretty much at the top. At that time. He was he’s he’s, you know, been, been the game since the beginning, as you know. And so I started listening to it and, you know, he was always inspiring, but it’s always the guests that he brings on that, that really helped to you know, bring it all together and, and helped to transform a lot of people’s lives. I know I’m not the only one.
RV (03:20):
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, so yeah, so I was one of those guests, I guess. Okay. You
JT (03:25):
Were, you, you were,
RV (03:26):
You had, so had you, you had never heard, like never had heard of me or brand builders group, like just, you were listening to Lewis’ show and then you’re just like, whatever, whatever one’s next in the playlist. And, and up by up, I come, right.
JT (03:39):
You, yeah, I had not. You, you just came up and a lot of the things that you had said at the time really resonated with me because I think, you know, for me personally it, it’s interesting because you, you help people turn their reputation into revenue, right. And so that’s why I think it was a great match, but, you know, I had, without even knowing it in the past five years had been creating a personal brand on my social media, you know, without a call to action without a monetization strategy. And that’s why you came into my life at a really good time. Cause I said, well, I have all of this these amazing people in my life, these amazing connections, but I guess I just needed more of a direct path to get me to where I wanted to go. And I’m a big believer in proponent in coaching and mentoring. So this was just a relationship way to happen.
RV (04:25):
Yeah. It’s, it’s funny that you mentioned that because one of the things that AJ talks about all the time is how, you know, people think of personal brand as like, oh, it’s social media, or it’s a course, or it’s like, you know, followers, et cetera, but really the way that we define it, it is the digitization and the monetization of reputation that it, all of us have a reputation and, you know, personal branding is basically just digitizing that it becomes visible and then making the conscious choice to say, I wanna, I wanna monetize this. I wanna, I wanna, I wanna do something. So, so you said that there was like five years that you were basically just on social giving, giving out stuff. The you know, like just, were you, were you sharing advice of any kind or were you just sort of like sharing your life?
JT (05:18):
Yeah, I was sharing my life. I, I was sharing my experiences with, with individuals. I mean, I feel like your experiences are deeply etched into your being and your soul. And so it depends on what you do with those experiences. Right. And so I’ve lived a very adventurous life. I’ve traveled to over 40 countries you know, over five continents. And so I’ve just wanted to share what’s possible for people in terms of my story. And I just found it difficult, I guess, with all the noise around us, these days with wanting to do too many different things and, and, you know, understanding now that you need to break through the wall with one niche, with one specific you know, path before you can go ahead and do multiple things,
RV (06:03):
You know, you’re, you’re, you’re spoken like a true brand builder’s member with like the focus and breaking through the wall. Is that, is that, what is that, what jumped out at you most? And that, and that kind of first interview was just how, you know, we always talk about, if you have diluted focus, you get diluted results and, or, or what were, what were some of the things that kind of like you IME you kind of latched onto that was like, ah, I, I think maybe there’s something here for me.
JT (06:31):
Well, man. Yeah, definitely that, but it was more to that. I think, you know, when you hear people speak the words they use sometimes, you know God speaks through other people to you directly. And so I felt at that time, for me personally, you know, you were kind of speaking to me and directly to me on the podcast on a lot of things you were saying in terms of the impact and the meaning. And so, you know, I, I I’ve felt this for a long time. I, I, I believe the meaning of life is to find your gift and the purpose of life is to give it. And so, you know, it’s interesting how, you know, you are leading a group of mission driven messengers essentially on that path to, to greatness and, you know, that’s, Lewis’s uniqueness, that’s who it resonates with me so much, but you know, that is Lewis asked on this podcast after every, you know, episode is how do you define greatness? Right. And so that is the ultimate goal for me. And that’s kind of been, and that’s why I Lewis has changed my life.
RV (07:32):
Yeah. That’s awesome. So what, when you first came, okay, so when we start working together, so you kind gonna have this, you know, realization of going, ah, I’ve been sharing my experiences, my travels, you know, these adventures I’ve been on, I think there’s an opportunity to maybe turn this into a business or like make this a more formal kind of part of my, my life, my career. And then what, what were some of the things that you were still struggling with early on in, in, in terms of where you said, Hey, I think, I think brand builders can maybe help me.
JT (08:07):
Yeah. You know, I was going through a really difficult time when I was introduced to Louis originally. I believe it was, it was back 2017, 2018. I had been living in San Diego, I’m originally from the Northeast New Jersey. And, you know, I just, I just think that was lost RO I think that you know, I was just lonely because I had made that relocation out to the other side of the country and I deprived myself, you know, I deprived myself because I, I didn’t create connection in the relationship with myself, others in the world around me. And so I had to learn the hard way, you know? It’s, it’s interesting. It, it took me you know, for, for an evening when I was driving and, and, you know, came to a red light and I was lost.
JT (08:52):
I was confused. I look up and I see you know, a, a big sign right above me near the red light. And it says, you know, Terranova drive. And, and so I’m like, okay, like, that’s interesting. I, I looked to the right and looked to the left and there’s a road that leads up to the left and sure enough, I’m like, okay, I’ll play along. So I drive up the road and then I look on my GPS and as Terranova park. And so, you know, I make a left into this development that leads me to Terranova park. I’m like, this is really interesting. This place is really familiar and uncanny. Like, I feel like I’ve been here before. Right. It was just this really interesting moment. And as I got to the park, R I, I parked there, looked around, it looked very familiar.
JT (09:36):
It was something that I’ve, that I’ve seen before, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. And I looked to my left across the park. That’s a development. And it says Parkside port, and for your audience that is, you know, where I grew up. That’s my parents still live in the development Parkside. And so, you know, in, in the madness you know, there’s meaning. And so you’re, you know, through the breakdowns, you know, that creates breakthroughs. And it took me to hit rock bottom in this time of my life to really understand how important connection is. I was robbing people from the opportunity of helping me. And so part of what I’m doing now is, is trying to cure my loneliness through the years. And I know that’s a problem for a lot of people, you know, and so connection is the cure. And so that’s how, that’s why I feel that what I’m doing right now in the work that I’m in is impactful and is meaningful. Cause it it’s a big problem in, in the world right now.
RV (10:38):
So to, so to use brand builders speak. And for those of you that aren’t aren’t members or aren’t yet members like the, the you know, we, the brand positioning statement is sort of like the, the core foundational work of our first you know, event of we’ve got 14 events, like at 14 parts to our whole journey, but the brand positioning statement is just getting super clear on what is your uniqueness and what problem were you uniquely created to solve in the world. So is loneliness the, the problem of your brand positioning statement?
JT (11:15):
It is.
RV (11:17):
I love that. So, so interesting to hear you talk this out in a, in a public format, you know, like usually when we’re working with clients, it’s very private and going, I love the connect. Like the, I love the alignment of that between, you know, your life and your story of what you’re talking about is like, in this moment, and, and we are always talk, we are always saying how you’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. And so there you are in San Diego feeling totally alone, isolated. And now several years later looking back, realizing there’s a lot of people that feel that way. And so, and then is connection your uniqueness. That’s kind of like what you you’re called to, to bring to the world.
JT (12:00):
Exactly. Yes. The brand is the connection creation.
RV (12:07):
So I got it. So, and, and you said that Parkside court was like the name of the street you grew up up on, back in the Northeast,
JT (12:16):
Roy, it’s the entire development that I grew up in. Oh, it’s an unexplainable event in my life. I love asking people this question, you know, is there something that’s unexplainable that has happened to you? And for me, that is the most unexplainable thing cuz it’s just it doesn’t make much sense that that would happen, but it did, you know, all the way across the country.
RV (12:37):
Yeah. So then talk to us about, so you got clear on your positioning, the brand positioning statement. You go, this is the problem I wanna dedicate my life to, to helping people solve loneliness. Connection is my vehicle or my mechanism or the term we use. My uniqueness are helping them solve the problem. And then how did you talk to me about the monetization strategy that you came up with or, or have come up with is still fairly early, right? Because you’ve only, you’ve only been with us for what? A few months. Six months it’s
JT (13:08):
Yeah, it’s been about six months now, Roy. Yeah.
RV (13:10):
Okay. So then what’s the monetization strategy that you started with or, or are doing like, has it, have you, has it pivoted, has it like, are you still trying to figure it out?
JT (13:21):
No, I, I have a pretty good grasp on it, but it’s funny to individuals who are interested in BBG brand builders group or who are going through the journey right now as you say, in a lot of the, the speakings and recordings, it’s, you know, what we’re trying to do is a lifetime’s work. And so it’s, you know, condensing maybe 15, 20 years for some into, you know, a couple sentences. And so it’s really difficult. And so, you know, when you go through that journey, just have patience with yourself and, you know, it’s, it’s similar to really any journey you go on. It’s just to have patience with yourself and kind break it down. But, you know, in terms of our monetization strategy what I’ve really noticed in the marketplace is obviously, you know, the problem of loneliness, but you know, through all of my travels the main problem that I’ve, that I’ve, that I’ve noticed is, you know, when we are traveling, we’re, you know, more inclined to take, to step to our comfort zone, to meet new people, to try new things, to live our true, authentic selves.
JT (14:22):
And then unfortunately we come home, we gain all this amazing momentum and we take our experiences and we sometimes put them in the closet. We shove ’em away and we don’t integrate anything that we learned into our everyday life. We kind of go back into that rut. And so something that it is we’re looking to create and that we are creating is an experience for individuals in a group travel style, where we bring people together and we show them what’s possible. And it’s really interesting and unique because we’re actually on our first experience right now. It’s interesting as the, the podcast date lined up with, with where we are now, we’re right now, that’s
RV (14:59):
Crazy right now, where, where are, where are so, so you’re so wait a minute. So this is, I just wanna make sure I understand this. So you sign up with us, you join, you decide you’re are gonna lead these kind of like small group experiences, these destination experiences. And then you are at your first one with your first group of clients today, which is the time of this is the recording, right? This will air, but like you’re actually recording from a, the destination.
JT (15:28):
You can’t make it up. I am literally here with eight clients. Wow. and so it’s, it’s a really incredible moment and a really amazing experience for all of us. And like right now, like I chartered a yacht for them. We’re we’re on St. John and the Caribbean the us Virgin islands. And so they’re out on the boat right now. I’m gonna pick them up in a little while, but so it’s, it’s it’s interesting that, wait a
RV (15:51):
Minute, you pat a step on a, a yacht trip
JT (15:53):
To
RV (15:53):
Record a, to record a short podcast. What are you thinking? You’re
JT (15:58):
Crazy. Well, something about me is I also, I worked on a 18 million super yacht for a year and a half, so I I’ve had enough full time. So I’ve done that. I’ve been there, done that, but I just want everybody to enjoy their experience. Of course, someone like yourself, I’m just so excited to be here and chat with you. So, you know, it’s hard to pass up.
RV (16:18):
Well, so well, I can’t resist the opportunity to, to, to you know, work with you on like, so, so what are you, what are you working? Like, what are you working on right now? Like, is there anything that I can help or like we can sort of talk through cuz so you seem like you have a very clear brand positioning statement. So I love, I love, I mean, the problem of loneliness is very clear. It’s widespread. There’s a lot of people out there who are struggling with that. You have an aligned business model that aligned with your brand positioning statement. So if connection is the uniqueness, you know, and for those of you that are listening, one of the, like the way that we do monetization is not like what’s the easiest way to make money. That is that’s not how we teach it the way we teach it is going what does your audience need from you the most and how can you serve them in the deepest way?
RV (17:18):
What does your audience need the most and how can you serve them in the deepest way? So instead of going like, oh, I wanna, you know, I wanna create this or that. You get really, really clear on who you’re trying to serve. And as you get clear on who they are, you get clear on what they need. And as you get clear on what they need, that helps you, that informs your decision to instruct and architect an offering for them. And, and so a lot of times when people don’t make money, it’s, it’s because there’s this breakdown of like, they wanna sell this thing, but it’s not actually the format or the modality that sort of serves the people that they’re with. And, and you gotta, you know, the magic is sort of syncing that up. Well, when I think of Jesse here. So when I think about you, Jesse, you’ve actually got a great alignment there that your, your business model is literally pulling people together in these groups, creating connection, which helps, you know, remove loneliness. It also does all the things that you believe. And clearly you spent a ton of time traveling, whatever you said, 40 countries like, and, and so it aligns with your uniqueness and you’re, you’re teaching people to do things that you’ve done. So, so I love all that. So that feels totally aligned to me.
JT (18:33):
Yeah, absolutely. And, and my message is to create meaning in the relationships with yourself, others, and the world around you. And so this, the journey that I’ve been on, I want to share with others, and that’s why I’m very vocal and open with my story. I feel like it’s transformed my life and, and it is a bit of a testimonial when I do share it with people. They’re impacted by it. And so, you know, it’s not, it’s not about, you know, for me, per se the monetization strategy in terms of Mo monetizing monetizing it. I know that’s very important component of it, but for me, it’s impacting lives and touching lives and serving people and, you know, helping individuals. Cause I know, like I said, after these past two years, you know, I miss the smiling faces of people. I miss the laughter. I miss the connection. I miss the, the experiences that people have and what I’d like to do is, and you know, in the past five years I have worked in travel and, and Toros and design. And so I have design experiences for people itineraries, things like this, and, you know, people, people are looking for something like this. I think that the demand is there. I just think the awareness is missing. I think people aren’t really aware that this is something that is possible for them.
RV (19:47):
So what do you think is the biggest challenge that you’re like struggling with right now in your personal brand, where you go, like, I, I got this clear brand positioning statement, you know, it aligns with my uniqueness, I’ve got a business model you got here, you are in real life in the flesh, like living it, it came true six months, you know, later this dream is a reality, you’re on your first experience, which I love. And you know, I’m proud of you. It’s kind of a weird thing to say, but like, I’m, I’m so proud to like
JT (20:16):
Thank you or living
RV (20:17):
That. So what’s the biggest challenge you think you’re having with your personal brand right now?
JT (20:23):
Well, I think going forward now in, in terms of scalability it’s something that I’ve been putting a lot of thought in, cuz there’s a lot of directions I can go. And for me personally, when I, you know, know joined BBG and this journey I like to, you know, incorporate my own thoughtfulness into the experience that I want to create for others. And so when people arrive, they will receive two books. One is a, a book by Sarah Samuel called mindful traveling. Another book is a journal that people will, will write in and you know, kind of capture their experiences. So when they go home and they’re feeling a little off one day, they can kind of go back and revisit that. But to answer your question, the problem is like I had said a awareness and, and showing people that, you know, Roy, I just think there’s so much fear right now in the world.
JT (21:13):
You know, whether it be people who are, who are not in traveling because of the COVID restrictions because of, they they’ve been, you know, trapped, stuck in their house, you know, loneliness is a bigger killer than obesity and smoking, you know, so it’s interesting how a lot of people are feeling stagnation and, and limited in where they want to go and, and who they want to be. And so, you know, travel can be used in that fashion, in that manner to help people transform their lives. And you know, when people arrive home there’s, you know, this incredible amount of value that I want to add to their lives in terms of courses, in terms of blogs in terms of coaching programs, I mean, that’s kind of why this took a little longer than I wanted it to cause I wanted to, you know, build out a coaching program for myself, but I also wanted to do these experiences and I said, well, which one can I do first? And so I broke it down through your process in the S Asian strategy of which one, not made more sense, but you know, where is, you know, your uniqueness lies at the intersection of who you were me to be, who you, your intersection lies, your uniqueness, lies the intersection of who you were designed to be and who the world needs you to be. And once you find that out,
RV (22:30):
I love it. Jesse. You’re like a, you’re like a, you’re like a brand builder’s fortune cookie, dude. I, you, I love it. Like you, you, I could tell you’re like watching the stuff and you’re doing it. Yes. So I’ll, I’ll I love that. So, so the yeah, if you, if y’all didn’t catch that, so you’re unique to, at the intersection of who you were created to be and who the world needs you to be like the, so, so is it just awareness, like, is that the biggest problem that you’re having is sort of you, you mentioned scalability and then also just like awareness, like drawing more people to it.
JT (23:06):
Yeah, absolutely. I think when people see the word retreat it can means something different for everyone. I like to use the word experience. And so it’s just, you know, depending on how I build it out in terms of the experiences, do I have entrepreneurs come on the experience, do I have people who are really struggling who, you know, may not be able or willing to take that leap and book the flight tomorrow, you know, for the experiences to start now, I, I have, you know, eight people who I shared the experience and they booked their flight in a day. And so those are the people that I like, those people who are spontaneous, who see the vision, who see the value in what it is that I’m trying to create. And, and, and they see the alignment there that I do. But yeah, I think, you know, just, you know, as the, the COVID restrictions start to dwindle away and people get back out there I think it’s a really good time right now to launch this type of business and this type of model because I think it’s very desirable.
JT (23:59):
But it’s just proof of concept and getting the experiences under my belt, leading them, learning you know, as I’m leading them, I’m also, you know, bringing people together. And so that’s basically all I’m really doing other than leading orchestrating and facilitating these experiences with the questions I ask with the different activities that we do. You know, but I think at the end of the day, it will be a bit of a challenge to to show that in the beginning. But, you know, we have some amazing content creators right now on the experience with us. Like they got their drones up in the air and they’re doing some really cool stuff, Roy. So we’re excited to see these promotional videos that we’ll create and all the amazing content that, that we’re creating. So I think we’re gonna be in good shape.
RV (24:43):
Well, yeah, so that’s, that’s great. Well, so one thing that just sort of like pop, pop, pops up for me as you, as you were talking about this, because there are, there are a lot of our members who, you know, when you go through, so phase one, so we, yeah, I mentioned we’ve got these like 14 part processes broken up into four phases. Phase one is really about your branding and positioning. It’s really understanding your identity, who are you defining your uniqueness, clarifying your business model, creating your content, your intellectual IP. And then when you get to phase two, you, we that’s like the marketing phase, which is kind of going out and telling the world that you’re there, which is sort of like where you’re at Jesse. So one, I, I feel compelled to sort of share with you and with you listening and I’ve been talking a lot about this is that for some reason, the default that everybody has right now is thinking that their next customer is go, gonna come from social media, they think, or they think that like their next customer is gonna come from, you know, online or something like that.
RV (26:02):
In reality, almost always when you’re a small business, your next customer doesn’t come from being online, it comes from offline. It comes from the relationships of the people, you know, in real life. Like we spend too much time being consumed with trying to make strangers fall in love, like strangers on the internet. We want strangers on the internet to fall in love with us and follow us. And then like, like all of our stuff and then pull out their credit card and give us five grand or 10 or 20 grand, or like whatever the number is. Meanwhile, the, the, the common misconception, the, the common thing that people overlook is that they’re, they ignore a lifetime full of real life, meaningful, trusted relationships that they have developed with people offline. And so, you know, I’m sharing this to Jesse just because he’s here.
RV (27:10):
But I’m really talking to, to everybody that if I am Jesse, the first place I am looking for my next eight clients is from my current eight clients. It is not strangers on the internet. It is. So, and this is, we actually teach this in pressure free persuasion, which technically is a phase three event, but it’s, it is how we do one-on-one selling. And it is the referrals from the people who have actually experienced the thing that you have done. They are, they are the best forms of marketing, like a changed life. The best form of marketing is a changed life, a transformed life. You know, like we talked about Lewis house, cuz that’s how you, how we met you, right Jesse. But like that was an all offline relationship I met, I met Lewis in real life. We became friends. I helped him.
RV (28:11):
We helped him with some offline stuff that was going on. And then he reached out to us a few years later, asked if we could help. We said we could, he came, we had an in-person experience, you know, here at our house. And then we had a transformed life and, and then he went and told a bunch of people, right. And he just happened to have access to a lot of people. So, you know sure. That’s the other, the other tip is, you know, have Lewis house as your first client, if you can, is a good, a good thing, but it’s well,
JT (28:44):
There you go. RO, there you go. I know that, I know, I know the residual you’re earning is, is off the charts from him. So congratulations there.
RV (28:51):
Well, yeah, no, it’s the, it’s the opposite. It’s the residual that he is earning. But there is you know, the, the point is it was a real life convers, a real life thing. And so it is the, your next customer, the contact information for your next customer is not owned by Facebook and YouTube and Twitter and TikTok the, the contact information for your next customer lives in the cell phone of your current customer. The contact information for your next customer does not, is not owned by Facebook or Instagram or social media. It lives inside the cell phone of your current customer. Your current customers know who your next customers should be. They know better than anyone, including you, your current customers know who’s a, who’s a better fit for your program, even then you, because they are that person. You are not that person.
RV (30:01):
You know, you might have been that person five years ago. But so I, I just wanna make sure that everybody knows that, you know, we call it the law of AJ because she’s, she’s the one always talking about this. You don’t need millions of followers to make millions of dollars, your, it, it comes from your real life relationship. So anyways, don’t know what your plan is, Jesse. But like, when I think about if I were in your spot and I was, I was, you know, doing this business model the way that you were doing it. And I, and I go, okay, I need to, I need to increase my awareness. And you know, and my, my scalability, I would start with the people who are there. And I would, you know, at some point like before they leave, may maybe even before they leave, I would say, you know, you just, I go around the room and just say, what has been your favorite highlight from the last three days?
RV (31:00):
Right. And people will say it was this, and it was this and was this. And then you just kind of simply say, you know, this has been amazing for me. And you share what your highlight is. And you say, if there’s anybody in your life that you think would benefit from having an experience, like the one that we just had, would you be open to introducing them to me? And I would love to just get to know them. If they’re a friend of yours, I’d love to just do a call with them and get to know them. And when you couch it in that way, which is really how it is, they’re going, it’s not, can you refer someone to me so I can sell them? Like, so you can do the work of selling them for me and I can close them and take their money.
RV (31:49):
It’s going, if you truly believe that what you just experienced was amazing. If it Tru, if you truly believe it was incredible, is there someone else in your life you would like to, you know, give, give that, that same gift to, and, and that is one of the things that I think is really missing from the marketplace. And so I know you haven’t been through pressure free persuasion yet because you haven’t, you haven’t, you haven’t been in the program long enough, but that’s, that’s where we’re taking you and that, but, but since you’re in that moment right now, so
JT (32:26):
Precursor, thank you,
RV (32:28):
Pre sure. I would be thinking, I would be thinking about that if you’re, if you’re not sure.
JT (32:32):
Sure.
RV (32:34):
Absolutely. So the, the other thing, so that in terms of awareness, so the other thing, like one of the other things that we have people do is we call it the fast 50 is you know, we, we tell ’em to make a list of 50 people they know in real life, right? So 50 people, you know, in real life. And then what you do is you just call ’em and you just, you, we call it the check in method. But you, you just calling, you check in with them and you say, Hey, how’s, how’s it going? What’s going on? And then you tell ’em what you’re doing. You say, Hey, I know we haven’t talked in a while, but I wanna let you know an update. And the update is that I am now doing blank. And the, the, the little elevator pitch formula that we teach is I help blank to blank.
RV (33:24):
I help blank to blank. So I help insert your avatar to insert your payoff. So you, you know, let’s say Jesse and I were friends, I’d say, Hey, Jesse, I know we have, you know, I know we haven’t talked a while. I wanted to give you a little bit of an update. Like my wife and I started this new business and we are now helping experts to become more well known. And then this is the key don’t try to sell to the person you’re talking to, because these are 50 people that are like, you know, ’em in real life. These are your friends, this is your family. This is like, you know, your, your, your, your roommate from college, don’t try to sell to the people that, you know, that will feel weird for you. You’ll find yourself reluctant to do it. And they will feel reluctant.
RV (34:07):
They, they, they can sometimes feel weird too. So the key is don’t sell to the people, you know, ask the people, you know, for referrals. So what you would do is you say, you know, Jesse my wife and I now started a business. We’re helping experts to become more well known. Is there anybody, you know, who is trying to, you know, anybody, you know, who is a coach? Is there anyone, you know, who is a speaker or an aspiring speaker? And then you ask them and, and another little key is don’t ask to be introduced to people who need what you have ask to be introduced to the type of people you do it for, right? For us, it’s coaches, speakers, authors, consultants, trainers, professional service providers, anybody whose face is attached with their business. Right. But it’s like, we’re actually not typically trying to meet fortune 500 CEOs.
RV (34:57):
We’re typically trying to meet more like small business owners. So you say, is there anyone that you, who is a coach and Jesse would, would immediately go, he wouldn’t have a hundred people. He knows, but he might have three, which is even better. Actually, it’s better for them to not have an overwhelming number. They just go, oh, there’s one specific person that I know. And you go awesome. If I sent you a little note that you could copy and paste, would you be in minded to introducing us? And that’s it. And for most of us, that is, it, it, that is where your first revenue is gonna come from, not from launching a huge podcast or getting a book deal or, you know, going viral on, on social media.
JT (35:43):
Worry. That’s, that’s something that really resonates with me. And, and it’s been coming into my life more. So in terms of my intuition, like, look for the answers from within, right? And it also can branch off and say, look for the answers within your own network and the people that you do know, and the relationships that you have cultivated over time. Cause that’s where, that’s where the value is. Those are the people who know you best. Like you said, people, those people know you better than you know yourself sometimes. And it’s definitely interesting to hear you say that, cuz you know, when you lean into that people will come to your aid and I’ve experienced that in the last couple weeks and months, you know, people have been, I’ve been sharing my story and people are coming, coming to help me out and, and helping to inspire me and to, to, to help propel me forward. And it’s, it’s been a really great journey thus far.
RV (36:27):
Yeah. I love that. And it’s like lean on the people who already trust you versus trying to create trust with strangers on the internet, 60 seconds at a time when only 1% of ’em are gonna see the thing that you’re putting up anyways. So I think, you know, that’s where awareness for everybody. The, the other thing about scalability so scale scalability is also something that we’ve always spent a lot, a lot of time thinking about and studying. And it’s, it’s, it’s actually something that we’ve, we’ve been fairly successful at. You know, that’s one of the, of things, a lot of personal brand struggle is to get to, you know, seven, especially multi seven figures and very few ever get to eight figures. But you know, whenever you think in terms of scalability, the key there is just realizing that custom custom fails standard scales, custom fails standard fails.
RV (37:21):
It’s not so much that custom fails, but custom fails to scale any. And if you just think like conceptually the more customized something is and has to be the less, it is able to be, you know, routine and rhythmic and process oriented. I mean, if you think about manufacturing plot, the they’re they’re mass producing, how are they mass producing they’re mass producing because they do everything the same way every time. So if you wanna, if you want to scale your business and, and scaling your business, isn’t always a good answer. You know, sometimes people think growth just for the sake of growth, but oftentimes it’s like, no, how, what do you, how much do you really, they need to be happy, but if you do wanna scale, you gotta think in terms of, okay, custom fails, but standard scales. So when I think of like your business, Jesse, and I go, okay, what does standardization look like in my business?
RV (38:12):
That’s basically, you know, the way a, a more narrow question of scale is not so much, how do I scale as much as what does standardization look like in my business? So, you know, to me, it’s going, you would either, you would either take kind of like the same group of people you already have. And so you already have the customers taken care of and you go, let me design a new experience for them because then, you know, there’s, there’s like two parts. There’s getting the customers and then delivering the thing. And if you can standardize one part of it, it automatically is gonna scale faster. So you go, okay, well, if I already have the customers, let me rate a new experience. And that thing is for them. The other thing would be to go, let me keep the experience exactly the same and then bring in new people where it gets dicey is if you’re a small, if you’re small and you’re trying to scale is to go, I wanna get a whole new group of people and do a whole different experience. That is just, it’s not that it’s impossible, but it’s gonna be difficult because you have, it’s difficult. It’s difficult. So yeah, you know, and if you have a great, if you have a great location and you have a yacht contr, like if you have, you know, where all the restaurants are and you go, we can just keep running trips back here. You, you have the perfect agenda. Now you can train someone else to facilitate and, you know, et cetera, et cetera,
JT (39:39):
You got it. That’s the idea, you know, over time in, in terms of scaling it out, something that I have in my mind, and I don’t know if it will come to fruition, but it is a vision of mine is to hire other trip, experience leaders around me to go ahead and lead their own experiences. And so once I have each destination one, my, my favorite parts of creating an itinerary, putting, putting experience together is, you know, speaking with the people on site and putting it together, the people at the Villa or the hotel, the torque company, the cars, like all of
RV (40:09):
Design, you used that term early. Yeah. That’s
JT (40:11):
So good. That’s me. Yeah. Yeah. That’s, you know, I’ve worked in design, I’ve worked in design, traveling tourisms and design the last five years and it’s been amazing. And all of my experiences that I have in the past have brought me to this place that I’m at right now. I’ve worked you know, as, as a recruiter for a couple years. And I don’t know if you, I don’t know if you attest to this, but in my opinion, you know, recruiting is one of the most difficult sales jobs in the world because you’re selling people and what’s more, what’s more, you know, what’s, people are more unpredictable than the stock market. And so it’s really difficult, you know, in those relationships. And, you know, I, I actually have a similar similar beginning point similar origin. I, I was an accountant as well. I wasn’t as great in in Excel as you were, but
RV (40:55):
Well, I I’m decent at Excel, but I, I was not a great accountant. It was actually the worst grade that I ever got in school was accounting in college. So, but that’s funny. So you, you, but, but that the you’re like an architect. I mean, you are designing this experiential, this experience for people and, you know, know, and I, I think, I, I think that’s, I think that’s awesome, Jesse, and I would go getting other people to lead. It becomes even easier once you’ve done it five times, and this is the agenda, here’s the exercises. And here, it’s just, you can run that. You can run on a autopilot. It’s,
JT (41:35):
It’s a proof of concept. Exactly. It’s, you know, hiring those individuals and having a built out framework with my values with the things that I want to spread, you know, in, in my experiences. And so once we have that all figured out people will go ahead and, and run those experiences under my philosophy under my framework, under my values. And, you know, for example, this is called experience St. John. And so I’ve, I lived on St. John 2019 and 2020. I know the islands really well. I have some amazing contacts here. And then, you know, who’s to say in, in, you know, a couple years, you know, I can’t be running it for my laptop. Right. Or, you know, I want to year, but there are other destinations that I wanna also build out. Like I live in Portugal now. I moved there last November, so there’s gonna be an experience Portugal. And so it’s just really exciting to see how things are, are going.
RV (42:27):
Yeah, that’s great, man. I, I, I love that. I, and I love that for you. And it’s like, I think if you’re, if you’re drawing in a energy from that, and that’s what you’re passionate about, that’s totally unique. Like how many people are there in the world that do tourism design, you know, in this kind of way, like versus, you know, I mean, there’s a lot of courses. Like there’s a lot of people that make courses, for sure. I think this, this can really be magical and unique. And if you make it unique, right? Like if you focus on this thing and you go, how can I make this extraordinary? How can I make it life changing? Mm. What, what can, how can I serve my audience in the deepest way? They will have a transformed life and then they will go do the marketing for you, right?
RV (43:14):
Like they will help tell people, versus if you’re always having to create new things, you’re it, you’re when you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. Like you become spread across so much stuff versus just going, what would make this over the top life changing transformational to where they went back and they had to tell everybody, I just had the most unbelievable three days of my life. That’s what Tony Robbins did when people walked on fire, that’s exactly what he did with the whole fire walking thing. It was like, it was remarkable, worth remarking about it. And you, and if you, you dedicate some time, you know, to that, by having, you know, fewer, fewer things, then you, it it’ll, it’ll spread and do everything you need, man. So I love it. I love, I love this idea, tourism design. I think, I mean, Jesse, you’re so warm and, and humble and uplifting and encouraging. And man, I, I, I feel like there’s, there’s no doubt, like you’re on such a great path. Congratulations on your first experience that you’re leading. Although I, the only thing I don’t understand is why you would miss out on the yacht just to talk to us,
JT (44:28):
But we,
RV (44:30):
We are, we’re so grateful for you, man. We’re so grateful.
JT (44:34):
Thank you, Ru it’s a, it’s a pleasure to be here and it’s been amazing connecting with you and and thanks for all of the tips and advice. I I appreciate it and I value it.
RV (44:44):
Yeah, well we, we we’re excited to continue following your journey and being a part of your journey and, and you know, if somebody is out there right now, Jesse, and they’ve kind of been listening to the podcast and they’re going, eh, I don’t know about if BBG is for me, like, is there anything that you would say that you would go, ah, here’s, here’s how, you know, this is for you, or like, here’s, here’s, you’re looking to get blank. This is what I’ve really, that I think would help.
JT (45:14):
Yeah. I think, like I had mentioned with travel we find that travel is an accelerator in the connection process. You’re more inclined to take those risks to step outside your comfort zone and live your true, authentic self while you’re traveling. And so, you know, it’s, it’s difficult to hop on a plane for the first time, eight hours across the world, not be terrified. Cause of course I was when I first did that. Right. So you can always start out you know, going to the city that you live in right now over the weekend doing a quick trip to walk around in different restaurants, different areas that you’ve never been to, you know, taking advantage of the weekends. But you know, it’s interesting because people are scared right now and they’re fearful. So all I say is, you know, for me personally, it’s been really difficult in terms of my journey. But there’s a reason why planes take off against the wind and not with the wind. So I’m excited to continue to take off and, and thanks for all your help and, and with BBG, I’m just so blessed to be a part of it.
RV (46:10):
Yeah. All right. My friend, well, we wish you the best and we’ll stay in touch. We’ll talk to you soon.
JT (46:18):
Worry. Thank you again. Talk soon.

Ep 262: How to Build a Digital Media Empire with Nathan Chan

RV (00:02):
I am absolutely delighted to introduce you to Nathan Chan, who really I’ve known him for years. Very, very briefly. We’ve had very brief interactions, but we, we probably have like four or five pretty close mutual friends. And I’ve always heard the sweetest about this guy and the best things about him. And there, his, the brand that he has built is one that I have respected from afar. So he is the CEO and publisher of a magazine called founder magazine. So it is a digital magazine. It’s really like a digital media group that reaches well over 4 million people. Every single month they’ve got more than 3 million people on Instagram alone. And so they’re especially known for the magazine. I’m sure that you’ve seen them. It’s founder without the E F O U N D R. And so they’ve, they’ve had featured cover stories with people like Richard Branson and mark Cuban and Ariana Huffington.
RV (01:06):
And it just goes on and on. And so Nathan knows how to build a brand. He knows how to build a company. He spent a lot of time interviewing some of the best entrepreneurs on the planet. And then he’s also had quite a nice personal brand he’s developed, although is he would describe it. It would be sort of casual and not so strategic, I think. And so I wanted to hear a little bit of his philosophy of personal branding in relation to what he does as an entrepreneur, actually, as the, as the CEO founder, but also to understand a little bit about the business model of a digital magazine and what does that mean and how does it work and how do you make money? And and most of all, just to introduce you to this delightful lad and somebody that I’m hopeful will become a closer and closer friend. So Nathan, welcome to the show.
NC (02:02):
Awesome. Thanks so much for having me, Rory be here, appreciate the kind introduction and yeah. Really excited to share with you kind of how I’ve thought about personal brands. And yeah, as I said, I haven’t been that strategic around it.
RV (02:19):
Well, let’s talk about, let’s talk about founder first because you’ve been very strategic around that you’ve done phenomenally well, you’ve built a, a very large following, a lot of reach. I a very respectable brand. I mean, it’s very clear that you know how to build a, a great brand. So can you just tell us a little bit of like, tell us the story of how you started founder and how you built that brand?
NC (02:46):
Yeah, sure thing. So started about seven, eight years ago now started just as a magazine digital magazine on the app store, Google play store. First business knew nothing about business. So I thought, I thought I’d start a magazine around entrepreneurship so I could learn literally just started it to try and get a job in marketing. Cuz I just finished my masters of marketing. Couldn’t get a job. So launched the magazine just literally as a side hobby, passion project, no grand vision, no thoughts of raising capital or anything of that sort like, you know, how can people have a business idea for me, it was like literally a, a side hobby passion project. And then I launched March, 2013 and we made $5 and 50 cents with the magazine. The magazine didn’t even have a, a successful person on the front cover. I had no idea what I was doing. And when I launched, I was like, okay, well we got two subscribers now. Now I’ve gotta a commitment. I gotta, I gotta keep producing the next one. Yeah. And then so cuz I’m the kind of person that wouldn’t wanna let others down, especially first business paying customers. It’s like, wow, okay. Especially
RV (04:08):
Two people. I mean you could afford the risk to your reputation.
NC (04:12):
Yeah, exactly. So, so, and I was doing it on the side while I was still working my day job and, and then off I go and then so about, for a year I built it up the recurring revenue to, in the subscriber base so I could, could go full time on it. And then the rest was kind of history. So then as time went on, I was like, okay, I can do more than just the magazine. I can start producing content to build like out a media platform and, and start doing all of that. And, and then over time I, I looked at leverage around like if we do interviews with people for the magazine, then it could be a podcast. It could be a video interview, it could be an article, it could be all these other things could be social content and you know, the, the game, like you chop it up and you can really sweat that asset.
NC (05:00):
And then cuz that’s what, that’s what content is. It’s an asset, right? When you produce one piece of content, it’s an asset. So over time just started to build that out and, and really build the building blocks one brick at a time of each channel, whether it’s audio, whether it’s video, whether it’s written, whether it’s social, whatever social channel. And then started to get into the online education space felt that there was something special we could do there. There isn’t really a well known platform or a go-to platform where it’s like a masterclass, but particularly focus on entrepreneurship or business building or like a digital marketer.com. That’s purely focused on marketing. Yeah. So, so then that, that was the vision that we started to build out about four or five years ago and, and it’s been a journey, but, and so, so then found it became more of a kind of media company plus online education company.
NC (06:04):
We’ve got, I think like 23 courses in our platform and we’re looking to really scale that up. We’re looking to have at least a hundred plus in the next three to five years. Wow. with, with all sorts of different diverse founders teaching topics that our audience wants to know from founders that have actually done it, founders that have built real businesses like, like yourself, right. You’ve built a real business. And yeah, we’re, we’re gonna work on a membership product. We’re gonna launch that in the next three to four months and, and yeah, along the way have slowly built the brand and it’s been an incredible ride thus far.
RV (06:45):
How much, what just if you don’t mind me asking, how did you make the leap? So, so that, you know, that’s something that a lot of our members and our clients and the, you know, our, our listeners are going, okay, I’m starting this as a, that this, the passion project sort of side hustle. How much, like, how did you know when to make the leap or how much, how much recurring revenue did you have to have to where you felt like there was enough to go or, or like talk about that transition a bit.
NC (07:14):
Yeah. So look eight years ago, I wasn’t, I wasn’t on like a high salary. I wasn’t an executive, I wasn’t a manager. I was, I was working in it support. So I was earning about, I think 50,000 Australian dollars a year. That was my annual salary. So I think that worked out to be around after tax around 3000 Australian dollars a month. So I was living out of home and I was like in this kind, like with a housemate and I was in this kind of really old rundown house. So rent wasn’t much. And then you could work. I could just work out my cost of living pretty quickly then. So
RV (07:58):
Did you just wait till it was exactly equal? Like, did you go say it was fit, say it was 50,000? Did you wait until you had 50,000 or whatever, 3000 a month? Or was it kind of like 75% of that or 60% of that? Like how close did you have to get before you went for the leap?
NC (08:15):
So there was a couple of key things. One I made sure I had six months of living expenses saved. I used to love traveling. I always had like right. Living off my credit card. So I made sure I had no credit card debt. I had six months of savings and yeah, ITAC exactly that. I replaced the revenue from the business a little bit more in fact, a little bit more because obviously the business had expense, but it was fairly profitable and such a small business looking back compared to, you know, and then so yeah. How, how did I make around three and a half, $4,000 in MRI to then go, okay, I can safe constantly take two of that and then live. And then the rest I could just keep slowly multiplying capital very, very slowly. And, and I could work on it full time.
NC (09:13):
So, so that was the argue. The argument was if I was working on it nights and mornings, first thing all into the night, all into the morning that if I could work on it full time, I was actually losing money. It got to a point. And that was something that somebody taught me. It got to a point where being in my job was actually losing me money because if I had have been able to apply myself to it full time, I would’ve been able to make a lot more, which it that’s what ended up happening.
RV (09:44):
Yeah. Like the opportunity cost of that time on your business becomes greater than the actual pay for time in your, in your company. I think it was interesting part of, what’s always fascinated me a about you and you even kind of alluded it to it here was like, why a magazine? Like what, what, what, what an interesting choice. But but you know, like you said, there, there, there wasn’t, there, there there’s, there’s, you know, there wasn’t a lot totally in that space and, and the recurring revenue is a wonderful and so is, did the business model, it sounds like really started purely as a magazine. And it was, I want people to pay me a monthly fee to subscribe to this magazine and I’m gonna curate content and do these interviews and produce this beautiful digital thing. Correct. And, and, and support my subscribers. And then how did the BI model evolved to there that it then did it go to courses? And that was how you monetize next?
NC (10:43):
Correct. And what was really interesting was I didn’t need traffic for the app store or the traffic come from the app store. There were people searching for the magazine every day, organically through organic search. And I worked out how to, if somebody typed in Forbes, if somebody typed in entrepreneur, if some type body typed in success, magazine, founder would show up. And then I used, so in the first four months, I got an interview with me, Richard Branson. And we, I, I really capitalized on that. And I used that front cover as a way to build the authority of the magazine. And I made that magazine addition free. So I learned this concept by E pagan called moving the free line, giving your best stuff away for free. So yeah, the magazine piece was not strategic. Rory just fell into it. There was this software that I could per that I purchased that allowed me to produce the magazine and build the app.
NC (11:55):
And it just so happened that it was a smart move because you talk about like your, like part of your process or your unique me methodology working with clients is producing a book. Why do you produce a book? It’s because it build authority. It makes it builds, thought leadership. I believe a magazine is even a higher, a, a higher level of thought leadership people really want to be on that front cover. It actually says something. And then once you build it up around like the people that have been on that front cover, then you’ve built a really strong authority. And it, it is, it has a lot of weight and I didn’t know that at the time, but you know, you get, you get your clients on front covers versus publishing their own book. Even if it is, you know, they’re signed by penguin ran house or whatever, like if they’re on a front cover of a well known magazine and they can use that in their social media profile, like I know like board apes is the new flex for your social profile, but if you wanna build your own personal brand and your you’re on the front cover of entrepreneur magazine, success magazine for like rappers, they rap about how they want to be on the cover Forbes or, or like that’s aspirational like that, that, but then owning the magazine, owning the property, then that yields the, I believe even stronger authority and leverage.
RV (13:32):
Yeah. I remember to this, the new owner of success magazine is a, is a brand builders group, client, and a friend of ours. And I actually just recently finished a term as I, I was an inter I was the interim entrepreneurship editor just like an associate, a kind of stand in when, when they acquired the company. But I, I, you used to be close with Darren Hardy, who was the publisher of success magazine for years. And I remember Darren telling me one time, he said, Roy, the magic of the magazine is it opens the door to any interview in the world of just like, it’s the relationships going? You try to, you try to, you know, sell something to someone they’re not answering. You try to get an endorsement. They’re not answering even try to get ’em on your podcast or something.
RV (14:20):
But if you call and say, I would like to talk to so-and-so about being on the cover of the magazine. Every one of those calls pretty much gets returned and it’s probably not everyone, but I, it made a lot of sense to me. And you know, here you are edifying the same, the same commentary. So what I think is inter another thing that’s fascinating about this to me, Nathan is, okay, so you started with the magazine, which is kind of like, you know, people would go, oh, magazines are dead. You can’t make money with magazines. And yet you’ve built this amazing business from it. And then I actually feel like a lot of people talk about courses that way, like people kind of go, oh, you know, the courses have, have, have run their, have run their road. But you know, you’re doubling down on courses. We, we had an interview with a, a brand builders group client, a friend of ours, Darcy, Ben and Costa was on this podcast. She’s doing seven figures a year from a few courses and she’s just crushing it. And, and, you know, some courses are 40 bucks and other ones are 400 bucks and others are four, 4,000 bucks. But like, you know, so now you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re moving in into the course world heavy.
NC (15:28):
Yeah. So the idea is how can we get a lot of the people like the aspiration is how can we build a platform or an educational platform, like a masterclass.com for entrepreneurship, and how do we get a lot of the people that are on the covers of our magazine, or even not on the covers to actually teach. And really we kind of democratize entrepreneurial education. So you know, we sell our courses, but I think now we’re in a position where we have enough that we can charge a member. We can, we can create an all access pass and, and have a membership. And then also start to build an incredible learn earning platform that is much more than just a course, you know, like, and really take the market because there are you’re right. There are a lot of people selling courses, and it’s so hard to know who to trust, what to follow.
NC (16:28):
We wanna create a membership that effectively is, is the superior product in the marketplace, which is extremely cost affordable. And, and the stuff that you learn is incredible. And your learning experience is, is, is like off the chain. Like, you know, we, we’re gonna build a learning recommendation and engine, we ask you a series of questions and then you’ll have a customized learning journey to fully tailored to your learning needs around where your areas of development are. And then the teachers will be just really next level, legit teachers that have actually done what, you know, they like, they’re so focused on their business that they don’t really need to teach or want to teach. Yeah. So, so that’s kind of the next evolution for us. So, so yeah, that, that was, and then like, it’s, it’s kind of like a really nice natural extension, to be honest with you R because you know, a lot of media companies, they produce a lot of free content.
NC (17:33):
Like we do 99.9% of our content is free, but then they have premium content, like premium paid content. Right. that’s all we’re doing. We’re just creating a, a, you know, premium content. If you want to know about let’s just say social media growth, and you’re reading an article, but actually you wanna do an in-depth course on how to grow your to organically. Then you can, you can get the full program or so to the membership. So it’s like, you can read an article, you can watch a video, but it’s only skirting the surface. You wanna actually go deep and actually get an actionable framework that is unpacked step by step with templates and like, to get you the result faster then. Yeah. That’s what we’re thinking, that’s the vision
RV (18:24):
And, and the course is like, are these kinda like $2,000 Jeff Walker type courses? Or are they, you know, $50 kind of thing?
NC (18:34):
Yeah. So, so that’s two bucks.
NC (18:38):
So it, all our courses range anywhere from a few hundred bucks to a few thousand dollars. So that’s why the, the me, that’s why once we move to the membership model, it’s gonna be, you know, incredibly valuable product. And eventually we’ll work to the, the evolution will be, we’ll only have one product and it’ll be the membership for an annual or monthly fee. And when we launch it, we’ll start with an annual. And honestly, the, the cost of the annual will be an absolute, no brainer. Like the it’ll be a no brainer. Hmm. And then it’s, we move from this idea of people purchasing a course as a form of ownership, to a membership where they’re just renting, they’re renting and that product will get significantly better over time. And that is our number one focus to build the most superior, largest online business school in the world.
RV (19:38):
Mm.
NC (19:39):
Interesting. But then, but then over time, cuz we’re building a platform, we can help founders in many other ways too. Well just be through education. It can be through events. It can be through tools in, can be through services. But one step at a time.
RV (19:59):
Yeah. Well so talk to us about your personal brand for a second, because you don’t have a personal brand website. You do have some personal social media, but this is another thing that’s really amazing. Like it’s not super easier. At least we haven’t found it super easy to grow on social. I mean to grow. Yes. But to, to get to where you have millions of followers is not an easy feat and you did it under a company name and a company profile, which is, I feel like even harder, like there’s fewer companies with millions of followers than there are people, but you’ve been able to do that. Meanwhile, you’ve kind of like not focused so much on the personal brand, which to me is a move that classic entrepreneurs would make classic entrepreneurs would go, no, I wanna, I want the business to operate independent of me or irrespective of me as the founder.
RV (20:49):
And that’s what building a company, a, a company that has equity value. Like we’ve had several we’ve had business valuation expert. We did an episode with Jim Comby, who’s one of our favorite business valuation experts is a Harvard, Harvard, JD MBA guy. And you know, the whole thing the business has to operate without you. So anyways, just talk to us about your personal philosophy for, you know, growing the company versus growing your personal brand and why you, you know, you actually haven’t, you know, gone all in on your personal brand. Like most of the people probably that we, we highlight and, and interview.
NC (21:26):
Yeah. So it’s really interesting R I, this time last year hired like a really experienced executive assistant. And she said to me, Nathan, what’s the plan for your personal brand? And I said, I don’t have one. We just gotta focus on growing founder first. And you talked about kind of the opportunity cost, right? You talked about the opportunity cost right. Of when I was in my day job and sacrificing that time to go all in on founder, I still see it as the same thing I could spend right now, I’m building my personal brand, but I think it would be an opportunity cost to not just double down on founder and still be the face. Right. So you were spot on, I found your study that you were talking about offline really fascinating because that’s, that’s correct more, more and more, the rise of personal brand is happening, right?
NC (22:34):
You look at the Logan, Logan, Paul, the Jake Paul, like it is incredible what those guys have done and, you know, they, they are spinning off businesses like you wouldn’t believe right. More and more people are much far interested in, in the who behind the brand or the person who from they are buying. So for me, in my particular situation and circumstance, I do have the ability to still build my personal brand without creating a Nathan Chan website without creating nation Nathan Chan’s social accounts, where I’m creating custom tailored content, because I can do all of that through founder. And also at the same time, I want to continue to build founder as an asset based business, not as a cashflow based business. So I’m aggressively reinvesting and slowly but surely building out founders. So it’s one for me, opportunity cost. But two, I do have the ability to, to, to build the, the Nathan Chan personal brand, somewhat strategically by still doing the interviews and by still producing content around topics that I believe I have the right to speak about like Instagram growth or social media growth, or building an online educator business.
NC (24:05):
I will strategically talk about those topics because I believe I’m qualified to share. So yeah, I will, I do plan to get myself off the interviews though. That is, that is a master plan. I haven’t quite got there yet. I’ve just rebuilt my whole leader ship team and hire some really, really experienced executives that, that are very familiar with scaling companies. And slowly I’m slowly, slowly getting off the tools. One of the last things is doing the interviews and also doing our, like when, when we sell our courses we, we use a model called a masterclass model, right, where it’s like an old automated webinar, but the way that we do it, because we have other talent that we work with to produces all of our courses we do it like an interview. I still do those. So those are those are those still like the two things that I’m on the tools, but eventually the master plan is to build a podcast network where we have quite a few shows in our podcast network that it will be total acceptable, fine, not even know a difference, who’s doing the interviews.
NC (25:28):
And then I will still create some other shows to have that Nathan Chan who’s behind the brand feel. Because one thing that I found very, very interesting, and this is not me pumping my own tires or anything, but people do like to follow the founder journey and they do, they are in interested to hear what we are doing. Like not everybody, but the people, there are people, there are people that notice, there are people that are interested and I’m not saying this to put my tires. So I have to keep like, like fueling that. I have to keep telling that story, that kind of, that heroes journey starting from nowhere. And then let’s see how far we can build it. It’s like how Gary V is like, I’m gonna buy the jets and people that’s part of his hero’s journey because people are following along. People wanna see how far people wanna champion the underdog, the person coming from nowhere. So there’s a little bit of that where people do follow the founder journey, what we’re up to, how far we’re taking this thing and how big we’re gonna build it. So I have to yeah. Keep, keep feeling that.
RV (26:38):
I think it’s kinda interesting though, cuz it’s like, you know, like the way that we, we would think about it or describe it as even I would say this is you have a great personal brand, you’re actually quite deliberate about building it because you do the interviews, you do speak at the conferences here, you are doing an interview. You’re also guest appearing in places and contributing both on your site. You just don’t have your own com. And I think people sometimes MIS misinterpret to go, oh, a personal brand means I must have a website in the way that brand builders would describe it is no, your personal brand means you have a reputation. And you know, we think of personal branding as simply the digitization of reputation, which you do have, you got a lot of digital assets and like you’re saying, cuz cuz Richard Branson does the same thing.
RV (27:28):
Richard Branson doesn’t have Richard branson.com, but he writes and [email protected] or what, whatever, you know, the, the URL is, but everybody knows Richard Branson. And you know, I, I think it’s really interesting almost even that evolution of what’s happening with personal brand and what that means. Cuz I think you have a great personal brand, even though you don’t have a website, but, but I would say, I mean the, the way that you guys have grown on social is amazing. You’ve really done a great job with that and you know, know where do you see that headed? Because right now I feel like it’s harder. It’s get it’s there is so much noise and it is, it is so difficult to get organic reach. And are you still, you know, optimistic about organic social media growth and still seeing big numbers real in and if so, why and if not, why not?
NC (28:29):
Yeah. So I love the way you think about it and you spot on like, I, I guess I am strategically building a personal brand, but maybe not a traditional way with the, you know, producing a bulk producing content. Nathan’s this guy, you know what I mean? Like, so yeah, you’re right. But no that I used, I’ve only done the interviews Rory because there was nobody else to do at the start and it just got outed that way. But yeah, no, it’s, it’s really cool. And I don’t really do podcast interviews. I, but I am starting to ramp it back up now. So yeah, I’ve gone in and now I don’t speak at, I don’t speak at conferences either. I, I cut that about three, four years ago. So yeah. It’s funny you say that cuz you can, you can go I’m I’m going up and back, but yeah, at the moment I’m, I’m, I’m wanting to double down again because I feel like it’s powerful and I’m finding more time, but yeah.
NC (29:28):
So coming back to answering your question around organic and social growth is it still powerful? Yes. I think there’s a couple of key things to take away there. It depends on the platform like right now I think Instagram is still a very, very powerful platform and we will continue to double down on it. I’m not happy with our creative. Yes. We still grow like 1000, 2000 new followers a day. But I think we can do a better job on the creative and that’s gonna be a focus for us this year, but then also there’s always emerging platforms, right? Like TikTok, TikTok will probably be the next big platform. And, and you see that there are people that grow really fast on there and it’s a different platform. It’s different kind of content and yeah, I think you can of doing incredible things.
NC (30:23):
It’s, it’s crazy some of the numbers and things that you can see, I can’t share them publicly, but you know, we, we know like a significant amount of customers that, that find us. They start with Instagram doesn’t mean they end with Instagram because you’ve only got a couple of ways to drive traffic through stories or that link in buyer. But we know that people ended up finding us via Instagram because when someone becomes a customer or a student and enrolls in one of our programs, we, we have a survey and we find out you can’t, it’s an onboarding survey. We, we find out and that that’s, that’s actually the largest way, most voted way that people find it. So it’s funny, you know, you look at that, but then also you look at you’re retargeting with paid advertising. You know, how much are you spent spending on retar
RV (31:23):
Use to be anyways, like pre that, that the apple iOS update last year was been, I mean, has that that’s gotta have affected you is feel like it’s affected everybody and you guys did a lot, a lot of paid. I mean, you’ve done a lot of paid advertising and I guess presumably you’re driving paid ads to your free masterclass and the free masterclass to, you know?
NC (31:45):
Yep, yep, yep. Correct. Yep. So everybody’s taken a hit on paid advertising. Does it still work for us? Yes. do we get the returns that we used to get? No. Do we have to spend more? Yes. Do we have to become better? Yes. It’s just a fact, right? It was whether it was iOS 14 or something else costs were always going to rise. It was always going to get more competitive. So yeah, I’m not sitting here from an ivory tower saying like, yeah, we’re killing it. Like we have had challenges, but we still sign frequently spend a lot of money on paid advertising because it works still. It still works. It’s just not as effective. So it’s your job as the founder owner CEO to, to, to find ways to make it work. Cuz it still can or diversify look, you know there, there, you know, it’s, it’s just classic business, right?
NC (32:47):
You can’t rely on one channel like anything, you know, you gotta diversify your channels, you gotta diversify your revenue. So yeah, but yeah, coming back. Yeah. So we find that yeah. Top of funnel social still works top of funnel. We still drive a significant revenue from our social channels, but at the same time we’re working on always new channels like SEO, like YouTube, YouTube, massive one massive, massive what you can do there. We still haven’t cracked it. It, it drives substantial revenue, but not, not to the, not to the, not to the size that I believe is the potential. So to answer your question, yes. Social organic still works. You have to look at it from not that being your only play though. I think you’ve got it’s, it’s a multi omnichannel approach. And we see, we, you know, from paid from retargeting, from customers ending up on our email list or, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a varied approach, but yeah, it still works. It’s more competitive than ever. But even when I started seven, eight years ago, it felt super competitive. To be honest, it didn’t feel like, oh wow, this is Greenfield. I like, there’s no one playing in this space. Like it was still the same. And it was still the same feeling that it’s like, all right, now, now we’ve gotta crack to few hundred thousand followers. Like you ain’t cutting it.
RV (34:27):
What is just like off the top of your head, when you think of like a cost per lead, like what you would pay for an email address, what do you kind of go? Yeah. If we’re in this range, we’re probably doing okay. If we’re not like we gotta shut it down and you know, come up with a, a new creative or something,
NC (34:43):
Look, to be honest with you you, you, we could, we can get leads for a dollar. Right. We can get leads for a dollar. Like we can go Facebook ads, Facebook lead ad form. And we get, we can get leads for a dollar, but doesn’t mean they’re buyers. So, so we don’t use that as a metric, but yeah, we, we, you know, anywhere between three, five, $10, $15 a lead. Yeah. It, it, but it depends. Right. Cause cuz for us, it’s not about leads. It’s about direct response. How, how much did we put in and then how much did we get back?
RV (35:22):
So you’re looking at more like a, see like a cost per acquisition, like number and metric is much more what you’re looking at.
NC (35:30):
Yep.
RV (35:31):
Yep. And do you guys typically kind of ascend people like you go, Hey, let’s offer a masterclass and then a low dollar thing and we try to send them or do you have like sometimes we’re selling the $500 sometimes the a thousand dollars sometimes the two.
NC (35:44):
Yeah, no we, we don’t, we don’t we don’t have like a, a value ladder like that, to be honest with you from a business model standpoint we just have certain courses and we have you know, free trainings that can give you a taste tester of that instructor, their frameworks, their beliefs, their ideas. And then if you really like the instructor, you can roll on the full program. The next evolution for us is, is the membership product. So it’s like, you can buy one course or you can, and then you can go to the membership. And yeah, yeah. We’re, we’re probably not that good at that. If I’m being honest, I’m, I’m looking at it like quite honestly, how do we build a large, like I look at ed tech platforms for inspiration, like what is skill doing? I know creative live was sold to fiber and they kind of went backwards a bit, but like, you know, what is creative live doing?
NC (36:45):
What is skill share doing? What is masterclass doing? What is mine valley doing? What is, yeah. Like companies like that, how, how are they building out their brands? How are they building out their platforms? But still using and being inspired by online marketing or the Jeff walkers of the world. Jeff Walker, you know, launch PLF. We’ve done, we’ve done that before. Right. But you know, it’s interesting when you look at kind of like, you know, the, the, the PRLF stuff, like we’ve done that for, and it didn’t work as effective as just doing the model that we do. And it’s just like, you can do it with one course. Right? You can do it with one course or a second course, but how do you do something like that with 20 courses? How do you do something like that with 50 courses or a hundred courses?
NC (37:38):
And at the end of the day, you want to be able to, of the operations of these things as well. And so when you look to create a $5 product or a trip trip wire for 20 bucks, then you wanna upsell somebody to something to $300, then you wanna do 500. Then you wanna do a thousand. Like there’s a big operational cost when you wanna do out by 20 or hundred or 50. You know what I mean? So like, that’s why, yeah. We don’t, it’s, we’re not very good at that kind of classic online marketing, kind of some of that kind of value ladder stuff. And it, it is working for us now. Yes, we will. You know, I think there’s a great book that I love called ready fire aim had to go from zero to a hundred million flat and they talk about there’s two kinds of products. There’s the product with the sole purpose to acquire a customer. And then there’s a product with the sole purpose to generate profit. That all makes sense. And we are not there yet. Like we, we still have, we, we, there’s a, there’s a little bit of evolution and little bit of work for us to be done there, to be honest with you.
RV (38:52):
Yeah. I mean, that’s so great to have, I mean, that’s I’d say we very much feel that way. I mean, we’ve, we’ve been through this journey once before building from scratch and growing it and exiting the company. And now it’s like we’re three years into the new thing and very much like, oh my gosh, we have so much work to do. Like, we are still so far away from where we wanna be. But I mean, this has been awesome, Nathan, this is so into inspiring. Like I really appreciate you kind of just like sharing the story and opening up a little bit about like what the journey has been. Obviously people can follow founder on Instagram. I know that’s, you know, you got a big presence there. Where else would you direct people to? If they wanna like find out more about, you know, what founder is, is, is doing and you,
NC (39:36):
Yeah. Just go to founder.com founder without the E
RV (39:40):
Founder.Com without, without the E Nathan Chan friends. Buddy, this is so great to reconnect with you and wish you all the best, but look forward to following your journey and, and seeing you, how you, how you do this. So keep in touch.
NC (39:57):
Thanks so much, Roy. Appreciate your time.

RV (00:02):
Love love, love that chat with Nathan Chan and longtime friend. We’ve been colleagues and just seeing what they’ve done over there at founder is awesome. Just such a quality brand and obviously a great guy, right? Like super humble and really intelligent and and just really smart and service mind. So I, I, I love that there, there were, there were a couple big tape takeaways from me or for me from that interview, I mean, like always I learned so much from every, every single guest that we have, but, you know, so the first one is how to make the leap full time. Right. So his personal story about how did he actually do that was really inspiring to me. And, and hopefully something that you picked up too. And, you know, there were a couple, two, two things specifically, well, three, three things.
RV (00:51):
So first of all, he said, I had no debt. And that to me is really important, right? A lot of people believe in debt and using debt in different ways. We come from the school of, of not at having debt. I grew up, you know, financially speaking, being raised, so to speak by Dave Ramsey was where I learned about money. And we just don’t believe in debt. We don’t wanna have debt. We want to be free and clear of, of owing people stuff. And so you know, hearing Nathan talk about that was, was, I’m always into, to hear when other successful people, you know, say, yeah, I didn’t bring on investors. I didn’t go out and get bank loans. I didn’t leverage credit cards. I, I didn’t, you know, mortgage the house. Like you, you, you could, there is a way to do it.
RV (01:36):
Right. And, and that’s how AJ and I have done it. Like, we, we don’t have debt. So we have some lines of credit that are like for emergencies, but their emergencies to the emergencies, which is the second thing he said is he said I had six months of living expenses saved up. Right. And so if, cuz if you’re in that mode of going, okay, how do I make the leap full time? The question is, is typically like, how am I gonna survive in the first few months? Because that, that’s the reality of the being successful at anything. Like, even if you’re busting it hardcore, like when you’re doing something new, it takes a minute, like you can’t just automatically start a business and be successful or start a brand and be successful. Like it takes a while to even get your first revenue dollars in sometimes.
RV (02:21):
So being debt free gives you an opportunity that extends the runway. Why? Because you don’t owe money every month, right? Like if I have a bunch of car payments and a bunch of credit card bills and a bunch of student loans, and you know, now you might have a mortgage. Like that may be the one thing that you have, but like, you know, hopefully there’s not much more than that. And if there’s a way you cannot have a mortgage, then that’s even better. Right. And that’s why so many entrepreneur stories start of like, you know, Lewis, how tells the story of sleeping on his sister’s couch. And you know, people moving back in with their parents and just like, yeah. Two and whatever it takes for a minute, but you don’t, when you don’t have debt, it extends the runway. When you have debt, you’ve got monthly payments that are due and you’re chained to those, right?
RV (03:04):
Like that’s why the Bible says the borrower, the borrower is slave to the lender. You’re, you’re chained to those. You’re, you’re tied in, you’re committed. You can’t break free. And the only way to break free is to pay it off. And you know, there’s there’s to do that, but it’s almost like that’s a season in and of itself. You get debt free and then you gotta stay on that really like frugal fight where you’re, whatever you’re working extra hours at work, you’re making extra sales calls, you’re garage sailing, you’re pitching, you’re doing some side hustle. You’re, you’re taking a second job. And then you save up to where you have six months of limb expenses. Now you can make the leap, right? Like, it doesn’t mean you’re gonna be set and it’s gonna be easy, but it’s like, okay, you can survive. And you gotta give yourself some runway.
RV (03:51):
You be, and this is what it means to be an investor. I mean, when, when you’re a financial investor in a company, they use this term runway, they’re, they’re creating runway. They’re saying, we’ll give you this much money. Not because that’s the only amount of money we have, but that’s the amount of money we’re willing to put at risk for this idea. And when you, when you bootstrap a company, you are the investor. And, and the way that you’re investing is if you don’t have a lot of money, it is through sacrificing some luxuries in your life and, and selling off some stuff and downgrading your quality of life for a while and increasing your work ethic and your output so that you can, so you, you can create some runway. And that I think a lot of people stay trapped in a job.
RV (04:34):
They hate for the rest of their life because they can’t take that risk and they don’t know how to break free. And so I, that, that’s really an important function here about how do you, how do you start a business? And, and when do you make the leap? And then, and then, you know, so you, you know, get debt free, then stay frugal and save up six months of living expenses, which by the way, this is, this is, these are part of Dave, Ramsey’s seven baby steps, too. You know, so if you’re following on that plan, you’re, you’re doing this. And then the third thing that Nathan said is once you can replace the revenue, once you feel confident that you can generate enough revenue in your new thing, that to replace what you’ve got from your current thing, or if you can at least get, you know, like 60% of the way they, or 50 or 40% of the way they’re doing it as a side hustle.
RV (05:21):
And then you give yourself a six month runway and then you go, all right, I’m gonna take the leap. And I gotta get myself from 40% to a hundred. That’s how it happens. Like, if you don’t wanna lose your house and like do the thing, but it’s not easy. Like it’s not easy. Who told you it was gonna be easy? Like when did you think this was gonna be easy? Like, what guest have we ever had on this show who has made and, and built a huge business or a huge brand who was like, oh yeah, it was, it was easy. It’s never easy. It’s hard, it’s difficult. That’s why most people don’t do it. And you have to be prepared to make the sacrifice for at least a little while. It’s why, so that you can have your dream so that your dream can come true so that you can impact people, make a difference in the world, but there are tactical practical steps and strategies that can do it.
RV (06:07):
That, that just like we’re talking about here, like you gotta be willing to pay the price you gotta be. As, as my, one of my, my long time friends, Randy G always says, you have to be the number one investor in your own dream. You gotta bet on you. You gotta take the shot. You gotta take the chance. And why would anyone else give you money if you’re not willing to, to, to, to pay the price of saving up and doing yourself. So that was huge. I always, I love that story. I thought that was tactical. The second thing, which I have never heard be for at least not so clearly, which really hit me from this interview with Nathan. And this will stick with me, is there are two different types of products. There is the product that you create, where the sole purpose is to acquire a customer.
RV (06:52):
And then there is the product that you create to generate a profit. That, that was fascinating to me. And now he, he quoted the book ready, fire aim, which I had never heard of. So I guess apparently that that’s a big concept out of, out of that book, but that’s a really powerful idea. And, and when we have a, one of our, one of our stop on the brand builder journey, like one of our courses that’s called high traffic strategies and it’s about running paid traffic. And it’s more, it’s one of the more advanced courses that, that people get to once you’ve built your whole infrastructure. But one of the things that we talk about there is, you know, this concept of like a self-liquidating funnel or you know, a, a, a recovery or a break even where you’re able to pay money for ads to drive traffic.
RV (07:44):
And then you’re just trying to sell enough of those items to recover your ad spend. And you, wait, why would you do that? Like, why would I spend a bunch of money to only just barely get that money and, and have the risk? Well, the reason why is because in the process, you grow your brand awareness, you grow your email list, you grow your social following, you grow your presence, your street cred. There’s more people that hear about you. So there’s all of these other positive ancillary byproducts. If you can set that up, that’s what he’s talking about here is one product you create exists for the sole purpose to acquire a customer. That’s kind of that concept, right? At least in digital marketing world, that is, is that concept. Then the second type of product you create is to generate profit. So the other reason why you would do this sort of self-liquidating funnel concept is not just because of those, those things like, Hey, I would, I would get more impressions, more, reach, more awareness, more emails, but it’s because if you capture their contact information, that’s an actual asset that you can monetize directly in the future.
RV (08:53):
So just think about it as an email address. Let’s say I put $10 in the machine and I get, you know, $10 outta the machine. I made no money. I spent a bunch of time. I took risk. I made no money. Well, why would I do it still? Well, because the, the byproduct is an email address. And you say, well, what difference does it make you, you don’t get paid for addresses. Well, that’s true. You don’t get paid on the first sale, but you do on the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, the 10th, the 50th that you go, oh, well, then I’m monetizing it later. And this is this little part right here is like, honestly, functionally. One of the biggest differences, like you think the biggest personal brands in the world are the biggest, because they’re the smartest or they’re, they’re the best, or they have the most original ideas.
RV (09:39):
They’re not, they understand this concept I’m talking about right here, and they’re willing to take risk. And they’re willing to bet on themselves. They’re willing to say not by followers, but by attention, by awareness, by reach by impact. And say, I will put in a ton of work to impact lives, even if I don’t make money from it, because I wanna impact a lot of people. And it’s, you know, there’s a lot of functionality to it, which is one of the reasons why brand builders group exists. Right? But that, that’s the concept here and Nathan’s telling the same story. And then the third thing, which again, is sort of this one’s more classic entrepreneurship is when he was just saying, find a way, find a way you gotta find a way, like, are you gonna take a hit on paid advertising? Yes. Did I, the iOS 14 updates, crush a bunch of us.
RV (10:28):
Yes. I say us, we weren’t actually running paid ads, but the, the, it has, it changed the landscape you yes. Does. Does every time a new social media come on, you know, TikTok comes out. Does that change things? Yes. Is the metaverse gonna affect the future? Yes. Are there new competitors coming in? Yes, it’s hard, but you gotta find a way you gotta make the decision to make the resolution, make the commitment that I’m gonna find a way. Like I have a goal. I have a destination in that I am pursuing, and I am currently on a path that path might get blocked. I am not committed to, to having to follow one path. I am committed to the destination. I am committed to finding a way to get there. The way that I get there might have to change. Right? It’s just like driving somewhere.
RV (11:16):
You have your destination. There might be a traffic jam. There might be road construction. There might be an accident, but you go, I’m going to do whatever I have to do. And it might take longer than I thought I might have to go different. I might have to go, you know, do something new, but I’m still committed to the destination. It’s exactly how it is. And yet most of us go, oh, I had, you know, I, I had destination and the path I was walking it down. It didn’t, it didn’t work out. And so it’s over. I mean, that’s not wrong. It’s not bad. It’s just not what successful people do. And so are you really somebody who’s willing to make that decision to find a way to commit to the destination, to, to go the entire journey, to do whatever it takes, because there is a way like there is a way to get there.
RV (12:01):
It just may not be the way, you know, and, and you gotta, you know, you need help. You need other people to guide you and show you the workarounds. And, and, but there is always a way. And, and what it matters is not so much that, you know, the way as what matters is that, you know, the destination, you don’t have to know the way, but you have to know the destination and you have to be committed to the destination. And if building your personal brand is a really important destination for you, we know a lot of ways to get there and we’ve run into a, out of the roadblock and we know where the construction is, and we know where the traffic jams are and we can help you. And, and we have a track record of figuring out for ourselves and for a whole host of hundreds of clients, figuring out ways around them, because things are always changing, but this is, you know, this is the game that we play.
RV (12:52):
And so if you’re serious about building a personal brand, you need to request a call with our team, right? You need to take advantage of, of the, you know, the, the opportunity to do that and, and request a call and talk to us, we’ll do the first call for free because all of us have had to have that journey. And you hear about ’em every single week, Nathan Chan was no different. They’ve built a really, really wonderful brand a founder magazine, 3.4 million followers. I mean, that gets the attention of the biggest people in the world. I mean, some of our, our very high profile clients are people that we’ve been connecting to, to Nathan Chan, because it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a legit reputation and it’s not easy, but it can be done and you can do it. So keep coming back, keep staying plugged in. We’re gonna keep bringing you hopefully valuable insights and inspiration and inspiring stories and guests right here on the influential personal brand podcast catch you next time.

Ep 260: 3 Steps to Making Money From Social Media with Vanessa Lau

RV (00:07):
Vanessa Lau has become one of my favorite people to follow. You know, recently I mentioned that Jasmine star, when we had Jasmine on that, I’ve, you know, known her for years and we become friends and I love her. I love following Vanessa as well. I learn a lot from her, but I’ll tell you what impresses me the most about her is her transparency. If you hit her YouTube channel, which by the way, has a half a million subscribers, the very first thing that you will see is a video that auto plays, which shows her crying. It shows her in real life, the starting her dream, her journey as like corporate escapee just a few years ago, like three or four years ago. And now she is a seven figure CEO. And she specializes like in, in teaching online course creators and coaches, unlike how to build their influence, she’s got more than 200,000 followers on Instagram. And she just has a, a, a really powerful knack for teaching practical things in a very, very honest way. I had a chance to interview her for something I was doing with success magazine several months ago, Sean Cannel vouched for her and said she was awesome Hansen, Chang. And we just got to meet and I really, really like Vanessa Laos. So Vanessa, welcome to, to the show.
VL (01:23):
Thanks for having me, Rory excited to hang out with you and have amazing conversation.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
So tell us just a little bit of like, I mean, a lot of the people that we have on this show are people who’ve been around a minute, right? Like you’re you have like shot to the top of this space, just terms of the, the size of your following and your impact, like in a couple years. So what happened? How did that ha like, how did that happen? Why do you think that happened? Like, just tell us the story a bit.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I mean, I started about four years ago in 2018. I started with my YouTube channel and I never like, even you explain that I’m having like pinch me moments, cuz even for me, I don’t realize how much I’ve grown and how far I’ve grown. But I honestly think what contributed to my success was just being candid and honest. I never thought that I was gonna monetize. I never thought that I would be building courses in the future or just even having a, a company. When I first started, I created my YouTube channel because I was just in so much pain in my corporate job when I was trying to figure out how to quit it. And during that journey, when I was trying to figure out, you know, if I should leave, if I shouldn’t leave, I really couldn’t find any resources that I could connect with to help me with that taboo decision.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
When you decide you wanna leave corporate, you wanna quit your job. You don’t go around your office asking your coworkers for advice. You don’t really have a lot of friends or family to really support you through that decision if they’re also in corporate as well. And at the time I found so many resources of people explaining them, leaving their jobs, but all of those jobs were more so like service level, minimum wage entry level jobs. I couldn’t find any resources that were really for that person who like went to college and has a really high paying job and trying to make that decision. And so I went through a lot of pain to like figure out what was right for me. Then eventually when I did quit, I made it my mission to create YouTube videos, to help that person and share my story of why I quit my nine to five, what was my thought process, the pros and cons, and really documenting my journey of doing that.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
And I think that was kind of the the thing that made me stand out the most was the pure honesty, but also the niche that I was in at the time, I didn’t even realize it was a niche, but looking back, it was like me addressing a pain point that was really specific to a very specific type of person. And I, so I think that’s kind of what really helped me make my mark in the beginning. One other thing that I was really good at when I was starting out was building and community. I think that there’s a difference between building an audience versus building a community. When you’re building an audience, it’s like building a following, getting more views, getting subscribers and all that stuff. But building a community is very different. Building a community to me means making as many of your audience members feel seen, heard, appreciated, respected, and feeling involved in your, and one thing looking back that I did really well was the moment I started building the audience.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
I would invite them to a Facebook group and inside I would do even more trainings. I would actually genuinely try to get to know people. At the time when I had the time, I would also do really generous things. Like, you know, if, if you had a question and book a call with me and let let’s talk about it, let’s hang out and let me, let me help you as best as I could. And I think that’s what really helped me grow a lot faster was because I focused on the community building aspect without me even realizing I was doing that. To be honest, when I first started, I was so naive. One thing that I liked to say is I was successful because I was stupid because I really didn’t know any other industry leaders. I didn’t know any business, best practices. I didn’t know what systems and processes were.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
I didn’t know what were the dos and don’t. And so I just did what felt right? I did what felt human. I did what felt good to me. And at the time I just genuinely wanted to connect with other people because I couldn’t find that connection in my real life. Now fast forward to today, this is why I love teaching people about social media specifically is because through my journey, I really learned that social media has just done so many great things for me. It really put me on a international platform and it helped me connect with so many people like without social media, I wouldn’t have connected with you Rory. And so now I realize like, wow, my mission today is I really wanna help people just like me who have this like story to share or, you know, who have tips and advice that they want to give to other people so that they can avoid the same mistakes they did, but giving them that international platform, whether that’s YouTube, Instagram, whatever is in trend right now, so that they can amplify their message and help more people. Because through my journey, I’ve experienced the beautiful thing where, because of my videos or because of my Instagram or because of whatever I’ve helped, one person get 1% better. And as a result of them getting better, they are now helping other people do the same with whatever they learned. And so that is kind of my mission today. But to answer your question of how I grew so fast, I really do think it’s because I UN unintentionally understood the difference to between community and audience.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Yeah. That’s a powerful distinction, you know, and I the, I think, you know, between com that component of community, and then also the transparency, you know, we were joking before we started the interview about how you wrote the world’s longest blog post at the end of 2020. And I read it, I read it because it was so honest about what you struggled with and you kind of hit, you know, you hit seven figures and you entered what we call the swamp. And we teach a lot of our clients is like, it’s really exciting to hit seven figures where the real work happens is, is truly between one to 3 million and, and getting to 4 million and beyond is a is a very much a case of what got you here. Won’t get you there. And most of us cuz you can’t do it alone, like you can get to 1 million by just being like a pretty bad mam Jamma, but like getting past three or 4 million is a totally different game and the team and you anyways, you were writing about some of those pains and I just you know, I loved it and it was really, really good.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
So on, on for the social media to talk about that for a second you know, Mo a lot of the people who have big social media followings had them because they amassed most of it before 2018. You know, this was even an I would, we would’ve even been in that category. So we sold all of our social media in 2018. You know, we kind of went, it went in the exit of our first business, but you started in 2018 and you also did courses. And I want to talk about the course business model because it was like, you know, 2018 was not early to the game. It was late to the game and yet you’ve grown really, really fast. And so when it comes to social media specifically, do you think it’s really cuz of that community aspect or, you know, are there other things to it you think that have played a big role?
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I think that one thing I, I like to say to my own followers because they always think that it’s too late to start something is just having the mindset of like, you know, it’s always going to be too late to be on a platform, but you know, today is better than none at all. And so that was the mindset that I had going in just as the FYI, because one thing I realized was like, wow, I’ve been putting start a YouTube channel, my new user resolutions for the last like five years, 10 years even. The best time really, if I were to be completely honest was probably when YouTube launched and a bunch of people discovered this whole influencing thing like that would’ve been the best time time to, to launch. So even in 2018, like I at the time didn’t feel like it was the best time because I missed so many opportunities.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
But even today I think that if someone’s listening to this episode, don’t think that even now is too late. I think that it’s it’s, you should just start. But in terms of other things other than building a community, I do think that it’s just, like I said earlier, like stupidity was my, my biggest advantage. Like I wasn’t, I didn’t even know who my competitors were at the time. And so I didn’t try to do the same things as everyone else did. I didn’t try to like watch someone else’s video and just basically copy and paste what they were saying. And so I think that especially if you’re trying to grow in a saturated market saturated, cuz that’s subjective. I think it’s important to almost shield yourself from some of that. So you can actually let your creativity break through. I think that you were just saying how, oh, I, that, that blog post that I wrote where literally outlined every single month, how much I made, even if I didn’t make a profit, all of my learning lessons, all of that, the reason why I did that was because I had noticed that everyone else during that period, during the new year period, everyone was talking about all their wins and all their successes and how awesome it was.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
And so I was like, you know what, let me just do something completely different to of that and talk about all of my failures and all the LS I took in 2021. And that, that, that blog post went viral. And so that’s an example of something that I still do today, which is doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing or having a more refreshing take on certain things. And I think that also helps you stand out in the crowd. I think even for me doing that and doing things different also attracted the attention of people who were even more successful than me. Like EV like even you RO you messaged me and you’re like, whoa, that blog post was amazing. It brought me back to back then when I was building my business and I was feeling a certain way. And you weren’t the only one I had people who had like doubled the following.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
I did message me about it because it, that blog post was circulating so much that it went up to them in their world. And so I know I’m talking about blog posts, but the same thing applies to videos and Instagram content and social media in general is when you actually have a different take on something, people tend to notice actually, people who are more successful than you, because it’s like, oh, this young person right here, or not even young, like this new will comer, holy. Like I didn’t even think about certain things like that. And so I think that from a even a personal brand standpoint is being different is your advantage. And if you are starting on social media, I think a big mistake that a lot of people make is like, oh, but I’m not successful. I don’t have a hundred million followers or I’m, I haven’t had X, X amount of years in business.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
I’m like, that is your advantage. What you think is not your advantage is actually your biggest advantage of being someone who’s starting out and being someone who’s new, not only from a con tent standpoint, because you might have a refreshing take on certain things that no one challenges or no one questions in your industry, but also it’s a lot easier to build community. You know, the reason why when I answered that question of yours earlier, I said, well, I used to, or back then I’m using a lot of past tense language is because back then I had the capacity to create eight community. And that was my biggest advantage that I took advantage of now with all these followers and all these subscribers, it’s a bit harder to do without a team. And so your secret sauce is what you actually think is your disadvantage, but I guarantee you that it is your secret sauce that you have to recognize within yourself.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Yeah. I that’s, I love the, even there where you mentioned the idea of a blog, right? I mean, you know, blogging is like, oh, it’s so old school. Now we talk about the blog is the central is the central home headquarters of our digital strategy. And it’s kind of what we teach everything else is just sort of filtering because of SEO and et cetera, et cetera. But you know, just starting with that and going now let’s talk, can we talk about your business model for a second? So we
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
You came out, it, it was the course. So your course is boss Graham academy. That was like, that’s been like your flagship. That’s like the, the first course you kind of launched and built and have built on, right. For the, the last few years that’s been your flagship. Right?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
I mean, the first thing I ever launched was coaching like one on one. Got it. And the reason why was because my videos, like honestly, when I started my business, I just want to be a YouTuber. My goal is like, I wanna be a full-time YouTuber, make money off of a sense. And you know, I’ll be happy with that. But what I realized is that as I was creating more videos, talking about my story, my journey, and, you know, eventually I started sharing some social media tips that were doing well for me, just cuz genuinely I wanted to share. I started getting like DMS from people being like, Hey, can I actually pay you to help me privately with a question that I have? And I was like, what’s this, you know, a few years ago I had no idea what coaching even was. And so that’s when I started experimenting and just taking on a few clients at first I did for free cuz I had no idea what I was doing.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
And I was like, is this even for real? Then I got confident cuz I was like, okay, I’m getting busy. I’m actually good at what I do. And people are getting results. So let me start charging. Then the next phase of my business was okay, no, now I’m booked out. I am booked out. And at the time I was working with 12 clients, which to some people isn’t a lot, but to me who’s just starting out. That’s a lot at once. Like for someone who doesn’t even know what they’re doing, right. And then I noticed like, okay, there’s some patterns amongst these clients who are the clients that I love working with, who are the clients that maybe weren’t a good fit? Who did I get results for? And through that process of working with one on one clients, it also helped me identify like what my strengths were too.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Like there were some questions that I was like, mm, I could answer that, but I’m not really passionate about it. Or I’m not really qualified to answer this question. Other questions were asked. I was like, ah, this is like my zone a genius. So eventually because of pure demand, I was literally rejecting so many people and closing out my programs cuz there was so much demand from it. Thanks to the traffic that I was getting on social media. I then decided to package everything that I knew into a course. So I didn’t necessarily build a course because I was like, ah, everyone’s got a course and I’m gonna a lot of money from this. It was really because of like, okay, I’m basically repeating myself to a lot of these clients. I have a whole wait list of people that wanna work with me. So what’s the easiest way to like still create impact for people without trading too much time. That’s when I created the course and now that course is my flagship.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Yeah. And that, that, you know, we talk about how services are always the fastest path to cash, but they’re the least scalable long term. And coaching is one of the services that has the least barrier to resistance. Like, you know, being a speaker, which is kind of how I came up as a classic kind of corporate keynote speaker. It’s a, it’s a hard road. There’s, you know, a long time for decision making and a lot of competition and you’re book events way out in advance. But when you’re a coach, it’s like, if somebody’s a fan, they could just hire you it’s and they can hire you tomorrow and you can like start working right away. But when you repeating yourself over and over and then going, I just need to package this. So how did you then launch the course? Right? So you, you realize, all right, I’m good at this.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
I’m gonna start charging started for free, love that. Super common in the journey. You’re repeating yourself. You go, okay, I’m gonna package this up. I get it recorded. I get it edited. Now it’s up inside of, you know, whatever, some LMS somewhere then what is the ma the mechanism or the process? Cuz we have a lot of clients that are in this, but, and they could even be like not online marketing coaches, they’re they’re, you know, whatever they’re CPAs or their lawyers or their, and they cannot, they can’t take on any more service based work. They have to commoditize that knowledge. And I don’t think the hardest part for them is creating what to say and getting it recorded. The hard part is going, how the heck do I sell that thing? So talk us through that.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah. Well I actually did it a bit different where I just sold the sales page first. So I marketed the program and I, I, I basically, I come from a corporate background and one thing that I learned from being in corporate was you all always want to prototype something. I learned this from one of the people who worked at Google that came in for a keynote. And basically what prototyping means is instead of just CR building the product first and seeing if people are gonna buy it, because you could waste a lot of money, time, resources, building a product that’s not gonna sell. When you prototype something, you just create like the bare minimum of what needs to be marketed and sold to. And then if there’s demand, then you build the product. A good example would maybe be like Elon Musk and his cyber truck.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Right? Like he didn’t even build it yet. He just kind of sold the I idea on it are people interested, do a wait list, get a deposit. And then he uses that money to actually build the cyber truck. So that’s essentially what I did. Even back then, when I worked at keels, I worked for a skincare brand. I was doing marketing. We would prototype like skincare kits. Like we would create the mock up of what the kit would look like and the then just put it on the counter and see if there was anyone that would pick it up just to see if there was a demand for it first, before we actually built the thing. And so I use the same approach to selling. My course is I didn’t want to waste a lot of time. Like it’s a lot, it’s time consuming.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
It’s easy to do, but it’s time consuming work to film a bunch of modules, a bunch of lessons and figure or all that stuff out on top of marketing it. Right. So I just went straight to marketing it. I started off with just doing a poll. Hey, if I launched this program and it had these modules and these lessons, would you be interested? Yes or no? A bunch of people said yes. Okay, cool. Now there’s some sort of demand there. Let me go on to create the sales page and actually outline it. And you know what it would be, what would include now again earlier I said that one thing that made me stood out was community, not just building an audience but community. And so on my stories, I would tell people, Hey, I’m thinking of like creating this course. I haven’t built it yet.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
I’m thinking of doing these modules. What do you think? Or like, what lessons would you wanna learn? And so my audience felt invested in this product because they’re like, we’re basically building it with Vanessa. So obviously when I launched it, a lot of those people who built it with me kind of, they bought it because it was everything that they asked for. And so that’s kind of what I did initially was I pulled my audience just asking, Hey, I’m creating this program. And you know, to those listeners who, if you already have a course, this method still works is like making people feel involved in your launch, making people feel involved in the campaign. And so that’s kind of what I did. Then I launched the the sales page with all like, this is what we’re doing, all this stuff. We like, this is the time that we’re gonna start, but
Speaker 1 (20:06):
The thing still didn’t exist yet. You just created the sales page for it.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
No, I just created the outline in our everything. And then I also, like, didn’t say, we’re gonna start right away. I’m I, I basically sold it first. And then I said, we start a month from now kind of like when you register for school, like, you know, you’ve enrolled, you apply, you get accepted. Okay. School starts on this date. So I had like a month to kind of at least build something on the back end. And so I sold it and first launch made about $200,000, which was beyond me. Like I had no idea that I was gonna make that much, my very first course launch. How much was it?
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Like, it was
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Like, it was like, it was like a $500 product. So I enrolled quite a bit of people 40
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Wait. Yeah. Several. What is that? Yeah, so it would be like 400 like 400 customers.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Yeah. It was about like 400 customers. I think I had different price ranges. I had like 500 to like 700, depending on if you were an early bird or if you were I, yeah, I had different pricing tiers, but the total amount was about $200,000 that I made. Yeah. And I didn’t have, you know, this, the audience that I have today. So it was crazy for me. And did just like
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Tell people, go to this sales page and check it out. Or did you say come to a webinar or
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Did you do a so challenge? Yeah, you’re bringing me back to memory. So what I did was I was like so I, I, I did tell people that I was building this program and I was like, you know, polling people. I was doing market research. I had a Facebook group at, at the time too. So I also looked at what people were asking in my Facebook group to help inform what was gonna be in the program. And then afterwards I said, Hey, you know, I’m doing three free like trainings over on Facebook. Live of like not even a fancy webinar platform, nothing. It was just Facebook live, cuz that’s all I knew how to use. And so then I, I hosted three master classes and those classes really taught people kind of like here are the things that I’m actually gonna teach in the program.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Here’s like a little preview and each training kind of walks through three different, you know, CATA GOs. Like one of them was about how to like find your niche. Second one was about content. And then the third one was about like, here are some Instagram like strategies that have been working really well. And then at the end of those trainings, I would just tell people, Hey, if you want to learn more about this or if this like really helps you out, I wanna let you know that I, my program’s ready. Like I have this program am now here’s the link to the sales page. If you wanna buy it by X date, we start on April 1st. Like, so that’s kind of what I did and I not expecting that.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
It’s not, but it’s like, it’s not rocket science. It’s kind of like, if you knew nothing about marketing, how would you do it? You go, I would, you know, come up with an outline, see a, if anybody might be interested, invite ’em to a free training and then offer ’em thing, it’s kind of like, you know, you go through whole foods and they hand you a, a piece of chip on a, a stick and they get a sample or, you know, my mom sold Mary Kay or like people do tapware you come to a party, you try on the makeup. You like, you see the product, you get a sample it and then you buy it. Like, it’s, it’s really not that rocket science. And like, I love how you’re saying that, you know, if you don’t know anything about technology, a start a private Facebook group, and that can be your email list opt in, you know?
Speaker 1 (23:21):
And then it’s like, you just go live and that’s the version of your webinar. And then people can VE mow you the money. Like there’s no reason not, not to to, to do this stuff anymore. Who, so who was who was the first person you hired? Like talk me through your team real quick. So you, you do that, you do that launch, you keep growing on social. Clearly you are reinvesting into your brand and your website and your team. How, how, how did you bring on the roles to start scaling towards your first seven figures?
Speaker 2 (23:52):
I mean, even with my first launch the, I only had one person helping me out and we don’t even know what her title was. She was actually someone from my community. And I remember I was, I was, is growing my Facebook group. Right. And, you know, after your Facebook group gets a certain size, it just kind of becomes chaos inside. Like I would say after like the 3000 person mark, it just becomes like a spam Fest. And you know, you get people who might have found you through cold traffic and just say really mean things or something. And so I actually had someone in my community D I mean was like, Hey, like, do you need help? I think you need help. And I was like, I do. I was like, can I let me just pay you like $15 an hour and just try to help me out.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
And so she was, I think looking back, maybe her title was more of like assistant or general VA. And so she started off just helping me moderating my free Facebook group. Then she also helped me with like designing lead magnets, like for my YouTube videos. Sometimes I would have a lead magnet attached to it to grow my email list. But when I actually did my course launch, you know, the fact that I didn’t create the program yet, she really helped me create some of the slides as we were drip feeding. So the basic to kind of close the loop on how I launched the, the program because I didn’t create the program yet. I had 30 months, like runway to just create something so that when people start on that day, there’s something for them. And so during those first, like 30 days, I created the first module first.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
And then as the program went on week after, I would just drip feed the remaining modules. And after each module too, I would have a feedback form so that our clients could like tell me, like what worked, what didn’t work. And so I would just adjust as I went. And so that’s how I got a lot of good testimonials and social proof on my program because it was exactly what people wanted and people needed. So I’m really glad I to like that approach. And so my first hire, what she helped me with was I would, because it was a lot of modules and like to do in a week, I was kind of like, that was a lot of work back then. I would just do the outline of my slides and then I would send it to her and she would make it pretty. And then when she made it pretty, she’d send it back to me. I would record it and then I would upload it to whatever course platform that you decide to use. So that was really what she helped me a lot with. And she also,
Speaker 1 (26:13):
You signed like skeleton slides of like, here’s the content. And then she would use like Canva or something. And like,
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Exactly. Like, I would literally use like aerial font, like just blank, like, you know, placeholder here, like please create like a, a picture of, of a graphic here. Like it was just really, really rough draft slides. But the content itself was all me. She just made it pretty and presentable and also checked for any spelling errors because when you’re in creation mode, like you’re just, there’s gonna be typos everywhere. Like, and she just polished it up and cleaned it up. She helped me upload it. And she also helped with just like interacting in the Facebook group not necessarily answering questions. It’s kind of what I still did at the time, but like rooting people on like, Hey, you’re doing a great job. Or she would just flag anything that I should know about, but I was pretty involved in, in my first launch and how I delivered the program.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
I also, after every module that dropped, I would do like a, an FAQ call or a Q and a call live. And so if people had questions about the material, I would answer those questions. Now, obviously this was my first time doing it. And that’s why I was so hands on. But to answer your question of how we sit scale to seven figures is eventually after each launch, I would, it, my, my involvement would be less and less because the program became better and better where it, the curriculum could really stand on its own at that point. And people could get results technically without me because the program was so refined and it’s been about like, this is our fourth, third year having the program, I think. And every time that we’ve done an update, we still keep in mind customer feedback and we just streamline the curriculum so much to the point where the version we have now basically can stand on its own.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
I love it. I love it. One last little quick, quick question. How much has paid ads played or no, not played a role in what you do.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
I it’s so funny cuz I feel like I’m one of those maybe rare entrepreneurs where paid ads don’t work really well for me. Most of my sales and traffic come organic, I believe maybe paid ads contribute to 30% of, of like one third of everything. But it is something that I still need to scale up and optimize. So yeah, but I have found that like obviously eventually with organic, you do start wanting, you do start going into paid ads to kind of increase your reach. But I am that one of those entrepreneurs where organic is still kind of my bread and butter in terms of how we get our results in our traffic.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Awesome. Great to know. So where should people go Vanessa? Like if they want to connect up with you, see what you’re up to? I mean, obviously you’re on the socials. Is that, is that where they go or where would you point ’em?
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Yeah, my socials my YouTube channel is probably the best place. If you guys want to learn more or about social media, about building a business entrepreneurship, and if you wanna hang out on Instagram, that’s great too. I do a lot of more personal stuff on Instagram. But yeah, those are like the top two places. And then from there, you’ll see all the other places you can connect with with me with, so those would be the top two.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
I love it. Well, thank you so much for are sharing. Keep going. We believe in you like you’re you are so cool and there’s just no doubt the trajectory that you are on Vanessa. Like it’s gonna end up somewhere really, really exciting. And, and you know, you’re helping a lot of people, so we just wanna encourage you in your journey and, and thanks for being here. We look forward to watching it all unfold.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Thank you for having me, Rory. This was awesome.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if, if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon,
Speaker 1 (30:37):
What a fabulous and encouraging and practical and inspiring interview there with Vanessa. And I like, I mean, I’m, I really think Vanessa LA is cool. Like I have been following her and watching her she’s she’s humble and practical and not pretentious. And you know, you get a sense of that just from, from listening to her. So I wanted to take everything that she’s talked about and I’m gonna share with you kind of like my three highlights, which are, you know, I kind of take this as three steps to making money from social media and, and, and you know, she’s taking us on her journey. And then as, as I sort of assimilate that into what we know and teach and think about how does it apply to you to go, all right, if you wanna make money from social media, how do you, how do you actually do it?
Speaker 1 (31:27):
And I think the, the, you know, the, the first step that she talked a lot about is to basically let your difference be your advantage, let your difference be your advantage. I love when she was talking about how people take notice of things that are different. So the fact that you don’t do things the way that everybody else does, or that, you know, people who are already well known do gives you in advantage. Like you have the ability to take risks and to take chances and to do things differently and even be beyond that, she said, what you think is not your advantage is actually your advantage. I was thinking about how does that apply to us at brand builders? Like, you know, a lot of our clients have more social media followers than we do a lot more cuz some of our clients have millions of followers.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Literally, and yet it’s like the thing that we would go, oh, well maybe that, like why would they hire us? Well, it’s because that’s not really what we teach. Right? Like our focus is not on making, you know, getting millions of followers. It’s on getting millions of dollars. I mean, frankly, like we’re really good at scaling the infrastructure, the strategy, creating you know, the systems, the operations and, and organizing things in a way to go. Like, how do you, how do you make a business? Like how do you actually build a business? And I, I changed my Instagram, like header here recently, you know, that kind of says what I do. And in a, it says helping personal brands build better businesses. And you know, that’s what I realized is like, you know, what we teach is business. And then underneath that, it’s like entrepreneurship.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
And then underneath that, it’s like specific for personal brands and, and that’s sort of like the, the place that we play in going, ah, they’re not hiring us cuz they don’t need that. The, they already have that. They know how to do that thing. So a lot of those things exist only in your head as insecurities and you know, self-doubt when really that thing, whatever that thing is that you think is your disadvantage often is your advantage. Like that’s what she was talking about is she was able to build a following so fast because she didn’t have a following. And she was basically documenting this whole journey and sharing what works and just being open and, and honest about that. And it reminds me of what Gary V one of the things that Gary Vayner check says, which I think is an awesome one, is don’t feel like you have to create just document, right?
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Like don’t feel like you have to create just document, talk about, share the story of you trying to build and learn about whatever the thing is that you that you are doing. And I think that’s super duper powerful. So your, your, your difference is your advantage. The second thing that she brought up, which I really love, and it was such a sharp, such a sharp distinction and, and such a quick distinction is there’s a big difference between community building. Like there’s a big, there’s a big difference between building a community and building an audience. Like most people on social media are trying to build their audience, right? They’re trying to like get a large number of people to pay attention, but they’re not actually that focused on building a community. They’re not actually, I mean, in, in here’s the difference to me, which she didn’t say this per se, but here’s how I process it.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Building an audience means you’re broadcasting, right? It is one way communication. Building a community is, is multidimensional or it’s like omnichannel. So meaning not only is it two-way communication. So like to me, you know, an audience is you broadcast. When I do a speech, right? People hire me to come in and speak. I’m I’m broadcasting to an audience and it, and you know, there’s very little response other than like maybe a Q and a portion or people come get a book sign at the back of the room or whatever. And if it’s, so if it’s, if it’s one way communication, that’s a broadcast, that’s an audience. If it’s two way communication, that’s a conversation. But I would say that’s not even a community. So I do think that is part of it is going okay, let’s have a conversation. And that’s part of the power of, even if you think about web one, like one was basically broadcast.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
It was like, you could throw up a website. People could come read web two is social media, which is like, oh, now we can have conversation. Like I, you can leave a comment. I can reply. We can get to know each other, but it’s really even con connecting people inside that conversation separate from you. So it’s connecting two of your list centers or two of your fans or two of your clients. This is a huge focus of us for, of ours at brand builders group for our monthly members, because we now have almost 400 active monthly clients, 400 people that we’re doing one-on-one coaching with who are coming to our events. And what we’re realizing is, oh my gosh, the power, or like in addition to amazing world class content that we teach in our curriculum, the power is the community it’s going. You should do a podcast with you and you should be an affiliate for you and you need to help this person get into that company.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
And you guys should share speaking leads and, and you know, this person write Forbes and they need articles and you have this big story that they cover and, and that’s happening all the time. And so brand builders group is really transforming on, on the paid side of our business to community. I mean, the content is always gonna be there. We’re always leveling that up. You know, but the content’s dialed in, I mean, we spend a lifetime learning this and it’s, it’s like, we, we know it. It’s not super dial. It doesn’t change that often. It’s a lot to learn a ton. I mean, it’s, we have 14 different two day experiences in our full curriculum, but the community is the part that never ends and is always growing and strengthening. And so I just encourage you to think about that as like, are you even approaching social media as it is a one way channel of broadcasting?
Speaker 1 (37:43):
Is it a two way channel of communi, like of, of conversation or is it an omnichannel omnichannel or inter channel connectivity, which is really a community. And that community makes a huge difference. A small community can be tremendously powerful versus a big audience is not that powerful. Right. I think of the, the, like a billboard which is, you know, that reaches a huge number of people, but they’re not really engaged. It’s very passive versus a community is like, we’re living together. We’re doing life together. We’re so supporting each other. We’re we know each other, we’re helping one another and that’s a really, really big difference. And as you know, so conceptually, that’s the difference, I think, between building a community and building an audience now, pragmatically, there’s other parts of this that really roll out in terms of how does this work to your advantage when you’re monetizing.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
And I think it specifically showed up when she was saying, make people feel like they’re involved in your launch, give people a chance to have a backstage pass. Right. That’s really how what I think of like stories on social, or even like Twitter, you, you could think of it this way is, or Snapchat is they’re getting to see your daily life and like follow what’s going on. As you, as you document, as you document your journey. And so when you, you tell ’em the moment, you have an idea for a product and then you get feedback on it and then you kind of like share your rough out line and they get you feedback on it. And then you say, Hey, if I put this together, would, I mean, if you buy it and you get feedback on it and just, it’s almost like they’re sold by the time you create it because they, they wanna see it.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Like they’re, they’re a part of, of creating it. I think that really applies for, you know, a book launch and for, you know, launching anything, certainly a course launch for her. So build a community, not just an audience. And then the third, the third thing here for how to monetize your social media is do a simple launch, do a simple launch. What is a simple launch to me, it is telling, you know, it’s building an audience and telling them that you’ve created something. And I guess I would add an intermediate step. I would say, you know, you gotta build an audience first. And that’s the part that everyone screws up. Everybody wants to build a product and then, and then find an audience to sell to. You have to flip that you gotta twist that around you don’t, you don’t find an audience after you’ve sold the, after you’ve created the product, build an audience, and then you build the product for that audience.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Don’t build a product and then hope you can build an audience, build an audience, and then build the product that they need. And so if you flip that, then that becomes the first step is you, you build, build the audience. Then the second step is give ’em a free sample, give ’em a free sample, let them sample it somehow and then ask them to buy it, tell ’em how much it is, what it is, where they get it, how much it costs and ask them to buy it. And so often we get lost in the, you know, the technological complexities of all the different ways to do this. And of course there’s a lot of people that make a lot of money from teaching it and making it complicated. But you could do this, like with a Facebook group. It like, you don’t even have to have an email responder.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
You just start sharing content and you say, Hey, if you want more, come join our private Facebook group. And that basically functions as like your early email opt-in list. Now, long term, we would tell you, you need to, you need to focus very intentionally about getting people off of social media and onto an actual email list. But the point here is just that you could start right away without knowing anything and having any team or ever any technology leverage the idea of a Facebook group or a LinkedIn group. And you say, Hey, come join this group. Now they’re in the group, you’re posting content in there. And then you say, Hey, everyone inside this group, I’m gonna host of free training. And you could literally just go live and it could be one long free training, which would be the equivalent of a webinar.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
You could do three short trainings, which would be the equivalent of a video funnel. Like over a few days, you could do, you know, seven micro, 10 minute trainings five to 10 minute trainings over a week or 14 days. And now it becomes a 14 day challenge or, or something, right? It’s it’s, it’s not, we get lost. We get so lost. And when we so consumed with like, what’s the right technology and what’s the perfect process, and those things are important, they add a lot of value in there’s details. But the big idea is the same. Always it’s like add value to people’s lives, give them a ch you know, to build your audience, give them a chance to sample the product, and then let ’em buy the product. It’s the, the same thing that happens in the food court or at the grocery store.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
They, they, they let you sample it and then they B your chance to buy it. It’s the same thing that, you know, you do with a direct sales company. It’s the same way that you get booked to be a speaker, right? You go speak for free. You let people sample you, and then you let, ’em hire you to bring you in for more. So it, the modality isn’t so much important as just the high level concept of going create something awesome, like add value to people’s lives, make an impact, give them a chance to sample and then show ’em how to get more and whatever the mechanism is, the modality of how that happens. It almost doesn’t matter. It’s just that you’re doing that. You’re connecting with humans and you’re thinking about them as real people. And not just, you know, faceless entities with a credit card in hand that you’re trying to access.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
Like, that’s, that’s what you have to move past. So those are three steps. You know, I, I, I think there’s psychological steps. There’s, there’s three mindset shifts that need to happen that also have corresponding technical, you know, or practical action items that you could take. So I hope you enjoyed the interview. Thanks for tuning in for the highlights. We love you. We’re so grateful for you. If you haven’t left us a review, please leave us a review on iTunes, share this podcast with somebody who you think would benefit from it. Check out our free trainings that we, we have available for you request a free call. If you want to talk to one of our strategists about creating a custom plan for you. We work with all types of people, you know, billionaires and celebrities and people with millions of followers. Most of our clients have smaller followings. They’re they’re, they’re just beginning, or they just have an idea or they’re, you know, intermediate. So talk to us, right. Request a call and keep coming back more, more than anything. Just keep coming back. We’ll keep bringing awesome guests and sharing with you the best of what we know. That’s it for this episode, we’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand podcast.

Ep 259: What You Need to Know About How CSX is Changing with Brittany Hodak

AJV (00:07):
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the influential personal brand podcast. This is one of your co-hosts AJ Vaden here, and I am genuinely so happy. I’m so excited to have the amazing Brittany Hodak on the show today. She’s a personal friend, but she’s also someone that we go to for customer experience, training and advice. So we, we’ve got some shared personal and professional lives, which I’m so happy to merge those together for everyone on the show today. And let me just give you a little bit of background. But before I, I wanna tell you why you need to stay tuned for this entire episode is like there are two things that propelled me to COER Brittany to come onto the show today. And the first one is the fundamental belief that every single person in your company is in charge of customers experience, rather that is service or sales or marketing as like everyone, to anyone who touches your customers, which should be anyone and everyone at some point they are in charge of experience, which means this is an important conversation to be had for every single person, no matter what your job is, what your role is, what your company is, what industry you’re in.
AJV (01:22):
If you sell things to people, this is an episode that you need to listen to. So stay tuned for that. The second thing is this merging trend of how we’re seeing the marketing departments merge with customer service and experience. And this is happening in huge companies all across the world. And we wanna talk about why, like, what is the impact on customer service and customer experience on sales and hyper specifically on marketing. So stay tuned for that. So now let me give you just a little bit of a highlight of the all inspiring, all, all inspiring. If I can talk today of Brittany Hodak. So Brittany is an award-winning entrepreneur. And so speaker who has delivered keynotes across the world to organizations, including American express and the United nations, right? Like what, that’s amazing. She’s also published more than 350 articles for different media outlets, including Forbes ad week success magazine.
AJV (02:20):
She’s been on NBC, CBS, CNN, CBC. I mean, the list goes on and on. She also is the author of an upcoming book that we’re gonna get a little bit of sneak peek insider perspective on that’s gonna come out in about a year from now. But you know, she literally has done fan engagement for some of the biggest brands in the world, including Disney, Amazon Walmart, and then my favorite Dolly Parton. Right. So you kinda had me at Dolly Parton, so I could go on and on talking about your accolades and your awesomeness both professionally and personally. But at this point we’ll actually start the conversation. So Brittany, welcome to the show.
BH (03:00):
Yay. Thank you so much, AJ. That was so kind, I am thrilled to be here for the record. It was very easy for you to coach me to come on the show because I am a long time listener. And when you asked me, I was like yeah, that sounds fun. We should do it. So thank you for having me. I’m excited to you know, take some of the conversations that we usually have without a microphone and have them in front of a microphone.
AJV (03:24):
Yeah, I am honestly, I’m so excited. And for everyone listening, I actually asked Brittany to come and help us at brand builders group. And she and I had a, a multi-hour session just a couple of weeks. So talking about customer service and experience, and it was one of the things that it was like, oh my gosh, these are the things that every single person on the planet needs to hear. And so let’s start, let’s just start a little bit of, how did you get to where you are? Like, how did you merge from being where you are like being where you were to this real true expert, but not just an expert is something you’re truly passionate about. And it literally does just bubble out of you that way around customer experience and service that like, how did you get into this? Like where did this all start?
BH (04:08):
Well, you know, I think a lot of it started during my childhood because my dad was the most passionate customer service proponent of any anyone I ever met. And he when I was really young, he managed a restaurant and I used to love to go and sit in the restaurant and just see the way everybody who came in knew him. And he was so happy to talk to people and he didn’t mind being up front or in the back. Like all of his employees loved him and the customers loved him. And, you know, he would tell me stories about like some of the crazy things that would happen. And then when I was a little older, he was in charge of customer service at a car dealership and I thought everything was so fascinating the way, you know, he would talk to me about like the referral things that they were doing and retention plays and all of these things.
BH (04:57):
And like simultaneously, because he cared so much customer experience and customer service, anytime he was like wronged by any store, we were like forbid to ever go there again, which I remember as a kid was like, so frustrating. There was this one time in the summer I was probably like six or seven and, but he was the yard and the lawnmower broke and he was like, I’m gonna go get a new lawnmower. And, you know, we grew up in a small town. There weren’t a lot of places. But he went to the mall and tried to buy a lawnmower at Sears. And they were like, well, we don’t have any, like, you’ll have to come back in week. And he was like, but I see it right there on the floor. And they were like, oh, but we can’t sell you that one, cuz it’s assembled.
BH (05:42):
And he was like, right, but you have an assembly charge. So like, why can’t I have this lawnmower today? And then you can just like make another one when you get the other ones in. And they were like, yeah, sorry, we can’t do that. And so my dad got so mad, like when we left, he was like, we’re never shopping at seas again. He’s like, I’m not even gonna take my craftsman tools back when they break. And I was like, what do you mean we’re not gonna shop at Sears? Like where am I gonna get like clothes? Like what do you mean? But he, you know, there were probably like seven or eight brands over the years that were on like the do not buy, do not support lists either like retail or D TOC stuff. So I, anyway, he was so passionate about this idea of putting the customer at the center of everything you do and making sure that everyone on your team knows that the only reason you are there is because of the customer.
BH (06:30):
So every decision you make should be in the service of customers. And you know, I think I sort of like absorbed all of that without even realizing it. I always wanted to work in entertainment. I worked in the music and entertainment industry for like the first 15 years of my career. And as I started doing more and more brand staff, I realized that there’s this huge intersection of those two worlds and that the same things that make people love an artist or an entertainer are the things that make people loyal to a brand or a retailer. And, you know, it’s all about building that affinity and getting to that point where people wanna be advocates. And that’s where I really had this aha moment of if I can bring some of these principles, I understand from entertainment into the customer experience world to make people realize that customer experience can be fun and sexy and cool, then you know, that will serve a lot of people.
AJV (07:23):
Oh my gosh. I love that. And I, so, so I am curious. So and maybe this is a little bit of, what’s gonna be coming in your upcoming book, creating super fans, which is coming out a year from now, roughly give or take a little bit. But, and so I’m curious, like in your opinion, what makes people fall in love with entertainers?
BH (07:43):
I am so glad you asked this question. So I always say super fans are created at the intersection of your story and every customer story. And so I’ll never forget the first time I met Taylor swift, she was like 16 or 17. I was like in my early twenties, I was working at a record a company and I’d flown to Nashville where I live now. But at the time I lived in New York, I flew to Nashville for an award show and it was the very first award she ever got. And she was actually at the show with an artist who I knew because I’d worked at his label in college. So we were all at this after party together. And I was just, you know, talking to her about like the marketing that she was doing, because at the time she was really innovative with MySpace in particular, but like social media in general.
BH (08:27):
And so I was talking to her about, you know, all these things that she was doing, which of course came very natural to her cuz she was a teenager and she said something to me that hit me like a lightning bolt. And I thought it was like the most brilliant, some of the business side of the music business that I’ve ever heard an artist articulate. And she said, my dream is to sell a million records. And I know that if I’m gonna sell a million records, I have to make a million people care enough about me to want to buy my music. And so she was spending her time like paying it forward, like showing her fans that she cared about them even before. In some instances they were like showing that they cared about her. And I remember are like turning to my friend who I brought to the party with me.
BH (09:17):
And I, you know, after like we were talking I was like, that girl is gonna be a superstar. Like she is gonna be one of the biggest artists on the planet if she keeps this mentality and keeps this attitude. And I think one of the biggest common denominators that you see between the artists who, you know, sort of come in fast and hot and then dizzle out and the ones that have that longevity are the ones who really take the time to invest, invest in their fans. Like the ones who have that fan centric attitude. And the same is true of brands. Like the brands that are most customer-centric are the one who stand a test of time because people aren’t constantly looking for the next thing.
AJV (10:01):
Oh my gosh, that’s so good. And I love that. It’s like, I know I’ll sell a million records once. I know that there’s a million people out there who care enough about me to support me. And it’s like, that is so true of business and of companies and of business brands. And so, and I would say it’s like, it’s not that companies don’t know that they just don’t know how to do it. Or maybe they even know how to do it. They just can’t seem to execute it. So I have two questions on this. OK. One, how do companies do this? Right? Like give us like a couple of insider tips on how do we become the type of company that really is customer centric, customer focused while also battling the realities of trying to turn a profit and pay our employees and all the necessary things that have to happen. So that’s my first question. And then the second one I want you to be noodling around is like what’s, what’s the company to be watching who just does this exceptionally well that maybe we don’t know about. So those are my two things, so let’s start there.
BH (11:01):
Okay. Awesome. I love it. So the first one oh my gosh. I’ve already forgotten the first part of your question. It was
AJV (11:09):
So a couple I was
BH (11:10):
So concentrating on not forgetting the second one that I forgot the first one,
AJV (11:13):
A couple of tips on how do we actually do this? How do we become? Oh
BH (11:17):
Yes. Okay. Thank you. Yes. So, you know, one tip is to really be honest with yourself about where you’re at right now, because if you ask a hundred CEOs, are you customer-centric, you know, 99 of ’em are gonna say yes and the other one wasn’t listening. But if you add ask customers of those same hundred companies or employees of those same hundred companies, you’re gonna, you know, get wildly different results. So the first thing is to really understand what being customer-centric means and it means putting the needs of your customers first and there will be conflict. There will be times where you have to make a decision between, am I putting profit first or am I putting the customer first? And those are the moments, those moments where you’re being tested, where you have to have the resolve to say, we are doing what’s right for customer.
BH (12:13):
We are going to make things right for this customer. And if you can do that, if you can model that for all of your employees to follow, not only is your customer experience going to improve, but your employee experience is going to prove improve. You’re going to see the improved loyalty and advocacy on both sides inside the company and outside the company. But the thing where, again, a lot of people like don’t wanna hear this message at the top of the company, but in the middle of the company, people are like shouting this from the rooftops. It has to start at the top. And to your point at the beginning of the show, one piece of advice that I have is don’t try to have your chief customer officer or your chief experience officer operating in a silo. They need to have as much of a voice as anyone at the company, across every single department, actually a client of mine like five or six weeks ago was talking to me.
BH (13:11):
And this was somebody I’d worked with for keynotes before and, and worked with them on a consulting project now. And they’re adding the title of chief customer officer for the first time, which is great. Like it’s a wonderful step forward for this company. They’ve got like 50,000 employees across the world. And the CEO said to me, you know, I really can’t handle another direct report. I think I’m gonna have the CCO report to the chief revenue officer. Do you think that’s a good idea? And I said, yeah, it’s a great idea. If you want to send a literal message to your customers and employees, that customers are less important than revenue, because that’s what you do. When you have a CCO who reports to the CRO, whoever at your company is going to be the flag bear and the champion four, your customers has to have a seat at every table in every conversation because their insights are going to inform, not just sales, not just marketing, not just customer service, not just product design, all of it, everything from start to finish, because if you don’t make those decisions with your customers and my you’re going to pay the price long term, you’re either going to lose the customer’s trust.
BH (14:20):
You’re going to lose their business completely. Or what I think is like one of the most underrated threats to every business that nobody really talks about is apathy. Like people are just gonna not care. They’re either not gonna care in the first place or going to stop caring. If you aren’t putting the needs of every single customer at the forefront of every decision that you make.
AJV (14:43):
Oh, solid. That’s really such a great reminder that, that you told me the exact same thing. You’re like, whoever is going to lead customer experience, customer care. They have to report to you. It’s like, it’s gotta be that level of importance. And so I’m curious when it comes to this topic of customer-centric like, are there a few things, one thing, two thing, three things that people could do to go, Hey, I know if I know I’m being customer-centric if we’re doing this.
BH (15:14):
Yeah. So one real thing that you can do is, you know, I, I was having a conversation with ear with somebody earlier today and we were talking about how so many companies try so hard, especially like as they grow and grow to come up with a policy for everything so that when people start the onboarding and training and enablement process is almost about stripping them of everything they’ve brought into the job rather than amplifying those unique talents that you hired them for. So instead of saying, I trust you, here’s generally like here are core values. Here are guiding and principles. Here are our customer promise and here are some general things to help you with, you know, frequently asked questions or frequent concerns. But instead companies, especially with their customer service and customer support teams are scripting everything out saying, do exactly this. Do exactly that.
BH (16:10):
Do exactly that. They’re giving these, you know, hundred page manuals of policies to employees saying like only say this in an email or make sure you follow the script exactly on a phone call. And then they’re wondering why not only are customers not happy, but employees aren’t happy and they’re, you know, leaving their jobs at rates. We haven’t seen in almost a hundred years. And I think a lot of it is because when you don’t equip every individual employee with the power to make something right, the way they see fit in that instance, within a certain larger set of parameters, you’re basically asking your people to be robots. And so one of the like interesting things about customer experience is like, you will never have better customer experience externally than your employee experience internally. Like an unhappy employee is never, ever gonna show up in a good way for a customer. And so again, this all has to be modeled from the top. And that’s why it’s so important, not just to hire for customers to interest, to make sure that everybody on your team, regardless of the position they’re in actually does care about customers and, and making their lives better. But to not train that out of people, because you’re so worried about having them fit the perfect mold of, you know, a BDR on your team.
AJV (17:34):
Oh, that’s good. And it’s like, and it, I think that’s the tendency, cuz I think as a business owner we’re typically, it’s like, well it’s like, is this how I would do it? Or you know, so that’s why I think so many people, you know, it’s like I come from a very corporate consulting background. I was like, I was paid for a living to like build scripts and like make sure they follow these process and these procedures. And this is what you say on a sales call and da, da, da, da. And it’s like kind of like coming back of like, no, you need a, a set of parameters, these larger guidelines, but goodness gracious. Don’t strip the humanity out of people, just teacher people, how to love people and how to have good conversations and then know what’s acceptable and what’s not
BH (18:13):
Exactly a hundred percent. And if you study some of the most innovative companies, that’s exactly what they tell their people. They say, this is the promise that we’re going to uphold to our customers. Your job is to make sure that we live up to that. And then, you know, of course you have to give them parameters of, of course you have to say, you know, use your best judgment within these guidelines. But when you don’t allow people to solve problems, as they see fit, it doesn’t feel like a personal solution to the customer. It just feels like, you know, I’m in another PO or another order and you like, you know, rubber stamped, the same solution that you do to everybody else versus where there are those opportunities for a customer to forge like a true connection with your company because of something that that employee did.
AJV (19:04):
Yeah. And again, it comes back to human connection, human relationship, right. It’s like saying back to this Taylor swift thing, it’s like people I have to get people to care enough about me. Right. And it’s like, yeah, you gotta do the same for our customers. So, okay. So before I get to this like model company example that I’m so curious to hear who you think it is. I wanna also talk about this like concept is like how we create this experience and how we prevent it from being siloed. Right. So what are some tips around making sure that customer experience doesn’t get siloed to just a customer service department, but it’s like, there’s huge trends. And it’s like, like one of our very close friends just merged with a huge company. That’s basically saying no marketing and customer experience are now the same. And there’s this trend of merging customer experience and customer service in, within marketing and I’m going well, that’s breaking down some serious barriers and silos of going no there’s synonymous to us. And so how do you, how do you do that?
BH (20:10):
Yeah. Well, that’s a great question. And I think a lot of that is of course the evolution of the fact that traditional marketing going back, like pre-social media and perhaps even pre-internet was all about intent. So it’s like the marketing department, you know, existed to create leads for the sales department and then maybe do like trade shows and stuff that were sort of like that, you know, bottom of funnel activity. And I think as social media really exploded and businesses were like, we don’t know what to do with this. Like who, who do we give it to? What do we do marketing. They can handle it. Right. They’re the ones who work with people to make like logos and stuff. Yeah, yeah. Do our social media pages. And so what you’ve seen is kind of this just like, you know, attrition of like marketing gets a little more, gets a little more, gets a little more, but you’re right.
BH (20:59):
Like experience. Now the customer experience, I feel like is having like a real moment right now. Like people are writing books about it to including you’re truly creating super fans in stores January 20, 23. But you know, it’s like people are talking about it on podcasts. And I think that a lot of C-suite executives are sort of just like changing their title from chief marketing officer to chief experience officer or chief marketing, an experience officer. But it’s gotta go beyond the marketing department and even like the marketing and the customer service department. Because as I said, like, everyone in your company is part of the experience department, whether they know it or not. And if you don’t have clear guidelines to teach them what the model is, you’re gonna, it’s gonna be like, you know, some people are great and some people are terrible because it’s gonna be just the variance from person to person.
BH (21:55):
And so you’ve really gotta remember that. I like to say that experience is everything. Meaning CX is, you know, the biggest factor for brand loyalty, more than two thirds of brand loyalty is driven by CX, which is more than price and product combined. So experience is everything in this economy that we’re living in right now. But the inverse of that is true as well. Everything is experience every touch point, every message. And some of those are gonna be controlled by marketing. And some aren’t somebody said to me a couple of months ago, you know, you never see a skinny per running on a treadmill. It’s only fat people. People who are in shape always run outside. You know, who said that to me, the guy delivering my new treadmill. And I was like, I kind of like, didn’t say anything, cuz I, you know, I wasn’t like expecting the guy who had just like loved this treadmill upstairs to I have that hot take. And I like, I don’t know what kind of response he was waiting for, but I was just kind of trying to decide if he was, you know, maybe kidding or not. And he goes, oh, I bet you got a big husband’s your husband fat.
AJV (23:02):
That’s awesome.
BH (23:04):
And then he went on to tell me like how you never see somebody who’s in shape running on a treadmill. And he runs side 30 miles every single week. And like that’s the only way to run and the best way to run. And I was like,
AJV (23:16):
As he’s delivering a treadmill.
BH (23:18):
Yeah, exactly. And I was like, so do you work for an Nordic track or are you like a third party delivery? And he goes, no, no, no. I work at the company. I’ve been there a few years. I could get a treadmill for so cheap. I don’t even want one.
AJV (23:29):
Oh, got a real advocate. Real advocate he’s doing.
BH (23:33):
Yeah. So every single person at your company is part of the experience department and every decision needs to be approached with that customer in mind. Another like totally crazy story. So I switched vets about a year ago after going to the same vet for more than four years for my dogs. And the reason I switched vets is because the message on the answering service changed. So like camp appointments online, you have to call and you never get a receptionist. It’s like, you know, a phone tray. So I swear the, this is the message. Thank you for calling the name of the place. For hours in location, press one, to get a refill, press two for cremation and euthanasia, press three, press four, to schedule an appointment. And then it was like, press zero for the receptionist. And the first time I heard that, like I hung up cuz I was like, that had to be wrong. And I called back again and I was like, Nope, they’re asking me to press three for cremation in euthanasia before I even get the opportunity to like schedule an appointment or talk to the receptionist. And I was like, I, I, I need a new vet. Like, well, cause I had so many questions as a customer were right. I was like, how many pets are they having euthanized that they like put that so high up in their
AJV (24:52):
Priority list.
BH (24:52):
Yeah. Like I, I don’t understand. And then, you know, and I mentioned it to my husband and he was like, do you think maybe you’re overreacting? Like, you know, maybe it’s like not that big video. It is a little weird, like maybe just say something to them. And I was like, you know, I don’t wanna say anything because the vet either a like signed off on this, which tells me that there’s some judgment issues or B wasn’t a part of this and has no idea that like this is happening, which is also scary, right? Like both of those are bad and I’m entrusting the care of my pets who can’t talk to me to somebody. I wanna make sure that it’s the right person because you know, as sustain goes the way you do anything is the way you do everything. And so I switched pets just because of that. Cuz I was like, well, there’s like a serious either lack of judgment or you know, like mismanagement of priorities going on on here. So everything is experienced. And that’s why, whether it’s like the former head of marketing or somebody else, you need to make sure that you’ve got visibility and influence across every part of the company. Because only when all of those come into alignment, can you truly shine and truly showcase your uniqueness as a company?
AJV (26:08):
Yeah. I love that. And it’s like, you know, and it’s interesting as like so many of the people listening are, you know, building personal brands and they maybe are a part of an organization or they’re running their own organization. And so as we, as we kind of relate this to a personal brand, right? So you’re a speaker author consultant. For, for anyone who’s out there who maybe doesn’t have a team of people and they’re like, okay, well I don’t have departments or teams to do this. Like how do you, so as a, you know, entrepreneur speaker, author consultant, like how do you do this for yourself as a personal brand, without a team.
BH (26:45):
That is a great question. I think the first way is to approach it as if you did have a team because the concepts are the same, whether you are one person or a thousand people. I had somebody a very nice man named Perry who came to fix sink last week, my sink was leaking. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. I called the insurance like the home company and they’re like, okay, we’ll send somebody. And so this guy, Perry came out, he fixed my sink. This Friday afternoon, my four year old was like yelling, trying to get his attention to show him some star wars toy. The dog was barking. The baby woke up for his nap because the dog was barking. And he was like at crying upstairs. And you know, I was like apologizing for all of this chaos.
BH (27:27):
And he’s like, no, no, no, it’s totally fine. And then so he like finished with a sink and he stood up and he points up on top of him. And like, this is so embarrassing. He like points above his head. And he is like, what am I looking at here? And I was like a dirty light fixture. And he’s like, yeah, like what’s going, went on with this light fixture. And I was like, I don’t know. It’s just like, you know, I always have little helpers and it hasn’t been a priority. And the reality is like, we have a tall ceiling and it’s like a expensive, like big glass, light fixture. That’s like a two person job for like for me and my husband. Right. Like somebody has to like, hold the ladder and then like you pass the thing down. So you’re not like climbing down the ladder with a, whatever.
BH (28:04):
He is like, give me a ladder. I’m gonna clean this for you. And I was like, absolutely not. Like you came to fix my sink. Like you do not need to do this. And he was like, my mom always taught me that if I can make something better, I’m not allowed to leave it the way that I found it, go get me a ladder or I’m gonna go in your garage and look for it myself. And I was like, oh my gosh. So he proceeded to not just like climb a ladder, it take down this gross light fixture. That for some reason is like where every moth in America goes to die. He like dumped out the dead bugs, used the dish washing soap to like clean it out, dry it, got it. Sparkling clean. Showed it to me saying like, how does this look?
BH (28:40):
And I was like amazing brand new climb back up the ladder, like reconnect all the pieces. And as I’m like thanking him profusely, he’s like, it’s nothing. This is what I do. Like I’m here for you. So who do you think I’m gonna call the next time I have a plumbing issue, right? Am I gonna go through the home warranty company and like take you over? They give me no, of course not. I’m gonna call Perry and say, Perry, I need your help come over. And as a preneur, the same rules apply. The biggest threat to your business is apathy. A lot of times I work with small business owners and they say, I’ve got this huge awareness problem. Not enough people know who I am or what I do. And in reality, when I dig in, it’s like, plenty of people know you don’t have an awareness problem.
BH (29:22):
You have an apathy problem. Plenty of people know, they just don’t because you haven’t given them a reason to you. Haven’t found a way to connect your story to theirs in a way that makes them not see you as a commodity provider, but view you as a category of one to be like, you know what? I found it. Cause you know what, like the truth is like a lot of people are lazy. Like once you get a solution, like I’m not ever gonna look for another Perry, I don’t need to. I found my Perry. Right? So what the easiest thing until now has been to just call the home warranty company or like get out my phone and Google, whatever I need and pick the first person with good reviews. But then once you have a person like you don’t ever have to look for a person again. So for solopreneurs to approach it by saying, what special or unique gifts do I have? What can I do to connect my story to a customer story in a way that makes them like, not even be able to dream of ever replacing me because they know that even if they can find somebody else to fix a scene, they’re not gonna find somebody who gives your home the love and attention that you do.
AJV (30:26):
Oh, that’s so good. And it’s such a great reminder of like this. Isn’t just customer experience advice. This is business advice, right? This is like, this should just like bleed through and the business and say, okay, I have one more question for you. And I promise I’m paying attention to the clock. Cuz I’m sensitive to everyone’s time, yours time and everyone who is listening it’s for those of us who do have teams, right? So maybe it’s one team member. Maybe it’s a hundred, maybe it’s a thousand, maybe it’s 50,000. How do you train this? Or do you hire for it? So it’s like, how do you instill this culture? Cuz that’s really what it is. This is a culture. This is a belief system and add, how do you get that ingrained outside of you? So how do you transfer this?
BH (31:08):
Love, love, love this question. Yes. Sometimes hiring a consultant does help because then you have somebody who isn’t afraid to say the hard things, right? You have somebody who isn’t having to like walk on eggshells or you know, doesn’t know the whole background of, you know, what led things to be this way. Part of it is hiring for it. And it’s so funny. Like sometimes I’ll just look at job descriptions from big companies either that I’m working with or just like for fun on LinkedIn. And it’s so funny how many people will be hiring for customer facing and the word customer never appears in the job description like at all. And it might say revenue or profit or leads like a hundred times, right? It’s an exaggeration, but sometimes it’s like a dozen times and it doesn’t say customer and I believe that you can improve like 95% of job postings, adding the words to serve customers by.
BH (32:07):
And then just like whatever it said, right? Like cuz that is ultimately the job is to serve customers. And so yes, training your recruiters and your HR team to ask questions about customer centricity, as part of the interview process is important, but you have to set the standard. You have to have a model to say, this is who we are. This is what we believe in. And everyone on our team is like playing from the same playbook and to do that, to infuse the DNA of your company and your unique story into a way that all of your team members, you know, love and can, can embody it such a powerful thing. And like Chick-fil-A does a great job of this and you know, everybody everybody knows, you know about Chick-fil-A’s commitment to service, but what’s really interesting. And this is a actually something Macy said earlier today when she and I were talking is like restaurants all over America right now are closing their dining rooms or they’re changing their hours, like two or three of the restaurants near me.
BH (33:08):
Don’t even open now until noon. And they close at six because they’re like, you know, we can’t get staff, we can’t find workers. Or there’s these signs saying starting pay $17 an hour, but Chick-fil-A have any problems with their staffers. And about two weeks ago I was going through the chick fo Chick-fil-A drive through line, which like I do a lot. And I heard one of the girls say to another girl, those people at taco bell could never do what we do. And the other girl was like, yeah, you’re right. And so I, and the car was like, you’re right. Like they couldn’t. And they were both like so embarrassed. Like they definitely were not saying it for me to hear. And they were so embarrassed and apologizing and I was like, no own it. Like they couldn’t. And it’s not just like, it’s not a people problem. It’s a process problem. And if you put a good person into a system with bad processes, the bad processes are going to win every single time. Those two same roles probably would not even be doing the same if they were the ones at taco bell because they haven’t been trained. They haven’t been told it hasn’t been ingrained into them. That service is what you’re selling, not chicken sandwiches. So
AJV (34:15):
Y’all need to write that down service is what you’re selling. Right. That is so powerful and such a great reminder because I agree. It’s like, I don’t have like, there’s no staffing issues that any Chick-fil-A that we live in Nashville, there’s a lot of them. There’s no issues. And it’s like one of our favorite pizza joints. It’s like, they don’t even have an open dining room. Like to that point. It’s like it’s. Yeah. And to that, it’s like, it’s interesting cuz we keep asking we’re all the people and well, is it a people problem or is it a process problem? Right. That’s a really good distinction. So, okay. Last question back to this one I’ve I’ve given you like ample time to like subconsciously think about this. So a couple, one or two company examples that you think are doing this extraordinarily well that maybe people wouldn’t recognize or know. I know a lot of people talk about Disney and they talk about like all like Ritz Carlton, but are there any like, you know, kind of undercover giants that are really doing a great job at this that we could look to for an example?
BH (35:17):
Well, I’ll give you one undercover, giant, and then I’ll give you another like under the radar when, so the undercover giant, I would say is Warby Parker. And I have been a Warby Parker super fan for years now. Neil, the founder and I did a bunch of stuff together for Forbes back in the day. And you know, I just love their glasses. What I love most about word we partner now is you can get your eyes checked online and it’s so easy. You just take your phone and your laptop and it’s you feel like you’re playing a video game and you get your prescription. And it’s amazing. And the reason that I know this is because the last time that I went to try to order glasses and my prescription was expired, it was expired by like two weeks. And I called the eye doctor and said, you know, can you like do me a solid?
BH (36:04):
And she was like, no, you have to come back in. And I was eight months pregnant. Anna was during COVID. But like when you’re pregnant, your vision can change. So I was like, can you please just like extend it? Like I don’t understand. And she was like, no, I can’t. So anyway, like regardless of what you do, if you think people can’t replicate it online, like they will figure it out. Like I literally got my eyes checked online and now it’s like, I’ll go in probably like once every five years to, you know, check for glaucoma or whatever you get. But like everything can be replicated digitally. And I know where like just at the top of the hour. But the last one that I’ll give you is a company called arm more and it’s arm more style is the web, the, the, or URL, the URL arm more do style.
BH (36:44):
And it’s like a clothing subscription service similar to rent the runway. But what I love about them is that you can send them an email and say, Hey, I’ve got XYZ event coming up. And a real person will style clothes for you. Like it’s not an algorithm. It’s a real person who will email back and forth with you, send you pictures, ask for ideas, and then you get your clothes. When you get your clothes in the mail, they’re always tied up like very pretty packaged with like twin and paper. And then they make these like paper mache, dresses like not paper mache, origami like an origami dress out of like a really cool decorated sheet of paper. And I always look forward to getting them because I I’ve got a four year old. Who’s always like having fun playing with like the little like origami dress, but it’s just such a great personal touch. It’s like everything rent. The runway was like 10 years ago. And now our Mars, like getting a bunch of market shares. So underestimate the power of a personal touch, never underestimate the opportunity to connect your story with your customers story by showing them what that, what matters to them matters to you.
AJV (37:51):
Ugh, this has been such an inspiring conversation. If not for anyone else for me. Great.
BH (37:58):
I,
AJV (38:00):
I like clearly, if it’s gonna help me, it’s gonna help someone, but these are just such great reminders. And I think back to, you know, I said that as soon as you said, like, remember what you’re selling a service. It’s like, yeah, like, don’t forget, like you got in, you got into this to serve people or whatever it, your businesses it’s, you’re working with people. So whether it’s a product or a service or whatever, it’s like, don’t forget the people, right. People over profits. I love this. This was so good. So just a couple of quick things for everyone who’s listening. I wanna make sure that you know where to connect with Brittany. And as she mentioned, her book creating super fans is coming out January, 2023. So you got a while before it comes out, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t start getting content from Brittany right now. And she has put together a really cool mini course, a little video series for you guys. So if you want to go to Brittany hodak.com for live you can get access to that mini course. And of course, we’ll put this link in the show notes, but again, that’s Brittany ho.com/live. And then Brittany, if where would you say is like, if do you have a preferred social site for people to go and find you,
BH (39:11):
My preferred social site is whatever your preferred social site is. I always tell people you should be active on all of them. Yes. You wouldn’t be active on all of them because you never want somebody to be like, oh, I would love to follow her if except I’m not on tick. Well, I have a TikTok account, but I don’t post anything. Cause I’m like way too old. My
AJV (39:31):
Pretty much TikTok.
BH (39:32):
Yeah. Yeah. But I do have, I do have my handle. So like you can send me a message. I don’t even know if you can send messages on TikTok, but if you can, you can send me, you can send me a message there. Yeah, I know I’m super
AJV (39:43):
Old, but everywhere. It’s at Britney hodak.com at Britney Hodak yes.
BH (39:48):
Everywhere is at Britney Hodak and at video course you mentioned is totally free. So check it out. It’s Britney hodak.com/live. It’s a five, five day video course delivered via email. And it’s designed for everybody on your team. So if you’re somebody listening right now and you’re like, Ugh, I would love for my team to get a little bit more of this and think a little bit more about customers. Just let ’em sign up for the course. It’s totally free. It’s five days of training and there’s not even like an upsell at the end. Like it’s literally just like, I want you to care more about your customers and, and here’s how, and then the upsell will come in January when I’m like, Hey, sorry you buying my book. Cause you should buy my book.
AJV (40:22):
Very good. It’s just infiltrate with value. And eventually people want, actually want more. This has been so awesome. Thank you for being on the show. Everyone. Thank you for listening. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call and builders group.com/podcall. We hope to talk to you soon.
AJV (41:28):
All right, y’all this, isn’t the recap on the just had with Brit Hodak on creating amazing customer experience, not just service but experience. So these are a couple of my key takeaways and just great reminders. And I love this so much because to me it is universal and is for everyone. It doesn’t matter if you’re a personal brand or a CEO or a frontline employee, or if you’re in customer service or sales or whatever it is you’re doing this applies to you. So here are my highlights in this universal fashion when it comes to customer experience is one, I think I said this like five times in the interview, but I’m gonna say it again here too, is that remember what you’re selling is service and I is so important and it’s so easy to get caught up in building systems and processes and building manuals and writing scripts and you know, building project management systems and email campaigns and all this stuff.
AJV (42:26):
When at the end of the day people just need to know that you care. And it’s really hard to tell if someone cares in an email or a text, right? And I’ll be the first one to say, it’s like one of the number one things that we’re trying to change at our company at brand builders group right now is we are a call first company right now, if your preference is email, we will correspond an email, but we want to talk to you. We wanna actually have a real conversation and a real a real relat up of like, tell me where you are. What are you going through? How can we help? Not just fill out this survey and maybe someone will look at it one day. It’s like, it’s a call first culture. And a lot of that started from some work that our company did with Britney in preparation for starting 2022.
AJV (43:11):
And we basically said, it’s like, our business has gotten too automated. So how do we rein infiltrate back that human connection? And again, it’s like, people don’t remember all the things that happened. They may not remember what you said or what you did, but people do remember how you made them feel right. And people care to know that care about them. So remember what you’re selling is service. And as long as you can make someone feel cared for and feel heard that’s a win, right? It’s I would much whether I would much rather win the relationship than win the sale. And that’s a tough pill to swallow sometimes as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, and it’s going, sometimes I choose to lose the battle so that we can make progress in this overall war of, yeah, we’re not gonna be a fit for everyone.
AJV (44:03):
And we have to figure out like within parameters, what makes sense for the customer, right? And it’s like, and how do we also not like go under and we can still pay our bills, but we do have to remember, it’s like we got in this to serve people, just like you did whatever it is that you’re selling whatever it is that you’re doing. It’s like you got into this probably to help someone and somewhere along the way, we forget how to put people first and how to keep people first. And so if you can just like one key takeaway is just remember what you’re selling is service. I thought that was amazing. Such a good reminder for me. So hopefully it is for you too. The second thing that, that was so impactful is this reminder that building a, a business building a brand, which I was same thing cannot happen in silos.
AJV (44:50):
And man, is it easy to get caught up in silos? Because communication and collaboration take a lot of work and emotional energy and physical energy and meetings and all the things, right? It’s like, that’s actually a lot of work to do that, to break down silos and go, no, like these are universal culture components that we share. And so how do we transfer culture from the personal brand or the owner or the entrepreneur or the department head down to every single person who touches anything that you do it’s that customer experience is universal. And I think her Nordic track example is so important of at some point along the way the, the mission or the message what we do at order track got lost. And for someone who is actually delivering this piece of equipment into your home to go, I mean, I never see skinny people running on these and I run outside, must have a fat husband, like, wow, just imagine if you do have any staff, people it’s like, are they sold?
AJV (46:00):
Are they bought into what you do as much as you are? And would they actually encourage you, like encourage your customers, not to work with you and not to buy what you offer inadvertently by just not sharing this like, culture of like, this is why this product exists. This is why this company started. Like, this is the story. All right. And just back to that, it’s like, there’s gotta be a story. And I love that Taylor swift example. It’s like, I have to figure out how to get at least a million people to care about me. If I’m ever gonna wanna sell a million records. Right. We gotta do the same thing as companies, right? It’s like we have to care about our customers in order for them to care about us. And so how are we doing that? And how do we create this culture at every single level and every department at every position.
AJV (46:50):
And there’s a great upside. For most of us, you who are running small businesses or building personal brands is we don’t have to worry about the masses. We’re not trying to infiltrate a thousand different people to get on board with our culture. We’re dealing with one or five or 10 or maybe 20, right? And so there’s a lot of power, but it still takes the same amount of work. Right. We have to transfer that emotion, transfer that mission transfer the way that we wanna have people treated and then have other people treat them the same way. So again, it’s like customer experience is universal and that goes for your vendors too. So remember it’s like, if they represent you that counts for them too. So number one, remember what you’re selling as service. Number two customer experience is universal. And then the third thing, which I kind of led to a little bit is this concept of how do you get people to care about you?
AJV (47:45):
Well, number one, you care about them somewhat simple. So then I ask yourself, and I don’t have the answer for you for this. This is a rhetorical question I’m asking. But ask yourself, how do I care about my customers? How do I make sure that these people know that they’re cared for? How do I, as a entrepreneur, a personal brand, a business owner, an executive, whatever, how do I show my customers that I care about them? And I think that’s gonna look really different. And I think you gotta first ask with what does our, what do our customers want from us? And that may start with simply asking them, cause I think everyone values different types of service differently. Like I know for me, like one of my personal core values when it comes to working with other companies is responsiveness. Like even with my own team, it’s like, I hold responsiveness, like above the bar in terms of importance.
AJV (48:43):
Like to me, it’s like, if you are responsive to me, I’m important to you. And if you are not, I am not. And so when it takes other companies and vendors and suppliers, days or weeks to get back to me, well, I’m not important to you. So I might as well start looking because somebody else can, will prioritize me. I just have to go find who they are. So may not be that for you. So what it is, what is it for your customers, right? And then you gotta figure out what it is. And then how do you put protocols in place guidelines to allow for, for that to happen whatever it is in your culture and your company and your environment. So again, just ask yourself as like, how do we let our customers know that we care about them and not just our customers, but our perspective customers as well. So again, if you didn’t listen to it, go listen to the entire episode. It was so good. Go check out her video course, Brittany ho com slash live. It’s a free five video video course. Go check it out and get inundated with how to create super fans out of your customers. We’ll see you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 257: How To Set Your Coaching Prices with Mary Sobon

AJV (00:08):
Hey everybody. This is AJ Vaden here and welcome to another episode on the influential personal brand podcast. And I am specifically a excited for this episode because I get to talk to someone who I actually work with personally. So Mary has been my business coach for over a year. And so to get a chance to share her expertise with all of you is such a great honor and privilege, but let me give you just a little bit of her background. I can probably talk about and Rav about her for the next 30 minutes, but that’s not why you’re here. So I’ll make this short and sweet, but here are some things that I think is really amazing and some kind of sneak peek into what we’re gonna talk about on the show. Today is one, Mary has a very extensive executive corporate background in like fortune 50 companies, fortune 20 companies. I don’t even know like it’s extensive, but what I love most is she’s been able to take this amazing executive experience from these, you know, multi-billion almost probably trillion dollar companies and then apply it to small business and entrepreneurs like me. So I’ll get the benefit of all, all this worldly expertise that allows me to tailor it to my own business. But she’s worked with more than two organiza 200 organizations. Yeah. More than 2, 200, 200
AJV (01:34):
Organizations since she started her consulting firm, it’s called M two consulting here in Nashville. She works with EO the entre nos organization all over the world. She helps with people with mergers, acquisitions, exits high growth companies. And today she is here to share some of that expertise with our audience. And I’m so excited to have you, so Mary welcome.
MS (01:57):
Yeah, it is wonderful to be here, AJ. And again, it’s hard to believe that it’s already been a year boy time class, especially when the clients are great
AJV (02:06):
Or, or complicated either way.
AJV (02:09):
OK. So give everyone in the audience, just a, a high level background of your corporate world experience. And then when you left that, I guess that’s like over 15 years ago to what you’re doing now. Cause I think one of the things that will really resonate with our audience and our listeners as so many of the people that we work with are probably in a full-time job or in corporate job. And they’re trying to figure out, it’s like, how do I exit this to do this thing that I’ve always dreamed of whatever that may be. So since you’ve gone through that process from you really high up, I’m working with these massive companies to go, no, I’m gonna call it a day and I’m gonna go do my own thing. So give us a little bit of that story.
MS (02:49):
Yeah. And I would tell AJ, I don’t know that I’m gonna be the most helpful role model on this because like a lot of entrepreneurs I actually started as an entrepreneur because I lost my job. The biggest company that I worked for is McDonald’s corporation. I was a regional marketing manager for them and I was with them at a pretty interesting time in, in terms of learning a lot of things, leadership, finance, because they were probably at, at one of the worst points of their professional, all trajectory. And they went through their single ever reorganization that the corporation has ever had. I was working in Nashville in a field office that was servicing about 500 restaurants. And interestingly enough, I’m probably gonna get in trouble for saying this. They closed our office, even though we were number one in the country in terms of improved sales transactions, because we had an inexpensive lease buyout.
MS (03:43):
And I guess when you’re looking at 40 regional offices around the country with a lot of space that matters, but I had a choice. I had a choice to transfer to another city with McDonald’s. And at the time I thought I was gonna go, and then I, then I actually, if found out my dad was really, really, really sick. And I knew that if I left Nashville and went to another city and, and they were gonna help me kind of commute back and forth because my significant other was here. I knew that I couldn’t be taking care of all three things at one time. And so I decided to leave. And I went out and I did some consulting in marketing for a little while, which is really the worst job on the planet. And because small businesses and I’m talking really small businesses, don’t understand why you can’t get a story on their company in the New York time.
MS (04:36):
And so I did that for about a year and it was, it was pretty profitable, but not much fun and then sort of accidentally. And I think this is the thing that it really stood out for me in my story that I want to make sure other people pay attention to. I met one person who opened a door for me that led to possibility after possibility after possibility. And I’m gonna give her a shout out. That person was actually Julie May who, who ran an it company here in Nashville. She was a member of EO entrepreneurs organization. And she said, wow, our organization is kind of a mess and you seem kind of smart and you know how this works. Can you come in and help us? And I had no idea at that point, what they needed or how to do it, but just went in and did the job.
MS (05:25):
Mm. And it went pretty well. And I did my best. And if I look back, I would be appalled at what I did wrong, what I did silly, but I think the most important thing is that I did it. And that led to me meeting different people who were also in need of, of people to come in and just sort of help them with business coaching. It’s an interesting thing to think about when I started, I was the only performance coach that I knew. I wasn’t even a performance coach. I was a facilitator who sort of did some coaching incidentally with that, but now almost 20 years later, you at any room you’re in, you’re in a room with two or three other coaches. So it makes a whole lot of sense that we are, we live in a world in which things are so complex.
MS (06:10):
And so interconnected, you need a partner who can help you sort of sort through things. You just wanna to make sure that that partner has something that’s really valuable for you. And for me, that thing is scaling. I have spent more time working with entrepreneurs, scaling high growth companies. These are companies that are growing 200% a year, 500% a year, and have seen pretty much all of the good, the bad, the pains, the joys of, of that. And it just excites me. It excites me to this day. So I work still with entrepreneurial companies who are focused on growth. I work with entrepreneurial teams, even in larger corporations who are interested still in doing things smart and fast and growth. And when you do that, boy, you never stop learning. And that would be maybe the second thing that I learned is that, man, if you’re coaching, you are a full-time learner in addition to being a full-time coach, because whatever you are working on today, it is gonna be disrupted by something maybe three to six months from now at the most. So that’s kind of my journey in a nutshell, I’ve been doing it for a long time, man. There are a lot more people on the space and boy, I gotta stay sharp if I wanna continue to be successful.
AJV (07:25):
Okay. Well the very first thing I heard and I think this is really important is the importance of saying yes. Yeah. Even if you’re not completely ready and I’m just like, we were talking about this a little bit before, or we started, and I didn’t even know you were gonna say this, but it’s like in your experience, how many people do you think that you’ve worked with who simply don’t succeed because they don’t just do it.
MS (07:49):
So more than 80% of problems in businesses come from people not being willing to sort of lean into the things that are really available to them. That will be really helpful. I was just on a zoom call with a client right before we jumped onto this podcast. And she was talking about the struggle that she’s having with her team in data. And she said, data makes them uncomfortable. And so every time we get busy, they use that as an excuse to say, well, we, we don’t really have to look at the data. We’d have to work, try to work with the data, cuz it’s hard for us. And, and I was guilty of that as well. It was really hard for me to put myself out there. I engaged a sales coach early on and I did my pitch for him. And he said, Mary, not only have you not sold me, you’ve given me a lot of reasons not to use you as consultant.
MS (08:41):
And I did it because I was scared. Mm. And the one thing that I could offer that made me feel so much better about everything is that as a coach, it’s about fit. And you’re not gonna be a fit for everybody. And so being open to the idea that you’re gonna have to meet a lot of people, a lot of those people are not gonna be a good fit for you in order for you to find the people that are is just part and parcel of it. And now I used to go out kind of desperate to you. I wanted to land the business and now I go out and I say, I’m so excited to meet you. And we may or may not be a fit, but more than anything, I just wanna have a lovely conversation and get to know this really great person on the other side of the table.
MS (09:22):
And I get to do that because I’ve been doing this for a long time. And I get when you’re starting, it is really scary. And, but the thing that I often coach my high growth teams on is you gotta bet on yourself. Like it’s okay for you to get involved with something that you don’t know how to do. As long as you are willing to bet on yourself to figure it out. A great example of this was way back when a, a, a, a company had an RFP out to go do something around high performing teams. And my husband came across it and said, you should do this. And I said, I don’t know anything about high performing teams or how you teach it. And he goes, yes, but you’re really good at figuring things out. So maybe you trust yourself. And that started a 15 year relationship with that particular company.
MS (10:10):
But at the very onset, the first sentence out of the guy’s mouth was, well, we’re talking to six or seven experts it, and I thought I’m cooked. So I’m just done. But as we talked, I realized, again, it was about fit. It was about my ability to understand them and listen to him much more than it was about any of my bonafides or whatever model I had. And I would say that’s true for coaching. In general, as you’re starting your practice, if you make it a about you and how smart you are, that’s kind of helpful if you make it about them and making them feel seen and being smart about helping them to know what they already know, man, that’s valuable. It took me much longer to learn that than I wish I had. That’s so
AJV (10:53):
That’s so insightful. Cause I think, I think for most people, and I can at least speak for myself. It’s like any time where I don’t think I’m a good fit, it’s, I’m totally focused on myself. Yeah. And it’s like, at the end of the day, it’s like, who knows and who cares? It’s it? Who I don’t wanna do things that aren’t fun and I don’t wanna work with people. I can’t help. So if I just take that approach and so for that person, who’s rather just started out or their in growth mode or their scale and eight figure coaching. This is wherever they are. How, what would you say are some best practices of figuring out how you figure out who’s the right fit for you? Cause I think a lot of coaches and I can speak for myself for a lot of years, worked with a whole lot of clients that I didn’t wanna work with because I wasn’t clear on exactly who was the fit for me.
MS (11:38):
Yes. And so this is the, maybe the one part where away from clients, you wanna understand how you are very differentiated from anyone else who’s coaching. And, and there’s a weird thing because again, there are a lot of coaches out there and there, there are coaches who coach from technical expertise and there who are, there are coaches who work much closer to for lack of a better word therapy life coaches who just wanna be there for you. And you can find a lot of both. I think the key is to understand in yourself one what, what you are really, really, really gift that that other people may not be. And so for me, early on, early on, early on, early on one thing that I knew that I was pretty gifted at was conflict. And in my mind, conflict, isn’t more mad at each other or hostility.
MS (12:25):
It’s like, Ooh, we don’t agree. We’re in different places on this. And you know, as luck would have it, I just happen to have some gestalt training before I met EO who values the use of this idea of Al and we’re in that world, there is no conflict. There’s only people in different places which allowed me to come into some situations with an approach that felt later easier. This isn’t the end of the world. Nobody’s right. Nobody’s wrong. Let’s just go. And so that was helpful for me to learn that easy early on, cuz that led me into high growth is chop full of conflict. And so I had a lot of opportunities to work with bigger corporations and I know big corporations and this kind of maybe gets to your point, AJ. But I also know that I don’t wanna do work. That doesn’t go and I don’t wanna work in the bureaucracy. I don’t want to sit in meetings and talk for the sake of talking. And so by definition, that’s screened out almost every large corporation. I have an utter respect for the fact that that building consensus and working things through needs to take place. It’s just not fast enough for me. Oh. And so that, yeah.
MS (13:38):
Yeah. And so I think that I always encourage my clients when they’re thinking about the clients to think about the work that they’ve done that has made them happiest and to think about the people in that work that made them the happiest and what qualities the work and the people had. And so for me, it’s, you have to be honest, you have to be a little vulnerable and I don’t mean woo woo. Vulnerable. I mean, you have to be open about the fact that there are things that you need to learn, grow do. And I’m fine with just about everything else. Like I’m good with people who have very strong personalities who have tempers who have a lot of things, but what I knew I wasn’t good at is people who just wanted to make the conversation singular. And so I got there pretty quickly by looking at the work and saying where, to your point, AJ, where am I happy in the work?
MS (14:28):
And where is the work that I come home feeling fatigued and kind of down on myself and really doubting myself as a, as a, as a coach. And so in doing that, I realized I need smaller firms who are moving quickly and who were willing to be honest with themselves about what their challenges were and for anybody else, who’s just starting her out or in the middle of it and is looking for a refocus, where is the work that you have had the best results and that gives you the most energy and who was in that work and what were they like? I might flip, I might turn the tables on you AJ and say, well, how did you learn about clients that were good for brand builders or not?
AJV (15:09):
Yeah. You know, it’s so interesting is as soon as you were talking, my very first thoughts went back to, you know, the first 15 years of my professional career as we were building our previous business coaching, training consulting and speaking. And I think one of the things that I realized during that tenure, which made brand builders group so much easier is I got super clear on what my natural strengths were, but that did not happen organically. It was almost forced by, by having so many clients for so long that just burned me out. Yeah. And it wasn’t until I think I went to a conference or I had a coach or something where I really said that, what do I want to be doing? And I knew, I knew for a really long time what I didn’t wanna be doing, but I wasn’t focused on what I wanted to be doing. And I feel like for me, it’s like, I was clear on what I didn’t want, but it took a lot of focus and effort for me to get really clear on what I did want. And I think for me, what I discovered in this process, it’s like my superpower is to be able to come into it. It’s a a blessing and a curse, really, if you think about it, but it’s a, it’s my ability to come into any single situation, any room, any, anything, and immediately see what’s wrong.
MS (16:26):
Yeah.
AJV (16:27):
Yeah. Probably think it wonderful. I, your team loves you. But it’s like any situation I can immediately go, that’s how you make it better. Yeah. And I, I started attracting clients who wanted that type of feedback who wanted that type of directive, that type of momentum, because I just remembered my sales calls. I’m like, listen, if you don’t want someone to come in and tell you what to make better, I’m not the fit for you because I’m never going to be like, it’s great. I’m just never gonna do that for you. But until I figured that out and it really took 10 years, so it shouldn’t take everyone else that long like take, you know, lessons from this, but it wasn’t until then that I was like, I actually really love my clients because they were fast paced action oriented. I didn’t have to follow up. I didn’t have to hold ’em accountable. They were action takers because they knew, but by the next time I talked to him, I was gonna have three more things.
MS (17:17):
Nice. So people who were happy and people that would tell me people who were happy to be pushed. Yeah. Cause that’s not everybody. Right. And so again, yeah, it’s just, but I, at the beginning of my career on this, I wish I did a much better job of sort of documenting how the work went and because you would get there faster. And so if you are just out today, document your clients, what is working about this client? What do I not love about this client? And as you said that AJ, it reminded me of something that really helped me from a long time ago, there’s a, there’s a gentleman named hum cloud who does sort of these back of the cocktail cartoons that are mini lessons in business. And he does a lot of work on culture now. And one of the things, one of the ones that really stood out for me is he said that, you know, when we think about work, you have this sort of, this ven diagram of work that is really sexy and fun.
MS (18:07):
And then that pays you a ton of money. And he said, people who are starting out have a tendency to think that that ven diagram completely overlaps that all your work should be super sexy and grow your brand and, you know, be wonderful to do and pay you a lot of money at the same time. And that’s a short road to unhappiness because what you realize every time. And I think you probably realized is that, is that there are clients who you adore and there are clients who pay you incredibly well. And the number that are a 10 on both of their scales is actually relatively few. And that’s okay.
AJV (18:43):
Yeah. One of the things that I started reminding myself of when we started brand builders grew what should I like almost almost four years, which feels like yesterday and 15 years ago at
MS (18:54):
The same time and a hundred years ago at the same time
AJV (18:56):
Time. But I said, if I wouldn’t want to coach you for free, then I shouldn’t coach you at all.
MS (19:02):
Yeah.
AJV (19:03):
It’s like, if I, if I wouldn’t wanna do this without making money, then now, you know, 15, 20 years later, I’m in a position you that’s clearly not. I would take anyone in the beginning. For a very long time, I was like, whatever it is you want I’ll, I can do it. I’ll figure it out. But now it’s like, if I, if I didn’t wanna coach you for free, then I shouldn’t coach you at all. And I don’t think that’s how we start. But for me now it’s more about mission and passion of going. It’s like, I wanna be able to do this without having to only do it because you pay me. So it’s like the more I can find those people, the naturally the happier I am and the happier my clients are.
MS (19:43):
Yeah. Love that. But it takes a little bit of time, right? Because you immediately think it has to be bid to those things and to start. And I think that you’re onto something that’s really, really important also, AJ, as you start and, and my view on this shifted a little bit, but not too much. And I’m sure your has, but it, yours has as well, but it is the idea of what is my business about am I in it for the experiential point of, I wanna love what I do. I want to have a blast with everyone that I work with is the purpose of my business to create financial freedom so that I can go out and do whatever I wanna do go climb a mountain or take a month off or take three months off. And it’s kind of related to that thing, but I have always chosen the experiential over the money and that has been great, but also not because when I get too happy with people, I don’t want them to not like me.
MS (20:36):
And so one of the biggest challenges I’ve had as a coach is how do you take people’s money up and learning how to have that conversation was really tough. And I’m sure that you had to do the same thing. Yeah. Okay. But it occurs to me that you were on the same side of that equation, which is, I know what I want my business to do. I want the work to give me energy and make me happy first. And so I’ll take a little less money to do that. Like you don’t have to pick between the two, but it’s helpful to understand. I know other coaches that are like I’m in it to make money. And I do a great job deliver a great service, but the work feels a little different for them. And they get to do a wider space of clients because their needs are different.
AJV (21:14):
It’s such an important distinction for anyone who’s in this space to anyone who’s in this industry of being really clear of like, what are your goals of being in this space? Because that really does clearly distinguish your market and what you’re going after. So that actually brings up a really good question because I know that this comes up in our community all the time is people don’t know how to charge. Right. They undervalue their services. They don’t know how to charge. They don’t know when to do price increases. And I, I find this for both businesses and personal service alike. So both on a coach side and then also on a individual who coaches businesses like any tips or advice or experience shares around, how do you determine what to charge and when your prices should go up or come down, or like, how, how do you do that?
MS (22:06):
Yeah. And but prices the stickiest wicket for all businesses of us sizes. Anytime anybody’s working on pricing strategy, I’ll show you some unhappy people, cause it’s really hard and there are no real right answers on this. But for coaches, it’s actually pretty simple. Most coaches start off by either way overvaluing their, their services or way undervaluing the, our services. And so you’re gonna have to make a choice early on as to whether you go with a retainer model. Am I gonna say it’s X number of dollars a month and we’re gonna make the most of that, or is it a delivery fee for delivery, which is for every hour that I coach you, I get money that there are challenges with both to begin with though. It is easier to get people to sign on for a fee for delivery. It is also easier to make the value of a fee for delivery visible when you’re starting out, when you’re on a retainer and you send a very big number to an entrepreneurial CEO, they’re like, what is all this money for it?
MS (23:06):
Cuz I sure didn’t see it. I spent an hour with Mary, but she’s got $7,000 on here and say, what is, what is she doing that way? And so I find that it’s probably a good idea to try to sell both, but if you’re selling a retainer to make sure that the value of that retainer is visible and defined, not just, I promised to be there between 10 and and 20 hours, it would literally be the, to give them a sense of I’m advancing these things for you. On that, the second thing that I learned is I’m just gonna be, I’m gonna get in trouble for this. My pricing is highly aligned with how easy and fabulous I think you are to work for.
MS (23:47):
That is probably not a great and scientific way to do it, but there are things that I value. Like if you never cancel, if you, I, I do fee for delivery. I’ve always found that just simpler, easier. I’m happier. But if you always show up when you’re supposed to, if you’re not always moving your schedule around or, or, or canceling, if you actually do something with the work, like just like you AJ. And if you share with me that you think what I’m doing is valuable, you get a discount from me and mostly it’s a discount in, in terms of, I’m not gonna raise your rates as we go. That’s fascinating. Yeah. So that’s an well, and then the other part of it is where people always, if you’re a great client, it’s kind of, there’s an, there’s an analogy with this, with a rental house, which is they say, if you find a great tenant who pays all the time and doesn’t trash the house and doesn’t have pets, you never raise their rent because you never want them to leave.
MS (24:42):
And I think that’s kind of how I feel about the clients that I love of. And I have worked for, you know, it’s funny, like you say, we’ve been working together for a year. The number of clients that I have been associated with, but for more than a decade is more than I cared to count. It’s a great thing. But part of that is because I value them and I don’t, I’m not always taking their money up. The second thing that I will say is take your money up on every next client. Like, as you are building your business, if you got somebody to say yes for this amount, try taking it up a little bit and see if you can get somebody to say yes to the higher amount. And if a couple of people say yes to that, try taking it up to the next level.
MS (25:20):
Until you get people who are one in four might say, oh, it’s a little pricey or I don’t know, or just not get back to you. But if everyone is just like, oh, that’s fine, that’s fine. That’s fine. You probably have room to go north a little bit. And that’s what I have done. So I actually have a pretty big spread in, in, in what I charge. But it says, I said I’m a little wacky that way. However my husband, who is always telling me double your double, your price, I’m like here outta your mind for one thing. But secondarily, I spend an unbelievably small amount of time in business development because I’m not great at it. And so word of mouth and people who stay with me allow me not to have to spend on average. I wanna say beginning coaches spend 25 to 33% of our time developing business.
MS (26:10):
I will joke that sometimes clients are paying me to develop business cuz I’m in a coaching session and they’re telling me about somebody else that they wanna introduce me to. Yeah. and so that was my strategy was make people really happy, generate good referrals, good word of mouth. And try to keep prices a little bit lower. Everybody’s gonna be a little bit different, but if you are taking your prices at the key is you have to show value. You have to show here’s what you are getting and why absolutely why it’s worth it for you to have this time. And that’s something that with good clients, they’ll tell you this is valuable or if it’s not valuable and boy, if I go too long without somebody saying, Hey, that was valuable, I gotta check in and say, Hey, is the work aligned to what you need?
MS (26:52):
But on the, on the pricing front, I have found the easiest way to take prices up is to do it with new clients. And when you have to do it, don’t don’t nickel and dime take the significant price increase so that you only have to do it every couple of years. That is absolutely a best practice in our line of work is people don’t want their fee. They don’t want the annual renewal of your fee went up as if we are Comcast or Netflix these days. And every once in a blue moon say, Hey, I I’m just, I’m adjusting to meet the, the business standard really helpful to invent the standards of our industry. Those are I’m adjusting my these cause.
AJV (27:31):
So many. Those are so many good things. I just wanna make sure we don’t skim over some of those because this is a really challenging thing for most people. I don’t, it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. If you’re in a service space industry where you’re charging fees it’s a big deal. Especially in this coaching training, speaking consulting world. And there’s three things that you said that I think are really worth, just commenting on is. And honestly, one of them is this, this pricing model based on the ease of which it is to work with you. And as you are hourly, it’s like if I have to track you down and follow up with you to show up for my calls, I’m going to charge you more because you cost me more.
MS (28:11):
That’s exactly right.
AJV (28:12):
That’s brilliant. That’s so smart and creates more accountability. I would think in terms of, Hey, listen, if you’re difficult to work with, I have to charge more because you’re holding up space on calendar.
MS (28:25):
Yep. That’s exactly right. That’s so
AJV (28:28):
Smart. Yeah. And I think too, the thing that I love about that is also going, I love that there is a differentiation and although it’s like, I think it kinda like motivates clients to wanna be better clients.
AJV (28:42):
Right. And it’s like, who doesn’t wanna be motivated to be a, a better client of going, wow. If like I’m a really good client then like I would get like locked in at this like grandfathered rate. Like I need to be a good client. And I think there’s like some like reverse psychology. That’s actually really, really beneficial in that. Cuz I think for most people they’re human nature is, well I wanna be, I wanna be a good client too. Not, not, I think most people go into this going, I wanna be a giant pain in the ask for you and then see if you can make it work and
MS (29:09):
Amen. I mean, and you have to have some trust there. Like I don’t say that to everyone. I say that to clients that I really like, and, and it is, it also helps them to understand, Hey, you get a little special treatment, which makes them want to be better clients. I
AJV (29:23):
So smart. So interesting. Never heard that pricing. My I’ll ever love that. So good.
AJV (29:30):
The second thing that I think is really good is this concept of being grandfathered in to pricing. Yeah. Like I think that makes a big deal. I think about some of my longest term consulting clients in my former life. And it’s because I didn’t just raise the prices for raising the prices. I’m like, you’ve been amazing. You’ve been six and seven for your clients year after year. I’m not gonna raise prices just for the sake of raising prices. I’m gonna keep the prices the same. So our relationship will continue. And I, I, you know, I, I can’t tell you how many vendors that I’ve been contacted by. I, since the beginning of this year, letting me though, they’re just doing a standard across the board, 10% price increase and I’m going for what? Like based on what inflation market.
MS (30:12):
Yeah.
AJV (30:12):
And I’m just sitting here going, okay, well, should I increase our, you know, it’s like, and those things where it’s like, and then, you know, Roy and I had a long to sits a lot of discussion around, well, should we be doing that? And then we just set back and we’re like, no, we don’t feel like that’s right. For where we are. And so it’s like one of the things that we’ve kind of doubled down on is we’re not gonna raise prices, but we’re going to be doing new things to increase value without raising prices. And there’s two different ways of going about at it. And it’s like, if you really wanted me to stay and to refer you business, which I would happily do, it’s like raising the prices for no reason, probably isn’t the thing to do. So we’ve taken a counter approach and we’ve added three new, huge benefits to our membership platform going, and we’re not raising prices. Our goal this year is to increase value.
MS (31:01):
So I just love that. And in fact, when I was at McDonald’s, we used to use this very simple but powerful formula that said value equals price divided by experience. Oh, and the idea was to say, as long as you’re providing an experience, that seems better than the price you’re winning on the value score. So you didn’t always have to take prices down. You had to make the experience better. And at the same time was the key to driving value. So what you and Roy are doing is just so smart because it does allow you to but yeah, but it does. And I think that it, so one thing again, that I would, that I would share with, with people who are in this doing, but we do, and even for you guys too, AJ and worry is something that I do and started doing several years ago that it took me forever to do.
MS (31:50):
And this is a, a shout out to a very smart guy named David Baker, who does a lot of writing about business models for advertising agencies. And I got dialed into him on one time ago. But one thing that he says is if it you’re doing it for free, you still gotta put it on the invoice because there’s no way for people to understand the value of it unless they see it. And so I would put it in as a, this line item with a no charge, or I would actually put it in at full boat and then, and then cut it it back out. I’d do it both ways, but helping people to see the, these are things that we are doing that are valuable for you is super, super important.
AJV (32:29):
I love
MS (32:29):
That. Cause they don’t, we do Abstract work, right? Like it’s its, it’s not, it’s not holding something in your hand.
AJV (32:36):
Oh yeah. Out of sight, out of mind, what have you done for me lately? It’s easy to forget like all those things.
MS (32:42):
Right. and so even again, like the last we finish this up by saying, it never felt really great about either one of those things. And so just two weeks ago I found out the thing that I love that I put out invoices. And so now it says, here’s the service with my comp, here’s the thing I did with my compliments. That is like, this is for you. This isn’t even a, a line item. I want you to know that I did this as a little gift for you. Oh that’s. And so as you and Roy are doing things that are really value added, making sure that you find ways to share those that feel good. Yeah. And is an important part for anybody to who delivers coaching consulting as a service.
AJV (33:23):
Oh, that’s so good because it’s true. It’s like, people don’t know what they’re paying for. If you don’t tell them what they’re paying for. Right. And what they’re paying. And especially
MS (33:31):
If you have multiple people, there’s in my line of work, there’s no way for a CEO to know that, Hey, I had a one off coaching session just for the good of the cause with one of your people, unless it says bonus coaching session with my compliments. That’s so good. Yeah.
AJV (33:44):
That’s awesome. That’s so great. And then the third thing you said that I also love because I think this is, I think people do this more than anything else is they never raise their prices. But it’s, I love this. It’s, you know, I would liken it to like client demand. It’s like the more clients you have, it’s like, you have to be raising the prices be, and that’s just, there’s only a limited supply of how many hours you have to deliver. So the less hours you have the higher, the prices must go. So the earlier I think to me, it’s like the earlier you have clients in, they should have lesser rates to some degree because you more ample time. But as that time gets sucked away, prices must increase cuz the value of your time is innately higher.
MS (34:27):
Yep. And on that, I think a couple of things that are important to remember one of which is you can do an introductory rate. Like you can do it. Let’s try very much like what you guys do. Here’s a preview. Here’s a way for you to try me before we get locked in. And people actually love that. Like when I’m selling coaching, I always say to people, well, the best way for you to understand it is let’s just do it. Like let’s just have a coaching session. And if you’re like, yes, that was great. Then we can do next steps. And if you’re like, that was awesome, but you’re coming intense. But then we’re probably not a good fit and great too. But it saved me from doing a lot of pretend work. I’m like, why not just do a little bit of the work and let them see it?
MS (35:10):
And so that I think is something that is important to know that you can also say to people, Hey, we can do my usual rate is like, you gotta know what your actual prevailing rate is. My usual rate is this to us. If we can get to know each other, I’m willing to do three months at this and then we can reevaluate. That’s an okay way to get started. And so that I think is an important thing is that you have some flexibility and don’t publish your rates would be a big one to not publish. Yeah. Your rates. I mean, I go back to you triggered something that was really helpful for me. And I don’t remember who this was. This might also have been David Baker, but I don’t think so, but I ran, I ran across a great formula that said, if you’re working in corporate America and you wanna go out and consult the number that you need to make in terms of breaking, even with your old salary is somewhere between 1.5 and two, just to stay where you were earning your salary in corporate America. Because you don’t think about things like, well now I’m paying my own portion of says social security and now I’m responsible for my own health insurance. And now I have hours that I have to spend an administration that I can’t bill you, but still are a cost center. And so when you set your rates, you have to account for all those things the same way that they do when they set a salary in a corporate world.
AJV (36:35):
Oh totally. Those are such wise experienced comments to anyone. It doesn’t matter if you’re just getting started or you haven’t established coaching consulting practice. Like those are things that so often never get discussed. Like they don’t actually make it to the conversation of how do we set prices. And so funny, cuz this wasn’t an intended part of my interview with you, but this is so incredibly valuable. And all right. So I have just one other quick question, but before I do that I’m gonna put this in the show notes, but when it comes to social media, if people wanna go and connect with you where’s the best place on social media for people to connect with you
MS (37:15):
That’ll be, I’m too consulting on LinkedIn. So I’m an I’m, I’m not young. I’ve been doing this for a long time and had a career before that. And so I have found that for me and really professional social media is my bag. And, and so yeah, reaching out to me through LinkedIn is the best way and to get to me. And just one thing I am so grateful for just the journey that I’ve had and the amount of amazing experiences and fabulous clients that I’ve had that I always wanna help other coaches along the way. And so if anybody wants to reach out with a specific question around pricing or client management, or what did you do about this, please, please, please take advantage of that as coaches, AJ, I’m just gonna share this with you, cuz I think it’s important and know I actually think brand builders, is that a big part of the solution to this coaches don’t have community?
MS (38:07):
Mm, my husband is a political consultant. There’s like 9,000 political consultant bashes a year where they all go together and party it up and celebrate each other. And if you’re a coach that one of the surprising things for me was how lonely it was and how little community there actually is for coaches. And I think that brand builders is actually finding that part of their mission is to create a safe places for coaches to come together and to share. But also just as someone who is a little bit down the PI here, I am so happy to share my experience. If it’s helpful for anyone that just reach out to me at Mt. Consulting on LinkedIn or Mary, so on LinkedIn if I can help you, I will.
AJV (38:50):
Aw. So awesome. It’s why we love you so much and I’ll put all of in the show notes so generous and you might need to prepare yourself. You might be
MS (38:59):
That OS well though, like again, it’s an honor and man, I’m just so grateful.
AJV (39:04):
Oh, that’s so generous. It’s so nice. Okay. Well here’s my last question. And this is like totally has nothing to do with anything other than my own personal curiosity. But I would say and this is connected to this world of coaching that we’re in. But what would you say has been the, your favorite, your most favorite part about being a coach over the last 20 years?
MS (39:30):
So the, the, the obvious answer, right? Like the existential answer, it is such a gift to watch someone change. It is such a gift to be able to watch the light bulb go off in an aha moment, perhaps more importantly. It’s so awesome. And interestingly enough, I didn’t have children, but sometimes I’m like, Ooh, this must be like what it’s like with a kid where you watch your kid figure out how to tie their shoes at a, a sophisticated high level, but to be able to watch people access particularly their own self agency. And that is my favorite part because what I have found with most people is we give up so much of our agency when we are in trouble. When we have problems, we tend to go, it’s all this stuff around me and I’m stuck. And if we just turned inward just a little bit and said, Hey, actually I have more than I need to get out this.
MS (40:24):
And watching people access that part of themselves, cuz then they have it forever in everything. It doesn’t matter what they’re doing. If they’re like, oh, I can figure this out. And that’s pretty much hands down. My favorite part of that for myself if you took the clients away from it, I would say my favorite thing is how much it requires you to stay current. Oh, okay. I can’t think of another business where you do not have the luxury of relaxing and I will share with you that I meet a lot of people who are my age and I’m like, wow, you’ve had pretty much the same job for the last 15 years. And I’d be happy some weeks with having the same job for 15 minutes. But man, it keeps you young mentally. Like there, everyone is talking about the need to keep learning as a way to say young mentally. So that’s my favorite part about selfishly.
AJV (41:13):
Oh, I adore you so much special conversation with so many nuggets and so many awesome tips and best practices. Mary, we love you. And I don’t, I, I don’t know if people caught this, like I’ve had the pleasure of having Mary as my coach. And I mean, it’s like, I, I speak for that. It’s like, I, I know sometimes you say it’s like, wow, just wondering if you still wanna continue. I’m like what, what, what do you mean not be don’t, you’re have to be brave enough to ask sometimes it’s true and I can totally vouch. It’s like when you find that right coach, and this is where coaches out there and finding your clients, it’s like, it’s a really magical, it’s a really magical. And so be intentional with your clients, be intentional with who you do work with because it, it impacts you too, so that thank you so much. Everyone else stay tuned to the next episode on influential personal brand,
Speaker 3 (42:07):
Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and, and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand buildersgroup.com/podcall brand builders, group.com/podcall. We hope to talk to you soon.
AJV (42:55):
All right. Well, welcome back. Y’all welcome to the recap episode of my conversation with Mary Soin. I love her so much. She is just so full of wisdom and experience. And as my own personal business coach, I was so excited to have her on here and I get the privilege of not just recapping our conversation, but also sharing just some powerful insights of things that she has taught me in terms of what, what do you provide really as a coach? And it’s interesting because as someone who considers yourself in the coaching industry and the coaching business, it’s what we do at brand builders group and personal branding. But it’s also really important that I have a coach to constantly get that different perspective for myself. And so there’s a couple of things here that I thought were so insightful for anyone who is in the coaching industry.
AJV (43:51):
And here are the couple of things that I think is really insightful is one. How do you set your prices? I don’t think a lot of people talk about this, cause I don’t really think a lot of people know how to do it. And I love the conversation that we morphed into on our call on our interview. Because that wasn’t, the intent had that naturally came up and we just went with it. But here’s a couple of takeaways from how to set your price and that think are really valuable. And then I can speak to as Mary, as my own business coach, right. One I think this was really fascinating. There’s two ways of looking at this, right? There is a, or really three ways. There is hourly, there is retainer and then there’s project and that’s how I would kind of lump these together.
AJV (44:32):
And on a, on an hourly, it actually puts a lot more work on you because you’ve got to track all of those per client. But then on top of that I think a lot of times I’m going, well, what if I don’t use, what if I don’t need these? And then she gets booked up, right? And I’m thinking like specifically of like how I’ve been as a customer, it’s like, I feel pressure of going well, if I just book hourly and I’m not on your schedule when I need you, are you gonna be available? Right. And for any of you who have ever been in counseling or therapy or, or life coaching, it’s like, no, when I need you, I need you. And if you’re not available well, that is not really helpful for me. So there’s pros and cons on a customer’s per on a customer perspective of doing it hourly.
AJV (45:15):
Because then the pro is, it’s like it’s cost manageable. Right. but for you as a coach, it’s a lot more work. It’s a lot more tracking of going now. I have to track and prove and document every single hour that I was with your organization or with you. So first one is hourly. Okay. Second one is retainer, right? Pros and cons to that one too, because on a customer’s perspective, I’m going, well, I want you to show me what you did for this retainer. Right. I paid you $3,000 for last month. What’d you do? I wanna know. And so there’s, again, a lot of tracking and reporting on that. There’s clearly a lot more security on the coaches side for pricing, right. Because you can plan out ahead and there’s less tracking. But then there’s again, extra documentation, right? So there’s, there’s always gonna be pros and cons to this, but I would say as a coach a project or a retainer model, I would blend my way to that more to quickly.
AJV (46:15):
Except for if you are just in that one, on one space and then maybe it’s the hourly. But I think the benefit of some of this in a retainer perspective is it allows you more opportunity to provide more value. And so now you have to figure out what that retainer pricing is. And maybe that retainer pricing is $500. Maybe it’s a thousand, right. Instead of going, Hey, just tell me when you need me. It’s like, no, we’re just gonna set up. It’s like, we’re gonna do two calls, three calls a month. One is for you. One is for your team. You can set it up however you want, but that can still be a retainer model. And here’s another way to look at hourly, even if you only do hourly, just have people pay in advance for their hours.
AJV (46:54):
And that could be like a project, right? So instead of billing hourly, it’s like, well, I’m gonna bill you hourly, but I’m gonna do it in advance. So right. I’m gonna go ahead and bill you for 10 hours. And you can use that in any increment that you like. It could be in 10, one hour calls, it could be in two, five hour sessions. But it it’s like I’m gonna bill you in advance. And then I won’t bill you again until you use those up. So there’s different ways of thinking about how you price. But then you also have to think about what is that actual personal, hourly rate, right. And I thought this was fascinating cause right. There’s projects. And then there’s retainers, right? Which happened monthly versus a project, which is a one time, Hey, here’s what we’re gonna do for Q1.
AJV (47:38):
And here’s how much it costs versus you’re gonna pay me X amount of money every single month and definitely, or for six months or for a year or for whatever. And then there’s hourly, which I’ll track every single hour and I’ll bill you, or you can have people buy hours up front and then you don’t bill again until you use those up. And then they buy the next allotment. Right. So there’s lots of different ways to do it, but then the next is, well, how do you set your internal hourly? Right. So you know what to charge for in a project or on a retainer or hourly like, well, what should I charge a hundred dollars an hour? Is it $50 an hour? Is it $500 an hour? I don’t know what my fee is. And so I thought this was so fascinating because I’ve never heard this and I’ve been in this industry and I’ve been in this business a really long time.
AJV (48:24):
And she said, that really depends on the client. And then, and it hit me. It’s like it sure frien does. It does depend on the client. And I love this and I have never heard of anyone else doing this. So I think this is really, really cool. But this concept of going, how easy is it to work with a client? And that is a part of how you hard, like how difficult is the project gonna be for you? In other words, if you are doing something that is gonna require a lot of research time and a lot of documentation time, a lot of coordination time, then maybe there should be a higher hourly rate because it’s, it’s making you do things that are not a part of your norm, right. Versus like, no, this is, you just want me on a phone call and you wanna ask me questions.
AJV (49:15):
That’s easy. Are you, are you a client? Are you working with clients that are very hard to track down and they always take out virtual real estate on your calendar that you’re always having to go back and try to refill. And it’s like that to me was like the aha moment of going, how many clients have I had in the past that would book calls. And then constantly not show up and then I couldn’t fill that hour with someone else. So there was a huge opportunity cost, and then I would have to track this person down, reschedule, reschedule. They weren’t prepared. And I’m like, oh my gosh. It’s like, this is so much more work than we had anticip hated for. So it was like, how easy are your clients to work with? Are they people who show up prepared and ready to work?
AJV (50:00):
Are they people who constantly know show and reschedule on you? And I think a lot of that you don’t know until you work with them. Right. so she talked about, excuse me, having a grandfathered price in. So it’s like I start everyone at some point at based on what the project is based on what they need based on my involvement. But my prices evolve and change, right. Just like inflation changes the prices in the markets as does at my prices. Right. and really it’s more of supply and demand, right? The less hours I have, the more I charge, the more hours I have, I don’t have to charge as much. And that’s the case with, you know, anything it’s like the less there is typically the more you pay for it. Right. and so just this concept of how easy is it for me to work with you?
AJV (50:48):
How reliable as a client are you to work with and how much availability do I have and then how much expertise is required. Those are the things that we evaluate as we’re setting prices. And I think that’s really interesting to look at, of going the more that you do this, the more you should charge, because the more experience, the more value that you provide, but you need to make sure that that’s what’s happening. And I, I know some people who just get in and they’re like, my fees are 200 bucks an hour. And I’m like, based on what I have other people who get in this business and they charge a hundred dollars an hour and I’m like, you should be charging five, like legitimate, you should be charging 500. That is the level of expertise that you are providing. What’s the difference has everything to do with the need of the client and finding that right.
AJV (51:41):
Fit, knowing what your niche is and knowing exactly what you’re gonna be coaching on, knowing exactly what your target market is and what is their income and what are their demographics and what are their psychographics on a huge part of this? Isn’t about what it’s about, who it’s about, who are you targeting and what expertise are you bringing? And in what model are you going to be charging? Right? And this is such a detailed conversation to have in this recap, but I think it’s one that’s really powerful and a customer of Mary’s to know, it’s like, I’m sitting here going. I wonder if my pricing means I’m a really good client, or I’m a really difficult client of I’ll tell you what it did for me. And I, I hung up for this interview and I went and I talked to my husband, Rory. Who’s also a co-host as you guys all know if you’re listening and I asked him and I was like, based on these fees, do you think I’m a bad client on a good client?
AJV (52:33):
And it created this internal desire in me to like, I wanna be a good client. I wanna get grandfathered in to really good rates. It’s like, what do I need to do to be a better client? And then I’m asking myself, do I reschedule on her? Do I knowhow? Do I not come prepared? Do I not stuff. And there is a mentality that intentional or not, that has been created since this interview of me going, I want to be a better client because I want to be rewarded for being a good client and being rewarded means I get grandfathered in at my original rate. Heck yeah, I’m not gonna reschedule on you anymore. I’m never gonna knowhow. I’m gonna show up and do the work because I want these grandfathered in fees because I value your time. And if I, if I value and I respect your time, you’re gonna reward me as a customer, sign me up.
AJV (53:22):
So I think there’s also reverse psychology working here in her favor again, intentional or not, that makes me wanna be a good customer. So again, really fascinating conversation on pricing. It’s a really delicate conversation. It’s always changing and evolving as your prices should, right? They shouldn’t be the same that they were 10 years ago, because you are definitely saying that you were 10 years ago or even five years ago, or maybe even last year. So please check out this full interview. Mary also gave the incredible offer to any anyone in the coaching business. If you’re a coach and you just want more community with coaches and you want advice from someone who’s been doing this a really long time, she said look her up on LinkedIn. It’s Mary Soin into consulting. And she said, reach out to me. And I’m, I’m happy to support. I’m happy to help and ask any questions. So if I were you and I was a coach, I would take her up on that because I’m taking her up on it for free. So check it out, go listen to the full episode and we’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 256: How to Build Your Own Audience with Dr. John DeMartini

RV (00:00:08):
Hey, my, my new friend, mark, Victor Hansen introduced me to somebody that you are about to meet Dr. John Demartini and mark and crystal who we had on the show several months ago, said you gotta have Dr. De martini on. He is incredible. They’ve known each other for 38 years. But Dr. Demartini is one of a, a world renowned specialist in human behavior. So he’s a researcher, he’s an author. He studied over 30,000 books, which I was pretty amazing. That’s just a, a wide on, on a number of topics, but that’s a bunch of books. He’s been on Larry King live, he regularly contributes to magazine and I’ve been just following him online here, recently tuning into to what he’s up to and getting to know one another. So anyways, Dr. Demartini, welcome to the show.
JD (00:01:04):
Well, thank you for having me. I’ve been looking forward to it. Thank you.
RV (00:01:07):
Yeah. So, so tell us a little bit about how you got started. I mean, you and I were just kind of rapping that you’ve known mark Victor Hansen for 38 years. So you you’ve been around the industry for a while. Would love to just kinda hear how you get started and then kind of like, what is your business model? How, and how is your business model, you know, did it begin and how has it evolved over the years in terms of like, you know, the different revenue streams that you focused on?
JD (00:01:39):
Okay. I had an arm and leg deformity when I was a child and speech impediment and went to a speech pathologist and specialist for that in first grade, I was told that I would never be able to read or write or communicate effectively, probably wouldn’t go very far in life for amount to much had to wear a dunk cap back in 19 0 59 60. I made it through elementary school by asking kids questions. What did they learn from the book? What did they learn from the class? And if they told me stuff, I would get enough to kind of, sort of pass.
JD (00:02:25):
When I turned 12, my parents moved from Houston, Texas to Richmond, Texas. We went to a low socioeconomic country area. They weren’t a bunch of smart scholarly kids. I didn’t have a team to help me. I failed, I dropped outta school and I lived on the streets, but I was okay in standing on a surfboard. I started doing that at nine, but Texas was not the surf capital. I didn’t wait for a hurricane to get new waves. So I made my way out. 14. I hitchhiked out to California and lived in Huntington beach for part of the summer, and then hitchhiked down to New Mexico and surfed California in Mexico. At 15, I left there and got enough money panhandling to go and fly to Hawaii. I lived under a command may highway, sunset bridge. Then I lived in EAI beach park under a park bench, then in a bathroom abandoned car. And finally a tent kept social climbing. I was riding waves and got pretty good at it. Got to hang out with some of the top surfers, got in a few magazines and me movies and books. And then I nearly dock at 17.
JD (00:03:45):
At 17, I was in the recovery of that. I was led to a little health food store and then eventually to a yoga class to try to overcome my neuromuscular problem that I had there. One night I met Paul Bragg and one night, one hour, this man who was inspired and a very enthusiastic man spoke and talked about what we can do with our lives. He talked about, we had a body of mind and a soul and a body must be directed by the mind. And mind must be guided by the soul in order to maximize our, our life.
JD (00:04:21):
When you spoke that night, he said that we need to set goals for ourself, our family, our community, our city, our date, our nation, our world, for and beyond for a hundred, 120 years, nobody ever talked to me like this and I could understand. And he was simple. And he, and he said that what you think about what you visualize, what you affirm, what you feel, what you, what you do and what you write, determines your destiny. And so that night was the first time in my life. I thought maybe I could overcome my learning problems. And I thought I could someday become intelligent.
JD (00:05:02):
And that with his inspiration at night, I set out on a quest to try to overcome my learning problems. I, I eventually left to Hawaii and I flew to LA and I hitchhiked back, Texas. And I prepared for a G E D and passed GEDs, a high school equivalency. I passed that and I tried to go back to college and I failed and I was distraught sitting on my living room floor and my mom and dad, you know, we’re encouraging. But my mom said to me that morning, that, that day when I failed son, whether you become a great teacher, like you dream about cuz at night I met Paul Bragg. I had a vision that I would overcome my learning and learn how to speak properly and be able to teach.
JD (00:05:51):
He said, whether you become a great teacher and travel the world, like you dream, whether you return to Hawaiian ride giant waves, or whether you go to the streets again, just wanna let you know that your father and I are gonna love you. No matter what. When she said that my hand went into a fist, I looked up and I said to myself, I’m gonna mass this thing called reading and studying and learning. I’m gonna master this thing called teaching, and I’m gonna do whatever it takes. I’m gonna travel, whatever it is since I’m gonna pay, whatever price to give sort was love across the plant. I’m not gonna let any human being or myself stop me now. And I got up and hugged my mom and went in my room and I got a dictionary out and I started memorizing 30 words a day and she would test me on 30 words a day until my vocabulary was strong enough to learn and pass school.
JD (00:06:40):
And I, I did and I eventually started to Excel and I’m now 18 and slowly but surely people started asking me questions, cuz I started to Excel in school and I started to have students asking me questions, mentoring. And it went from one to two to about 15. By the time I finished my first little two years in school, I went to the university of Houston. I started having a hundred, 150, sometimes 400 people a day under the trees and I would do my yoga and they would ask questions and I’d have a, a following of students. Wow. When I went on to professional school, I started doing classes seven nights a week. I would speed read books of by then. I was learning how speed reading it. But I was speed reading, read four to four to seven books in the morning and then do a presentation that night.
JD (00:07:33):
And that’s how I had paid my way through college in professional school. When I got outta school and I still opened up my practice. I was teaching every single night and I generated patience from doing talks and everywhere and anywhere I could find a place from breakfast clubs, luncheon clubs, you name it anywhere where there was a speaker might be used. I went to go and offered my speaking services and I generated patients from that. That led me to have a TV show on channel 20 on health, Dr. De Martinez health ends. And then I started doing that in my office. They’d film it live for my audience and we would talk about patients and care. And then I started doing more. And then I, and I figured out how to grow. My practice went from a little 970 square foot office to 5,000 square foot office from one assistant to five doctors and 12 a and people want to know what the heck did you do?
JD (00:08:34):
And all I did is I prioritized things and delegated things and stuck to what I did best, which was being a man on a mission with a message and speaking, and then engaging people. And then doing clinical work. And I prioritized my patients and got the doctors to do certain ones. And I did the most info and 10 folded my income. And then in different professions, they started asking me to speak on clinical practice and growing practices and things and mindset. And I was studying everything and anything I could get my hands on any possible thing that might help maximize human awareness potential. I was devouring and that reading, you know, sometimes 20 books a weekend, I was just devouring and devouring and devouring and learning everything I could. And speaking as every single time I could. Cause when you’re told, you’ll never be able to read and write or speak and then you find out you can, it’s pretty inspiring.
RV (00:09:34):
And what was your practice? So you, your Clear clinical psychologist.
JD (00:09:37):
I, I was a car. I, I was a chiropractor. I was a chiropractor.
RV (00:09:40):
Ah,
JD (00:09:41):
That’s where I met. That’s where I met mark Victor Hanson at a chiropractic convention in Las Vegas. There were about, I don’t know, 6,000 doctors there and I was a speaker there and that’s where he and I hooked up. And then we end up doing some things together. We created a, an Al them of what they called audio cassette album back in those days, how to build a, your practice. And that led me to speak into other health professionals and then other businesses. And then and I was, I started writing books at 23. So my first book was at age 23, I’ve written over, I don’t know, 200 book books now. And I call it, most of ’em are big textbooks that are going to different specialties, but a lot of ’em are, I got probably four of ’em. They’re about to do 10 more new books that are coming out. Publisher just did a 10 book deal. And so I write, I research, I teach every day of my life and you know, I, I just, it started to grow and I started to go from United States throughout all the states, all but two states I’ve gotten to speak in and then it went into Canada. Then it went into France and Spain and Italy and it started going to Europe and it just kept growing. And I, I, I kept getting opportunities and I
RV (00:10:56):
In the beginning. So in the beginning you were, you were, you started speaking, but you were making money from being a chiropractor. So you were speaking for free.
JD (00:11:05):
No, I, I, I, no, no, no. I, I, my first money that came from speaking started at the university of Houston. Okay. I started doing tutoring and I got paid very small amount. And then when I went to professional, I started to, I, I tried this love donation bit, you know, you put a bowl out and whatever you wanna pay kind of thing. Nobody loved me. So I, I decided to pay 20, make ’em pay $20. And the second I valued myself, so did the group and it grew, I started charging $20 for little evening talk and that kept growing. I just spread the throughout the city. And
RV (00:11:44):
So you’re
JD (00:11:44):
Over a hundred,
RV (00:11:45):
A public seminar model at that point. You’re like in professional school selling tickets.
JD (00:11:50):
Yeah. And I did I did over a hundred thousand dollars a year at 23 years old doing talks, which is pretty good back then and paid my school and I didn’t have debt and I could buy all the books I wanted cuz I just, all I cared about is buying books. I wanted to catch up and read and, and study. I wanted to study the greatest teachings on the planet. And so that I, my teaching model, I was paid from 23 on and I, I, I got paid even when I was in practice, I got paid to speak and then I got generated patients from it. So I got double paid and then I, they buy books and they buy, I made audio cassette tapes. I, I had, I had 900 audio cassette tapes by the time I was 20, probably about 29 30.
JD (00:12:32):
I had 900 to audio cassette tapes on different topics of health and and, and growth and personal development and made albums out of it. So I had tons of albums and things that was going on. And I just, every time I talk, I recorded it and people wanted a copy of it. I had a Mira recorder and I had a duplicating machine, two of them. So I could create six duplicating machines at the back of the room and they would get a live presentation. And then that was my advertisement. As I spoke, they would get copies of that. They’d tell it and I’d give ’em to the friends. And then I had the backlogs of all these other talks and they’d buy a bunch of those. So I had a, a revenue model and then they were coming in as a patient. So I had a good revenue model
RV (00:13:15):
And then
JD (00:13:16):
Expression.
RV (00:13:17):
So you were selling tickets to come to the event event, and then you are selling tapes at the back of the room and then you’re getting clients out of there for your practice.
JD (00:13:27):
And then I was doing consulting too
RV (00:13:29):
For
JD (00:13:30):
Companies. I was getting clients from that to consulting. Yeah, I was doing, I did a lot of the, you know, oil companies in Houston, Texas where we started and I did presentations to them on ergonomics and health, health, reducing healthcare costs and things. And then that was generating business too. Plus they buy products cuz I had I had a bunch of books by then and tapes and they were buying those and they didn’t have to pay me if I could sell. They had to, had to pay or they’d do a product sale, either one, I was prepared and that I never stopped that I still did that. And then in those days, you know, there was no internet and there’s no fax and all that stuff. And we just did, we, we sent out these little cards to notify these little mail cards.
JD (00:14:16):
We’d stamp these little mass mailing cards out and the people would come, we’d have, you know, hundreds of people coming to programs. And then I, I had other conferences once I had products, conferences could have me come on and speak cuz then they could do a revenue share and they didn’t the fees. They could afford the fees, cuz I’d have a fees and then they would split the revenues on the product and they’d get their feedback. So they, they liked me because I could, I could you know, make it cost effective. They didn’t really have to pay anything and they made money off me. So they, they didn’t mind me speaking. And I just kept those opportunities growing. I didn’t have any slick marketing. I just, I just made sure my dad said if I, if I deliver more than people expect, I, I won’t worry about business.
JD (00:15:02):
And I found that to be true. If I, if I deliver something that’s unique and present something that’s inspiring and meaningful and practical that they can use immediately to generate opportunities or money or a business or more fulfillment, then there’s always business. So I, I just found that that I’ve never been a slick marketer. I don’t really know all that stuff. I’ve hired people. I, all I do is research, write, travel, teach to this day. I, I live on my ship and I basically research write, travel, teach and do podcast all day webinars and write books so, and travel. So I, I never stopped that model. I just kept doing it. And I’ve spoken in 163 countries now and millions and millions of people. So I, I, I had a dream to travel and step foot in every country on the face of the earth. I still got a few more countries to reach and I I’ve held a vision of that since for 49 years, I’m going on my 50th year. This will be the 50th year of speaking.
RV (00:16:00):
I mean, this is just so, so wonderful. And it’s, it’s amazing to see so much of the path cause this would be so I’m in like, I mean the first time I got paid for a speech was like 2005. That’s kind of crazy to think. I’m not even in year 20. I, I started speaking for free when I was in high school, right. Coming outta high school, which was like 2000, 2000 2001. But the first time I got $5,000 for speech like really paid I think was 2004, 2005, something like that in. And you know, so I I’ve been in 15 years coming on 20. And so many of these concepts apply exactly the same. You’re speaking for free. And then you are selling at the back of the room and then you, you know, you know, people are hearing about you and I think it’s, it’s really amazing.
RV (00:16:53):
So talk to us a little bit about your business changed. I do wanna hear about the boat, cause I think that’s super interesting. You’re on a boat right now. If y’all, didn’t pick that up. Dr. D Martinez’s been on a boat for a long time, actually here the last couple years. So I wanna hear about that, but how did your business change or not change? So, so that happens, you know, in the eighties, the nineties, and then 2000 hits, the web comes out 2005, social media podcasting starts to come on the scene. Did you basically just like transition what you were doing to those platforms? And you know, it’s kinda like, oh, I was doing tapes and then I did CDs and then I didn’t B three downloads. And then I did learning management system or like tell us a little bit about how life evolved at post 2000.
JD (00:17:46):
Well, CDs in the nineties, CDs came in, audio cassettes, still sold. I still had some audio cassettes, but the CDs started coming in and then we converted to CDs. But you know, I learned at age 27, not to do anything, but what my core competence is, which is research, right. Travel teach. So I don’t do anything else. I haven’t driven a car in 32 years. I haven’t cooked since I was 24. I haven’t done administrator written checks or done any, you know, hiring or firing or managing, or I, I learned it to age 27 after reading the time trap by Ella McKinsey, not to do anything other than what is absolutely most inspiring to you if you want inspiring life. So I delegate everything and I’ll hire people that know what, what they’re doing to do that. And so if it’s time to go to CDs, I find somebody that takes care of all that.
JD (00:18:35):
And I just put them in place and I, to this day, still stick to that model. I don’t, I, so I haven’t really done anything except teach research right. And travel since 27, I’m 67 now 68 going on 68. So, so 40 years, that’s all I’ve done. I don’t do the other, I, I, my day consists of reading, writing, teaching, or doing interviews or movies or something. That’s, that’s it. I don’t do the, I don’t do anything else. I don’t make those other decisions. I learn that from Warren buffet and I, I don’t, I don’t, I do what I do my core competent. I know what it is. I stick to it. I don’t waiver from it. And but I surrounded myself with people. So if somebody, if we, if we need to go to CDs, we get some of the packages and organizes and does that.
JD (00:19:23):
If we’re going now to internet marketing, and then I get somebody to do that, but I don’t sit there and try to do my learning curve and do all that. I, I just hire people around me to do that. So to this day, I couldn’t tell you how it’s all being done behind the scenes. I just know I have competent people that take care of that for me. And my objective is to do as many podcasts and do as many webinars and do as many speakings and as many as many books and share as many insights as I can on this planet. That’s, that’s all I, I care about and travel the world.
RV (00:19:54):
I love it. So you’re now you’re living on a boat though, so you’re not, you’re clearly not doing in-person speaking events. You’re
JD (00:20:02):
Well, I, I did until I, I I’ve been living on this ship for 20 years, so I, I, I got this in 2001. So oh, so I, I, after nine 11, I was living in truck tower in New York, right underneath the Donald there. And we were up in the top of the building and, and but when nine 11 occurred, my wife said, no, this I don’t wanna be here in New York. Right now. We had some homes in Australia also. So we, she got a helicopter in the street and got out of there real quick. And and we, we got to Australia, but I told her, I said, look, I’m not scheduled to be in Australia, but four times, if you’re gonna live there, we need to come up with plan B. So I found out about the, the world, the ship called the world and which is a private condominium luxury condominium that, that sails around the world to all the countries.
JD (00:20:51):
And I, that matched my belief system, cuz I’ve said, the universe is my playground. The world is my home. Every country’s a room house. Every city’s a platform to sharer my heart and soul since I was 20, I’ve been internal dialogue. So it matched. So I, I bought that as an anniversary presence. We lived on here until she passed and I’ve been on here, but I’ve been traveling by, by flights. I still did 350 plus speeches a year by still flying and shipping. So if I’m on my ship, then I will go places. If not, I fly. So I’ll get on and off. But since COVID the flying has, and so I’m now just full time on the ship, just going place to place and doing much of it on zoom. So, or on these other mediums.
RV (00:21:36):
Well, and you’re not, but you’re not seeing you’re. I mean, clearly at some point the chiropractor patients stopped. And
JD (00:21:44):
Well, I sold, I sold the practice. I sold the first practice to two of my docs at the five. Gotcha. And I became financially independent at that time. And then I opened up another part-time consulting and practice. I did only for very special patients. I still did a little bit of practice by 1990 I, 89. I was not time practice. I was full-time speaking and consulting. And still to this day, I still consult. I still do consulting as it comes in. I don’t go out promoting it. Don’t do any marketing for it. Really. I just, it it’s on the website if people want to do it, but I still do coaching consulting. I don’t like to call it coaching, but just consulting with executives and various types of people, entrepreneurs, students. But I don’t, I don’t drive that. It just happens. You know, I I’ve done, I can do 300 in a year or I can do 200 a year something maybe, maybe more. But I, I don’t, that’s not my main business. I may do it and a half to that, on that,
RV (00:22:47):
On consulting.
JD (00:22:50):
But
RV (00:22:50):
Your, so your revenue streams now from, from the, you know, the ship for the last couple years is people will hire you to speak. You do virtual keynotes, you, you have private coaching slash consulting clients and then are, and then, and then what else? Like book deal like you, you know,
JD (00:23:10):
Web webinars, I have webinars. Most of my income still webinars. I have 80 different courses that I teach that I do pretty regularly. The one the break to experience, which is my CIG program. I’ve done 1,140 times. So I, I do that consistently. Donald told me that he says you, if you’re gonna do something brand and do it, build momentum, incremental momentum by doing it and over and over and over again until the people recognize it. So I’ve done that one. That’s my signature program. But I have a series of programs that are multi-day programs that I still do. That’s primary generation. I definitely have book royalties, but they’re not, that’s not, you know, major it’s, that’s secondary, that’s just added, but I I’m getting ready to do 10 more books. That’re in the making now. And then but most of it’s webinars, you know, the live webinars that I do or live. And that when yous that I do
RV (00:24:04):
Think is so is, so this is just so fascinating. So when you say a webinar, you’re saying people are buying an individual seat at a virtual event that you’re hosting and leading.
JD (00:24:19):
Yes. Yes.
RV (00:24:20):
So it, the same thing you were doing at the university of Houston under tree, people were paying money to come get tutored. They’re just paying 20 bucks per whatever. You’re still doing that more or less, just virtually someone buys a ticket comes to your event.
JD (00:24:36):
Yeah. But they’re not $20 anymore.
RV (00:24:38):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, that, that’s the awesome part is the price just keeps going. It just goes up over time. But, but the, the part that’s fascinating to me is that, like you basically said, I’m gonna do these four things. And for the most part, your core model, it sounds like has been public seminar. What I would call public seminars. It’s it’s anybody from the public can buy a ticket and come, you know, you started doing it for free. You are mentoring a couple students. Then it comes to, into, you know, hundreds of people. Then it’s 20 bucks ahead. And now it’s whatever it is a price for, but, but your people are buying a ticket and then they’re coming to an event and anyone can pay their own admission to come and, and just learn from what you, you have learned. And that, that hasn’t really changed. That’s been the core through your whole career. And then out of that, you’ve gotten keynotes and consulting and you’ve sold some products. And you also had your practice that you sold off, but like just basically hosting public educational events. You basically, it’s been your main business, the whole career.
JD (00:25:43):
Yeah. I think I’ve made about a quarter of a billion dollars doing that. So I think that that’s been a good model, but I think
RV (00:25:51):
I would say, so you, I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s not nothing a quarter of a million dollars is that’s a pretty good bit of coin.
JD (00:26:00):
Yeah. The, the thing is the, the speaking, you know, I, because I had a speech impediment speaking is probably the most inspiring thing I get to do. And because I had learning problem learning and delivering something that’s novel and unique to people, you know, it’s original information. It’s not something that’s canned from somebody else. I don’t copy people. I create original ideas that serve people and and synthesize and Ize information. So I’ve, I’ve, I’ve done a lot of reading to try to make, distinguish that from just anybody out there it’s solid information. So that, that’s my core thing. I just do it every single day so that you, you, somebody, I have people sometimes coming back to a program multiple times because they, they want, they know there’s something new every time that’s that’s part of my model is just to continue. Even if I do the same program, it’s I keep refining and adding and building and, and educating myself. That’s my responsibility.
RV (00:27:03):
Huh. Yeah. I’ve always kind of thought of myself as almost like a Civ, right? Like as the reason people pay me is not for the time with me, they’re paying me for the time I’ve spent condensing information from other places and, and, and exactly. It seems very much like how, how, how you view yourself, how do you get people to come? I mean, at this point, I guess you’ve had the email list and social media for years and word of mouth, but like, but like literally, how do you get people to come? Do you just have a team that says, Hey, you know, create an online page and we send email blasts and drive ads to
JD (00:27:38):
It. I don’t, I don’t, I have no idea. I don’t say that I don’t do that. I just research right. Travel, teach their job is to help me spread my message across the world. That’s their, I hire people whose vision and mission are congruent with what I’m intending. And I tell them, and I inspire them to what my vision is and help me do it. Let’s go, go make it happen. So I couldn’t tell you everything that goes behind the scenes on social media. I know we’re in all those things, but I don’t do all that. I, I, all I do is if they want me to do a message on some sort of social media, they send me a link on a zoom and they tell me this is the topic or whatever. And I just do a dissertation on it. And then they take care of all that I don’t. No, I couldn’t tell you I’m I didn’t even have a cell phone till last year. I don’t deal with that.
RV (00:28:31):
I love it. Are these people, employees or contracts, like vendors that you hire or does it matter?
JD (00:28:38):
There are some that I guess you would classify as contract. I think there’s a little of all that, cuz there’s somebody that’s kind of does management and does things and they hire people and I don’t even know all the people cause I have a south African office and I’ve got for a while there, we had people in Tokyo and Sydney and South Africa and the states and London and, and so I don’t even know all the different people until I get there. And then I recognize them and I say hi to ’em, but I don’t, I don’t, I Don manage. So I don’t do all that. All I’m all I do is write, travel, teach depend. Yeah. I don’t know all the different prices.
RV (00:29:16):
Yeah, yeah, no, that’s okay. But I, I, I, I, I just, I paused the recording here. Y’all for a second. Cuz I wanted to ask, ask Dr. D Martin, if he’s comfortable sharing the prices, cuz I wondered, you know, how much char these and you know, it’s, it’s really, you’ve stayed so true to just doing your thing. But it’s fascinating because you know, identifying that through line is that you’re a teacher you’re doing exactly what you said you would, but you’re the teacher in your own classroom, you created your own school, your own events, people used to pay or they started out paying $20 per seat to come. How much do they pay now?
JD (00:29:54):
It depends. I mean, sometimes there’s just little webinars, a little simple webinar, they still pay small amounts. And then there’s sometimes one and two and three and five and 10 day seminars, two week seminars. It depends on what we do. And each of those go up in price, they could range from oh $1,200. I’d say a thousand to $1,200 up to $7,000. It depends on what we’re doing. And the, and the things now, since zoom has come down, we’ve been able to bring prices down because we don’t have the logistics of the flights and the venues and all that. So we’ve been able to keep those prices down. But so some of the higher prices are down a bit closer to the five, 5,006,000. But, but that’s, you know, it depends on the logistics and what we, we, we just take what I, what I have is my fee. And then we find out all the cost and we put those together and we calculate that and we pass that on.
RV (00:30:47):
Interesting. So that’s a interesting way of figuring out the pricing. So you basically take your speaking fee. Plus you take the cost of the event. You add ’em together. You figure out how many seats are available, divide it, take the total cost divided by the number of seats. And there’s your, there’s your price. But with zoom, you’re able to bring, bring that. And I just, I, I, I, I, I love this. There’s so many reasons that I love this, but your whole story is one of just being told you, you know, you can’t do it. You’re not gonna be able to do it. You’re not good enough to do it. And, and then you basically take into your own hands and completely defy that. And I know a lot of people that are listening to this show, Dr. D martini, they feel that way in the industry, right?
RV (00:31:32):
Somebody, they, they maybe aren’t struggling with a speech impediment or you know, the, the kinds of things that you were, but somebody is saying, you know, you’ll never be a great speaker. Like you’ll never get booked to speak on a stage. You’ll get a book deal. Like my company will never hire someone like you. And I think there’s so much of this industry that people go, Ooh, I got a book deal from a publisher. Or I got a company that hired me to do a consulting engagement, or I got a speaker’s bureau that decided I was good enough to pitch me to their client. And I got a, a speaking engagement through the, these third parties. We forget how much of the world is available to us directly. And when you look at mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield, my personal mentor was one of ’em was Zig Ziegler.
RV (00:32:18):
You look at Dave Ramsey, you look, you look at Tony Robbins, you look at Tom Hopkins and Brian, Tracy, and, and, and it, all of these people and your story syncs up with that is going, you can find your own clients. You can hire yourself for your own speeches. You can, you can be your own publisher just by adding value to people’s lives. And whether it’s on a cassette tape or it’s in a venue or it’s on zoom, I just it’s, it’s inspiring to me as, you know, at least in this case, usually I’m starting to be the older guy in the room, but you’ve got many years on me in this industry inspiring to go that has worked. And it will always, it will always work
JD (00:33:00):
Well when the whys big enough, the house take care of themselves. As the old proverb says, when you have a big enough reason to get a message out into the planet. If the publisher I got rejected by publishers, I got night and gal KOAC rejected me three times. Now, they’re, they’re putting in products out. You know, that that rejection just means refinement. It doesn’t mean anything else. It just means, you know, they’re either not resonant or it’s time to refine what you’re doing, or just keep going and publish yourself. So I published many books on my own before I did the others. I didn’t let any of that. Stop me from my mission. My mission was to, I wanted to reach billions of people on the planet. And so we do so that’s we, but that means I may do find podcasts 10 podcast in a day, or, or go sit at the BBC and do 21 radio shows in a day.
JD (00:33:46):
I mean, I don’t, I don’t care. I don’t care what it takes. I just on a mission to get it done. That’s that’s, if you, if you have a, an attitude that there’s no option, we’re going forward, we’re making this thing happen. How do we do? And you’ll, you’ll, you’ll find the way you’ll find the people, the people, places, things, ideas and events will synchronize in your life and show up in your life. If you’re just committed to the outcome. All I wanted to do is study the greatest teachings on the face of the earth, by the greatest minds I ever lived, summarize synthesize Ize that gather that information devour, synthesize it, come up with something original out of it by the, a transcend awareness and deliver that in such a way that inspired people to go out and do exactly what they would love to do and show them how they can do it. I, I was told I couldn’t, I, I found out I could and they, they may think they can. And if they, if they all of a sudden follow some basic principles, they absolutely can. I, I, I, there’s no doubt in my mind that people can do something extraordinary their life. If they decide to do, it’s just, I’m just gonna pass the torch from what I’ve learned. That’s all.
RV (00:34:52):
I love it. That is so inspiring. Dr. D martini, where do you want people to go to connect with you? If they wanna like, stay in touch with what you’re up to or find out, find out more about your work.
JD (00:35:03):
All they have to do is go to Dr. D martini.com, D R D E M a R T I i.com Dr. D martin.com. They could spend the rest of their life on that, that website, cuz there’s so many interviews and YouTubes and things to read. And it’s an educational website. You know, people always said, you know, this is how you make it a sales website and stuff. And people buy stuff on there. But that wasn’t my intention. My intention was an educational website. So I get told that’s not how you’re supposed to do it. And I said, you don’t understand your mission is a sales before content I’m as content before sales, sales comes, take takes care of itself. If I do something that’s a value. So it’s an education and you’d almost have to believe in Buddhist reincarnation, cuz you’re gonna need a bunch of lives to probably be able to absorb what’s on there. There’s a lot of on there. So you’re gonna have to come back again.
RV (00:35:54):
Well I know, I know you are, but then it’s it’s like what your dad said, right? I mean, it was that idea. If your dad said it, basically if you over deliver, you’ll never have to worry about business. And that’s
JD (00:36:08):
My dad was correct. And I thank him for that. I had a, you know, my dad was an engineer and he had background in philosophy and he, he always, he’d never figured out how he could make a living on philosophy. And he said, but son, you figured out how to study the sciences and religions and philosophies of the world and psychologies and stuff. And you, you were able to do it. So he kind of, he used to come to my class and both, both my, the whole family used to come to the class and it was inspiring to see my dad and mom there. It was just lovely.
RV (00:36:37):
That’s so cool. Well thanks for sharing your, your, some of your personal story and your family and the background. It, it really is inspiring. And but your,
JD (00:36:48):
Can I share one more story? Can I say one more thing?
RV (00:36:51):
Yeah. I, I know
JD (00:36:52):
Where to go. When met Paul, when I met Paul brag in 1972, he had daughter named Patricia brag, a controversial background on that, but there’s, but that’s his daughter that took on and she took over the business when he passed. Well, it was interesting. I was speaking in Honolulu at Waikiki, the Hyat and I was doing my breakthrough experience program and in the back of the room in walks, Patricia brag. And after I, I, I took a break and, and at the break, she came up to me and she’s four foot seven. She comes up to me with this pink outfit on this hat and she comes up to me and she says, that was inspiring. And I said, thank you. And I knew who she was because I, I recognized her from Paul Bragg’s books and her books. And she said, you remind me of my father.
RV (00:37:46):
Amazing.
JD (00:37:46):
That meant a lot. And she then with my daughter, she sat with my daughter and she said, if you ever have an opportunity and you have an inspiration and it feels natural for you to want to carry on the work that your father’s doing. Just know it was inspiring for me to be able to do that with my dad. Well, my daughter is now teaching and doing insulting and doing this and doing and taking over. So she says, step aside, pop on taking over. So I’m still gonna be around for another 10,000 years, but I’m gonna be doing program. I’m gonna doing seminars with Wei boards in the afterlife. So that’s okay. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll be selling Wei de Martin Wei boards probably that they can tap into. That’s
RV (00:38:27):
A joke. That’s that’s funny.
JD (00:38:29):
My daughter, my daughter is definitely up and coming and she’s, she’s on the, on the ball now.
RV (00:38:36):
Yeah, well that is, that is so cool. And you know, I, I, I feel very much connected to that lineage of just all the personal development teachers that have come before. And it’s, it’s, it almost just feels like an honor to sit, sit in that stream and that, that stream of consciousness as it flows from one generation to the next. And obviously at brand builders group, we serve mission driven messengers. And so we very much feel like this podcast is mentoring. Those who, you know, are, are where I was 20 years ago going, how do you become a New York times best seller. And how do you get in the hall of fame of public speaking and how do you make this your full-time business and how do you speak in front of thousands of people? And it’s just like, it just passes from one generation to the next and it’s, it’s, it’s an honor to just be able to carry some, some small part of that torch for some number of years was really, really, really great.
JD (00:39:33):
It, it’s a, it’s a great industry and there’s some, you know, some great people in there that have left great marks. I was chatting, we did a little thing with Dennis Waitley recently, you know, we did a, his I dunno you saw, I saw pictures or two ago when
RV (00:39:48):
I did, because Darren Hardy, I think Darren wasn’t Darren Hardy there too.
JD (00:39:52):
I don’t remember who all was there, cuz I just did an hour with him and and that’s fantastic. I think he may be trying to meet us up in, in Tahiti next week, this coming week. So I don’t know. I’m gonna see if I he’s gonna come on, try to hang on out on
RV (00:40:05):
This. Well, I saw pictures of an event and I recognized of course I recognized Dennis Waitley and then I recognized several people that were in the room and it was like, wow, that, that was a, was, it was a room full of legends. So that’s really cool. Yeah.
JD (00:40:20):
Well, I, I went to, I went to zigs class when I was 20 and I went and I went to Dennis Wheatley’s class back when I was about that age. So I, I remember him, I, we met way back then we, I spoke with Dennis Waitley in 1984 together in Chicago and also Wayne Dyer and you know, Deepak and all the characters.
RV (00:40:40):
Yeah.
JD (00:40:41):
And so I got, I had, I be, I’ve been blessed to meet a lot of great people along the way and yeah, they all add a little piece to the puzzle along the way we all do. Yeah.
RV (00:40:48):
Yeah. You know, that’s the other thing about this industry that’s really amazing is just, I mean, I guess it’s probably true for most industries, but it’s like, if you hang around long enough, you end up meeting all these people like it, there it’s, you know, you end up being at the parties, you’re sharing the stage with them. You’re in the green room. You’re, you’re on the TV shows you have book launches at the same time. You, you know, you’re on each other’s podcast these days or whatever. It’s it’s really fulfilling. Well, thank you for sharing part of that legacy and, and that history with us today and such, such an inspiring story. And I, I, I know that there are people listening right now who will go, yeah, I can just do this. I can just find people to help and love on and I can be in charge of my own destiny and put on my own events and just pour into their lives. And if I over deliver, I I’ll never have to worry about business. So we wish you the best Dr. John, and you know, make sure you hit Dr. D martini.com. If you get him, if you get a chance and, and go over there and check out some more about him and what he’s up to and, and his, and we just, we look forward to staying in touch and, and all the best.
JD (00:41:57):
Thank you so much for having me on your show and for asking questions and appreciate it very much. Thank you.
Speaker 3 (00:42:03):
Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re in interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:42:50):
I had no idea that I was going to love the interview that I did with Dr. John D martini. As much as I did that interview was inspiring. It was informative. It was instructional. Like I thought that was so cool and awesome. And I mean, there are so many great lessons from that, and I’m gonna draw out just, just like always, I’m gonna share with you sort of like my, my top takeaways, my top highlights for you and how I’m gonna apply them to my life and how I think you might be able to apply them to yours and to your business. But the, the very first one here is the story of how he started his business. What was it? 40 years ago? 40 years ago, he spoke for free to generate clients for his practice. He spoke for free. Then he started charging $20 a seat.
RV (00:43:48):
And now today he charges $7,000 per seat. This is always the model like this is the model. And it’s like from 40 years ago to, to 30 years ago, to 10 years ago, to five years ago to two years ago, you gotta speak for free. You gotta you’re you’re you gotta get out there. I mean, we call this chicken on a stick in inside of our, our membership community. It’s like, you’re walking through whole foods and they give you chicken on a stick, or you go through the food court. They give you chicken on a stick. Why? Because people need to sample. They need to get a taste of what you’re about. They need to get an opportunity to know a little bit about who you are and to experience a little bit of benefit enough to where they go. That was fabulous. I want more.
RV (00:44:33):
And so that, that principle has never changed and it never will change, right? Like it’s the fastest way to take someone from a stranger, right? Why do they spend money giving out samples and stores? Because you know, I don’t know your brand. And, and it’s like, you rarely see it with big brands, right? Like if Doritos launches some new chip, they’re not given away tons of samples across the nation, typically because it’s Doritos. Everyone is like, yeah, I know Doritos. I’ll try it. Like I like, if you like Doritos, I don’t. But like, if you like Doritos, you go, okay, I’m gonna try this. Cuz I recognize the brand. But especially the newer brand, the younger, the brand, the, the, the more lesser known the brand is the more important it is for the sample. Right? And you go, I’ve never heard of this type of chicken, but you know, or this season, but you put it in your mouth and you go, oh my gosh, that’s incredible.
RV (00:45:25):
And in that case, it’s like, the product is selling itself, not the brand. And, and when you, when you’re just starting out as a personal brand, your product, your expertise, your content, like it is your content that people are buying. They’re buying the solution to per, to their problem. They’re buying your methodology. They’re, they’re buying the idea that you are an expert later, when you break through Shehan, while they’re buying you, they’re buying you because it’s you, right. That’s what everybody did with Gary. Vaynerchuck’s NFT thing with V friends, right? Half the people who bought it didn’t even understand it. They don’t even know what the heck it is. Like they still probably don’t understand it, cuz it’s like new and pretty complicated. But you go, why did they buy it? Because it’s Gary V because they trust him. But in the, but, but, but millions of people are sampling him every day and have been for 15 years.
RV (00:46:17):
What are you doing for people to sample you? They have to sample you. They have to have a free chapter, a free download a podcast, a a, a video of you, several videos on social, your blog, right? Like everything that we do in the relationship engine ecosystem is about creating these little mini assets where people can sample you. They are basically chicken on a stick and they occur as tweets and LinkedIn pulse and blog posts and medium posts and YouTube videos and Instagram videos. Of course, we use the content diamond, which ties that all together from, from just one main video a week that we repurpose. There’s a video on my blog, by the way, if you have, if you’re not familiar with the content diamond, if you’ve never heard me talk about that term, just go to Roy vain, blog.com and then search for content diamond.
RV (00:47:08):
And it will, it’ll, it’ll pop up. But like the point is you have to put self out there, not even yourself. Like you have to put your content out there, your expertise out there in a way that people can sample it because they’ve never heard of you. But if they like your content, it’ll override it, right? Like just cuz I’ve never heard of this type of seasoning. If, if I taste it and put it in my mouth and go, that was amazing. Like, or I’ve never eaten at this restaurant. If I taste it, I’m like, yeah, I’m gonna, I’m gonna eat at this spot in the food court. That that’s how it’s done. And, and Dr. Demar has been doing this for years and it’s just another example of this timeless principle. And so, you know, don’t get lost in the tactics and the like, you know, I don’t, I don’t know if this is working and I don’t like this platform and I’m not like it doesn’t even matter really where it happens.
RV (00:47:58):
It can be a speech, it can be a podcast, it can be a video, it can be an article. It can be a tweet. It can be any of these things, but you’ve gotta put your expertise out there. You’ve got to add value and solve problems for people and answer questions for them so that they can sample you and build trust. That is why we do. I mean, that’s our whole content marketing strategy. That’s it. The second takeaway from Dr. D martini, which was interesting, cuz I’ve done this and heard a lot of this, but never thought about it quite in this way, which I, it was super sharp was he said, you know, I started speaking for free and then I had a fee and people would pay me. And then as my fee got higher, less and less people could afford me. But what several of the audiences did is they would do a revenue share with me.
RV (00:48:49):
And, and that is how the conference could afford me. That was how I could get my speaker fee. And, and that’s a really important way to think about it. I mean, especially if you’re beginning, you should be taking every gig you get, like you should be taking every opportunity to practice and hone your craft and, and get out there and, and, you know, rehearse your content, do that and build your email list and all those things. But the other thing is going, if you can make an offer from stage and you can sell something. And typically what we’re gonna say is, I mean, in world class presentation craft, which is our phase one course, three of our curriculum, we teach about the mechanics of what to say you to sell from on stage. And we talk about firm offers like our not firm offers, sorry full offers and soft offers a full offers.
RV (00:49:42):
When you’re asking for a credit card, a soft offers, when you’re just like offering people a free call or a free download when you’re first starting out, you, if you’re making a full offer, you, I would, I would say you probably wanna keep it under $200. Because it, it takes quite a bit of skill to sell to a room full of people, something north of $200 and not like, you know, turn a bunch of people off. But most of what our clients do and what we do is when we speak, we do soft offers. We don’t sell anything. We give away free calls. And then we do one on one calls and we do the selling there. And that, that is the way to do it. And, and even to this day, there are some events that I will speak at because they don’t have my fee, but they will allow me to do an, an offer.
RV (00:50:26):
And they will allow me to follow up after the event and get emails and do all this stuff. And we can, we can make our feedback in, in other ways, if it’s the right audience, if they’re, you know, perfect for us. So the revenue share from the sales that come at the events is another way that, that you can get your fee or maybe you don’t even have to do a revenue share with the event. Host. Maybe the deal is you go speak for free, but you get to keep, you get to make an offer and you get to keep all the money at the back. I mean, all of that is kind of like part of the normal negotiation, but don’t just turn away an event because they don’t have your fee, especially if they really want you, like, if they’re really your fans, they’re really your people.
RV (00:51:05):
They love your stuff. Hopefully, you know, and if you’ve been in our community, hopefully you’re learning ways to monetize. I mean, I know you’re learning the ways cuz we teach ’em to you, but like you have other ways to monetize other than just your speaking fee. And that also opens up a lot more opportunity for places that you can speak. Because even if you don’t get your speaking fee, you can, you can make the same or more by what comes at the back of the room or from free calls after or from getting people on your email list. And then you, you sell, you know, after the event is over and that’s huge. And, and again, part of why I love this conversation is one that’s sharp and kind of like a new way of, you know, just a really clear way of thinking about it, but the other is it shows you that this idea, this is a principle that has been around since the beginning of personal brands like that, that you speak for free, and then you’re selling at the back, and that is how you make your living.
RV (00:52:02):
And that is how I made my first dollars as a personal brand. I spoke for free and I sold myself published book at the back of the room. And then after that, I spoke for free and I sold tickets to a half day event at the back of the room. And then, you know, from there it evolved and evolved. And then, you know, one, we sold, we sold CD sets for a while, and then we sold courses and then we sold the expensive live event tickets. And then we sold coaching programs. And then you nowadays, we just drive free calls and then we talk to people and then we sell ’em whatever they need. And some of the stuff we sell is 99 bucks. We have, we have stuff that’s 25 bucks, 99 bucks. Most of the stuff we do is obviously our membership program. And we’ve got different tiers of that, that fit sort of every budget. So you can do it. People have done it. Dr. John D. Martinez has built this whole. We are doing it. It has worked, it does work. It will work revenue share from the back of the room. And then the third thing was something was when he was talking about what his dad said, and this is so simple, right? But it’s just so good. He said, son, if you always over deliver, you’ll never have to worry about having enough business.
RV (00:53:18):
If you always over deliver, you will never have to worry about having enough business that is so strong and clear and simple and profound and true and was true, is true and will be true to come. Like if you always over deliver, if you always give people more than they are expecting, if you always give people more than what they paid for, if you always deliver above and beyond what they need or what they deserve, like what, whatever the transaction is, if you exceed that, you’re never gonna have to worry about business because you’re gonna have advocates out there. I did. I did a reel on this, on my Instagram my handles at Rory Vaden. And I did a reel on this, about how to, how to select the right price. And, you know, my whole, my whole point is going. It doesn’t so matter.
RV (00:54:16):
It doesn’t so much matter what you charge. It doesn’t so matter. It doesn’t so much matter what your price is. What matters is that you always deliver more than the price that you’re charging for, right? You always deliver more than the price you’re charging for. So it could be a hundred million and you, as long as you’re delivering a billion dollars of value, it’s worth it, right? If it’s $10. And so we use the something that we call the rule of 10, which is price it at one 10th of what it’s actually worth, right? So, you know, if, if our goal, if we’re gonna, you know, let’s say it was $10,000, we wanna deliver a hundred thousand dollars of value that we go. Like, we really believe this is worth a hundred thousand dollars. This will, you will make a hundred thousand dollars from what you’ve learned here.
RV (00:55:02):
And we’re gonna charge 10,000. That gives you a lot of conviction that gives you a, a lot of strength that gives you a lot of enthusiasm when you’re sharing the price and talking about your program. And you don’t have fear because you’re going, this is, you’d be crazy not to do this, which is how I feel about brand builders. I’m just like, y’all, we are the cheapest, most insanely valuable education. There is. I mean, what we give to our members for what they pay is are tens of millions of dollars. Like we have proven it. Like we have made millions of dollars from these things that we’ve had to learn from 7,900 different sources and pull it together and give it to you step by step. And just going, if you haven’t requested a call with our team, like request a call, like go, go to free brand.
RV (00:55:54):
What do we say? Pod, pod call, whatever, whatever the advertisement is, you can go to free call.ro vain.com. I know that one works or whatever the ad is that we place on here. But like, if you’re liking this and you’ve been listening to this for a minute, you should request a call, right? Like it costs some money to do, to work with us, but it is extraordinary what people get and the experience and the results that people are having. And the, and the other people in the community alone. Like if you learn nothing, just being around the other members of our community is insane. Like our community is epic. I mean, you’re at an event sitting next to New York times, wrestling, authors and hall of fame speakers, and eight figure entrepreneurs and billionaires and people who’ve sold their, their companies for hundreds of millions dollars and people who are multi seven figure, you know, direct sales or network marketing people.
RV (00:56:46):
And you know, the top of their profession or their industry. And maybe you’ve never heard of ’em, but they just crush their industry. Like they’re the most well known in their thing. And they’re all just sitting. We’re like all in the same space. It blows me away. Like our members, our clients are the most amazing people, actors and actresses on TV. Obviously the, the author thing, there’s former pro athletes, tons of people with like hundreds of thousands of followers or tens of thousands of followers. And there’s like sitting right next to you at, I mean, our, our events are crazy. So, and that’s how we design it. Right. And it’s, it’s because of exactly what Dr. DM, our teen’s dad told him. And then he did. And so many, you know, Zig Ziegler was one of our mentors and he did it. And like overdeliver, overdeliver give people more than they expect more than they deserve more than they paid for.
RV (00:57:37):
And watch it come back to you, watch it, change your life, watch it, change your business, watch it radically flood your bank account. Like just do it for a while. Go, how can, what are people expecting? And how can I give ’em more than that? How can I constantly be pushing the envelope of adding value, adding value? And our team is doing this. Like our team is awesome. You know, I’ll, I’ll log into like our members portal and be like, oh my gosh, that’s so cool. Like, where did that feature come from? Because our, our team is just doing it and you wanna create that culture. And even if it didn’t pay off somehow in money, it, it, I mean, it always does, but like, it, it, it pays off an impact. It, it, it pays off in purpose. It, it pays off in this feeling that you’re contributing to the world and that what you’re doing is good and that you’re adding value to people’s lives.
RV (00:58:28):
And it gives you the conviction that other people should buy from you. And that is worth a lot. It’s worth a lot to you, especially if you have call reluctance and sales reluctance, like I’ve had for so much of my career, cuz I don’t wanna annoy people and I don’t wanna be pushy and I don’t wanna be aggressive. And so you gotta be convicted the value of, of what you do. And, and so use the rule of 10, use the rule of 10. It’s just make sure that the, the value you deliver far exceeds the price that you charge. That’s it make sure the value you deliver far exceeds the price that you charge. Because as Dr D Martin’s dad says, if you, you over deliver, if you always over deliver, you will never have to worry about having enough business. And I hope that you feel loved on as a listener of this show.
RV (00:59:19):
We would love to talk to you. So hopefully you, at some point, you know, request a call with our team or just keep tuning in like, and, and just keep tuning in or just keep tuning in. We’re here for you. It literally fills us up to know that you are on the other end every week, listening to this show. Like even if we never ever have any financial exchange, it is the greatest like honor and privilege to know that you’re gifting us your attention and your time, and you’re willing to allow us and our guests to be an influence in your life. And it’s just an honor. I mean, and we absolutely love it. So I hope we get to meet you in person at some point. But thank you for tuning in. Thank you for sharing this with your friends. Thank you for leaving your comments and your reviews on iTunes and telling people about this. And just please keep coming back and know that our heart is to overdeliver. And Hey, if you don’t think we’re overdelivering or if you have ideas about how we could leave that as a comment on iTunes, let us know because that’s, that’s the desire of our heart is to, is to really serve you in that way. That’s it for this version of the influential personal brand podcast, Roy Vaden out.