Author: AJ Vaden

Ep 152: Fear Fighting and Being Bold with Luvvie Ajayi Jones

Hey brand builder Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that, Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming. From anything that we do with this is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit. Call brand builders, group.com/summit. Call. Hope to talk to you soon on with the show.

I love Luvvie Ajayi and you are, this is the second time we’ve had her back on the show.

You left the Jones out Rory!

That’s right. You’re Jones now, too. I can’t believe that I should have said that. Lovey Ajayi Jones. Now she’s a married woman. Yeah, coolest wedding ever, by the way. Pictures on social were awesome. But so Luvvie is a friend she’s a New York times bestselling author. Her first book was called I’m Judging You the Do Better Manual. She has a viral Ted talk that has I think like 5 million, more, more views than mine, which makes me also a little bit jealous.

5.6 million. I just checked today.

She is, co-authoring a book an anthology with Bernay Brown, which is pretty awesome and a whole bunch of awesome people. She has hundreds of thousands of people following her on social and through her blog. She’s, she’s been you know, one of the OG bloggers for like 15 years, she hosts a a fantastic podcast.

And the reason that we’re talking to her now is she has a new book out called professional troublemaker, the fear fighter manual, which is all about overcoming fear and living audaciously. And so when lovey was here, the first time we talked more about like the technical parts of how she built her audience over years I don’t know what episode number that is, but we’ll put a link to it in the show notes back to that first episode, but we didn’t really talk about, which is what we’re going to talk about today is the emotional side and, and the kind of like mental side of putting yourself out there and overcoming fear when it comes to building your personal brand. So anyways, Luvvie Ajayi Jones, welcome to the stage.

Thank you so much for having me back.

Yeah. Well, all right. So let’s talk about fight and fear, the fear fighter. And I have to say one of the things there’s so many things I love about you, that I admire about you. There’s a thing specifically that I think you have, like one of the things that you have that I think I wish I had more of was boldness. I think that that’s, that’s held me back in terms of, you know, my ability to grow on social to not be as pointy and sharp as I probably could. And, and I think part of the reason why is because I am scared of being judged, right? Like I am scared of what people will think and et cetera. And anyways, I think that anyone building a personal brand has some of that, except you don’t seem to, you just like, have such so much confidence and boldness, like, how do you do that? Where does that come from? Like, were you born with it? Or can I learn it?

I think it can be learned, but I think I was born with some of it. Some of it, I think the boldness of it all that I show up as, like I say, what other people are thinking, but they’re not to say, it’s not that I’m not afraid of being judged is that I realized that being judged is not the worst case scenario. It’s one of those things that is a foregone conclusion. If you aren’t going to be somebody of notes and create, and be somebody of impact, you will either repel people or also loved them like, or, or, or be loved deeply by them. There’s no middle ground to be able to be loved deeply by people means your whole character, how you will show up will also repel some people. Some people will judge you for it. Some people will not connect with you.

And that’s fine. I always think about the people who am deeply loved by the people who, when I write, when I speak, say you just took the thoughts up my head, put it on paper, thoughts. I didn’t even realize I had now. I think a lot of us have the tendency to swallow away what we want to do and how we want to show up because of that fear of judgment. We’re afraid of somebody not liking us or, Oh my gosh, I’m afraid of how somebody else is going to take this thing. And I think for me, growing up, I come from a family and a culture Nigerians are culturally loud and really just boisterous.

I was gonna say, when I introduced you, I was like, you’re my favorite Nigerian friend. But then I was like, unfortunately, I don’t, you might be my only Nigerian friend, And I was like, well, that sucks. That’s not good for you or for me. But anyways, I think you’ve, you definitely hold that title, but I need some more Nigerian friends. But anyways, you are my, you are my favorite.

I’m just the gateway Nigerian for you. Don’t worry.

I’m the gateway. Nigeria, you will find other Nigerians through me. But I think we’re very boisterous as a culture, like growing up, who I was, was never told to be less. I was given permission to be bold. I was a four year four, or five-year-old who, when I got in trouble, I would challenge my mother about it. I’d be like, I don’t think it was fair. I here’s the part that I think was not fair to me. And even though I’m sure I got on her nerves, she never did

I’m not going to let Jasper listen to this episode. Just so you know,

Jasper, let him have it. Let him have it.

He’s not gonna listen to this one.

I used to literally be like, mom, I’ll accept the punishment. I’ll take it. Whatever the punishment was. And then after the fact, I circle back with a note telling her my perspective, telling her why I didn’t think it was fair telling her why I think I was wrong. Okay. And it’s funny, like she never told me not to be that person. So I grew up not doubting that person that I was, I grew up not doubting my voice. And I think the power of that is that the boldness became less of a, I have to push myself to be this. It became my default. And one of the things that we can learn in being more bold is being pragmatic about the, our purpose and our I in, in what we’re doing in this world is you, you create a whole business on helping people solve a problem.

And you, one of the things that you pointed out that I do is I help solve the problem of powerlessness and the way I do it is through my boldness. I show up in a certain way and people get to see and say, if she can do it, maybe I can do something close too. Maybe I can also be myself. So in learning, the boldness honestly comes in just watching other people do it. Rory, like you were on, you were on a thing with the cohort that I had, where we talked about brand building and the last five minutes of you being on. I told my team afterwards, I was like, we have to put this as an episode of the podcast, because in that moment, it’s like, you borrowed boldness from me. How you actually showed up that day was way more bold than I’ve actually typically seen you.

And what that lets me know is, I guess we can borrow other people’s traits or the people that were around will infuse certain things into us, which lets me know that we can actually do it even when they’re not there. So like you came and gave such, it was so pointed. You’re typically very pointed, but on that day, your energy was different. It was so like strong. And so I’m just going to say this thing because I need you guys to understand why it’s important for you to stand in your purpose and you came with full fire and I’m just like, Rory’s typically very chill, very like, Hey, but you came with fire and I was like, okay, it can be done. And you do do it. It just shows up differently.

Yeah. I mean that, that really is true. I mean, I do feel like it is it is contagious and you, when you see someone else doing it, I mean, now let me just ask you this. Like, I’ve just been curious about asking you this and you don’t have to answer if we, if we, if we tread into water that you don’t feel comfortable about, but you are very outspoken about personal beliefs. You know, like you’ve got this X, you got expertise around helping people live audaciously and chase down fear. You also share a good bit of your political viewpoints and whatever socioeconomic or whatever you want to call it. Cultural, cultural beliefs. Do you, do you wrestle with the idea, first of all, I’m curious, do you actually wrestle and go, do you ever wonder, should I post this or does that, do you not even have that filter? Do you just go, Oh hell no. If I’m thinking it it’s coming out and if you do have a filter, how do you kind of determine what passes through the filter of going, like, does this serve my audience somehow? Does it, does it align with my business goals? Or like just how like, yeah. So is there a, is there a filter? And if there is tell us like what, what that is?

Yes. I have been blogging for 18 years at this point, half of my life. Wow. I started blogging in 2003. And when I started, there was no strategy behind it, but I think as I got bigger, as I finally called myself a writer, as my platform got bigger, I started understanding what was happening was kind of like the unfolding of purpose. And as my platform got bigger, I didn’t change my voice. What I did change, what changed was my level of responsibility in how I was showing up, like, right. Like when I had 300 followers, I could say whatever I wanted into the ether, it didn’t matter today. I can’t say whatever I want. Right. I, it has to be, it has to be way more thoughtful. So I do absolutely have a filter in how I say something. What I jump into as a cultural critic, as a side-eye source risk as a writer is shady Nigerian.

I think having the filter is good. Like it’s really good. You have to have a way to figure out when you’re not gonna just be impulsive and saying something just to say something I want to always make sure I’m not just speaking because I want my voice heard because I just feel like talking. So that’s why I have three questions that I ask myself whenever I want to say something. Especially when it feels like I’m going into territory, that could be contentious. And the first question is, do I mean it, like, am I actually saying this thing? Cause this is my belief. So too, can I defend it? If I am challenged on it? Can I actually back it up? Can I stand in it? Cause here’s the thing is the judge will be judged and then three, can I say thoughtfully?

So all of these are important because if I say yes to all three, I decided to say it, the third question of, can I say thoughtfully is really important because then it’s what makes it come out more thoughtful. It’s what makes it come out without, with as little as possible hate. Right? And I, and I, and I hope I never operate with hate, but I always try to figure out what is the way to say this that will land the best, or do I think it’s going to land the best now with my three filters, these three questions quantifying my decisions. It’s not with the guarantee that whatever I say will be like, well received. It’s just a risk mitigator. It is just a way for me to create some criteria to at least anything that doesn’t pass. I don’t say it out loud. If, if it’s not passing the three questions, I’m not saying it, but then if it does pass and I say it here’s the thing.

It can still go weird where somebody is like, Oh, I don’t like this thing you said, or, Oh my gosh, this is what I took away from it. And I think those are the moments where we have to understand that we are not here to appease everybody. It’s not our responsibility to make everybody comfortable or to make everybody feel good, because we were really nice that day. I think our responsibility is to do what we were put here for. And a lot of times that thing is going to run a foul of somebody because if it is purpose-driven, it’s pretty strong in some way, you know, they’re going to be people who are going to be like, I just don’t like what she just said, just because it’s Monday or Tuesday. But I think once my filter runs through, I go, that’s my obligation. My obligation is to myself, have I done my own job of making sure I’m showed up as best as possible if I have. Hey,

And so then how do you balance this? Right? The, so on the, on the one end, it’s like you’re unapologetic, you’re bold, you’re audacious. But then even, even you, you’re saying there is a level of discernment or filtering or you know, might even use the word diluted or like the, that you’re, you’re tempering, you’re tempering it, you’re tempering it some, some somehow. And you know, I guess I’m just trying to, I, I, I’m asking because I’m genuinely interested for me. Like sometimes I feel like I’m too tempered. Like I’m too safe. I’m too, I’m too comfortable. I’m too afraid to like stir up whatever. But then I think, you know, I also see much the danger and the risk of like, ah, yeah, go on too far or whatever. And, and so I, what I hear you saying is that basically, it’s just, you got to just stay centered in your purpose, what you believe that you were put here to say, and then just say that as cleanly and loudly as you can,

That’s it that’s really it. And honestly, it’s not even a case of temporary or sensory myself. It’s that the sermon is actually the right word for it. That is the right word for it. Getting the spirit of discernment because you know, when you’re young and you decide, Oh, I’m just going to just keep it real. Yeah. You’re probably going to be saying a lot of thoughtless things, but I think the older you grow, like again, the bigger the platform gets, you also have to wheel this power responsibility, like responsibility. So I, people who know me in real life and who like have known me since high school, we’ll read a piece I wrote and say, this sounds just like you still. So I always want to make sure that I am present in whatever I put forward. That even in my, as the a platform is getting bigger, nobody can say that doesn’t sound like lovey.

No, no, it’s always going to be me. I’m just being smarter about it. And that doesn’t mean I’m not cussing. That doesn’t mean I’m not showing any anger or strong opinions. I’m sure I’m still doing all of that. But I think I am a better thinker and a better writer and a better leader now than for sure, 10 years ago. And it’s not because I was censoring myself. It’s because this sermon, like the spirit of discernment is even better. I’m sharper about it. And I want you to not think too hard about going the other way. Like I see how you move, Roy, you straight you straight. Like you keep it nice and cool. But I think giving yourself permission to say what you truly believe is necessary, it’s necessary because you also have so many people who are watching you, who are listening to you and how you show up as amazing your words matter in a big way. So if I was to ever see you say something strong, I’ll know you actually meant it. And it would make me pay attention even more. I’d be like, wait a minute. Rory’s out here using caps. What?

Yeah. Well, it’s funny. Cause I saw you, you know, I made a post about my dad on his birthday about this story, about how I found my dad. And I noticed that you left a comment and a lot of people did it, and that was a very emotional, just like a very, a very real thing. So I, so let me ask you this. What are you afraid of right now? Or are you afraid like, like what’s going on right now that you are scared of?

You know, I have a fear of success.

We talked about fear of failure all the time. I think fear of success is just as real. And it’s part of the reason why I self-sabotage sometimes by procrastinating, I figured that out in therapy when my therapist was like, you’re PR, cause it was last year actually, when I was on the hook for finishing my book and I’d go into sessions and she blocked, so where are you with it? How’s it going? I’ll be like, yeah, about that. I didn’t really write anything this week. And one session she asked me, she was like, so why do you think you didn’t write anything this weekend? I was like, I don’t know. I didn’t have time. I was just sitting on the couch and she was like, could this be a form of self-sabotage? And I was like, what do you mean? She was like, what are you afraid of with this book that is making you stall on it? And I think I was afraid of like, what if the book did what I think it will do? Like what if it does somehow help a billion people conquer fear? Like how does that change my life? Do I, how does that level up change? What I what’s around me? Yeah. Fear of fear of success is real.

And so you’re saying that, you know, let’s, let’s say the book sells a million copies that forces you to live a different in a different way because your life at that level looks different than the way it does now. And that is, that is uncertain and that escape, it was scary.

Yeah. I have to hire more people and get it’s just, it’s like, are we, it’s the fear of like, am I equipped for the next level? Yeah.

And so how do you overcome that? Then?

When I say it out loud as a starting point, acknowledge it. I talked to people like you who know what level of look like I basically say and ground myself with some affirmations, that’s like, whatever you need, you got it. And I just ride the wave and I try to figure out the moments when I’m self-sabotaging, when I’m trying to pull myself back I talked to friends and yeah, I do all of that. It’s a, it’s a constant ritual of like, you got this, you got this. If you do have to hire more people, you got this, like, it’ll be fine. And again, like talking to and having, you know, a lot of friends who are really successful also trade war stories and say, Oh, I’ve been there. And because a lot of people who have come before us have already done this, they basically give you the map on how to navigate it. So I’m definitely leaning into my community. And my friends to just tell me what I need to do to get ready for a massive book coming out. Like you’ve been in the immense help. I’ve been talking to Glenn and Doyle, you know, talk to chase Jarvis and it’s just, just getting ready.

Well, I think so who did you write this book for? Okay. So taking it specifically back back to this book and you go, you know, the book’s called professional trouble troublemaker again, but the fear fighter manuals, the subtitle, which I just love. How, like, who is it targeted at? Who’s it, who’s it aimed at?

I wrote this book for me. I feel like this book was, was was something that I created for me because I like to create work that I need, you know, when I was afraid to call myself.

Yeah. See, like, I don’t think of you as being scared. So this is just the person you once were.

This is the person that I once where was, is can sometimes lean into some times. Like, I think, you know, we don’t just become bolded state both 24 seven. Right. We will have moments where we’ll go. Hmm. Should I think that big? Or should I actually say that thing? You will still have your moments of fear here. And their fear is not always about the big time. I think even in the small moments where you are afraid to say something that might feel scary. And I think I honestly wrote this book for me because I think about how 10 years ago, I was afraid to call myself a writer. I think about, you know, turning down my Ted talk twice because I didn’t think I was ready for it. I think about shoot now being afraid of what the level up looks like. You know, it’s a constant reminder.

And I think the best things that we do is when we create something that we need when we fill our own need. Because when we do that, we fill somebody else’s need. And I think for me, this is a book that I wish I had even last year when the pandemic happened and I’m sitting in my house like, Oh my gosh, what’s, what’s the world gonna look like? And I remember feeling convicted to be like finished this book because this book is what you need right now. So I think about people like me, like whether or not you’re bold or not, you know, people who have big dreams and who want to create impact in the world whose lives like their ideal lives, aren’t going to call for them to do or think bigger than they’re currently doing and who are going to need to be loaned courage from time to time.

So that’s why I really wrote this book for it. It’s the dreamers or the people who are still afraid to become the dreamers, the very pragmatic foot on the ground. Folks who were just like, you know what, I’m just going to do this one thing that feels easy, do it just really well. But what happens when people are given permission? Not just told they can be bold, not just told they can dream audaciously or speak the truth, but like told I need you to, I need you to speak the, I need you to dream audaciously. I need you to get a Nigerian friend. Okay. I need you to build the squad. You know? So I want my book to be permissioned for people. The permission they might not ever be given to be themselves to be too much, you know, to be too soft, if that’s who they are to be too hard, if that’s who they are. So it’s the permission.

And, and what about like lightened? You really like, do you, are you afraid of offending people?

Sometimes. Sometimes. And yeah, like there’s a, there’s a whole chapter in my book called failed loudly where I talk about my biggest public fail in how it knocked me off my square for a year, because something, I said offended thousands of people and how I recovered from it. But I realized that, and it actually also taught me the lesson of, it’s less about what you say and it’s more about people also projecting themselves onto you and it’s something you can’t control. That’s the part that’s frustrating, right? That’s the part that scares people. It’s like, how do I control it? How do I make sure nobody ever gets mad at me? And I was like, you can’t, you can say the sky is blue. And somebody, somebody somewhere would disagree and say, I’m offended. That’s actually red. And that’s why we cannot be tied strictly to the landing of everything that we say.

We can’t be tied strictly to other people’s thoughts and ideas of us, because it will move us away from our purpose. It’s why you have to know what your compass is. You gotta know what your center is and stand in it because people will want to move you off it. And it’s going to be up to you to kind of drill in and say, okay, I am growing as a person, but this is what I’m supposed to be doing. Like I’m supposed to becoming to help people think critically, I’m supposed to help people feel joy. And I’m supposed to basically compel them to leave the world better than they found it. And in that whole purpose driven life, I will be the villain. In some people’s stories. I will burn some bridges, but if at the end of it all, I actually left this world better than I found it. If I actually stood in my purpose and help people feel more powerful. If somebody somewhere can say, I heard you speak, or I read your book and it changed my life, then I’ve done my job.

I love it. I love it. Loving where she wants people to go. If they want to learn about professional troublemaker and learn about you and more like more of what you’re up to,

Yes, people can go to professional troublemaker, book.com. Pre-Order the book come to my book tour. I’m in conversation with seven people who I think are also living purpose driven lives that are huge and audacious and they can find me all over social media. I am at lovey L U V V I E one word on all platforms. Okay. I got the one screen name.

Okay. The Oprah level, you got lovey lovey.

That’s all you need to know. BBI

E is Luvvie. And I, you know, I really think that that’s interesting, you know, this term earlier that you can, that you loan people courage. And I think that’s what this book does. And I think that’s what you do. And you know, to that point of that last conversation where you had me in front of your audience is that you do give permission to people. And, and I think it is contagious and it’s like you loan you loan people courage. So if you’re listening and you don’t have courage and you need to borrow some courage, get some of Luvvie in a professional troublemaker, the fear fighter manual. Thank you for giving us permission to be more bold and to to be more courageous, lovey it’s, it’s really, it’s really fun and inspiring to watch.

Thank you so much for always sharing space with me, Roy, like you you’ve changed the game a little bit from you, Rory, you chase, the guy said something the other day. And I was like, that feels like a Rory fading quote. I was like, that sounds very Rory Vaden. I like it. Let’s keep it like,

That’s good. I love it. Well, we wish you the best, my friend. And we’ll look forward to staying tuned. Yes, indeed.

Ep 151: How Billionaire Entrepreneurs Overcome Self-Doubt and Learn to Believe in Themselves with Jamie Kern Lima | Recap Episode

RV: (00:06)

Welcome to the influential personal brand podcast recap, special edition with our friend, Jamie Kern Lima. AJ is here with me today. She’s back. Where are you, man? Woman? You’ve been working. You’ve been mommin’

AJV: (00:22)

It was a three-week podcast.

RV: (00:27)

It’s a great episode to be back. Jamie is a friend of ours. She was last time that we talked to her. She was, she was here in Nashville and so excited to see her book coming out. And yeah, we’re breaking down our top three takeaways, which I’m going to it only seems fitting to let one female CEO entrepreneur that I ex I respect so much kick off the the recap with to another. So what did you take away from from her?

AJV: (00:59)

So I, this was probably my biggest, not just my first, but my biggest takeaway from the podcast, which I thought was really great for on so many different levels, but here’s the first thing doing what hasn’t been done before. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. It just means it hasn’t been done. I think so often we hear our clients talk about, well, this is what our competitors are doing. This is what the market is doing. This is what, you know, competitor research says this blah, blah, blah. And that’s what I say. Because I think it’s so often it’s why are you looking to find your uniqueness and something or someone else, and that is just counter intuitive to every single thing. That’s at the core of what makes you, you, which is no one else is you. And I love what Jamie said. And she was like, just because it hasn’t been done before. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. It just means it hasn’t been done before. So why not? You, why not your company? Why not your personal brand? And she’s the best case study of that, that there is a, in the beauty industry. And I love, I love that message so much.

RV: (02:16)

I got goosies Vaden. That was good. That was strong,

AJV: (02:20)

But it’s, I it’s, we, we suffer from this challenge all the time of we say, well, everyone’s doing funnel challenges. Well, everyone’s doing courses and everyone’s doing Instagram ads. And it’s like, why do you care what anyone else is doing? So that was my biggest takeaway. Do what you do, do what you do and build it into a nine figure business. I mean, it’s kind of, well, almost 10.

RV: (02:49)

Yeah. I guess nine figures would be a hundred million. It’s hard to know

AJV: (02:55)

199 million

RV: (02:56)

Sold it for a billion, which would be 10 figures. I mean, it’s hard to even count anyways. It’s a lot of zeros. It’s a lot of zeros and you know, kind of related to that, I think my big takeaway, which I think is like the, one of the central parts of her whole book, I’ve read the whole book cover to cover. It’s awesome. That’s funny. It’s, it’s inspiring. I, yeah. And I read slow it’s so I don’t read that many books every year. I try to, but it’s that doesn’t help either or I don’t stay awake very long, but it is you know, and, and she basically saying that like learn to listen to your gut, which is like, kind of what you’re talking about, your instinct. Right. And versus just what people say, Oh, it has to be this way. No one would ever buy a beauty product from someone that looks like you. What? I mean, that was crazy. Like, I can’t believe somebody said that to her

AJV: (03:57)

Because you’re a man women hear stuff like that all day, every day. Don’t make me go on a tangent.

RV: (04:04)

I believe I am. I’m not saying I, I just, I can believe that someone said it. I just saying it’s so stupid that somebody would say that it’s so mean that somebody would say that is, is, is what I’m saying, but, but anyway.

AJV: (04:19)

Yeah.

RV: (04:19)

Well, I clearly right. W tack up rack up the points for Jamie Kern, Lima. I think she got the best of that battle. But it, you know, it, it reminds me of when we met our literary agent Nina, and it was just like, you know, I just, I just felt drawn to this idea of like, this is who we’re supposed to have represent us because they had such a track record of rep representing new young business authors. And it was like, I know we’re not qualified to be with them yet. I know that, you know, like we’re not big enough or whatever, but this is, this is how I’ve, I’ve just felt so drawn to that. And over the course of our career, I feel like so many times.

AJV: (05:05)

But that mean to your point is that you felt this internal knowing similar to what Jamie talks about, even though that we were rejected two years and it did not make logical logical sense, but deep down you’re like, Nope, I know this is it. I know my external surroundings do not line up with what my gut is saying, but that’s what it’s saying.

RV: (05:28)

I feel like you do that so well, it’s one of the things I love about you is you, you have such a strong instinct about this is good. This is bad. This is fair. This is not, this will work. We can’t do this. Like I believe in this, I don’t believe in that. And you have such a clear instinct. I always tell AJC, sees the world in black and white. It helps me. Cause I always am like living in this world of gray and, and she’s like, boom, boom. And that’s that’s instinct. And you just don’t hear enough about that. Anyways. That was my first big takeaway is, you know, follow the gut, follow the gut.

AJV: (06:02)

Yeah, I am. And I think it’s not just follow your gut. It’s follow it. Even when the surroundings around you don’t line up and it’s, it’s being in touch with your instincts,

RV: (06:13)

If it’s strong enough. Like if it’s that strong. Yeah.

AJV: (06:16)

Yeah. Okay. My second one that was very long. So my second one,

RV: (06:21)

You interrupted me. So that doesn’t count

AJV: (06:24)

Is I love this. She said you cannot fake authenticity, authenticity doesn’t guarantee success, but in authenticity guarantees, failure might drop. That is so good. That is such a reminder to all of us where it’s like, no one said authenticity is going to make you successful. But what you can guarantee is that inauthenticity being fake, bending the truth that will guarantee failure at some point. And that is just so solid and so good. And just to that, it’s like, it’s why fake authenticity specifically to building a personal brand, right? You’re, you’re, you’re building your entire business off of you, your uniqueness, what you believe in, why wouldn’t it be authentically true and authentically you, this is your opportunity to share your thoughts and your mission and your values with the world to share your unique message, to help people all around the world.

AJV: (07:32)

Why wouldn’t you want it to be authentically you? Why do you think you need to have certain clothes or certain photo shoots? And, you know, just all of those things that I think are just so amazing. And I love Jamie story. And although she didn’t share tons of this on the podcast interview, but it’s like, it was her authenticity on QVC that sold out the products, right? She probably could have gone up there with the exact same product and not did what she did and had models come in and dah, dah, dah, and it may not have sold out. We don’t know it was her authenticity, her truth that sold a billion dollar business. That, and I love that because it would’ve been really easy to do it the way the industry does it the way her competitors did it, the way that even people like QVC were suggesting that she should do it.

RV: (08:25)

And I think, I think that authenticity is going to translate into a lot of book sales. Like she’s she does the same thing. It’s just part of what she does is just, she just shares her heart. And that is so powerful and it’s exhausting to not be used. So I, I love that too. That’s a big, a big takeaways. Even if you win, you’re going to burn out. If you’re, if you’re in authentic, you can’t really, when you, you, you, you can, it guarantees failure. So my second takeaway was that when she, the, she drew a line in the sand where she said, I would rather have women not buy anything, but see someone who looks like them, then I would have them buy a bunch of stuff from, from women who are, are unattainable, that unattainable aspiration of, of beauty and what she did right there in that story was she drew a line in the sand that said, I am about mission over money.

RV: (09:27)

And that is something that we’re always talking about. It’s in our mantra, we have a thing called a mantra at brand builders group that we read about, we read every month internally. And we say, we are about mission over money, just because something will make money. Doesn’t mean you should do it. Like, it’s it. Money is just one scorecard. It’s not bad. There’s not anything wrong with money, but it’s like, it takes so much passion and heart and belief and conviction to say, it’s about mission. And I’m going to, I’m going to follow that. And that was that’s what broke through the noise. That’s how she broke through the wall. That was huge for me. Yeah.

AJV: (10:04)

And second that, I second that and so here’s my third one is I love this so much because it speaks to what I think we all should be doing is she was, she said that, listen, I’m going to use myself as the case study for my own products. I ha I stand behind my product so much. I will be the case study. I will go out there with no makeup on, because I know my product works. I stay in behind what I have created and I stayed behind what it does a hundred percent. So I’m not going to use all these people who already have perfect skin and perfect complexions because they’re 19 years old. I know I’m going out there. I’m going to go out there raw with no makeup. And I don’t want to show what my product does. And it’s like, you should be able to stand behind your product and your services, a hundred percent conviction, and that it doesn’t make your product or service.

AJV: (10:58)

Perfect. Nobody’s trying to attain perfection here. But what I’m saying is that you should believe in it a hundred percent if you’re dedicating your life and your career to it. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. It doesn’t mean your business is perfect. We all have flaws. We all have ears. That’s not what I’m saying here is that you believe in it so much that you’re like, Nope, me, I’ll be the case study. I know this works because it changed my life. It changed in her case her complexion, which improved self confidence and all these other things. But you’ve gotta be able to stand up and say, Nope, I’ll be the case study. That is how much I believe in this. Not saying that it’s perfect and without flaw, but you just have that much conviction in it. Yep.

RV: (11:43)

That’s so good. That’s so good. For me, the, the, the last takeaway is, you know, the book is called, believe it. And her whole thing is about believing yourself. And how do you believe in yourself? And, and, and, and I love it. It’s upstairs. We got to both upstairs. I think yours is in your bathroom and the mindset and the bed, the the but, but, but here’s the thing, what I love is she talks about belief and authenticity and passion. And then she also talks about work. Not just, I sat in a room and, and I didn’t manifest this by like, it wasn’t like, you know, just sit around and think good thoughts. She did a thousand live shows 1000. She, she had one year, I think, where she said she did like 300 shows in a year. That’s like almost every single day, she sleeping at QVC.

RV: (12:44)

They were doing 90 hour work weeks for 10 years. Like, I just, I love that because it’s both right. Is it like, is it mindset or is it work ethic? Yes, it is both. It is belief. It is passionate. It’s vulnerability, it’s authenticity, and it is freaking work. And, and you just don’t hear that enough about like, it’s work a thousand live show. I mean, that is a thousand. We, you know, we always heard from Eric Chester or one of my mentors, the difference between a good speaker and a great speaker is 1000 presentations. She’s done a thousand. She has been hustling and pitching and fighting. And so it’s like, while you’re, while you’re waiting to believe in yourself, work like you, you may or may not believe in yourself, but you can start working right away. Like you can start taking action, no matter how you feel like you can just go. And if you do that, you build this momentum and then you get some wins and you start to believe and you go, gosh, maybe this could work or Whoa, that didn’t work. But I think I could try this. And then it’s like the, the, the work leads to the belief, right? And the belief leads to the work. But if, if you don’t have the belief, it’s not going to stop you from doing the work. So just work, just go, just follow that instance.

AJV: (14:09)

But yeah, to that is, you’ve got to have something that you believe in enough where it no longer even feels like work. It’s just what you do. It’s who you are. It’s a part of your mission. It’s that mission. And it’s like, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a 90 hour work week, to be honest, I don’t want one. I’m not citizen,

RV: (14:31)

But

AJV: (14:31)

I think it comes back to it’s like, but is it because it feels like work? Or is it because you’re so tied to the mission of it? It no longer feels like work. It feels like your calling. It feels like your purpose, your mission. And I think that’s, that’s an important distinction of this too. This just work. Wasn’t just building a company. This was a mission. This one is a changed in industry. And I think that too is really important to recognize where definitely I definitely can’t sit here and say, I encourage you to work 90 hours, but I could definitely sit here and say, but if it doesn’t feel like work, if it’s a part of who you are and what you feel called to do, you should do it 24 hours a day.

RV: (15:09)

And you’re not going to just believe your way there. That’s that’s my thing is like, believe it is the part of it, but work, it is work. It is the other part of it. Right? You can’t just believe it and not work. In fact, the fact that you do the work is evidence of the belief you’re working in the direction of the thing that you say you care about. Like, you can sit and go, Oh, I really care about this thing. But if there’s no effort behind it, it’s like, you don’t really, if you believe it, and it’s your mission, then you’re, you’re, you’re going behind it. Who cares? How many hours? There’s action. There’s action to support that belief. And yeah. So I just love it. Super power.

AJV: (15:51)

Yeah, it was. It’s a great interview. You should listen to the whole thing. You should go buy the book, read the book and give her some love.

RV: (15:57)

Check it out. Jamie Kern, Lima, everybody on the influential personal brand podcast. That’s the recap edition. We’ll catch you next time. Stick around.

Ep 150: How Billionaire Entrepreneurs Overcome Self-Doubt and Learn to Believe in Themselves with Jamie Kern Lima

Hey brand builder Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that, Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming from anything that we do with this is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit call brand builders, group.com/summit. Call, hope to talk to you soon on with the show.

You know, it’s not every day that you get to sit down and learn from a billionaire especially somebody who is according to Forbes, one of the richest self-made female billionaires, or, you know, self-made richest females in the world. And you’re about to meet Jamie Kern Lima, who is a new friend of mine. And she is most known for being the co-founder of it cosmetics, which was a company that had millions of customers. They sold it to L’Oreal for $1.2 billion a few years ago. And she became the first female CEO and L’Oreal’s hundred and eight year history. She also has been in lots of media. She actually started her career as an award winning TV news journalist, and then her story has been featured on good morning, America. The today show CVS this morning, ABC Nightline and in the last really year.

So she’s been building her own personal brand as she’s working towards her new book, which is called believe it, how to go from underestimated to unstoppable which if you’re listening to this live comes out two day. The book is out right now at you know, if you’re listening to this, as soon as this is published and you know, building her brand has happened very her personal brand has happened very fast. She spoken for Tony Robbins. She spoken for Dave Ramsey’s team. She’s worked with a lot of very influential people, but her story and her book is really about how to overcome self doubt and achieve your wildest dreams. And so she’s here to tell us a little bit about that story and how that applies to all of us building our personal brand. So Jamie Kern, Lima, welcome to the show, Lori.

Thank you so much. It’s so, so great to be here.

Well so, you know, when you look at, can you just give us the, tell us the story, right, so that, you know, obviously the, the, the book you go walk us through, but you went from being a Denny’s waitress to having an idea to start a company to 10 years later, selling that company for $1.2 billion. I mean, that all happened in 10 years, like real in real life. Yeah.

Yes, that is true. And you know, what I kind of realized is, is, you know, over the years and just hearing from so many people all the time who maybe you see like a headline on my story or something like that, that, you know, I’ll get messages on Instagram and people will say, Oh, you know, did you get lucky or how did it happen? Or, you know, I wish I could do that, but I’m just facing so much rejection. And what I realized worry was that so many people, you know, they, they see sort of like the highlight reel out there. And what I wanted to do is, is for the first time ever, like share the story behind the story of everything the one I hope has everyone out there in their own journey of building their personal brand or any other dream they’re going after helps them feel less alone. And and, and more connected also in the struggles we all go through and cause really, you know, believe it it’s the first time ever, I think like 85 or 90% of the stories in the book I’ve never shared before, but it’s really

Share some personal stories in there. Like some very intimate, like when you were on a reality TV show and you share some stuff about that, like in your younger days, like you really, it’s really honest,

It’s super honest. And it’s really the heart and soul of this book. It’s a story about a girl who goes from not believing in herself to believing in herself and not trusting herself to like learning how to, you know, hear my own inner knowing and then trust myself and going from doubting I’m enough to knowing I’m enough. And the reason I really wrote it as I think it’s the story of so many people out there right now, probably so many of your listeners and people in your community on their own journey of, of learning to believe in themselves and trust themselves and, and know they’re enough. And

Let me, I want to, I want to ask you about this because one of my favorite stories is the story of, I think it was the first time that you were pitching to one of these companies, all tower, maybe it was an investor and this investor said something to you and, and you know, if you’re not familiar, it, cosmetics is now like the, the leading luxury brand of cosmetics in, in the United States. And, and, but where this started, there was an executive who said something directly to your face. Can you, are you, are you comfortable sharing with everybody with that?

Yeah, I, you know, we I had this dream and this vision, you know, to create a makeup company cause I had a skin condition and, and in the process of, of realizing that I couldn’t find a product that worked for me, I’d also realized that all the images I’d seen a beauty in my whole life never showed women that had problematic skin or women of different ages or sizes or shapes or skin tones or skin challenges. And I kind of had this big aha moment when I launched my company that, Oh, if I can really create a product that works for people that have skin challenges like me, it’s going to help so many people. But at the same time I had this like deeper, deeper, deeper why, but I had identified really early on, which was, you know, my entire life, you know, seeing all these images of, of kind of like flawless airbrush models on, in ads, on TV or in magazines.

Like I growing up, I always aspire to look like those, but they also always like made me feel deep down inside. Like I wasn’t enough. And I had this huge moment creating my, my company where I realized, Oh, it’s not just going to be about a great product that works. If I can get this thing off the ground, if I can create this, this beauty company, when I know nothing about the industry, by the way if I can do this, I’m going to use models and calm and beautiful and mean it that are every age and shape and size and skin tone and skin challenge. So I had this whole vision of something that meant more, that was bigger than myself because I wanted to do it, not just to create a product, not just to, but like to try and shift culture in the beauty industry for every little girl out there who was about to start doubting herself and every grown person who still does.

So I had this deep mission, meanwhile, to, to get to the investor story you’re talking about you know, the first several years of launching my company was really hard and I love that you share like, Oh, you know, it, cosmetics now is the largest luxury makeup company in the country, which is crazy and amazing. But, but the first three years was packed with no after no after no and rejection and down to no money. And, you know, after hearing no from all the department stores and even QVC and so forth we finally got what I thought was going to be a life-changing meeting that this potential investor, and this was a private equity company. And they had invested in tons of, of consumer product companies. A lot of them pre-revenue in their small and then they built them. They helped build them into these companies that like we all shop at grocery store for, and they’re they’re household names.

And I thought, wow, they love our product. Like this is going to be huge. And so we took meetings with them and started the diligence phase, which is when you hire you know you just show your financial projections. Sometimes you end up hiring bankers and lawyers. We got pretty far along thinking they were going to invest in our company. And I thought two things were going to happen. I thought, Oh my gosh, if they invest then a I’m not going to go bankrupt and maybe they can use all of their leverage to try and get us into these stores that I’ll keep saying no to us. Right. Because QVC said to us, you’re not the right fit for us or for our customers. So for us and no, all the department stores. So I’m like, okay, no, one’s believing in this vision.

And when I keep checking in with my gut, I keep feeling like I’m on the right track and that people need this product and we need a new definition of beauty, but everyone’s saying no. So I thought like it, like this investor is going to change my life and I’ll never forget I was with my husband actually. And we went to the final meeting where I thought, okay, this is going to be, yes, this is going to be huge. And I was standing about three feet from the head guy and, you know, he thanked us. He said, we really don’t. We think your product is really great. And all that, but you know, it’s going to be a no, we’re gonna pass on investing in a cosmetics. And I was like, okay. And by this point I’m super used to hearing, no, right.

So I’m like, okay, can you share why? Like, can you, can you share why? Because feedback is always a gift. At least usually it’s a gift. And I said, can you share why? And he goes, well, do you want me to be really honest with you? And I’m like, yes, please. And he was literally like about three feet from me. And my husband was right next to me. And then he looked at me and he said, I just don’t think women will buy makeup from someone who looks like you, you know, with your body and your weight. And I remember like, it almost felt like his mouth was moving in slow motion. I remember the words coming out and you know, anyone who’s dealt with with body doubt, self doubt, which for me had been my whole life. At that point, I remember feeling like my whole body flood with this like self, like a lifetime of body doubt and self doubt.

And it, when, as I was watching him say these words to me, it was almost like I was staring my own fears straight in the eye. And I, I knew in that moment, two things, okay, I’ve got to figure out how to keep my faith bigger than this. I’d also hurt really bad, but he was saying, but one thing happened in that moment. That would be a defining moment. That would happen to me many more times, which is, as he was saying, these words to me, I just don’t think women will buy makeup from someone who looks like you with your body and your weight. I got this like deep feeling in my gut that he was raw. It was like this deep knowing that he was wrong and I felt it. But I also knew like if I was ever going to prove that it would come down to me, learning how to believe it for myself.

And the other thing was, even though it hurt my feelings, like I didn’t, I didn’t get mad at him. I actually felt no ill will toward him. One thing that happened was I was like, Oh wow. It, this whole beauty industry, isn’t just about making me as a little girl feel like I’m not enough. Like he’s actually making a business decision to not invest in my company because guess what? He’s been impacted by it too. He’s using his best judgment to say, Oh, I think you have to look a certain way for people to buy from you. Right. He’s making a business decision based on my weight. And so he’s as much of a by-product of evidence me. And so for me, while it hurt, I also, I also used it as fuel to go, wow, why I’m doing what I’m doing is really big. It needs to change. Not, you know, not just because it impacted me growing up, but there are so many people out there that are in this kind of, you know, that, that it needs to change for. So yeah, I mean,

I mean, it’s like they’re living this whole industry is living with this paradigm that they don’t realize, like there’s this set of beliefs that beauty can only be sold. And you talk about how they literally used to say things like you have to show them what, what, what was the language and impossible level of beauty or a flawless. There was like a term that they used to always say. And if you, if you don’t show them that people won’t buy, it’s amazing how pervasive a limiting belief can be on an entire industry now. So that’s a big part of your story. So you you’re, you’re at Danny’s you have this idea, you start in your living room, you’re working hundred hour weeks. You’re being told, no, you get this meeting with the investor. This guy tells you that. And then you fast forward to, you finally get a chance to be on QVC. And one of the parts that I I love, well, we’ll talk about how many presentations you did. Cause I think that’s really important for personal brands, but the very first time you were on QVC, I want you to walk us through that moment, that story of your thoughts going into it. And then what happened when you were live on the air and how you were feeling, and then just like tell us that story. Yeah. So it

Had been, gosh, three years of nos, we even Rory had QVC, you know, I had, at one point I had gotten their head of hot beauty there who was like, he’s literally a visionary in the industry. I’m responsible for building this multi-billion dollar division of beauty there. And I got him on a phone and I thought, Oh my gosh, if he’s going to bless me with his time, it’s, it’s going to be a yes. And, and I remember getting him on the phone and him telling me I’ve met with all the buyers at KVC and it’s unanimous that you’re not the right fit for us or for our customers. And I remember crying myself to sleep three nights in a row. Not knowing what we’re going to do, but every time I would, I would check in with my gut.

I had this, like this, knowing like this feeling, you’re going to be on QVC. You’re going to sell your product. Can you see? And sometimes we have these gut feelings, but then like nothing around us, how’s us we’re right, right. And we start to doubt our own intuition. And every time I would send my product to them, it was always a no. And you know, a lot of times when we have these dreams on our heart or these feelings, it’s so easy to let self doubt creep in. It’s so easy to second guess ourselves. It’s easy to think that our gut is wrong when we still don’t see the proof around us, that it’s right. And even in the hardest times of QVC, I just kept feeling like we’re going to be on there. Like we’re supposed to be on there, but it was three years of them saying, no, I just share that.

Because I think a lot of times people let things hold them back or they just get stuck or they just give up because they feel like, well, I think I’m just wrong. I have this feeling, but like I tried and it didn’t work or they keep, you know, in this case they literally said, you’re not you the word, because you are not the right fit. Which when someone says you’re not the right fit for us, obviously it feels like rejection. But it also, it feels like these, these statements of you’re not enough, you don’t belong here. All those things. Right. And, and the one thing that really truly kept me going, and for some people, this is how they hear God and their faith. And it’s every time I would get still, I would just hear that voice saying, no, no you’re supposed to, you’re supposed to be there.

So so we eventually, after three years, we’re at this big beauty show, demonstrating our product in it and a really amazing moment. And a bunch of other stuff happened that I share in the book, but we eventually got a meeting and one shot on QVC. So, so, and, and we were down to under a thousand dollars in our bank account. I didn’t know how we were going to make it. We were only selling two to three orders a day on our website pack them up in our office, which was our living room. And we get this one shot. And what it meant though, was we had this 10 minute airing where you’re going to go live. Right? So QVC a live TV shopping channel for anyone who hasn’t seen it before, it’s, it’s a live TV shopping channel, your broadcast live to a hundred million homes and there’s no script, no teleprompter, nothing you’re, you’re live.

And in homes, yeah. A hundred million homes shot big shot. And it was, it was 10 minutes, but Rory, what it meant was, so even though we were selling just two to three orders a day down to our last thousand dollars as well breast to say yes, to this one opportunity, this one chance, this one shot we had to actually, it was a consignment deal. And we had to sell over 6,000 units of our product in a 10 minute window in order to hit their sales goal. Why not come back? And so we had to apply for SBA loans and 22 banks said no. And the last bank, the 23rd bank gave us an SBA loan that covered just that inventory to be able to do that 10 minutes segment. And so but it was consignment. And what that, what that means for anyone who’s unfamiliar with that word is, is we had to pay for everything ourselves we, to pay, to make all the 6,000 units pay to ship them in, pass all the clinical testing regularly, all the steps

Like you got to have the physical product sitting. You have to have 6,000 all the money to PR to create 6,000 units sitting there so that if they sell them, they can actually ship them. And you weren’t selling, you were selling two or three a day. So you basically leveraged your whole life on this one moment, like all your financial on this one moment,

And you should never do this. Like, like in the business world, they say, never take a purchase order. You can’t afford to lose. This was a decision we made because at this point it was like, we didn’t even know what we’re going to do. We were about to go out of business. Anyway. It was like, okay, we have one shot. Let’s just go all in. And so we got the loan manufactured is over 6,000 units, got them into the QVC warehouses. And I’m sitting there with one shot and 10 minutes and it was so stressful. And, and here’s why and, and, you know, when I talk about that, this is a book about learning to believe in yourself and trust yourself. Because to me, that’s everything, right? Not everyone’s going to want to go create a product company or build a billion dollar company or whatever, but I think every single one of us, no matter where we’re at in our own personal brand or why we’re doing what we’re doing, I think all of us are on the journey of learning, how to hear ourselves, our inner knowing and learn how to actually like step into all of who we are and all of who we’re created to be.

And, and in this moment on QVC was really this big defining moments. I get this 10 minute window. And I we had hired these third-party experts consultants, which are amazing. They help so many people sell their products on TV and in stores. And but in my case, I wanted to do something really different. I wanted to not use the traditional type of models with perfect skin. I wanted to sh to show like, like Rory, I kept imagining, I know, I know from so many people who love being your clients, and they talk about the amazing work they’ve done with you and AIG, and they talk about like their customer avatar and things like that. Right? So this is a real life example of that. I was sitting in my car. I flew out a week before this 10 minute airing, okay. This one shot, I fled a week before I sat in this rental car, in the parking lot of QVC staring at the front door, watching people walk in and out knowing the next time I walked in that building, I was either going to be out of business or a whole new world was going to open up.

But here’s where here’s here was the big challenge. And the big dilemma I faced, we worked with these third party experts who are amazing with amazing track records. And when I had explained to them, well, the reason I’m doing this company is like, you know, I would imagine my customer avatar to use your words. Like I would imagine that women sitting at home and let’s just say I’m 70 years old. But if I’m only seeing models that look like they’re 12, how I know the product’s going to work for me, or, you know, I have a, you know, a skin challenge or, you know, a different, you know, skin tone skin issues. If I don’t see someone live on TV, show him in this, how do I know it’s going to work for me? And I would argue with them, I’m like, in fact, let me just show my bright red rosacea national television. Let me prove to everyone live that like why I created this product.

Yeah. So pause right there. If y’all didn’t catch this. So Jamie’s got her whole life on the line and you make the decision that not only are you not going to use models, you’re going to go on there personally with out makeup. You’re going to show the world rosacea, which was what your, your skin situation was all about. And you’re going to like show people your real skin on TV, which at the time was crazy. I mean, crazy. Unheard of. And your height, the people you hired told you, this is stupid, that they, the people almost never let you on because you want it to do this. And yet you believed in it and you’re going to do it anyway.

Well, I, and I think it comes down to like, do we learn how to listen to what our guts telling us to do? Even when other people are telling us to do the, and you know, QVC was supportive. QVC was like, you do, whatever’s authentic to you. But I knew I had one shot. And so it was the, you know, third, third party experts are so good. And I said, yeah, I want to show my bright red rosacea. And I said, and you know what, because you need to, you need to use models to show the product. I’m like, Lemmy actually put models that are ages and shapes and sizes and skin tones. And I S I remember but, but here’s the thing. They, they are all, they all thought I was crazy. And they’re like but they wanted me to when they had the best intentions of at heart, but sometimes even people that are, that are visionaries still can’t imagine something working.

If it hasn’t been done before. And if I learned that lesson earlier, I would have saved myself. So many nights, cry myself to sleep. When so many people did it believe in this, this vision I had or what I was trying to do. And, and so, you know, it felt heavy. I knew this was going to come down to this 10 minute moment. And I sat in that rental car in the parking lot. And I imagined who my customer was like, I imagined who I was talking to because honestly, worry self-doubt did enter my head. I thought thoughts like, well, what if your gut is wrong? What if there’s no proof around you now for three years, that what you’re trying to do, you is going to gain any traction. Right? You have all those thoughts. You have friends and family that love you so much, but they’re like, you know, are you sure, sure.

This is how you should be doing it. Like, didn’t, you want to be a talk show, host your whole life. Are you sure you want to stay in this makeup industry? Like, you know, all those things, you hear everyone who loves you. They mean so well, but all of it can turn into this noise of self doubt. And I just remember this moment sitting in that rental car going, who is, who is my customer. And I imagined her sitting at home like watching this 10 minutes and who is she? I imagine all different types of women. And I imagine like, you know, women that maybe had never seen someone who looked like them on TV as a model, and I wanted to show real women, call them beautiful and mean it, you know, literally. And, and, and I, I had this moment where I realized, you know, if I was going to get one shot, I would rather have women turn their television on and not buy anything, but see someone that looked like them, someone that I am authentically saying is beautiful, but that, that makes them, or reminds them that they matter that they’re enough and have them by nothing.

I’d rather do that than sell a ton of product and stand for nothing. And it was this, this moment where I knew what I had to do, but sometimes we know it doesn’t mean that it’s easy. And you know, when, when I walked into the building so, so for all the everyone building a personal brand and, and, and doing all kinds of stuff right now share this, this part of the story. I thought I had my 10 minutes, like produced in my mind, right. I had a whole script of what I was going to do and what demonstration I was going to show and how the flow was going to go. And so you get like a two minute meeting with the host right before the show. And they meet with all the different presenters from all the different companies. And and in that two minute meeting, I was explaining to the host that I wanted to do in my one big shot.

And she’s like, well, thank you, but that, but here’s what we’re going to do. And she basically threw everything out the window that I wanted to do. And at that point, you have to just trust. You have to trust. Cause the last thing in the world you want to try to do is become the expert of something. You’re, you know what I mean? That when someone else is the, I had to trust and, and, and I prayed like crazy, but we went out there and I remember that, that there’s this big 10 minute clock and there’s cameras everywhere in the studio. And here’s the thing when the, I knew once the clock boom went live and it was nine 58, nine 57, I knew everything was on the line. I knew I couldn’t do it both ways. But I also knew that you can’t fake authenticity.

And in that moment, there is so many thoughts going through my head thoughts about, Oh, if, if this doesn’t go well, you’re not guaranteed 10 minutes to sell your product. If it doesn’t go, well, your clock gets cut live. You can go from, you know, maybe you’re at nine minutes and it’s not going well, boom, you’re down to two minutes like that because they’re wrapping up and they’re onto like Dyson vacuum or vitamin X or whatever, right? Like it’s no one messes around. They’re like, it’s high pressure. And, and so, you know, I had to kind of like get thoughts like that out of my head and focus on like, why am I doing what I’m doing and how it’s bigger than myself? And I remember little moments where you know, things I’ve never shared before, but I remember being live on air and being like, Oh, my dress feels a little tight or, Oh, I feel sweat, literally dripping down my back.

And I hope that’s inspiring where you’re like, this is the biggest moment of my life. I can feel sweat trickling on me. Yes. But, you know, I, I knew I knew it enough to know and something I share, but then I learned it. I share a lot about authenticity and trust and belief in this book for everybody, regardless of what journey they’re going on, lessons I’ve learned in that. But one of the lessons is like authenticity alone. Doesn’t guarantee success, but in authenticity guarantees failure. And I knew in that moment, I could not show up as somebody else or as this, this version of a brand that works for everyone else that wasn’t authentic to why I was doing what I was doing. And I also couldn’t stand up there on live television and, you know, be all about inspiring women to know they’re enough, but then stand there in my own head about my own stuff.

Right. So I knew it had to, it had to be bigger than myself. It had to be about the woman watching at home. And that’s the only way that I was able to get through those 10 minutes because the pressure was so heavy. I remember, you know, I had practiced this demonstration on my wrist a million times, but when we went live, my hand was shaking so much that I couldn’t even show this demonstration properly on how our concealer didn’t crease like the other two departments are concealers. So the host had to kind of like put my hand under the pedestal. I remember the moment, my bright red rosacea, my bare face before shot came up on national television and then walking over to the models. And I remember there was about a minute left and the host was like, the, the deep shade is almost sold out the tan shade. We’re down to 200 units. And I was like, and then I remember it was like at the 10 minute Mark, the sold outside came up across the screen. It was like this big diagonal sold outside. And I literally Rory started crying. Like I, it was just, it was, the pressure was so much and I just started crying and I remember they cut the segment and my husband came rushing through the double doors of the studio and like sobbing. And I’m like, real women have spoken.

He’s like, we’re not going pay crops. And it was this whole thing. One airing turned into five that year and then 101 the next year on QVC, eventually 250 airings a year. I’ve done over a thousand live QVC shows myself and we grew to be the largest beauty brand and QVC is history and right. In many, did you say a thousand worth over a thousand live shows? Yeah. and, and right now at this moment that we’re talking it cosmetics is, is still the largest beauty branding in QVC history. And I only share that because for three years it wasn’t just like, no, or, Oh, can you come back later? It was like, you’re not the right fit. Right. And that wasn’t just QVC. It was everybody. It was, it was all the retailers, all the stores. It was, it was everyone. And I just think that for me, one of the biggest lessons is a, no one can tell you you’re not the right fit.

That’s the first thing. And the second thing is when you check in with your, your knowing, right? And by the way, I hear so many people just saying, Oh, just don’t quit or just don’t give up or whatever. I don’t agree with that. I think, check in with your gut, check in with your, your, your internal knowing, because sometimes letting go of a dream, knowing when to let go of a dream is as important as knowing when to go after one. And, you know, I thought it was gonna be a talk show, host my whole life. And it was working as a TV journalist and thought that’s what I was going to do. And when I got rosacea and I felt this, knowing that I’m supposed to let go of that dream and actually start this makeup company, even though I knew nothing about it, you could see it as quitting or as like the victory of knowing what you’re, what you’re feeling in your, in your own intuition and then deciding to trust it.

And I think that, I think that for me, that’s one of the greatest, the greatest lessons. Cause when I look back now, you know, it cosmetics, we eventually gotten to all of the stores that said, no. L’oreal said no for three years and then they eventually acquired us. But you know, in that whole journey, when I look back all the times a I, most of the times I made mistakes, which I talk a lot about the stuff I did wrong in the book too, as well as like lessons personally and professionally. But when, when I didn’t, when I trusted either other, you know, other people’s opinions or whatever, when they, when they differed from what my gut said, when I didn’t trust myself, that’s usually when I made the wrong choices and, and the wrong decisions. And, and similarly during all the years when there was no proof around me that we were onto something or no traction, or when it didn’t make sense to keep going, like, like getting still.

And, and, you know, for me, just praying and trying to hear that, that gut feeling that still small voice, when it would say to keep going, like I made the decision to trust it, even when it was hard, even when we had no money, even when you know what I mean. And, and I think, I think that that that’s the greatest journey, not, Oh, are you going to build a personal brand that has millions of followers? It’s Oh, on your journey of building a personal brand, are you listening? Are you learning to believe in yourself? Are you learning to trust yourself? Are you learning to stay authentic to who you are? Are you learning that you’re not here to compete with anyone else you’re literally just here to compete with who God made you capable of becoming like, like all these lessons, like to me, that’s the victory, that’s the success, the journey of stepping into all of who you are and all of who you’re created to be is is the success not any types of other outcomes.

Yeah. Well, my friends, if you go to believe it.com right now, you can order the book. There is a little, there’s a special for the moment that if you go right now, believe it, dot com you get a couple bonuses, right. Jamie. So what do they get if they go order right now?

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I’m so excited to share it, share with everyone at brand builders group, too, that everyone in the community yeah, if you get, believe it the book anywhere, you can get it anywhere at sold, which has all the retailers like Amazon Barnes and noble, independent bookstores target, you pick it up anywhere. And then you go to believe it.com. So the book’s called, believe it. And then the websites, believe it. Dot com. If you go there for, it’s a big, big launch celebration, you’re going to get a bunch of free stuff. It’s all free. So you’re going to get this action plan I put together. So it’s like a 90 page action plan, which is how to implement all the lessons from the book into your real life. You’d get that for free plus yeah, I, I’m so excited.

I’m so excited for this worry. But, and then also my first ever course called becoming unstoppable how to overcome the things holding you back. You’ll get that for free as well as a, as a book launch bonus. And and I’m just excited for all of this, you know, I’m donating a hundred percent of the proceeds of the book. I’m literally just doing this because I believe that we’re all in this together. I believe that when we share, like really share the stories behind the stories, that’s how we all, you know, rise. That’s how we all grow. It’s how, you know, w we’re really all in this together. And I think every one of us has a powerful story and it’s, it’s been a crazy journey. I’ve made a lot of mistakes personally and professionally, and I’ve, I’ve also learned how to accomplish some of my, my biggest dreams. And, and now it’s like my greatest joy is helping other people on their own journeys of accomplishing their, so it’s an honor and I’m, I’m super grateful and I’m grateful for you and AIG, by the way yeah, grateful for your friendship. And just so many people I know have their businesses and also just who they are, has been impacted by the two of you. So I just want to say thank you for that as well.

Of course. Well I’ve read, believe it. It’s awesome. It is not every day. Again, you just get to hear a story like this, and you, you do such an, a good, just such an honest job of walking us through the self doubt over and over the rejection, but systematically just continuing to follow that intuition and overcoming it and learning to believe in yourself. And then, you know, you’ve got, there’s so many great lessons and takeaways, so go to believe it, dot com. You can get all of our pre-order bonuses, which you all know, we teach you how to do book launches, right? Like, so there’s, Jamie’s have some killer ones, the course, and the workbook are legit way massive. Over-Delivers just for, for ordering the book during her launch, but check it out and I’m telling you, you’ll love the book. It’s really entertaining and inspiring.

It’s funny. I laughed out loud several times. I cried a few times. Like I’ve never, I’ve never heard the story of how a billionaire sold a company. So that was fascinating. And her husband Palo and adopted not, not adopting, excuse me. But you had surrogacy as a mom and also you were adopted, I mean, there you’ve had the craziest story. Y’all, it’s, it’s like a movie. It probably will be a movie at some point. So go to believe it, dot com check out the book, plug into what Jamie’s doing. We’ll link to her social media, of course, on our website so that you can follow her. And Jamie has thanks for the gift of, of changing an entire industry of challenging the status quo of believing that there’s a better way to do it a more uplifting way to do it. And following that intuition. And then also, I would say caring enough that it’s like it wasn’t about money. That it’s been about mission for you over money the entire time, which goes to show why you would write a book when you don’t need money. Like you don’t need the money. You did this because of mission. And we think that’s a great gift to the world. So we wish you the best. And thank you so much.

Thank you.

Ep 149: Using Written Articles to Grow Your Personal Brand with Robert Glazer | Recap Episode

Hey, welcome to the recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. Rory Vaden is here, Roland solo. Again, we’ve had some weather challenges around town and we’ve had a crazy time trying to get coverage for the babies. And so mama CEO, AJ is off helping manage a million things. And so I’m solo on this recap edition, but this is an important one. Bob Glazer is the episode that we’re breaking down. If you didn’t go listen to that, make sure that you do, because Bob tells the story and talks about the story that we know we should do. We, we hear about it.

We kind of know intuitively off. I’m going to build my personal brand. I should write more and I need to write, and I’m not writing enough and I’m writing, but I don’t like it and it’s not working. And he tells that story about why it matters. And you can’t hear it. You just, you can’t hear it enough. I mean, it’s, it’s just about impossible. I think, to build a personal brand without having to, at some point master the written word. I mean, even if you are a video personality, like even if you’re a TV personality, there is something there is, at some point comes along in your journey where it’s like, you have to write a book. People want the book that you’re writing articles, you’re writing copy, of course, for your emails and for your website and marketing copy. But I think this, the idea of writing articles and just the power of the written word is so important because one reason is because of Google because of search engine optimization, the written word can be indexed and searched and shared and reviewed quickly and highlighted.

And you can go to specific points like you can’t, you can’t do that with videos. It’s, it’s really hard, you know, without going, Hey, go watch this video at minute one, you know, 10 minute, seven seconds, 38 seconds in, right? Like people don’t do it. And, and, and Google and the search engines, don’t, don’t yet fully index and you know, track. And it’s just not the, not the, the way of the digital world. So the written word is really important. It always has been important. I think it will always be important. And, and Robert is talking about how you can use the written word to grow your personal brand. It is free traffic. It is trustworthy reputation building. I mean, to this day, when people say, Rory, how do I become a speaker? Like, how do I get hired to speak? Like how, how do you get these gigs where you’re standing on stage in front of all of these people.

I want to do that. How do you do it? It’s very simple. I always tell them that the, it has never changed. The number one reason that people hire you to speak is because they have seen you speak. That is number one, right? We talk about all of that in world-class presentation craft in that course, and then also full keynote calendar. Those are our two courses. One is the artist speaking, the other’s, the businesses speaking our events, our courses that we teach, but the other, the number two reason, which is why I’m bringing it up here. The number two reason why or how you get booked to speak is because someone has read something that you have written, right? So number one is they saw you speak. They said, Oh my gosh, that was amazing. I need you to come do that for my people, for my audience.

But number two is they read it and they said, Oh my gosh, this is amazing. Like, this is what I need. My, my people, my audience, my, my fans, my customers, they all need to see this. Like, can you come and do it? And, and so the written word is powerful and, and the written word is the currency and the backbone and the spine of search engine optimization, which is, is like the core of, of digital marketing, right? And, and, and, and content marketing in the written word. And so this is just an important to hear about someone who has built their personal brand, mostly from the written word. And, and it’s, it’s really powerful. So anyways, here’s my top three, my top three takeaways for you and for myself, just as, as a recap, right?

So the first one, which

Is not unique, it’s not unique to this interview, and it’s not unique to Bob or to me, but you need to hear it. I’m going to say it because we need to hear it all the time is that it starts by asking, how can I deliver value for my eyes?

Like

That is the Genesis y’all

Of how this works is if you are not

Sitting and soaking and praying and meditating and focusing on how can I create more value for my audience,

Your brand,

Isn’t going to make it, you’re going to burn out. You’re going to get consumed with all the noise you’re going to get frustrated. Like, because if it’s all about you and your vanity metrics and your growth and your money and your, you know, your sense of fame or importance, like it’s going to burn out and, and re the written word, especially, you know, I loved, I loved what, what Robert said, where he said, look, I’ve been doing this for five years. And I figured out writing rewards the long game. It rewards the long game that, that search engine optimization as a hockey stick, right? Like it’s slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow spike. And that’s just, that’s the name of this game. Like, and it’s not just writing that, it’s all this stuff. It’s, it’s producing your videos on YouTube with eight views and 12 views and 20 views and 30 views.

And it’s like, the reason that more people don’t make it is not because their content is bad. It’s because they give up. Right. It’s because it’s discouraging. When you look at the numbers, it’s discouraging. When you go, gosh, I’ve been doing this for a year. I’ve been doing this for two years. I feel like nobody’s watching, nobody’s paying attention. And, and you know, that is, that is the path. But, but like, everybody dies on that path. And the first one or two years, there’s few people left when you get to your four and five and six and 10. And, and those are the ones you see and you go, Oh my gosh, it’s amazing. I want to be you. But it’s like the 10 years before, you know, at least five, I mean, don’t get discouraged in year one or two. And people, some of, some of us, like some of y’all get discouraged after three months.

And you’re like, ah, I’ve been posting videos every day on social media for three months. And now I, you know, I’ve got a hundred followers and it’s like, don’t even look, don’t even look until a year has gone by. And this is why being serviced centered matters, matters so much. Because if you’re, if you’re self centered in this pursuit, if, if your personal brand is really about you, it’s really about your ego. It’s really about your followers. It’s really about your money. It’s really about you feeling important and dah, dah, dah, dah, whatever, if it is self centered, you’re going to burn out because you’re either going to hack your way there. And it’s going to be fake by doing all sorts of crazy stuff, or it’s going to be a slow build, and you’re going to go, man, I’ve been doing this for two years.

I’m not sure it’s working. And it’s like, if you feel that way, guess what it’s working because for everyone else who’s been on this journey, they tell the story, you listen to every single episode we do. Like all, all of us have the same story. And, and, and even for me, like, it’s so frustrating. Cause I already paid my dues once. Like I already, I already went on this journey and then started over. Right? So I mean, we, we exited a company and there were a number of things that went along with that. But, but the net impact is I had to start over. Like I just started my social media from scratch. I just start my blog from scratch, how to start my website from scratch, like start over. It is painful. And, and, and here’s what Robert said that I loved. He said, you know, I’ve been doing this for five years.

I’ve still never found a hack. And gosh, that’s so important to hear because I feel the same way I’ve been doing this for so long. I haven’t found a hack, right? The hack is provide a lot of value for a really, really long time. Like, I know it’s not what you want to hear, but you need to hear it and you need to hear it every single week. And I don’t care if that’s, it. It’s like one of the top three takeaways from every single episode that you hear, we’re going to bring it up every time because we know how frustrating it is and how discouraging and how lonely and how empty and how hopeless it can feel and how you can be overwhelmed. And, and just beaten down that like, Oh, I’m putting in all this work. I’m spending this all this time. I’m putting in all this money.

Does it matter? And, and, and you have to be centered in service. You have to go, yes, it matters if only to one person, right? Like you have to stay grounded in that. And if you do it catches, it’s a snowball. It’s exponential. It’s a hockey stick. You know, like it is all of those things, but it starts by saying, and, and staying centered in how can I deliver value for my audience? You gotta live in that. You gotta, you gotta remind yourself of that. You can never forget that. It, it, it’s just, that’s the nature of the beast here. And, and it’s good. It’s good for our, it’s good for our ego. Like, it’s, it’s good to be reminded. Like, it’s not about your views and your comments and your likes and your engagement and your followers and your money and your duh. It’s like, it’s good to be reminded of like, no, I’m focusing on the one person who’s gonna read this.

I don’t care if one person watches this video, or one person reads this article. Like I’m doing it for that one person. And I am, I am doing it because I feel called in my life that, that there is some message inside of me that I feel called to share. And it is irrespective and independent of how many millions of people or how many zeroes of people ever see it. Because I feel called, which means there is one person out there that needs to see this. And that is why I do it. Not for vanity, not for likes, not for followers, not for comments, not for money, not for any false sense of importance or influence, but because I feel in my heart that there is a message that I was put on this earth to deliver, and I’m going to follow that prompting. And I will do it for as long as it takes, even if no one shows up that is the commitment that you gotta make.

And you gotta make it as a writer, as a speaker, as a content creator, as a podcast, host and producer at like, as a, as a, as a video producer, like whatever form of content it is that you just got to make it. And I’m telling you like, that is the battle. We have all of these amazing techniques and strategies that we teach and they frigging work. Like they’re really, really good, but nothing replaces that. So make sure you stay centered in that. Okay. Very good. My second takeaway this one, I don’t like as much, this one I don’t like as much was that sensationalism isn’t clickbait. Ah, I don’t like this one as much, but it’s a takeaway because it’s true. This one is also true this Sox, but it’s like, man, there is just a part of this that there’s just a game that you have to play to, to get ahold of people’s attention.

Like it’s, it’s weird, right? To say in this almost in the same breath, as you gotta be focused on your audience, which is, is still a hundred percent true, but it’s like to say that the vanity stuff doesn’t matter. And then to turn around and go, you know what? You have to not be afraid of a little bit of sensationalism. I don’t like it, but gosh, it’s true. It’s true. The data is true. It’s indisputable. People respond to all that crap. They, they, they do it’s it’s it’s it’s and, and here’s the way that I wrap my mind around, around being okay, to embrace a little sensationalism. Cause, cause y’all, I’m resistant to this, like this is not me. Like this is not the, this is not the way we play it at brand builders group, we’re playing the long game. We’re bringing value.

Our strategy is reputation. Our strategy is trust. Our strategy is, is ethical and honest and, and integrity. Like it is all of those things. And part of that is just going like, look, I mean, I think the way Robert said it, which hit me hard was he’s like people don’t click on the warm cup of tea titles. They don’t like, they just don’t. And, and the hard part is going, okay. We need to be willing to put out our content regardless of how many people are watching it. But at the same time, it’s like, we also have to be doing everything in our power at the marketing game. Like we have to do everything in our power to like communicate truth and honesty and integrity. But we also have to do everything in our power on the marketing game, because there’s a bunch of scam artists out there that we’re competing against a bunch of, there’s a bunch of negative images.

I mean, I would go so far as to say the devil is out there using every tool in his power to, to communicate false lies and propaganda and trash and, and negativity. And it’s like part of we got up, we got to stand up and go, you know what? I’m going to master marketing. Like I’m going to learn marketing. I’m going to do it because not because of the vanity for me, but because it’s like, if I’m going to, if I’m going to change lives, if I’m going to reach souls, if I’m going to impact people, I gotta be in front of people. Like if no, one’s reading the article, it’s not, it’s not doing any good. If nobody’s seeing it now I should be willing to do it. Whether there’s one person seeing it or a thousand, that’s what I just got to saying.

But at the same time, it’s like, I also want you to fight and scratch and claw and hustle and go, all right, how do we, how do we get in front of more people? Remember the reputation, formula results times reach equals reputation. Reach matters, reach matters. So there’s no, there’s no replacing the long game there there’s there there’s. We don’t want to be flash in the pan. We don’t want to be gimmicky. We don’t want to be empty promises. We don’t want to be over promise under deliver. We want to be substance. We want to be truth. We want to be valued. We want to be solid. We want to be honest. We want to be content, but we also need to have good packaging and a good wrapper and good marketing strategy and good and good tactics and good promotion because people, people got to find us.

And so when he was saying sensationalism, we’re talking about titles specifically where he said, sensationalism, isn’t the same as clickbait. And here’s how I processed. Here’s how I made sense of this because clickbait here’s, here’s what I, when I think of clickbait, what I think of clickbait as clickbait is bait and switch. So what is bait and switch bait and switch says, you know, click here to see a picture of, you know, Brad Pitt’s abs, and then you click here and it’s, it’s not a picture of Brad. Pitt’s abs it’s a, it’s a picture of, you know, it’s, it’s an article for how to buy my, you know, something that that’s, that is clickbait it’s bait and switch. It’s I Lou, are you here with one thing? And then I give you something that is other than that thing. It is not that thing to me, that is really when people say clickbait it’s bait and switch.

I do want to give people bait. I want to, I want to set a hook. I want to give them an appetizer. You know, the way that I think about it is like, when you go through the food court at the mall, they give you a bite of chicken, you know, honest toothpick, and they hand it to you and they go here, you know, it’s a sample, right? So they, they, they, they get you to salivate. They get you, your wedding, their appetite, your, your, your drawing, their interests. You do have to do that. And some of that is, I mean, he uses the word sensationalism. I, I, I hesitate, you know, for me, I’m just so reluctant to take it all the way that far, but, but maybe, maybe I need to be more aggressive. I mean, frankly, maybe this is why my brands my, you know, have grown slower than, than they could have is cause I haven’t embraced this.

Cause it’s like, I’ll tell you this, for sure. There is some other person out there that is not providing as much value who doesn’t have the depth of expertise, who is a lot more slimy and shady and unethical and they’re getting clicks, right? Like they’re getting the attention because they’re, they’re unafraid to just bait people in. And so that’s part of what you’re competing against. Right? And so the good people we got to learn to compete here a little bit. Like we gotta be willing to, to, to play the game, not in bait and switch, but in bait and deliver. Right? So that would be my theme here is rather than bait and switch bait and deliver. But I want you to bait, you got to set the bait, right? Like you, you got to hook them in there’s you can’t just throw a hook in the water and have no bait on it.

Like the fish aren’t biting. There’s God, there’s got to be bait there, but it’s not bait and switch it’s bait and deliver. In fact, it’s really bait and over deliver, right? That’s what we want. Not bait and switch bait and over deliver. That is what it’s after. But you gotta, you gotta, you gotta bait. You gotta be good at the bait. Like it’s just an, it’s a necessary part of this. And I wouldn’t even say it’s a necessary evil it’s it is just simply necessary that we are, we are battling for attention span. Like there is a battle that the especially the digital world is, is, is a, is a, is a 24, seven, three 65 battle for attention span. And, and, and we are in a battle. We are competing for people’s attention. And if you have valuable ideas, if you have good ideas, if you have worthwhile products, if, if you have substance, if you have truth, if you have integrity, if you have honesty, then you also be it.

You have to be willing to fight that battle, to get those people over there. What good is it? If you have the cure for cancer and nobody knows about it, not good, you gotta, you gotta be willing, but bait and deliver, not bait and switch. So sensationalism me. I mean, I might not, I might not sign off on that and give that the official brand builders stamp or Rory Vaden stamp, but I, I would sign off on, on bait and deliver. All right. So do what you have to do to get the viewers and the readers w you know, within reason, but you need to learn how to create better subject lines. You need to work to create better titles, which is my third takeaway. Okay. So my third takeaway was I actually went back through all my notes from this interview and just, you know, was, was trying to create a a list of great article titles.

Now, if you’ve been through our brand DNA event, our course, or our first course, or you’ve been through captivating content in both of those courses, we teach something called the five title tests, which is how to title your, your products okay. That you know, is kind of similar. But this list, this list is different. This list is for articles specifically, this is titling your blog articles and stuff, which, you know, I also think you can afford to be a little more Beatty with articles because they’re not as permanent as a book title or a coaching program title, or a course title. Right. That’s something like you’re going to live with for awhile. So but here’s, here’s some of the things that, that, that, that Robert threw out.

Ep 148: Using Written Articles to Grow Your Personal Brand with Robert Glazer

Hey brand builder Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that, Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming from anything that we do with this is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit. Call brand builders, group.com/summit. Call, hope to talk to you soon on with the show.

A while back, I was in a mastermind, a true mastermind of colleagues of best-selling authors who got together to spend some time to share some of our secrets with one another. And Bob Glazer is somebody who was there, who I got a chance to meet, who I really have enjoyed following and learning from and watching here ever since, you know, he is like me a practitioner. One of the things I really love is he teaches not so much from theory, but from experience. He’s a serial entrepreneur. He’s the CEO of a global marketing agency called acceleration partners. And you know, he, he has they’ve won a lot of different awards for his actual business. The reason I invited him a lot of people come talk about, which is really through writing.

He is a regular columnist for Forbes, for Inc., for Entrepreneur. He really started his brand with something called Friday Forward, which was very simple. It’s a weekly inspirational newsletter that now reaches over a hundred thousand people. He is a podcaster, but also as a writer, he has written several books. He’s a wall street journal and USA today bestselling author of four, four books. And I just think he’s a really great example of somebody using writing to leverage his personal brand. So anyways, welcome to the show, Bob Glazer, thanks, Rory excited to be here. So, you know what I just shared about you? I don’t even know how much, you know, that that’s how I kind of view you as an outsider. When I look and go, this is what I see about what you have done. Would you say that’s an accurate assessment or, or would you say that you’ve built your personal brand based on something else or other other things?

I mean, it was no, I think totally accurate sort of by accident, you know, it started, it started within our industry. You know, I, I always felt like I could communicate clearly in writing and our industry is just devoid of thought leadership. And I started writing stuff that was a little controversial, a little different you know, people really resonated, you know, with people in our business was strong and I realized it really set us apart within our industry. And then I kind of followed the cam. Harold was a coach and, and Tucker and we, you know, there was no industry book. So we said, look, we’re going to, we’re going to write the definitive book about our industry and how to use it and, and really lean into that. And then along the way, like how we were growing our business, in those words that you were saying around culture and stuff, I, I B sort of became passionate about how we were.

I thought we had figured out some things and leadership and culture and, and, and started to then take that writing and share it outside. And, and, and, you know, in articles, getting, getting, you know, byline articles, getting columns, you know, related to the books. And then as you mentioned, the big thing that sort of blew up really unintentionally was a note that I just started sending to my team every week that was getting, that was just about getting better. Just about sort of some of the core things I believed in and pushing them to this notion of build their capacity. And basically it started getting shared outside the company to the point where I then opened it up. And when I opened it up, all these people were interested in it and it, and it kind of exploded and then turned into two books later on. So it w it wasn’t an, it, it wasn’t

When you say, when you say industry, you’re talking about like marketing agencies,

Partner, marketing, affiliate marketing, like really about like the opportunity within our industry. But, but we always were trying to do our industry better, but part of the way we did that was build a company that focused on development and leadership and people. And so it became almost these two separate trees of topic. And, you know, one of the things that I always say, I, because we work in affiliate marketing, I see people write a lot of stuff to try to make money. Right. I, I never, for me Friday, I actually got a lot of questions. I, I, I never was clear how it was going to help my business, whether it was going to make any money. I was getting really great feedback from people. And it made me the next week to say, how can I deliver value to this audience that, that, cause I’m making a difference for them and not worry about what I was going to get out of it. And, and probably the best thing I ever did for myself or my business or otherwise, but because, but I didn’t have a goal other than to add value to, to the readers every week.

How, how long did it take you? Like, so at you’re at over a hundred thousand subscribers on this, this week?

Yeah. Probably reaches about 200 now across LinkedIn and a variety of channels each week across in about 60 countries.

Okay. And, and how long, like when did you start it? Like how long has it taken you to ramp to five

Of years? And I think like anything I’ve heard, you’ve probably heard James clear, like we were, writing’s like, it rewards the long game. Like I think, you know, it it’s a hockey stick of both SEO and stuff, getting out, you know, it was probably, you know, w w you know, year three to four, I probably added more people than year, you know, w one to three. So this is the thing, whenever I see anyone looking for the outcome before they put in the work, I kind of think you have to put in the work and then hopefully hope for the outcome. I, I, I’ve never found a hack to, to doing that.

Yeah. I love that. You know, the hack thing is like, sure, little tips and tricks here are always good, but I’ve felt the same way. It’s like, no one, no one’s significant ever hacked their way there. It was value over the, over the long haul. Now, when did so writing for like Forbes and entrepreneur and E Inc, right. Those are things that I think really helped with credibility and all that. And also search engine optimization, and also just reach, like, there’s just flat out people who will find you there that would never find your own blog. So how do you, how did you get that? And when did you add that to the mix and like, how do you even go about getting one of those

Posts? Yeah. You know, a lot of times a book or something, or it’s just a reason to connect with people. And, and I think I had done some work with John Hall and you probably know him in his team, and I think they were able to help me. I was actually at a conference when I met the guy he had been on Friday for, we talked for an hour and he, he handled some of the Forbes columns, was able to get me that column. And then it was when I launched I think my elevate book, that part of the outreach and some of the PR connected with the leadership writers, they saw what I was writing about offered, offered a column, and then, you know, it’s like anything, once you have one or two, it’s much easier to go to the third and say, you know, I, I, I do X and Y I think one of the things that, that the mistakes that I made I’ve learned is, is I think sometimes you just try to create too much new stuff.

Right. I, I could adapt the Friday forward into an Inc article and do different angle. I learned to take the articles and put them on medium and put them on LinkedIn. And I really, in the last year or two, try to, you know, cause some of the commitments on those things that used to be pretty high, you know, in quantity to write weekly and, and, and for free, which is so, so it’s a lot to do. So I focused on syndication more. I focused on bringing something back from years ago and redoing it again and reaching a new audience. There’s always the desire, something new and shiny, but I, I I’ll bring back like one of my tried and true, you know, new York’s posts you know, into, into one of my things every two years. And I will do just as well or better than the first time.

So, yeah. Would you mind sharing with us a little bit about like, do you have a system for how you sequence that? And then also like, you know, are you, I know you’re saying now that you’ll repurpose on more like social, like you’ll,

Unless something like the LinkedIn or medium, right. You can bring stuff back as much as you want.

Now, were you having to write unique articles for each of these Forbes and entrepreneur and Inc like, like, were those when you first started, were those all new, new proprietary? Like, you’re only see this post here.

Yeah. Those have to be new, but then after two weeks you can take them to LinkedIn. You can take them to medium, you can take them to other places. Right. And they’re even in other places that will syndicate them. So you write new for them. But I would also have something where Friday Ford was a certain storytelling format, but I could take just the core essence of that and make a eight ink article about it. That was different, but on the same topic. Right. So just in terms of trying to leverage, and a lot of times, I know I knew the topic resonated, right. But, but Friday Ford is a storytelling and Forbes and anchor like a one, two, three, so you need to take it. And, you know, you’ve got to shift the format a little bit, but yeah, I, I think there are a couple of places, right. That require that it be new, but, but I was in the LinkedIn pulse program earlier, early you know, I have a 305,000 followers on the newsletter system there. I think it’s the number two newsletter. And so obviously that built a little flywheel around, you know, publishing on LinkedIn is as well.

Hm. Hm. Yeah. I, I love that. So, so what is your rhythm now? Like how frequently do you think I have to write a new article? Is it still once a week for Friday forward and then everything kind of emanates from that or, yeah.

I slowed down the new creation, so I read it on Friday forward. I syndicated on LinkedIn. I will then, you know, if I’m doing an article for ink or Forbes that is timely or something I want to write about I’ll then do that. I’ll wait the two weeks and I’ll, I’ll put it somewhere else as well. But I I’ve actually slowed down the new because it, it became, it became a lot. And, and, and that was easy to do actually, because it got complicated last year to write about things at certain times, just from April to may, to June you just certain topics you couldn’t write about. And, you know, didn’t want to write about COVID stories every, every week. So also, you know, you start looking at the data and, and, and what works and where do you see impact and where do you see, you know, the flip side of this sometimes is you can get caught up with, you might have a column somewhere or whatever, and it does nothing for you. Right? You got to kind of look after a year to say, look for the hundred hours I put into this. Should I have put them out? Where should I have created a course or written a book or, or otherwise. So I, I’ve tried to really look at the data and what worked and where are people hearing me from it. And I’m always sort of calling something every time I add something. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, that’s true about anything, right. You could spend that time creating Tik TOK videos, or creating YouTube videos or creating whatever. But so at your peak, would you say you were writing like three new articles a week, five new articles a week,

But two, three a week. And it was, it was a lot of work. How long

Did that go on for

At least a year or two.

Okay. So, so you’re doing like two at the peak. You’re doing two to three new articles a week. And how for how long were you writing at that frequency?

I think about 12 to 18 months just to see if it made a difference, but I, but I had sort of an assembly line. Like I had the ideas, I do the drafts. I have some really good editors behind me and we’d have kind of a bunch in, in, in motion. Like I can write really quickly, but editing takes me forever. So that’s something I have people that can edit really fast. So I, you know, you need, you need a system, I think, behind that in order to do something like that.

So, yeah. So I agree. So the ideas thing is interesting cause I, I have yeah, I basically write on for kind of four topics, all influence. I think of my areas just influence, but I’ve got four different topics in each of them. I have a sheet with ideas for posts in each of those categories. How do you do your drafts? Do you sit in front of a computer and like, just type it, do you talk it out? Do you shoot a video and then transcribe it like

I I’ve had two getters I’ve worked with for years that, you know, at this point, understand me and my race. I have actually tried everything except for the video I’ve done recording and memos. I will do like a really deep outline where I’ll write a couple of the things and I’ll say, what we need right here is a study or a reference to this point, you know? And then I have some they’ll research it and grab it for me. So I I’ve tried a bunch of different ways, honestly, as long as you’re comfortable with it, like, like for me to like, I can get it done fast, it’s messy as typos, but I’ll just sort of say, look here, I, I got this all out. This is a thing. Can you just, can you clean it up? You know, for me

Are these editors like contractors? Are they staff or are they PR like, were they provided by somebody like else or did you just like find it person?

Well, I I’ve used outside. I think it takes three to six months to get to somewhere where like someone’s editing or stuff and they think it’s you, I I’ve worked with outside, but these were staff. So we had a head of content for our business. And then eventually I brought someone on who handled a lot of my personal stuff and writing, you know, it was a big part of that. So I think there’s two people I’ve reached that level too. I always, I always joke with her if he could write something and send it back to me and I would think I wrote it because one of the things that I, that I do when I’m getting to work with that editor is I make a lot of comments around their edits. So like, one of my things is I never used things. I have a thing about sort of super motives, like always or never things that big can be disproven. So if they ever edit without word, I will say, I wouldn’t use this word. Right. Like I I’ll never use always. I don’t use never. So I, I actually will try to comment to them and give them some of my like isms so that as we edit, you know, it gets, it gets better.

Yeah. We’ve we do a similar thing. Like we’ve been doing something very similar with videos where, you know, a video editor will be editing and then it’s like, I’ll make a comment specific to something I want them to change, but then I’ll make a second comment that says why this is, and then we add it to a style guide that it’s like a list of just if you’re going to edit for me, these things should always be there. I mean, that’s interesting, just like the super-light sieves and you go, don’t ever send me something with a superlative in it. If it, if you are, then that means

Something that says never, never

Send me something

Explained. I explained it to, I said, because again, in my writing, I think if, if, if you’re trying to get to the reader and you say this never happens, and if someone can think of an example where it happens, then you’re sort of discredited. Right. So I it’s, I’m conscious to never, never say that. Okay.

So, so, so that you have this process, you kind of idea that you just sort of like puke it out there in whatever format, and then you let the editors do it. And you’re just kind of like always running that production cycle. Why that’s what you did for like 12 to 18 months. Yeah.

We have one in early, early development, middle development, like late development. Right. And they’d be coming back and forth.

Yeah. But if you do 12, I mean, if you’re doing three articles a week, let’s just say, so that means you’re doing, you’re doing 12 a month. You do that for 12 months, you got 144 articles. Then basically from that point, you can repurpose and backlog again, switch things around and brush it up. And now you’ve got a stable plus anything.

And then you go to write a book or something eventually, and you’d realize that four or five of those articles are key concepts in the chapters of your book. In fact, I’m, I’m doing that for my next book. Now I did the outline and I was like, I’ve talked about this concept before I’ve talked about this concept before. So, so we’ll be able to pull in some of that stuff.

Yeah. Plus the data, like what you’re saying is going on the readers are really responding to this. It’s like this needs to be in the book and know, you know, the book’s going to be a hit before you publish it because you already have the data out there of going, I know people love this. Right.

I know they love this unless you blow the title, which is, you know what, I learned a lot from you on that, on that map.

Yeah. That’s pain. That is, that is the pain. I mean, it’s funny because procrastinating on purpose, that that is a lot of what ended up in those, that book was they were, those articles appeared on my blog and there, you know, like the 30 X role is this, the section that I wrote and it’s like, I never wondered if my Ted talk was going to be a hit because there, it had all been proven before, you know, we, we messed up the title, which was super painful, but

And by, and by the way, in writing and in articles and Inc and Forbes push this, the title might matter five times more than what you write. So you get, you spend a lot of time on the title. And I saw this in ink, it’s a B test, every title. And you cannot guess sometimes which title will do better. But what they did was they would send out the top 10 articles every month. And there’s this travel guy and he’s number one, two, three every month. And it’s his formula. It’s just really clear. So this is where you have to use, you know, Ben, Hardy’s big on this. You gotta use data. And I know for people who are really good writers and purists, they don’t like getting into the sort of title and they think it’s clickbait. But I always say to people do want, you could write the same article and 10 times the amount of people will read it. Everything’s going by people really quickly. And they need a reason to read that article that day, that hour, because once it passes, they’re not going back to it.

Yeah. So let’s talk about that because you know, you’re referencing the story that I shared with you all about titles and we’ve, you know, my second book, which is painful, which we share a lot of our, like a lot of our members know that story, but let’s talk about titles. Like, is there anything that you can share that you go, man, this, this works like, these are general rule of thumbs, actually. Can you tell us what should we always do? And never do as it relates to our titles.

Look, I think you got to get uncomfortable with making it a little sensational. If I look at all, every time they send out the top lists, you know, the formula tended to be, you referenced a well-known company or name or something. And you said, this is the top reason or what they do, or the single thing. Like you see that a lot. But every time I get a list of the top performing articles, those titles are already on top of it. So this is, you know, this is the one thing Michael Jordan did to get ready for games. And here’s how it can help you like those title or, or those titles work. It’s coming by your desk. You’re like, Oh, what’s the one thing. And you’re not going to get to the one thing until halfway down. Now, I, I don’t consider that clickbait at all.

I consider clickbait when, what you get them into the article is not what the article is about or not. And it’s a bait and switch switch. Yeah. I don’t consider a clickbait like something that’s a little sexy in terms of, you know, bringing someone to the topic. But I, but when I get the list and again, if you’re ever an ink, it’s fascinating. They send out the top performers, this travel guy every month, it’s like, you won’t believe the one policy change Delta just made their customers love it. Right? His title is always something like that. Or United airlines just made this huge blunder and their customers revolted. And, and you know what, I even go through that list. I’m like, what was it? I wanna, I wanna, I wanna learn what it was. So it’s very clear that there’s some formulas that, that work.

So, you know, I really resonate with this though, because it’s like, I hate feeling like I’m pandering. Right? Like I hate feel like I’m just, you know, it’s, it’s like, I don’t want to,

You’re like, I wrote a good article. I wrote it

And cheap what feels like cheap wrapping paper.

Correct. But when somebody, if you get to the why someone said, what’s the point, I want people to read the article. Cause I think it’s, I think it’s good. It’s not true. And I think it can help them. Well, if you can tell me that one approach, we’ll get 10 times the people reading it than the other, then, then I can get comfortable with, you know, why I want to do that warm. As I, as I said to my editor, sometimes when we’re debating titles, this, this is something that someone at my company said to me, like warm cup of tea, titles, like don’t work. They just don’t things that sound like, you know, could check it out. Like, so-so that travel thing, right? The Delta airlines made this policy and their customers freaked out. You know, if I said like, you know, this is why it’s never good for an airline to change, you know, its policies on its customers without notice. Like, it’s kind of like the warm cup of tea Virgin. I got, I got, I see it. Come on. I don’t really need to read that. It, it is, it is interesting. Yeah.

If it’s not a warm cup of tea, what is it like, what’s the, what would you say it is? Is it like the extreme or the like, like what

I think that formula is like is ER urgent and simplicity, right? That’s what that formula is. Like. You want to it’s news. You want to read it now and by the way, there’s a, there’s a quick, not a quick, but there’s a simple takeaway for you. It’s always better to have the one thing than the seven things right here are the seven keys to success in life versus bill Gates said, this is the one thing that made him successful in life. Like which one are you more likely to read quickly or think you’re going to read quickly because you’re just curious. You might just be like, well, what’s that bill Gates? One thing I can look at that quickly, but then I get pulled into the article.

Hmm. Yeah. So you’re saying quality article, be okay with a little sensationalism or you’re just saying that’s what works, which I agree with. It’s like, whether you like it or not, that is what is, that is what people respond.

Sorry. I had to, I had to get comfortable with it because the data is clear and you’re in this, you know, if you ever watched a 16 year old these days, their phone, you have three seconds to like, you know, get someone’s attention as they’re going through. I mean, you know this from books, I always say to you with books, you can have a great launch and a book, or you can have a great launch and a great book. You can, you can pump a crappy book up at launch and then it will kind of crash afterwards, right? Or, or if you have great content or like how L rod, it’s not about the launch, it’ll come back. But if you have really great book, you will do better. If you have a great launch and you get the flywheel going, right. And it’s it’s, you shouldn’t feel bad about trying to sell your great book. If you wrote a piece of crap, you know, infomercial bug, then you might feel a little dirty about trying, you know, it up in the book. So this is predicated on that you wrote a good and meaningful article that has value to people.

Huh. So as long as it’s good and meaningful, then wrapping it in a trashy title is no problem, no biggie.

Again, you said it best. You can not do it, but, but the data will show that you’ll get maybe a third of the amount of people on it. And then the algorithmic world, you know, the more people that click and read it earlier, the more it gets shown

It’s it is such a heart it’s Russia, but it’s the same thing, right? It’s like, what good is if I have the cure for cancer, what good is it? If nobody knows that I haven’t. Right. But I feel they’re there. It’s like an artist struggle. You know, this is like a, this is like an art.

I struggle with it. And then the data became so clear to me that I became released.

What’s what convinced you. You’re just like, it doesn’t matter just that the data tells this is clear. It’s a strategic decision. I just got to make.

Yeah. I want people to read my content and get value from it. So if the title, it makes them more likely to read it, then I’m going to do that. As long as I don’t, I, again, I’m not, I don’t feel like I’m beading and switching them or trying to go with them into something. I think that’s where it gets a bad name. You know, ones that get you into these 25 clicks or whatever, but just talking about an article on ink, that’s been edited. Like it’s not, it’s not selling you, you know, potion or anything. Like it’s, it’s just content for someone to read.

Yeah. Well, I I like this. This is good stuff. I mean, this is, thank you so much for just kind of sharing, you know, like your, your process, Bob, where do you want people to go? If they want to connect with you or learn more about you and kind of like follow, follow up with your work?

I sure I I’ve got ever everything finally integrated which I’m sure you’ll appreciate at Robert glazer.com. So you can get the podcast Friday forward books courses, all this stuff is, is right on that page. It’s a GLA Z E r.com.

That is awesome. Well, you won’t get warm cup of tea titles. You won’t, you won’t get super Latinx, but you will get awesome insight and practical stuff. This has been so great, man. I really appreciate you opening up to let us see a little bit behind, behind the curtain of how you’ve been using the written word to just really build and grow your personal brand.

Great. Thanks for having me. It was great discussion.

Ep 147: Exactly What to Say to Sell High Dollar Offers with Phil M Jones | Recap Episode

We are back with a recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. Talking about one of my favorite things to talk about, selling. One of the reasons I love to talk about selling is because everybody does it wrong. They either don’t do it, or they do it wrong. And I have some very pointed philosophies about the right way in the wrong way to sell. And I have to say, you know, this, this interview with Phil M Jones, who I’ve never interviewed before. I was so happy about we met, I don’t know, you know, several months ago at this point, but we haven’t been longtime friends. I’ve heard about him. And there’s a lot of stuff that is taught on the profession and the art of selling that I flat out disagree with that I don’t like that I, I don’t subscribe to and that I don’t follow.

And that AAJ doesn’t believe in that we don’t deploy with our team. I think we sell in a very non-traditional way. I would, I would call it a much more modern way than how most people sell, which is just, you know, it’s not about all the tactics and the pressure and the, you know, just pressure. Let’s just call it, leave it at that. And so getting to talk with Phil was great because I was so impressed at how much we aligned philosophically on a topic that a lot of times just don’t align with people on. And so anyways, it’s a fantastic interview of, of course he has that wonderful accent to listen to, and you know, make sure that you, you go back and listen to it, but I want to give you my, my highlights is always getting to play the role of student here, listening from Phil who’s, you know, done has helped so many people.

And, and he’s got a great thing going with exactly what to say. And I think a lot of these things were reinforcements for me because I don’t really talk sales that much anymore. Not, not like direct tactical, like one-on-one selling, but that was, that was where my upbringing came from. I mean, that was how I started in business. I mean, I, I started going door to door. I mean, it doesn’t get much more like old school hardcore selling than that. I mean, in terms of dealing with the rejection and, and whatnot. And so I love this, and it’s been a long time since I’ve, I’ve talked about this and, you know, we have an event coming up you know, a new curriculum that we’re developing this year that is on sales specifically in selling high dollar offers, because we’re realizing that gosh, all of our personal brand, you know, clients need this help of, of what to say and, and how to have a one-on-one conversation that leads to a credit card.

And so we’re diving into this more, although we’ve left it alone for, you know, the last few years. And so it was great, you know, to, to do this with Phil and, and just walk you through my three, my three big takeaways, obviously you may have noticed AJ is not here today. So I’m filling in rolling, rolling solo. You got the, you know, I’m your, I’m your guy for today, which is a shame by the way, because AJ flat out is the single greatest salesperson that I have ever met. She is extraordinary. And she is so client-centric and, and so service centric and, and is just the epitome. I think of all things of what a great professional sales person should look like. And she outsold all of the top salespeople that I’ve ever known and ever been around. And so at some point we’ll have to get AJ back here to do an episode.

Maybe we’ll do a special episode on selling or maybe I’ll just interview her, her because it’s, it’s, she’s incredible. Well, but anyways, to break down the takeaways from Phil M Jones and who I really enjoyed learning from here they are. So number one and all of these, by the way, all of these are mental. And that’s what I have found this to be true about selling in general, the reason that people struggle with sales is not because of technical training. It is because of mental conditioning, their mind doesn’t think of it, about selling in the right way. And all three of these takeaways for me, kind of fall in suit with that. So, number one, and this is a mindset thing that you got to realize if, if you’re the sales person, no is not the enemy. Indecision is the enemy.

Somebody telling you no is not a bad thing. No means it’s not a fit. No means we don’t have a match. No means not right now. No means this, this, this, isn’t what I’m looking for. All of those things allow you to move forward in a powerful way to know what to do. Next indecision is the enemy in decision is what keeps us stuck in decision is unacceptable. Both for you and get this for your prospect, right? If somebody tells me no, I can move on. But if someone tells me, maybe I am stuck, I am not moving forward. Like I can’t move on. And, and I, you know, I, I can’t move. I can’t move onto something else. I am literally just stuck until they make a decision, which means I’m playing cat and mouse. I’m chasing them down. Right. And so many salespeople are afraid of the word, know that we do everything that we can to avoid the word.

No. And instead we set ourselves up for maybe. And what I would encourage you to do is set yourself up to hear no so that you don’t hear maybe a yes is good. Like a, yes is great. A yes is what we’re going for. Yes. This is what we want, but at no is fine. I know it’s okay. I know it’s not bad. I know is not the enemy, but in decision, Ooh, indecision is no way. No indecision is not good. Indecision is not acceptable because not only does it keep you as the sales person stuck, right. I don’t know whether to like celebrate and get this client activated or to, to, you know, close up shop and move on and go find someone else I’m like stuck in this limbo. I can’t move forward, but it’s not just about you. It’s and more importantly, it’s not about you.

It’s about them. It is a disservice to allow someone to tell you, maybe it is a disservice to them. Why? Because they can’t move forward either. Right? Like if they tell you, yes, it’s like, great. Let’s do this, right. If like, you know, just to use us as our company, brand builders group, as an example, since that’s a frame of reference, right? Like if someone says, I am ready for personal, I want to take my personal brand to the next level. I’m ready to grow. I’m ready to monetize. I’m ready to like build my speaking career, launch my book, you know, whatever, become a bestseller. Right? My Ted talk, like build out my digital marketing system and they go, you know what? Brand builders, I like you, I believe in you, I’m on board. Let’s do this then. Great. They can move forward. We can move forward.

That’s exciting if they say no, right. If they go, Hey, you know what? I don’t think you’re the right firm for me. Okay. No problem. You know what this, you know, I’m not going to, I’m just not going to move forward with my personal brand at this time, period. Okay. No problem. You know what? I’ve decided to do some, do something else fine. But if they say, you know what, let me think about it. That is terrible because that means they’re stuck. They’re not moving forward. They’re there. They’re not moving forward with us getting into action mode. And like, let’s do this. Let’s go. Or they’re not moving forward with someone else. It’s like their dream isn’t moving forward. Their dream is stagnant. Their dream is stuck because you have allowed them. The indulgence of that’s no good your job. And then this is, so then I’ll say this is a second tech.

So the first takeaway is realizing no is not the enemy, right? No. Is an inevitable byproduct of getting to yes, no happens because not everyone is a perfect fit for what you do. No is a necessary part of, of the process. But, but maybe is no good. We don’t want maybe yes, yes is great. No is fine. Maybe not good. Keeps them stuck. Keeps you stuck. Which leads me to the second big takeaway from that chat with Phil, which is just the way that you think about what you do is sales. If you, and here’s what it is, I’ll give you the takeaway selling is about helping people make smart decisions. That’s the way that that’s the way that Phil said it. Helping people make smart decisions. I would just say selling is about helping people make the right decision for themselves, not for you, but either way.

It’s about helping people make decisions. Why? Because people need help making decisions. That’s why like people struggle with procrastination. That’s why I wrote my take the stairs book. Like procrastination is something that we all struggle with and, and take the stairs was all about helping people overcome it. Because even in our own life, we naturally default to inaction. I mean, we live that the escalator mentality is pervasive it by subconscious. It happens automatically. We default to inaction. So in order to help someone change their life in order to help someone get something different in order for somebody’s life, to be better than it was, they’re better tomorrow than it was yesterday. There has to be some change in action. And my job as a salesperson is not to take something that they don’t want and use magical words to convince them they should get it.

That’s not ethical persuasion. We believe in ethical persuasion that isn’t ethical, taking some convincing somebody to get something that they don’t want, or they don’t need is unethical. That is taking advantage of them. That is using the psychology of influence. It’s using the principles of persuasion in a negative way. We are not on board with that. I don’t care how much commission you make from it. We’re not a fan. We’re not on board. And our sales team knows they better not sell anything to somebody that isn’t a fit for us because that’s just not what we believe in. But we do believe that people need help making decisions. They need help navigating uncertainty to arrive at a place about what is good for them. And sometimes that means they, you need to look them right between the eye and you need to tell them to their face.

You should buy this because it’s the right decision for them. Not for you. It’s all about them. It is helping them in a standing in service of them, standing in a place of helping them achieve their goals, their best interests. That is what ethical persuasion is all about. That is what we believe in. But, but know this. It’s not an excuse for you to WiSci out as a salesperson. All right. Sometimes it means it. Sometimes it does mean pushing them a little bit and saying, this is a good thing for you. You’re saying you want this, right? You’re saying you have a dream of inspiring millions of people. You’re saying that you want to make money to have a lifestyle business, teaching what you know, and doing what you love. You’re saying that you believe that we have answers for it. Then you’re telling me that you have the money. Let’s do this. Let’s go. You need to do this. That’s different than, than, than talking them into something that they don’t want, but people need help making decisions.

I would say that as a professional salesperson, your job isn’t to be a pro a smooth talker. Your job is to be an expert listener. And it is to help people figure out what do they want? What do they need? Where are they? What’s the gap between where they are and where they’re trying to go and help them make a good decision. And if that decision does not include you or your product or your service, you should be okay with that use, you should be willing and be okay with people telling you no. And in fact, you should not want the wrong people to tell you, yes, you should not hope for the peop the people who aren’t the right fit to give you money, because that doesn’t help you. What you need is the people who are the right fit to give you money, because they will take action.

They will do the thing that you have because it’s an alignment with what they need. And so they will get results and they will, and it will work and they will be grateful and they will be happy. And they will refer you people. What you don’t want is just a bunch of people you took advantage of because you talked them into it. That’s not what you want. Even though in the short term, it’s like that pays you money. That’s not really what you want. That’s not how you build lasting reputation. So what you’re looking for here is mutually agreeable outcomes, which is, you know, I think that’s the term that Phil used mutually agreeable outcomes. And I hundred percent agree. That is what we’re after now. Sometimes people, you know, sales, like sometimes the customer will talk you into doing stuff you don’t do.

We’re not a fan of that either, just because we can do it doesn’t mean we should, like, we’re not a fan of selling a custom solution to every single person. Right? We have some offerings and it’s like, if our offering isn’t a fit, even though you need our expertise, if it, if you want it in some other way, like we don’t do it. Then, you know, like brand builders, we do one-on-one coaching. Like that’s like our lane, we do it. You know, we have our events, which, but those are a part of one-on-one coaching. And even at our events, our events are so small because we put people in round table groups, they get one-on-one coaching at, in their round table groups. So like, one-on-one is what makes us as a part of what makes us unique. So, you know, there is a range of acceptability of which we will kind of bend and flex, but at some point it’s like, you offer, you have what you have.

And people either are a fit for that, or they are not. And if they’re not, you gotta be okay with that. But it’s mutually agreeable outcomes, right? What works for you as the provider, right? Like this is what you have to offer. And then it’s like, what does the client need? If that’s a match, we have a win. If it’s not a match, then it’s disjointed. It’s disconnected on either side and it should be a no, right? Like we don’t believe that you should try to sell every single person you talk to necessarily. We believe that you’re looking for the right fit. You’re looking for the right match. Because just because you can sell them, if you know, on the back end, what you deliver, isn’t what they need. Like, you’re, you’re gonna win in the short term, but you’re going to lose in the long-term.

So help people make smart decisions. We’re looking for mutually agreeable outcomes. It’s, it’s more like we’re looking for a match, right? It’s almost like dating. It’s like, we’re looking for compatibility more than we’re looking for manipulation or conviction convincing. Or, you know, even though we talk about like with digital marketing, we’re always talking about conversion. That still should be a win-win. It’s not about magically taking somebody who should be a no and turning them to the, yes. We don’t consider that a victory. What we consider a victory, right? It’s not a win, lose thing. If sales is a win lose, like I beat you. I got you. Right. That is not what we believe in that is not ethical. Persuasion. Sales should be a win-win thing. It’s right. And not even that, it’s really just a win. If it’s a win for the customer, it’s a win.

Right. But there’s no way the customer ever loses. And then that’s a win. What, what is the right thing as what is the best thing for them? If that happens to include us, then that is awesome, right? Like we’re of course we’re excited about that. But our job is not to coerce people. Our job is to serve people. Our job is to help them make decisions. And if you can flip that switch in your brain, you won’t have call reluctance. You won’t have fear. There is no fear when the mission to serve is clear. You only feel fear when you feel pressure to convince somebody of something. Well, you know, if I have to convince you of something against your will, that’s combative. That is confrontational. That is conflict. Yeah. There’s, there’s pressure there. But if all I have to do is serve you. Right.

And it’s like, I’m bringing you food. And it’s like, do you like it? Yes or no. If so, here it is. If not, no, you don’t. It’s like, there’s no personal rejection in that. It’s just service. Like that is a big, an important switch. And then the third takeaway, which if you didn’t, you got to listen to that interview with Phil all the way to the end, because at the end we got into like some very specifics about marketing. Like you know, we’re talking about keynotes specifically. And I mean, to, to his, to his brand, he gave some really great one-liners of exactly what to say and, you know, selling yourself as a speaker. So this would apply. I think this was what we were talking about selling high-dollar keynotes, right? Because Phil and I are both in a, in a pretty top tier keynote fee range, but this would apply to selling a high dollar coaching program, selling high dollar consulting, selling any high dollar offer, selling high dollar or you know, medical services, right?

Like any, any high dollar offer. And, and here’s what, here’s what he said. He said, remember when you’re selling a speech, because that was the context, it’s not just about selling your content. It is your content plus their circumstances. And I would probably modify that ever so slightly. I would just say, it’s your content applied to their circumstances, right? Like that’s a part of what the artful selling is specifically with it. Anything that’s like information marketing related or thought leadership related or con you know, consultancy related is it’s not just, Hey, I’m, I’m an expert on blank. It’s, you’re struggling with this. And here’s how I think my expertise would apply. It’s more like we’re working together to, as a team, to help in a, in a partnership to help me apply, you know, what I’m doing to your situation, to help your people again, it’s, it’s like we’re working together for your benefit.

That’s what selling is. It’s not me convincing you, that you need what I have. It’s it’s me working with you to figure out, can we take what I have and make your life better? That’s the difference that is ethical persuasion. And I would say that is professional persuasion. Like that is what the best elite sales performers on the planet do because they get so many referrals and they have so much reputation. Like you become a top producer, not just by being a great producer for one conversation or one year. It happens over time because you develop a reputation and a confidence and an air for knowing like, I know who should buy and who shouldn’t. And I am a consumer, like I am consultant. I’m trusted. I have expertise. Not only in what I do, but expertise in helping people determine about whether or not I’m the right fit for them.

And that takes time. So it’s your content, your expertise applied to their circumstances, right? To their it’s, to their goals, to their dreams, to their future. It’s not about you. It’s all about them. That is what ethical persuasion is all about. And that is how you take the pressure off yourself. There is no fear when the mission to serve is clear. So next time you’re in a high dollar selling situation. Make sure you’re not thinking about what you want and your commission. And are you saying the right thing? Just focus on service. That’s all we’ve got today for the into influential, personal brand podcast recap. We’ll catch you next time. Stay tuned.

Ep 146: Exactly What to Say to Sell High Dollar Offers with Phil M Jones

Speaker 1: (00:07)

Hey brand builder Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that, Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming. Ufrom anything that we do with this is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit. Call brand builders, group.com/summit. Call. Hope to talk to you soon on with the show.

RV: (01:04)

Sales is something that I love. It’s something that I spent my life doing knocking on doors as a teenager in direct sales, of course my mom was in direct sales and the first company, if you don’t already know this, the company that AIJ and I built was an eight figure sales coaching company. We coach salespeople how to sell after 2018, when we left that business, we’re no longer in the sales training business. And over the last couple of years, I have started following a gentlemen that you’re about to meet named Phil M Jones. Phil is one of my favorite experts in the world of sales in the world right now. He is the author of several different books, but the three kind of, I guess, flagship books are called exactly what to say exactly how to sell and exactly where to start.

RV: (02:05)

He has sold close to a million over over 750,000 copies of these books. And so he serves as both a resident expert on building a personal brand, and we’re going to talk to him about how has he built his own brand and sold so many books. But also we’re going to apply his expertise to the process of how to sell for personal brands. Because Phil sells consulting, he sells keynotes and he teaches organizations like Microsoft, Virgin, Atlantic pampered, chef DHL Volkswagen, ADT, Isogenics he teaches companies like that and those people how to sell. And so since we became friends recently, I was like, buddy, I need to get some free sales training for all of our peeps on the podcast. And he agreed. So welcome to the show, Phil.

PMJ: (02:59)

Hey, it’s a pleasure To be here, always good to chat. And hopefully we can share some things today that are useful to our listeners.

RV: (03:05)

Yeah, buddy. You know, I I know that you and I, you, we’ve only, we’ve only really, I think had one encounter where you and I are in this kind of non-paid mastermind of off a group of authors. And that’s where he mad. Of course we share Jay Baer as a mentor. I think he’s a mentor to both of us in a very dear friend, but you know, at brand builders, our audience is what we call mission-driven messengers. So we’re after people who are more about making impact you know, it’s not that they don’t want to make money, but what I’m, what I love about the stuff that you teach is it feels like it’s less ego. It’s less, it’s not about lies. It’s not about manipulation. So how do you think of sales? Like what, like when you think of just the word selling, how would you describe it? What do you think about it? Cause obviously your philosophies are resonating deeply with the world in terms of the way you think of selling.

PMJ: (04:10)

Okay. So how do I think about selling? Well, Phil Jones dictionary definition of what selling is, is, is firstly earning the right to make a recommendation. So, but break that down real simple. And it means you should never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever suggest to anybody that they should buy anything. Unless you can say these words first and the word you should look to say, first of the words, because of the fact that you said, because of the fact that you said blank, blank, and blank, then for those reasons, my recommendation would be blank, blank, and blank. Like that’s how you earn the right to make a recommendation. If you do the work before the work, it’s putting yourself in the position that this is the ultimate solution to other things I think about from a sales point of view.

RV: (04:52)

So just on that, that, that, that, to that, to me, that tees up listening, right? Like in order for me to be able to say, because of the fact that you said it means that I must have first asked questions, correct?

PMJ: (05:06)

The answer to suggesting that if you have not done the work to get into a position where you can say that, then you haven’t done the sales job, right. Too many people think it’s about embellishing, a product or service with features and benefits. Hoping one of them might stick. What you’re better to be able to do is to uncover true needs analysis, to see if there’s a genuine fit and then move yourself into a marketplace at one, there’s another ingredient though, that goes into being great on the ethical side of sales. And it’s understanding your job description and your job description is really one of being a professional mind to make her other people think no is the enemy of yes. Yet in the world of sales, indecision is the enemy not, no is people stuck in maybe. And if you can find ways of being able to actually move more of the right people who were stuck in, maybe choose you as opposed to somebody like you, or to choose you as opposed to choosing to do nothing. Then that’s where you get the ability to be able to fast track your success. So we are either decision catalysts or professional mind maker offers.

RV: (06:12)

I love that. I mean, that’s a total reframing of just what the enemy is and the real part part, you know, that reminds me of like, you know, so my first book take the stairs. People often ask, well, you know, which, which was overcoming the psychology of procrastination and helping people be disciplined in all areas of their life. And, and people said, what’s the connection of that between sales? Like, why do you have this company about the teacher’s sales training in your book is about helping people be more disciplined to take, because I said, well, it’s the same problem of inaction. It’s getting someone to take action. And in a sales conversation, I love that. It’s like, it’s not that they’ll tell you no, it’s that they won’t tell you anything. They won’t make a decision. They just, you live stuck in this world of maybe which takes a lot of pressure off of you as a sales person. I feel like, like, if, if, if, if knows the enemy, it feels like in order for me to win, I have to get them to say yes, but if they say no, then I lost and they won. But if indecision is the enemy, it’s like, we can both win.

PMJ: (07:16)

Right? And if you can help people make smart decisions that are mutually beneficial over the test of time, like people talk about great salespeople as being able to sell sand to Arabs or ice to Eskimos or any of these cliche sales sayings that have sat around for 30, 40, 50 years is that doesn’t wash in today’s as well. You sell somebody, something they don’t need that they already have in abundance. So they have no useful purpose for off to the transactions involved. And you, my friends are a crook, right? Like that, that is what exists there. What we’re looking to be able to do is to create mutually agreeable outcomes that go on to me, that your promise outperforms, the expectation that was delivered at the time, the promise was made yet still. We want them to choose you for that promise and not somebody else.

RV: (08:03)

So how do you, you know, like I think a lot of people that are listening, there’s a lot of technical training to sales. That’s, you know, we’ve spent a lot of time with teaching people. I mean, and that’s another reason why I love what you do is literally you teach people exactly what to say. There’s a, there’s an extraordinary sales as a technical skillset is a whole world of study. But I find that most of the people who struggle with sales, it’s more of the mental part that they can’t get their mind wrapped around. It’s like, I don’t want to be the slimy, whatever car sales man or, or pushy sales person. So how do we get our mind wrapped around this idea that in order for me to monetize my personal brand, I have to learn how to sell. Even though my initial response is like, eh, I don’t want to be a salesperson. Like, what’s the mental part of that

PMJ: (09:01)

When you’ve been around salespeople, that chunk right, is just type that, that stereotypical sales person I’m going to reverse the interview for a second. And I want you to throw some adjectives at me that would describe a stereotypical salesperson.

RV: (09:16)

Yeah. So pushy, manipulative, dishonest, disingenuous over promising over exaggerative like, I don’t know [inaudible], but if it is a word

PMJ: (09:31)

And we have to make out words to talk about made up people, right? So here we are. In that situation, you are seeing a very clear vivid image of somebody in your home. And everybody listening in is jumping to their version of that same name. What if I now ask you to read your mind and not those that describe a stereotypical salesperson, but instead attic teams that would be used to describe a professional sentence? What words would we got there?

RV: (09:57)

Well, it’s interesting, you know, if, if you took out, if you just said professional, like if you drop the salesperson, if you just said professional on purpose. Okay. So if I thought a professional salesperson, I don’t know. I mean, I, when I think of the word professional, I think of like educated, articulate, intelligent, you know, I think of like doctors, lawyers, CPAs, but, but I still, if you add Salesforce and I still think of like, you know, still a little bit overly persuasive, a little bit, it’s more just like sly and how they’re, you know, kind of influencing. But, but the word professional makes me think of an advisor of like like like I go to my doctor for answers because they’re an expert. That’s how I think of just the word professional by itself.

PMJ: (10:50)

Right. And I think even in that one example, I changed one word and you changed all the words you saw a different picture. When you thought about a professional sales person, first is a stereotypical salesperson. And that’s part of the starting point is we have to decide that we are not the devil like that has to be that we understand that that exists in a percentage of the way that people sell yet. That doesn’t have to be the way in which I’m going to do it now, often in my work, I love that.

RV: (11:21)

There’s only like just changing the way you’re thinking, like changing the way you define yourself to go. Like, yeah, some people are that way, but that’s not what I’m doing.

PMJ: (11:28)

Right. And love that. There’s a simple way of even being able to analyze this is people often ask me, you know, what’s the difference between manipulation and persuasion. Yeah. What’s the difference between the two that difference in my mind is easy. So integrity. Like one is with integrity and one is without integrity, right? That’s the missing dish that exists is you can persuade somebody with integrity and therefore your open to deal with the consequences of that persuasion, you are prepared to run the distance with what happens. The other side of that persuasion. If you manipulate somebody, then chances are that you’re not going to have the integrity to be able to deal with the consequences because you’re too busy now manipulating someone else. So if you have integrity in your actions, being persuasive is what people want in their life. What people want is people to help lead the change.

PMJ: (12:18)

You’ve got thousands of people to plug into your work that are passionate about leading the change. What I would say is if you’re not prepared to dive into the conversation with the lives of the people that you’re looking to help change, then you ain’t that passionate about it. Talk about it. But like, if you care about saving people from burning buildings, I don’t want to read your article about saving people from burning buildings is find a building that’s on fire and go get someone out of it. Right. And that would be my advice back to many professionals. I see in these times that we’ve lived through through 20, 20, early 20, 21 is people are claiming to be an expert on a thing yet their expertise could be remarkably helpful for the world that exists right now. And they’re not bringing that help to the world now being paid for that help. Isn’t a bad thing. It’s actually just the sign of the applause of a job. Well done. It’s another way of keeping score. If you’re good at what you do, people should value that. You’re good at that. Well, that do, to me that they’ll pay you more than the next guy or girl that’s doing that thing.

RV: (13:17)

Yeah. Well, and I, I mean, just that, that, that idea that you were talking about a moment ago hits me really hard, where it’s like, if you really want to take the money out of it, even if you go, if you really exist to solve a problem, you should never be afraid to pick up the phone and talk to somebody one-on-one about that problem. If you, what I heard you say is if you’re not willing to do that, then you’re not that passionate about reading the world of that problem. And you’re not that passionate about helping people that have that problem. That’s powerful.

PMJ: (13:51)

And it’s also true, right? And sometimes that’s all it is. Let’s just hold a mirror up on it. Now what you might find out is that you’re scared. You might find out that you’re lacking skills. You might find out that you’re so fricking confident in 85% of what it is that you do, but you’re missing the 15% over here, which is the skill, which means that all of a sudden, you’re like, I don’t want to come across embarrassed. And that’s what stands a lot of people back from being able to dive into meaningful conversations, because they’re fearful of the unknown, just like everybody is in any environment. Many people who’ve grown to be an expert in something wants to feel like they need to have that expertise in everything later, right? Rookie mode is the best place for us to go for growth here. I also think about a sales conversation though, is if you move it from being a I win or I lose, and instead define a series of levels of success, where level one is I show up and I give a good representation myself and my company level two is I managed to build rapport with this person, find some common interest level three years.

PMJ: (14:57)

I can create a genuine opportunity. I can now only judge my success or failure as if a genuine opportunity presents itself. So my job is to explore. Is there a possibility of a genuine opportunity in this phone call? Ah, I can show up for that as opposed to, can I sell my high ticket coaching program, right.

RV: (15:17)

So yeah, totally different. It’s totally different. And, and, and to me you go like, if you’re there to serve the person’s need, if they don’t have a need, you didn’t lose. If, if, if they had a need and your solution, wasn’t the right fit for them. You didn’t lose. If they had a need and your solution was the right fit and they needed to take action, but you couldn’t get them to take action because they were scared or they had reluctance. Then that’s a loss for both of you.

PMJ: (15:51)

Right. But it’s not happening to you, but you learn getting better from that through reps, not from, you know, thinking about it, worrying about and getting hung up about it, you know, getting up, having to go and then waking up the next morning and thinking, what should I have done differently? And then carrying that experience the next time.

RV: (16:09)

Well, yeah. Reps and education. I mean, that’s, that’s the thing, right? It’s like, once you get past the mental block here and you go, you do need professional sales training. Like you do need to learn this. This is a, a skill and it is an important skill. If you’re an entrepreneur or you’re a personal brand, or you’re a marketer like anybody who wants to build a business, like you have to learn to sell. And there is a skill set there that’s learnable. And if you get like, once you get past that mental block, you go, okay, great. Like I need to get, I need to get some of Phil’s books. I need to go through some brand builders training. I need to go to any anybody else who teaches sales and go teach me what to do. And then you, you just deal with it and you learn it like anything else.

PMJ: (16:53)

Right? And if you learn that you’re developing a skill set to help people make smarter decisions, as opposed to I’m learning a skill skillset to help sell my thing. It shifts the intent. And now all of a sudden, the decision for you to, to work towards mastery in this era of salesmanship, isn’t that your working towards mastery in something that is working for the enemy,

RV: (17:20)

A men. Okay. Love this. So now question for you at the intersection of both building a personal brand and your expertise around sales. So you do a lot of speaking too, right? So like when you sell yourself as a speaker specifically, I’m talking about speaking, do you think that is more of a marketing function or is that more of a sales function to get, to get speaking gigs?

PMJ: (17:58)

And in terms of getting speaking gigs, there were really only two areas that generate speaking gigs more than anything else. One is I’ve seen you speak and I’d like you to speak at my event. The other is somebody has seen you speak and think that you might be a good fit for them, right? Those two things trigger more success in the speaking world than any other thing. Even if that somebody is a Bureau agent or that somebody is, you know, somebody referring you in from elsewhere, the influence of other people’s perspective, the things that you can do from a marketing point of view, to create more of those conversations without you being present the crate, I saw you, I heard you, I listened to you a bull. Like any of those moments that say you might be the fit are all marketing activities that I would have classed as pegs in the board. There are two things to focus on as well though, that when we come to creating speaking opportunities, because not only do you want the speaking opportunities, so you want somebody to have an idea on how valuable you are as a speaker.

RV: (19:02)

Yeah. That’s a whole different conversation. Yeah.

PMJ: (19:08)

150 gigs at one pay a dime, right? Like that’s not necessarily what people are looking for, or do you want high fee paid speaking gigs? If you want high fee paying, speaking gigs or high revenue opportunity platforms to be on to then speak to those, you need pegs in the board. What are the pegs in the bullet that you need that different for different people, but you need a quantity of quality picked in the board. Best selling book might be one of that. You’re known by a lot of people. You have heavy reach on social. You’re seen as a trusted expert by an accredited group full of people. You’ve got reps and experience that mean that you are a trusted provider of these services where the huge rich history of high levels of performance, like these roles in marketing activities that needs to be done.

PMJ: (19:52)

So even getting into the game where the sales part comes into play in a speaking point of view, his final mile, and probably not even final mile or final 10 meters of final mile. And this is the part that I now do the most work on is say that if I’m in the shortlist of two, three, four, five, what do I do to mean that I went in that short list and unfair number of times, and the things that I can do to do that is one provide sales tools that deliver levels of certainty to my customer. And those would be examples like how do I prove that I’m easy to do business with, through the wind, the bid calls, some of that is providing resources. Some of that is just having a support staff that are easy to do business with. Some of it is sending a LinkedIn connection request to everybody.

PMJ: (20:50)

Who’s going to be on the pre event planning. Cool. Before I get to the pre event planning call saying that I’ve done some research, right? These are all things that showcase and I might be different to others. The next part is the conversation itself and the conversation itself when you’ve got an opportunity to win a speaking gig, is that I do believe that nobody can sell you better than yourself. I have an agent, I have bureaus that rep me, et cetera. And I think they’re great for positioning and also great for positioning of fee. But for final mile decision, they’re looking to employ your services. So they want to get an experience of you and what you’re about, and not necessarily your content, but your content plus their circumstances and how you might join those two things together. So here is almost a structured exactly what to say formula for speaking inquiry. Oh

RV: (21:47)

Yeah. Brilliant.

PMJ: (21:49)

So is speaking inquiry comes in, what two things do they use? Typically, every inquiry ask if you, one is, are you available date? And two is, yeah. So how do you respond to that? Well, most people respond with yes. And what’s your budget, right? Which just leaves them into this dark hole of despair, or they blindly shoot a rate card across, across the fingers. Here’s my play by play alternative. Firstly, I’m going to check the date and I’ll check the day and I’ll say, good news is the dates available enough place to hold on our calendar. Right? So there’s a date, things switched down and I’ve also given some level of intent that I’m taking their interest as intent. And my next question is the killer question, which is what is it about me and my work that makes you think I might be a good fit for your event, zip it, and they’ll watch them sell you. Well, we had Rory Vaden last year. He crushed it. I asked him somebody who could build on our ideas that might be out, it’d be a good fit. And he said that you would be his number one pick. I will just happen to my confidence if that’s the thing they say next, or they say love is browsing Google. When we looked at a hundred videos and yours was one of the top three, like, what am I doing? I’m earning context.

PMJ: (23:15)

And that context is valuable to me for two reasons. One is now I can start to see the world through their eyes. Two is my confidence is growing because of the fact that I can see the world through their eyes, all in one question, listening, and then building on the answer that comes next. I still need to position fee. Here’s how you position a valuable fee is you create a problem that is bigger than your price.

RV: (23:38)

And right there, I’m going to pause the interview and say, if you don’t think you’ve got something to learn from Phil M Jones, at this point, you probably are realizing that you do and the power of why we had him on this show. Like, I mean that question, what is it about me and my work that makes you think I’d be a great fit for your event? Main, this is the kind of tactical stuff that he does all day, every day, not just for selling keynotes, but for selling consulting for selling coaching. So your high dollar course, like whatever it is. So Phil, where do people need to go? If they want to find you and follow you and learn more about exactly what they need to say.

PMJ: (24:22)

Well, the first thing I’d point [email protected]. I’d like you to see that we’re a product of the product of putting pegs in the board of proving that we’ve got reps behind everything that has to do with the personal brand. So it comes to the website. I have a nose around and see what you can learn from just seeing how we set our stall out. If you want to connect further, you’ll find links to all the social channels. You’ll find contact forms. If you want to buy books and you cannot find my book exactly what to say, that’s my problem, not yours. So tell me where you couldn’t find it. Then that’s an issue I need to address. But wherever you look to buy your books, you should be able to find mine pretty straightforward.

RV: (24:57)

I love it. Well, we will, of course, link to Phil M jones.com. The direct places you can buy the book and feel social on the show notes and on at brand builders, group.com in our podcast area. Of course, bill, brother, this is awesome. We’re aligned. I love what you’re talking about. And I just thank you for being here and we wish you the best,

PMJ: (25:20)

Absolute pleasure, my friend, and yeah. Good luck on the show. And maybe we’ll pick up the other side of that conversation at some point in the future. We’ll just tease it out there forever.

RV: (25:29)

I like it. I think we can have a few more chats about this. All right. All the best. See you soon.

Ep 145: How To Get Bigger Brand Deals with Eric Dahan | Recap Episode

Hey, welcome to this recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. It’s your man, Rory Vaden breaking down the interview and the recap with Eric Dahan and I’m rolling solo, no wifey and CEO. AJ on this one. She’s out traveling, but I am fascinated with this interview with Eric, because if you haven’t listened to the interview yet, I mean, this is guy who has an agency and also developing software that is specifically sourcing influencers to pair them up with his corporate clients. These companies who have money to spend on advertising and they are recognizing the power of micro influencers. And in his case, they’re not all micro-influencers. There, there are lots of bigger ones. But this is amazing. I mean, this is, I like the first thing that jumps out to me about this interview, which is not part of like what my takeaway is, but it’s, it’s just something for you to realize and was something for me to realize is like, this is really incredible.

That big brands and big companies are looking to for the most part every day, average normal people. I mean influencers, but micro influencers and paying money. They’ve got budgets, they’re hiring companies like Eric’s to go out and do the research and source people to say, this person is reaching our audience and showing up with real money to pay you, not, not the radio stations, not the people who own the billboards, not the people who own the TV commercials. You know, not the people with the who own the magazines, but that you, an individual person quote unquote an influencer, whether or not you think of yourself that way, but just you as a messenger and someone serving and cultivating an audience that you have the power to monetize that audience by way of the, the most classic. And this is what’s fascinating is in the one way, this is so new is it’s just the idea of micro influencers in two other ways.

It’s as old as time one is paying for celebrity endorsements, right? So we all understand that we would expect, you know, Brad Pitt to get paid a ton of money to be in a commercial. So we understand the concept of celebrity endorsements, both what’s new is it’s like it’s the local celebrity, the super local hyper niche, like micro influencer celebrity. So we kind of understand the concept, but it’s at a much more granular level, which is powerful, but then you also have the dichotomy of the, the age old, most pure form of advertising. There is companies paying to put their brand, their message, their, their commercial, their product placement in front of viewers in front of listeners in front of eyes and ears to get the message out. And that vehicle, that model has existed ever since there was media, right? Like pretty much ever, ever since there has been the, the modality of TV or radio or newspaper or print or magazine, like, and, and even probably before that, right, is just the idea that companies will pay and they have budgets to pay.

They, they have advertising as a part of the way that they function and they grow their business and they’ve got money to spend and they’re willing to spend that money in whatever vehicle gets their brand in front of their people and these micro influencers, which is you and it’s me. I mean, it could be at which, which is amazing to think of that even though you don’t, you know, you might not be a huge media company and you might not have hundreds of thousands of followers or even tens of thousands of followers, but that you can do a better job of reaching their core market in some ways, then like a national TV commercial, because they are captive. And I found, you know, this is powerful for me as an author. And as you know, somebody who is is an influencer, like being on other people’s podcasts, we see more direct response from that than we do from national TV and from major national hits.

Not, not always, sometimes, you know, the major national hits are huge. They have major, major impact, but sometimes, you know, I can think of one time specifically where I was on a major national morning TV show. And it was like, I literally don’t know that a single person saw it. I mean, I know they did, but we got like zero response, zero, like speaking leads, zero customer coaching requests, zero, you know, book us for this podcast, appearance, zero like tweets and comments. It was other than friends and family being like, Oh, Hey, I saw you. And no notable increase in book sales. And so brands and companies are waking up to this idea that, that the local person has influence, which is what has always been word of mouth, but now it is you and it is measurable and it’s trackable and it’s repeatable and scalable and predictable.

And that is fascinating to me. And somebody like Eric is out there living on the, you know, on the bleeding edge of this emerging space. So I just thought that was amazing in general, just to kind of realize and contextualize this interview with Eric of, of what this means. And, and if you’re new to this, if you’ve never heard of this, this concept is called influencer marketing and it is about getting brand deals. And that is what this is all about. So if you want brand deals, let’s talk about my three biggest takeaways from Eric, somebody who’s living in this all day every day. So number one, biggest takeaway of all don’t fake it, right? Don’t fake it. Don’t, don’t take the followers. Don’t fake the engagement, like the data is out there. The algorithms are out there, there’s the apps are out there.

Artificial intelligence is out there. Like if you want to have a legitimate shot at monetizing your personal brand through brand deals, which you may not. Right. And, and frankly, for me personally, and for brand builders group, the likelihood that we will ever care about this is, is very little we are much less likely to do a brand deal, like where a company’s paying to access us because we, it’s not worth it probably to us for that one time payment, when it cannibalizes our own offerings of our own coaching program, you know, like, which is our primary business is one-on-one coaching. So we, we would be more likely to do more of like an affiliate arrangement or something more long-term. So I don’t personally know that this will ever come into play for me, although it could, particularly as we kind of like focus more on my personal brand, now that brain builders group is kind of like up and running and starting to scale.

And, you know, we turn some attention maybe back to my personal brand, but anyways, regardless, don’t fake it even for yourself. Like if, if you’re faking it, the problem is you don’t know how you’re doing. Like you don’t get an honest assessment of what is there, which means you can’t make a strategic decision about what to do and how to move, to grow it. Because everything you do is like kinda clouded by this, this group of people who aren’t really followers. You know, now there’s a case to be made. And some people do this to just like nobody cares. I don’t care about audience engagement. All I make doing is a credibility play. I just need people to come out and see, I’ve got a lot of followers and they’re not check-in. And I don’t care about brand deals. And I literally just want, you know, whatever my clients are, members of the media to go, yeah, you know, you look credible because you got a lot of followers, you know, that’s a choice for you to make that’s a strategic decision that you gotta make.

A lot, this is perception. And so it’s, that’s something to consider. But if you want brand deals is the point, like if you want brand deals. And I would say, even if you don’t want brand deals, if you actually want to use the vehicle of social media and use the vehicle of audience building to drive real revenue growth for your company, don’t fake it, do the hard work and do the slow work. And don’t be embarrassed about how slow you’re growing or how small your following is. I mean, look, this is what he’s saying is going, you know, they don’t care. They’ve, they’ve got a budget based on how many impressions and they’ll pay you for whatever that is. But, you know, 10 qualified impressions is 10 qualified impressions. And, and I think some of these companies are realizing and waking up to the idea that we’re paying all this money for mass market media advertising.

And we’re not, we’re not even sure we’re reaching our right people. We could spend a lot less money in more targeted ways with influencers that are much easier to get ahold of and have, you know, probably a much smaller legal department and it’s easier and it’s faster and it’s more fun and it’s more organic. And it’s like, they’re supporting individual people and not you know, these huge enterprises. So just, I really loved what he said. Don’t fake it. The algorithm will pick it up and just, you need to know, like you gotta know, is my content working? Are we growing? Who are the people who are my followers? Like one of the most valuable parts of social media is not even just who you sell to. It’s being able to pull the analytics and go, this is the age. These are the geographic locations.

This is the gender. This is the income range. These are the industries. These are the job titles of the people I’m reaching. And these are the topics that my audience response to based on data. If I have a bunch of fake followers in there, then it’s like, I don’t really know what’s working in the data is constantly skewed. So, you know, just, just be really, really I guess, critical or cautious about doing the fake fake follower thing. And if you’re going to do it, you know, make sure you’re clear about why you’re doing it and just know it’s probably, you know, you’re, you’re missing out on some, some other things here, which, you know, might be a decision that you make, and those are just decisions you make. But that was the first thing. And I really believe, you know, clearly with artificial intelligence, that’s going to get smarter and smarter over time that, you know, at some point people like Eric are going to automate this whole, this whole space, this and, and companies are just going to literally go to some platform and say, I want to reach, you know, personal brands and, you know, some software or tool or AI will go scrape the web.

And it will say, ah, here’s the top 500 profiles that reach personal brands. And it’s like, Oh, brand builders group is on there and they’ll just email us and say, Hey, we got some money. This is what we think you’re reaching this number of people. Do you want it so fascinating, fascinating. Don’t fake it, pay attention to the data or, you know, think critically before you just kind of do the fake follower thing. Number two, simple it’s about supply and demand. This was a good reminder for me. I think this is a theme, as I’m even just talking this out of how there’s like a new thing going on here, a new movement that’s kind of fresh and fun and exciting. And at the same time, these are old principles, the principle of supply and demand, how many people are out there who do what you do, right?

And this is where the, the, the whole niching down thing is really powerful. If I have, you know, if I have, I mean, it can work for you and against you. If I have the world’s number one website on, you know, hand niche, Paul shoes for cats and kittens, then I probably have a very dedicated, loyal audience of cat owners who follow me, which means that pet smart is gonna, it’s going pay me a lot of money. Cause they know my entire platform, whether it’s a thousand or 10,000 or a hundred thousand, like they know I’m reaching their audience. There’s not really any question about it. And so that is super powerful. Now, at the same time you go, you got to pay attention and be mindful of what is the demand for it, right? So like how many, how many brands are interested in marketing to cat owners?

Well, probably a huge number. It’s a huge market. But if it’s, if it’s something else that’s like super specific, there may not be brands interested in that. So if you’re playing the brand deal game, which by the way is a dedicated business model. And it’s a difference in positioning. If you come through finding your brand DNA, which is our phase one course, one event curriculum experience, one of the things we help you get clear on in addition to what audience do you serve? What is your uniqueness? What is your unique solution? Your unique message is what is your, your perfect business model that is suited for you? The reason why is because when you, when you make a strategic decision, if you’re going after keynotes, that’s different than going after brand deals. The business model you’re in drives a lot of these, you know, practical on the ground decisions that you make every single day.

So you need to be mindful of what is my primary business model. That’s what we call it in brand DNA. It’s finding your primary business model. And we, we take people through something called the golden grid, where we look at what your short-term primary business model and your longterm. And then we look at secondary business models, ancillary revenue streams, and you know, all, all these different, different ways to the five ways to monetize your personal brand, et cetera, but know what business you’re in, make strategic decisions accordingly. Don’t just like wing it by the, you know, fly by the seat of your pants. And if you’re playing the brand deal game, it’s simple. How many other people are out there that do what you do? How many other people, and more specifically I think is going, how many other people out there have the same defined audiences you, and if you are clear on what that is, you know, just be, be aware of it.

Because if there are a lot of people out there who do what you do, or more specifically, as it relates to brand deals who reach the same people you reach, then that means supply is high. When supply is high, that drives the price down, meaning the money coming to you. So you got to that’s, that’s, that’s a factor for you to consider how many other people out there are, are doing what I do or what I’m thinking about doing. And if there’s a bunch of them, right. You know, like if it’s general interest motivation, there’s a ton of them, right? Like a ton of people are doing that. If it’s leadership, there’s a ton of, you know, you know, tie to people now, good ones, maybe, maybe less, but what’s how many people are reaching your audience. And then the other part is the demand calculation.

And look, I’m I’m I know this is like basic freshmen, econ from college, but a lot of people don’t understand supply and demand, even though super simple. So if supply goes up, the price goes down because that means I can, I don’t need to buy from you because I can buy from there’s a hundred other people that do what you do. So I’m paying attention to supply how many other people are out there, have an audience like mine have as a result of having a topic like mine. Then the other thing is what is the demand for what is the demand for it? How many companies or entities or enterprises or organizations want to reach this market using something like pets. As an example, there’s a lot of companies with a lot of big budgets who know that pet owners spend money on their pets and they’re willing to pay money to get access to those people.

There’s high demand for that. Versus, you know, if you teach tennis lessons, how many companies are interested in the game of tennis? There’s plenty, but it’s probably not as many. There’s not as many people who play tennis in the world as there are people who have pets, right? So you’re, you’re paying attention to that. And then in terms of the pricing, it’s just knowing how many impressions can you get, right? So part of when you’re selecting your topic and, and your positioning in the marketplace, which is really like what we do as good, if not better than anyone else in the world is help you determine your positioning in the market. What is your uniqueness? What should you be offering? What are the words you should use to say it? How do you differentiate yourself from the competition? And anyways, once you nail that, then it’s just a function of how many of those people can you reach?

How many impressions can you get for the brand? And by the way, you don’t need to wait for the brand to show up to you. When you know this, if you, if you select brand deals as your primary business model, you just simply go, ah, I’m reaching cat owners. And, and, and you’re clear on that, which should come from your data, which should come from your dashboards, which we talk about at our high traffic strategies event. You could also listen to the interview that we did with Praxis metrics Aja grin, and Megan canal Connell about digital dashboard tracking. Or you could come to us through our high traffic strategies course that will pull and tell you who you’re reaching. And then you can actually go approach brands. And you can say to them, look, I believe like PetSmart, I believe PetSmart, I am reaching your target audience.

Here’s the data on the audience I’m reaching. And that is a sales job. Like, you know, just like generating any business. Any revenue is a sales job. And if you’re, you know, if you’re in this game of brand deals, I think understanding brand deals, this is a great episode. The other great episode that we did on this was our, our friend and client and fan, and one of our close Nashvillian neighbors who we love and believe in and support. And she supports us is Julie Solomon. She’s one of the masters at brand deals. She’s got a course on this, that we are an affiliate for, but she did an interview like a free interview with us, or back in one of the early episodes that was just killer. Also Kevin Harrington, the interview we did with Kevin Harrington, which is, you know, he was the, basically the founder of the infomercial.

One of the, one of the godfathers of this whole movement, which is now digital, Mark has evolved to digital marketing. And just talking about the way that he thinks about, you know, pairing up brands and ad spend. So check it out. But it’s supply and demand, simple supply and demand as supply goes up, price goes down, okay. As demand goes up, price goes up, okay. Because if there’s high demand and low supply, that means a lot of people want it. And there’s not many places they can it from. So price goes up if supply goes down and yeah, demand goes up. That drives the price up. If supply goes up, okay, meaning I can get it from anywhere. And demand goes down, price goes down. Because there’s not that many people who want it and they can get it from anywhere, right?

Like that is how, how it works. So toilet paper, you can get anywhere. I mean, demand is stable, but it’s not like super high until when COVID hit. And there was a run on toilet paper. Everyone was afraid of running on toilet paper. And so demand, even though supply was high demand skyrocketed. And so that drove up the price, the price K follows demand as demand goes up, price goes up as demand goes down, price goes down, prices, inversely related. So price is directly correlated to demand, but prices, inversely correlated, or indirectly correlated to supply as supply goes up, price goes down. A lot of people make it well, it’s available. Price goes down. If supply goes down, few people make it. Or few people have it price that causes the price to go up. So price and demand are directly correlated. Price and supply are inversely correlated.

So there’s your freshmen, economics class brought to you by Rory Vaden. All right. Third takeaway for me here, which is, is, is probably the biggest. One of all was the attitude of how you got to think about these people as your customers. These, these companies are your partners. Like even, it’s like, even though they’re paying you for the ad, spend your working for them, your, they are your client, they are your customer. And I think too often influencers and people going specifically after brand deals, it’s almost kinda like this game of like, how can I, how can I trick a company into paying the most amount of money I can get out of them? I’m all for, you know, being paid fairly and being paid well for the work you’ve put in, but you’re not. You don’t want to game the system here. You want to find a good match.

You’re looking for a partner. You’re looking for a relationship. You want to be able to provide results to this person, to your advertisers. And this applies to podcasting too, right? Like you don’t want to just sell your ads to anybody. I mean, at some point you might need to for cashflow or whatever, but it’s like, that’s not really what we’re after. We’re trying to find mutually beneficial relationships. We want them to advertise. Not just once, like, Hey, I’ll pay you and your posts. You want to be able to deliver results. So it’s like, Hey, I’ll keep paying you. I’ll keep paying you. I’ll keep paying you. That’s a mutually beneficial relationship. And it’s just a great reminder that this business is about reputation. It’s about relationships. It’s about trust. If people aren’t buying from you, they don’t trust you. If they’re not coming back, they don’t trust you.

If they’re not following you, they don’t trust you. Like this is a game of trust. And you have to make sure you are always working to earn your client’s trust. To adapt something that I wrote about and take the stairs called the rent. Axiom that says success is never owned. It is only rented. And the rent is due every day. Trust is never owned. Trust is rented and the rent is due every day. You have to be out there servicing your customers, working to make their life better, not just taking money from them and disappearing. Be constantly thinking whether you’re doing brand deals or not. This goes for all your clients. How can I make my life better for my clients? How can I make it easier for them? How can I make them more money? This is what we are constantly thinking about at brand builders group.

I’m going, how can we make our, how can we make our affiliates more money? I want, I want them to get massive passive mailbox, money. How can we create more income for our clients and our referral partners? How can we help our clients be more successful in making money for themselves? How can we help our strategists make more money? How can we make our team members make more money? Like when you adopt that service centered attitude of how can I help everyone else win quickly, man, it’s like, it’s like the old psych. My man Zig Ziglar used to say, like, if you help enough other people get what they want, you will get what you want. So view these people as your partners, help them succeed and you will succeed. That’s all we’ve got for this recap edition. Thanks for tuning in. Keep coming back. We’re going to help you build and monetize your personal brand right here on the influential personal brand podcast.

Ep 144: How To Get Bigger Brand Deals with Eric Dahan

Hey Brand Builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that, Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming. Ufrom anything that we do with this is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit. Call brand builders, group.com/summit. Call. Hope to talk to you soon on with the show.

Now, y’all know, I don’t very often bring someone on to this show that I don’t personally know or haven’t seen speak or something like that. And occasionally we get those cold pitches and they make it through our team because of how relevant they are for you. And this is one of those I’m excited to introduce to you and really meet along with you for the first time. A gentleman named Eric Dahan and Eric is the co-founder and CEO of a company called Open Influence. And he’s a graduate from Pepperdine University and I’ll tell you what they do in just a second. But he was on the Forbes 30, under 30 list in 2017. And his company’s clients include people like Disney, Google, Amazon, Facebook into it Unilever P and G Coca Cola, Pepsi L’Oreal Under Armour and a whole bunch of others.

And so what he does is, is he’s basically an ad agency. His client is the company, but what open influence does is they source influencers to help place ad spend to help their clients accomplish their ad advertising goals. So he’s looking for people like you probably that are listening to say, who has the audience that my client is trying to reach and helps to identify them, contact them, negotiate the deal, create the strategy, and just kind of oversee the whole campaign so that his clients spend their advertising dollars well through influencer marketing. So with that, Eric, welcome to the show. Awesome. Thanks for having me. Is that a pretty accurate description of what y’all do? I could not have said it better myself. You nailed it. Well, awesome. So, so that is, that is so great. I’m so excited about it because I feel like this is coming up a lot for our clients.

You know, some of our clients have really explosive growth where they’ll, you know, like I think of one of our clients who went from zero to half a million followers on Tik TOK within 60 days. And now all of a sudden she is like in this world of brand deals and trying to navigate it. And so I guess what I, I would love like if, if, if I put my influencer, if I put myself in the shoe of the influencer, what I really want to know is what do I need to know to help your clients be successful? What are you looking for? You know, when you identify influencers kind of, how do you go about it? And, you know, let’s just start with that.

Yeah. Yeah. So you know, like you mentioned, we represent the advertisers and when we start off the process, it’s really all about finding the right influencer for that campaign. And you know, typically we’ll work with, you know, dozens to sometimes even hundreds of influencers on a given project. But we, we use the data first and foremost really find out who’s the right match. And so we look at you know, we look at things like our size. We look at audience metrics, we’ll look at impression rates as well. But also like just what you talk about and how does your audience engage, which is really the first and foremost most important thing is when we’re working with a brand, we want to find influencers and creators that you know, really just having an audience that will be very receptive to that kind of messaging to that kind of branded content.

And so we’re looking at things like past sponsorships, we’re looking at how your audience reacts to different subjects and different pieces of content. And so if you’re an influencer, for example, we’re running your videos and images through image recognition or seeing what’s actually in the content itself, we’re looking at keywords that you may be using such as hashtags or mentions. We’re looking at freeform text and all this comes together to let us know. You know, how does your audience react when you talk about a certain thing, do they engage in lean forward or do they kind of tune out? And one example, it could be like, you might describe yourself as a fitness influencer, but you know, when you talk about yoga, your audiences are really engaged, but when you talk about boxing, they really engage in lean forward and they, and they really engage in that kind of content. And, and that tells us you’re going to be a much better, a much better match for a brand looking to talk about boxing, maybe like an Everlast, as opposed to an aloe yoga or Lu lemon. And so, you know, that that’s sort of first and just really looking at the data and understanding that, and then in terms of what can influencers do or creators do to make,

So hold on for a second. So I want to stick on the data, cause we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re huge data people, and we love data dashboards and we love doing studies and all that. So how the heck do you know my audience metrics? Like, clearly you can tell audience size, but how do you know how whether or not they’re engaging and what the impressions are like, how do you see that as an, as an outsider?

Yeah. So some data we can’t get as an outsider and we only get, once we start working with influencers, but we work with thousands of influencers a month. And so that gives us access to more of those lower funnel metrics, but at a high level you know, we’re, we’re pulling a lot of data from a lot of different sources from a lot of different platforms. We’re marrying that with with other data that we get from different data providers and really most importantly, most basically, you know, you post a picture on the beach, we’re looking at how your audience is, you know, engaging, how are they liking that? Are they commenting? What are they commenting? So we’re taking all that public information. We’re putting that side by side. So we can say, you know, when Rory talk, you know, post about, you know you know, going surfing his content does really, really well. His audience really engages on average, as opposed to when he talks about, you know cooking. Right. And so, you know, and, and so these are just random examples, but

Not very often that Rory Vaden talks about cooking. I mean, let’s be, let’s be, let’s be honest. I, I, outside of like, geez, I’m not, I’m not adding much value to the community there.

Well, you know, and maybe it could be entertaining if you do start talking about cooking, you know? I, I’m a terrible chef. But my girlfriend gets, gets a laugh out of me trying to cook. So, so clearly there’s something entertaining that

You’re saying that you’ve got data sources like these kind of like aggregators or whatever, you’re pulling those in, you know, to your company. And then at some point when you research, you literally just go to the person’s profile and like, look and see, do they have comments? Do they have lots of likes and views and saved? Well, I guess you can’t see saves. But is that what you’re saying? Like part of it is just looking at their profile.

Well, I actually a lot more sophisticated than that. So, so we’re pulling information directly from the platforms we’re pulling information that’s publicly available on the web. We’re then marrying that with, with other data sources that, that we might be able to pull. And we’re, you know, we built a proprietary system. That’s bringing this all in. And so rather than someone just looking at your profile and saying, Oh, here’s what you tend to post about. You know, we’re, we’re running this through our machine learning and AI, and we have hundreds, millions of posts that we’re analyzing. And so I could actually look and say, here are all the different keywords you talk about here, all the different, you know, here’s how many times you had a wine bottle included every one of your posts here’s the average performance when you do it, here’s how you perform.

You know, here’s how your audience engages when you do sponsored content versus not sponsored content. Here are the 20 brands you, you, you mentioned in the past 180 days, so we can get really in-depth with that. And then we could use that to surface. So I could say I wanted to find an influencer. You know, coming back to the yoga example, I want to find an influencer that performs really well with their audience when they talk about yoga on, you know, on YouTube and Instagram. And, and I could type that in I’ll, I’ll find that people, I could sort that by engagement rate, I could sort that by number of posts, if we have the data, we can look at impression rate and, you know, our video views. And then we could say, okay, here are the people that are going to perform the best. And these might not be the people that are, you know, when you think about yoga, they’re not maybe the first names that come to mind, but these are the people who have a lot of influence in that category that you’re not necessarily thinking of as a brand.

Interesting. So do you ever furnish that kind of data back to the, to the influencers or only when you contact them and say, Hey, did you know that when you post about boxing, you’re, it’s like some of you, you know, your engagement rate is super, super high, or is that not really, that you’re just, you really only bring it up when you get into actively kind of, you know, I guess, recruiting an influencer for a campaign.

Yes. So it’s funny, actually, we like, all that data is, is pretty much brand facing. Like we don’t, you know, we’re not, we’re not necessarily going back to the influencers, giving them reports on their own accounts or on what we’re finding. You know, we’re definitely letting them know like, Hey, you know, we’re working with you because of these different things or, you know, here’s why we’re engaging with your, you know but you know, one of the things we kind of talked about, it’s like, we’re sitting on this mountain of information and it’s been pretty much exclusively, exclusively used to be brand facing. We said, you know, maybe there’s something we can do. That’s influencer facing. Also, we’re playing around with some ideas now, but you know, whether it be to help influencers, you know, proactively find the right brands to partner with, or just see what different brands are doing are there similar influencers that a brand is working with to them, which could be a good signal to say, okay, I should reach out to that brand. I could be a good match. So these are sort of the ideas we’re playing with. But to be honest, we haven’t really delved into that too much.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well that, you know, that is interesting as a, you know, as a business idea because it’s like, you know, I think there’s whatever there’s, well, there’s a thousand fortune 1000 brands, but there’s 2 billion people all trying to figure out what is their audience respond to, which is like the part that you really figured out. So it’d be interesting to see if that flips at some point to where you, you, you offer that. But so then, so now let’s talk about, so that’s really cool. So you’ve got some different data sources you’re pulling from, you’re aggregating it in your own tool and you’re basically going, okay, Everlast hired us to do a campaign. We need to find all the people who have audiences that respond when it comes to boxing, you plug that in, and then if I am an influencer, do I just randomly get a message one day from, you know, Eric or someone on your team at open influence that says, Hey, we’re doing a campaign for Everlast, you’ve been identified as someone in an influencer in this area. Like, is that how it works?

Yeah, yeah, correct. So, so we in our network you know, we have a lot of influencers that we’ve worked with before. And, and yeah, if you’re a new influencer or someone from our account management team, we’ll shoot you a note outlining the opportunity. That part is automated in our system actually. So, you know, account manager would say, okay, you’re a good fit based on the data, I’m going to add you a reach out, we’ll go out. And then from there, we’ll, you know, we’ll negotiate a rate and, and, and the terms of the deal. And you know, we’re, you know, we’ve gotten this down to a science where we know, you know, w we essentially know what the ask for and what the outline, and, and also eliminate surprises on both sides, because for us, you know, we, we don’t want to, you know, we want to avoid reshoots. We want to avoid surprises. This is definitely a business where you want to be very, very clear. And so, yeah, so essentially when we reach out, we outline the full scope of work for that influencer. And, you know, they’re able to, you know, to say yes or no, and we’re not a talent agency. So, you know, we’re not asking to represent you. We’re not asking for any exclusivity is just like, Hey, here’s the deal if you want to do it. Great. And if not a well,

Yeah. So you’re, and does that usually happen like through a DM or something? I mean, do you, or do you, are you scraping their emails somehow offline? Or is it like, Hey, it’s most likely that it’s going to show up in my, my DMS because your software scraped that information and then followed me and then automatically sent me a message to say, Hey, we think you’re a candidate for this, for this campaign.

Yeah. Typically it’s through email, right. We’re, you know, a lot of, almost every influencer has some sort of contact detail, whether it’s on their Instagram account or their YouTube account, or on their own website, our blog. And so you know, that, that information is there and we just send them an inquiry to that, you know, essentially to that, that information provided and you know, and if they choose, they could, they could provide us with, with, you know the ability to contact them through, through text message as well. But you know, initial reach out is always done through, through email.

Okay. All right. So I’m just, you know, I’m trying to help people identify if they get one of these, like, how do you, how do you vet as an influencer? How do you vet the legitimate ones from the, from the, the, you know, the scammy ones, but before we do that, tell me what your, so I get the engagement. Well, I guess here’s a specific question. How much does followers matter? Like how many followers do I need to have before I might get one of these opportunities? Do I need to have millions, hundreds of thousands, 10,000, 50,000? Like how, how does that factor in here?

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I, I think from a, from just a visibility and kind of vanity standpoint, I think when you start looking at like 20 to 30,000, it starts to become interesting. You know, you, it really depends on what your niche is as an influencer as well, and what you’re talking about. So like you’re talking about something really specialized or you’re doing something really unique, like stop motion, animation, having a huge following is not really as important if someone’s looking to access that niche, they’re going to come to you because, you know, you’re an expert in, in that. You know, if you’re talking about teen fashion, you know, there are people with hundreds of thousands to millions of followers in that category. So you really have to look at it from the lens of supply and demand. But yeah, I would say that 20 or 30,000 is arranged now from an advertiser standpoint followers size doesn’t really matter at all.

What really matters are how many impressions we’re getting, what kind of click-throughs are you getting? Can you really drive and move your audience? And, and, you know, sometimes that process is hit or miss where, you know, you, you might think your audience will be a good fit for a certain product, but they end up not, or, you know, or a product you thought they wouldn’t be a good fit for ends up, you know, you ended up converting really well. So it just really depends. But you know, I, I think the key is to really just look at how many people are actually consuming that content and legitimately engaging with it, as opposed to just looking at follower count, because that could easily lead you to optimize for the wrong sort of things.

Right. Okay. So, yeah, so I, it’s interesting, you bring up the impressions where it’s like at the end of the day in advertisers paying either for impressions or some type of a conversion. So it’s, they don’t really care how many followers you have, but the number of impressions and conversions you drive is going to be related to, you know, to the number of followers you have and what your audience is interested in. So talk to me about the money for a second. Like, you know, you hear stories of, you know, people making $50,000, a hundred thousand dollars, millions of dollars, but realist like, realistically, like what’s the real, like, what’s the real world on this and what’s a baseline and you go cause, cause you know, the other thing that I hear a lot is it’s like influencers, a lot of influencers end up doing deals for just like merchandiser product. Right. And so they’re getting free and they’re not getting any money and they’re missing out on realizing, Oh, actually my audience is worth something. How do you kind of like cost justify? How does the brand cost justify? Is there like a, you know, any type of rough standard or baseline you’re looking for?

Yeah. So there are a lot of variables involved with it, right? So you have to look at one like the influencer size and just the amount of impressions they get. You have to look at the market that they talk to in the audience they have. So, you know, if you’re looking for like again, like teen fashion verse, like if you’re looking at like Sonic high performance, mountain biking equipment you know, an influencer in that category can definitely command a premium because they’re so specialized. That’s the platform

And like the niche, the niche ones command a premium because of supply and demand. There’s not a million people talking about high-performance mountain biking equipment.

Exactly. And they’re really focused, so they could really convert. And so brands know that if they want to engage with influencers, these are the ones that are really right to talking to that audience. And so and then you have to look at like platforms, content, formats, usage, rights exclusivity scope. So there are a lot of different factors to consider. And then also like bundling it, like, it’s, it’s very rare that, you know, you’ll just pay an influencer for a one-off post. Typically, you know, these are more involved activations. And so you know, and it, it just depends out what, what we’ve seen is it’s actually very rare in, in our world to, to have, you know, working with the brands we work with to have those engagements just pay like for merchandise or free, I guess the trade-off is, it makes it works when you’re working as a brand working micro-influencers, but the trade off there is, you know, those influencers are in your favor for you, right.

They can’t pay their bills with merchandise. Like it’s nice, but you lose the ability as an advertiser to really, you know, essentially, you know, set a schedule, set the terms, outline what you want from a content perspective. You know, you, you can’t really dictate and say, Hey, I want the post to go live on Tuesday at 2:00 PM. You know, you’re not paying for that post. You’re not paying that influence or they’re, they’re doing a favor for you. And so, you know, what ends up, hold on. I’m just going to pause my Slack notifications, right. So, you know, you end up, you know, it ends up just not making a whole lot of sense. Now when you, you know, when you’re an influencer, you know, you, you might, you might do that because you have a relationship with the brand or someone, but ultimately you know, th this is definitely a paid model.

You know, brands are going to want to hedge, you know, from our experience, like some brands want to pay influencers on the back end of the deal with like some sort of rev share, but you know, that, that, you know, a lot of influencers aren’t really receptive to that because they’ve gotten burnt with small brands and like, you know, like startups just, you know, kind of, you know, not having their business model, figure it out to where they’re not able to drive conversions. And so you know, so typically I, you know, I think there’s some upfront amount what those dollar amounts look like can change, but, you know, you could look at, you know, a thousand dollars, couple thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the influencer size you know, and, and the activation type, and also you know, how good you are for that Cuban brand.

Yeah. So if you, you know, let’s say if you’re, you got 30,000 followers, and maybe you are a fitness person and it’s like, Hey, there’s a, there’s a yoga campaign. And they want you to do, you know, like if T for a $5,000, let’s say like a $5,000 deal. How many posts is that usually? Is it, are you, is it is a brand typically going to be looking for like three posts, five posts, 20 posts. I mean, I’m sure the larger, the fee, obviously the more posts they want and the more control they want and, you know, that kind of thing.

Yeah. Look, they could be looking for three to five. You know, they’ll look at like some stories typically, because stories are sort of your, your most transactional and cheapest form of a posts, right. If it’s, you know, Tik TOK is a little bit of the wild West right now, it’s pretty new. So you know, that that’s a little bit all over the map. If it’s on YouTube, that might be part of it, right. Where you’d like saying, okay, I, you know, 30,000 followers or 30,000 subscribers, you know, from a story standpoint might not be a lot, but if I’m creating a YouTube video, that’s really focused and it’s a dedicated video you know, then, then a bulk of whatever fee I’m charging would go towards that. And, and, you know, and, and then brands will run the assessment and say, okay, well, if you’re working like a DD brand, they’re going to look and see how that converted, right.

If you’re a smaller influencer, you’re, you’re going to tend to fall in the realm of you know, more direct to consumer type businesses that are looking for like a direct response to whatever you’re doing. And so they’re going to look at that say, okay, well, we generated X amount of sales from that post, you know, they might not break even, but they might be really happy with that because they understand that, you know, as an influencer, one part of it’s branding and, you know, prospecting a new audience and the other part is converting. Right.

Huh. And, and would you like if you’re dealing with a real brand deal kind of a thing, do you typically deal in almost like, kind of like a set type of cost per impression, where if you show up and you come to me, you basically have a budget in mind because you have the data and you go, okay. I think if Rory runs a post with a surf board, we’re going to get about this many impressions, and I know my client’s willing to pay on average around, you know, this much for a CPM or whatever. And so you kind of have a number that you’re coming to me with to say, Hey, Roy, this is what we feel like we want you to do for this many posts.

Exactly. Yeah. So, so like, we, we have, you know, and we have a pricing model based on, you know, tens of thousands of transactions per year that we run. And so, you know, we’re looking at that and we’re saying, okay, like, based on all these metrics, here’s what we’re willing to pay for based on all these different variables. And, you know, we know this is competitive. And we also look at, instead of, if everyone’s saying yes you know, then it probably means worth pie. And if everyone’s saying, no, it probably, it means we’re too low. Right. So you know, we want to find a rate that’s competitive for, for the advertiser you know, our, our clients, but, you know, makes sense for the talent as well.

Interesting stuff. It’s so interesting, Eric, just that, you know, this kinda, I mean, I don’t know, five, 10 years ago, this was like only available to the biggest media companies in the world. And now it’s just like, this is becoming an everyday occurrence for anybody with any kind of reasonable following. Like if you’ve been, if you’ve been dedicated to building an audience for a few years, you know, you’re gonna, you’re probably gonna be in this space you know, if you’re doing it well and you’re doing it consistently. I think it’s, I think it’s fascinating stuff. Is there anything that you would say this is kind of like a last question in terms of mistakes that you see let’s say that influencers making consistently that either kind of ruin their reputation or immediately kind of like throw them out of your pool to either where you would never contact them or, you know, they say something to you early on and you go, I definitely know. I mean, this, person’s not a, I obviously, if they’re a total jerk, but like beyond, beyond that, are there any kind of like red flags or common mistakes you see that you go, man, this influencer just lost five grand because they didn’t do blank.

Yeah. Yeah. So, so I mean, you know, the metrics are the metrics, right? So we, like, we know that upfront, we don’t get hung up on that. What tends to really, you know, kind of screw up a relationship would be things like just, you know, being unreliable and unprofessional you know, changing scope midway through as an influencer or like, you know, not following through you know, or just in general being difficult to work with. Like ultimately you know, this is you know, it is a people’s business. You know, we are working on a piece of content gathering it’s collaborative and someone that’s going to be combative and difficult and unreliable will just automatically, you know, get put on our, do not use lists or do not work with lists. And you know, we have a whole system internally for rating influencers and on, on things like from responsiveness to professionalism.

So, you know, I, I really think, you know, going into it as an influencer with the right attitude, really treating the brands you’re working with, whether it’s us or a brand directly as your partner, right. And as a customer you know, that’s, that’s really what goes along this way because ultimately brands and agencies want to work with, with people that they can trust and that they enjoy working with. Because they know that, you know, they can come to something reasonable and that’s going to make sense, but, you know, no one wants to work with someone that’s going to be difficult to throw a tantrum or, or, you know, not follow through.

I love it. Really good stuff, Eric, I think fascinating, you know, just your business, even the existence of your business. Again, I think you’re, I mean, you guys have done a lot. You’ve got a great, a great thing going on, open influenced.com. We’ll link up to that, of course, in the show notes and y’all can see know just a really interesting space, something that, again, didn’t, we wouldn’t have existed as an opportunity even maybe a few years ago. And it seems like you guys are early to the space and you’ve got some big brands on your roster and you’re doing great stuff. Is there anything that you anywhere else that you want to point people to, if they want to like connect up with you or learn more about what you guys are up to?

Yeah. I’m pretty active on LinkedIn, so you can just follow me there and connect with me there and same with, you know, open influence. You could, you know, I, we have a great content marketing team. That’s, that’s pumping out you know, latest trends and insights and, and white papers on the influencer industry. So you know, follow us on LinkedIn or sign up for our newsletter on our website and you know, stay tuned with, you know, with everything, especially from a brand perspective.

Love it. Eric Dohan is his name open influence? Y’all hopefully you have learned a lot. I know. I certainly have Eric. Thank you for being here, man. We wish you the best. Awesome. Thanks for, I appreciate it.

Ep 143: How Entrepreneurs Can Use Their Personal Brand to Grow Their Business with Liz Bohannon| Recap Episode

Hey, welcome to this special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. I’m Rory Vaden breaking it down so low. Our recap, this is a recap episode of Liz Forkin Bohannon and I am laughing because this episode cracked me up. I thought it was so funny because so, so here is my first, my, my first big takeaway. All right. So my first big takeaway was verbatim what Liz said, which actually has nothing to do with personal branding. Ubut I thought this was just so profound and powerful and relevant and poignant and, and wow. When she said a lot of the problems in the world can be solved with a good job. A lot of the problems in the world can be solved with a good job paying good money, providing good men benefits. And the reason I’m laughing is because this transformation, if you, if you listen to the interview, Liz talks about how she was like this nonprofit, bleeding heart, like change the world.

I’m going to go, you know, serve, serve people to becoming this extreme entreprenuer doing who’s launched now a huge direct sales, a business that she’s turned into a direct sales you know, multilevel marketing thing that, that she thought she invented the business model. And it’s just, it’s just hilarious. And it is in it’s awesome. And it’s profound about the idea that, you know, money, money solves problems, but not just giving people money, teaching people how to make money and creating an opportunity for people to make money. And that to me is just powerful. Again, it has nothing to do with personal branding, which we normally wouldn’t share as a takeaway, but I mean, I was inspired because I know that you probably, in some way, lead to the work that you do create jobs for people. And so often we think about like the audience that we’re impacting or speaking to are the people who are buying our products and services.

And we think about our own income, but I think this is a good reason and a good moment in time to pause and just go, thank you. And congratulations to all the entrepreneurs who create jobs, whether they’re full-time jobs or part-time jobs, whether as employees or contractors, but that the work that you’re doing as a, as an, as an entrepreneur, as an influencer, as an entrepreneur, maybe who works as part of a direct sales company, or even as an executive, a corporate executive at a big, at a big company, but that your personal brand is serving more than just you. And it is even serving more than your audience. Your personal brand is creating jobs and opportunity for a whole world of vendors and partners and contractors. And one day, you know, if you follow our model and we’re teaching it, you know, if you get to phase four where we talk about eight figure entrepreneur and scaling your personal brand, you’re going to be providing lots of jobs.

And that’s just awesome. That is awesome. That is another reason why we love serving you and, and helping people create jobs and businesses and side jobs and side hustles, and you know, work with people in direct sales because you, when you start a business, you create jobs. And as Liz says, a lot of problems in the world can be solved by providing a good job. So that was, that was a huge kind of unusual takeaway and, and rare takeaway from the event and just really profoundly impacted impacted me. And I just you know, I also find it hilarious kind of the transformation of this journey that she went on. And just, just awesome. So that’s great. So my second big takeaway from this, which is just magical is going if you’re an entrepreneur. And when I say we’re not for the purpose of this segment right here, when I say entrepreneur, I’m going to say that you’re a, I’m going to in quotation say a real entrepreneur.

And what I mean by that is going, you’re not just a personal brand, right? Like that you’re building and monetizing your face and your persona. But if you’re truly building a company and a, and a, and a brand name and company equity, and it’s not built around your face, most of what we do is, you know, the core of our target audience is people who are authors and speakers and coaches and trainers and consultants. And then, you know, our secondary, I think audience is more of like professional services and lawyers and accountants and, and doctors and financial advisors and real estate agents, and, and then direct sales. And then I think another big part of our audience is corporate executives. And then entrepreneurs like Liz, where Liz is main income is coming from her business, which is not selling speaking engagements and video courses and membership sites and books is from her job and the profits of her company and the salary that she draws. But if you’re a, if you’re that kind of an entrepreneur, I don’t real entrepreneur, maybe isn’t right, but it just, if you’re a classic entrepreneur or a true entrepreneur separate from being a personal brand,

Take notes of what she said about the power and the impact

And the significance and the

Value of free money

Marketing that personal branding provides to her company, to her corporation, to her brand, to her business, to her, her logo, to her, her, her exit value to her, to her asset that is this business that she has built. It, you know, she said, it’s remarkable if she could, if she could quantify the amount of free marketing opportunity that she has had for her company because of her personal brand. And I think companies and entrepreneurs and big corporations and small businesses are starting to really wake up to this idea, which, you know, a lot of the most successful companies have figured this out long ago, right? Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Steve jobs, you know, these are personal brands that have built huge enterprises and they leverage their personal brand to get media, to create, you know, influential relationships and connections and not to monetize their personal brand in the, in the classic way that we think of it, which is the paids, you know, the, the paids model that we teach and, and the various things that we talk about, but actually monetizing their personal brand through the profits of their enterprise, like of their actual business, the bottom line profits.

And that is just, you know I’m going to let the cat out of the bag here a little bit. So we haven’t shared this anywhere publicly yet. So you’re getting an insider secret of foreshadowing, a hint at something exciting that has company coming, that we have officially commissioned and commenced something that we are calling the state of personal branding. And we are in the middle right now of conducting a nationwide survey where we are looking at statistically valid sample, a sampling of valid populations to determine the trends and the data, and doing a pure empirical analysis on the trends of, and the state of personal branding. And one of the things that we are measuring and it’s tied to this is do people trust companies more, or do they trust personal brands more? Do they trust, you know, this big giant enterprise and the logo and the history behind all that?

Or are they more likely to listen to a person who is an executive at the company or a founder, or, you know, someone that runs a department or a product line or something that, and we’re fascinated to find out the results. I don’t know the answer yet, you know, from a data perspective, but we’re about to know, and we are going to be releasing this. But if you listen to just what Liz is saying here through kind of her own personal recount, she’s going my personal brand brand, your personal brand as an entrepreneur gets you access to marketing opportunities and connections and relationships and resources and, and money that you would not get if you don’t have the personal brand. And that is reason enough to do it, especially if you are an early stage startup, especially if you’re a small business it’s super duper powerful, but you know, like I said, Richard Branson and Elon Musk, I mean, all these, these people that we talk about, they are the wealthiest people in the world.

I mean, literally Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk. So the wealthiest people in the world use your personal brand to build your business. And I thought, you know, what was important tactically for you, you know, real entrepreneur classic entrepreneur, that if you’re listening is to ask the question, how does this serve my main goal right now? Right? So most of you listening are like me, you’re a personal brand. You speak, you write books, you do courses, you do coaching programs, consulting, et cetera, et cetera. And then some of you are more professional services. What I would say is kind of like an intrepreneur where, where it’s, it’s not fully your own business, but you have your own book of business. You have your own clients and you do your own marketing and, and, and sales and service typically. But you’re probably not like dealing with PNLs and stuff like that as much.

But then if, if you’re truly running a company, like if you’re truly an entrepreneur and you’ve, you know, you, you file a 10 K every year and you have articles of incorporation and, and, and you have a tax ID number for your business entity. It’s going, how can I use my personal brand to drive the company profit? And that just like you would make investments into advertising and hiring and infrastructure and CRMs and technology, you should be making the same type of strategic investments into your personal brand because of the exponential returns that it gets you. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs are waking up to this. And for those of you that are more classic personal brands, kind of like, as I view myself in many ways it’s, it’s realizing that not a lot of entrepreneurs start companies because they don’t want to be a face.

They don’t really, they like being sort of behind the scenes and, and they want to build something that is, you know, kind of, of them, but it is powerful. And I think entrepreneurs need to learn from personal brands, how to leverage their personal brand, to throw a tension and gasoline on the fire that is their company, and to grow their business and personal brands need to learn from entrepreneurs about how to scale and in, in, in incorporate infrastructure and systems and processes, and to build things that operate without them. And that’s, I think one of the things that brand builders group does is we sort of sit uniquely at the intersection because of our experience and passion for both entrepreneurship and personal brands. But anyways, that if you’re an entrepreneur, you gotta be lightened up about using personal your personal brand to separate yourself from every other company out there that does what you do.

And now is the time and stay tuned for the data on this. That is coming from the brand builders group, personal the state of personal brand study. I can’t even hardly contain myself. I’m so excited. You’re going to love it. All right. My third takeaway, takeaway number three, here was this term pluck that she uses pluck. Now, you know, it needs, it needs some explaining, which, you know, from that standpoint, you know, it doesn’t pass the clarity test to some of these things that we talk about with titles, but as a concept, the concept that she uses of pluck, I really, really love this because, you know, she, she describes it as a, as a, it’s a, you know, it’s an actual word that means determined, and it’s the determination and the commitment of a beginner. But I also think of it as passion plus luck which is, you know, pluck.

So I’m kind of adapting her, her term here. But the, what she said that was super powerful is that beginners have an advantage. So we typically think of beginners having a disadvantage, right? And there are some disadvantages, like you’ve got to figure things out for, you got to prove, you know, you got to prove that there’s a market for what you’re doing. You have to, you know, find a sales model and, and, and, you know, cashflow a startup and get things off the ground. There’s a lot of challenging things about about being a beginner, but there are also a lot of advantages to being a beginner. She talks about at least 14 in her book, but you know, this reminds me, this is a kin to what Malcolm Gladwell talks about in his book, David and Goliath, which if you, if you’ve never read, of course, everything that Malcolm Gladwell writes is very fascinating and curious, and, you know, not as much practical as it is kind of interesting and philosophical, but somehow still applies to a lot of things in life.

And this is a great example of one, what he talks about it in David and Goliath is basically how, you know, we think basically how the things we perceive as disadvantages are advantages and how we all think David conquered Goliath. And it was like this mighty giant. And David was this little like scrawny kid with no armor and no weaponry who takes down this mighty giant, which is true. But he says, you know, he kind of makes the case and walks you through historically, what’s going on there, you’ve got this big, whatever nine foot man out there in the field moving, you know, covered in heavy, heavy armor. And, you know, David with the little Slingshot kind of darting around here and, and throwing a rock. And, and David had a lot of experience with this as, as you know, basically a sheep herder and a shepherd.

This was a tool that he used on a regular basis. And, and anyways, it’s, you know, the way Malcolm Gladwell kind of presents it, at least causes you to look at us and go, Hey, maybe this wasn’t as unfair as we all think about it. And we like to tell the story is that actually you could say David had the advantage. You know, if it was, if it was a really hot day and he has the advantage of agility, there’s advantages and whether or not that’s true, or you agree with it, or you like it, it’s a powerful perspective. And here’s why this is important because you right now in your own life, think you have disadvantages you right now in your own life. Think there are things about you that you have as weaknesses. And the reality is that every single one of those things could be flipped and turned to an advantage. If you just change the way you look at it, and that changes everything, because whether you’re able to turn it into an advantage or not the fact that you let go of the limiting belief, that your, that your perceived disadvantage is really a disadvantaged. If the fact that you’re willing to let that go, and you’re able to let that go in to say, Oh, this could be an advantage that changes everything.