Author: AJ Vaden

Ep 142: How Entrepreneurs Can Use Their Personal Brand to Grow Their Business with Liz Bohannon

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.

Now you all know when I bring someone on the show, it’s almost always somebody that is a personal connection. There is one other time when we had Kristen Giesa on to talk about television. And today I’m introducing you to a new friend, Liz Forkin Bohannon, who was a cold media outreach from her PR team to us. But you’ll see, there are lots of great reasons why we have had her on the show. She’s amazing. And we actually, I just realized she spoke at global leadership summit last year, which are some of our best friends. We love the global leadership network. I’m sure some of you listening probably saw me speak there. And some, I, my pal Jason Dorsey speak there last year, but anyways, Liz got a chance to speak there because she’s incredible. So she founded a company called Sseko Designs and it is an ethical fashion brand usethat has gone from literally like three women making sandals together under a mango tree in Uganda to this international fashion brand. That’s been featured in Vogue and O magazine and Marie Claire and in style and red book. And it provides employment and educational opportunities to and just like entrepreneurial training and education to women all in East Africa and across the globe. And you know, so Liz and the Sseko story had been featured on shark tank at good morning America and just lots of other places. And so anyways, we’re realizing we have all these connections and anyways, Liz, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me Rory quite a, quite an honor to be one of two connection. So I’ll look forward to, you know, anytime after this will be considered personal connections from here on out, we ever connect a non-personal connection way. I love it. Yeah.

And I think, you know, you’re, I know that your real business is Sseko designed to, so I want to talk about, but like to that point for everyone listening you’ve done a great job of using your personal brand to build a real business. Like you, I get the sense that you are a true entrepreneur. You, you have your, you have your, you have your book beginner’s pluck, which y’all can check out. We’ll put links to that, but it’s like, what you really have used your personal brand to do is like forward your mission and your work as an entrepreneur. Is that accurate to say

Very correct. Yeah. I consider myself my day job. My, my main kind of mission in life right now is growing Seiko and Sseko is very much so a company that’s bigger than me that that works, that operates without me necessarily at the center, although my role is very much so kind of the face of the company and how my personal brand interacts with that is really important. But yeah, I’m not, I’m not a solo preneur. Like my goal is, is to build a scalable international company.

Yeah. And can you give us, so, so can you tell us a little bit about the story of Sseko? Cause I do want to hear about how you’ve used your personal brand to build it, but just like some reference in context to how this thing got started to it’s become, you know, this very recognized just almost like a social, like movement and the good work, like social conscious, like conscious company. And then when did it start where you at give us like a frame of like what, what the businesses is like,

Why don’t we start the thing long story short and it’s never super short. So I feel like I’m starting to lose credit.

I wouldn’t even preface it with that,

But, but 10 years ago I graduated from grad school with a degree in journalism and was really interested in issues that were facing women and girls living in extreme poverty and living in conflict and post-conflict zones. The only problem was I had zero experience living, working really actually understanding issues facing billions of women and girls across the globe. And so I graduated from grad school with all of this information and all of this kind of intellectual understanding and no context, no community, no relationships that were actually representative of that kind of more intellectual interests that I had. And so I moved to Uganda. I didn’t have no one would hire me by the way, I looked for a job that would like take me internationally. And it was like, like I said no real life experience or anything to offer. And so that was kind of a dead end. And finally basically just got to a point where I was like, okay, I’ll just go. Like, I’ll just go in the, in, in the goal will just be to learn and kind of to fill that education gap of like actual experience, real people and in relationships and in community. And so, I mean, I showed up in Uganda, I was what, 22, 23, like knew nothing. And just the goal was just like, okay, just go make friends, just like go build community, learn about these issues and what you think, you know? And,

But like he had no plan, no job, no like family connections there. You’re just like let’s

I knew one girl, we weren’t even really friends in college. She was like kind of an acquaintance who had moved to Uganda and about, Oh, about two weeks before I moved to Uganda, I emailed her and was like, Hey, you still in Uganda, like, I’m, I’m coming. I literally don’t have a place to stay. I don’t have a job. I have nothing. And she was like, wow. Okay. Well, I mean, you can like stay with me in my apartment until you like figure things out. And I was like, great, that’s amazing. So I had one connection in the whole country and just showed up and just started like making friends, trying to learn. And yeah.

And did you have a vision like you didn’t have at that point, you didn’t have a vision for the company, but you had a calling to try to do something for these women.

I had a desire to learn is literally all I had. I considered myself still more a journalist at that time then definitely not an entrepreneur. Couldn’t be actually like reacted really strongly against the idea of being an entrepreneur was not interested in business. Really believe that like, you know, I was like a pretty tried and true like bleeding heart humanitarian. I believed that like the solutions lied or, you know, we’re with the journalists and the truth tellers and the nonprofit starters. And so when I went to Uganda business was so far off my radar. I went as a journalist to go learn, live, understand more what I was going to do with that information. No idea. So I’m in Uganda and I’m just, I have my curiosity hat on, right? Like I have my little like, no one’s paying me investigative journalists. Like just being curious literally for my life, just, you know, 14 hours a day, just asking questions and following leads.

And through that process is when my world totally turned upside down. And my perspective on business really turned upside down because I came into the situation being like, no business is mainly part of the problem. It’s like, you know, it’s like greedy in it, oppresses people. And it’s all about like maximizing profits for stakeholders at the cost of, you know, whoever happens to be, you know, in the way. And, and what I realized through a series of events and learning is like, Oh my gosh, it’s such a big part of the solution. In the mechanics of like capitalism and business and building economies and creating employment, like so many of the problems that so many charities and nonprofits to solve wouldn’t exist. If people had access to good jobs where they were treated fairly, where they were paid on time, where they were safe, where they were treated with dignity.

And that’s not to say every single problem can be solved with a job, but a lot of them can. And so in Uganda it’s like, you know, you got to has one of the youngest populations in the entire world. And yet their youth unemployment rate in some parts of the country are 80%. And so just kind of like thinking through my understanding of how development happens completely turned upside down. And I was like, Oh my gosh, if I want to contribute specifically to enabling really high potential young women to kind of further their leadership and educational journey, which was my heart was like, okay, I know if there’s one thing that I can buy into it’s that educating a girl can change everything and that gender equality and that creating access to economic and educational opportunity for girls, specifically girls in the bottom billion. So those living in extreme poverty is one of the fastest, most effective ways of ending global extreme poverty. How we do that became definitely an evolution and using business as a tool to actually use that, to solve the big problem is coming of,

That’s a big shift, like going from like businesses, the enemy to, Oh crap, like businesses, the solution. And then you’re also going, I don’t know much about business. I mean, I’m, yeah. I mean, guessing like you’re in your twenties, like

Journalism, I hadn’t taken a single business class in my entire life so far.

So then, so then I guess you, you have this realization and from that you go, what could we do? Like what resources exist here that we could turn into a company that we could sell something to create income and jobs for people in a service for, for customers? Is that basically it,

So it was all backwards in the sense that I can didn’t start with a customer problem. I started with the problem of like the present issue, which was, I had met a group of girls that were getting ready to graduate from high school, wicked smart, top 5% of students in the country were getting ready to go into like a nine month gap in between high school and university gap year that everybody in the, everybody in the school system, in Uganda experiences and knew that there was a real likelihood that they wouldn’t make it onto university. Not because they weren’t smart enough, but because they wouldn’t be able to find a job during that nine month gap. And so started out with my big, hairy problem was like solve the nine month gap. How we did that, like what we were creating, what we were making. I literally couldn’t have given a flip. Like I w I started a chicken farm and was like, Oh, I don’t know. Let’s do chickens. Like this seems viable. And then I was like, what am I doing? No, no, no, no, no, I don’t want to run a chick.

I’m not going to be the chicken lady. I can’t be the chicken lady. The chicken farm is not the answer.

Oh, it was not the answer. And it wasn’t because I didn’t know, because at the end of the day, I didn’t know anything about what I ended up doing, but I didn’t, I didn’t, it, it, chickens are gross. They freaked me out joy. And that became very clear. And then, so I was like, okay, we can’t do this. We need to do, I need to make something. And ultimately probably sell it in the United States. There’s a real hunger and desire to get us dollars and build up the export markets. And so I was like, okay, there’s probably more of a pathway for that. And I know I’m an American woman. I kind of know that market. It’s not, I don’t have professional experience there, but I have a lot of intuitive experience there. And so ended up designing a pair of sandals. And again, at the time I was kind of like, man, chicken sandals. I don’t, I’m not really passionate about either of those.

You were solving the problem, not for customers, but for the employees.

Yes, exactly. And so ended up making these sandals, which actually were really cool. And I think if I would have started with something more like we sell jewelry now, too, we have, we’re a whole lifestyle brand. So we do footwear and apparel and leather goods and handbags and jewelry as part of our business. And our jewelry business is great. I think if I would have started there, I would have really struggled because the kind of fair trade, ethical jewelry market, there’s a lot of options there. Because just the barrier to entry to jewelry is, is a lot lower. And our product was pretty neat. It was a pair of these. It’s still one of our kind of flagship products. It’s got a leather base and then these five anchor points and these interchangeable straps. So the deal is you buy the base and then you can buy multiple pairs of straps. You can tie them and style them in different ways. So it’s a really unique product. There was nothing like it on the market at the time, and it’s really interactive. So the customer gets the product and she immediately starts playing around with her sandals. And she’s like, Ooh, look at this tie I invented. And the likelihood that she’s like, Oh, so I’m going to take a picture of it. And I’m going to put it on at the time. It would have been Facebook early Blogspot and talk about how she’s styling her sandals and

Myspace profile. I’ve got all my pictures of my best Sseko ties.

It’s a super interactive kind of versatile co-creating product, which is cool. Kind of got the energy that it did. In the beginning,

Lucky, like, did you design it that way? We were like, I’m going to let them,

No, it was, I would say, I would say it was more plucky than lucky.

No

Real thought. I think honestly, because I came from a background where I wasn’t particularly interested in fashion, I was, I’ve always been really drawn to the idea of versatility and fashion. So how can one product serve multiple purposes and solve multiple problems and B be clever. I think I’m really drawn to like clever things, as opposed to just like make a thousand designs that each can be worn one different way, this idea of like, but what if we could make one thing that could be worn a thousand different ways? And so it really, when I got home and started selling the product, I realized that we did kind of have that magic one, two punch of one, the product was, was interesting. It was clever. It was something that people want to talk about. I think, you know, you, you’re onto something when people are like, Oh, I thought about something like that before, you know, or they like say something like that.

And you’re like, Oh yeah, but you didn’t, you didn’t do it. I did, you know, but it’s like almost this sense that it’s like, Oh, I think I, maybe I invented that. Or maybe I had a dream about that, you know, and that combined with the story, which like, Hey, you’re going to go buy a pair of new sandals this year. Anyway, like you’re going to go to target. You’re going to spend 25 bucks on a pair of sandals. The last you may be a year, maybe two years, you have no idea where they came from. You have no idea what the impact is, or you could buy sandals from us. And in addition to getting this really cool product, you can be a part of this really rad story. Like there’s these awesome bad-ass female entrepreneurs, any staff Africa who are going to go on to change the world. And like, by buying sandals from us, you get to be a little part of that.

And so, so what’s the scope. What’s the scale of the company today.

So we now operate, we have a manufacturing facility in Uganda, Sseko Uganda, we’ve got about 75 full-time employees there. And then we have now artists and partners in Kenya, in Ethiopia, in India, in Peru. And so we’ve got now global partners, basically almost on every continent. And we actually just welcomed a Southeast Asian production partner. So we’re employing at this point are partnering with thousands of artisans across the globe to make our, our catalog of goods. And then those products are all sold in the United States by Seiko fellows. And so Seiko fellows are our stylist consultants. These are primarily women that sell the product in their community, using social media, using their personal brands, hosting trunk shows, and then they earn a commission off of everything that they sell. And then our, our entrepreneurial fellows are the ones who are actually building teams. So not only are they selling the product, but they’re recruiting other people to sell the product and building and mentoring a team. And then earning a really scalable income off of that.

What did you say the stylists are called? We call those fellows say co-fellows, and then you have entrepreneurial fellows.

Yeah, well, they’re, they’re all called Sseko fellows, but like in every, you know, kind of network marketing, we have different levels. So we’ve got women that are like, I love this. I love the mission I love being in. And it makes me feel so good. And I like earning really beautiful product for my wardrobe that maybe I wouldn’t spend on myself otherwise. And so I’m going to host three shows a season and earn a couple hundred bucks and get free or discounted product. And then we have women who are like, no, I’m, I’m an entrepreneur. And I want to build a business. I just want to outsource all the crappy parts of building a business, you know, like totally development and logistics. And so they’re really focusing on leadership development and really building up a marketing and sales organ and leadership organization whilst they could go corporate takes on ticks on all the dirty work behind the scenes.

Yeah. We, we love direct sales. We have lots of direct sales and clients, you know, network marketing and obviously most people that listen, know my background, a very in depth background with, with it. So let’s talk about that part, the personal branding more for you specifically because you, so it’s one thing to do personal branding for direct sales. But what, what I’m really curious about is you took this mission and you made it a brand as a company. You started a business and you’re not monetizing your personal brand through selling like advice or anything like that. And also you’re not selling a service really. I mean, you, the direct sales is kind of an opportunity, but but the brand itself, like you took your personal brand and how so, like how do you, how do you think about the relationship of your personal brand with your business and, and like the, some of the practical questions we get.

So like, we have a group of people who are personal brands, they’re just, you know, like Rory vaden.com and, you know, they got their speaker and they got books, et cetera. And then we’ve got entrepreneurs and they’re going, one of the first questions is what should the domain of my company be? Should it be Rory vaden.com or should it be brand builders, group.com? You know, like we have that for our actual company. So how do you balance that relationship? How do you think about your personal brand as an entity in, in relationship to this business that you’re building and to this corporate brand, like you’ve got your personal brand, but you’ve built this, this amazing corporate brand, which also is socially conscious brand that has a lot of equity. So what are your, some of your thoughts and philosophies there,

But yeah, so for me personally, the company is its own entity sseko designs is not Liz Bohannon. They’re very related obviously because I’m the founder, I’m the spokesperson, I’m the chief, you know, like, you know, I speak on behalf of the company and I’m really the chief storyteller. The chief inspire the chief connector, whether that is for our customers, whether that is for our fellows. But I would say actually since the very beginning was very clear about this is going to be a business and this is going to be a business that is going to be bigger than me. And I actually don’t want to be the center of it. I want to build an organization. I want to build a brand that exists, maybe not even necessarily outside of me, but it’s bigger than me. And so my perspective on growing my personal brand, at least up until now, you know, for the last 10 years has always been like my personal brand is in service to this larger organization.

I’m much more much more at this point, interested in using the opportunities that I get as a human person to build this larger organization than I am in building up my personal brand. Now I say that, and what’s amazing about having a person. I still do very distinctly have a personal brand, right? Like I wrote a book that launched last year, it’s called beginner’s pluck. I have a podcast called plucking up. Like I use social media. I have all of the like elements of a personal brand. I think my framework for the question of building

The website, I mean like a whole whole thing. Yeah.

I just asked myself as like, does this go to actually serve my main goal right now, which is growing and scaling Sseko, but what’s awesome is that when you have a personal brand that is compelling, that is, and I hold, you know, they’re not one in the same in the sense that I really use my personal brand to talk about things that I care about on a personal level, that aren’t necessarily like Sseko’s core values or brands. So there is separation between the two, like if you follow Seiko designs on Instagram and you follow Liz Bohannan, you’re going to have two pretty different experiences, but what’s so amazing is like the access that I get, because I’m a person who cares about a cause and has expertise in that area to share about my company. It’s remarkable. Like if I could quantify the amount of free marketing and advertising that Sseko has gotten over the last 10 years, because of the opportunities that Liz Bohannen has actually gotten, like people aren’t inviting the CEO of Sseko, they’re not looking for a representative from Seiko to come talk at this event. They want Liz Bohannan to come share her experience, her story, her expertise. But because what I care about and because my mission and my philosophy on life is so tied up in the values of my brand. I get the opportunity to share the brand story.

Well like global leadership summit is, I mean, that event is the biggest speaking event in the world. That’s amazing. Cause you get, you get, not only do you get free marketing, you get paid and you get the marketing, like you get paid to, to, to, to, to share your story with people around the globe. That’s incredible.

Yeah, it is. It is a really remarkable when, when you can make it work, the value that that can provide to the entity, to the organization that you’re building is I really do believe it’s unquantifiable. And I think that there is a real legitimacy play there as well. Like I know for us being a direct sales, you know, a multi-level marketing company when I’m recruiting or when someone else is recruiting to come be a part of our company leadership development, it’s a big part of our industry. Like people are joining a company one because they want to sell a product. They want to earn an income. They want to be a part of a community. They also want to better themselves, right? Like they want to push themselves. They want to, you know, they want to learn how to grow their own businesses and grow as a person.

And so when the leader of that company has all of this external validation in the leadership realm of like, Oh, our CEO is like really highly sought after and valued in all of these other spheres to come teach her leadership knowledge. And like, we get that here at our company just by like, you know, I go live on Facebook all the time with my fellows. I’m way more active with our internal community that I am even with our external community. Cause I’m like, I’m going to give you my best. Like those followers on Instagram, those people that go to my website, like I love them. And I, I really want to create content that serves them. But heck if I’m going to, we only have so much time and energy in a day. Right. It’s like I would rather pour my resources my time, my best into those people that are then going to go out. Cause they’re like, they’re the magnifying voice for the brand for the impact. And so it’s like, that’s how we create and really scale impact. I don’t think I do it through me and through growing my personal brand. I think I do it by equipping using my brand to then go equip and inspire thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of women to then go do that in their community.

Yeah. So since you brought this up, so this is interesting. I didn’t realize that you guys were direct sales company before the, for the interview, right? Because I’m putting together pieces of the Liz fork and Bohannan story here as we go along. But you know, now knowing that, and, and, you know, I mentioned to you that I speak at direct sales companies. It’s like the number one financial services and then, you know, direct sales companies. And so I love this, but to the topic of using your personal brand for the business, a lot of direct sales, there’s a lot of old roots of direct sales. It’s been around a long time. Social media is a very new and I would call it a disruptive, I would call, I would just say personal branding is I think occurring as a very disruptive force in network marketing.

You know, multi-level marketing, direct sales, whatever you want, whatever term you want to use. And I feel like I’m seeing a split in philosophy that some direct sales companies are going, Nope, no personal brand promote the company focus only on the, only on the company. Like this is what we do and others are going, you know, like I think of like Rhodan and fields is a good example. They’re just going, it’s all about the personal brand, all in, on the personal brand, all in, on social media. And, and I really understand the dilemma because from a, from a brand perspective, it’s like, you want to make sure people are representing the brand accurately and ethically and saying, you know, consistent things in trying to like reinforce some scalable systems that make them successful, but then it’s like to ignore the power of the personal brand and the power of social. So now knowing that you are, you actually happen to be a founder of one of those companies, clearly you’re on the side of the value of the personal brand. Like how have you reconciled that and how do you reconcile that with the fellows in terms of what you promote in terms of how, how they should use their personal brand to build their direct sales company? I E in this case, Seiko.

Yeah, definitely. I mean, one of the, we were kind of chatting a little bit before the show and I, I confess that I am a founder and CEO of a, you know, an MLM, a direct sales company that has literally never had any experience battling for buying from like day one of my exposure. I kind of thought here here’s, here’s the real truth. I kind of thought I made it up. I was so unfamiliar with the industry that I like had this whole thing. And I was like, we did these party in a boxes and I would send a box of product. It was usually at the time it was like college students. And they would, you know, like host an event on their college campus and literally like send back an envelope of cash. And I would let them keep some product and exchange. And I was like, this is good. Like the energy, the connection, like the experience they’re able to create. They walk away from, you know, a Seiko campus show with a totally different experience with the brand and connection with the brand than they do. If they bought that at the boutique down the road that also sells the product because at the time we were a traditional retail company

Can I just, I have to just interrupt. Cause I, in my mind, I, I, I can’t help, but laugh because you’re like this bleeding heart journalist chicken farmer level marketing, like direct sales, like the pendulum swung pretty far in terms of what most, how most people view it, but all based on this realization to solve this problem of giving women opportunity in these developing countries, both economic and educational. And I just, I just think it’s so ironic and radical and fun to see this, how your life has gone in this way, where you’re like, I invented this awesome model of party planning and, and then you can recruit somebody and get a percentage sauce. It’s, it’s awesome.

Even with the recruiting and stuff, like at this point I was running a traditional retail organization. So it’s like, you got your VP of sales and then they earn a commission off of your sales reps. And the sales reps actually go in the field and they sell to the stores. And I was like, what if we just did that? What if it was the same, but it was just like with, instead of with stores, right. So you’re totally right. And I honestly, this is where, you know, my book beginners plaque is kind of all about how you’re in competency, your unknowing of how the industry works of how it’s always been done of the rules can, is actually, could be your superpower. If you understand how to be really intentional about harnessing it and using it to your advantage. And this would be a really good example of had I known I wouldn’t have done it in the sense that I think I would have had all of these preconceived notions about what MLMs are and who I am and like, you know, and my goal in the world.

And I think I would have probably been too, there would have been too many reasons for me to talk myself out of it. I was so ignorant that I was like, I’m inventing this, I’m just making this up as I go along and it’s this incredible model it’s going to be really scalable and we’re going to have this exponential growth. And then what that enabled me to do is to take the roots of the model to take the structure, to take the skeleton, which is brilliant. It’s just amazing and build it out and layer on top of it, a different way of thinking about it. A different reason, like 80% of the people who are in our community selling have never been a part of an MLM or direct sales company before, which obviously has challenges. It also has an incredible advantage because we’re just doing things in a way that’s a little bit different and there’s, we’re able to access specifically a younger market, younger market.

It’s really comfortable with social media. That’s really familiar and passionate about kind of more of a cause marketing values-based like consumer relationship that frankly would never sign up to sell a product that didn’t have something that touched them on a deeper level, on a values level. And we’ve created that we’ve created a space where it’s like, Hey, come earn an income. But also you get to be a part of this community where you wake up every day and you know, like the work that you were doing, it matters so much. And you know, like when you become a Seiko fellow, you have the opportunity to get matched with a Seiko sister. So this is one of our team members, one of our colleagues in Uganda, you take a quiz. So you each kind of put in your like preferences and life and we match you up with somebody.

It’s like, Hey, you actually have a lot in common. You, you know, like Susan from Minnesota, you’ve got a lot in common with Sharon. Who’s our head seamstress and Uganda, we connect them, they learn about each other. They can actually write letters back and forth our top incentive trip. So, you know, every MLM sends their people, you know, incentive trip is an all expenses paid trip to Uganda, right? Like that’s normal necessarily. That’s not like we’re going to go, we’re going to have the experience of a lifetime. You’re going to meet your Ugandan colleagues. You’re going to learn how the products are made. We hang out in the factory, we do dinner and one another’s homes. Like there’s a real, it’s a different flavor, but the model and the structure of it is still the same.

Yeah. Is that, is, is there, are there fellows

In Uganda or just the manufacturing and like the production happens

Right now. It’s just manufacturing and production. So all of the sales is us and the partners are on the production side. You’re in Oregon. I’m in Oregon. Yeah. And we’re is headquartered in Portland.

Yeah. wow. Well, that’s just, it it’s, it’s fascinating. I’m glad you mentioned that because I wanted to come back to the, to the concept of pluck. The book is called, you know, your book’s called beginner’s pluck. It reminds me almost of the a little bit of the Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath, where, you know, that book talks about how everyone assumes that David was the underdog. But in reality, you know, he was much faster. He didn’t have a lot of the weight, you know, it was a sunny day. He was nimble, et cetera, et cetera. And how the underdog, isn’t always the underdog you think. And that as an entrepreneur, I mean, it seems like that’s kind of the premise that you’re saying is that there’s a brilliance in that unknowing that you don’t talk yourself out of something. That’s basically what you’re, what, what you’re talking about. Right.

Totally. Yeah. So the book has, there’s, there’s 14 things, 14 principles of beginner’s pluck things that I believe that natural beginners do naturally it comes more easy to them. They do it more quickly. They’re more familiar with it. And as we gain expertise and mastery, we actually lose those things. And I believe that over time, when we lose those kinds of that ability to channel our inner beginner, we actually become less effective. We become less curious. We become less innovative over the long haul. And so it’s all about like this concept of, if you actually are a beginner, here’s what you just need to know that this is your advantage. This is your secret weapon. So lean into it. Don’t be afraid of it. Don’t deny it actually lean into it. And if you are an expert or master, if you’re 10, 20, 30 years into your career, here are the things that you should be intentionally trying to get back to and to channel in a way that you probably did without knowing it more when you were a beginner that you’ve probably naturally lost along the way. And that’s totally fine, but being really intentionally about kind of getting back there for the purposes of becoming more creative, more innovative. Okay.

So cool. So cool. Well, we’ll put links to the book. Liz, Bohannan everybody, Seikos the name of the company? Liz? Where do you want people to go? If they want to learn more about the stuff that you’re up to?

Yeah, well, you can go to Seikos website, it’s S S E K O designs.com. You can shop Seiko, you can host a trunk show. You can become a Seiko fellow and you’ll hear me run my mouth a lot more. I’m on Instagram at Liz Bo Hannen. I have a podcast called plucking up, which is one of my newest, recent loves where I interview amazing people like Liz, Gilbert and Arianna Huffington, like wildly successful people. And it’s all about their pluck ups. So the whole concept is basically like, Hey you’re going make mistakes along the way. And really kind of like pulling the curtain back on, like those really challenging seasons, the rejections, the embarrassments, the seasons where you felt totally lost and upside down and underwater. And it’s been a really, really fun space and really fun community for people to come together and go, Oh, when I’m messing up it.

And you know, when I got rejected, when I did that thing, and it was a total embarrassment or flopper failure, it’s actually not because I’m broken or I’m stupid, or I shouldn’t be trying this in the first place. It’s because you’re probably trying something that’s pretty challenging. And you’re in really good company of a lot of us who were doing awesome stuff and plucking up all along the way. Usually sometimes a little bit of both at the same time. And so you can subscribe to plucking up and find me there as well. So, cool.

Well, keep providing jobs and education turns out business is part of the solution. One of the best parts of the solution, a lot of problems can be solved with a good job. That’s going to be one of my big takeaways. I think so, Liz, thanks for being here. We wish you, we wish you all the best. Thank

You so much, Ray. I really appreciate it.

Ep 141: How To Get Millions of Followers on TikTok with Maggie Thurmon | Recap Episode

well, I think that was our first teenager experience with a guest on the influential personal brand. Although she may technically not be anymore Maggie Thurman, but I was blown away. This girl is sharp and intelligent and compassionate and, uh, just really wise and clearly entertaining millions of followers, a hundred million likes on her videos. That’s amazing. Uh, so we’re breaking down. Welcome to the recap edition. We’re breaking down the interview that we did with Maggie Thurman and Tik TOK on millions of followers. And, uh, gosh, I just, I was just thought it was fun. A different perspective for me. So what were, what were your age? And I will break down our top three and three takeaways for you.

Yeah. You know, one of my biggest takeaways is something that we actually talk a lot about at brand builders group, which is you are your own media channel. Like we always say, it’s like, you are your own media channel. And we live in a day and time where individuals with their social media platforms, podcast, blogs, um, YouTube channels, that you can be your own media channel, like a network, each person like your own network. And I thought this was an amazing Testament, real life case study of what it means and what it looks like to be your own media channel. And in this specific, and this specific medium on Tik TOK, right? And she was talking about, she’s got friends in college who are 19 year years old, getting six figure brand deals for doing videos on Tik TOK. And here’s what I love about this.

This isn’t about the platform paying you. These are true brand deals based on your viewership, right? So this is like, you know, I was an advertising major for a hot minute in college. Like this is like the Nielsen ratings, right? It’s like how many people are watching and how much is each commercial worth. And that’s, that’s what the that’s what dictated commercial spend. And the exact same thing is happening now on all of these social platforms with brands going, you align with our brand. And we think that your audience meets our audience demographics. So let me pay you to do videos. Doesn’t matter if they succeed or fail, but it’s you or ship, same thing as a commercial

Literally are your own

Own media channel. And I just thought she was such a great real life case study of someone who’s doing it and figuring it out. And she’s completely supporting herself right now through her Tik TOK brand deals.

Not every gen Z ears could live in at home with the parents. Some of them are rolling in Lamborghinis and Ferraris from videos they’re making

Well, I, I, that was my first and biggest was like, yeah, it’s like, this is a great case study Testament of you are your own media channel. And in this case, if you think about it, you got to think about it that way you put it that way. And, uh, so I have, I have

All right, well, I’ll, dovetail on that. Cause so for me, I, one of the things that I was left with was that there’s basically like, uh, there’s four ways, you know, to monetize as a, as just a sh as a pure creator. And, um, you know, what you were just talking about our brand deals, right? It’s like you get a company to pay you that’s number one. The other is that there is ad revenue that comes from the platform. So a Tik TOK launched the creator fund. Facebook watch does it. And now, uh, and then YouTube does that, right? And so more and more that’s becoming like an additional source of income. And one of our friend’s clients Lewis’ Howes, has been sharing pretty publicly that he turned on ads on his YouTube channel for the first time ever. And it’s a massive flow of money that’s coming in.

That’s like, wow. Um, so you’ve got brand deals and ad revenue. And then of course, you’ve got your direct revenue, which is mostly what we specialize in is helping you convert your audience into becoming your own paying customer for something. And then you also have affiliate revenue, which is where you, you know, promote other people’s stuff. Uh, you know, like Lewis is an affiliate of ours and, and, and, and he gets paid when we meet people through him. We all, all of our clients, uh, for the most part are referral partners of ours. But, you know, that was just a quick takeaway for me was going, you know, people go, how do you make money from YouTube? And like, how do you make money from this? That’s it, there you go. Brand deals, ad revenue, direct revenue and affiliate revenue.

Yeah, that’s good. So, um, I started, okay. My big second takeaway was just listening to how many takes that they do to get video that they think will go viral. And she said that on their dance videos, that they would do a hundred

Takes. That’s crazy.

That’s crazy. He was like, say what? Like, and that is treating it like a real business, right? That this isn’t a hobby. This isn’t some side gig. This is like, no, this is my business. This is my brand. This is how I want to be represented. This is the quality of content that I put out in her case. It’s entertainment, uh, you know, the former part of it she was doing, but I just was like, that is no beginner, right? That is expert. Like, I’m taking this seriously. I’m going to make this a business. I’m going to make money doing this. Like, I don’t even know that many professionals who will make a hundred. Right. So it’s like, yeah, girl, you should be getting six figures. If you’re doing a hundred takes to get one, you know, 10 seconds, ten second video, you dang straight. Like you need to be getting like, but that’s what it takes. And I just was like, girl, what?

You don’t see? You don’t see that part of it. You just like, Whoa, a 62nd video with millions of views.

And she said, yeah, it’s like, we would, you know, and I love that she does it with her dad because that’s so much of her brand. Yeah.

Plus he’s cool. We interviewed him a few weeks ago.

I think that that would, to me, it was just like, that is you taking this seriously? This isn’t something that you’re just slapping some content up. This is, this is scheduled. This is planned. This is practice. And this is perfectly curated for your audience.

My second takeaway too was, I don’t know if you caught this. She said three hours of editing for every one minute of video. So you’ve got the hundred takes. And then you got three hours of editing, right? This, this is a business. It is a, it’s an art form. It’s a science like excellence. This is a, from a great book called take the stairs back in the day, like amazing. One of the best books ever. You should read this book by Rory Vaden. And he talks about in this book, excellence is never an accident. And here it is three hours of editing for every one minute of video. There’s no easy road, but you could do it. It just takes time and work and talent and talent. Yeah, that’s my problem. I don’t have the entertainment talent to do it. Although you keep posting these weird pictures of me and my pajamas, which are not supposed to make it onto the internet Baden

All the time. I know exactly how to make viral. He just refuses to take my advice. He doesn’t want it.

Nobody wants to be seeing my pajama, my pajamas online. Anyways, what’s your third takeaway? What’s your say? Focus. Third takeaway.

Okay. So my third takeaway was actually an internal thought that I had, because I am not tick talks demographic,

Except for Trump impersonations, AIG, Trump, Sidney.

Weird. Uh, they’re hilarious. But you know, it’s funny cause I really loved dance. I was a ballerina for 18 years. I like love dance. So you think I would really be into Tiktaalik it’s just not my platform. Not your demographic. That’s okay. Um, but I was asking myself if I were to be on Tik TOK. Okay,

Here we go. What would it

Be that I would want to make videos about? And I’ve been thinking about this ever since,

Wait to hear this. I don’t know what you’re about to say.

So that listened to Maggie’s interview. I was like, Hmm, what would I make videos about? And I’ve got two ideas. Um, so maybe, maybe I will get into the tech talk if, uh, if one, if you can give me some feedback on which one of these you think would be the best. So my first thought was I would love to do, um, kid interviews.

That would be awesome

To interview all the kids that I know specifically my kids, but not just my kids. Um, our friends, kids, just all the kids that I know of. Like professionally sound crest.

I love this. This is, yes. This is like that show. Are you smarter than a sixth grade? Kids say the darndest things, but this is the Tik TOK version, short version.

Hilariousness I love it because I think that would be this really the other one. So yeah. My other one would be to, um, do behind the scenes, um, where no one knows I’m filming you embarrassing moments.

I think you already started that. Haven’t you with husband?

I’m just testing out, testing out my concept. But I think that would be hilarious. I’m like behind the scenes, funny videos of like, nobody,

Like people say get in their car, like at the stoplight and they don’t know anyone’s watching them. Yeah. That’s good.

Is that people like yelling at the barista for no reason. I’m just like, what are you doing? Like why? Like, why are you, so

I want videos of people yelling at like Fox or CNN, like when they watched the, in the news of the other of the TV. Like, no,

No, these are my two ideas. And so I need feedback. Any comments I need you to tell me, uh, are either of these viable for a successful talk account and don’t we still an ideas.

I think what she’s saying is we need you to purchase services from brand builders group so that we’re not forced to head in this direction because this is not what we’re designed to do. I would probably do the kid interview. I think the kid one is legit because they’re hilarious. Oh my gosh, our kids, they say funny stuff. All the kids do.

They’re so funny. So those are ads. What I’ve been, I’ve been like, Oh, what would my Tik TOK channel be about?

That’s good. Um, mine. So my third takeaway all was, was a little, was it a little more? It was so fun, but it was a little more on the serious side, I guess, which was just something that I thought was just so profound and wise from such a young woman with so many haters.

I love this. She answered this so well.

And she said, just, you got to realize that people are hurting everywhere. And it’s easy to take that out on people everywhere. And, and for her to realize it has more to do with them than it does with you. I mean, I think most 40 five-year-olds putting content on social, do not get that. Right. And it’s so good.

Immature statement, realization, self realization. And I want to add something to it. You said since I already use my third one, I’ll just do

You’re intervening on my okay. Three, three.

Um, she also said on this exact same subject matter, she said, here’s what I have to realize is that I’m less of a real person online.

Like to them. They don’t really, they think of you as just a fake a character.

Um, I, I don’t have a family, right? You don’t know me. You don’t know my background. You don’t my backstory. You don’t know the struggles or the successes. Like I’m not as real online. So it’s easier to be mean to someone that you don’t actually know. You forget that I’m a real human being with real feelings and real issues and real things going on. And when I’m just a face behind a dance video, people forget that. Oh yeah, that’s our real human being. And I thought that was just such a mature insight of any age. I’ve just, yeah. It’s like when you don’t know someone it’s easy to talk smack and be mean and, and hate on them. Cause you forget, Oh yeah. Like this impacts them. This is a real person with real feelings. I thought it was just really, really well.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well there you have it. Go listen to the interview with Maggie Thurman, uh, YouTube maybe can have millions of followers on Tik TOK. We’ll have a couple more of these come in. Cause it’s, it’s, it’s exploding as a platform. Of course now there’s clubhouse and all these other, you know, always emerging things, but we want to help you stay in the loop on what’s going on with those and see how you may or may not be able to use them to build and monetize your personal brand. So keep coming back. We’re so glad you here, that’s it for this week’s edition of the influential personal brand.

Ep 140: How to get millions of followers on TikTok with Maggie Thurmon

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 have certain times in my life and career where I just feel old. I used to be like this young guy making the moves up and coming and now people like the woman you’re about to meet Maggie Thurman. They make me feel old because I guess I am old. I am almost 40 now. And young Maggie here is the daughter of Dan Thurman. Who’s been a longtime friend and acquaintance. We had him on the podcast a while back. But Maggie is 18 years old and she has been on Tik TOK for about a year. And within one year she has managed to accumulate not one, not two but 3 million followers in a year. And it’s dramatically changed her life. She’s had over a hundred million likes on her videos and her and her dad do some fun things together on Tik TOK.

But it’s really been her personal account, which is just named it’s at Maggie Thurman that has really just blown up. And so I figured we got to bring in, you know, we bring in a lot of the old timers to learn from, and it’s like, we got to bring in the young movers and shakers. So Maggie, thanks for making some time for us. Thank you for having me. This is awesome. Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s, I’m so proud of you. Like I know it’s weird. Like we’ve never met before, but it’s just really, it’s really cool. So can you just like, just tell us the story, like, how did you get started? Why did you get on there? Was it a joke? What have you, did you start with like, I’m going to become an online influencer or what happened?

Yeah, absolutely. I downloaded the app beginning of my senior year, which was fall of 2019. And I originally just got it because I kind of had no idea what it was. The app had previously been musically, which I had been on for a brief time and then deleted it. And then once it became tictok, I kind of wanted to see what everyone was talking about. And my first post actually was essentially saying that I was going to make one tiktok for every week of my senior year. So at the end of my senior year, I could look back at my Tik TOK page and it would be somewhat of a scrapbook like a really cool online scrapbook that the whole world could see if they wanted to cool

One a week. That was the original, like one a week,

Once a week. Yeah. and that post got maybe 80,000 likes and that was insane to me. I thought I had peaked. I thought that was the highest I could go. Okay.

I definitely would have thought I would have peaked. I, if I got 80,000 views on one of my videos, I’d be calling everybody. I know being like I am a baller. Yeah.

Really funny. I actually, I walked into school the next day sat down in my first period anatomy class and people were telling me that they saw me on there for you page last night. I was like, I know isn’t that crazy. And so from there I got a little bit of a following. I think I got about 15,000 followers of people who just, they didn’t know me at all, but they were interested in seeing my senior year. And a few weeks later I kept doing the one a day tech talk. I did a Tik TOK dance with my dad too, for delicious. And that tic talk blew up. I think it has 3.5 million likes at this point. A few maybe like 20 million views or something, not sure. But it was all over tech talk. I saw it on Twitter. I saw it on Instagram and that is what really kind of gave my page a lot of traction.

And from that I got a few hundred thousand followers. I think I was at 400,000 or something. And then I just kept going about doing tech talks every week. For my senior year, my dad was in a lot of them just because we genuinely had so much fun doing this. My dad travels a lot or he did before COVID for his job. He was a motivational speaker. And so even when he would fly home really late at night and only have a day here, he would make time to learn a dance and we’d go do a dance. And it was just this really cool thing that the two of us had. And then I’d say we’re really changed, was quarantine.

So hold on a second. So pause right there. When was the, so you originally were going to do one a week, but then you started doing one a day.

I I’d say the one a day kind of started in quarantine, but from the one a week, it kind of got to the point where if we could do more than one within our busy schedules, we’d shoot for two, but it was still a lot of work trying to get the two of us to learn a dance or do whatever we wanted to do and get it to a point where we wanted to publish it. But one a week was the original plan and it slowly built up to the goal of one a day.

Okay. And so then, and then have you been doing one a day, like consistently

Ben trying to, it’s a little, little different with college now I will say. Especially when I’m at school for the semester, I’m on break right now. But especially when I’m at school, I’ll try and get a few done on the weekend so I can post one a day, but it doesn’t always quite equal out.

How long does it, can you, so like how much can we, do you mind sharing your process a little bit? Like what happens? I mean, so I know most of yours have been like dances and stuff, which are really fun and entertaining, which lends itself well to, to the platform. And even though most of our audience is probably not going to make dances. What, what I’m, I’m trying to understand is just your creative process. And then also like how much time it takes, but so do you just, do you just hear a song and then you’re like, Oh, I should do a dance to that. Or do you come up with some other idea or like, how do you come up with the idea? What do you do to like develop it before you turn on the camera? How many times do you turn on the camera and then how do you edit it? And then is there anything you do to promote it other than when you don’t have to answer all those in one breath, but that’s like what, what, I’m what I’m interested in hearing. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. I think a lot of tic talkers have a different process. I don’t, I mean, I know that from talking to my friends, but for my dad and I, in particular and for me in particular, in the beginning, it was strictly, we’d see other people do a dance and we’d learn their dance and the learning process, he’s gotten a lot better. He’s gotten a lot better at learning them quicker, but sometimes we would learn for two hours and then go shoot a tech talk. And we’re both not perfectionist, but very, we want our product to be as good as it can be. And so we’ve had times where we’ve been feeling

And you were a cheerleader, right? Like when you were in high school, so you and, and yeah, for those of you that don’t know her dad, Dan Thurman, I mean, he’s Acrobat and top of being insightful and inspiring and amazing. He’s also an incredible acrobatic performer and juggler and physical specimen of man. Did you dance it around and stuff? So you guys have a little bit of athletic talent, so you’re putting that to work, but you’re saying you would prepare, you like spend two hours maybe learning the dance and then you record, how many takes are you recording?

Say our longest sometimes a few times, maybe two times we’ve gotten it within one take. But there’s definitely been times where we’ve done over a hundred takes trying to get something perfect.

Yeah. Wow. A hundred takes now. It’s only like 60 seconds, right? Yeah. The top

Is 60 seconds. Usually the dances are closer to 1520, which is helpful. But especially when it’s two people, one of us can feel like we completely killed it and the other one got off a little, so we’ll have to redo it. And then there’s the process of once you’ve done all the takes, watching all of them to decide which one you both agree on is the best.

Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, how long does that take?

That can usually, I’d say about 30 minutes. Just to kind of watch them. Sometimes we just watch one, we both agree on it and we say, okay, we’re not going to watch anymore. We’re just going to go with this one. But that’s more in specific talking about dances because a few months ago, well maybe more than a few months ago, we kind of started to do more comedy. And sometimes the comedy videos we’ll talk about days in advance and then plan them out. And then sometimes we’ll have spur of the moment things where I’ll just say, I have something I want to tell you, can I turn on a camera while I tell you and we just get your genuine reaction. And we found that people really like to see that because it’s kind of a more authentic view of our relationship, which I think is one of the reasons why a lot of people follow us is just because of the connection we have with each other and the fun we have with each other. And so those are often a lot easier to make because there’s a lot less prep that goes into them.

And, and when you’re editing, what are you editing for? And, and are you taking, you know, like if you’re doing, let’s say a few dozen takes, are you taking clips from each different take to put it together or do you mostly just like, no, the reason you’re doing all those takes is for one and then like, what, what do you, what’s your, what’s your eye searching for,

For dances? It’s always a one-take we never edit those together. Which that’s one of the reasons why it takes so long because there’s no room for error in that

It doesn’t take you as much time to edit. So you’re doing it all in the shoots and it’s just like, once you nail it, 30 seconds, like, bam, we got it. Yeah. Okay.

But more comedy you’re talking videos, I’d say there’s a lot more room for editing editing, depending on the video, I’d say usually takes me around 30 minutes to an hour. Especially when you have to add close captions to videos, which we’ve really been trying to make that consistent, just so we’re more accessible to the deaf community, hard of hearing to add that onto our platforms, but that’ll, that’ll add on a good bit of time. So it really does stack up

Is, and, and, and are you so, so the non dance videos, like I know a lot of the videos you, you do with your dad, you do as a team, but you do a lot of them by yourself too. And, and here’s the other thing I was trying to figure out the music that you actually hear on Tik TOK. That’s not really the mute, like when you do the dance is that that music is playing. And is that what it’s recording? So that’s recording the actual music in the room. So you’re just like hitting rewind on the track.

It’s Hmm. I don’t know how to explain this. So the actual audio that plays through it, doesn’t pick up our audio when we do the dance. It just uses the audio that we’re hearing, but it doesn’t rerecord it with our room audio. It just takes the audio directly from talk.

That’s what I was trying to understand. So, so because you, you choose the song to play in the tick talk app to overlay with your dance, right? So, so when you record the dance, you’re playing the same song to dance to the music, shooting the video, but then it’s basically, you’re just stripping the like you’re, you’re effectively stripping the audio off of that when you upload the video.

So what you can do, and what we usually do is select the audio beforehand. So every time, once you select the audio and go to record inside the Tik TOK app, the audio will automatically play as you record and you can dance to it. And when you go to publish it or edit it or whatever, it uses the same audio that you were hearing during it, the one you previously selected, if that makes

Got it. So you’re actually dancing to the song that is playing out loud through the Tik tock. It’s not like you have some other speaker or something that you’re dancing to and then overlaying it. Okay. So and then you do this and I mean, there’s a lot of time going on here. I mean, this is like one, one 60 seconds. How long does it, I mean, all in for one 62nd video, how much editing time are you putting in?

I’d say 30, 45 minutes, maybe an hour with closed captions.

Okay. Now that’s just the editing, right. But the whole, like researching the dance, learning the dance shooting, the takes, then editing, you’re talking about three hours per, per one minute of video,

Depending on the style. Yeah. like I said, sometimes it’s very spur of the moment. Things are, sometimes we immediately get a dance if it’s easier and we can knock that out in 20 minutes, but there are certain times when we really want to shoot for a hard dance or go for a concept that requires a lot of editing and it just takes more time.

And are you kind of like, so you kind of built the platform on dance, but now you’ve mentioned like, you’re, you’re, you’ve gotten more into comedy. Has your audience like, have they received that pretty well? Not as well. Not at all more than dance. Cause that’s an, and, and, and are you, you know, like what’s the balance in terms of, you’re still doing dance videos, but now you’re, you’re doing these like sketch comedy kind of skits.

Yeah. I’d say they received it very well. It’s one of the same kind of, like I said, where it’s an even more genuine look at our relationship. Cause it’s us communicating with each other. It’s us joking with each other, which does play through in a lot of dances, but it’s kind of another aspect of that. Yeah. I think people really appreciate seeing another side of our relationship. And honestly, I think it has done better performance wise than a good bit of our dances. Which is interesting. Cause we used to be so specifically just dance take talks, but it’s really nice to be able to do both.

Yeah. And the way you described this, it’s basically like, you know, your, you and your dad is it’s the epicenter of this. It’s not an ancillary thing. It’s like, it’s the relationship between the two of you that kids and parents like whoever’s watching, they enjoy and it is endearing to see your relationship together. And you think that that’s part of the secret sauce?

Yeah, no for sure. I mean, what I’ve always kind of strived for with my tech talk is I want it to be genuinely me and a huge part of my life is my family. And so I think that plays through on my take talks because they mean so much to me. They are truly, I mean, my parents are some of my best friends and so it’s really easy for that to show through on my page. And I think people really appreciate that.

Yeah. Well, I mean, that’s awesome. The idea of a teenager being best friends with their parents is, I mean, that’s like AAJ my wife. So my wife is also my business partner and that’s like, her dream is just that our kids would grow up to like want to just be our friends. So I could see why a lot of people tune in to watching, watching that. Cause it’s kind of rare really. And you know, coming back to the videos, do you feel like you’re able to predict which ones will go viral? Is there, is there certain things that you see like, Oh, I know this one’s gonna go well because of this or not really. Is it a, is it a total like toss up every time?

There are a lot of the times it is a toss up, but there have been a few instances where all even I’ll even say to my friends or my family or something where I’m, I’m feeling this one, I think people are really gonna enjoy this one. There was one where my dad and I did this trend where we put my dad in heels. I was like, no way, is this not going to do well? He’s, he’s a 50 year old man and heels. It’s amazing. And sometimes, sometimes we just get feelings or a lot of the times it’s things we’re just really proud of that we put a lot of work into and that we think other people are going to enjoy as much as us. And usually I’d say that’s correct instinct.

So it’s just, it’s not really a formula as much as it’s like an intuition. Yeah, I’d say so. Okay. And, and are you at this point, it seems like the way that you described this, it’s, it’s a lot of entertainment, you know, it’s basically, you’ve got dance and now you’ve got some comedy and it’s, you know, a little bit of this kind of like showing your relationship with your dad. Do you, do you kind of plan on using it or do you, do you intentionally, like, are you deliberate about kind of saying, yeah, this is, you know, we’re putting out content that is really for entertainment, not so much for like education or encouragement or, you know, some other type of content, but you know, that’s, is that how you see yourself as basically like an entertainer or how do you, how do you see yourself in your product, as you say, like your content,

I’d say as much as, as much as it is entertainment, it is also become somewhat of a business. For me in particular over the past, I’d say about six months, I signed with some management and we’ve been working together where it really has become a business. I make my living off of it. Which was really cool. But I’d say overall, what I’ve come to know about the tick talk app is it can be very full of negativity. I’ve seen a lot of my friends struggle with that. I’ve struggled with that. And with the platform I’ve been given, like I said, I didn’t really start out on Tik, talk with the intention to become an influencer. I wanted to have fun. And over the time kind of realize what I’ve been given and with the negativity on Tik TOK, my goal has been to just make something that’s going to make someone smile. If there’s something negative on their page and they can scroll. And it’s one of my videos. I want it to have a positive impact. And so entertainment. Yes. Joy. Yes. That’s all stuff that I aim to accomplish with this, but it is also at the end of the day, a bit of a business.

Yeah. So can you tell me about the business part of it? Like when did that w at what, how many, like followers did you have before you started monetizing and then how are you monetizing? Like what actually what’s the vehicle that money actually shows up? Cause this is like, like you’re saying here, it’s like three hours of time for a one-minute video. It’s not like you’re just slapping together or something and throwing it up there and it’s going viral. Like this is a job.

Yeah, no, absolutely. It was, I, I had just hit a million followers. I’m pretty sure. Or I might’ve, I think it was a few days right before I hit a million followers. I had previously worked with Hollister as part of their high school media team. And I had some connections there that translated to United talent agency and they reached out, we had a meeting with them and we started working with them. And I’d say that was the game changer in this shifting from something fun. I do to a business, to my source of income, to, it was one of those things where I’d been putting in the hours beforehand. And this was kind of the turning point where I began making money off of it. And with that essentially, I’d say the main source of income is collaborations with brands, which my team will bring to me, we’ll discuss it. We’ll either take it or leave it. And then from there, we’ll go off working with the brand to create a monetized product.

And, and so what does that mean exactly? Is this like, does that mean we’re going to do a product placement in a video somewhere and you guys are going to dance while that people are seeing that product, or is it more involved in

The, I’d say it ranges for sure. Depending on what the brand wants. A lot of the times I just, I just did a deal with Amazon where I had a call with Amazon discussing what they wanted to promote being their Amazon prime students. Since I am a college student who that’s eligible to and we discuss how that would fit in authentically with my brand and in a way that it will be well received by my followers. And that’s a huge part of being successful when working with brands is it can’t seem too forced or like a blatant ad. And from there, we came upon a conclusion where I was going to order some things as a prime student, create little presence for some of my friends who were going through finals and give them to them. And through the video that ended up being the ad, it was following me, ordering them through Amazon prime, me, building them and me giving them. So while it was an ad, there was still a little bit of a storyline and something positive that came out of it. And we decided that that would resonate well for my audience. So it’s what we went forward with.

And did it, did the video perform well relative to other videos?

It did. Yeah. that one actually did pretty well. I think it has 130,000 likes which I consider good for an ad. But it was very it fit in very well with my brands and with my content. And I think that’s one of the reasons why it said well. Yeah.

Yeah. And I guess when you, when you’re making that decision to going, okay, what, how do I make this fit with my audience? Is that, is that a gut instinct or, or is there something specific like, like when you say fit in with my brand, what do you think of as your brand? Like, so, so when these other companies are bringing opportunities to you, what, what do you think of as your brand when you’re trying to like assimilate the two together?

Yeah, for sure. I think it directly goes back to who I am and kind of, I mean, when I think about my profile, my brand, I don’t cuss on the internet. I don’t do any very sexual things. I try and keep it very wholesome and family content. As well as with my personal things, like who I am as a person, I had a butcher shop, reach out to me for an ad. I’m a vegetarian didn’t quite make sense. And so it’s just things like that, where if I were to promote a butcher shop, my followers would be a little confused and it would look very much like I was just doing it for a check, but when you can do it for things that actually fit with who you are as an individual, if it comes off as a lot more organic, like I use Amazon prime, it worked out

Right. And then do you, when you have this is so interesting to me, I just think this is so cool. I mean, and you know, we have we have at least a handful of our clients who make real substantial income from Facebook watch. And I mean, just for you listening, you know, this can be tens of thousands of dollars a month in income that people are making. I mean, it can be Randy, I was, I mean, what, what are, what are some of the numbers don’t, you don’t have to share your numbers, but just like, since you’re in the community, like if somebody is listening, going, gosh, like maybe I should spend more time putting into editing my videos. Like realistically, what are some of the numbers that you hear from like other influencers and different brand deals that somebody could realistically expect after, you know, if they are able to build their profile over time? Like, what are these arrangements look like?

Yeah. I’d say they definitely vary a good bit because there’s certain partnerships, collaborations that are one video and done. And then there’s other that have posting commitments consistently throughout a six month contract, a year long contract. One in particular I can think of. I have a friend who does a deal with bang energy drinks. I’m not exactly sure what his deal looks like. I think it’s one a week. I’m not entirely sure, but I know he’s estimated to make six figures within a year, which is crazy as an 18, 19 year old. Absolutely crazy from one sponsorship from individuals I’ve heard of people making between two to, I think this was a much bigger influencer than myself, but somebody made like $80,000 off of one video. Absolutely. Mind blowing.

Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s pretty wild. I mean like on YouTube. So for those of you that are members, right? So we teach in phase three in lesson one, we are events called high traffic strategies. And we talk about paid traffic and YouTube specifically, you know, there, which as I understand is also how Facebook watch works is they’re paying you for the length of time that people are watching, but also who they are, who is watching matters a great deal, because you’re getting paid per based on the performance of the video. And so you know, like statistically, the English speaking audience is going to pay the content creator much higher than a non-English speaking audience. And then it’s like, you know, there’s certain demographics like women, as an example, if you have women viewers, typically those pay higher than male audiences cause they’re buyers, but that is very different than what you’re describing, which is you’re not getting paid based on the performance of the video.

You’re getting paid a flat fee, regardless of how well the video performs by a specific brand for a specific project. Which I guess is for everybody, that’s the, I guess the difference between a brand deal, which is what you’re talking about. Somebody saying, I will pay you a flat fee to make this video and post it versus getting paid based on the performance of your videos from the platform itself like Facebook or YouTube or in this case, Tik TOK. So are you monetizing your channel as well from Tik TOK? Like, are you also receiving like, is that that’s a, that’s the other stream of income here, right?

Yeah. So that’s actually fairly new. I’d say maybe it was may when creator fund became a thing, because before, if you were a creator on Tik talk, you made no money just based off of your channel and its performance. Your only source of income was work with outside brands. And that could be a performance-based income based on certain videos or a flat fee. But none of it was coming from Tech-Talk like YouTube monetization. It was completely different, but a little while ago, the Tik TOK creator fund was announced. And that is essentially a payment each day. You can take it out after 30 days after the end of a month, you can receive your earnings from that month. And it’s a payment based on views. So that was a fairly, fairly new change to Tech-Talk where now it can be monetized that way. And I think the only qualifications you need is 10,000 followers. And roughly, I think it was 50,000 views within the past year or something that may be completely wrong, but you, you can find it on the internet, but it’s not. That sounds about right.

Cause I think that’s what you’d like. Although actually, no, I think with YouTube, I think you need, maybe it is 10,000. I think it’s a hundred thousand. I think you need a hundred thousand subscribers before you can monetize from YouTube on YouTube, but these brand deals like you can get, you don’t have to have any there’s no, there’s, you just have to prove to a brand that you can reach their audience and that, you know, you’ll, you’ll help create positive brand awareness. Now you said you so immediately you hired an agency. Like you engage with an agency as soon as this started happening to help negotiate all this. So you don’t really deal with all that stuff directly. Right now.

I, I used to a little bit, I was kind of terrible at it though. People would reach out to me and say, you know, can you use my song in a video? How much will you charge? And I was like, it’s 20 bucks too much. Like I really didn’t understand the market at all. So I’m so thankful for my team. They’re absolutely amazing. But yeah, I don’t handle any of the negotiations now.

Huh. So, so cool. So interesting. Just two, two last little, two last little questions here. Maggie, this has been so, so informative and I think just helping people understand, you know, just the dynamics of how this platform works, what’s going on. It’s obviously a big mover in the, in the market. Do you, are you repurposing your content in other locations and how has that performed or not performed?

I personally try and keep it a little bit different on each platform. So I’m on Tech-Talk Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube. I don’t really repurpose content. I’d say I know a lot of people, a lot of tech talkers in particular, Instagram has a new feature called reels where a lot of people post their tech talks for me. I just never really got into that. I guess I, I just use each platform differently. So it doesn’t always make sense for my content to transfer, but again, I strive for my brand to be consistent on each platform. So I don’t really repurpose, but I’ve seen a lot of creative friends be successful in that.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That’s interesting to hear different different philosophies there. And then here’s my last little question for you is certainly you’re dealing with your volume. You’re dealing with some number of haters and trolls and the negative comments. And we, we know that no matter what type of content you’re putting out there, that’s going to show up and I have to think even though your videos are awesome and hilarious and entertaining, I have to think that you’re getting, you know, some number of hateful comments. So how do you handle those? And, and what’s like, what’s been your, what’s been your outlook on dealing with those?

Absolutely. I think there was definitely a learning curve to it. I think I used to think, take things a lot more personally than I do now, because honestly though, at the beginning I didn’t receive hate for a good long time. My dad and I used to joke that our pages were just an enigma because people weren’t mean to us for a long, long time. But as we both got bigger on the app, we did receive more negative comments. And honestly, I kind of, every time I received that, I really sounds so like textbook, but I kind of have to ask myself a few questions when receiving the negativity. I have to think in my mind, did I do something wrong? Is there a reason I’m getting negativity? Do I need to change something? Or is, are these people just not my demographic? Are we not people who would get along in real life or are we just different?

You know what I mean? Like you’re not going to get along with everyone you meet and you meet a lot more people on tech talk than you do in everyday life. It’s okay. Not for everyone. It’s okay for everyone not to like you. And also just realizing that people are hurting everywhere. And it’s so easy to take that out on someone who you don’t really even understand. I think a big problem and why there’s so much hate on social media is that people don’t necessarily think of influencers as real people. To an extent there, someone they see on their screen. That’s why when I meet people, a lot of the times they’ll say things like, Oh, you’re so much, you’re so much different when I’m really kind of exactly the same. It’s just me in person. Like I’m a real person. People always think I’m taller than I am.

That’s kind of off topic, but it’s just like something where people don’t know you entirely. And so when you’re less of an actual person to them, it’s a lot easier for them to be mean to you. And honestly, at the end of the day, my rule that I’ve kind of told my family is at the end of the day, if I’m proud of the content, then I’m going to post it. I’m going to leave it up. If it doesn’t perform well, but I’m proud of it. I’m going to leave it up. And if people don’t like it, but I’m proud of it. And I think it’s a reflection of who I am and I’m going to leave it up. And I think that’s just something I’ve had to learn by is you can’t judge things based off of numbers because the algorithm is always going to change certain people aren’t going to like it. And you really have to kind of be your own moral compass on things.

I love it. Maggie Thurman is who you’re listening to. Maggie. Where should people go? I mean, obviously Maggie Thurman on Tik TOK is a one place they can find you. Is there anywhere else that you would direct people if they want to connect with you? Maggie

Thurman on Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube.

Nice. Well, thank you so much for this Maggie. Thanks for just, you know, your transparency here and sharing what this, how this, how all stuff works and for your encouragement and your entertainment and making the world a happier, more joyful place. Especially in a a year that’s been pretty dark for a lot of people. It’s great to know that there’s positive content out there that is spreading and that

It’s given you resources to, to make a bigger impact in the world. So we wish you the very best my friend. Thank you so much. [inaudible].

Ep 139: 4 Lessons Personal Brands Need To Know To Go To 8 Figures with Cameron Herold | Recap Episode

Cameron Herold my friend breaking down this interview. Welcome to the special recap edition just me by myself today. And I love this conversation with Cameron. Here’s one of the things that I love about Cameron. There are certain people that I have in my life that I would say I would go to when I need to expand my thinking. When I need to look at a situation or a problem in a completely different way than I am seeing it. And that is to me, one of the amazing things about Cameron, and I think that’s a part of the magic of what he does and also the magic of the growth and the success of his personal brand. You know, the other thing is when I think about, you know, we talk about reputation, your reputation, precedes revenue, it’s it is what are you known for?

What do people trust you with? And I think, you know, when, if you’re a, a real CEO or a real entrepreneur or a real COO, you it’s like, Oh, at some point in your career, you’re going to come across Cameron, Herold. He has the reputation in that space, in that vertical, and it is so great. So I just want to break down my three specific biggest takeaways from him. And, you know, we’re gonna, we’re gonna classify this this recording for sure, as a sitting under our face for eight figure entrepreneurs. So one of the things that we’re doing, if you go to brand builders, group.com forward slash podcast, we are, you know, organizing all of these episodes now in alignment with our, our curriculum. So at brand builders group, we’ve got one curriculum, but our curriculum is divided into four phases.

And then each of our four phases is divided into three courses. So our core curriculum is 12 courses, four phases. And our phase four is the, we, we, we it’s the scaling phase and we, we kind of, our flagship course in phase four is called eight figure entrepreneur. And that’s definitely where this conversation lives. So if you haven’t yet listened to it, I would say, you know, this conversation with Cameron. I mean, if you’re brand new, it’s probably not that relevant to you, except for the idea of going these. This is the way you need to be thinking. And if you can structure your business on the front end you know, it’s going to set up for scale, but his, his real expertise. And, and I think, you know, creative genius is around helping businesses scale. And that leads to my first big takeaway is the concept of ones and threes.

And I, I was so excited to hear that this was, you know, Cameron’s Cameron’s concept because I, I have had heard this quoted by people who’ve said, I once heard someone say, I once heard someone say, and I’ve never known the original source of this. And he’s claiming ownership. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna say it was him. And this is a big idea of the ones and threes. In fact, we teach this at a figure entrepreneur is that, you know, it’s, it’s very much like what Marshall Goldsmith says, what got you here? Won’t get you there. And when you’re growing your business, it’s not that you just kind of do more of the same thing. That’s not really how you grow a business. It’s sort of like there is a range, there is a window where you can do more of what you’re already doing.

And if you become efficient at that, that will get you up to another level. But then as a wise author, once wrote in this amazing book called procrastinate on purpose, which if you haven’t bought it, go by procrastinate on purpose. Like that book will change your life. Of course, that’s my second book. But one of the things I wrote in there is that the next level of results always requires the next level of thinking. And the levels as an entrepreneur, I think are measured in ones and threes. And that’s what Cameron’s talking about. So these are revenue markers at ones and threes, which means the first marker in any business is can I get it to a hundred thousand in annual revenue? The next marker is 300,000. And going from a hundred thousand to 300,000, you don’t have to learn a lot of new skill sets.

You just have to do the skill sets that you have better than you were doing them before. But to go from 300,000 to a million is a different jump. It requires a new way of thinking, a new set of operating principles and practices to get to a million. Now, once you hit a million, getting to 3 million, a lot of times, it’s just doing more efficiently that which you’re already doing, and that one to 3 million, by the way we call this the swamp. There’s a lot, a lot of personal brands that get to that 1 million, but they get stuck in that one to 3 million and it’s, it’s hard to break free. And that is because there’s a big jump between going from 3 million to 10 million and annual revenue. Right. And that is a hard leap, which is what if you look at the brand builders group phases, I would say that like our goal with phase one, it’s like you know, we’re, we’re, we’re teaching you the fundamentals of like getting, what do you need to be clear on in order to get to six figures?

And then I, I think of phase two is really like, Oh, an okay. And now in phase two, we’re going to go, how do we get a hundred thousand to 300,000? And then in phase three, we’re going to go, how do we get from that 300,000 to that one to 3 million? And then in phase four, we’re going, how do you get from 3 million to 10 million all the way up to 30 million, which is phase four. And then honestly, once you got to 30 million in revenue, I would send you off. I would say, we’ve done our job. We would pass you off probably to someone like Cameron actually. Cause that’s really, his specialty is more of that, like you know, 10, 20 million up to a hundred million. And that’s, that’s what the ones and threes are, right? So the difference between 10 million and 30 million, isn’t that different.

It’s like a lot of what you’re already doing, but doing it more efficiently and just, you know, kind of smarter and more well-organized, but to go from 30 million to a hundred million is a big leap and go from a hundred million to 300 million kind of the same, but to go from 300 million to a billion, totally different. And so those are the ones and threes, and I think that applies for our operational practices. Well you know, we, we talk about the nine departments and how every company is laid out. That’s one of the things that we teach in phase four, but you know, like just to, to, to pragmatically speaking, the marketing that you do, we’ll work from one to threes, but till I go from 300,000 to a million, you can’t really just do more of the marketing you’ve been doing. You have to create some other new marketing stream, some other new sales stream, some other new practices, same with your operating, right?

So your, the, the operations department to go from 300,000 to a million, you probably need an operations apartment, right? Like to get to 300,000, you probably just have a couple people and freelancers, but then to make that jump, it’s like, we need to improve our marketing. We’d increase, improve our sales. We need to improve our operations. We need to increase, increase our financial disciplines. A lot of times you have to increase your it, right? So to go from 300,000 to a million is a big is, is usually technological infrastructure. And I would say specifically to go from, from 3 million to 10 million is an it infrastructure issue. That is one of the, one of the big things that needs to happen there. So ones and threes, ones and threes, and just kind of be knowing like, okay, where are you at? If you’re at a hundred thousand, the good news is you could probably get to 300,000 without changing much.

If you’re at 300,000, guess what? You’re probably going to stay stuck there until you have some big time breakthroughs. Now, if you’re coming through the brand builder journey, our formal curriculum, we’re going to, we’re going to take you there. We’re going to step you through these ones and threes, but super powerful concept. It stuck with me for years. I think it’s so true also with personnel, right? So just your marketing tactics and your operations and your it and your sales, but also your people, right? A lot of times people can grow with you. They can go through like up to two of those leaps, but after that, they’re either going to have to significantly up-level their skills, or they are not going to be able to take you to that next level. And so you’re going to have to like bring someone else in who, you know, is used to operating at that level.

And, you know, I found this to be true. So it’s not, it’s not written in stone, but one’s in threes. That’s where the big leaps are. And you got to have a systematic change in your, in your operating system in order to make that leap. The second big take takeaway, which I think is so important is that many people write a book based on an idea they have for a book. And they say, Oh, I’ve always wanted to write a book on this. Or I’d love to write a book about that. But I feel like this is something Cameron said, and I agree with him that the best books are not based on an idea you have for a book, the best books are based on the needs of your real life clients. I would think of this as, are you writing books in forwards or in rears, right?

So if you think about paying your bills, some bills you pay and forwards, you, you pay them in advance of receiving the service. That’s called paying and forwards, and some bills you pay and rear, which is after you’ve received the service. Now, you know, if you’re running a business, you always want people to be paying in forwards. That’s one of the things that we’ll teach you in phase four, also for cashflow management. But when you write your book, we write our books in rears, meaning we don’t write a book as like a hypothesis of some ideas we think could be true. We write it as the conclusion of things that we have found to be true. This is why brand builders group hasn’t released a book yet, right? So we’re two and a half years, or, you know, like just over two years and some change into the start of our company.

And we don’t have a book out. Why not? Well, we certainly could write a book. We actually have 12 books. Every course that we teach in our formal curriculum could be a book, but we’re, we’re, we’re dialing it in, right? We, we create what, what our content is led by what our clients need. Those make the best books. And I think that is super duper powerful is just serving your client in a deeper way, figure out what they need in real life. And then test it, work it, refine it. And then the book is the final conclusion of that rather than the hypothesis. I think your book will last longer. People will read it. It’ll, it’ll have more depth to it. You’ll have better case studies and anecdotes and illustrations because you’ve done it. I think worse author sometimes get into deep water is when you sign like a multi book deal and you commit to writing so many books in some frequency of time, but you haven’t really learned that much new and you haven’t really had that much growth in your business or clients.

And it’s like, you’re trying to write in forwards rather than an in rears big idea. The third big idea that I think Cameron, you know, talked about, but also really to me, his personal brand is a great example of this. And this is such a simple question, like such an important question is to simply ask yourself, where is there a gap in the market? Where is there a gap in the marketplace that is an opportunity to build a great business as you go, where is there an underserved market? This is part of, this is exactly what, what Cameron has done with COO’s right? A lot of people do stuff for CEOs and and founders and owners, but almost nobody does stuff for COO’s training and developing the second in command. And, and Cameron noticed that and he said, Oh, I’m going to go serve that community.

I’m going to dominate that space brand builders group, I feel is doing something very similar. This is why we serve personal brands, right? We don’t work with companies. If Google calls and they say, Hey, will you consult with us on our branding? The answer is no, we don’t do that. We will work with one of your executives and help them become more influential. But we brand people, we don’t brand companies. Now just so happens. Google did call for me to do a keynote. I just did do a keynote for them, but that was based on take the stairs. It was more of my personal development content. It’s not what we do as a team, right? So that is a market that we said, you know, there’s a lot of people teach in webinars and podcasts and book publishing and video courses and membership sites and Facebook, traffic and funnels and copywriting, and you know, getting media interviews.

But nobody that sits on top of it and says, how do we orchid organize all of this and orchestrate it for personal brands? How do we create a strategy where all of these things fit together in a specific order in sequence that aligned with your uniqueness in your direction? We said, we’re going to come in and we’re going to serve. We’re going to serve that space. There’s a gap in the market. So that’s a good question for you to ask, right? It’s it’s and specifically, if you can go, where is there a gap in there in the market that aligns with your uniqueness? Like your passion, your experience, your results, your education that you can step in and serve? I think Cameron is just is a really, really great example of that. And I want to give you a little bit of a, a quick tip here on uniqueness and differentiation as well, because I’ve thought a lot about this, but I don’t think we’ve ever shared it on the podcast.

And we don’t even share this in our formal curriculum at brand builders group. So this is this is a, this is a great one, is that when I think of differentiation. Okay. and, and by the way, to me, uniqueness and differentiation are not the same thing. Differentiation is how do I decidedly draw a line that separates me from everybody else. Uniqueness is more of an exploration of who am I, who was I designed to be? Who am I called to be? Who does the world need me to be? What position do I uniquely serve in the world? It’s more intrinsic. It’s kind of from the internal out, differentiation is more of an external, like is from the outside in going, okay, how can I position myself in the market? So this is a tactic specifically for differentiation, which is rare.

Most of what we teach at brand builders group is finding your uniqueness like our flagship phase one course is called finding your brand DNA. It’s all about our process for finding your uniqueness. So this is a little bit different because I think what Cameron is talking about is more about differentiation than it is about uniqueness. Now we believe in uniqueness, right? We believe in become who you are, become, who you were created to be, become your most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were and speak from that truth. And who cares what your competition is doing. That’s what we believe, but we also have an eye towards differentiation because anytime we can differentiate ourselves, that’s good. You know, I’m reminded of one of my favorite quotes from a, another dear friend of mine, Sally Hogshead, who says you want to be able to position yourself clearly inside of a box that people understand, but then simultaneously to immediately differentiate yourself from everyone else who’s inside that box.

And that’s kind of what we’re talking about here. So here’s a little tip. This is the, this is called the M three M three method or M three tip for a differentiation. So I think there’s three different places to look for. Differentiate differentiation, differentiate your first of all, your a market. Is there an opportunity to have differentiation in the market you serve? That is what Cameron was talking about, right? Like where is there an underserved audience? So for brand builders group, part of our, our uniqueness and part of what we’ve done to differentiate ourselves is to say, we survey specific market, a narrow market. This is a market as a type of person, right? For us, it’s personal brands. The second is your model. And by that, I mean your, your business model, which is how do you make money? So again, if you look at brand builders group, our model is one-on-one coaching.

Our pro we are primarily in the business model of one-on-one coaching, which is a differentiator of business model. Most people who teach to personal brands, they sell video courses, they sell membership sites, they sell masterminds, right? They sell one to many experiences, but our, our business model is one-on-one. If you want a one, if you want a private coach to help you apply the concepts and strategies and techniques and philosophies and principles of personal branding to your specific life and business, you need us. I don’t even know anyone else who does it at scale. There are some independent people out there, but there we do this. Cause we, we do one-on-one coaching really, really well. That’s a differentiation, not in the market we’re serving, but in the business model, the, the way we do it, how are we charging? Right. So the market is who are you serving?

Okay. The, the, the, the, the model I would say is how are you making money serving them? Right. So one-on-one coaching is a model. And then the third M is the method, which is what are you teaching them? Right? What are you teaching them that, or, you know, or teaching them for personal brands or in general, what are you providing you know, to them. So when I think of like the method, right? The method is more of like your unique intellectual property, your unique methodology, your IP, your framework, your body of work, all the things that in our, in our phase one course, two, which is called captivating content. That’s what we do is we help people extrapolate their unique SIS system or methodology, or we help people create their frameworks. We help them write their books, write their Ted talks all out of a, a unique set of IP.

That’s birthed from their own brain by way of taking them through our process. That is their method. That’s different from their business model, which is how do they make money, right? So the market is who are you serving? The model is how are you making money? The method is what are you providing to them? And, and are you differentiating it somehow based on what you, what you’re providing. So like, when I think of the like Uber, right? Like the Uber and taxis, it’s kind of the same business model. They’re charging for a ride, but the method is different. The delivery mechanism is different instead of a taxi, it’s an independent driver. They’re serving the same taxis and Uber. They both serve the same market. Pretty much people looking for a ride. They both charge the same way, which is how, you know, how far is the distance or time in the car, whatever.

But the method is different. The, the, the, the modality is different. One is, you know theoretically a professional driver was a taxi cab driver versus, you know, just a home driver. I think of Airbnb being similar, right? They’re looking, they’re serving the same market and they charge on the same model as hotels, which is like an overnight rate, but it’s a different method. It’s a different it’s a, it’s a whole different place and vehicle for establishing and providing that service. So the market is who the model is, how are you charging? And the method is what are you providing to them? So that is a little bit of a Diddy and distinction on uniqueness and differentiation, and kind of a rare lesson on how to differentiate yourself from the competition. That’s what we got. That was what I was inspired by, among other things from Cameron, Harold, a big time speaker, a complex thinker, someone very good at breaking paradigms, which is what you would want from someone helping you create these explosive growth opportunities between the ones and threes. So I hope you enjoyed it. Keep coming back, stay tuned, listen to the interviews, listen to these recaps, stay plugged in our free content should be enough to help you start making money. And then at some point we hope that you’ll consider investing some of that money into letting us, coach you to get to the next level with your personal brand. That’s it for now. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal

Bye. Bye

Ep 138: 4 Lessons Personal Brands Need To Know To Go To 8 Figures with Cameron Herold

RV: (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. 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.

RV: (01:03)

So much fun to introduce you to Cameron, Herold this Cameron and I have been friends for years, we’ve shared the stage at events together. One of the things I love about Cameron is his pedigree of track record of success as a, not just an expert teacher, but an expert Dewar. So a huge part of his story was that he was a CEO, the COO of a company called one 800, got junk. And in six years he helped that company go from 2 million in revenue to 106 million in revenue. Eventually he left that business and became a personal brand. He’s a best-selling author of a book called double double how to double your revenue and profit in three years or less. He’s got other books. He’s also a great example of somebody that we think of as like has developed a real strong niche expertise around specifically serving a specific audience.

RV: (02:03)

COO’s the COO Alliance is something that he started, which is like the world’s largest community for number twos in companies, not the CEO, the COO, which is often a very underserved community that he identified and you know, found his uniqueness there and, and built that into something extraordinary. And he’s going to tell us all the secrets about how he did it, and he’s going to tell us for free, and that’s why he’s here. Welcome Cameron, Herold.

CH: (02:32)

Rory. Thanks for having me, but I appreciate it. Yeah, man. So my first chronic question for you is you know, we’ve got a lot of people in our community who are like coaches, consultants, et cetera, but I love your story of like, you kind of came out of, I don’t know if you call it the corporate world more of the entrepreneur world, but that’s gotta gotta be a shift from going. I’m a COO, I’m an employee that has a job every day, too. I’m going to build a personal brand, teaching people my expertise. Can you just talk a little bit about what happened, when did it happen? How did, like, how did that transition start for you?

CH: (03:14)

It’s interesting. So it’s an interesting, you mentioned coaches, I’ve been coaching entrepreneurs for 31 years. Wow. Since before coaching was a thing I had coached 120 entrepreneurs by 1993. All of the, all of these companies that I was coaching all had real, real businesses with real employees and, and we’re actually in two countries as well. So I’d coached a lot of entrepreneurs 30 years ago. And I also, I started to build one 800, got junk with my best friend who was the CEO. It was then going to be the fourth company that I’d helped build. But the other three, I was very much behind the scenes as a second and Columbia command or a very, very senior leader in one of the two. I was a very senior leader. The other two, I was second in command. And in all three, I was very behind the scenes.

CH: (04:03)

So my name was never really affiliated or attached to the brand. And I decided when I joined 1-800-GOT-JUNK, I was the 14th employee walking in the door. When I left six and a half years later, we had 3,100 employees system wide, but I knew on day one, the only way I was going to do it was either to have equity or to have brand equity. And I needed my aim to be attached to the brand because I wasn’t going to do it for the fourth time and have nobody know what I did so very, very early on. Yeah. So it was very much by design that I knew my equity play was going to be more valuable having my name attached to what I’d done versus having equity in the company.

RV: (04:43)

See, that’s awesome. Like I’ve never even thought about that as like, like when I think about personal branding, what we do, I always think about it as like, Hey, you know, either start your own business or did you do it to grow a business, but even inside of a company, it’s like the value of building your own brand and reputation and being associated with that company is equity value. Yeah.

CH: (05:06)

And then it got to the point where it actually became embarrassing last year where the founder had written a book called WTF. Brian was always one of my best friends. And in the book beat you up, willing to fail. When I started reading it, I was like, I just hope he mentions me. I hope he says, thank you to Cameron somewhere in the book. And, and then like on page three, he mentioned me. And then on page six, he mentions me and then on page 12 and I’m like, okay, good. You mentioned me were awesome. Thanks so much. And we get to the end of the book and I’ve been in there like seven or eight times, but no one else on the leadership team had been mentioned with the exception of the new COO who I’ve known for 34 years. Cause we started a fraternity together and he mentioned Eric, but I realized that the others who had helped build the company had fallen into the shadows much.

CH: (05:55)

Like I had fallen into the shadows and Gerber auto collision and Boyd auto body and college pro painters. And you bartered.com. And I just didn’t want that to happen again. So I was pleased that that was, but it was by design, right? So the way that I did it was making sure that I did the speaking events for the company, but I was very outward facing much like Harley Finkelstein is today as the second command for Shopify, a very outward facing COO or Sheryl Sandberg, very outward facing CEO for Facebook versus a lot of CEOs are very inward facing and they’re only known inside the company. I wanted the outward brand as well. So it was, it was a lot of speaking events for the company in the early days. And as we scaled, and then it was a lot of press interviews and generating press interviews. We had 5,000, 200 stories written about our company in six years, independent stories. And this was all before social media existed. So it was how do you build a brand with speaking and with PR coverage was how we did it.

RV: (06:53)

Interesting. So even as an employee, there’s just that value to building the personal brand, being out there, being in the public eye. So then

CH: (07:05)

Certainly being the one taking credit for things, but just being the one, explaining how we as a team were doing it, you know, I didn’t have to be taking credit for what my team was doing, but I could explain how we were doing what we were doing. Right. So very much like your guy Kawasaki did with Apple, you know, that he has described himself as technical evangelist for Apple. But what most people don’t know is there was a meeting that Steve jobs had that’s the guy Kawasaki was sitting in and Steve said, as of today, all of you, every single one of you employees, your title is technical evangelist. Like go talk about the brand. So guys like, it. I’m getting business cards that say technical evangelist. And he built his entire brand off of becoming a spokesperson for the company when the reality is every employee is a spokesperson for what you’re doing most just don’t stand up and talk about it.

RV: (07:57)

Awesome. Love that. Okay. So you guys, so you exit the business and then by my best friend, awesome.

CH: (08:07)

Yeah, my, my best friend fired me one morning after six and a half years on good terms, but he’s just like, look, you’re the guy that took us from 2 million to a hundred million. You’re not the guy to take us from a hundred million to a billion. So I left the company and took four months off. And, and for four months I just journaled and wrote lists and mind maps and tried to figure out what I love doing and what did I not like doing and what was I good at and what do I suck out and what gives me the energy and what drains me of energy and what I came up with that was, I love speaking and I love networking and masterminding and I love coaching. And outside of that, I’m great in a lot of stuff, but I don’t love it.

RV: (08:50)

And so that led you to go and Hey, I should, I should take this personal brand, like make it my income generator.

CH: (08:58)

Yeah. And I really started to look at, you know, I love being the person who helps the entrepreneurs make their dreams up and you know, even why am I on your podcast is to help you and your listeners, why I built one 800, got junk, was to help Brian. He was my best friend. He was my best man at my wedding. Three months before I joined him, I joined him to help him grow his company. Coaching entrepreneurs has always been, I love coaching them and helping them. So I just wanted to build a brand around us and build my name around being that CEO whisper, you know, the one who was just whispering and every CEO’s ear and giving them the shortcuts to scale their companies.

RV: (09:34)

Yeah. And that’s interesting because, you know, I hear people refer to you as like the CEO whisper specifically in that like entrepreneurial environment. You and I shared the stage at EO events. I think that’s every time we’ve shared the stage, which I think has only been twice, has been at an EO event. And but you’re yet your audience, you kind of, you kind of, you know, exploited this vertical of the seat. Oh, Whoa. So was that, was that deliberate or like, how do you, how do you reconcile those

CH: (10:08)

Very deliberate? See, I hadn’t played the COO four times, right? So I was in the COO role and I kept showing up at EO events and YPO events and Vistage events and genius network events and Maverick events and all these amazing events for entrepreneurs. But I didn’t fit in. I wanted to get into the nitty gritty and talk about the operations of the businesses I was building. So I realized that there were a hundred groups for entrepreneurs, but there, there were groups for marketers and lawyers and engineers and doctors, lots of association, but there was no association or organization or a mastermind group for the second command. So I started one for the COO. It was called the COO Alliance. But if I grow the CEO’s skills and if I grow the CEO’s capacity, they’ll grow their own entrepreneurs company. So it’s completely consistent with my core purpose. And it was just a need that wasn’t happening. But I was listening to my customers. I was coaching Bob glacier from acceleration partners and his COO. And then I was coaching Tucker max, and his COO. And I was coaching. Then like all these CEOs with their CEOs that I was coaching and I realized their CEOs were the ones doing it. I needed to really coach them on how to do it. I needed to coach the CEO on what needed to happen. Right.

RV: (11:23)

Huh. But that’s just like one of the things we say at brand builders all the time is your most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. And you’re such a great example of that, of going, I was a CEO, a COO, I understand their world. I am that person. Holy moly, nobody is servicing this group. I’m going to do it. I’m going to start it. And that is that.

CH: (11:46)

It was also because I listened to my customer and I gave them what they needed instead of me trying to create something and market it to a group that doesn’t exist. They were all wanting and starving for more information and starving to talk to each other. So I just, I actually got 10 of my second in commands together from companies that I coached, pulled them together for two and a half day weekend. And they all wanted to keep meetings. So I’m like, let’s just start this thing. It’s like my books, I’ve written five books, but none of them, I didn’t have this desire to be an author desired, but my clients wanted more information. Like how do I get more press coverage? You landed 5,000 stories. How do I get it? So I just wrote a book and here there’s the content. Like I gave them the how to guide in every book.

RV: (12:29)

So it was more like it wasn’t going, Hey, I’ve got an idea for a book. It was more going, Hey, my clients have a need for information. And that was the Genesis of the book.

CH: (12:39)

That’s it? Like I have two others that I’m working on right now. One is on the highs and lows and CEOs and why most entrepreneurs ride this manic bipolar rollercoaster. And how do we, how do we ride that in a better way? And then the second is about building that CEO, COO relationship, that real two in a box model. And it’s, again, I don’t want to be a writer. I don’t like writing, but I like sharing my ideas because it helps so many people.

RV: (13:04)

And can you tell us a little bit like your, about your business model now? Okay. So you, you know, we know that you’re a speaker and you get paid a speaking fee. Okay. You know, you know, you get your, your rights and books and make some money from that. But like as a personal brand, what’s the, what’s the primary revenue model. Is it the COO Alliance?

CH: (13:23)

It’s a few. So if I, if I was to take you through what my funnel might look like, my revenue funnel, the top of my funnel is all the press that I generate for myself. So it’s podcasts, you know, speaking events it’s and sometimes being paid to speak, but all of that is, is press right. So all of the press coverage and then being paid to get press coverage is one, all of my books and selling, you know, tens of thousands of copies of each of my five books gets more revenue, but more brand building as well. And then my coaching of CEOs and their teams, because I’m paid, my coaching rate is $2,700 an hour. So I’m paid a good rate for the year to coach these people. And then I have the COO Alliance, which is really a business in and of itself that is, you know, already really revenue, positive and scaling. And then I have referral income. So I have, you know, I spent 14 years knowing who the best M and a firms are the best executive search firms, best copywriting firms, PR firms, fractional CFOs, fractional CMOs. And I refer companies to these groups. And then I just get checks in the mail from those relationships and those introductions.

RV: (14:27)

Yeah, yeah. Essentially that’s the whole, the whole brand builder model is, you know, we have a bunch of affiliates that we pay them a lifetime referral fee just to basically come on in and talk to their audience and do a free thing. And then anyone that comes from it, I mean, it’s incredible. It’s crazy how powerful that is.

CH: (14:45)

I’m going to number one, referral source to describe, you know, for booking the box Lewis, Howes is one of your clients is he’s the number two referral source in the book in a box right now it’s called scribe. I’ve got four of my coaching. Clients are working with this one, that one M and a firm to help them exit and they’ll get huge exits. And then I get nice referral fees. And then the last thing that I do is all of my coaching clients three years after their coaching ends, they have to write me a bonus check for what coaching was really worth when I was coaching them. So, yeah. So it’s based on, on an idea that the true value that they generate doesn’t generate during coaching. It generates in the years following coaching, when they actually implement all the ideas they’ve learned. So three years after we finish our coaching engagement, they have to cut me a bonus check for what they feel the value of the coaching really was.

RV: (15:38)

Wow. And it’s not, not set. It’s just, it’s based on what they feel like it was worth.

CH: (15:43)

Yeah. I have a guy right now who like, every time I talked to him, he goes, that was just a McLaren. He goes, that was a Ferrari. Thank you like this. He’s like, I know I’m writing some big checks here. You know, one of my clients went from 4 million to 52 million in four years. Another one of my coaching clients that I coached for six years, three years ago, he raised $255 million from Warburg Pincus. One of the top investment banks, I’ve helped four companies sell for 150 million or more. So there’s, there’s really nice income there when I focus on their needs and not worry about the check, the check comes later.

RV: (16:21)

So and that’s, that’s one of the other things I wanted to ask you about. So one was just a little bit about your story as a personal brand. I think that’s really fascinating to go that you’re getting like referral income as a percentage of just these introductions you’re making to these high value connections and what that is worth and that’s worth a lot. And but the other thing was, I actually wanted to talk about scaling a business. Okay. Because personal branding is, is interesting. You know, a lot of times people get into it and it’s like, Oh yeah, I’m gonna make some money. And then they start making money. And then it’s like, okay, they’re, they’re building their notoriety. And then they hit like this one to $3 million threshold like this ceiling. And they go crap, I’ll never get past this, this level.

RV: (17:08)

If it’s all about me and then it’s going, okay, how do I get from 3 million to 10 million or that eight figures? And I think it’s like, when I think of you just as my friend, it’s like, you are someone I put in that category of going okay. If I need to talk to someone about shifting my mindset from that, you know, seven figure to the eight figure nine figure mindset. You’re like the guy. So what do personal brands need to do if they want to make that leap? Not everybody does, but if they do want to go, I want to turn my personal brand into a real business. What switches do we have to flip?

CH: (17:47)

So I can give you, I can give you four been chomping at the bits. I, I, they both, all four of them came to me really, really quickly. So it’s interesting that you said from 1 million to 3 million, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard me talk about the ones and the threes, but the ones in the threes, the natural hurdle points in the company. When you go from one employee to three, everything’s different, and then you go to 10 employees. Now you have like a manager somewhere and you go to 30 employees. You might have a few managers. You go to a hundred employees. You don’t know the names of everybody. You go to 300 employees, you’ve got internal politics. You’ve got to like, and then from the, on the dollar side, a hundred thousand to 300,000, okay. Now you’ve actually got a real business. You’ve replaced a wage. Then you go to a million. Well, now all of a sudden you’ve got taxes to take care of. And you’re trying to figure out ways to Mont, like to minimize tax. And you’ve probably got employees and issues. Then 3 million, you’re dealing with banks and credit facilities and then 10 million and 30 million, a hundred million. So there’s these natural inflection points that happen. So the key is to get over.

RV: (18:42)

So one thing on that, can I stop you on this? Because I’ve never heard you say that, but I’ve heard other people quote that, but they they’ve always said, I heard somebody wants talk about, so are you, can I officially start citing you as the, the originator of the ones and threes? Because I love that. We talk about that.

CH: (19:02)

I’ve been talking about the ones and threes for ages, because it’s just this natural. I visualize everything. As a series of hurdles, I used to run hurdles. When I was in high school, I ran 400 meter hurdles. And I pictured myself as having to go over these hurdles. But the hurdles keep getting bigger. Right? As, as we were building 1-800-GOT-JUNK, you know, we had six consecutive years of 100% revenue growth, six years in a row. We D we doubled the size of the company. Every, it was like pushing a snowball up a Hill with one hand, like you had to climb your way up the mountain and the snowball kept getting bigger. So the hurdles keep getting bigger and you need to anticipate what happens at each hurdle point to scale your company, or you get stuck at the hurdle, right? So I’ll give you a couple of the core lessons I would give are the first one.

CH: (19:47)

If you don’t have an executive assistant, you are one. So every single person, who’s a thought leader or a brand that one of the very first roles you need to hire as an executive assistant or a fractional or part-time executive assistant to get all the stuff off your plate that has less than a $25 an hour job, $50 an hour job. Why do you think that my effective hourly coaching rate is 2,700 an hour. My speaking events are 30,000 or 5,000 for zoom. So I shouldn’t be doing anything that’s less than 2,500 bucks an hour. Like nothing. I should delegate everything except the stuff that is in my hourly rate. So executive assistants that first one second one is recognizing the ones in the threes and the tens and the hurdle points. The third is to delegate everything except genius, right? And to really look, to get stuff off your plate, just because you couldn’t do it just because you’re capable of doing it, just because you’re good at it doesn’t mean that it fills you with energy and the more of your day that you can filling up with energy as you’re working in your business, the more that positive energy just continues to spiral upwards.

CH: (20:53)

So it’s about getting stuff off your plate. It needs to get done, but not by us, right? So that’s, it’s kind of like, can you be that lazy entrepreneur and delegate everything except genius is huge. And then the fourth one, and this is a really powerful number that people need to understand when you’re running your own business. When you go from being a solo preneur to, to, to building it into a business, you’re only going to get paid a third of the time. Like only a third of my time. Am I going to get paid for speaking or paid for coaching? Another third of the time I’m dealing with stuff with my clients. I’m getting prepped for an event I’m prepping for coaching. I’m thinking about my clients. I’m making referrals, whatever, but I’m doing some unpaid work. And then maybe 30% of my time, I’m actually doing sales and marketing, trying to find more clients.

CH: (21:40)

So if I’m only going to get paid a third of the time, I need to charge three times what I think I’m going to charge to end up at the end of the year with what I want to make. So here’s what I mean by that. Let’s say you want to earn a hundred thousand dollars a year just for easy math. Let’s say a million dollars a year. If you want to earn a million dollars a year, that means your hourly rate. If you worked 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, you would be getting paid $500 an hour for 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year generates a million dollars in income.

RV: (22:09)

Okay. Slow down here. Just a little bit on the math cause I’m, I’m gone. Okay. So a million dollars a year is how much

CH: (22:17)

Is $500 an hour. So you can do the very quick math $500 times 40 hours a week, times 52 weeks generates a million dollars. Okay. Got it. But if you’re only getting paid 30% of the time and 30% of the time you’re working on the business and not getting paid for it. And 30% of the time you’re at finding new clients. That means you need to charge $1,500 an hour because you’re only really going to be billing out at about 14 hours a week. To end up with a million dollars a year. The reason most consultants never make enough money is they charge the hourly rate. They used to get paid. And then they realized that the end of the year, they don’t get paid for 40 hours a week. When they’re still trying to find work, you’re not charging enough. You got to charge more. One of the very, very first things I did at 1-800-GOT-JUNK was raised our prices by 40%. One of the, one of the first two weeks I was there. You know, like, what’s your speaking fee. I know you’re going to tell me, and I’m going to have to raise mine again. But what do you charge for your speaking?

RV: (23:16)

25 grand for a, for a one for a one hour. It’s 25 grand. And we’re doing, we’re doing 7,500 for a virtual.

CH: (23:24)

Okay. There you go. I need to change my virtual keynote. Cause five grand. I’m underpricing myself. Every time you think about it, you can raise your bar a little bit. And what I can do with that extra money is like, yeah,

RV: (23:33)

Well, our friend Dorsey Wright, every time I talked to Dorsey, I have to go crap. I got to tell my fees.

CH: (23:40)

I helped Dorsey with some time that guy used to check his suitcase at the airport. I’m like, dude, you can’t your suitcase and do 130 speaking events a year. But yeah, he’s, he’s doing like 136 speaking events a year at 50 grand each.

RV: (23:54)

Yeah.

CH: (23:55)

When you charge more than you can spend more on your website, you can spend more on your coaching. You can spend more in the masterminds, you’re in, you can spend more on your brand and you can spend more on your marketing. But if you don’t charge enough, you don’t have enough to spend on everything and you’re not making it up.

RV: (24:09)

So what about when you first start though? Like how do you, cause that’s hard, right? Like if, if you first start, if you’re just beginning, do you go set my price based on what I think I’m worth? Or do I take what I can get or do I just figure out mathematically here’s how much I need to make at the end of the year. I know I’m only going to get paid a certain, like, how do you calculate that in the beginning?

CH: (24:31)

I never negotiate price. I always add value. So my speaking event is 30,000. Oh, you can’t pay me 30,000. Well, my speaking event is still 30,000 for me to fly to you. But the night before I’ll do a dinner with you and some of your CEO friends, it’s 33,000. Okay. Well that was 30,000 plus a dinner. I’ll give you some books as well. Like I’m going to, I’m going to add some value, but the price is going to stay at 30,000. What most of the rookies do is they tend to negotiate their fee down too quickly. And they just, what they haven’t learned is that entrepreneurs negotiate. It’s just, they do it for sport, for entrepreneurs, negotiate for fun. It’s like being a Mexican and negotiating for the trinket on the beach. You just know that you don’t pay the first price. Right?

RV: (25:15)

I mean, yeah, it’s interesting. I’m trying to just go, you know, some of these are just like literally mental switches that you have to flick in, like in your brain in order to scale and to move. And

CH: (25:32)

These are the mental switches that I learned as a young child. So I had, I did a Ted talk or a TEDx talk it’s on the main Ted websites. If you go to ted.com, you look up raising entrepreneurial kids. I did a talk 10 years ago about all these different businesses that I ran before. I was 18 years old and all the business lessons I learned. So I learned how to negotiate when I was eight years old, selling licensed protectors door to door. I learned how to hire my first employee when I was nine. And I hired a neighbor to do deliveries for me, for the newspapers. So I would like the tips, but he didn’t deliver them during the week. You know, I learned all these lessons. So for me, the mental switches have always been there. Cause I was groomed as an entrepreneur at a very young age.

RV: (26:16)

W w w w one last little question here, which is not something I was planning on asking, but when you look ahead at the future of personal branding, right? Like you, you, you hang in a lot of these circles, you know, we hang in some of the same circles. You mentioned something that like masterminds and you know, a lot of these best-selling authors, you know, a lot of these high dollar speakers specifically on the valuation, this is totally, totally out of left field. One of the things I’ve been trying to wrestle with and think about is I’m just going, like, you know, there’s such a market for buying and selling companies, but I think there is an emergence of a market of buying and selling email lists and members and subscribers and podcasts downloads. Is there anything that you see related to the future of the valuation of certain assets, of personal brands being bought and sold like values of email lists or just anything really in general, like your mind on the future of PR PR personal branding

CH: (27:22)

Flip side of that actually, which is that most of the people trying to build personal brands, unless they’ve actually done what they are saying they can do are going to get filtered out because of AI or because of, it’s almost like if you go on Twitter today and you see a post that Donald Trump did in 30% of them are getting flagged by this is not true. I think we’re going to start seeing filters built into our AI or built into our social platforms that allow us to scan for who the frauds are really quickly. Like we’re going to just know that Roy vaping is the real deal. He’s running a real consulting company. You know, Jason Dorsey is the real deal. Like I’ve known Louis House for 14 years. I had lunch with, with us before he could afford to buy lunch in New York. It’s 13, 14 years ago.

CH: (28:04)

He’s the real deal with like what he built off LinkedIn with Sean malarkey, his old partner, like you’ll Victoria Lubbock is the real deal. Like you’ll know who these real business people are that are also the thought leaders. And then you’ll know the ones that have just become good marketers, but don’t have the content and they’re marketing somebody else’s content. So I think you’re going to have to be really 60 minutes per week. You have to be able to have people scratch the surface to know you’ve done what you say you can do. You’re not just out there quoting somebody else’s quotes or selling somebody else’s stuff. So I think there’s going to be a lot less of the good marketers selling somebody else to stuff. And there’s going to be a lot more or a better truer brands of people that have actually done it before.

RV: (28:51)

Interesting love that. We you know, I would welcome that both for us and our clients and just do it the right way. Play the long game don’t take advantage of people think hard, work hard, come up with meaningful stuff. And it’s like, it’s, it’s no, that that will pay off. And in the future, AI may be a part of that. It’s filtering people out.

CH: (29:14)

Well, that could be a really killer app right now that could be created that the, a layer or an API that ties in with like Facebook. Imagine if I go on somebody’s Facebook and then this little app that it’s like, Oh, you’re on Rory Vaden site. Oh, fraud, Rory has never done it before, or he’s amazing. And it gives us a score. But instead of me needing to load your name in and checking to see what your Instagram followers are real, like there’s apps right now where you can do it, but you have to do it manually. Imagine if it was a layer that oversaw everything right now, for us almost like a, like one of the coupon codes, like, Hey, a coupons available. Imagine if every single person’s profile you clicked on it overlayed and showed you what their real brand value actually was. So you knew who the frauds were and who the others. Weren’t

RV: (29:57)

Interesting. Yeah. I mean, I think about that this, I don’t know if this is still around, but there was a thing called the clout score, the K O U T I. And that was actually kind of like that, where it was like when you had to go into cloud to see it. Right.

CH: (30:13)

Imagine if I go click on John ruins profile and, you know, from Giftology and Facebook and it’s like, Whoa, cloud score 98. I didn’t even think to look, but it shows me his cloud score and his factor in his swearing value or whatever. It’s like, well, that’s an interesting,

RV: (30:30)

Yeah. And you know, it’s interesting too. And somebody like John Ruhlin is interesting because if you look at, if you looked at like his number of followers, you might not be that impressed. But if you saw the guy’s personal Rolodex, not just the Rolodex, but like the people who he actually knows and who he actually is

CH: (30:51)

Brick walls for him. Like the people that I just introduced John to a major, major, major player three hours ago, like a major player. Right. And if you think about who that guy knows, yeah. That can be some pretty powerful stuff.

RV: (31:05)

Yeah. It’d be interesting. Interesting to see. Well, I love that you know, Cameron, where should people go if they want to learn more about you? I mean, certainly anyone listening that has a second in command, which all of us should, if we’re building a real personal brand you know where to learn about COO Alliance and the stuff that you’re up to.

CH: (31:22)

Yeah. Check out the second command podcast for shirts and amazing podcasts where we have amazing guests. We will never interview the CEO. We only interview the second in command, the COO Alliance, for sure. And then all five of my books are available on Amazon, audible and iTunes. And then I guess my personal brand website, just go to Cameron, harold.com. You’ll see everything wrapped up there.

RV: (31:44)

Awesome. Well brother, thanks for challenging. My thinking, I feel like every time I talk to you, there’s something that’s like, it really stretches, stretches me to think in a new way and appreciate you making some time for us, man. And we just as always wish you the best.

CH: (32:00)

Thank you. The feeling is mutual. I get stressed every time as well. Appreciate it.

Ep 137: Secrets of Self-Publishing Your Way to Becoming a Bestselling Author with Chandler Bolt | Recap Episode

Hey, brand builder. Welcome to the influential personal brand podcast recap. Today, we are looking at self-publishing my old friend Chandler bolt, which was fun to go back on memory lane a little bit and see how far Chandler has come and his team, what they have built such a great operation. And so yeah, let’s dive in right away. We got my three big takeaways as well as ADJs for you. And I think the first thing, which is kind of obvious, but I don’t think it’s pervasive enough, which is the idea that every business owner needs to write a book because you use the book to build your business. And so it’s like, you may not care to be a New York times. Best-Selling author. You may never need a traditional publisher, but the power of a book is, is magical. And there’s just, there’s nothing quite like it in terms of the impact it has on your ability to market your business, your product and service.

Yeah, that’s interesting. That’s, that’s similar to my first one, but a little bit different. And this is something that Chandler said and the very, very beginning of the interview, probably in the first, I don’t know, five to seven minutes. So you’ll, you’ll catch this tidbit right off the bat. And he said, before you start asking yourself the question of, Hey, should I do a traditional book or self published book? He said, really the question to answer is, is a book the next best thing to do for your business. And in his opinion, it is, he said, you know, I love what he said. He said, books, change lives. Like they change lives. They can change your business. They can change your mindset. They can change your relationships. They can change your financial situation. They can change your fitness. Like books have the power to change lives.

Ask yourself is a book, the next best thing for my business, then worry about everything else. And I thought that was really powerful because I agree in so many ways. A book is a calling card. It’s a, it’s a giant size business card. But more than that, it represents what you stand for, what you believe in your way of doing business, your methodology, your principles, your philosophies, if you really want someone to know who you are, and if they’re a good fit for you and vice versa, read the book, right. Or, you know, listen to the keynote, you know, in, in many ways. But I thought it was really interesting. And he said, if you, and if you answered that, no, then move on. But if the answer is yes, then that’s kind of step one.

Yeah. And I think the idea of is it the next right thing is good. Cause like, even at brand builders, we’ve got several books that we are working on writing, but we haven’t, we haven’t said we’re ready to do the first one yet. So there’s timing, timing matters. That, yeah. So my second big takeaway from this was where he said, which I love, because this is a guy who has self-published his own books helps people self-publishers runs a school that teaches people how to self-publish. And he says, yeah, we got, we, we got, we got boxes from when you’re, when you’re, when you’re actually in the program. And here’s what he said. The key to a self published book is to publish to self-publish a book that does not look like it is self-published. And I think that was valuable to hear from him.

And I, I really agree with this because I think, you know, self-publishing has gotten to be so easy, which is a great thing that the downside is, you know, it’s, you can print something really quickly and, and not have it kind of look and hold the cache that you want it to, if it’s going to be a reflection of you and your brand and your business. And, and yet now it’s so sophisticated that you really can self publish a book. If you need to, or if you want to, but either way you can do it and it can look as professional and clean and neat and powerful as a traditionally published book. And I think that’s super important.

Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. And I think that self publishing has come a long way in the last five years. Typically it’s come a really long way. All right. So the, the next biggest takeaway for me is I just, I think this is, you know, kind of like a spoiler alert, like tr you know, to traditional publish, to self publish, and, you know, Chandler’s opinion is very strongly in there. Like self-publishing is the way, is that the only time that a publisher would ever want to do a deal with you is when you don’t need them. Right. and so it’s like, you know, it’s like when a publisher wants you, you don’t really need them. Self publishing is the way. And, but I thought it was really interesting, he said, but if it’s the way here are the things that you need to consider.

And I just, so I don’t mess this up. So I wrote these down and he said, you’ve got, these are the three things to consider time cost and royalties. Those are the things you want to consider. What are the expenses to get it done the time to get it done? And then what would be, what would you be for fitting or gaining and royalties? And then he broke it down. He said, them, there’s two types of costs. There’s costs of creation and then cost of production. And then he breaks it down again. And he says, now creation costs are covered design, editing, and formatting. Right. How does it actually look in the structure of the book and then production our print inventory and shipping, right? And it’s like, those are a lot of things to consider because I mean, it’s like if self publishing is the way you need to be really clear on what means in terms of time, resources, involvement, expenses.

I think, I think it is the way for so many people, but there’s also a lot of work to be done. But that’s why I think answering that question first is, is I book the next right step helps make the rest of this checklist very much a checklist of, okay, well, these are the things I need to do. This is just the next thing. Versus what do I do? What’s better. It’s like, well, these are the things to evaluate. And it’s very clear and it’s very transparent. It gives you a really good, accurate view of, okay, this is what it would look like for me to self publish. It was, it was so clear, transparent and very checklisted, which I love,

No, I loved it. I, in those same notes about, about the cost, like if you’re, if you’re considering this, you’ve got to just kind of think through it, treat it like a business. You know, I remember early in our career with our first books, we waffled back and forth between traditional self published. Like for so long,

Roy will not tell you this. Cause he doesn’t want you to know that it exists, but his very first book

That’s right. Yeah. That’s right. And it’s called no, nah, nah, you can’t share it. They’re going to go find it

Like in Oh two. No, that’s like, Hey, I know w how to be funny to make more back. You have, you have a coffee somewhere hidden. It’s actually really cute book, but we actually

Self publish first. That’s right. That’s right. And we purposely didn’t want a lot of people to know about it, but, but you know, so that question comes up a lot. Should I self publish? And should I traditionally publish? I really am convicted that they both can be great and they both can work. And it’s all about, we’ve done both. And it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s all about the right fit at the right time, which is what I think we help people navigate. But you know, if you wanted me to give you the textbook answer on this question, cause we get it all the time. You know, in one of our events is called bestseller launch plan and we teach how to actually launch the book once you have it. And for me, I say is pretty simple. It’s 10,000 units. If you have a plan to move 10,000 units within the first few weeks of it launching, you should go after traditional publishing.

If you you’ve got like that size of an audience of, of direct reach and indirect reach, you go for it. If not self-publishing is probably the way there’s, there’s enough advantages to self publishing. And so you’re a little formula. Oh yes. So, so here’s the thing you just got to keep in mind that to become an Amazon bestseller takes hundreds of units in a day to hit a bestseller, to become a wall street journal bestseller. You need to have thousands of units within a week and to become a New York times bestseller, you need to have tens of thousands of units sold within a week. And so if you can move thousands of units in a week and you want to go after the wall street journal, you probably to traditionally publish. But if you’re going after, you know, a few hundred copies in, you know, hopefully in a day or within a few weeks self publish and you, you know, if your platform is bigger than that, then you can step up to it later. But there’s, there’s, there’s no shame in either they’re both great. They both have good parts. They both have, you know, more challenging things, but that’s, that’s my textbook answer, 10,000 units.

And I think the last thing for me is really just waffling through the question of, well, what are the pros and cons of both because there are pros and cons in both. And I think a lot of the, you know, pros and cons of self publishing, we kind of talked about my second point and Taylor goes into a lot of that, but then it’s also, well, what are the pros and cons of traditional publishing, right? Cause those third year too. And I think one of the things that he liked, he highlighted, which I think is so true is specifically today is that publishers only want to work with authors who can sell books. Like that’s, that’s the short I have to work with, not to hate on publishing.

No, they, they have to work with that. They don’t sell books,

Marketing houses, right. Publishing houses. And I think that’s a huge wake up call. It’s like, if you think your publisher’s going to market and sell your book, you’re wrong. Like that’s not, that’s not the goal. They help edit books. They help publish books. They help format books, they help distribute books. So if you’re looking for a really big advance and lots of distribution, maybe you should try to go for a big, you know, publishing deal and get yourself an agent and get a big advance. But if that’s not the case, and if you don’t have a huge platform, and if you don’t have a way of selling your own tens of thousands of books, then self publishing is maybe the best way to go. And I love too, is that we’d had him on our podcast before Howe L rod is one of the greatest self publishing of all time.

He has sold more than 2 million copies of his book and, and is making tons of tons of money off of this book and has created this empire and impact around a self-published book. Didn’t need a traditional publisher. And then you’ve got other examples of people who started traditional and then went South because they’re like, well, I don’t need a traditional publisher anymore. And I think that the way that Chandler summed it up, or maybe you said it, I don’t know who said it, but I thought it was really good. He said, sometimes you just have to understand is a traditional publishing a step in the path or is it the path? And I thought that too was really good of just, you know, is this a way to help grow your notoriety and credibility and get your message out there? Or is it like, Nope, I’m just doing it for the advance. Yeah. Is it a money-making thing or is it a step in the path? And I thought that was just really good and clear

And you just, you need to know and remember writers, write editors, edit publishers, publish distributors, distribute retailers, retail, and nobody sells the book. So whether you self publish or you traditional publish, you got to sell it. That falls on you, whether you like it or not, there’s other advantages or disadvantages, but either way you author creator, influencer messenger, your job is to sell and we’re here to help you learn how to do that. So thanks for being here. Come back next time on the influential personal brand podcast

Ep 136: Secrets of Self-Publishing Your Way to Becoming a Bestselling Author with Chandler Bolt

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.

The more time goes on. The more I start to feel like the old man in this industry, in this space and Chandler bolt is one of the people that makes me feel that way. Because when I met him, it was years ago, maybe like six years ago. And him and his brother, Seth, who is one of the, the, one of the members of my, one of my favorite bands, if not my, the favorite brand need to breathe, they were doing a book together and they were on my old podcast. And I just was like, man, there’s something about this guy. Like he’s, he’s legit, they’re they’re legit. And fast forward to today. Chandler is now the CEO of self publishing school and self publishing.com. So, you know, he’s written six best selling books, but self publishing school is like the premier world’s premier leader in helping people publish and self publish a book and understanding how to do it.

What’s the process, all the nitty gritty details. Where do we go? How does it work? Which is what we’re going to talk about today, but he’s also an investor, an advisor. And as an entrepreneur, this company, you know, they’ve got like 30 plus team members. They’re an Inc 5,000 company, three years in a row. He also hosts a couple podcasts to seven figure principles podcast and then the self-publishing school podcasts. And it’s so weird, cause like, I just am proud of proud of this guy. And and he’s a baller and y’all need to know him and you need to know what they do. A lot of people don’t realize this, but I self published six pieces of six different bodies of work. They weren’t all books before I launched take the stairs. So most people think of that as my first book, which hit the New York times and I was 29, but I had been self publishing since I was 22.

And we don’t hear that story a lot. So this is the guy and we got them here live. So Chandler, welcome to the show, Roy. Great to be here, man. Thanks for having me just proud of you, bro. And I, you know, I have to say at this point, I really have, in some ways been out of the self publishing game, you know, other than our clients do in it and, and, and from a, from a distance like watching it. So I guess, first of all, let’s talk about why self-publish, why, and when because there’s always that like, you know, Hey, I want to be a bestselling author and you know, do I have to have a traditional publisher? Do I need an agent, you know, is self publishing? Does it work? Is it, is it legit? Like, can you just kind of talk about that conceptually

For sure. And I think, and I think probably the first, the most important decision or question for most people here is like, even before then, like is a book, one of the best things I can do to grow my brand or to grow my business. Right. And then you get into the self publishing versus traditional publishing and it’s like, that’s kind of a mechanism or vehicle to take you there. Right? So like I almost look at it as like two independent questions of like is a book, one of the best things I can do to build my brand, to build my business. And we talk about this all the time, like to get, truly get more leads, sales and referrals, which I believe that it is like, you know, I believe that books changed lives. I believe that, you know, they changed the life of the author and also the reader, I believe, you know, they’re one of the best ways to set yourself apart, get your foot in the door.

Like we always joke. It’s kinda like the key that opens this door to Narnia, like this magical world, all these opportunities that only exist for published authors, right? If you have made that decision, then it’s just a matter of which path are you going to take and self publishing versus traditional publishing and like the long and short of it is, and this is not just because I run a company called self publishing school or own self publishing.com is as long as sort of it is that self-publishing makes more sense for most authors, 99.9% of people, unless you can get a big advance. And and, and that’s it, or, and, or you care about distribution like international distribution, especially that’s the only time it really makes sense to, to traditionally publish. Otherwise you’re going to be better off self-publishing and, and, you know, it’s kind of like, maybe you’ve heard the the sayings like banks only loan money to people who don’t need it. Right. It’s like, well, publishers only give posting deals to people who don’t need it and who can sell the books without them. So if you’re Oprah, Seth Godin, Rory Vaden you can get a big advance. Awesome.

Again, I just say, you know, I, I get about the same size advances, both Oprah and Seth Godin. I’m, I’m pretty sure. My, my advances are, are I’m sure they’re the same as what Oprah gets definitely in the Obama

Range, like selling copies on the first day

In all seriousness. I agree with what you’re selling. I think self publishing makes the most sense for the Mo for most authors. And the thing that we tell people is we say, look, if you can’t move 10,000 units on opening week and have a plan to move about 50,000 units within two years, you’re not ready for traditional publishing and you don’t really need it. And the economics of it don’t really make sense. So, you know, I totally, even though I love, I love commercial publishing and I, I love my publisher in that. I think self publishing is like a critical, essential, necessary step in the journey. And then people like Seth Godin, you know, they’re kind of going well, once I’ve done a few commercially published books, they’re going back to self publishing.

Exactly. For some people it’s a step in the journey for other people. It’s the journey, the journey. Yeah. Like how L rod, I mean, obviously that’s one of the most, one of the biggest self-publishing success stories, but he’s sold millions of copies of that. Self-Published and so really, I mean, I think to just like, bring this full circle for people when it comes down to is the time that it’s going to take you the royalty rates that you’re going to make and the cost of published, like those are the three bigger buckets. And so, so it’s traditional publishing is ironically enough, like actually going to take longer. Most people don’t know this is going to take you two plus years. They’re not going to do any marketing of the book. People think that the publishers will market the book they want. And, and then there’s the cost to publish, which, you know, you’ve got to cover that yourself if you’re doing it on your, on your own. So that might be, you know, a couple to a few thousand dollars.

Yeah. Yeah. Talk, give me, give me the details there. Right. Cause if someone’s listening, going okay. If I start looking at self publishing seriously, realistically, I mean, that is one thing that is awesome about commercially publishes. We’re not paying the cost of the editor to the graphic design, the printing, the warehousing, the shipping and those are big costs. Cause there’s a lot more volume, but when you’re self publishing, you also can do a hundred copy print run, right? Like how does that, what are the, how much does that actually cost and, and who does it and how do you do it?

Yeah. Screw all great questions. So there’s the cost of of creation and then cost of production, if you will. So the, so if you get a traditional publishing deal, you’re going to agent then to hopefully get a deal and get in advance. And then they’re going to cover the cost of that for you. Then there’s this middle ground, which is like hybrid or vanity press, which, you know, that might cost five, 10, 15, $20,000 a year paying someone to pay the books. So it’s like part service, part publisher, and then self publishing. Obviously you’re paying for it yourself. And there’s really three main buckets of costs. There’s there’s cover design, editing and formatting. Those are the main three. And if you don’t know what you’re doing, you might, you might spend five, 10 grand. Plus if you do know what you’re doing, you can do it for as cheap as a few hundred bucks, if you’re like really on the cheap and really bootstrapping or you’re typically a couple thousand bucks kind of in that range give or take is, is where we see people land. But that

Was cost of creation. You’re saying

Creation. Yeah. Yeah. So of, of actually creating a book that’s ready to be printed and shipped, and then you have the opportunity to go if you’re self publishing print on demand, so they’ll print it, package, ship it when someone clicks purchase, right? So you don’t have to hold inventory or you can do, like you said, runs of a hundred books or a few hundred books or whatever, but that’s the benefit of print on demand is you don’t have to hold inventory. It’s like, we all know someone who has like 2000 copies of their book in their garage and have had those copies of their book for like years. And so that’s the benefit there from a self publishing perspective is you don’t have to pay to carry that inventory. So that’s, that’s kinda how that works.

All right. So, you know, when you think about cost of creation, I want to, you know, cover design is obvious, right? It’s like you can hire the world’s best graphic designer and it’s 50 grand, or you can hire someone on Fiverr and it’s five bucks. So there’s the whole range there. Editing’s kind of the same way. It’s like reputation and all that sort of stuff. What is formatting? Because that was the thing that has always like, in the times I’ve self published. I was like, Holy crap. Like there is a lot more work here than I realized that there’s so many details of like, what’s the gutter size, which, you know, like between where the book folds, like how far the tech sits in the crease of the book. So when you say formatting, you’re saying you’re paying someone to like lay the book out to be ready for print.

Yeah. Totally. And funny timing, hopefully can you, yeah. Since it’s a big difference, actually. So one thing that we say all the time is your self published book shouldn’t look self-published right. And so we want a traditional quality book that just happens to be self published because the fact is not many people know. But what’s, self-publishing, what’s traditionally published, but what, what you really want to do here is a format, or is someone that takes like, think your word doc, and kind of what you alluded to a second ago. It was just like, there’s the margins, there’s the bleed, there’s the, all that stuff. And then they format it to be a, what, like a good looking book or a well formatted Kindle book. So essentially it’s making like th and, and it can be any variants of just like, Hey, literally just make this a book on the very simple side of things. And then, and then artistically, it could be as complicated as like, Hey, I want images here. And I want this format of this way. And I want, you know, these and graphs and stuff like that. So they’re kind of Jerry’s and complexity, but that’s the basics.

And so is that part of what you guys help people do is like pair them up with those people, like who actually do that, or do you just go on, do you just go on Upwork and grab someone?

Exactly. So our goal, like when we work with someone, our goal is, is, is three things like number one, we want to we’ll save them hundreds of hours in the process. Number two, we’ll say them hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in book production costs. So like stuff that we’re going to spend money on anyway and then number three, it’s, we’re gonna help them make more money by selling more books. And, but then also using a book to drive business. So that’s specific to number two, right. Which is you know, we’ve negotiated exclusive discounts since we have like our book production partners. And so we

Very similar to what brand builders group does. We’ve got, like, these are our copywriters and these are our podcast people. And these are our social media, like vendor partners. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That’s cool. I mean, it’s worth a tremendous amount of just the pain of finding these people and knowing who’s legit and like, do they actually do what I need them to do? And that’s, that’s half the battle. So, and then, and then when you talk about print it, packet, ship it. Okay. So if I have a word doc, so let’s, let’s say I came to captivating content for brand builders group, and I outlined my deal. And then I joined self publishing school and you’re going to walk me through from that kind of outline and concept all the way to completion. At some point I have a word doc, then I send it to a format. That person lays it out. They probably, the finished products is probably a PDF. Right. Okay,

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. A PDF. And then there’s on the, I mean, this is getting into the minutia, but on the ebook side of things is a dot EPUB or.mobi file. And then on the flip side, it’s, it’s a well formatted PDF. That’s really an InDesign format, so that can be ready to be printed. Exactly.

And so then when you go to print it, so what, what does that mean? Like, do I just like run down to Kinko’s and print it, or you, you find like any printer or there’s people who specialize in printing self-published books or does Amazon print it or do you, or, or is there somebody who will print it, pack it and ship it all in one place? Or like is the answer yes. To all of those things? Yeah.

Yes. I, I, yeah. And so really it’s, it’s like there there’s, you could go down any path and there’s any of those things you can do. We recommend, we recommend Amazon from like a full, full perspective. So like they’re print on demand through KDP print, they’ll print it, pack it and ship it as soon as someone like your eye goes on to Amazon and says, Hey, I want to buy this book. They’ll they’ll handle the rest.

Okay. huh. So, so if you do it through Amazon, then basically you just kind of like upload the files, like for the, and everything and set the dimensions. And then Amazon will, like, they don’t really store it in a warehouse because they just print it when a sale comes through. But so you don’t have like warehousing costs, like you would with a normal book where you got to, like, the publisher has to print a bunch of books and put them in warehouses all over the country. You’re not dealing with any of that. And it’s already do. They automatically like index it in Amazon also. Exactly. Okay. So that’s, so that’s why Katie P is like, just the easiest on the production side, if you have it formatted properly. But then the key is to have, like you said, how do you make sure it doesn’t look like, you know, chintzy, self published book. And I, you know, I use that term respectfully, all of my initial stuff did, I mean, it was like, it was embarrassing. Like my first books, I, you can’t find them anywhere deliberately. You didn’t want anyone to be able to find them.

Yeah. So I mean really good cover and good formatting. Like those are the two things, like if I’m going to spend, I mean, I spend good money on editing too, but like pay for a good cover designer and then pay for a good format. Or that knows what they’re doing. This is not your friend or relative or whoever else people try to do that. Don’t do that. Like play, pay a professional and it doesn’t have to be crazy expensive, but pay a professional. And that’s what helps make the quality really. I mean, it’s, it’s indistinguishable.

And, and so when you were talking about earlier, like you might be in a few thousand bucks, this is really where your cause. Cause when you say you’re in a few thousand bucks, that’s for cover design, editing and formatting. Exactly. You’re not, you’re not having to shell out 20 grand to print inventory because it’s just, there is no inventory unless someone goes to Amazon and buys it.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And that’s a big benefit.

And then, and then what about buying your own book? Like do you just go to, do you literally just log on to Amazon and go, I want 50 copies and send it to my house. Yeah,

Yeah. You can do the same thing. And actually we’re, we’re exploring some different options right now that are more cost-effective. Cause I think it used to be about $7, 15 cents landed. Like the book landed to someone and I would pay, you know, three, $3 and 25 cents a book and then plus shipping. And that was landed if I shipped them individually. So that was pretty simple. But now we’re just, we’re we’re re-exploring this to say, Hey, where can we save a dollar or two, a book? Can we, can we wholesale print somewhere and then fulfill somewhere else? Or let’s like exploring alternatives of like print, pack, ship kind of thing. But, but yeah, I mean you can the, the most simplistic way to do it, it’s just, I can ship a hundred copies, 200 copies. I do this for speaking gigs all the time directly through KDP print.

Okay. And then if you’re shipping bulk, they don’t charge you the same shipping per book. Exactly.

Yeah. So your discount cost goes down a whole lot more. I mean, you might get, you might be four or five bucks, a book landed maybe a little bit more when you’re shipping in bulk. So it’s like it’s yeah.

So functionally speaking here, you’re like a word document and then some editing and a PDF away from a book, like that’s really a hundred percent gap these days. I mean, there’s the ideas and all that sort of, you know, the content stuff. Of course, but this is doable. I mean it’s doable more today than ever before, ever by far.

Yes. And not only in my opinion, is it doable, but it’s, I truly think, and I know it’s like, Oh cool. The book guys talking about how amazing it is to do books. But it, like, I truly think it’s one of the best things that you can do for your business. It, and I, I mean, I think this is why you guys integrate this as part of your brand building strategy. Cause you’ve seen the impact of this for you personally, but then also for so many other people, I mean, whether it’s Lewis house or it’s like the P S people build entire brands off of books, but not only that, it’s like, it’s, it’s the, it’s kind of this cataclysmic mechanism. If you will, to get your foot in the door to start doing podcasts interviews and start doing speaking gigs to start, like, at least it was for me. And so that’s, and, and we’ve seen that for a lot of people that we work with. It’s like, it’s, it’s one of the first steps and sure. It might not be the first step. For some people it is a, for some people represents like, Hey, I’ve finally consolidated what I believe in, put it in a book. And this is like my first step into this world. And for others, maybe it’s a step along the journey.

Well, like we, we work with like a lot of financial advisors as an example, right? And it’s like, they’re not trying to sell video courses and all that. They need a credibility piece that takes their 25 years of knowledge and they hand it to somebody and go, and somebody goes, Whoa, you’re an author. And like, to what you said, if it doesn’t look chintzy, the average person on the street has no idea if Simon and Schuster made that book, or if you printed it with Amazon, if you, if you do the things you’re talking about, you pay the money to have it nice. They’re going to go, Whoa, like it’s a big deal. So I liked that you raise the bar there on that like production piece of it.

Yeah. And then you plugged that book into your business and you watch how your business grows. I mean, it’s that financial advisor there, their close rate might go from 25 to 37% or their average order value might go up 20% or they’re getting more leads. Now they’re getting more referrals because now all of a sudden, and this is for, especially for businesses like this, or any brick and mortar businesses, we say, Hey, give two copies of your book to every single new customer one for them. And so now the onboarding process is shorter with that customer because if the book is your methodology like that, you’re going to save your team a whole lot of time because they’re being indoctrinated in that methodology. And you give them the second copy so that they can actively refer you business. So you turn customers into active refers, and they’re not going to go around town, handing out your business card, but they will hand a book to someone else and say, Hey, you should read this. Like, why don’t you try to start looking at your retirement, like check out this retirement book. Like I think it would be really helpful for you or insert book that solves whatever problem that you solved. And it just, you make it so much easier to refer business your way.

So, okay. The time is flying by. I knew this was just fly by, but this has been so helpful, I think because there’s, I think there’s still a little bit of a black box and most people there’s a lot of fear going on here. I want to try to spend a couple minutes on the best seller stuff. Okay. So let’s say you go through this, this birthing process of creating this thing, we call a book and then how does the bestseller list work? You know, and, and when we talk self publishing, you know what we tell people and, and, you know, it’s kind of like, you’re really talking about an Amazon bestseller. That’s really the game. That’s really what we’re going after with a self-published book. How does the Amazon bestseller list work? What does it take to hit it? How realistic is it? Is it worth the money? Like how many units are we talking about to, you know, like tell us a little bit about that

Great question. So there’s, there’s really two ends of the spectrum, right? There’s, I’m an Amazon bestseller and underwater basket weaving or some other obscure category,

Which is like a sub category of a sub category kind of.

And that’s where I think the term has really been ruined. And you have so many people just claiming that. And then there’s the other end of the spectrum, which is New York times. Right. And, and I think what’s important and it’s very impressive that you hit the list. It’s very hard to hit. You know, the DOE like you’ve got to sell 10 to 12,000 copies within week one, but it’s also like kind of this breakdown of like, some of them needs to be mom and pops to store some needs to be bulk purchases, some needs to be on Amazon, some of these. And so the fact of the matter is when you look at the landscape of lists, you’ve got kind of four main, you’ve got New York times, you’ve got USA today, wall street, journal bestseller, and then Amazon right now, New York times, most people chase that list.

It is an editorial list, which means it’s, it’s an opinion by the New York times, it’s not an actual bestseller list. Whereas the USA today bestseller lists is the is the most factual, accurate, like number of books sold. So you can make the USA today bestseller list and you can make the wall street journal, bestseller list self publishing, a book. It’s, it’s not likely if, if you don’t sell copies, obviously like the average self-published author, now, you’re not going to make one of those lists if you do it well. And so thousands of copies in week one, you have a great chance to hit one of those lists. But you’re right, functionally, like we look at Amazon bestseller and for most people, like that’s the most likely case scenario. And when we look at that, it’s okay, let’s get number one in a significant category on Amazon. That’s not underwater basket weeding or something

Business, how finance, something like that, those relationships, those are legit. Yeah. Yeah. And they’re, it’s kind of like they’re sub categories. They’re not sub sub sub categories kind of S kind of a thing. Yeah.

They’re meaningful categories with bills,

Books, how many units do you need to move? And is it like within a certain time frame and that kind of stuff,

If you move hundreds within the first day you have a chance depending on the category and then this, and there’s calculators online that, that kinda calculate like, Oh, the number one book in this category probably sells X amount. But definitely if you sell a thousand books within the first few days, you will hit number one and a lot of significant categories,

Kind of like how I said, w if you can move 10,000 units in week one, that’s where you’re like, let’s talk, let’s talk, literary agent let’s talk publisher. Yeah. And then it’s like, if you can figure out a way, how can I move a thousand units in, in, within the first week? That’s like, okay, let’s go, let’s go blow up a number one, Amazon. Like, that’s what it is.

Exactly. Exactly. And what I think is super important is, is we talk about this all the time is like kind of this concept of the the Toyota Camry and the sports car launches. And most people look at book launches like a sports car. It’s fast, it’s sexy. It burns up a lot of fuel AK energy. And it’s gone in a flash, right. It’s like, shoo, okay. That was our launch week. Right. But we really look at like, how do we create a Toyota Camry type book that keeps selling month after month after month? And how do we in our fundamental marketing, yes, we want to have a strong week, a strong launch week, but like, how do we make sure that we’re setting up to where longterm, this thing’s going to keep selling? So there’s a lot of strategic marketing stuff, but building virality into the book, like a lot of just kind of fundamental things there. And so really that’s what I would encourage people is like, make sure that you’re solving a fundamental problem, a painful problem that people have, that you get reviews that you, and then that you focus on marketing strategies beyond week one, because that’s where a lot of, I mean, that’s where the money is from both a book sales perspective. Sure. But also from a using this as something that’s like an, a continually driving drive, lead sales and referrals for your business.

Yeah. So this is, this is part of why we had Chandler on, obviously I’ve known him for years. Yeah. I know his brother like these, these are legit guys in the stuff they’re talking about. We believe in, we we’ve done. We do. And you know, th that’s what brand builders exists is to grow your platform. It’s the, we’re playing the long game and, and that is why Chandler’s here. So here’s one of the things that Chandler and I talked about, his team will do a free call with you if you are seriously considering, okay, what are the next steps look like? If you go to brand builders, group.com/s P S for self-publishing school go there, just like, just like most many of our clients did, you know, they’ll do a first call with you. They’ll figure out where you’re at, what you’re up to. And then they’ll kind of go, here’s some ideas, here’s some pointers. And if, if you’re a fit, then they’ll, they’ll tell you how it works. But brand builders, group.com forward slash S P S as in self publishing school. And, and and so you’re, you’re willing to do a call with people just to help them sort that out. Right. Chandler.

Totally. Yeah. And our goal is, I mean, it’s, I think it’s, it’s, it’s a helpful 45 minutes. It’s get clear on your goals for your book, your challenges with your book and your next steps. So how do we take this from something that you’ve been dreaming about doing, thinking that doing it’s been on the maybe next year list for like five years in a row and, and how do you actually make this happen and make this a reality, but, but in the process of doing that, like save time save money in the process and then, and then create an asset it’s going to build your brand. Which I think is just huge and, and, and a fundamental piece of, of what you guys teach. And I just wholeheartedly believe in the whole process and in this as, as a part of the process. Yeah.

I mean, the book that, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a critical, essential piece and self publishing is this necessary step. And you guys do self publishing better than anybody that, I mean, it’s all you do is why you’re here. Right. It’s why we is like, this is their world. Like they live in self-publishing books all day, every day. So go to brand builders, group.com forward slash SPS. If you’re interested, you know, if not keep hanging around. And then when the time comes, you know, you can take, you can take their team up on it. Chandler man, I’m proud of you, bro. I’m excited. I I’m, I’m, I’m really excited. I think you can help a lot of people in our community with this, you know, important piece, this really important piece of the whole brand building journey. So thanks for being

Here. Absolutely. Absolutely. Really. Thank you so much.

Ep 135: How to Serve a 7-Figure Niche with Lisa Woodruff | Recap Episode

Welcome back to the influential personal brand recap. It’s your man, Rory Vaden. I am rolling solo today. AJ Vaden is out and I am breaking down the Lisa Woodruff interview that we did, which was awesome. I mean, hopefully you hear in my voice or heard in my voice how proud I am of her. Like she is one of our star students. She is somebody that it’s just amazing that we got our hands on in terms of working with her system and her teams or with her systems and her team several years ago. And we’ve known her and she’s been like a student of our philosophies. And over the last, I mean, it’s, it’s been a, it’s been a long journey for her, but

The last, I guess, six, five or six years that we, we have known her and doing the various work that of ours that she has been introduced to. She has gone from a six figure business to now becoming a seven figure business, which is just awesome. A real life case study of a, of a massively successful person in a, in a very specific niche, right? With home organization and everything she’s doing to organize three 65. And it’s just it’s, it’s so exciting for us, right? Like when our clients succeed, we can’t take credit for it. Like they, they have to do all the work, everything we teach you on this show, like you have to be the one to do the work. And ultimately your success is, is about you and it’s up to you, but it does show that there’s a lot of people doing the same types of things as the things that we talk about and teach on the show and obviously to our members.

And so it’s just great to see that in in, in Lisa and she’s a rolling stone man. She’s a rocket, a rocket ship. I think she’s just getting started. So she came through our eight figure entrepreneur event recently which is our event that we it’s a phase four events. So if you, if you haven’t figured this out from listening to brain builders group, you know, we have one curriculum, but that curriculum is divided up into four different phases and each phase has three topics. So overall our, our flagship curriculum is, is 12 topics. You know, our, our full curriculum is is, is 12, 12 topics. And so anyways in phase four one of the topics is called eight figure entrepreneur, where we teach someone how to turn a personal brand into a fully operationalized business and how to scale and, and not just scale your reach, but scale all of your systems and your people and your processes, and build a company that has real value.

And anyway, she’s got some really big goals, which you got to hear a little bit about on the interview, but in terms of me being the student for you know, in and learning from her that so fun here’s my three biggest takeaways from the interview. And, and the first one is so profound and it’s so simple, but what she said, and I, and I wrote this down, she said, the only thing that you will ever have with you, the rest of your life is your own mind. Like that is the one thing that, you know, like, even if you didn’t have clothes, right, like even if you didn’t have food or a house or, you know, friends or anything like the one, the one thing that you will have everywhere you go for the rest of your life is your mind. It will last longer than like the basic necessities. And so personal development is the investment into the one thing that follows you everywhere into the one thing that is a part of every decision into the one thing that is a part of every single day, your mind is with you all the time. In every moment, every situation, every relationship, every single decision, like it’s this asset, it’s the one thing that you can invest into. And yet, how many of us do not?

How many of us think, Oh, that’s silly or, or, or the last time that we invested money into ourselves was when we were in college or we invest a little bit into it. It’s, it’s really scary because I heard Brian, Tracy say one time, I don’t know how statistically valid this is, but I heard him say this years ago, where he said, you know, the, the average person will spend more on car maintenance every year than they will investing into their own self-development and education, which is, which is crazy, right? Like you should spend more on your self-development than you do on your mortgage. Like your brain is the thing that follows you everywhere. And after college, most of us stop investing into it, probably because you’re still paying back. College loans are so long as a, you need to invest in some things that actually teach you how to make some money.

And so that was just so edifying for me of just the and, and she is a living example of it, right? Like, you know, I said earlier, like, we can’t take credit for what she’s done. I mean, I hope she gives us some credit and she pays, you know, she’s super polite and respectful and, and yeah, that works so grateful for the things that she says about us, but she has invested in lots of programs. She’s been through lots of courses. Like, she’s a great example, as am I, as am, as is AIJ like as, is the richest people that I know, like literally the richest people that I know. And there are, there are two billionaires that have suddenly come into my life here recently in our life recently to two different billionaire clients that we have, who I’ve been spending a lot of time with.

And both of them are, dudents massive students of personal development. Both of them have gone through, you know, courses and, and, and read books and, and spent, you know, years learning and studying their trait in their craft. And it’s like, this is the thing that separates people. It’s, it’s not the needy people, the broke people, the, the ignorant people who are at all the conferences, it’s the smartest, sharpest hard work, hardest working, most entrepreneurial, most creative people that are all the events. And and Lisa, just a great example of that. And I just, I want you to think about that, right? Like how much are you investing into your personal development? And Hey, we would love if you did it with us. Of course, we would write, like, we, we happen to think that we are the best among the best in the world at what we do.

I’m really convicted that we are, but whether it’s on your personal brand or whether it’s with us or someone else, or if it’s some area, other area of your life, right. Like, you know Dave Ramsey was a, who was a huge part of our journey personally. We’ve been through things like landmark forum that changed our life, obviously, you know, spiritually AIJ. And I study the Bible every single day. But in terms of, you know, going to marriage conferences and, and going to retreats and summits and video courses in an events, the most successful wealthiest people in the world do these things. So are you doing it are, I mean, are you doing it? Are you investing the money? Are you investing the time? And are you, are you after it? Like, are you investing into your own brain because it’s the one thing that follows you everywhere?

And man, there was just something about the way that Lisa said that that just hit me hard, that hasn’t just, hasn’t just like hit me that hard before. So yeah, invest in your brain and Hey, keep listening to the podcast, right? We, we have so much free stuff that we put out at brain builders group Rory Vaden, blog.com at, at our obviously we’ve got the podcast, we’ve got a bunch of free resources on our website. I think we’ve got like five or six free different trainings now at brand builders, group.com that are totally free, that are amazing. Like we should be charging for this stuff. And we don’t because we just, we want to build trust and provide value and help you make enough money so that, you know, you feel like you have some money to reinvest and, and you know, be willing to do that, be willing to do that and spend more on your brain than you do on your car.

And, and you know, maybe not more than your house, right? You gotta have a place to live, but you know, anyways, make that investment. The second thing. And the second, the thing that Lisa said, and this hit me, I thought this was super interesting. I had never thought about this is she said, think of brand builders group as your college degree for your business. And I thought that was really fascinating. And it, part of it is, is ironic because we have four phases. And we have our phases have three topics. So we typically tell people, it takes about three to four months to, to, to, to go through a topic. So if you went through our three topics, I mean, we teach them as in two day events, we have two day experiences. So it only takes two days to learn each topic, but then it takes about four months to deploy each topic.

And if you did that three times, that would be a year, which would be a phase. So our four phases represent, I mean, it’s crazy like what she said, it lines up so directly with this idea of like a four year journey with brand builders group. Now I, I think it’s, you know, if, if you’re looking to build an, a personal brand or an online business or, or a marketing machine or a marketing engine for your business, I think it’s, it’s extremely tactical. What we do is extremely tactical far more tactical than you would, you would learn in college, which is more about, you know, kind of like abstract thought and problem solving and conceptual learning. Brand builders group is very direct, like do this in this order, in this way, follow this process, follow this checklist. And if you, if you follow the roadmap, we’ll take something that would have taken you 20 years and we’ll help you get there in five.

But anyways, I thought that was interesting about education and, and that is a good way, I think, to look at, at brand builders group. And, and again, just kind of on tying back to what we were just talking about, what are you doing for education? Like, where are you learning? Like, who are you learning from? What are you learning? What are you doing? Like Charlie, tremendous Jones, who I got to meet several times. He was an, a legend in the national speakers association. He died a few years ago, but what was amazing, amazing, just one of the most incredible humans I’ve literally ever been in the presence of, but he used to say five years from now, five years from now, you’ll be the same as you are today, except for the books you read and the people you meet. And you know, that is, that is true.

And I would extend it from books. You read to the courses, you take the seminars you attend, you know, the, basically the education you receive and apply, which is true, right? Like some people say, Oh, I have five years of experience. And they really don’t have five years of experience. They have one year of experience repeated five times. They’ve been doing the same thing over and over again, which is, you know, the definition of insanity. If you’re expecting different results is, is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results. So what are you learning? Like where are you learning? Who are you learning from? And, and are you learning about the things you need to grow your business? Obviously I’m, I’m, I’m preaching to the choir here, since you’re listening to this show. The only way you’d be hearing this as if, if you are listening and following along.

So I know I’m probably preaching to the choir, but just to Edify the time you’re investing here in another places to, to, to grow your brain and think of it, you know, you could think of brand builders group for those of you that are our clients, that our members you can think of our, our brand builder journey, our four-phase process as your college education. And then the third thing, the, the, the, the big highlight for me was, you know, she, she said this in the interview, it’s, it is just these, these four words that you, you can’t be reminded of enough. I can’t be reminded of this enough. And, and these four words are so important for your personal brand. In fact, they might be the foremost important, I would say definitely four of the most important words that you can remind yourself of on a daily basis.

It just takes time. It just takes time. It just takes a little bit of time. It just takes some time to build, right? Like when you know, I know some, some of our clients are in phase two, which is when we get into like the nitty gritty of building funnels and this thing, you know, the content diamond and managing your social media and all that. And it’s like, you know, we’re learning all these checklists and processes. And then it’s like, Oh my gosh, like, you know, how do I do this? And it’s like, well, if you only have to do it once, and it just takes a little time, but once you do it once you’ll have it forever. And then in general, right? Like when Lisa was saying, you know, I’m, I’m basically doing the same stuff I was doing 10 years ago.

The difference is I’ve been doing it for 10 years. A lot of people I’ve come across. A lot of people, a lot of people know me, a lot of people, I’ve got a lot more clients, a lot more testimonials, a lot more fans, a lot more reach, a lot more systems just from the course of time. So, you know, if you can add education and time, you know, and obviously taking action, those are the, those are the critical ingredients to your success. So just do it right, and just keep doing it. Like, just keep going and remind yourself when you don’t have as many followers as you want, when you didn’t, you didn’t convert as many customers as you want it in your last launch. When, when you’re not seeing the conversion percentages in your funnels, when you’re not seeing the engagement rates that you want on your social, when you’re not getting as many keynote leads, when you get turned down for the book deal, right? When you, when you launch something and it breaks when you’re, when, when you put up a website and nobody comes when you, when you do a video and nobody watches

And all of those moments, and you will have those moments. Every one of us does me, a J our team, our biggest clients, Lisa Woodruff, and you like, you will have those moments. It’s not about if you will have them, you will have those moments. And in those moments, you have to remind yourself of those four words. It just takes time. So keep going, keep coming back here, stay inspired, keep getting education and stay focused on the person out there who you’re trying to serve, because sooner or later you will find them. It just takes time. That’s all we got for today. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand podcast.

Ep 134: How to Serve a 7-Figure Niche with Lisa Woodruff

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.

This is going to be really fun for me to introduce to you someone who has become a good friend over the years. Lisa Woodruff and I admire her business. I very much think of her as a classic example of someone who has a very specific expertise who serves an audience very well. She’s built a great personal brand. I think a lot of you will love what she does in her business. One of the other things that’s awesome is I guess, I hope you don’t mind me saying this. Lisa, I would consider you one of our star students of brand builders group and just we’ve worked together for years. So you’re both like a mentor and a colleague and a student at the same time. And that’s why it was like, Hey, we got to have you on the show. You all got to meet the powerhouse.

That is Lisa Woodruff. And I want you to know, so she’s the founder and CEO of Organized 365, which is really what you know, is like her, her, that is what her brand is all about and what her main business is. She has a podcast that’s called the same thing. That’s been featured as women’s day podcasts of the month. She appears in online media, a bunch, she writes for Huffington post regularly. She’s been on like more than 50 TV segments. And basically I think, you know, her expertise is just sharing strategies for reducing the overwhelm and kind of clearing the mental clutter that specifically women face, although it doesn’t only apply to women, but just helping them to live a more productive and organized life. She’s the author of several Amazon bestselling books their newest one, the paper solution, which I had an advanced copy of. And anyways, Lisa, welcome to the show.

Well, thanks Rory. As a former teacher and a lifeline learner, you calling me a plus student like that is the thing that I remember everything you just said. All I heard was, Hey, that’s all I heard.

I mean, in all seriousness, you know, brand brand builders groups, we have, we, we are, our official curriculum is 12 topics, but you know, as of right now, we only, only formally eight of them are available to the public. And he went through and I think you’re the only person there’s maybe two others that have completed all eight, but you did it in what the whole thing was like next month you lasted through which is not something we normally recommend, but for you, it was okay because you have the team to help you implement. I mean, number one, you got a team and number two, you’re the most organized person I know. And so you’re able, it’s, it’s crazy how you are able to learn information and immediately incorporate it into your business, your processes your structure. And so anyways, it’s, it’s worth celebrating, but you’re, you’re definitely one of our star students.

Yeah, well the whole brand builder curriculum. And as a teacher, I just look at curriculum. I love curriculum. I’ve built my business as a teacher first because that’s my formal training is as a teacher. And so I approach business differently. And I used to think that was a detriment. And now with the business coaches that I’m meeting with, who have grown these companies and sold them and everything, I realized that because I’ve created a company as almost like a teacher of the company and then a teacher of the community, I am able to implement things really fast in my team because I look at my team as students and they all have different learning styles. And I look at whatever we’re implementing as courses that need to be taught with a deadline and I’m able to break them down. And yeah, I think being a teacher actually is helping me win at business.

Yeah, it definitely is. And, and yeah, you, you’ve got the teaching background and then, you know, one of the things that we say around here a lot is, you know, in order to be a great teacher, you gotta be a great student first. And of course, you know, I’m promoting what you’ve done with brand builders group, but you, you know, one of the secrets, I feel like to you growing your personal brand so fast and so strong is that you are a major investor into personal development yourself. Like you play the role of student. Can you just talk a little bit about your philosophy there? Cause you’re, you are definitely the teacher of your community, but again, it’s as much as anyone I know, you’re always like the first person to sign up, to be in coaching programs, yourself and stuff. And I love that about you.

Yes. So when you take strengths finder, my number one strength is learning. Like I just, I’m a natural learner. I love to learn. I consume a ridiculous amount of content, anybody who I’m not good at telling you where I remember the content from, so that’s bad, but I consume a lot of content, diverse content, and I’m just filling my brain with a whole bunch of ideas all the time. And I listened to podcasts and I follow other entrepreneurs that are successful. And so many people say that the only thing you have control over is yourself. I say that when you’re getting your home organized, or when you’re getting your control of your life and moving from reactive to proactive mode, you have to focus on yourself, getting your mindset, right? And so when you’re growing your business, the only thing that you will have with you for the rest of your life is any investment that you make in yourself in your learning and your mindset and your connections and your relationship, the business they’re in now, maybe a different business.

But you all the, all of the resources you put into yourself will grow. And then I would say in the last three years as organized three 65 has started to gain some traction. And now I know that it’s going to be a company five years from now. It’s not going to go out of business. Like I’m more confident in the fact that we kind of know what we’re doing and that we’re going to stand the test of time now. And instead of investing in me and getting over my imposter syndrome, it has been more in investing in me and becoming a better leader and staying six months to a year ahead of my team, because now my team is growing because I’m a good teacher. Like I provide them with coaches and resources and courses. And honestly we did brand builders, not because I needed a brand builders, but because everything that brand builders teaches, I had learned in eight years on my own.

And it was time where I needed to disseminate all of that information into my team. I need to make sure that I had ticked off all of the boxes, dotted the I’s crossed the T’s so that we’re ready for scale because we are perfectly positioned to be a company that is going to scale soon. I overhired. So I hired people just so I could train them the way I want them to be trained so that we will scale with ease and with grace versus at a breakneck speed. That is fun, but stressful, especially for the women that I employ.

I love that, you know, and I, I have become, you know, more convicted on that, like brand builders is become is, has become such a curriculum, you know, and we’ve got resident experts who teach it that I think you know, a lot of personal brands come to us for like their education, their strategy. But I think in the future more and more people are going to look at us more like you did, which is get your assistant trained, get your team trained, get your CMO trained to where it’s like, you don’t have the time to unload all this information, let us catch them up in, in and also like you said, dot the I’s cross the T’s make sure you’ve got all the cracks sealed. So I love that. So let’s talk about your business a little bit. Can you walk us through a little bit of what your journey has been with organized three, five from when you started as a personal brand? You know, and you don’t have to tell us exact numbers, but any, anything you can, that that is empirical, that you feel comfortable sharing. You know, how many people did you start with? How many people do you have now? How many years did it take? How did your revenue, you know, roughly grow? You know, how many clients did you service in the beginning and, and how many now? Because I just, you know, I I love, I love this story.

I do. I love listening to it. So I know your audience is just like me. So I’m just going to get down to what I wish I was hearing. If I was an entrepreneur growing my own brand, we’re about to celebrate our ninth anniversary. And in hindsight, I now realized that I make leaps about every three years. So the first three years, January, 2012 to 2015, I was a blogger. I was doing in-home professional organization consultations as a service-based business. I represented a direct sales company that first year. And then I realized that products weren’t really what I was going to sell. And I was just getting a lot of boots on the ground, meeting with other people in their homes, men, women, children, old, young, different socioecono economics and realizing what are the true holes in organization? What is, why is it with organization books?

People are still not getting organized. And that’s when I learned some of the basic things I teach today, like organization is a learnable skill. I’m a teacher. I could figure out how to teach you this online. You have different organization in different phases of life. It’s roughly every 20 years, it’s, you’re a child then twenties and thirties, you accumulate forties and fifties. You’re in survival. And then 60 plus, if you stay in your house the same during all of those phases, you’re going to need to reorganize it. And the organization looks different. So all of that like mindset work and I was blogging and I was figuring out that this was the thing I was going to do forever.

And that’s almost like it’s kind of like field, like you’re in the field, just in the nitty gritty, like talking to clients in their homes and they’re going, this is why I can’t do this. And this is what I struggle with. And that’s a part of where your content really went from hypothesis to curriculum. Cause you’re like, Oh, everybody struggles with this.

And what is my unique spin on it? So my unique spin on it is I’m a teacher. I can teach you how to do this. This is a learnable skill up until that point, professional organizers always said, I have the answers. I can fix your problem for you. Let me come in and do it for you. You are not capable. You are important, organized, sorry. And that’s the message that we had as women. So then it was, how do you get that message out? The next three years, I hired a couple of contractors. I hired my first executive assistant. I started producing the Amazon bestselling books. I came out with two Amazon bestselling books. I moved into podcasting from doing the blog and slowly started to move that over. I was taking these concepts that I was learning in person. We still had in-person organization. That’s where all of the money came from for the first six years, I had grown a team. They were doing the organizing for me. And I was really formalizing that thought leadership into books and building my experience. So the first six years really, I mean, I was making a hundred thousand dollars or less a year. I was paying people on credit cards. I was just building up my body of work and figuring out what is it that is unique to me.

And you were, most of the revenue was service-based business, 85%. And when you say a hundred thousand a year, that you’re saying, that’s your ingrown, not your rev. Oh, grandma’s gross. Oh yeah. Okay. It’s taken a minute. Yeah. You laugh now, somebody out there listening it, ain’t funny. At least they’re saying it. Ain’t funny.

Yeah. Six years. I know when I was listening to all these podcasts, they’d be like, it takes seven years. It takes for you. I was like, I’ll do it faster. I’ll work. And I was working 100 hour weeks. Like I was clocking my time 80 to 100 hour weeks. You cannot outpaced time. Like there is a time factor to growing your expertise and learning and developing. I mean, you just can’t shortcut it.

Yup. Yup. Yup. Zig Ziglar used to say, well, no elevator to success. You’ve got to take the stairs, baby. Okay. So that’s year three through six. Is that about when we met the first time? Cause the very, the very first time we met, we were working on your infusion soft. That was when

We had Pat. Yep. And we were doing that. So that was going into 2017 in 2017 was like a landmark year for me in betting on myself and just saying, you know what? This is good, but it’s, there’s more here. It’s going to be great. More people need this message. Women need to hear about grace. They need to understand this is a learnable skill. Like this is a problem that no one else is going to solve. So I’m going to go all in and I’m going to solve it. So that was a year that I paid $10,000 to go to New York for one weekend and learn about how to get a professional book launch. I hired seven people in seven weeks at the end of 2017. Now all of them, except for one were contractors and they’re like three to five hours a week. So it wasn’t like I was hiring full-time people.

But I did this, I wrote my mission, vision and values. I moved from an LLC to a C Corp. I got a patent pending on my Sunday basket. I got a manufacturer to make the Sunday basket. At that point, we had no physical products. I just been talking about these on the podcast, but there was nothing people could buy to actually get their, to do list, eliminated, organize all of their tasks and ditch their filing cabinet. And I knew I had one course, the 100 day program was an active course. It was only sold in the launch model. Yeah, that’s all I had.

It started with an information product. Was the first sort of scalable offering that you had.

Yes, I did have that. And we had just added in 2017, the basic first planner that went along with that. So once I hired all those people, that was to get everything out of my head in the physical products created and to develop what you see today with the warehouse and fulfillment and all of that.

Yeah. So how many, so, so from, from zero, from your zero to three, it’s basically just you from years three to six, it’s like you one full timer and a bunch of contractors. And then years six through nine, it was like, okay. We, we kind of took some contractors, made them, full-time brought on a bunch more part-time contractors. And then where are you at now with like your staff size and, and you know, like how many customers you serve and like, give us a sense of the scale now, nine years in.

Yep. So in year six, seven when I hired all of these people are we ended that year at $441,000 in revenue. And we ended our last fiscal year. So at the end of that three years at 1.3 million in revenue. And I knew at that point that I had taken the company as far as I could, without a physical product and without a team to help me and I could stay at the level I was at, but in order to make the impact that I wanted to make, I had to take all of my profit and put it in people and products in order to then make the ultimate impact that I wanted to make.

Yeah. So that 1.3 million in revenue was, was that like,

Yeah, our year end is June 30th. So,

But that was like your ninth year.

Yep. Eighth year and third year. And it was three years after I hired all those people. So it’s yeah, the numbers are weird because I changed how I end my year.

When did w when, so when did we incorporate infusion soft into the mix? That was like 2015?

Yeah, it was right before I hired all of those people. So it was, it was that 2017 year. I believe it was in January that Pat and I got into that coaching with you to do that for the entire year, by the time we were done that’s when I was hiring all of the people.

Got it. Yes. Okay. So yeah. So then you had so there you go. So that was basically three years from that kind of point that you turned on the, what we would call phase four eight, figure entrepreneur. Like you turned on the like, okay, now I’m I’m turning my personal brand to a business, vision values team systems go. And then, and now here you are making sure.

Yeah, so we have seven full-time employees, one part-time employee, and then four part-time contractors that are still part of our team that all come to all of our all team meetings and then a whole bunch of other contractors, you know, just like you wouldn’t regular. Yeah.

I love, I mean, I just love this and, and you probably made more in income in the last two years than the first eight years combined. Is it something like that?

Totally. Yeah. Yeah.

And that’s, this is part of why I wanted people to thank you for sharing this because it’s like, when we tell people, you know, I know, you know, this I’m kind of talking to the listener right now is we’re always saying we’re playing the long game. We’re playing the long game. We’re playing the long game. If you follow the fundamentals, do the systems build, you know, build the processes, do this. And it’s like, ah, it’s like this slog Fest for the first four or five years, you particularly for the first two or three, but then it, all of a sudden, it’s like it started to catch you in all in you developed as a leader. And I don’t know. I’m just so freaking proud of you. I’m going to, it’s weird to say, but

The other thing I would say about that, well, thank you. Or the other thing I would say about that is when I became a C Corp in that summer, I put myself on payroll and I became an employee of the company. And until that point I had just been pulling money, Willy nilly. So when I became an employee of the company at year, whatever, five and a half six I then had a paycheck and I made my paycheck be the opposite week of my husband. So now we have money coming in our family every single week that is predictable after I’d been doing this about 18 months I realized that everybody in the company was kind of making the same amount. And so then I wasn’t giving raises. And I finally realized, Oh, give yourself a race. I’ve raised my own salary. And then I didn’t feel like I had to hold everybody else’s salaries down.

I was able to give raises there as well. And now that we’re going into year nine I hired a fractional CFO last year and we made profit last year. And he’s like, this is where you take a distribution. I was like, no, no, no, no. Put it back in the company, put it back in inventory, which is what we did. Cause we were in the middle of the pandemic and he says, you have to realize Lisa, you’re also an owner. Like you get paid as an owner. And so I’ve been wrestling for the last six months about how much should I get paid as an owner? How much do you take out as an owner? And I’m finally to the point where that will be a conversation we have next summer is like, okay, now what is your owner pay? In addition to your employee? I’m just so thrilled to have a paycheck now and know what my income is going to be. It’s hard to think about the fact that I’ve also built an asset in addition to a job for myself.

Yeah. And the, in the eight figure entrepreneur event, which you were, you were in, I think we did it in June Aja and I had to figure that out too. And we actually have three different sources of pay. We pay ourselves as you know, like a salary as a, as a, as a manager, we have profits that we draw from the company and then we actually pay ourselves for doing service-based work on the exact same pay plan that we would pay anyone on our team on. And it’s like, you really are wearing different hats. And you got to almost think about like, I am playing different roles, paid in different ways. The owner hat is the one that you don’t get paid on forever. And then one day you do. So I want to talk about your business model now a little bit because I feel like you are more rare. One thing I love about you is you’re the seven figure business. Is it, is it fair to say that products like physical products is now the core or more of a, is it the primary business model or secondary still?

So I will share with you as entrepreneurs when I came up with this idea and I think it is the thing that saved us in the pandemic. And I think it’s the thing that’s going to save us going forward. We’re not a product company and we are not a course company. It is a blend and it is hard for a consumer to figure out what am I paying for the course? What am I paying for the product? Because there’s so much integration and everything I sell has a lifetime value to it. So I’m not selling an MMR monthly recurring revenue. I have a couple of little offerings like that for people who want to go deeper. But the basic customer journey is you buy a Sunday basket, which you see behind me, which is a box and a set of slash bucket. So there is a physical cost to that.

But in addition to that, you get into a Facebook group where we do coworking spaces. Every single Sunday, you have on-demand training, you have extra printables that come out, I’ll come out with extra things that are bonuses for people who have a Sunday basket, like at tax time, I’ll do a tax training and give you some tax printables. There’s no cost. We just add that in there. So you’re kind of like in that level. And then once you do the Sunday basket and you have eliminated your, your to-do list and have five extra hours every week, you usually go into the 100 day home organization program. Again, lifetime membership. We have a on on-demand videos for all 100 days. There’s a planner you get when you purchase and then you can purchase additional ones. You can upgrade and do your planner with me every quarter.

How much is the Sunday best Sunday basket. Basket’s $97. So that’s the, that’s like the entry point. It’s just the 97 come into the community. And it’s like a lifetime access though, to this community which includes like, you know, effectively a course that walks them through what to do

Coworking like every week of the year. Like,

Yeah. And what’s the a hundred, the a hundred day program is the next step up. Yep.

That’s $500. Or you can do six payments of $96. If you want to stay in that $100 a month investment in your home organization, that has a whole bunch of extra things. We’re working on an app. We have extra blog posts, like all kinds of freebies are given into that group as well. And then after that, you go to all access, which is where you ditch your filing cabinet. You get the four binders that replace your filing cabinet planning day. And then you can add on the kid’s course or the photo course. And once you get all that done, then you usually jump into our work box in our work from home offerings.

So an all access. So 97, 500, and then all access is 500, another 500, but those are one time. Those are one time deals. So, so when you do in seven figures, part of what’s amazing about this to me is it’s not recurring, like everything brand builders do. We’re a slow snowball that builds and builds and builds and you’re, you’re new. These are new people coming in. Yep. That’s amazing. It’s extremely difficult to do. I mean, so what, how are you doing it? Like, what are you, what is your primary mechanism for attracting? And hopefully y’all are picking this up, right? Just home organization, expert, extremely clear vertical, you know, clutter in and disorganization, a clear problem, a clear need, a true expert, serving one audience with an entry point that you then, you know, rise up. So you’re like, you’re a perfect example of that. Like breaking through the wall, picking the riches in the niches. So how do you keep getting new customers all the time? Like what’s the acquisition model?

So something I had to realize, which we had a VIP day in addition to going through brand builders. I also did a VIP day with you. And we kind of talked about how I have sold a thousand people into this work box system. And we’ve never really advertised it. Like I don’t talk about it very much. And all of those people have come from the Sunday basket. So when you really look at what is your customer journey, 99% of people in organize three 65, start with this $97 Sunday basket, or they try to make one on their own. Like they get the idea of, I need to plan my week on Sunday. There’s a certain way to do this. It’s not it’s unavoidable. I need to get the time so I can get more time back during my week if they do the Sunday basket, which we advertise on the podcast. And now we have Facebook ads and I do webinars that we advertise through Facebook. If they do the Sunday basket, 60% of them will do the 100 day program. I think it’s 40%. We’ll do the 108 program. And 60% of those will go all access. And 15% of those will go into our certification program. And 30% of those will upgrade in our certification.

Okay. Hold on a second.

I know my numbers,

No. And your digital dashboards and the Facebook ads and stuff. I mean, this is what you would, what you would expect from an organization expert, but it’s, it’s like, it’s why I love teaching you. It’s like you get the stuff we teach implemented faster. Probably that our team does. Like you guys are so fast. Okay. So 60% of them will upgrade. You said to the hundred day, and then you said 60% of those will upgrade.

Yeah. It’s like, it’s like 45. One of them is 41 60. I’m not good with details. But basically if I can get people into the Sunday basket, if the system works because I’m a teacher, like it works. If you are a detail oriented person or a big picture person, it works. If you have ADHD, if you don’t like, because I’m a teacher, I built in all the learning modalities. The Sunday basket works. If we can get people to get it and then get into our community, they have success. And what happens is it’s nothing to do with the Sunday basket. It’s the internal realization that I’ll be darned organization is a learnable skill. She taught it to me. I learned it. Well, if I can learn that, can I actually get my it’s a confidence builder. It’s a quick win within six weeks to realize, Oh my gosh, I have more time than I used to have.

My brain is not talking back to me anymore. I don’t have an unending to-do list. If that worked, I, I can have my home organized women for years have thought they can never have their home organized. And the Sunday basket has to come first because it proves to them that they can. And then when they start believing in themselves and they get in that group, we just shower them with love. We have the most positive Facebook group ever. There’s no negativity in it whatsoever. Everyone is supporting everyone. And then once you have that success, then you get addicted to organizing. And then you’re like, fine. I’ll do the pit. Everybody says they don’t have papers. So as they do the 100 day program, they’re like, Oh my gosh, there’s so much paper in this house. And then they just go right through the customer journey.

But it’s all about believing that you can do it. And the reason I am not monthly recurring revenue is because my target market is women and women invest in themselves last and they need to feel successful. So when they have the Sunday basket successful, I mean, if their child falls down to needs stitches at the ER, Rory, they stopped doing their Sunday basket happened to us three times, maybe those unexpected events derail them. And if it is a monthly recurring revenue, then it’s guilt. Every time that money comes out, if it is a limited time, you only have 90 days to implement it. There’s this pressure on women that they already have so much pressure. I don’t want any pressure. I don’t want any guilt. I just want to love on you and give you the solution.

And I think, you know, you’ve always been so encouraging of my procrastinate on purpose book. And one of the things I think one of the things we tried to do with that book, which it occurred it’s occurred to me. Why one of the reasons why I think it is so aligned with you is we tried to, in that book talk about the emotional side of time management, not just the logical stuff. And I feel like you do the same thing with home organizing it’s, it’s, it’s tactical, but it’s also the emotional components. It’s the guilt and the stress and the anxiety and the worry and your own story of changing your life when you were 40 years old. And like just all of the mental health aspects that having an organized that come along with having an organized home which I, which I, which I just, you know, I really love so, so I hear you on the customer journey.

Basically give them something small that they can have a win, get a result, build community, and then accelerate them up, especially like, you know, I know with your infusion soft, you, you’ve got it all tracked in a, in a process to move them from one to the next, to the next to the next. The, you mentioned the Facebook ads you, we, we teach people not to do it until they get to phase three. Like most people do it way early, but you’re a great example of, like you said, you just started introducing that. And is that so, so are, have you kind of acquiesced to the idea of going okay now that I know what my lifetime value is? I can justify spending ads, driving people directly to Sunday basket. Is that, is that how you do it? You try to, you, you move them deliberately into the front of the, of the journey.

Yes. So we started Facebook ads two weeks before our customer locked in. You know, we all went into lockdown for the pandemic and we’ve been ramping up the spend as you told us to do. So we advertise to our current customers, new products that are coming out. We advertise to people to start in the Sunday basket. We advertise podcast episodes, and here’s something unique to us. And I’ve done Facebook ads in the past with little money. Now I’m doing it with bigger money. Our ads always convert because women are always looking for organization solutions. And there aren’t a lot of people in that industry. And our ads are always not very expensive because they’re not competitive. I’m not in the entrepreneurial space. I’m not in the political space. So I’m able to get a good return on our investment. And we usually have three to four times return on our investment every single week. And sometimes up to seven times return on our investment, which I know is unusual.

So then on that first customer one, do you do drive people to a free training? Like let’s just take Sunday basket, not, not your existing customers, but is it just basically an ad to a free training or do you do a challenge or do you do a video funnel? Like what is that ad driving people to, or do you just take them directly to the sales page to buy the basket?

We’ve been taking them directly to the sales page to buy the basket and, you know, over the course of the year

It’s 97 bucks. It’s also not like it’s,

We redid our website. So all of June, I think we drove like 30,000 people to the website and they all bounced off because the website was broken. So we’re trying it’s, it’s lovely. It’s great. But we still made money on our ads. I don’t know what to tell you. So now we’re retargeting those people for webinars and I’m, I’m doing another webinar. We’re trying that for a while. So we’re taking 90 days and driving people to a webinar that only Facebook ads is getting that webinar and then seeing what the conversion is. So we’re testing. Okay,

Well, I’ve got I did a, I did a training last week on this specific thing I need, I’m going to send it to you. So, because you know, I just, w you are, you’ve done these things, not just the right things, but in the right order at the right time. And it’s, it’s moving, it’s moving along. So I have one more question for you before that. I mean, where should people go Lisa, to learn about you, you know, if they want to connect. And I mean, I’ll also, there’s a huge part of being a personal brand, which is just keeping your crap organized. And so, like the actual skill that you’re teaching here, I think really helps accelerate the success of any, any entrepreneur and, you know, not, not just, you know, you’re saying women and like the home and, and, and that, but it’s any business owner trying to like keep parts of their life organized. So where should they go to find you?

I often say that men are not holding women back your houses. And that’s why I speak to women because the emotional components that you’re talking about do not impact men the way they do women. And so many women have something they’re uniquely created to do, but they’re waiting until the laundry and the dishes are done. And so that is the person that I’m trying to reach. Like I want to free you from your home, so you can go bless the world with what you’re uniquely created to do the best way I do that is through my podcast. So if you’ve liked this interview, go check out the podcast, which is organized three 65. We have over 9 million downloads on that podcast. So it’s pretty popular. I love it. I love, I have a lot of episodes every week. I love talking on the podcast. And then if you just want to know more about the products, go to organize three 60 five.com. You can click on the shop, you can learn about the work boxes, learn about the Sunday basket.

Huh. We got it. We got the sun. We have, we’ve got, we’ve got the Sunday basket. We have the a hundred day program. I mean just really, really great stuff. So, you know, since you know exactly what it is like to be a brand builders group, client, and you know, you know, three years ago, I mean, you had already been at it five or six years by the time we had met. And then, you know, coming, reconnecting with brand builders group here recently, what would you say to that person? Who’s like, you know, in year two and they’re just like, Oh my gosh, like I do it all this stuff and I’m not making any money. It doesn’t seem like anyone’s listening. It’s, I’m frustrated. Like I can’t get crap done. I can’t afford vendors. I don’t know how to do it myself. Like, you know, I don’t have time. Like, what would be your, your advice to that person?

I love that bill Gates quote, when he says we underestimate what we can do in 10 years and we overestimate what we can do in one year. And I think that’s true too. Like you just have to realize that you are in a marathon and it is a self-development and blessing of the world, like whatever you’re uniquely gifted and created to give the world, like is amazing, but it’s not going to happen tomorrow, but you need to take the next step, take the next step, take the next step. And if you’re in brand builders are looking to join brand builders, look at it as like your college education. So there are four different phases and look at each phase as a year of college education. Now, if you’re like, I was, when you came in and you’re in your eight, then yeah, you can get the whole thing done in a year.

It’s extremely rare. I was over ready. If you’re in year two, then I would look at that for those four phases is like, if I get these four phases done in the next four years, I will be six years in. That’s where you naturally are going to be this, you know, businesses growing. I find it so interesting. So many podcasts that I followed for years and years and years, female podcasts. So many of them in the last two years have become seven figure businesses and moving quickly to eight figure businesses. And it’s just time. It’s not that they found something out that you don’t know, or they have a secret or it’s the super special funnel or whatever. It’s just time. It takes 10 years to grow to a million dollar business. Like it just takes time.

Love it. Lisa Woodruff, ladies and gentlemen, we’ll link up to organize three 65, man, keep going, Lisa. So proud. It’s been such an honor to work with you and we just continue to wish you the best in your journey and thanks for all your encouragement. Thanks, Rory.

Ep 133: YouTube Secrets Tips and Strategies with Sean Cannell | Recap Episode

Hey, welcome to the influential personal brand podcast. Recap edition, breaking down Sean Cannell. Sorry, Cannell. I keep saying it wrong kennel like YouTube channel. Oh, that is why I’m struggling with that because we have canals. I was like, why do I struggle with this? But anyways, it’s Sean Cannell like YouTube channel, which is the way to remember it,uwhich is smart and,ureally, really good. I mean, I just, I have really grown. I, I follow Sean closely now and he’s like the go-to guy on YouTube these days.

Rory was like, if you want to know YouTube, you have to listen to this

Because it’s, we’ve said in several of our recaps that like YouTube is

Literally every single guest has something unique in huh, to say about YouTube. And this was no different. I love it. And I love too that YouTube is making such a comeback in terms of conversations that people are happening. Cause I feel like for a long time it kind of fell off the wagon and it was all about Instagram and a tech talk and Facebook and you know, all the things. And can, I didn’t hear about personal brands on YouTube for a while, but some of the biggest personal brands we know have huge, massive followings and huge monetization plans using YouTube.

Yeah. And I think that’s part of the, part of the, part of the thing about YouTube is it’s, it’s not as like flashy and instant. And so that’s why it was like super exciting. And then it kind of went away and now people are realizing it’s got massive, long-term staying power. Like this is the place to be. And I think the first big takeaway was that Sean said, look you a skill you have to learn as you have to become a master at holding attention. And Gary V talks about this all the time that what he’s really doing is he’s day-trading attention. It’s, it’s, it’s not so much about the platform or about the content or anything. It’s about understanding your audience and how do you tap? How do these hand gestures, how do you captivate them? How do you hold them? How do you pull them in? And like, and, and, and, and, and have them, this is something that you gotta do. If you’re going to build, if you’re going to build a brand, you got to build your,

Yeah. I love that. And I think just even asking yourself, what am I doing to hold people’s attention? And this is something that we tell people all the time in our curriculums world-class presentation craft is watch yourself. I actually go back and watch yourself. Are you engaging? Are you inviting? Do you even want to watch yourself? Right. I think those are really good things that we forget to do. And you know, something we talk about, even with us, it’s when was the last time that we went back and listened to one of our own podcast recaps or podcast interviews, listening to our cadence and our speech and our hands gastros and all the things. But I think is really important. If you’re really trying to do this and really trying to build up this platform is are you watching yourself and becoming in tune with what is engaging and what holds people attention?

Because so much of it is people can’t sit and watch I talking head for an hour. It’s really hard. Just like you wouldn’t want to watch a PowerPoint with a voiceover for six hours. At some point, you’re going to be like, Oh my gosh, that’s too much for my eyes to take in. So what are you doing to vary it up and to capture and grab someone’s attention and then hold it. So, step one, I would just encourage you if you’ve got any sort of visual format or an audio format for that matter, go back and watch yourself and pay attention to those things. And when we actually talk about watching yourself four different ways,

This is from ed Tate. So this was, we learned this from ed Tate, 1999 world champion of public speaking. Okay. Go ahead and share the four ways to watch,

Just watch it normally. Right. I mean, I think I’m gonna get out of this watch it on fast forward. You know, that’s still a thing that from the BCR days but one of the reasons is that you’ll catch your little what do you call them? Your nervous ticks idiosyncrasies. It’s like do you have like a, you know, do you do this all the time? Like we had this friend one time that did this all the time and when you watched it on video, it looks like she was just filling herself up all the time. Do you remember this?

I do never noticed

It until it was on fast forward. Right. And then watch it on mute and then watch it not looking at it. So you’re just listening to it. Those are the four different ways, but I’m telling you you’re, it will be amazing to you to see what are all of the weird things that you catch just by watching yourself or listening to yourself, a stutter or Maybe you say, ah a lot

Of the little things

Like as mine, for sure. But I just think that’s really amazing to pay attention to because your job is to keep people engaged. So can you even keep yourself engaged? Step one?

Yeah. And part of that is just reducing, reduce, reduce, reduce, which was a big theme of what Sean talked about. I think of where Mark Twain said that brevity is the essence of wisdom. One of my coaches and mentors, David Brooks said he was the 1990 world champion of public speaking. He said, tell the audience every single word they need to know and not a word more. And that’s such great advice here. And that’s a part I think of holding attention, which was to me a great reminder of just edit, edit, edit, reduce, reduce, reduce. And then the last big takeaway for me was interesting because Sean is so technical and the stuff he teaches, he had this thing that he said like towards the end, that was like, whoa…

Oh, this is really, this is really profound. Yeah.

Yeah. So it was, and it was like, it was more than emotional. It was almost spiritual. What he said. He said, use your season of obscurity to prepare you for your season of popularity. Use your season of obscurity to prepare you for your season of popularity. That it’s like, look, you’re building the skills, the character, the talent, the systems, the processes in this, in this season that not that many people know about you because you’re being prepared for the person that the world one day need you to be, that you’re being, you’re being shaped and molded and created to be this extraordinary thing. And you’re just, that’s what’s happening. Like you’re, you’re it’s happening right now. Even though you think, Oh no, one’s watching my videos. No, one’s engaging. It’s now you’re, you’re actually being shaped. You’re being built. Yeah.

I love that. And I, you know, when I, when I read that Roy had highlighted this little sentence that made me think about one of my favorite pastors right now is this guy and I, Michael Todd. So total shout out to transformation church and Michael Todd relationship goals is the book. So shout out to that too, but I think it’s very similar to something he talks a lot about, which is the seasons of your life from being single, to being married. And there’s the season of being single that nobody wants to be in, but that is the season that you are being prepared for the life partner that you will one day have. And this, the season of just figuring out who you are and what you want and your connectedness to in our case, God. But then it’s like, people want to rush past that.

They don’t want to be single. They don’t want to admit that they’re single. They always are dating. And it’s like, if you’re always with someone else, then you never have time to find out who you are. And I think that’s very similar to a little bit of what Sean was saying is the season of obscurity is your season of just you at your time alone, it’s your time to set a solid foundation so that if you do get hit with tons of popularity, you’re, you’re grounded and founded in who you are and what you believe in. And it’s just a setting, a very solid foundation or tremendous growth. So very similar to that. And also just love to find any way to talk about Michael.

That’s a good word, Vaden preach it. That’s a good, that is good. That is strong. That is strong. And that’s why we’re here. We hope to keep inspiring you and keep informing you with our guests and our recap. So thanks for being here, come back next time. And we will see then on the influential personal brand.