Author: AJ Vaden

Ep 121: How To Build and Manage a Membership Site with Chris Ducker | Recap Episode

Hey, welcome to this recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. It’s your man, Rory Vaden breaking down the interview with my good friend, Chris Ducker. I’m rolling so low on this one agent. Couldn’t be here, but I’ve known Chris for so long that I think it’s apropos that I got a chance to learn from him. And to just share with you, I think some of my highlights from somebody who I consider a friend, and I think that the first thing that Chris said that stuck with me was super simple and it’s related to something that we say ish, you know, like we, we, we talk about this concept a lot, but there was something about the way that he said it, that really,
Really resonated with me in, in a fresh way. And, and that was this, he said, when you’re building your personal brand, just focus on becoming someone’s favorite on something, right? Like, so we talk about finding your uniqueness. We talk about you know, staying, staying focused. If you have diluted focus, you have diluted results. So we kind of talk about it, like from the lens of you, of like you doing the work and our, our, our brand DNA experience is all about taking someone through these exercises to figure out what is their uniqueness. Right. But when he said it that way, it’s almost like coming at it in the reverse, it’s thinking about from your customer or from your, from your prospect’s perspective, what could you be someone’s favorite resource for, I mean, that’s such a good question. We should probably consider adding that question.
I mean, he didn’t say it that way. He just said become someone’s favorite about something, but to, to, to translate it, I guess, to a practical question and you know, maybe, maybe we should actually include, this is it’s it’s so good is to say, what could I become someone’s favorite resource for that causes you to ask the question, you know, it’s another way of coming at your uniqueness, but it also has the kind of the entertainment aspect of it to be like, you know, what do I learn the passion question of, what do I love? What am I good at? What do I know so well that I could just, you know, I could teach it in a way that so many people would, would absolutely just love it because I, I love it. And I know something about it. So that’s a question that I would, I would encourage you to just maybe think about for the week, what is something that you could become someone’s favorite resource for and think about it, think about it as the consumer, right.
As you think about, okay, who is my favorite person to follow that has spiritual messages. Here’s, who’s my favorite person to follow that has financial information. Who’s my favorite person to follow with like, you know, technology tips. Who’s my favorite person to follow in my industry. Who’s my favorite person to follow on like you know, fitness and nutrition and right. Like we another quote of mine, not a, not a quote of mine. Another one of my favorite quotes is from a guy named Scott McCain, Scott McCain, as a, as a mentor of mine. And he’s a hall of fame speaker and a bestselling author and all that. And, and one of my favorite quotes from Scott McCain, as he says, mind, share precedes market share. So it’s almost like, you know, the human brain, it’s almost like, there’s like these it’s like a filing cabinet, right?
And so we have a file for like, who’s our accountant and who’s our doctor and who’s our eye doctor and all that stuff. And so it’s people want to be able to like put you in a file. They, they want to be able to like, when I have this problem, this is the person I call. So you, you want to reverse engineer that and go, okay, what is the thing that I want people to think of when they think of, when they think of this, they call me I I’m their favorite resource for it. I’m their go-to person on it. I’m going to occupy that space in their mind. I’m going to work to own that question and to become their favorite resource so that when they have a problem that they need solved, they’re immediately going to think of me, mind is share proceeds market share.
So but anyways, the way that Chris said it was become someone’s favorite about something. And I just thought that was super simple, but super fresh in a different way of thinking about this, all important idea of finding your, your uniqueness. The second thing that he mentioned, which I really love, just because we don’t talk a lot about it. Like we don’t talk about pricing. We haven’t talked a lot about it so far in the other episodes now we have one of our events, one of our topics is called building your revenue engine. And then in the revenue engine, you know, we teach about offer structure and pricing and how to lay out your offer in a way that gets people to buy, et cetera, et cetera. But a lot of our guests, we haven’t had very many guests on this show where that has kind of come up.
And one of the things that Chris said, which I think is a very salient, you know, important nugget that you, you might’ve skipped over, but I think it’s a really big deal. And it was a, it was a big reminder for me too, is he said we almost never discount things. We almost never discount things. And I find that to be a really important principle. Like I would actually consider that to be a core financial principle that we would, we would talk more about later on in like our eight figure entrepreneur curriculum and event, which is, you know, there’s certain financial ways of thinking that are really important. And I think discounting is one of the big mistakes that people make is they just get into this habit of discounting. They set this culture of discounting. You know, when you start to scale your business, you have salespeople and then salespeople think, Oh, I can just go out and discount stuff.
And I mean, think about this for just a second, about how negative, how negative discounting can be. Right. So generally speaking for many, many businesses are for most businesses, a 10 to 20% profit margin would be really good. So like, I mean, break even it’d be 0%. Right. And that’s hard to do a lot of most businesses never succeed because they they’re never able to break even. And 10% profit margin is like, okay, that’s healthy. And 20% is like, all right, you’re, you’re crushing it. Like you’re killing it. Right. So think about discounts. Think about like coupons. Usually, what, what do you think is the most common percentage that people give away when they discount? You know, usually it’s like 10% or 20%. Like now when you go to department stores and stuff, sometimes you’ll like, see deal for 30% off or whatever. Now, you know, that’s a totally different model than a personal brand, which is a professional service.
But even in service-based businesses, 20% can be very difficult to get to if you start having a staff and a team and you really start to scale a real business. So when you do a a 10% discount or 20% discount, what did you just do? You gave away the profits of the business. That’s what happened, like all of the work and the time and the energy that would have gone into creating a successful customer acquisition and making a sale and delivering a service and making a reasonable, healthy amount of profit. All of that disappeared with the discount. Now, when we give discounts, we think, Oh, 10% is not a big deal. Even when we get discounts, right? Like if I said, Hey, I got a 10% discount for you. You probably would be like, man, whatever. But when you put on your entrepreneur hat, when you put on your business owner hat, when you put on your CFO hat, when you put on your do I have resources to invest back into a team and to grow this thing, if I gave a 10% discount, I just gave away the profit.
I just, I literally gave away the whole financial reason of being in business. That means that every, all the work that we did to find customer, you know, find a prospect, introduce ourselves to them, make them know who we are, earn their trust, make a sale, deliver a product, make them happy. They have a great experience. We did enough to pay our team, pay our employees, pay the, you know, pay the government, pay whatever, and literally nothing left over. Right. So discounting is, discounting is extremely detrimental. Discounting long-term is extremely detrimental, which, you know, if you have to do it initially to get some customers and to build some credibility, you know, I guess you do that or did to build momentum around a book launch or something like that. But it is not something that can be a part of your core business for you to scale a truly successful long term enterprise.
So, you know, and now, and what he said, which I also appreciate is, so what do you do? What you do is you add on bonuses and you can add on incentives and you can, you can do promotions. You know, like if you’re trying to create urgency, you’re trying to get someone to action. What you do is you add on something, you add on some type of of a bonus, but you don’t discount the actual price of what you collect. And if you’re building a personal brand, that’s one of the most amazing parts about being in this space is that you can create a lot of digital assets, right? Like block two hours on your calendar record of, of some videos or have a long video training. And now you have this really incredible bonus that you can offer without compromising the profit margin of your business.
So that’s just not a lesson. We hear a lot. And I thought that was really good. And then the third thing which I always love. I mean, you’re just, I think you, you, I never get sick of tired talking about it, but again, the way that Chris said it, I thought was cool. He said, do the unsexy work? Do the unsexy work like so many people get into the personal brand space specifically because it’s like, it looks glamorous, right? Ooh, I have a book, I’m an author. I’m on stage. I’m leading a webinar. I have a lot of social media followers, you know, whatever I’ve got endorsements from all these people. And yet it’s like that, isn’t the job. I, it takes me back to an episode, another really great episode that we had a while back with David Avron, who truly is one of my most influential mentors in my life.
And he was talking about getting speaking gigs. And he said something on our interview that I’d actually never heard him say, or it never stuck with me. What Dave said is he said, you know, speaking is not the business. It’s getting the speaking gig, which is what the real business is. Everybody wants to be a speaker, right? Like being on stage speaking is the fun part, but that’s not really the business. The business is getting the speaking gig. And that’s what, that’s what you need to, you need to be willing to do the unsexy work. You have to take the stairs to, to use the metaphor and illustration of my first book. In fact, there was an interview. There was an interview in the take the stairs book, one of the ultra performers that we profiled. I’ll never forget this guy. I haven’t talked to him a long time, but he’s a total stud, his name is Chad Goldwasser.
And at the time he was like the number one agent in the world out of like 76,000 agents for, for Keller Williams worldwide. And we profiled him for the take the stairs book. And Chad said, you have to learn to fall in love with the daily grind. Not just deal with it, not just get by, not just like stomach it and be okay with it. The real measure is can you fall in love with the daily grind? Can you fall in love with the hard stuff? Can you learn to embrace and enjoy the, the challenge and the struggle of the day to day? Because that’s, that’s how you’re going to make it right. Everyone can make it when things are easy, everyone can make it when the economy is booming. The question is, can you do the work when things aren’t going well, will you do the unsexy work?
Will you take the stairs? Will you fall in love with the daily grind? Because if you cannot or you are not willing, I think maybe you should just pull the plug on the thing right now, because that’s what happens to most people. Most people hang around while it’s fun while it’s easy, while it’s super lucrative. And then it’s like the moment it gets difficult, they’re out. But if you just resolve and decide and commit right now, and you say, I am going to do whatever it takes, I am going to become whoever I have to become. I am going to build the business in whatever way I have to build the business to get my message out into the world, because I believe that is the calling for my life. And I am, I am going to be driven by purpose and driven by calling and not driven by financial incentives or what is easy or what is convenient.
If you can make that decision right now, you will make it. You will make it. You will simply outlast everyone. You’ll figure it out. You’ll stay the course succeeding in this business. And really in any business, isn’t rocket science. It’s about commitment and determination and discipline. The same thing we’ve been talking about would take the stairs ever since I’ve stood on stage is discipline. And, and you hear these people come on like Chris Ducker and say it. And so we’ll say it over and over and over again. And we’ll highlight that you hear the true story, right? Like the reason we’re inviting these people on this podcast is so that you can hear the true story. You know, not the stuff you see on social, not that you see on their website, not that looks pretty.
You can hear the true story of some of the biggest personal brands in the world. And you can hear them tell the behind the scenes reality of what it took and what it takes to operate at that at that level, at their level, because that’s what we want for you. We want you to become that person. We want you to follow that calling. We believe that your message matters. We believe that you can become that person and that that calling on your life is inevitable to come true. If you stay the course, you follow some principles, tenure simply be disciplined. Thanks for being here. We love you. We’re cheered for you. Make sure you keep coming back. Come on back. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 120: How To Build and Manage A Membership Site with Chris Ducker

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. Chris Ducker is easily one of my favorite Brits and probably like

I’m literally the only British person. You know, I think that is not true. That is not true. I would say that

Not true. I know quite a, quite a bit of British people, quite

A few Brits,

But man, he is amazing. I met him through Jay Baer, which just, we have close personal friends. Y’all know how much I love Jay Baer. And one of the reasons I love Chris because he’s a real entrepreneur in addition to being a, a phenomenal personal brand. So he’s written two books that are awesome, Virtual Freedom and Rise of the Youpreneur, but he owns and operates real companies. In fact, he has 350 full-time employees, mround the world. He’s got businesses in different countries. Umne of which is called virtual staff finder. For those of you looking for virtual assistance, we’ll, you know, we’ll talk more about that later. Um,t he’s also a blogger, you know, he’s a podcaster he’s, he’s got a great following. He’s built a huge personal brand himself. Uh,’s a speaker. He hosts an annual summit, u,,lled the Youpreneur summit, which, u,ually I think is in Cambridge or in England and is in London.

Okay. So he doesn’t event every year. And you know, we have a lot of overlap in terms of friends and audience and philosophy. And anyways, I just loved this guy and I, I, you need to know about him and what he does in his businesses and specifically his online business, which is the smallest part of how he makes his income because he’s got real companies doing real stuff. But he has a really big Academy called Youpreneur. It’s a membership Academy and I wanted to talk about how we built that and what does it take to really month in and month out manage a membership site because there’s good things and there’s bad things. And so anyways, Chris Ducker, my favorite Brit, glad you’re here. I’m glad

I just want you to keep talking about me. This is great. I could listen to you for hours.

Well, AJ always tells me she’s like, your introductions are too long. And I, and I, you know, I listened to everything. most everything AJ tells me, but I think it’s important cause I want you to know how much I love you. And I want, I want you listening to know every person that I bring on is here for a specific reason of someone that I learned from. And, you know, there’s you do so many of those things, but youpreneur.com, which is really the Academy, the membership site. I feel like Chris people, I feel like so many people get excited about a membership site. They start it, they run it for 15 months and then they’re like, this sucks and I’m out and you’ve done it. So how long have you done it?

We we have just hit our fifth year at the Youpreneur Academy. Which is fantastic. I mean, throughout the course of that time, gosh, I don’t know exactly how many people have swung through those doors. If I had to put a number on it, I’d say probably around about 3003 and a half thousand people have joined that period of time. We float anywhere between, you know, based on pre, you know, promotions and kind of mini launches to our lists and things like that, or float anywhere between kind of like six 50 to nine 50 members at any one time. So it’s a good sticking rate as well. I think the majority of people stick around for about a year and a half or so. Uyou know, but, but here’s the, here’s the big thing. I think the one reason why memberships, mome and go so quickly is because man it’s work that people that people think that it’s like passive income or something equally as sexy. And it’s definitely not passive. It’s probably about the most, you know, other than say, like coaching one-on-one or as well, we do, we do.

One-On-One like, it’s

That you guys, you guys would not be good poster Childs for the idea of passive income, but that’s your model you see, and that’s what everybody loves about you. And so look, here’s the deal. If you want that recurring reliable income on a regular monthly basis, you need to show the heck up every single month as well. And we do that. We do that through, you know everything from, you know, video training that goes live every month, right? The way through to a massive archive of stuff. We, the funny thing is actually we don’t produce that much new content on a monthly basis anymore. We’ve been gone well, we’ve been going five

Years, five years. You

Can talk about building relationships and, you know, providing solutions to people’s problems and packaging, your experience, which is what we do and what we’ve done, but what we, what we have been doing really successfully over the last year and a half or so is going in and revamping stuff and re kind of touching stuff up to bring it kind of more up-to-date and things like that. But there’s still a lot of stuff. I mean, without a doubt, the most fun that I have with the Academy is our monthly chit chats, which is where I get to sit down 99% of the time in person. Cause as you well know, I travel a lot and we actually usually, you know, when we’re at a conference or something, I’ll hire a suite and we’ll bring a crew in for an entire day and we’ll film like six videos in one day and then that’s our content for six months. You see? Uand you know, we actually, even though I haven’t recorded anything since March this year, which is the last time you and I saw each other in San Diego,uwe we’ve still got content good until like February next year. So, you know, we’ve

Six hours. So you batch are, are, are those like six hour long videos or are there

They run for about 30 to 40 minutes on average? I mean, how long are you going to actually honestly sit and watch two people talk to each other with like, you know, two different camera angles, you know, like people’s span of attention, pretty poor nowadays as it is. Right. But we, you know, we, we, we do great con you know, we’ve had some incredible people that we’ve sat down with over the years and that

Strikingly mediocre people like Jay Baer and Elsner Pat yeah, Pat Flynn, I know that given a large, large number of very average, average people, [inaudible] one time just wore the pants. I,uyou know, I think what it is is that that’s me,

I’m more of a talker than a typer. So, you know, I like to podcast, I like to do video work. I like to speak on stage and I like to coach and train people. And so everything else that revolves around the Academy and then also the incubator, which is kind of our higher level membership, which is more kind of one to group coaching. So if you imagine,

Are you comfortable sharing the prices with just like, so we were totally, yeah. Kind of give us a sense of like how many people and how difficult it is.

The, the Academy is 39 us a month. That’s it that simple, right.

I know I’m American, but we do have people who listen, but I appreciate that the, the th the, the U S translation, but I’m, we travel a lot. We are quite international,

Actually. It’s funny, you mentioned that on genuinely, because, you know, we, we have a massively like big worldwide audience as well. We’re very blessed like that. And so the question actually did come about, you know, what are we going to do? How are we going to charge? Are we gonna do it in GBP? Are we gonna do it in Euro? Are we going do it in the U S you know, USB? Those are really the only three currencies we talked about when we launched you know, online and Euro was kind of ditched pretty much straight away because people in Europe are used to paying, you know, in USD for stuff online. The, the, you know, the British pounds things was a conversation that went on probably for too long, purely, just because of the fact that I’m British. And since two years ago, we’ve now been based here, back in England. Whereas obviously, as you well know, we’re over in the Philippines for 18 years. Right.

So just, just for everyone to catch that, like you built these businesses living and operating and doing business in the Philippines, you moved for 18 years from England to the Philippines. I mean, that’s a, I don’t know. I mean, you’re definitely my favorite Filipino. Like, I don’t know. I don’t think I know very many and that’s, that’s amazing. Yeah. And I’m pretty sure you S you were charging us dollars when you were in the Philippines. I’m selling a very international membership site.

Totally. And I mean, you know, our businesses, you know, the, the larger of the businesses is fundamentally a B2B call center facility. So we, you know, we bill in USD and we pay all our bills and Philippine pesto, and it’s very, very profitable. And so with the Academy, it, the USD, it was just, you know, the other conversation, a lot of people have this who maybe are not, US-based, they’ll have this issue of if I’m going to write in English, obviously if I’m in Germany and I’m talking to a German audience, I’m writing in German. But if I’m international outside of the United States and I’m writing content in English, do I go with a U S spelling or do I go with British spelling? And that was an open discussion that we actually add to have. But, you know, we went, we do everything in American English. We do everything in USD billing mainly because of the fact that internationally pound for pound, the U S way of writing and charging for products and services online specifically is more universally accepted. So for your, all of your podcasts listeners slash viewers that are listening to this, there you go. I’ve just solved the problem.

Well, that is, and it makes me not feel quite as such a self-centered American. Even though that, that you, you know, so that’s interesting that that’s actually really helpful to have your perspective of that’s a conscious decision that you’ve made is just kind of the most transferable or universal. You know,

The thing is, you know, ever since my know, ever since I kind of got in, you know, left school and I didn’t go to university or college as you guys would call it. And so I went straight into the workforce strain and sales and marketing for a publishing company. I only ever had two jobs in my life prior to setting up my own firm. And,uit, it’s always, I’ve always dealt with people on an international setting. So pretty much from week one, I was talking to people all over Europe, for example, based in the UK, mhat when I went over to the Philippines, you know, set up the firm, et cetera, et cetera, I, you know, instantly knew that America was our big melting pot of prospect of customers. So, you know, it’s just one of those things. I’ve always done business on an international setting. Uh,u know, everything from time zones to international dialing codes, they’re all up here, baby. I don’t need to look any of them up so,

Well, yeah, I mean, you got tired, you got dialing codes, you have currency, you have taxes, there’s you have the writing. Like, [inaudible] like, like you’re saying the American English those are a lot of things. So, so $39 a month also gives you a very, you know globally affordable you’re factoring in certain countries that it’s like 99 a month. Like our lo our lowest price point is 99 a month, but you’re, you’re able to probably capture a much, a large percentage of the, of the world that maybe the 99 a month. Isn’t

The thing is, look, this, this is the way I look at it. Right. whether you’re just getting started online and you want to learn, you know, you want to learn how to build an audience properly and to, you know, become, I always say, you know, that you’ve got to try and become somebody’s favorite, right? So whether you’re looking to become somebody’s favorite podcaster or blogger or YouTube, or live streamer or whatever it might be when you get started, it’s good to have something other than just non-stop Googling that you can go to, that you can converse with other people that are in a similar situation and kind of learn from and brainstorm and you know, that kind of stuff. Right. But then the flip side of that kind of beginner coin is that there are people inside of the Academy who have been in business for 10 plus years, who are already running very profitable businesses, but I’ve never considered personal branding, or as I call it building the business of you ever before, it’s something they’ve never done.

And so, yeah, I’m, I’m profitable. I make money. But I’ve got no idea how to you know, build, build my website out properly to position myself as an expert. I’ve got no idea how to utilize my uniqueness as a person and my personality and my experiences to be able to bring in additional business et cetera, et cetera. Right. So this is, you know, the Academy really kind of just like it ticks all those boxes at a low price so that anybody can really afford it. Some might say, well, why don’t you just give it away for free? The reason being is because I didn’t give anything away for free. It’s really that simple. My time is a premium. And if it requires my time, even just a couple hours a month, if you want it, you’re gonna have to pay for it.

It’s really that simple. And so that’s why, you know, that, that’s one of the reasons why we got around to,ulaunching two years ago, the incubator, which is like, kind of like the next tier, mhich ends up, you know, it’s like 2,500 bucks for the year and us dollars. Yeah. And, and, and, you know, that is, you know, more time with me each month as a group one to many, no, one-on-one coaching one to many. Um, you know, it’s a smaller group of people, uh s up being around about a hundred people or so at any one time, some people come, some people go, um,a uh,i great because you know, those who do stick around for that entire year plus, uh,t see incredible, incredible growth. Uh, ioesn’t take much.

And, and, and even though you, you said you’ve been kind of hovering steadily between 600 to 900 members, you know, 40 bucks a month. That’s still, you know, whatever 20, 25, maybe $30,000 a month. And you’ve got, you got expenses, you’ve got some staff and stuff, but that’s, that’s a, a nice, healthy stream of consistent revenue that helps like pay the bills. And then the incubator becomes a little more profitable and a little more time. And then, you know, most of your time, your personal time, you’re actually putting into these other, other businesses. And so how do you, how do you fill it? How do you fill the membership? Okay. So I, I really love that it’s work, like hearing in that truth is important. How do you go about filling it? Like, do you do the big push twice a year? Like open cart, closed cart? Is it always open? Do people come and go, do you have affiliates? Do you run ads? Is it social? Is it Google, YouTube? Like, how do you actually sell the thing? Right. Like, how do you, how do you get people to pay money for this?

So we don’t do any affiliates. We don’t do any Google ads. We do a little bit of Facebook advertising, I guess we probably drop a couple of grand a month, us on Facebook ads for it. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s a low price point. So you’re going to look at like cost per acquisition, feature, new customers,

Right? Someone’s got to stay a long time,

Incubator incubator a little bit more. That’s a little easier to kind of warrant pushing more ad spend behind because it’s that 2,500 price point, right. Or if I have to drop a hundred bucks, 150 bucks to acquire a customer all day long, I’ll do that all day long. Right. But with the Academy a little bit different, I’ll tell you what we do. We produce [email protected], both from a blogging perspective. So written content along with graphical content. So infographics, Instagram stories we’ve got something that we do on my Instagram account called carousel wisdom, where people have to flick through and it sits on the grid. People love those. We do the podcast on a weekly basis, and there’s just one very simple formula that we follow to every single piece of content that we create. And this is what we teach our clients as well when we’re coaching them.

And it’s just as simple as this, always answer a question, that’s it. If you can create a piece of content that always answers a question, or for want of a better term, provides a solution to somebody’s pain point, regardless of what that might be. If you can do that with every piece of content that you create, it’ll have a long form effect on prospective customers, not only finding you, but then having those actually convert into paying customers for you. And, and by the way, that’s not a $39 like product strategy. That’s just a strategy for selling online. Consistently periods show up every single week, over and over and over again, with whatever piece of content that you feel most comfortable producing, but just make sure that you’re always answering a question or solving a problem. If you do that, people will find you

You’re constantly building trust. You’re, you’re blogging, you’re podcasting you you’re, you’re putting out that content. And then how do you what’s the conversion mechanism? Is it just, you literally send them an email and say, click and go to this. Like, here’s what it is. Click go to this, there’s a sales page. This is what’s included. It’s 39 bucks a month and sign up. Sure.

Ah, I mean, it’s, that’s pretty much it, you’ve just, that’s it’s I don’t like to complicate things out. And so you know, it, it, it really just comes down to obviously, I mean, we’ve, we’ve rewritten and rewritten them rewritten our landing pages, not sales pages. We tested things out. We know what you know, what terminology to use on our ads, but, but we never actually ever, will we ever spend money on cold audiences? All of the ads that we run are run to warm audiences, meaning they’ve either visited our website. They’re either on our email list or engaging with us or at the office.

So they’re all pixeled. They’re either pixeled audiences, or they’re an email list, custom audience that you have.

But for us, I mean, without a doubt, email is King. I mean, that’s yeah, you visit youpreneur.com. You’ll have multiple opportunities to get onto our email list. We have a great opt-in that we provide called the personal Brown roadmap. And it’s just a simple 10 step kind of checklist, 10 things to kind of pay attention to when you’re building a personal brand. Uwe get an average of around about a hundred organic opt-ins every single day and just every day, every day. Yeah. Every day, if we run ads that will double, triple that. Right? So this, this is because the website has been around long enough with, you know, four or five, 600 pieces of content on it that Google is indexing us for all of our search terms, right?

This is why the blogging is so important. Cause it’s like social media over time gets less valuable, but blogging content over time gets more valuable. The website.

Exactly, exactly. And I always say like, social media is great. You should absolutely utilize those platforms. Use that. Absolutely. Make sure that you’re focusing in on maybe one or two of them that you really like yourself, but his, the brutal reality of it, you don’t own those platforms. Google owns YouTube, Mark Zuckerberg and his friends own Facebook. You own Chris ducker.com or Rory vaden.com. You can control those. So you always have to utilize those other platforms to get people back to your hub. And then your number one goal as someone building a business online is to get them on your email list. And we went through five or six different opt-in magnets before we settled on the personal brand roadmap, which has been updated two or three times over the last three, four years. So it’s fully up to date links work, you know, resources are good, all that good stuff in it. But the fact of the matter is that once people are in that funnel, we can not only serve up more content that will obviously help and help them, but we can then obviously, you know, let them know as, and when we might be running promotions, you know, white, this is a good fit for them, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I stay away from launches. It’s not my style. It’s too stressful. Um, I do like running promotions two, three times a year where,

We’ll, we’ll very rarely

Discount anything we do, but we’ll add on certain bonuses to it. I stand behind our pricing because I feel like what we do is truly worth it, but I don’t mind giving somebody a free access to, you know, five videos for a month to learn how to XYZ, whatever it might be.

Well, I love it. You can see this, as we’ve mentioned, several times, you preneur.com. So this is, you know, several of our audiences, the perfect audience for this. So you guys go, go watch what he’s doing, check out what he’s doing, get on his email list. And I mean, Hey,

Everything, copy, swipe them and take them for yourself and get them

30, 39 bucks a month. I mean, it’s, it’s like 39 bucks a month. I mean, that’s like what you, you, you, you spend that on like sliced deli at the, at the grocery. So is there anywhere else you would drive people to Chris, Chris Ducker? Where do you want people to go?

I wouldn’t be much of a personal brand entrepreneur myself, if I didn’t have Chris docker.com. So that’s what it’s all about. Really. Chris ducker.com at Chris Docker, Instagram, there are two spots

And we’re going to talk more about virtual staff finder because we have a bunch of people who need help running our system, that we teach them, that we call the content diamond for managing social. And I need to talk to you about virtual staff finder because we need to see if we can hook up a deal for our audience on that. So

Would love to do that. Everybody should have a virtual assistant if they’re building, you know, a personal brand and

Yeah.

Helped just over 10,000 people in the 10 years we’ve been in business, actually find that. So yeah, we, we know a thing or two about it. Let’s do that

When you come back and talk about that. But anyways, Chris ducker.com check him out. He’s awesome. Cool guy. We love him. Appreciate your pre-state your transparency buddy. And showing us just like how straightforward and simple

It’s work, baby it’s work. I’ll do the work. You gotta do

The work, the unsexy work. That’s what you gotta do. You gotta do the unsexy work. I like it. Wish you the best. My friend.

Thank you, brother.

Ep 119: Blending Your Personal Brand and Network Marketing with Rebecca Louise | Recap Episode

Hey, welcome to the recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast is Rory Vaden and AJ Vaden. Today we’re breaking down our top three highlights from Rebecca Louise. Why don’t you go?

Yeah, as far as well, I just love her. She s so spunky. It’s such a fun interview and she gives so much, so much transparency and value and this interview so highly recommend it I would say the thing that I’m going to start with, and we’ve mentioned this several times now on these recaps is the fact that we’ve heard it once we heard it again and again and again, and Rebecca just kind of came in and reiterated it again, is that YouTube is such a force to be reckoned with. And I just, I am just so I’m so awestruck of the amount of people that we talk to that talk about the fundamental elements of YouTube being a driver for their business, but yet, and kind of the external world, you don’t hear a lot of that being discussed. And what I loved about her, she said that, and this was my big aha takeaway.

So I’ll get to it. She said that the thing that’s awesome about YouTube is it helps you really determine what your audience wants from you so that you can just give them more of the same thing and that the more of the same thing that you give them. And the more that YouTube sees that that’s what people want from you. They, their own algorithm will help explode your videos. And that to me is just so awesome and just genius. And the fact that it’s like, yes, do more of what people want from you. Don’t try to do all the different things, just do more and more and more of the same thing.

I think for me, it was, it’s interesting because there’s technical takeaways from her like that, that I loved and took away also the emotional side of just her attitude and her mindset really stuck with me. And I, I love just this idea of, of starting where you are and just starting with what you have and just be willing to just start and just go, like, no matter how far or fast or slow you can go, just go and then reinvest and reinvest and reinvest, and you can make it bigger and better later on. But I think it was interesting because she, she is a client of brand builders also. And, and you know, her a lot of her personal brand message which I think is where she’ll end up going longterm is really about action. It’s really about helping people move and create motion and and just kind of get, get past being stuck. And, and it comes through in her personality. That’s a huge part of her uniqueness. So start with, start where you’re at and be willing to just reinvest and then, and then grow from there. And that’s similar

To my second takeaway. And my second takeaway was I thought it was such a unique description of how she said that she uses her direct sales business as a part of funding, her personal brand and vice versa, but how she spends her time in both of them as she goes all in on one of them in a season and takes the money that she has gained from one of them to help fund the other. She said, but I’m always all in, on one of them. So in some seasons is my direct sales business and on others, it’s my personal brand. But I think the thing that was most interesting, and she didn’t say this quite this way, but as the fact that they they’re both synonymous with each other, right, it’s her personal brand is actually driving a ton of leads to her direct sales business. And through her direct sales business to her personal brand is gaining an enormous amount of traction, but she’s spending super intentional time and seasons on each of them independently to make sure that they get what they need to get off the ground running. So I thought that was amazing and it goes back to the investment

Well, in my, and, and I, I, that was my second takeaway actually was the, the best way to monetize a personal brand is to bolt it onto the thing you’re already doing. Like the fastest path to cash is to just use it as an accelerant to what you’re already doing. And for her that was direct sales and in the beginning and still is. And I, gosh, I mean, there’s so many people in direct sales and other businesses, financial serves professional, all the professional services, all entrepreneurs that you can just take your personal brand and use it as a marketing engine for the thing that you already have. Why wouldn’t you be doing it? I mean, this, this, I think this is just like, it’s not just the, the, it’s the future of marketing in general. Like, this is what personal branding is, what marketing will look like in the future. It’ll be all about the personality. So I, I thought that was cool. Really cool. Example of her, you know, crushing it in both direct sales and her personal brand.

Yeah. And my third takeaway, and there were so many technical things, but for whatever reason, this really stuck out to me was the fact that she started by somebody else hiring her to do YouTube exercise videos, a casting call, and she was getting paid 40 bucks an episode. And I just want you to like, let that settle in. And here’s what I found that was interesting is she, wasn’t so sure about what her content was about. But it was, Hey, I know that this sounds good and I can do this and do this for her. It was talk, watch she works out. But here’s what I thought was fascinating. It wasn’t that she had this like compelling message within her to start is the fact that she started. Yeah. And from there she realized like, I really love this. I need to do more of this.

So then she got her certification. And then from that, she built her own show and now she just released a book and then she’s got her direct sales is like, now she’s got like this multi-million dollar empire, all because she said, I don’t know where this will lead, but I’m going to start with this. And it was doing somebody else just show getting paid 40 bucks an episode, but she was willing to just start. And from there, that’s where she fell in love with what she was doing and found her passion and found her message. And it wasn’t like all this work you do off by yourself and then trying to make it perfect. It was like, no, just get in and do it and figure it out as you go.

Yeah. I also thought her mentality, wasn’t like, Oh, I’m not making enough money. Or I’m being taken advantage of. She was like, Oh, I’m learning. This is fun. I’m doing it. And then it’s like, Hey, I’m going to do this myself and figure it out. Was super cool. W w one of the other things that, that she said, or we talked about that really reminded me of something that we say around here a lot is we say people don’t pay for information. They pay for organization and application. And when she was talking about that, she basically just puts her exercise tips on YouTube for free. And that’s what she does. That’s what she’s always done. And then what do people pay for? Well, they, they pay for more, but they pay, they pay for them more organized right.

Organization application

In a way it’s not just like some random, like three minute tip, it’s a full 20 minute workout or a series of workouts. And now she’s rolled that into, into her app, this awesome app. I mean, she’s just crushing the app business, which is so cool. And I think just a good reminder because all of us are either we don’t know what we would put out for free, or we go, well, I can’t just teach everything I know for free. What would people pay me for? And just don’t ever forget people don’t pay for information. They pay for the organization and application the assistance of implementing that knowledge into their life. That is,

Yeah. That’s such a good takeaway. And then too, that it’s like this just randomly came to me. It’s like the fact that she has taken this entire message and this archive of content and put it into an app, right. It’s like, it’s, yeah. It’s one thing to do social media, but it’s like taking it to a whole nother level in terms of what does a membership program look like for you? Now, you’ve got to have the money and the investment to do that type of infrastructure. But if you do this the right way and you go all in again, it’s take the money you make to reinvest it to make more money. And it’s building a business that you can have for a lifetime. That’s so much of what it’s all about.

The first, the out thousands of members, she had all sharing the same password. That was how she started. Right? Like it wasn’t, she she’s, she scrapped her way there and you can too. And Hey, you know, that’s why brand builders is here is also to help you apply the things that we’re learning and teaching. And that our guests are we’re in the business of one, on one coaching, help you apply this. So at some point we hope you request to call, talk to someone on our team. Umf nothing else, just keep coming back here and we’ll keep supporting you on your journey. That’s it for now? We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

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Ep 118: Using Your Personal Brand to Grow Your Existing Business with Rebecca Louise

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 want it 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 am so honored and excited to introduce you to my friend, Rebecca Louise. Those of you that follow her on social may know her as Rebecca Louise fitness. If you don’t know her, let me just give you a couple stats, I guess, cause I’m a big fan of, of people’s, you know, their actual results and what they have produced, which is what one of the things I love about her. So she, I guess was originally known for her YouTube following. I don’t know if that’s right to say, but she’s gotten about 648,000 followers subscribers on YouTube 250,000 on Facebook, 540,000 on Instagram. But here is to me that one of the coolest things, and one of the reasons I, I invited her on the show is she has an app that is now called BTES that has over 11,000 paying monthly subscribers.

She’s got two different pricing tiers, which we may talk about, and it is one of the, the best fitness apps in the world. And, and very longstanding, very reputable has a lot of success stories from clients. But she also is she kind of, she came out of, or one of the things that she does is network marketing as well. We’re not going to mention the name of the company here, but it is a very recognizable, very well known network marketing company. And you all know that we love network marketing. We believe in it. I’m a product of it. My mom, yeah. I grew up around it. I speak to a lot of network marketing, marketing companies. And then her newest thing is that she actually released a book this year called it takes grit which quickly became a bestseller. And anyways, she’s just an all around baller and awesome, awesome lady. I met her as part of a mastermind that I was a co-leading with Lewis howes for, for Lewis was Lewis’ mastermind. She was, she was in there and anyways, it was like, you got it. You got to meet Rebecca Louise. So welcome to the show, Rebecca,

Thank you so much for the lovely introduction. I go down, I’ll record that and just wake up to that every day. It’s going to be my new affirmations

It’s been recorded and I, you will have, it will be available to you whenever you want. So can you just talk to us a little bit about your journey? I mean, I that’s, we kind of think of this show is like the real life story. Because people go, Oh my gosh, you have millions of social media followers and, and, and literally, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars in recurring revenue from your app every year. But you know, my guess is it didn’t start quite like that right out of the gate. So could you just give us like your, your backstory?

Yeah. So originally I’m from England and I came to America 22, 23 years old to get my commercial pilot’s license pilot’s

License. That’s awesome.

Yeah. And I ended up getting the whole license. I went back to the UK, did all my written exams. And then I was like, I just don’t feel like this is in alignment with what I’m supposed to do, but I loved Southern California and I grew up watching Laguna Hills on MTV. And I was like one day, you know, Lauren Conrad, I’m going to be driving down PCH in my convertible car and I’m going to go for lunch with my my OC crew. And so I got a visa managed to get myself a visa work visa to come to America because I’d done loads of random jobs in London before. So I had tried to do acting, you know, backing, dancing, TV, hosting, like all the things I got myself, a visa together to come to America. And when I got here, one of the first things that I did was I just started go for castings in Hollywood.

And I was like my British accent. It’s going to be fine. I’m going to be able to get jobs turns out that’s not the case. But what I did is I went to an audition to be on a YouTube channel. And I didn’t even know what YouTube was at the time. Yeah, it wasn’t even, it really wasn’t. It was, I mean, I feel so old. It’s like nine years ago now. And so I get that and it’s to be on a YouTube channel. That’s about fitness. Now. I grew up playing so much sports. I knew. What about fitness? Nothing about personal training. So I did not have my personal training license at the time. However, when I went to the costing and they’re asking you to do like a little workout and tool, I was like, Oh my goodness, this is my one talent in life. I can talk and workout the thing.

This is my thing. And so I remember getting the job and I got paid $40 per episode. And I was just so grateful and I would go up and I would film. And I was just in my element and off the 18 months of filming, we grew it to, I think, a million subscribers it’s now like 3.2 or something. And then they just filming. They stopped filming because I just wasn’t really a passion project. It was more a test or trial and error thing and probably to make some residual income. So after about a year of not filming workouts, people on my social media were like, are you going to film more workouts? Are you going to do this? And I’m like, I don’t know, because I’ve just built something to a million subscribers. I got to start again. She didn’t own it. I didn’t own it.

I was part of it. I just got paid $40 per episode to make these workouts. And I grew it because I was excited and I didn’t think about the residual income. I didn’t understand that. And so during this time where it was ending, I found network marketing and my coach in network marketing was like, you need to be doing it yourself so that you can make the money. And I was like, cause we talk about that in network marketing, right. I’ll do the work and I can do the, make the money, or you can do the work and you can make the money. Right. So I got started with network marketing and got amazing results on these nutrition products and then got my confidence to actually start my own YouTube channel. And I

Just a pause right there, even though you were doing network marketing, it was still kind of aligned with your audience because it was a nutrition, your network marketing business was a nutrition product, and which is kind of what you were building your whole personal brand around. So even though it’s like a different business model, it still fit inside of the personal brand that was becoming Rebecca Louise.

Absolutely. And I knew about fitness because I, by that time, I then got my personal training license. Cause I thought I better get this, this I’m doing these workouts online. And I actually didn’t know anything about nutrition. I’d really struggled in my teens with an eating disorder. I got down to 86 pounds and I’m 107 pounds right now. So 20 pounds lighter, that’s quite a difference for somebody who’s five foot, two and a half. So I didn’t actually know anything about nutrition, but it did fit and because it’s nutrition of fitness, but what it gave me was confidence. And, and energy and strength. And I got an incredible result from it as well. So yeah, I started the network marketing business and from the income that I got from that, I was able to invest it into creating my own brand.

Yeah. That’s, that’s such a common story that it’s like, you’re, you know, you do something to create income and then you’re taking that income and actually reinvesting it into the, the thing you, you wanted to do. So yeah. Talk to me about the, the mentality there of YouTube. Because I went through something similar here, we exited our former business and like one day you, one day you go to sleep, you’ve got hundreds of thousands, millions of people you’re reaching online. And the next day we literally wake up. It’s like, I have zero followers. And I’m starting on zero. So did you have some of that, like emotional, you know, head trash to deal with? Or like, how did you bounce back from going? There’s millions of people watching me too, nobody a hundred and I

100% I Didn’t have confidence. I was like, I’ve already built this. How am I going to start again from zero? So I actually started to do is I created a subscription model way before I even started my YouTube channel and I was trading. It was 9.99 a month. It was all on desktop. It was one video a day, which was 10 minutes. There was no recipes. There was nothing at anything else, but I was like, I need to be able to make money because I just, you know, hadn’t got money anymore from this $40 per episode. I mean, it wasn’t much, but at the time when somebody takes that kind of income away from you, you’re like, you know, even if it’s a thousand dollars a month and you’re only making 3000, that’s a lot of money. That’s a third of your income. Right. So I actually had this subscription because I was like, I needed to get money in.

And after about, I would say like nine months, I think I just, somebody told me like, you need to put this stuff out in the world. You need to just let it go for free. And you need to build your YouTube channel because that’s how you’re going to build your brand. And so my income and my network marketing company had kind of built up by that time. So I didn’t feel that, you know, letting all of this stuff and letting my subscription model go would be such a bad thing financially. So then about six years ago, I was like, you know what, I’m just going to put all my videos on YouTube. And for probably about two years, I just let all the videos go. And then I brought the subscription model back as a desktop version that was through Squarespace where everybody had the same password. So it looked like your unique password. Cause it was like que exclamation, Mark, lowercase, whatever. So it’s like number I like probably had, you know, five, 600 members at that time paying nine 99 with all the same password, no idea how to cancel anyone’s account, but I was just alone. And then it just evolved more.

And if you have, if you have five, if you have 500 people paying you 10 bucks a month, you had, you were having $5,000 a month coming in, just doing it yourself. Like, no, you didn’t have like the tech the about you’re using free Squarespace, like set it up, just password, protect a section. And that was how you started. Like that’s how you got to $5,000 a month.

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Squarespace. Same, same password for everybody. We’ll be fine.

Huh. But you’re so you’re just so you’re hustling it and, and now I don’t want to skip over. It sounded like you said for two years, you actually, when you went free, you gave everything away for free for two years and then went back to charging. Did, did I catch that right?

Yes I did. Because I just let go of everything of the subscription model because it wasn’t actually building my brand. Like it wasn’t building YouTube. And honestly that is where I get most of my referrals from that’s where I’ve grown most of my brand from. So I’m so glad that I wasn’t narrow minded to say, you know, no, I’m not going to allow any free videos out there because then nobody’s going to want to pay for my subscription. That’s not the case. You know, you can have hundreds of videos or hundreds of free content online and people will still pay for your product. So I had my mindset about that.

Yeah. So can we talk about that? Cause I was, that was one of the things I wanted to ask you is I think a lot of us struggle with, okay, what can I give away for free and how much can I give away for free and what should I charge for and where do I draw that line? And like how much and how frequent. So how have you wrapped your mind around that? Like, what’s your personal philosophy there, about how much you give away and what you give away versus what you charge for in the app?

Honestly, I’ve given out a free YouTube video every single week for almost six years. I’ve never missed a new workout coming out. That is one thing, consistency. So there are, I think there might be four or 500 videos on my YouTube channel, but what that does is it keeps the channel alive. It keeps new people coming in and that’s the whole thing. It’s new people coming in that you’re exposing it to one workout a week or even two a week with a couple of recipes here and there isn’t even a patch and what you get inside the app, like the app is just a whole other level. It’s all there in one place. It tracks your progress. You know, you can check off your workouts that you’ve done. You can get points for doing things in the app. So it’s just a whole other level. So there’s a massive difference in standard, but I can still put out content all the time with getting people to still want to purchase the app.

And so would you say those, like, I would classify a lot of that as like additional features beyond the content. So would you say that the way you do that, it was like, okay, I’m kind of giving away a lot of the content on YouTube, but in the app it comes with all these additional, these additional features. Is there also more content in the app or is it more about the additional features?

Yeah, there’s more content, there’s more, less, longer length workouts. So on YouTube every week I put a 10 minute workout out and that same workout is just a 28 minute workout with a warmup and a cool-down in the app. So you just get a lot more you know, there is 300 recipes inside of the app. You can filter them, you can search which ones that you want. There’s a whole video library that you can search through. It just makes it easier. And for a starting price of $3 and 99 cents a month, that will also track your workouts. It gives you what workouts to do each day as well. So that you, everybody’s kind of doing the same thing. It’s an accountability group. We have a Facebook group and people are just feel part of the community. They’re like, Oh my goodness. Did you do your BTS workout today? Yes, I did. Like how did you find it? So it’s more about a structure and being part of it, like being part of the community, rather than just saying, I’m doing a 10 minute workout here, 10 minutes here and I don’t really have anything that I’m missing.

Yeah. I love that. You know, I think brand builders group is very similar cause we do like a five minute video every single week, but then the, the, our, our, our entry-level product is $99 a month. And it’s two hour long virtual trainings every month where it’s like, it’s very similar to the content you would receive for free, but just spread out over forever and disorganized. So I think that’s, so that’s interesting to see in that application, even in inside of your world, inside of the, the fitness, the fitness space. So while we’re on the topic here of, of YouTube, I mean, this is one that I missed the boat on. I’ve missed the boat on YouTube, my entire career. It’s always been just like this, like, eh, I’ll throw something up there and now I’m like, Oh my gosh, I am stupid.

Like YouTube is where it’s at. W you mentioned consistency, which seems like everyone, everybody says, you know, that’s the ultimate secret is just consistency. Which, you know, don’t anyone skip over that and miss that in addition to that, is there anything else specific to YouTube? Cause you’ve done this twice. You’ve built a huge following, started over and built another huge following, which I find even more impressive than someone who’s done it once. Are there any other like tactics or strategies or mindsets or things that you think are out specific to YouTube?

Really, it’s just what your audience want. Like, I mean, that’s the thing with like any social platform? Like what is it that they want? Like I know which videos do really well on YouTube that AB workouts, you know, a lot of AB workouts, basically a lot of app, maybe some booty workouts. So I know that when I put one of those workouts out, it really does like help the algorithms. So, you know, you could just be a YouTuber. That’s like, Hey, this is the one thing that my people like, and you can keep putting the same content over and over and over again and not being worried like, Oh, well I just didn’t add work at like three weeks ago. No, they want more, they want another one and it helps the algorithms go up as well. And you know, I’ve sometimes made the mistake of going, you know what?

I want to give people overall fitness because that’s what I’m about. I’m about doing the cardio, the weights, you know, a bit of everything. So I try to put that on my YouTube channel, but it actually hurts the algorithm. You know, I have a girlfriend that’s done really well on YouTube and completely blown up this shit at everything is just abs abs and the same thing over and over. And again, so sometimes you want to be creative and do different things, but the algorithm on YouTube is very specific of, you know, what is working and it will really literally rocket you, you keep putting the same content that your audience is liking over and over and over again.

And you’re doing, you’re determining that by data.

Yes, you can tell. So as soon as you put a YouTube video out, it will tell you, Hey, this workout is doing higher than your other ones normally. And it will give you a ranking at a 10 with where it’s at, or it’ll say, Hey, this one’s just not picking up as many subscribers or it’s not doing as well. And then you’re like, Oh my goodness. Like I knew I shouldn’t have put that out there. So there is a little bit of like trial and error sometimes because you’re like, I want to put this out to see if my audience would be receptive to it because sometimes they’re not, you know, I started putting vlogs on my main channel and it hurt the channel because that’s just not what my audience were there for. So I had to pivot and put it onto a different YouTube channel.

Interesting. Okay. Yeah, I mean, that’s such a simple process. I mean, that’s, everybody’s create, that’s the way comedians they create and they test, they create a joke, they test it, they create and test and then they’re just responding from, from the audience. So I love that. Do you do you know, so you have the app, which is huge and y’all, if you didn’t catch this, so three $93 and 99 cents a month, like it’s, this is a very affordable deal. You’re loaded into this app. You have you have also a eight, what is it? Eight 99 for a VIP version. And then 11,000 paying monthly members on this thing that you’ve built over, how long

It’ll be three years in January that the app came out.

Interesting. Okay. So within three years now you had spent two years before that though building up the audience for free before you really started monetizing it. Okay. awesome. So one other question here about, I want to ask you specifically about network marketing, because we, you know, I mentioned we love network marketing as part of my background. My family’s background is we speak, it’s probably the number two audience that I speak to. And how do you balance? Because I think this is becoming a really big issue with network marketing is people make a lot of money in network marketing and it’s, it’s kind of a thing where it’s like a lot of people leave but they don’t leave because they’re still making money. And you know, we’re big fans of going, Hey, the, the fastest way to monetize your personal brand is to use it, to throw fuel on the thing that you’re already doing.

That makes money for some people that makes a lot of sense. They go, Oh yeah, for sure other people go, no, I actually like having kind of two different streams going here. So is there anything you can say about maybe your personal philosophy about how you kind of balance a brand of network marketing and then your personal brand, and, and, and I also would ask you in your network marketing company, do you have people on your team, like in your organization, you do right. You’ve got in your kind of downline, a bunch of people. So I think this is a question that network marketing leaders are also struggling with is like, okay, social media and personal branding is so powerful. What is the message I should give to my team about how to use it and not use it. So anything in that kind of mess, because I think that’s like a little bit of a mess that the network marketing world is trying to sort out and we’re trying to sort out and trying to help them, you know, Edify something that enforces the company, but also, you know, helps people succeed with their personal brand.

And, and you just hit the, like one of the top levels of your network marketing company. So you’re doing both. So yeah. Talk about that for a minute.

Yeah. And I love this and mine are completely intertwined and I love it that way. Because I really feel like net what marketing is, how I can help somebody have the life that I have. I have a brand, I, that’s a specific thing that I know if you want to learn how I did my brand, you have to pay me, you know money to do that. But I want to be able to give the opportunity to everybody. And that’s why I love network marketing over the last seven years. You have to be all in. And one of the things to really Excel at that. So first of all, it was my network marketing company. Like I was filling with that. Once I got that to a certain position for 18 months, I was like hard on in my network marketing company. When I got my check to a certain level, I started to work on my brand when I was starting to employ people.

I would get this to a level where then I would go back into the network marketing really heavy and get that to the next position. And so I would literally do one thing at a time because you really have to it’s, it’s trying to build a multimillion dollar business, both of them, you know, they’re going to take all of your time, but Hey, have you got employees that can just take over for a couple of months while you dive back into your network marketing company? This year was the only year that I have been a hundred percent in both because we’ve had so much growth because of what’s been going on. I’m like, I, can’t not, I can’t afford not to go all out with both of these, but how I’ve worked at over the years is that, you know, I worked in fitness and it’s nutrition is that it’s completely interlaced. So I have YouTube, Instagram, all of the things they funnel into a free 30 day program. After that 30 day program, they get on the app or maybe they get on there.

Okay. Sorry, hold on. So I back up a little bit, I’ve, I’ve started to miss that and I don’t want to, I don’t want to miss this. So tell me, this is kind of like how you see the flow of, of moving somebody in kind of through your system. So maybe from the beginning, they start with YouTube.

Yeah. Because if you have a personal brand, it’s like, how can you bring in those leads to actually have enabled them to become distributors? You know, this is my flow. This is how it works for me. So we have you come in through YouTube, Instagram, whatever, probably they’re followers of mine. They come in, they get onto the app after they’ve done like a free 30 day program that we offer or they get on the app. Once you’re inside of the app, there is a free, like five day better you program. And on that, they get a coach and I have nine frontline coaches and they talk with my new clients that come in through the app about, Hey, what results that you’re looking for? You know, are you allergic to anything? How can we get you started? And then they actually get started on a nutrition plan.

And so those leads come in and they get given to my well, I have my BTE as coaches, and they are all in my network marketing team and certain levels in my network marketing team. But they have to be a certain level to be able to apply, to become a BTS coach. So then they get those leads. And then what happens is those people then get started on a nutrition plan. They get amazing results and we tell them, Hey, do you want to be part of our girl group? Do you want to be part of our community of the BTS coaches and other people, you know, getting started and helping your friends and family get results. They’re like, Oh my goodness, of course, I want to be part of your girl, dang. Like this sounds amazing. Like I have 30 girls flying into my, you know, into my home this weekend to celebrate and recognize all of the new coaches.

We have a leadership development weekend. So then those people got started on a program, become distributors because they want to be part of it. And it just drip feeds from them. So I’ve used my personal brand to help build my network marketing because, you know, I love my network marketing company. I’m never going to leave it. My heart and soul is like some that web marketing companies you get in and you get out and you make the money. And that’s absolutely fine. All companies kind of different. We have people that have been there for 40 years. And when I got started as all the same people that are there, and I know that, you know, if I, I can’t film workout videos forever, like there’s going to be a point where I’m just too old and I thought move around. So I don’t know what’s going to happen with that business, but I know that I’m always gonna have my network marketing company and I can always flourish that, and that really is, I think the strong part of this top part here, it’s actually building this legacy forever.

Wow. So you basically, you’ve done exactly what we were talking about. You have taken a personal brand and you have basically bolted it on as the entry point to a network marketing business model. Now it’s, it’s, it’s also its own thing. It’s a sustainable thing of its own, but it’s also feeding back towards towards a long-term network marketing company. Yeah. Wow. I love that. I mean, I just, I think that’s so brilliant because it’s like, you’re living your passion. You’re helping lives. You’re building your personal brand, you’re making a difference. And some percentage of those people are going to be a fit for the ultimate thing that you’re building long term. And you’re not, it’s like a constant pool of people, but you’re not, you’re not offending anyone. You’re not forcing it on them. You’re letting them kind of self-select through the whole process.

That is fascinating. Love it, love it. Love it. Okay. I want to ask you about your book, but before I do that well, let me ask you about your book first, real quick. So it takes grit is, is now you are officially a bestselling author, which is so awesome. We were talking about that when I first met you whatever 18 months ago. And you know, some of those, some of those, some of those things tell us about the book and where does the book come from and how does that book kind of sit in between the space of your fitness personal brand and your network marketing business, and, you know, you’re the old Rebecca Louise and then the future, Rebecca Louise.

Yeah. So I started writing the book in 2019. So I was introduced to an agent in March of 2019 and pitched this idea. And I didn’t know at the time, like I was ready for a book, but I have all of this training inside of my head for the last six, seven years of working with mentors and going to masterminds. And I want it to be able to give my audience something that was like a no BS guide to how you get to where you really want to be. Because I feel like loads of people are like, Oh yeah, just do this and just do these Instagram posts and blah, blah, blah. And then you’re going to be fine. It’s like, Oh no, I’m going to prepare you for all the crap that’s going to happen. And when you’re prepared for that, you’re going to be like, Oh, Rebecca told me this was going to happen.

And this is how it happened to her. And this is how she overcame it because in my community, I have a lot of people who love the fitness and love the nutrition. But what changed for me, most importantly, as I got older was my mindset. You know, I was introduced to Jim Roan and Tony Robbins, and I was like, my community don’t know personal development. And I was like, I get to be the vehicle to share with them. And that’s why I started my podcast in January 28, 2019. It takes grit. And that, that involved into something that I can actually give people to say, Hey, you know, this is what it really takes to get to where you are. And you can look at somebody on a pedestal and be like, Oh my goodness, it’s amazing. How do they get there? But I share a lot of my own personal testimonials and stories of things that have happened to me that could have thrown me off, but instead I just like stepped forward and made it happen. And this is how I got to where I am today.

Wow. Well, I love, I love it. This is thank you for being so transparent with just your YouTube secrets, your app, your numbers your network marketing business. And I think it seems like, you know, transparency, there is like one of your, one of your superpowers and it takes grit. Seems like it’s a lot about the honest truth about what it has taken to build what you have built, which is incredible. And you know, you’re still so, so young, like I think it’s, it’s, it’s really exciting to see the trajectory of where people will be, you know, not just where they’re at today, but where’s the trajectory of go in 10 or 20 years. Like it’s nothing but extremely exciting. So where do you want people to go, Rebecca, if they want to connect with you, if they want to follow you and, and just plug into what you’re doing.

Thank you. Yeah. You can follow me on Instagram and Facebook, Rebecca Louise fitness, head on over to my YouTube channel, Rebecca Louise, you can get a free 30 day program or just go to Rebecca hyphen, the wheeze.com and all the details are right there. Check out the podcast. It takes grit, the book. And yeah, we have we have just an amazing gear coming up. We’ve got new transformation programs, you know, new features coming to the app and it’s just going to be an amazing 20, 21.

Love it, love it, love it. We’ll put links up to all of that. Rebecca Good luck to you and your organization and your team. I know we’ll be seeing you around the brand builders group, community, and our events more and more, and just really appreciate it and wish you the best. So we’ll, we will look forward to watching and monitoring your progress, tune into Rebecca Louise fitness. That’s it for today. Thanks Rebecca, for being here all the best.

Ep 117: Dynamic Speaking and Scaling Joy with Dan Thurmon | Recap Episode

Hey, welcome to the recap edition of the influential personal brand podcasts, Rory Vaden, coming to you. So low, a recap in this Epic interview with Dan Thurman and I’m covered for AIG to on this one just by myself. But you know, I’ve known Dan for so long. It’s, it’s fun to get to go back and listen to this and kind of analyze and break it down and give you my top three highlights. And there was so much going on in this interview. You know, we released these, these podcasts also on our YouTube channel. It’s actually not on the Rory Vaden YouTube channel. It’s on the brand builders group, YouTube channel and,

And you know, usually some people like to watch cause you see the facial expressions, but this one was, was crazy because there were a lot of visual components of it, which, you know, we tried to talk out for you for you visually, but anyways, so to dive in to the top three takeaways. So first of all, I thought the mindset to pivot and, and these were three mindsets that were my big takeaways from Dan and from that interview. And, and the first mindset is the mindset that it takes to pivot. And I loved the actual content that he was sharing, which is from his, his actual content that he, he teaches in his virtual keynotes, this idea that when things become uncertain, we can falsely feel uncertain about everything. And it’s like, when there’s change, not everything is changing. There’s a couple of things that are changing, but, but we sort of have this, if we’re not careful, we have this mental mushroom that we allow ourselves to do, right?

It’s if you’re not dissed, if you don’t have a disciplined mind, if you allow your mind to just run, it’ll run towards the negative it’ll it’ll, it will become just over-exaggerated and, and consumed with all of the, the, the negative possible outcomes. And I remember talking about this with Lewis Howes one time when I was interviewed on his podcast, actually the most recent time I was, I was on there and we were talking about how with successful people, there’s still always like this fear, no matter how successful you get, there’s like this fear that you’ll not just that you’ll fail, but that somehow you’ll fail so much that you’ll just become like homeless living on the street is like this, this deep rooted insecurity that drives someone to be so successful is always there. And it can get so out of control that like you just, when something goes wrong or doesn’t work out or you don’t get number one, or you’re not perfect your mind immediately freaked out and was like, Oh my gosh, I’m going to end up homeless.

Right? And it’s like, you’re so far away from that. Even though, even though things might be changing and you, you might not be winning or you’re just dealing with uncertainty. And, and I thought that was super powerful that, you know, Dan was reminding us that even though you’re uncertain about some things, you don’t have to be uncertain about everything and you can have faith in your, in yourself. And, and you can have faith in your ability that your entire life you’ve had to learn how to operate a new environment, your entire life. You’d ha you’ve had to learn new ideas and new skills and, you know, maybe work in new jobs or a new markets or verticals or industries, and you’ve been able to figure it out. So why do we become so scared and overwhelmed and frightened and stressed and anxious. When we face a little bit of change in our life, knowing that our entire life up to this point, it has been embracing change and learning new things.

We have the ability and the knowledge to figure it out. And if you can just embrace that, you’ll be able to pivot faster. And that’s going to put you in a, a much better position. So that I think was the first thing for me, was the mindset to pivot and, and what that looks like. The second mindset was, is really the mindset to up-level. And this one was more watching. It wasn’t so much what Dan said, like it wasn’t in the content. It wasn’t when he was like teaching his content, it was just kind of watching and processing his demeanor and looking at how quickly, you know, this is someone who’s made a career speaking in front of live audiences, and that’s like been the primary way that he’s made money. And that business model of the live keynote speaker has been disrupted. I mean, it’s been more than disrupted.

It’s been killed. It has evaporated. It has vanished. It, it went from, this is what I knew in my whole life to it disappeared overnight. So as much as like any business model the, the model of live keynote speaking in the physical sense in, in front of live audiences disappeared overnight. There’s no events, there’s no gatherings worldwide. It has shut down. Travel has virtually shut down. And so here you have somebody Dan, that that’s been his primary business, which, you know, we understand, we appreciate it. It’s, it’s always been a huge part of our business. But it’s actually, it’s become less and less over the years. It’s just been fewer engagements at higher fees, but still a smaller total of our proportionate revenue, because we’ve moved into more of building, you know, building a real business kind of outside of, of just being on stage speaking.

But that’s a, that’s a real scary thing. And what did he do? What has he done? He immediately turned to going, all right, I’m going to go virtual, but I’m not just going to do virtual presentations. I’m going to figure out a way to Uplevel the virtual experience. And he’s got a five camera shoot, three sets going on in his house with this ability to create this variation of, you know, the types of just kind of the type of energy in which he’s presenting with. And of course, if you watch, if you actually watch this video of the interview on our YouTube channel, you’ll get to just see. I mean, it’s, it’s worth going to look, even if you don’t watch the whole thing, but just kind of fast forward and see how this set changes. And it’s amazing. He just like walks out of the screen and into another, another screen, it looks like he was walking into a new room, different camera angles.

And it’s, it’s a simple bit of technology, but instead of being paralyzed and terrified and, and, you know, just scared, which would have been understandable, it is understandable. A lot of, a lot of speakers are still reeling with trying to figure out what the heck they’re going to do. He just said, how can I, how can I go virtual? And how can I, up-level the experience? How can I take this performance and this production to another level which people haven’t seen. And so we quickly did that. And, and so the mindset there, which he also did talk about is to go respond to uncertainty with new education, with new personal development, with new growth of, of, you know, he didn’t, he didn’t have all that technology before. He didn’t know how to do all that. He figured it out because he was leaning into the change and going great.

I’m going to, I’m going to use this opportunity for change and challenge and uncertainty to learn something new and, and to, and to prove that I have faith and confidence in myself, that I’ll be able to figure it out by investing and, and, and growing and learning and saying, you know what, there’s a way to learn how to do this and that. I mean, gosh, that is why I think brand builders, part of why we’re growing so much is because people are realizing that online. I have to be able to do business online. There’s, there’s, there’s no other way right now to really be steadily growing your business. And if you don’t have those skills, if you don’t have that knowledge, if you don’t know how to write copy, if you don’t know how to build funnels, if you don’t know what a words should be on a webpage, if you don’t know how to run a or to run Facebook ads, or if you don’t know how to do webinars, if you don’t know how to create content, if you don’t know how to manage social media, if you don’t have systems for training a staff to like, keep up with all this content production, you need to get going and you need to get going fast, sweetheart, like you’re, you need to get on it.

And I think, you know, God just had his hand on us in terms of guiding our life to be sitting in a place to provide this education to people in such a systematic way. And maybe that’s, you know, if that’s you, then, Hey, you should check out brand builders. We do it as good. If not better than anyone in the world, I really believe leave that. But maybe it’s not your personal brand. Maybe it’s some other part of your business that you need to learn. The point is is, and what I took away from Dan, both in what he said, and what he meant is that you respond to uncertainty with personal growth, with personal development, with education, with learning, with knowledge to go, all right, I’m going to adapt. I’m going to grow. And that’s not what most people do. I mean, let’s be honest.

Most of us want to hang onto the old days, rather sit around and commiserate about how things used to be and about how I wish it was the way it was and how, how hard it is been on me versus going, I’m going to educate, I’m going to indoctrinate. I’m going to learn. I’m going to develop. I am going to grow. And knowing that as I do that, as I push myself to, to develop and to grow and to learn out of that will come confidence and ability in the face of uncertainty, which of course is true because there’s always opportunity. Every problem creates new opportunity. And anyways, I just thought Dan modeled it. And you know, he talked about it and totally up-leveled his game to the point where, when I put on my virtual keynote speaker had I’m going crap. Like, you know, he, he sat in a new bar for what that looks like and, and going, man, we need it.

We need to figure it out. We got to find ways to up our production and, and up the exp up the virtual experience for our virtual keynotes. And so anyways, what are you doing, doing to learn? How are you growing your knowledge? How are you leaning in to change and uncertainty and instability with more education and more relevant education? And that was my, my second takeaway is, is the mindset to, to Uplevel. So that’s different from the mindset to pivot and just be safe is then adding onto it. Another layer, which is, which is the mindset to, and then for my third takeaway, I’m actually, you know, I wrote this down, it’s the mindset to serve the mind set, to serve. And this was the money line. Like this was the, this was the, the, the focal point point for me of the entire interview. And he said, yes, I can scale giving and helping on a global level. That is the type of success. I don’t even have to monetize.

Think about that for a second. If I could make worldwide impact, that is enough significance and value in my life that I wouldn’t even have to monetize it. And so that’s why he’s doing it. You got this 50 year old guy on Tik TOK going viral because he’s not, he’s not trying to figure out how do I suck the most money out of my audience. He’s figuring out what can I do that would give value to them? What would entertain them? What would educate them? What would encourage them? What would inspire them? What would teach them? What would, what would bring them a bright spot in their day, in a difficult time? And we say it, we talk about it. We say things like, you never feel fear when the mission to serve is clear. But, but when you look at people like Dan, they’re living it, they’re doing it.

And it’s, I think it’s like how many ultra performers do you have to hear? Talk about that extreme level of commitment to service before you really believe and adapt and buy into the idea that I’m going to serve my audience. Like that is what I’m trying to do. I will let the money follow. I will trust that the money will follow. I’ll have faith that the money will follow. But what I’m going to focus on is not the money. I’m going to focus on the impact. I’m going to focus on the service. I’m going to focus on making a difference. I’m going to focus on delivering value to people that I’m not even paid for. And, and once that, once that switch flips, you can’t be stopped, right? Like once, once that heart change really happens, like once that, that, that, that, that flip, that, that evolution wants that maturity.

Once, once that commitment happens, you can’t be stopped because you’re saying it’s not about the money. It’s not about the followers. It’s about making a difference and you can turn on your camera and reach across the globe in one button, right? Like it’s never been easier. So if you really want to make an impact, prove it, turn on the microphone, turn on the camera, pull up Canva and make a post type of caption. But like, if that’s what it’s about, do it make an impact and, and trust and know that the money’s going to follow and look, you know, Dan’s one of the highest paid speakers in the world. And, and he doesn’t know what life is going to look like in a post COVID area. That’s all still like sorting itself out. But you see him living that, that commitment to service in the midst of uncertainty and, you know, and you watch it from outside and you go, of course, he’s gonna win.

He’s focused on how can he, up-level the experience for his customers? How can he pivot quickly? How can he make a difference? Eventually the money’s going to follow that. And that is why we say we serve mission-driven messengers. It’s not that we don’t care about money. We do care about money. We, we we’re good at making money. We’re we, we, we consider it important, but it’s about the impact in the mission first. And, and trusting that if I serve enough people for a long enough time, I will eventually make money. If I serve enough people for a long enough time, there’s no way I don’t end up making money. But when all I focus on is money, it’s hard to, I’m not focused on service. And so when the money’s not there right away, I give up because it’s not fair today. And tomorrow and next week, and next month and six months, and maybe in a year, maybe even two years, and you go, I’ve been doing this for two years.

I’m not making money. Yeah. Eventually your going to burn out your going to give up, compare that to the person going I’m just here to serve. I’m just here to give value. I’m here to Uplevel the contribution I’m making to the world. And I can’t be stopped because there’s no measurement. That’s going to slow me down. Like I’m only going to make more impact. I’m only going to reach more people, whether it’s one or 1 million or 100 million, I know I’m going to, I’m going to naturally reach more and more people. And I I’m, I know the money is going to show up in some form or fashion, and that’s a switch that you need to flip. And, and it’s, it’s something that you have to flip regularly. It’s, it’s kinda, you know, it’s like what we talk about in the take the stairs book, success is never owned.

Success is rented and the rent is due every day. And the commitment to serve is never owned. It is rented and the rent is due every day. You have to wake up every single day and make that conscious decision that I’m putting impact first. And I’m all in, on making impact. And I’m going to trust that somehow some way, if I’m all in, on providing the best level of service and making the biggest difference, I can, I’m all in on that. And I’m all in on having the faith and the trust and the confidence of knowing it will eventually work out.

And that is how it is. That is always how it is. You just got to wake up and remind yourself of that every day, whether there’s one person watching or 1 million or 100 million, but if you can be making an impact, that’s something that it’s like, you don’t even have to monetize, but you can, and you will. And we’re going to show you how so thank you for hanging around here. Hope you enjoyed the interview with Dan. I loved it. You had listened to it yet. Go back and listen to it and just see if you can catch the mindset of what it takes to pivot to up level and to surf. We’ll catch you next time. [inaudible].

Ep 116: Dynamic Speaking and Scaling Joy with Dan Thurmon

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. Dan Thurman is one of the reasons why I almost gave up my career as a keynote speaker. He is extraordinary.

I mean he provides amazing content you know, just kind of like real, true thought leadership, but in the most acrobatic and entertaining way. And I use the word acrobatic because he does backflips. He juggles, he throws knives. He can do handstands on podiums, like and I know that most of you are listening to this, but if you don’t know this, we record all of these episodes as videos and we put them also on our YouTube channel. And you know, I don’t know for sure, but like, there’s probably going to be some elements because Dan is so visual that you, you may hear us reference and usual bit too to the visual and you might go check out our YouTube channel and you know, we’ll post we’ll post a link to that. But so Dan is incredible. I mean, he is a hall of fame speaker.

He’s also a former president of the national speakers association. I’ve known him for years. Although I wouldn’t say we’ve been like super close friends. We have the same friends that we’re super close to, and it’s not for any other reason than we just both been out there running a gun. And, but I mean, listen to his client list. Okay. So when I talk about the kind of work that he’s doing and the, the kind of companies that, that he is speaking to it’s extraordinary. So you’re talking about the Coca-Cola’s of the world bank of America, Proctor and gamble, Marriott Johnson and Johnson, Walmart crafts, state farm Honeywell. I mean, these are some of the world’s biggest and brightest companies that have brought him in to speak. The reason, not the only reason, but one of the reasons that I invited Dan to be here is because he has been around in the speaking world as a very successful speaker for a long time.

I mean, he was inducted into the hall of fame almost 10 years ago. So and he has also, you know, he spoke on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan. So he’s been around a long time, but he’s doing some incredibly innovative things. So he’s checks like all the kind of like classic marks, you know, he’s got a great book called off balance on purpose, but he’s doing some things. So first of all, on Tik talk, him and his teenage daughter, Maggie are like tick tock celebrities. They have multiple videos that have been viewed more than 30 million times. Their Tik TOK channel has over a million subscribers. And so it’s so innovative. And then one of the other things that he’s doing is the way that he has pivoted to his virtual live stream events is just extraordinary. And so we’re going to, we’re going to just talk about how to stay relevant in a kind of like COVID world as a speaker and all, all things. How do you get to be Dan Thurman except, you know, we’re not going to do pushup and handstand tutorials, I don’t think, but anyways, welcome to the show, Dan, glad to have you,

What an intro of Rory that is so amazing for your compliments. One quick update because things change quick, you know, that Maggie’s following on Tik TOK is now over 3 million. And so yeah, so things just keep growing and growing, man. It’s, it’s a lot of fun though.

I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s really crazy. Like, you know, and I’m serious about that. Like the first time I saw you keynote, I was like, why would someone hire me when they could hire this guy? It was like you know, I have that thought every week, not very often, but every once in a while I have that thought and I was just like, you know, that was it. And then, and then just seeing you guys crush it on social media is kind of the same thing. And I mean, you’re an entertainer. I think there’s a, there’s a big part of your background, right? Like you just been in entertainment, but so let’s talk about tech talk for a second. Since we can kind of dive in, what the heck, like, how do you get 3 million followers? Like why, what are you doing? Like, what is your strategy? Because most speakers, I think, a what a waste of time, and you guys are just crushing it. So like, what’s your mindset there a little over a year,

Year ago, like most people never heard of Tik TOK, but Maggie had. And so she got involved on the platform. She had a good background and foundation because for a year she had been in high school, a brand influencer and advocate for Hollister. She was hired on a team and a project to promote endorse, launched new products and things. They, they really educated her in many ways about social media and Instagram. It was really Instagram based on that platform in terms of how to work for for Hollister that ran its course and the program ended, but she already was quite marketing savvy, had grown her Instagram following a good bit and heard about Tik TOK got involved in, tic-tac had a couple of her videos that did well. And then she had a, she asked me, dad, do you want to do a dance together?

We did this dance that to a Fergie song that just went completely bonkers. We went to the gym to play racquetball. And by the time we got out of that session, it had over 300,000 likes or something stupid like that. And then it just kept going and going and going that elevated Maggie’s platform. And, and she continued to do her own thing, but the things that we did together, what was interesting is it became very much about our relationship. We have a very genuine, loving natural relationship which filled this need in Tik TOK. A lot of people responded saying, I wish I had that in my family. I wish my dad would do these kinds of things with me. And so in a very careful way, we’ve, we’ve managed her brand to she’s now in college, a freshman in college and envisions this as her career. Obviously I’m not going to be a part of that journey for her whole life. And so we we’ve grown the dad daughter stuff in dance and comedy. And of course the variety of skills that we do with juggling and acrobatics and unicycling and silks, and, and kind of found different ways to introduce all these skills.

And very quickly, I just have to say, like, you know, it’s a little bit frustrating that you like God was dishing out talents. And I think there was like a glitch in the system and just like dumped. I mean, you guys are incredible, like the dancing, the acrobatics, the juggling, I mean, that’s really, it’s really, it’s entertaining. It’s really entertainment, entertainment in the most pure sense.

It’s, it’s so fun. And it’s a part of who I am. It’s just by my language of my love languages, kinesthetic movement. I love to just do things, learn things, develop skills, always have. That’s kind of how I channeled my hyperactive energy. And now you and I are a lot, a lot the same. But as she got closer to college, what we began to do is, you know, obviously she’s branching out more with her own videos and her own skills. And, and now it’s probably like 90 10, like where she’s doing Mo mostly her content I’m involved in our channel here and there. We had a trip to LA last week to see some other influencers. And so we did some more together during that. I have my own tech talk where I only have like a half a million followers on mine, but but, but it’s, but I’m still thinking about Tik TOK relative to my brand, because this is gen Z. This is that next level audience. And what I’ve sort of learned is that they, they are very receptive to what I have to teach and to the way that I can teach it, it’s just a different vibe and a different connection. So I’ve been very careful and very fascinated by how I could develop that relationship, that relationship with a new, a new generation all over the world. And it’s extraordinary to wrap your mind around.

Yeah. So like talking about, thinking about the generations for a second, you know, we had Jason Dorsey on here just a few, a few episodes ago, talking about generation Z and all of their research and stuff, you know, on the one hand people kind of go, you know, how do you make money from tech talk other than like brand deals and stuff. But if you’re going to be like a speaker or an author or a, or a personal brand, and do you have some type of a monetization strategy or is it more of like, this is street credibility? Or is it more of like, these people one day will be the book buyers and the decision makers. And so I want to connect with them or do you just, or is it just like, I’m just there because it’s fun. And I think it’s fun to do, like, how do you approach that?

So I’m not trying to monetize it in any direct way. Although I have had speaking engagements that came in through Tik TOK or coaching relationships that started because people found me on Tik TOK, people who find me on Tik TOK, find me, go to my LinkedIn and see my business side. So, so it’s definitely feeding that pipeline. But so much of it, Rory is I know that something great is happening as a result because it’s pure and it’s, and it’s real. And, but my intention is only to give and to help. And if I can scale giving and helping and filling a need on this level, you know, that’s a type of success. I don’t even have to monetize. I would be, it would be so satisfying and wonderful to know that I, that I could contribute, especially now to a world where so many kids are facing depression and bullying and, and all this frustration.

And I’ve been challenged at early early ages to feel like they’ve got to have it all together when really they could, they don’t and they shouldn’t, and they can just be themselves and find themselves and they need joy. They need, they need, as Maggie’s tagline to her whole brand is go make someone smile, literally just go make someone smile. So there’s a lot of ways that you can make someone smile. And the best smile that we can have is when we appreciate ourselves and who we are. And so that’s really my intention with it is that yes, these will be perhaps future clients. It’s nice to have that brand elevated. It’s good to get recognized in Starbucks and in, by Jenny’s eaters, which, which happens regularly now. And, and it’s pretty bizarre cause it, it doesn’t matter where you are, right. It’s not geographic, it’s, it’s a, it’s a bigger type of celebrity, which I’m obviously not accustomed to, as a keynote speaker, I’m accustomed to going into the room. Nobody knows who you are. Right. Right. And then, and then when you’re done, you, everybody knows who you are and you get that like temporary celebrity. And then you can go back to the airport and blend in again and be completely anonymous. So it’s not that I’m super famous. I’m really not, but it’s, but it’s been fun to, to, you know, get recognized here and there.

Yeah. That’s amazing. I mean, I think I don’t want to skip over what you said there about, if you could just scale giving and helping at this kind of a magnitude, this sort of a level, that’s a success that you don’t have to monetize. And I feel like that mindset alone is the thing that ultimately is the cause and the source of the people who break through the wall, what we call breaking through the wall and sustain longterm, regardless of its Tik TOK or Instagram or email marketing or speaking or writing books. And just to like, hear you say that, you know, I want to ask you about some other stuff, but I don’t want to skip over that because that, that is such a big, a big moment. And that’ll probably be one of the biggest things that I take away from this, which I, I love,

It’s easy to say it’s, and we’ve always said that, that we’re in the business of giving and helping and serving, but, but, but really a huge part of our brain is always trying to work the revenue and work the business and grow the business and, and measure ourselves and compare ourselves to our competition by what we’re doing and how busy we are and how much we’re making. And so for me, the challenge of COVID was, you know, obviously the dates fell off the calendar and when you identify yourself as a speaker, who’s out there doing live engagements and there certainly are no, there’s no events, there’s no engagements, there’s no stages. There’s no audiences. Now we’re faced with the question, well, who are you now at? Or who are you really? And so very, very early on the shift became, I’m not sure how much money we’re going to make this year.

Yes, we’re going to, we’re going to pivot. We’re going to do our thing. We’re going to serve our clients. We’re going to grow our business, but let’s change that measurement to how many people can we help this year, because one, thing’s for sure in the supply and demand world point that the demand for our help and our services has never been higher. People need it more than ever. So if, even if it’s just giving it away, that’s what I want to do because I think it’d be interesting if we got hall of fame awards for the biggest impact that we made in the world. I pray, I certainly wouldn’t get one of those. But I I’d love to.

Yeah. And that’s, that’s such a great perspective. And social media gives you that ability to like, if you really want to change lives, like if it really has nothing to do with money, like turn on your camera and talk to the camera and change lives. Like there’s never been an easier way to, to, to access people. So I want to come back to the technical a little bit. What are you doing with reels? So now Instagram has released the reels functionality, which is basically like their answer or competitor of Tik talk, you know? Are you reposting the same videos to reels? Are you not yet paying attention to reels or like what’s yeah. What’s, what’s going on there.

Yeah. It’s not something on my radar right now. I I’m aware that it’s happening, but, but Maggie has I think it kind of told me that her generation kind of thinks it’s it’s not there yet in terms of what it could do and the capabilities you know, so, so that’s not something we’re doing. We are posting on Instagram and we’re posting on, IETV sort of my weekly coaching videos, which get a very modest impression. I think it’s, it’s nothing like the scalability of tick-tock for me. But I’d be very curious to know more.

What is your just for the purpose, what’s your Tik TOK handle and Maggie’s, do you mind throwing that out so that people,

So Maggie’s is Maggie Thurman, T H U R M O N. So just at M a G, G I E T H U R M O N. And and my, my ticket Tik TOK handle is actually Maggie’s dad one, two, three. So, so this, and this was a very early decision because I didn’t. So for me, what was happening with tick-tock was so special as a father and in our relationship. And I didn’t want to, in any way feel like I was trying to, you know, chase her clout and, and trade off of that in my own business. So I’m just, Maggie’s dad one, two, three, which is kind of funny. And it sticks because even though now I’m doing more of my own content on my channel, that origin story is still really special to both of us. But you know, all along, I really saw that as more our thing than my thing.

I love that that is really, really, really cool. So yeah. Okay, great. So we’ll put links to that. Maggie, Maggie Thurman at Maggie’s dad, one, two, three. So I love that. So you mentioned COVID here a while ago and the pivots, and I think most people are pretty aware of this. I mean, if for those of us that earned a large percentage of our ordinary income from getting on an airplane, flying to an event, being in front of hundreds of thousands of people coming in as a stranger, as you say, you know, delivering this whatever 60 or 90 minute performance slash teaching, and then COVID happens. And all of those events disappear. I mean, like literally all of them disappeared and almost literally overnight, they were gone. What so separate of this tick talk, social media thing, you also have done some amazing pivots with your, you know, what let’s call it, your corporate brand or your classic brand, or your classic message even down to the technology and the studio that you’re using. And again for you listening, you’re not going to have the benefit of this, but can I ask you to do a virtual tour for, so the people watching the video can literally see what you’re about to change rooms. Like, like just give us the, the tumor, if you, because when we jumped on here, you like stood up and walked to a different room and like the whole thing changed. So can you just give us like a virtual tour of your studio so people that can watch the video can see what’s happening here?

Absolutely. Okay. So the first thing to understand is my brand, which is that elevated experience. People hire me because they want more than just a speaker. They want mind, body, and spirit kind of all in connection. And my method of teaching is very physical, very, very visual. And so we realized early, we wanted a space where we could do that very well. So we have three different sets I’m currently sitting in the library, which is where we really get into that heart connection. More that spiritual connection, driving stories, home, closing points, that type of thing. But then we needed a physical space, which is right over here. So stepping just to my right, this is the stage, this is our action room.

Okay. And for those of you that aren’t seeing this, I have just, he stood up out of his chair, walked, I don’t know, three feet to the right. And the entire screen changed. And we went from looking at a library to now we’re still on a zoom meeting, but now I’m seeing a completely different backdrop with a podium and a teaching screen.

Right. So, so for example, you see the podium and you see my, my teaching screen. And you mentioned the book off balance on purpose. So in many ways I’ve been preparing for this moment this year and teaching in my contents, very, very congruent because we’re more off-balance than ever before. Moving through these changes with uncertainty, just kind of unfolding and forth in front of us for the foreseeable future. And so one of the ways I teach that here, I’m moving to the lectern is you know, this is like our foundations, which all of our foundations, how we work, we teach how we parent, how we eat, how we shop, all of it’s been rocked. And so the question is, how do you position yourself on top of uncertainty? Okay, here we go.

Going for it. This is crazy. He is vertical, complete handstand on top of a podium. This is so corroborate.

You got to see us. I’m not, I’m not balanced. I’m balancing, I’m making constant adjustments and corrections. And after all that effort, I’m still right here. So we just cut to a second camera, but here’s the message balance. Isn’t what you get balance is what you do this year is about developing the skills to make those adjustments in real time, even though your foundations are rocked and unstable, which you can do, if you bring a greater sense of purpose to the moment that you’re in and manage and use these skills, which we teach to help you leverage the positive aspects of uncertainty in order to, in order to change and in order to grow. So that’s,

That’s awesome. So, so this is where, okay, so hold on. I want you to, I gotta interrupt you because I want everyone to know what just happened. So he just, first of all, the last angle we were looking at, you were doing a handstand on a podium and there was two camps. There were two different camera angles on that shot. So it was the second setup, like a second stage with two different camera angles. And now you’re just walked another, like, I don’t know, three feet to a different direction. And now you’re in a different, what, what do you call this set? Okay.

This is our classroom. This is really where our we teach and break down ideas. So if you think of mind, body, and spirit, so this is where we would really focus on your mind and how we teach you ideas, but then break them down into strategies. Like for example, on this Flipboard here we talk about this is actually a different work for a client that we we’ve been working on right now. But let me move to one of our recent phases. We can interact with this and we can artfully go through different content in different phases. One of the things we talk about quite frequently is this spectrum of certainty. Like I talk about, you know, managing the positive aspects of uncertainty, which you can do because really all you ever get is some certainty. You know,

Just again for everyone that’s listening. So now he’s in his teaching classroom set and there’s another camera angle. So it just shifted. So you’ve got two camera angles here going,

And, and what, what I want you to know is that even with the, the other set, you had the low angle where I went into the handstand, we switched to a different camera here, we have this forward camera, and then we have the second camera, which is how you, where you see me, right. And it’s also a closer shot, a more personal shot. The point is, it’s not extraneous, everything’s intentional. And if you have different cameras, but they’re not for specific reasons, then it’s really the same as pacing a stage without any purpose. And so everything has to be well thought out and used in a strategic way. And so, okay.

So one other, sorry, real quick, before you go into the spectrum of certainty, because I think both your content is relevant to us, as well as how you’re delivering the content is super relevant. So I apologize for the interruptions, but like, are you looking at, do you have tally lights, like a camera lights that come on to tell you where to look or does the camera switch when you look to the camera?

No, I have Stephanie and Shan. Right? So, and that’s been another incredible thing this year. Rory is that so often we’ve, we’ve been on our own on the road doing our deal, and it’s been very much a solo effort. This brought our whole team together. My wife Shea is incredible and is a visionary and a video producer and developer in her own, right? So she brought a lot of understanding in terms of how to do this and was able to source the equipment. We leveraged fellow NSA, friends, like [inaudible] and others who, who helped us understand what they were doing and really cut our learning curve in terms of making this happen. So Shay’s here and she’s operating a camera and and kind of running some things in the background producing Stephanie is the, is doing the camera switching. And so we’ve, we’ve practiced enough and she’s watching me attentively. So when I, when I look from this camera, I do it very abruptly and she sees that and then she’ll, she’ll make that change. So it’s, it’s really a matter of me being clear with where I’m looking and, and then she knows how to read that. But you know,

And direct, you’re directing the camera shots basically by a definitive gesture to move where normally in a TV studio, somebody, the director is moving the tally light, the little red light, and then you follow that. You follow it, but you have it in reverse.

And what I’ve learned is I just have to be very clear because if I’m kind of like wandering around, she’s got no idea where to go. Right. And so it’s just, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve developed that skill over time,

But I love what you’re saying. That’s a, that’s a very SIM, that’s a similar parallel to just wandering eyes in an audience versus deliberate eye contact to like different people in the room. Right.

And, Oh my goodness. I can really go into that. We could do a whole tutorial on how to, how to teach to a camera which is maybe we should

Have you come back and do another one of those.

Yeah, exactly. But but the point is, we’ve learned a lot and we’ve really used this period of time to our advantage. And so this concept of a spectrum of certainty really is about three steps, three strategies that we teach to claim your certainty. So we got to claim what is certain, everything that we know already, still counts. We just have to use it differently. We have to redeploy what we’ve gained all these years and say, how does it still serve us? Or how does it serve us now in maybe even a better way than it did before? And so, instead of when you feel uncertain about some things, you can feel like you’re uncertain about everything, and it’s not true. There’s a lot that, you know, and it all counts and serves you. So you really have to claim it. You have to embrace what’s unknown because you, and I’ve seen a lot of speakers, authors companies, clients, who who’ve just spent enormous amounts of energy saying, well, when will this be over and how are we coming out of it?

And when will we be back on stages? And it just, all this mental exercise on really what is right now, not only unknown, but on knowable, right? We can’t control that. But what we can do think about your future as if it’s not just uncertain, but it’s unfolding, it’s unfolding and you have this role you’re playing in terms of how to shape it. But there’s just some things we’re not going to know until we get to the next chapter, like reading a great book or watching a great movie. You don’t have to know the ending to enjoy the movie to be engaged. And, and, and along the way we can create more certainty than the way you create more certainty is by testing yourself and improving yourself and saying, regardless of how everything else is working out, I know for sure we’re going to be better on the other side of this because of what we’re choosing to do now. And this studio is really our response to putting that into action. Right.

Right. Yeah. I, I mean, I love this. So can you walk back to the library? Is that, is that doable? Yeah. Amazing. And so then you just move over. So these are three, literally three different physical setups you have in the space. Then the room that you’re in this, isn’t like a virtual background shift at all. This is

Three physical spaces, five cameras. So there’s only one camera in here, which is all I really need, because again, this is about pouring into your heart, you know, and, and just really connecting eyeball to eyeball.

Yeah. So, so it’s a five camera shoot. And then the, in terms of the other technology, you got two people to run the room. You said Shay and Stephanie are both there to like help you operate things when you’re doing it. And then so you obviously have a switcher. So this is just like an alive event. You have to have a switcher to switch camera feeds. So you have a switcher. And then is there any other big pieces of technology that’s going on? I mean, must be some program that you’re running to like S or is it just different camera feeds into a school?

The beauty of keeping it with the physical switcher and we’re using an ATM system, a black magic ATM, which has a total of eight different camera inputs. We’re only, we’re using five for cameras, we’re using one for media. So in other words, we could start our show by taking a video and intro video that brings it in or cut to a video. I have, I have a scene where I’m in the action room and I finished something and I’m talking about, you never know where your next challenge is going to come from. And literally at that moment, a rope drops from the ceiling and I’m like, okay, well, I’m going to, I’m going to go for it. And meanwhile, watch this video. And I literally climbed the rope out of the camera lens, and then we cut to video. And so it’s, it’s really like producing a TV show, but the equipment of the cameras, bid cameras, a good switcher, a good computer to drive it, the S the software, because it’s hardware, you don’t need a sophisticated software program.

Usually there’s another device that flows out of the switcher for the interface to whatever platform you’re using. And what we found is depending on the platform, whether it’s zoom or go to meeting or black or whatever, it could be a Microsoft teams this afternoon, we’re doing one for a platform we’ve never done before. It’s a proprietary thing with each of those setups. And also with each of the updates, because there’s always new security settings and things like this, you really have to always, re-examine how your equipment’s working and make that happen. So it’s not a one and done set it and forget it. This is something you have to keep learning as you go.

Wow. but more or less you, you got, you got, you got a switcher, you got some camera and you got inputs from the from the cameras. And it’s not, you know, it’s not impossible. I mean, you guys are pulling it off. This is incredible.

Well, thank you. But I, and I also want to point out because I know that that a lot of people starting out are thinking, well, sure, like if I had a studio and a set, then, then everything would be easier and I’d be much more engaging and whatnot course. And the point is, you know, that’s the trap of this business is that comparison to what others are doing or what they, what you think will be necessary. And it’s not, it’s not necessary. There are so many of our speaker friends who are, who are doing something so much more simple and are still having incredible success because they know how to connect with an audience. And they’re bringing relevant content, which is the whole key. I mean, if you think about like an X, Y axis, this whole business and success and brand is about relevant content and then your engagement and your experience, and, and not just, not just what, you know, how, what, you know, really fixes the problem, applies to your audience and are you delivering it in a way that they can really absorb it, learn from it, remember it for a long time to come.

And so you can do that in any number of ways. This is just one of the answers. This is the answer that works for me.

Yeah. Well, this is so extraordinary. And, and I would, I would just, you know, I echo that point and emphasize that it’s not about the technology or any, it’s like, it’s your mindset to go? How can we serve? How can we adapt? How can we pivot? How can we be off balance on purpose as you say, and make the most out of this. And and it’s fun, you know, like I just, I really love it. You’re, you’re what a great way to showcase you, living out your message and your whole team coming together, and, you know, the family business of your wife and your daughter, like it’s just really, really cool. So Dan, where do you want people to go if they want to connect with you and like find out more, and man, if you’re booking virtual keynotes, like don’t bother calling Rory Vaden, just call Dan Thurman, just like skip past us contact Dan. And w H how do people connect with you?

Sure. Just it’s super simple. Just go to my website, Dan thurman.com Dan Thurman, T H U R M O n.com. It actually loads at the moment to our virtual page, but there’s a lot of content and resources there too, as well as our weekly coaching series. So maybe you’re running a team and you’re really looking for something that you can use to help them recalibrate their mindset. There are some videos on my website that can serve you and conserve them. And by all means, please help yourself and use those and spread those as you will.

So we’ll put links there to Dan thurman.com as well as to Maggie and Dan’s Tik TOK profile. So you can see this as lots and lots of fun. My friend, we just appreciate you and your mission and your heart to serve people. And just make the most of the talents you have to make the world a better place. And that totally shines through. And, and we wish you the best.

Ep 115: Top Secrets to Effective Speaking with Vanessa Van Edwards | Recap Episode

[Inaudible]

And we are back with another recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. Today, we are breaking down the interview with our new friend, Vanessa van Edwards, who we shared the stage with at the global leadership summit, which was awesome. And I’m actually really curious to hear AJ’s top three takeaways because this was, you know, really into the science of delivery. I feel like in presentation mechanics. So why don’t, why don’t you kick us off?

Oh, my honest, my first feedback was literally like the first part of the interview. She talks about her research and her book, captivate sales, which she said that hand gestures show trust. I was like, wow, Rory Vaden is the most trustworthy person on the planet. This is great for you. There is, there’s a future for you

As a speaker, I can do it. I could do it.

I was literally laughing out loud because just about after every podcast recap, I’m like, what is with you and the hand gestures. And then I realized I do the same thing monitor. I’ll just like blow for where you guys can see. But Rory is like literally hands coming, all the places all the time. And I’m like, wow, you’ve got a lot of trust going for you.

Apparently, other than you always, you always make fun of me for my facial expressions.

Those, those are different because no, it’s not the exaggerated ones. Those are entertaining. It’s the ones, his facial expressions are very expressive, very negative.

My neutral looks very Negative.

True. It’s true. So anyways, I just thought that was really fascinating and the fact that they actually watched every single Ted talk that was released in 2010 and compared all these things. And I really appreciate the data that goes into some of these findings, because if you just listen to them without, you know, the data driven back on her, like but I thought it was really fascinating and really interesting in terms of just like the fact that you use your hands shows like the passion and emotional involvement, but then the cues that it relates back to the audience of, you know, simply saying, Hey, there are three things that we’re going to discuss in this recap today, you make this visual connection with the verbal conversation, that there are three things. And I thought that was really fascinating. And just really a great reminder of like, people don’t just listen with their ears. Right. They listen with their eyes and I love that whole concept. So that was my first takeaway. But mostly you hear so many I’m sure Rory was sitting there going.

Yep. Yep. I, I, yeah. I thought that the whole way that she said that your gestures are basically a second talk.

Yeah. There, what did she say? You’ve got to, she said you have two different like content delivery.

Yeah. Two scripts. It’s like the words out of your mouth. And then, and then your gestures are like a whole second one. So I love that. And then the other thing is I was so excited and Vanessa and I nerded out after the interview was over because y’all, I did this, this was how I got started with in the world championship of public speaking for Toastmasters, I took 20 years of championships speeches, which was 200 speeches, analyzed them, graphed them, dissected them, and fact on what was the, we, I don’t know if we’ve shared this story. This is what, yeah.

We weren’t even dating a year. So it was like six months in maybe

So on my birthday the first year that AJ and I were dating you, what did you tell me? We could do anything. I wanted anything you wanted. She told me we could do anything I wanted, honestly,

Because we were also living long distance. And so I was with you on your birthday. I’m like, whatever you want to do I’m game.

And so I said, we’re going to spend the whole day watching world championships speeches from all the Toastmaster competitions. And you were such a trooper, babe.

I was, but I will tell you that’s the last time that I’ve ever said whatever you want, but no, it was actually, it was mostly pretty good, but you know, I was like, we were like watching videos from like the late seventies and early eighties at the time. And I’m like, do we really have to go 20 years,

Mark Brown. That was the day you fell in love with Mark Brown as a physical person from his speech. But so anyways, just for you, like the takeaway for me was this reminder that there is a science to this and, and all the things that we teach at world-class presentation craft are based on a science, a study, the research of, of these kinds of things. And if you’ve either been to that event or you, you know, you’re like me and you sort of nerd out about those things, I was just excited. Cause Vanessa seems like another great resource for people that really love the science part of, I don’t know, here I am using my hands. I can’t, I can’t stop it. I can’t stop it. The hands they just go. They just, they just go. So, yeah. So that was gestures. What was your second?

My second one was really, I, this was so thoroughly fascinated around this whole concept of how do you make a Ted talk go viral. And again, what I love so much about all of this is that it’s not just ideas, right? This is like there it’s very, data-driven it’s data specific it’s research research. I love that. And I think that, to me, it goes back to one of the recent interviews we had with Jason Dorsey around like information and data is your new competitive advantage. And same thing. We had another interview with Aja Yeager and Megan canal. I’m just like data matters, right? Those insights that you gather really matter. And talking about the titles. And so she was very specific and how she really wanted to create a title that was like a command statement that you are something right. So her title of her Ted talk is your contagious.

She talks a lot about how this a little bit different right now during COVID, but again, it’s just like really putting thought and intention into what would people search? What would people be attracted to? How are people gonna find me? And then I thought this was just so fascinating and I’ve really never heard anyone talk about it. The way that she did is the intentionality put behind getting on people’s playlists on YouTube. So just very definitive focus and intention on making sure that her YouTube strategy was intact, which will lead to my third point in a second. But just the whole concept of, you know, there’s a formula for making a Ted talk go viral that really has not as much to do with your Ted talk itself and what you do to make sure people see it.

Yeah. Th that thing about the YouTube playlist was cool because everyone wants to like reach out to the speaker, but she is like, I’m much more interested in reaching out to the person who has a playlist that nobody ever reaches out to, but they have like these really popular playlist. Yeah, that was super cool. Another tactical thing for me, that was just a good reminder, which I actually never realized the brilliance of what Ted did with the red circle. You know, if they do this red circle, the speaking, the dot and you have to stay within the dot. And normally when you take like presentation skills classes, they teach you to use the stage. We talk about that at presentation, craft of different sections of the stage. I mean different things, but one of the big risks is that especially non-professional speakers or early speakers, they have this shifty stance where they’re just always sort of like waffling back and forth and just wandering the stage like meandering aimlessly.

And it really takes away from the power of stand and deliver, which was like classic sort of like 1970s 1960s, I think of like more Utley or Cavett, Robert just standing there with a microphone and just like delivering. And that is, that is one of the most tactical things you can do to enhance the power of your presentations is to plant your feet solid, look, people directly in the eye and deliver a message, right. Not just wandering around because you heard, Oh, you should use the stage, but locking your feet on those key moments in those key points. And that was just a good reminder for me to get back to the basics of like, yeah, I need a lock. I need a lock in place every once in a while. So that was super

Tactical. Same time she talked about the importance of intentional gestures. Yeah. Not just, you know, using hands for the sake of using hands, not knocking the microphone, but for the sake of like, where are you going to place these and what impact does that have? Same thing. Same thing goes for using the stage,

Go to a location plant deliver, go to another location, plant deliver. Don’t just take it back and forth. Yeah. So that was, that was really good reminder. Yeah.

I love that. So then my third and final point was just a great reminder again, which I just keep hearing more and more about this from so many people that we interview on the podcast is like, get Joe self on YouTube. And I just feel like this has been this recurring theme that you don’t hear all the places, but we have heard it repeatedly. Over the last 12 months from all of our guests coming on of, you know, YouTube is still a little bit the wild wild West, right? You’ve got affordable advertising still on YouTube. You’ve got amazing search abilities on YouTube. You’ve got the ability to emotionally connect. It’s all video driven. We already know the data around video and how that’s going specifically with the emerging generations with gen Z. And I can’t even imagine the one after that where video is the most intimate aspect.

And I loved what she said. It’s like, if you’re selling a video course, then you should be on video selling your video course and no better way to be on video than on YouTube. And just like just little things that you’re like, you know, innately, but you’re like, Oh yes. The so those were just really great, but I think, I mean, everyone who is listening, if you listen to this podcast on a recurring basis, then you have heard multiple people talk about the importance of YouTube and the growing importance of YouTube if for a personal brand or for anyone. So I think this was just another, you know, kind of like,

Yeah, we’ve never, I’ve never placed, I think I’ve missed the boat on YouTube, which I talked about. Yeah, there’s still time. But, but I, like, I just have never realized just the power, the magnitude of everything that YouTube is. And there were two things about YouTube, cause this was my third takeaway too, that like YouTube is King. It’s like King of the social media is other than podcasting. But I, I think number one is that YouTube, unlike the other social media platforms, the longer the video has been around, the more valuable,

Right, totally opposite opposite, totally

Instagram and Twitter and Facebook, which is constantly pushing stuff down in the feed. Which is true about a blog and a website also because it’s, it’s like everything, Google, that’s the case. It’s like a fine wine with age. It gets better with all the other social platforms older is, is gone. And then the other thing, remind me, I can’t actually, I can’t, if this was recorded, did we talk about the power of being in the living room and watching the video because you and I are watching the mic, Todd.

Yeah. And also we talked about the TV series, the chosen chosen. So we’ve got this emerging kind of like thing happening with it is to, yeah. I mean, we link it to our TV and that’s what we want,

Literally sitting down to watch church to watch sermons, to watch.

But that is where we watch our, most of our church sermons specifically this year. That is yeah.

And, and sometimes, and sometimes in your bedroom, right. Like

We don’t, but people do. And I just think that’s really a great reminder of like this isn’t like this literally is where people are watching TV series, they’re watching sermon series. So why wouldn’t they also be getting all their content there? And the fact is they are, but you just don’t hear a ton of people talking about it, but you’re going,

Yeah. And we’re doing it. We’re, we’re ramping up. We’ve been, we, we recorded our first set of YouTube ads. Last week. They’re not live yet, but we’re going to be running those. And you know, we’ll report back to you on how those work. But anyways, Vanessa van Edwards, my fellow speaking research nerd. I’m so glad to have met.

Yeah. What you have created right here.

Yes. And now I am empowered.

I am empowered for full head gestures

Meaning, but so anyways, check out the interview. Thank you for being here. We hope you get in practical takeaways. That’s what we’re aspiring to do. We’re grateful for you. Have a great one. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.