Author: AJ Vaden

Ep 232: Sales Intelligence and Advanced Online Research Strategies with Sam Richter

RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:54):
Well, it was by special request that I was hunting out a specific man for a specific job to talk about a specific topic that I wanted for you. And that is my friend, Sam Richter. I’ve known Sam for a lot of years. We just kind of been casual friends through the speaking profession. He is in the national speakers hall of fame and he is one of the top rated keynote speakers in the world. And he’s a CSP he’s written books. He is the but when I think of Sam, I, I think specifically of like a very deep expertise on a topic sales intelligence. And so I want to, I remember seeing him the first time and it just blew my mind the first time I heard him talk and I know that he teaches companies how to do this for big, big money. And so I was like, I wonder if we could call it a favor and have him come on the podcast and talk about some of these things. So Sam, welcome to the show.
SR (01:54):
Well, thank you, Rory. And you know, I love what you do. The sales intelligence is really how to find information on other people. So you can be relevant. It’s basically the modern day version of Dale Carnegie. You know, Carnegie said the sweetest sound language language is the sound of someone’s name. And I believe with all the information that we have access to at our fingertips, the sweetest sound in English language is the sound of someone’s name based on what do they care about? Well, the flip side of sales intelligence, or I guess another way of saying it is ethically spying on people and ethically using it to help them. Well, the flip side of that is personal branding. It’s assuming people are spying on you and as you know, better than most everybody’s spying on us. And I’m not just talking like the government or anything like that. I’m talking about prospective employees, current employees, certainly prospective customers bankers, funders, they’re all, you know, spying on us or searching us. How do you control what they find? And that’s what you speak about. So you know, our messages are incredibly complimentary to each other.
RV (02:59):
Yeah. And I, I, I think everybody has heard of Google clear clearly. But I don’t think people understand, like the average person goes right to Google types in something real quick. It’s usually three words or less, and that’s how they use it. 99% of the time when I heard you speak, it blew my mind that it’s like, there is so much power in understanding how to use Google.
SR (03:31):
And w as, as some, as a personal brand, there’s all these things that we need to find, right? Like we want to find potential events. We can speak at, we wanna find potential podcasts. We could be on, we need to find literary agents or publishers or, or we need to sign a virtual assistant or a graphic designer or video editor or, you know, on and on and on. And I think we’re under utilizing, you know, Google specifically. And I guess is that that’s primarily the tool we’re talking about here, right. Is, is, is advanced Google searches. Let’s Google, it’s also social media, LinkedIn, Twitter. It’s also in Mo but most people don’t know and I’ll kind of shock them with this. Google actually gets to a very small percentage of the free and publicly accessible internet. The rest is what we call the invisible web, know the invisible web.
SR (04:20):
You you’ve probably heard of the deep web or the dark web that’s where bad guys hang out. And that makes up even an incredibly tiny percentage of the invisible web. So that 95% of the free and publicly accessible internet is just websites. That for whatever reason, Google can’t vacuum up. And so there’s a lot of those kinds of websites when, I mean, by vacuum up, if you think of Google as like nothing more than a big vacuum cleaner, cause that’s kind of what it is. It just goes around and finds websites with words on the page. You, you it sees those websites flips on the vacuum. Cleaner sucks up the word stores, the words and the Google vacuum cleaner bag or the database you go into Google and type one or two, three words. There’s a human being sitting in the background. It’s basically Google saying, where do those three words appear most often now the challenge now Google is awesome.
SR (05:06):
Right? And we know that that the channel and its algorithms are amazing. The challenges let’s say I go in and type in the word speaker, well do I mean professional speaker or Bose stereo speaker again, Google is pretty good. He said, probably knows what you’ve searched on in the past and knows what websites you’ve looked at. So it’s probably going to give you the, the, the right information. And you know, it’s, it’s job is to do that. But remember, the Google is not, Google is a search engine, but they’re not a search engine company. They’re an advertising company, meaning they want you to get really good results, but they wouldn’t mind if you clicked on an ad once in a while. So what I teach is how to really refine those results, whether it’s on Google or the invisible web using mathematical algorithms. And then I also teach and build tools that automate that. Yeah. So
RV (05:57):
Let’s talk about the [inaudible]. What does that mean? You know, like when I hear, I could use an algorithm, I’m like, I don’t, I don’t know. I don’t, you know, algorithms use me, don’t use the algorithms. So tell me about what does that mean to have an algorithm that you use on Google?
SR (06:14):
It’s just a fancy way of saying it’s a simple mathematical equation. So for example, let’s use that one. I just gave, I go into Google. I type in speaker and I get a bunch of results on stereo speakers. A very simple switch is to go back into speaker and then type in the minus sign and attach that to the word stereos, the minus sign needs to touch the S in the word stereo. Now every result you’re going to get, we’ll have the word speaker in it, but if any of those results have the word stereo in it, those results won’t show up. And I can do that about 30 times. So I can start out with a super broad search term and in seconds, get down to the information that we care about. Another simple trick is using quotation marks. Now, if you go into Google and type in Karen Jane Anderson, as an example, we’ll, you’ll get some really good results.
SR (07:06):
Probably the first page of results will be Karen Jane Anderson, but you’ll also get close to a million results because you’re also going to get every website that has the word. Karen has the word Jane, and has the word Anderson. So if there’s a webpage that has Karen Johnson, Jane Smith, bill Anderson on the same webpage, you’re going to get that result. A simple thing like using quotation marks. When you put a word, a job title, name of a person, name of a company, or even a phrase like digital reputation management or a phrase like a personal branding. If you put that in quotation marks, you’ll treat the words within quotation marks as a single entity. So those two tricks alone, the minus sign in quotation marks will probably save you an hour a day. Oh. And by the way, it not only works in Google. Those techniques will work in social media, the work when you’re searching your email, you know, how many times, if you’ve gone in your email, oh, where’s that email I sent to Rory, where is it textual work, or even your network drive. Where’s that presentation I sent to the widget corporation. You can go in and put widget corporation within quotation marks. You’ll get better results.
RV (08:17):
Interesting. So this is this is your you’re referring to Boolean logic, right?
SR (08:23):
Yep. That’s very correct. Yep. And then there’s other things beyond bullying, but in general, that’s correct. So,
RV (08:29):
So what is w what is Boolean logic? Like? What does that mean and how many, how many elements are considered part of it? Cause this is what you’re talking about is, is a really big deal. It was like, you know, the problem with Google is that it searches like this gigantic universe. And so finding, and for most of our clients, they wouldn’t be searching for speakers. It’s more like they’re searching for events that have speakers, right. And so if you said, you know, insurance association speakers, I mean, who knows what comes up, but if it could have stuff like you’re saying, like, you know, musical stuff because of the
SR (09:06):
Right, right. So bullying actually is from a 19th century mathematician, a guy named George Boole and the first modern use of a bully and George bull is kind of credited with, for lack of better term coming up with the zeros and the ones. So 19th century, the mathematical patterns that make technology work. Now, the, the beauty of really great technology is it’s intuitive, right? I fire up Google, I type into words, results, just show up. That’s kind of the problem, a really good technology. I type into words, results to show up. So I never really learned for lack of a better term, the good stuff, and the good stuff is the Boolean or reading the manual. The good news is it’s very easy. Just most people don’t do it. And frankly, most people don’t need to do it. It’s really when you’re, when you’re wanting to laser focus, a search where you might need that information.
SR (09:55):
So for example, if I wanted to find the meeting planner at the here, here would be a good one, the meeting planner at the speaker association, but not the national speakers association, the stereo speakers association, I’m making this up. I don’t know if there is, there probably is a stereo speaker association, you know, high fidelity stereo speaker, but that’s where you use these combinations of quotation marks and minus signs plus signs. There’s other bunch of other ones as well to really refine your results again, you’re going to do just fine typing words into Google. It’s, it’s really more when you want to, Hey, I really want to laser focus my results into something specific where you need these techniques. Okay.
RV (10:39):
And so is it primarily like, are the, are the big ones, quotation signs plus signs and minus signs?
SR (10:47):
Yes. There’s lots of others if we want to get really technical. So for example if you think of how people save a word document on their computer, well, most people use fairly logical titles for their documents. So for example, if I was saving a document, I might call that document widget corporation proposal. Well, you can actually limit your search to just titles of webpages, just like you might do when you’re searching for a word document. The nice thing about web pages is they’re usually titled something that’s very logical because that’s how you get higher up in search engines. And so for example, you can use a Boolean term called entitle, I N T I T L E and then the colon, those two dots in title. So for our listeners, let’s say I wanted to find a list of associations in the medical industry, right?
SR (11:45):
I could go into Google and type in medical association and I’ll get some good results. Also get a bunch of junk, or I can say entitle medical title association, meaning the only results that are allowed to appear are, were our results with the word medical as part of the title of the document, or excuse me, an association as the title of the document. Now I can also use quotation marks. So that exact phrase has to be in the title. So in title, colon medical association, put medical association within quotation marks, and it will pull up that exact result, that exact phrase, medical association, as the title of the document.
RV (12:26):
And can you also search by you? Can you search Google? This was one of the things that I remember was you can search for file types. What are all the file types that you can search into Google and how do you find them? And, and, and, and by the way, when you say invisible web is this, like, these are things that people store on the internet, but are not things that you would get to by like going to their website and clicking through their menu, or is invisible web
SR (12:56):
Well, there’s, there’s, there’s, I guess there’s two definitions that I use for the invisible web. The first definition are websites that for whatever reason, Google can’t back you up, I’ll give you an example. There are many websites that you have to create a, a login to access Facebook as an example. So Facebook, you can access some Facebook pages via Google book, but in general, you have to have a free Facebook username and password. Well, Google can’t create the username and password, and frankly, if you could find it, everything you wanted via Google search, there’d be no reason to have a Facebook account, right? So that would be an example, it’s the free and publicly accessible internet, but you have to have a username and password to get in it, not once you’re in it. Many times, Facebook, unfortunately, is not one of them, but many times you can use the same Boolean techniques to search once you’re inside that website.
SR (13:49):
So again, Facebook, as an example, if we think of every picture, every post as a page on the internet, well, I don’t know the number, but it would have to be trillions of pages that are on the invisible web. So you couldn’t access those via Google. You’d have to log in to access those. Now, there are, that’s one definition of the invisible one. The other definition is I’ll just give you, is my personal definition. Anything past page two on Google search results is invisible. Meaning no one’s ever going to find it, which is where you come in, really on, on reputation, right? And personal branding is to make sure that you show up number one. That’s why people should be getting interviewed should be you know, doing speeches. So they show up high up in Google search results, because if you’re on page two or three on Google search results, it may as well be in the invisible web cause no, one’s going to find you sure.
SR (14:40):
Getting back to your question as it relates to documents. Well, there are trillions of documents that people post online, right? It could be Excel spreadsheets or PowerPoints, and you can find those by using what’s called a file type colon search in Google. So file type colon PPT, or file type colon. PPTX, we’ll find PowerPoint documents. Now, why do we care? Because I could go in and type in Rory Vaden within quotation marks file type colon PPT, or file type Poland PPTX. And if there’s any PowerPoints that ever been posted out there about you or featuring you they’ll show up, including that one time where you were the, you know, you were cornered, right? You were sitting there after you gave your speech standing ovation, someone in the back said, this was awesome. Can we get a copy of the slides? And the, and the event planner stood up and says, yes, we’ll be posting his slides online on our super-duper James Bond, you know CIA NSA protected website, which of course wasn’t protected at all because we can find it, you know? So that’s where, that’s where you can find those kinds of document.
RV (15:48):
Well, and some of that’s like you know, the other time where I think about using this as like w w women to your words, sales intelligence. So there there’s one part of it is how do I find a list of people to contact that would be hyper relevant to what I do to where there’s such, you know, they’re going to know me or a lot of the people I know, et cetera. The other thing is, you know, maybe I get a, I get a lead to be like a, hold on an event to go speak at. And I get a meeting with them and I want to go, how can I customize my presentation, either my sales presentation or my actual presentation to prepare. And so you can find, I mean, you can find all tore, all sorts of internal power points and meeting notes and stuff like that.
SR (16:36):
Absolutely. And that, that level of customization is really, what’s going to differentiate you from your competition, from those who go out to, as I like to say, they wing it. Or they, you know, in, in Aurora, you and I have both seen this before where the speaker gets up and Hey, it’s so great to be a part of. And there’s a pause. They look down the financial industry in, because yesterday they did the exact same speech for the automotive industry the day before that the medical device industry. So that level of customization is so important. A couple of quote, unquote, invisible websites. And they’re invisible because Google doesn’t know they exist because I created them and I don’t let Google know they exist. One is a news search engine called you got the news.com that’s Y O U G O T T H E N E w S.
SR (17:22):
You got the news.com, which will pull up not only Google search results, but it will pull up local newspapers, trade journals, industry journals. So for example, when I did it, you got the new search on you, Rory. Well, I clicked on the regular news, which would be Google news. I think about if I recall maybe 12 articles showed up, but when I clicked on the more news button, and now that features again, local newspapers, trade journals, industry articles, thousands of articles showed up. And there’s also a tab on there for press releases, social media posts, blog posts, again for prayer, preparing for it, whether it’s preparing for a sales call or customizing your presentation, use something like you got the news five minutes before the meeting, frankly, five minutes before you step on stage, you’re going to massively impress the number of times where I’ve done that five minutes before I go on stage.
SR (18:12):
And I get up in the first words out of my mouth are instead of saying, Hey, thank you St. Louis it’s Hey, congratulations. Many of you might not even know, but your company just won a fortune, you know, fortune best places to work or something like that. That massively differentiates. Another one is a site I built called. You got research, Y O U G O T research.com. And that one will specifically find a credible objective research, white papers on different trends, survey results, but every single result is a PDF file. Why a PDF file? Because I found in doing Google searching, oftentimes when I’m searching for reports, all I get are places that want to sell me the report. In this example, I actually get the report. I get the PDF file, and there are things I teach on what to do with PDF files and, and how you can use those in sales, but, but for preparing for a speech, it’s great stuff.
RV (19:06):
Well, that’s funny. Yeah. So we are this Wednesday releasing our trends in personal branding, national research study, it’s a PDF. It will live on a, on a hidden URL of which it will be behind the gated. We’re not selling it, we’re giving it away for free, but it will be behind a gated page.
SR (19:24):
And we won’t be able to find that we won’t be able to get behind the gated page, but if somebody downloads your document and then post it on their server, then we’d be able to find it
RV (19:34):
Interesting of which surely they would mean somebody in the world that might, might do that. Yeah. So that just means like, and you’re saying that you got research.com is like, if I’m trying to research a subject of any kind, then I’m going and just saying, show me all kind of like statistically valid research studies and
SR (19:54):
Yeah, I’ve, I’ve I’ve modified it. So there’s different buttons. So one would be trend reports. So that would be research reports that talk about trends and other ones, survey results. So specifically dealing with survey results and there’s overlap between the two market outlooks, and then there’s even a button in there that it’s called. I think it’s industry statistics. I don’t have it in front of me, but that actually minds the invisible website, the department of labor. So for example, if you went in and typed in construction and then click the click that button, it will pull up all the latest statistics as it relates to types of employees, how much money they make, how many employees they are in that industry, again, help you, whether it’s doing business planning or whether it’s preparing for a presentation, just get you that information, credible objective information in seconds. Again, could you do it on your own? Absolutely. But knowing these and knowing where to look, I think can save you potentially hundreds of hours per year.
RV (20:53):
I mean, yeah. I mean talk about like podcast topics or blog topics or book, you know, site having. I mean, I think I’ve had incredible information to site in an actual book or something that is like, it needs to be statistically like sound. That kind of thing is really is, is huge. So that in that case, those tools that you built, they are just layered on top of Google.
SR (21:18):
That’s correct. It’s sitting on top of Google and I’m adding a 30 to 50 word Boolean algorithm. All you’ve got to do is type in, let’s say you want a trend report. You just type in construction. If that’s the industry, you care about trend reports, there’s a pull down menu that allows you to search by by date range. So you choose past a year typing construction, click trend reports in a 50 word algorithms going to be running in the background. Now here’s another little trick for you to finding PowerPoint documents. So that would be file type colon PPT or PPTX, here’s where there’s a great one. You know, it’s kind of one of those sayings when people talk about writing or jokes or something like that, right? Like everything that’s already been written or everything that already could be written has already been written by somebody in some shape or form.
SR (22:04):
What I mean by that is and I, for those of you with kids in the audience, this can help a lot with their homework because my kids would never call me. When they’ve got a research report due in college you know, they’ve known about it for three weeks. They happened to call me for hours before it’s due. That would never happen. Right? So here’s a little trick you go in and you search for a PowerPoint document on your topic. So let’s say your topic is a, you’re doing a report or again, in, in, in using our, our examples here, maybe you’re going to be speaking in the automotive industry. So whether it’s doing a report or you’re speaking in the automotive industry, go into Google type in say, automated automotive trends. And then now here’s a little trick or, or in all upper case proceeding or right after the, or if you type an or an uppercase a space before and after the, or not lowercase, but uppercase or you’ll get either or so you expand your search.
SR (23:00):
So I might type in automotive or excuse me, automotive trends or, or an all upper case issues, file type colon, PPT, X I’m telling Google, go find me a PowerPoint document. Only PowerPoint documents with the word automotive, with the word trends or the word issues somewhere inside that PowerPoint. Now, if I want to refine it even further, I can say in title automotive trends or issues, file type colon, PPTX a bunch of PowerPoints will appear now, how is this a huge time saver? You click on a few and you see, you try to find other people’s data. Now you’re not going to plagiarize. You’re not going to their PowerPoint, but in the lower right or left corner, what do we all do if we’re decent and we’re ethical at what we do, we put our source for the data, you know, a widget, a widget corporation, 2020 study, right?
SR (23:59):
You’re going to find that in the lower right corner of PowerPoint life, we’re going to grab the name of the source, go back into Google, paste that in, put it within quotation marks. Now we’re going to go find the original source of that data. So it was a little complex. What I just described much easier if we were on zoom and I was showing you, but, but hopefully people get it because what I’m doing is I’m looking at somebody else’s PowerPoint presentation, not to steal their content, but to see what data sources did they use. Now, I’m going to go back into Google finding the original data source. Well, heck I’ve just saved myself three hours of research.
RV (24:35):
Ah, yeah. I feel like that happens a lot too where people will cite it, but then sometimes people will say things and they’ve never actually liked the one I think of as the like statistics you hear about how much of the workforce is disengaged. Like so many people use that and it’s like a Gallup survey. Yeah. Most of the people who use that have never actually read the actual exactly. And being able to kind of like add the context and see the full report is a super powerful and, and on the topic of reports, I guess if you’re looking at PDFs, you could also pull up people’s annual reports. Now, if they’re public companies they’re available anyways. But even if you’re certain, certain private companies might have versions of their annual reports posted online.
SR (25:20):
Absolutely. So, you know, file type colon PDF, or file type colon doc or docx would be word documents XL would be XLS or XL SX. So what kind of Excel spreadsheets are out there? All, everything from budgets to member lists, attendee lists all sorts of different types. And it really it’s, you know, it’s kind of a science and an art. So the science is the plus the minus the quotes, the file type, the entitles, there’s a bunch more as well. And the art is kind of knowing when to use it. So you just try different things until something shows up that you like.
RV (25:56):
Yeah. So, but if I wanted to, let’s say that I had a you know, I wanted to get more speaking gigs and I wanted to go, like, I need all of the associations, you know, I want to get all the, you know, whatever the financial, financial advisors and like associations. So I could just theoretically say, you know, I might go on and do something like in title, financial associations file type, colon dot XLS.
SR (26:30):
Yeah. You could do that. But what I would also recommend is, is that a phrase I like to use is think like the author. So if I wanted to find a list of associations that paid speakers and I was creating that list. So if I’m the author of that list, what words would I put in there? Now, the obvious ones would be all association lists. No, here’s kind of a backdoor way of doing it. So already let’s say I want to find a, a list of more places, more associations that would hire Rory Vaden. Well, what I might do is pull up, pull up my past client list and say, Hey, I’m going to type in three associations who paid me in the past, you know, the medical association, the automotive Otis association, and the banking association put, put the name of the association in quotes file type colon PDF.
SR (27:25):
All right. So what I’m saying is those three associations have to be in the PDF file, but then I’m going to do something a little bit different. I’m also going to add the phrase member directory. So I’ll put that in quotes or, or an all uppercase membership directory, but that in quotes or a, or an all uppercase attendee list, what I’m looking for is a PDF document where all three of those associations have appeared. The concept being is if there’s a list of great associations out there, if those three aren’t in it, it’s not a good list, but if those three are in it, it’s probably a really good list. So it’s kind of, again, that phrase, thinking like the author. Well, if I was creating a list of great associations for it to be any good, what three associations would have to be in their search for those, instead of just searching for the phrase association lists,
RV (28:17):
I need the Sam Richter keynote past keynote client fee range, greater than X type dot XLS file. That’s I mean, this is amazing. These are free searches. These are free Boolean logic is all free. Theoretically, you could just go to Google and start messing around with plus minus file type. In, in title,
SR (28:45):
All in quotes you know, all in text in URL. I mean, there’s a bunch of them, but you know, the key is it. You don’t have to get too fancy. I mean, it, I guarantee if you just start using quotation marks and minus signs, just forget all the rest of it. Quotation marks and minus signs. You’ll save yourself two hours a day
RV (29:05):
And the minus sign, does it have to be, yes, there’s a minus sign and then a space, or does it have to be,
SR (29:09):
And the minus sign must touch the word that you want to remove. Now, if you want to remove a phrase. So if I wanted to remove a stereo speaker, I’d put stereo speaker within quotes, and then the minus sign would touch the first quote. Got it.
RV (29:24):
I got it. The other way that we can do this is you actually have a tool. Well, you, you also build a bunch of tools. You build, you build them for different industries, where you basically take, how does this work? You basically take, you create your own user interface. Cause some your searches will use 30 parts of Boolean logic that are all in this query, but you build a custom graphic user interface where you can just go type stuff in, and then it’ll run all the searches for you. It’s basically as if you were sitting there like personally doing this.
SR (29:57):
Correct. So what I, what I do in, in the industries in which I speak, you know, my kind of stake in the ground is, is very high content. So obviously entertaining, motivational those kinds of, you know, we’ve got to do that. But also very high context. And kind of my, what I like to say is, is, you know, hire me and the learning and most of most important, the implementation or the execution of what I share, doesn’t have to stop once the ovation subsides. So I produce what’s called a sales Intel engine for just about every industry in which I speak in a sales intelligence. So I’ll, I’ll interview my prospects. And I’ll say, you know, who, who are the types of companies that you call on? What are the types of decision-makers? Why does somebody buy from you? Why somebody buys might be, I call that a sales trigger what’s going on in their life, where they need you today.
SR (30:45):
And then I will build Boolean algorithms and, you know, it could be 20 to 50 different words. And then I’ll add a button on top of that, if you will. So instead of somebody having to type the 30 to 50 word bullying algorithm, let’s say that they sell to electronic electrical engineers. So instead of having to search the 30 to 50 or typing the 30 to 50 word algorithm to find electrical engineers, I just have a field that says location. They type in Dallas, there’s a button that says electrical engineers, they click on the button and it’ll instantly pull up all the electrical engineers in Dallas.
RV (31:20):
So you can even search, you can narrow searches by location. I mean, you can narrow your search by anything with Google.
SR (31:25):
Yup. Yup. But that, but that’s a very specific bull. I wouldn’t even want to try to explain it to you. Cause it’s, it’s pretty complex in terms of being able to yes, you could type in Dallas, but to do, to, to literally get the city of Dallas is a pretty long equation.
RV (31:46):
Interesting. So where do you go to, how do we go learn about these? So you said you, you call them sales, Intel and engines, and you built them. You have built these for different verticals for different industries. Yeah.
SR (31:59):
Yeah. And I, I, I build them all the time and I have a holding page for lack of better term of my catalog where after I do them for a company, I’ll say, Hey, I wonder if anybody else would want something like this. And I’ll S I’ll take out some of the personal things related to that company then make it available on an industry basis. So I’ve got a webpage. My catalog is Intel engine, I N T E L. And then engine is spelled weird. N G I N. So I N T E L N G I n.com. And that will have, I think right now there’s probably a dozen engines on there. I’ve got about three dozen more that I still need to frankly, build their landing page and put them on there. But in general, I mean, you’ll go there, you’ll see ones for the conveyor belt industry for the electronics industry, for the speaker industry. And then there’s a general one that’s called the premium engine. That just kind of is all things to all people for financial advisors. I’ve got a really powerful one. So those are the kinds of engines I’ve developed.
RV (32:58):
Hmm. Fascinating. So then we don’t have to actually know any of this stuff. We can just, whatever, pay us little monthly fee and then just like type in the filters and it’ll deal, pull it all up. And then it just sends us to Google and just says, here, here’s exactly what you need.
SR (33:14):
Yeah. It’s just designed to save you time and, and hopefully help you find information that you might not even have other known otherwise, knowing that existed now, inside the engines, I also search other other search engines and other databases beyond Google. Google is the primary one. I’d say 80% of the results will show up in Google, but the 20% I’m also searching other other if you recall earlier, invisible websites.
RV (33:39):
Interesting. Yeah. Well, I mean, I just, you know, I think about if I had to do a book launch and I wanted to grab a list of book reviewers or media writers or podcast hosts, or I wanted to grab, you know, a bunch of associations or I wanted a list of a membership directory of everybody in this industry that, you know, the way my mind would normally go about that is hire a VA, giving them parameters and let them go search for hours and hours and hours. But if I just search for file type like a membership directory and the right things like that, probably all those things, those things that I’m looking for have likely been compiled by somebody somewhere. And if I know how to do the Boolean logic, I can like go right to it. If it’s, if it’s on the web somewhere.
SR (34:25):
Yeah. If it’s on the web. Now the challenge today, especially in today’s world with certainly a lot of these member directories and attendee list show up, you still have to be careful because as you know, again, depending on what statistic you read, who knows which one’s right, but a good percentage, 30 to 40% of people have left their jobs or will leave their jobs either in the past year or the next year, whatever that number is. I don’t know. And so that means that a lot of those lists may no longer be valid. That’s why I also use LinkedIn. A lot of these techniques, you know, the same bullying techniques you can use within LinkedIn, but theoretically people keep their LinkedIn profiles up to date. So that’s why I like LinkedIn. So for example, I could go into LinkedIn and in the main search forum, I’ll type in book reviewer. Now, if I type in book reviewer with no quotation marks, I’ll get book reviewers, but I’ll also get anybody who’s. Any, I’ll get a music, I’ll get a music reviewer, who’s read a book. So book reviewer within quotation marks will tell LinkedIn only find that exact phrase.
RV (35:29):
Yeah. That’s so powerful and simple. So all right. So Intel and Intel engine, but without the ease and engine, right? The Intel engine.com. So that’s where you could go to check out one of these. I want to look at, I want to look at the speaker one, cause I want to use it and maybe we can do a deal or something with, for sure, for brand builders members. I want to talk to AJC. Maybe we can buy this for every, all of our members and provide it. Cause this is pretty, pretty powerful stuff. And where else do you want people to go Sam? Or if they want to connect with you and learn more about what you’re up to
SR (36:01):
Just go to Sam richter.com. Sam, R I C H T E r.com or frankly Rory, if if you can’t find it, just go to Google type in my name with, or without quotation marks. That’s my business card. I mean, if you couldn’t find me that way, don’t listen to anything I have to say, because I’ve also had to learn the, the flip side of this. Right. So if I’m going to teach how to find people, I better be able to be found. Yeah,
RV (36:25):
Absolutely. Well, Sam, so cool, man. I’ll always pick up so many tactical like tips of like, oh, that’s so, so good. And appreciate you being willing to share here. And as always brother, we wish you the best.
SR (36:37):
Thank you. You too. Keep up your great work. It’s so needed in today’s world and I’m just super excited for all that. You’ve accomplished. Congratulations. Thanks buddy.

Ep 231: Playing the Long Game with Dorie Clark | Recap Episode

RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon,
RV (00:54):
And we’re back on the influential personal brand podcast recap edition solo episode with Rory Vaden. AJ is not with us here today, but I am dissecting and digesting. And then distributing knowledge back to you on the Dorie Clark interview that we did, Dorie has been a longtime friend, and she’s just really well loved and really well-respected in the space, in our space and in our industry. And so it’s great to be able to see her and learn about her new book and playing the long game and all, all these kinds of things. So I want to share with you there, there, there were, there were two major takeaways. I have, I have three, but I’m going to focus in mostly on these, these two major takeaways that really, really stuck with me. And this first one is totally unique.
RV (01:50):
I’ve never ever had this thought before. I’ve never heard anyone talk about this and the way that Dory said it, it was kinda like she sort of quickly and lightly referenced it. But as I was thinking back, it really, really hit me hard. And so we were having this conversation of how long does it take to be successful, right? And like, just about anything and, you know, sharing our kind of our perspective back and forth on all these different ways in places that we’ve seen people be, be successful and things that we’ve tried to accomplish, et cetera. And basically what we both concluded was that it’s like, it takes two to three years before you really start seeing the results of your work. And then at five years is when it really starts to get, you know, exciting. And I think there’s so many examples of that, you know, in, in my own life, as I, as I look back you know, and doing the world championship of public speaking, like that took, that took, that was like two years of my life.
RV (02:59):
And then after that, it was like another couple of years before speaking really started to take off. I think of the, the, the first company that we started and it was like, you know, we started off pretty strong, then we kind of like leveled off, but then it was about five, about five years into it. We started to really like, turn the corner and hit this, this exponential growth. And this is, this is, this is true in Dory. Was Dory was sharing that about her. I mean, brand builders group is now three years into the business and it’s where it’s starting to get exciting. Like, it’s basically just been a grind in a startup and digging ditches, as we say, and laying the trenches and the foundations of a building a company. And it’s like, oh, it’s starting to get exciting. And my guess is that within two or three years, it’s going to be like, holy moly, this is amazing.
RV (03:50):
And then, and then at some point after that, it just turns to almost like it feel, it starts to feel unfair because you’re just like, I don’t even feel like I’m, I’m having to work as hard for this wonderful blessing. And that’s because for five years you got your teeth kicked in and you got beat up and it was just like stress and heartache and problems and breakdowns and like one gut punch after the next. And there’s also still problems. I mean, it is, it is true more money, more, more problems. But I’d rather have those problems than, than, than the other ones. But so here’s, here’s the part that is unique. That really hit me, that I was like, oh my gosh, I’ve never had this thought. W here’s the words, I’ll tell you the words that she said. And she said this like very casually sort of nonchalantly.
RV (04:42):
And I don’t even know if she meant to emphasize it, but she said the words, significant competitive moat, MOA T moat, a significant competitive moat. And as I was thinking back after the interview, for some reason, those, those words were like hitting me, significant competitive moat, you know, and what is a moat, right? A moat is what they used to put around a castle. And they would put like alligators in there so that when the Drawbridge was up, it was like, good luck attacking the castle. You gotta like, get through all the alligators. A is a, is a barrier. It’s a, it’s an insulator for safety. It’s a protective device, right. Or a strategy or, or, or, you know, now I think that, that you have, well, here’s the part that stuck with me after, as I was thinking about that. And I was like, why is that?
RV (05:38):
Why did that hit me so strong, significant competitive moat? Well, here’s the power, all the things that you’re struggling with now, all of the obstacles that you’re facing all of the time it’s taking all of the blood and sweat and tears, all of the challenges, all of the heartbreaks, all of the heartaches, all of the struggles that you are going through now will one day become the moat that securely protects you from other people coming in. And I’ve never really thought about it like that, of going, oh my gosh, all of the heartbreak that I went through is now something that is out there, kind of like working in my defense, so to speak. Now we’re not, we’re not scarcity people, we’re abundance people. So we’re not worried about, like, we don’t worry about competitors ever. Like we, we, we don’t really freak out about competition.
RV (06:40):
We only think that there is collaboration, but even so it, it, it’s, it’s this idea that there is this barrier to entry. There is this price of admission. There is, there is this initial orientation or this obstacles. You have to overcome that to get to where you are, you know, like to where you’ve made it. And that’s those very same challenges that were annoying you and driving you crazy one day become the things that you’re thankful for as a, as a moat, as a barrier to competition. They, and it’s not just a barrier to competition. It’s sort of, it, it sort of symbolizes and codifies your place in the world as an expert or as an entrepreneur or as the leading business on blank, because you’ve made it through that. And not very many people do so that, that just really hit me hard.
RV (07:41):
It’s just like, wow, all the things that I am frustrated with now are one day going to be the things that are protecting me and protecting sort of like our place in the world or our business, or, you know, my place in the world. And you don’t really think about that as you’re, as you’re going through those challenges, but they do become a significant competitive moat. And I want that to be encouraging for you, because if you’re in, if you’re in those early stages right now, it’s hard, right. It’s discouraging. It’s painful. It it’s, it can be hopeless. I mean, it can be desperate where you’re like, I just don’t know if this is working. I’m so stressed and overwhelmed and broke and tired. And like, is this ever going to pay off? And the answer is yes. And then once it does, it keeps paying off because you’re now on the other side of this, this moat that almost nobody will get past because they’re going to, they’re going to stop and they’re going to quit at all the same places you’re thinking about quitting right now, right?
RV (08:49):
Like, think about that. Most people are going to quit at the same places. You’re thinking about quitting right now. So if you don’t quit, if you keep going, if you keep pursuing, if you keep chasing, you keep taking the stairs, you keep serving, you keep pouring out and adding value and working and building, you know, digging the ditches and building the infrastructure and doing all the things that we talk about. A brand builders group that like five years from now, you’re going to be standing like all alone. I mean, you’re going to be on this island with very few, you know, sort of like an elite few that have made it, and then that’s going to become part of your protection. That’s just really powerful. And you know, it’s really cool brand builders group because now that we’ve been around for three years, we’re seeing these stories.
RV (09:35):
One of my favorite stories recently to share is Ian cognac, who is one of our clients. And he started with us. And when Ian started when, when he first started, it was like, Hey, you should do a video every week. And this is one of the things that we teach in our curriculum, right? Is you need to publish one video every week. Well, Ian started doing that on LinkedIn is post a video a week, a video a week, and his first video, seven views, 14 views, 11 views, right? And at some point you go six months into it. He’s posting this. And it’s like 26 views. Not really feeling, feeling it, but we’re going just stay the course, just keep going. One video a week, one video a week, one video, a week, two years later, his average video view gets like seven to 8,000 views.
RV (10:23):
His com coaching roster is completely full. He’s got like more business than he knows what to do with this is now like his full-time gig. He’s living his dream. He’s changing lives because, and, and, and, and most people will never get there because they won’t cross cross that mode. You know, Anton, gun’s another person who started working with us a few years ago and it was, you know, low six figures, low six figures, three years later, he’s all in doing the stuff, you know, going through the grind, like all the things we’re asking him to do, and he’s doing it, he’s doing it. And three years later, it’s like several hundred thousand dollar business. Let’s just say, north of half a million. And well, north, because it’s like, oh, it’s, it’s starting to catch. And you create this. You insulate yourself against competition.
RV (11:11):
Lisa Woodruff is one of our clients. Who’s we started working with her several years ago. We met her and, you know, she was a couple million and now it’s like, it’s, it’s way more than that. She’s pushing the eight, this eight figure number, because they’re doing the things. And then it’s like, once you get to that, these new levels, very few people will get there because you have built a significant competitive moat. The things that the challenges you’re facing today that are driving you crazy are going to be the very same challenges that you’re grateful for one day, because they’re securing your safety and they’re securing your place in the market. That’s so, so powerful. And I’ve never, never thought about it that way. The second thing was around this, you know, I asked story this question. What’s how do you find your personal vision?
RV (12:04):
And, you know, we, we take the stairs, we talk a lot about vision. And we haven’t talked about vision boards and the power of vision. And I share some of the stories of some of the big visions I’ve had in my own life and how I wrote them out years in advance. And then they become true. And that has happened over and over again. I mean, it’s a very house that I’m sitting in and you know et cetera, but the there’s a lot of different ways to come at vision. And our, we have our conquering impossible goals course is we take people through all of this assessment and analysis of how to find their purpose and how to find what they want to be and what they want to do in life. And so, anyways, I just sort of randomly asked this question and I kind of thought, Dory might say something like what you hear all the time of, how do you find your personal vision?
RV (12:53):
But what she said really caught me off guard, and it’s really stuck with me. She said, oh, well, ask yourself, who are you jealous of? Who are you jealous of? And that was powerful. And a little bit like it caught me off guard because, you know, we think of jealousy. I mean, jealousy is a, you know, it’s a bad thing like jealousy, you know, comparison is the thief of joy. It tends to cause you to not be grateful for what you have, but there is also this, this little element that comes from not jealousy, but who do you admire? Right. I mean, I guess that’s, that’s probably the, the, the, the better way of saying it. It’s who do you admire? Who do you look at and go, gosh, I like what they have is so cool. I would love to do something like what they did.
RV (13:41):
Yeah, I think admire is a, is a, is a better word for this, but I think those are hints to your divine design. Like when you see something in the world that someone has, or someone created, or some group of people created and you go, that’s awesome. I would love to have something like that one day. I don’t think that’s an unhealthy feeling. I think if it, if it makes you go, oh, if only I had that, then I could be happy. That’s unhealthy if you said you know, oh, look at how easy they have it. I have it hard. That’s unhealthy if it’s, if you say gosh, they’re so lucky. And look at me like, I’m, I’m unlucky. That’s not healthy. Even if, even if you see something, you go, oh, I can’t be grateful for what I have, because it’s not this thing that I want.
RV (14:42):
That’s an unhealthy, but if you just simply go, you know, what they’ve done is amazing. I’d love to do something kinda like that. That’s totally healthy. That’s ambition, that’s drive that’s inspiration. And, and, and I would call that divine design. I think those little cues are hints. They are, they are clues as to the calling of your heart and the design of your life. And like what you’re created to do, because you there’s these things in the world that you see in, you’re drawn to them and you go, oh, that’s beautiful. I I’d love to do that or have that, or accomplish that, or support that, or create something like that. That’s a clue to your calling. And, and I think that’s, I think that’s super duper healthy. So Dory said, who are you jealous of? I’m a temperate back a little bit and say, who do you admire?
RV (15:33):
And allow yourself to sit in that admiration and allow it to be divine inspiration, and a clue for who you’re meant to become. And I think that’s a really, just a really fast, clear way of figuring out who you’re meant to be. And if you are on that journey, trying to figure out who you want to be, what do you want your personal brand to look like? You should request a call with our team and you should talk to us about that. We know something about it, where we’re really good at it. We have a lot of great history with clients and some of the things that we’ve done ourselves. And if you’re not yet ready for that, then I would just say, keep tuning in, keep coming back, listen and learn from these guests. We’re just sharing all this stuff for free from our friends, our networks, a lot of our clients that we bring on.
RV (16:20):
And you’re getting to learn from people who we learned from too. So I hope you’re enjoying the podcast. If you are, keep coming back, share it with someone. And if you’re ready to get serious about figuring out what is that future for you? What is that personal vision for your personal brand requests, a free call with our team and let’s talk and let’s get you going in that direction. But until then, we’re so glad you’re here. We love you. We believe in you keep coming back. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 230: Playing the Long Game with Dorie Clark

RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:54):
Well, Dorie Clark is someone that I have known about for years. We’ve kind of been friends and acquaintances and hung out here and there. And I just think she’s delightful and wonderful and extremely intelligent. And so she has a new book that is coming out called the long game how to be a longterm thinker in a short term world. It was a wall street journal bestseller. It came out a few weeks ago. She had a fantastic launch. We’re in a little author mastermind group together. And so most recently we, we reconnected around that, but she also teaches at duke university. She’s a contributor, a long-time contributor to Harvard business review. She’s been featured in all of this major media and was also awarded one of the top 50 business thinkers in the world by thinkers 50, which is an extremely prestigious award and group to be a part of. And anyways, she’s cool. And she’s here Dory. Good to see you,
DC (01:53):
Rory. It’s so terrific to get to spend time with you. Thank you.
RV (01:56):
Yeah. So your first book reinventing, you was kind of like more about personal branding specific. That’s like very much in our, you know, the world that we live in these days. Tell us about the long game and you know, how would you describe this in a, in a phrase and then you know, let’s just kind of, I want to dive in around there.
DC (02:21):
Well, the, the phrase that I would use to describe the long game is it is applying the lens of strategic thinking to your own life and your own career. And the way I actually see it tying in with my previous work and with personal brand in general, is that in many ways, the inspiration for the book came from the coaching clients that I worked with in the people, in my orbit. And we’d be having a session, they’d be updating me, they’d say, okay, I did this, I did this. And at a certain point in almost every session, there’d be this pause and then say, so what now, what next? And they’d be looking for the next thing. They, what they kind of wanted me to tell them was like, oh, go all in on tech talk. That’s the thing do that big or what, you know, whatever the thing might be.
DC (03:10):
And I often felt really like the bad guy when I was talking with him because so often my advice was the thing to do is like, keep doing the thing you’re already doing. And I realized that when it comes to professionals that are passionate about getting their ideas out there, getting their message heard on one hand, we know that there is not some sort of magic bullet that will do it for us. And on the other hand simultaneously, we still kind of want one. And so, yeah, why not? So I wanted to write a book to really hopefully be a bit of a framework for people about the hard part of patients, because for a long time, if you are doing the work, if you’re really pushing to get your ideas out there to get better known and to build your brand, it’s a process that usually takes awhile and it can feel at various points in the journey as you know, really demoralizing, it feels like, oh, is this working? Oh, why is it taking so long? But that is what we have to muscle through to get to the other side. And I really wanted to encourage people to be able to do that so that good people didn’t give up too soon.
RV (04:22):
How long, how long does it take? Right. So if you know, I think about Malcolm, Malcolm Gladwell, you know, popularizing the 10,000 hour rule, right. Or a lot of times what we, we almost describe brand builders group is going, like, we often position ourselves as telling people, Hey, we’re not the people that are gonna like say, you know, you’re going to make six figures in the next 30 days. We’re the people saying we’re going to take something that would normally take 20 years and get you there. And six, like, but how long? And I know that’s a, that’s a kind of a broad question because the answer is it probably, it depends, but how would you answer that question? Like how long do I have to work at doing the right things? Even though I’m not seeing immediate results right away. And I’m like slogging away going okay. If I, if I do things the right way and I add value to the world and I keep trucking along here, like, okay, what when, like when do we actually start to turn the corner and see the, see some of the like big traction?
DC (05:28):
Yeah. Yeah. I love, I love the question. Worry. Cause you’re exactly right. Like everybody knows that it’s not overnight. We’re like, yeah, yeah, we get it. Okay. Not overnight, but nobody tells you what not overnight means. Like, is it like two nights?
RV (05:43):
I’m good for two weeks. So yeah. I, I don’t, I’m not overnight success. No problem. But two weeks later I’ve been doing this for two weeks Dory, like, and I don’t have a million downloads. Like why don’t I have a million downloads? It’s been 14 days.
DC (05:57):
That’s right. Well, I do, I do have an answer because on one hand, of course, you know, as you say, the caveat is yes. You know, conditions may vary for people, but also people want to know. And one of the things that I have had the benefit of over time is not only going through this process in my own journey, but now working with tons of people, I have this online course in community that I run it’s 600 plus people have been through. So there’s a real sense of sort of a cross section with longitudinal perspective. So I’ve gotten to see a lot of times what it looks like and where people get hung up up and how long things take. And so I’m curious to hear your answer, but my answer when people ask me this question is that typically, if you are, if you were putting in a you know, a strong effort, I say that it usually takes between two and three years to show almost any results. Like let’s be clear. And I then say, it will take about five years to show demonstrable results. Now the good news is that by the time you get to around five years, you have actually put in enough work, you’ve created a significant competitive moat between you and other people. That is a real headstart that differentiates you from the competition. But you know, most people are not willing to do it because you know, they’re at 18 months or whatever, and they’re like, this sucks and we gotta keep pushing. So how do you answer that?
RV (07:31):
Well, I mean the, the way that I would answer is, is more of a, more of the concept of it takes as long as it takes. Like, if you’re doing something that you really care about, if it’s really about impact, you just got to commit to say, I’m going to do this for the rest of my life. And sooner or later it’s going to work. Like I think about you and I also speak a lot. And I think that was a very first time we met was maybe at social media marketing world at Jay Baer is one of my best friends. I know you guys, I’m pretty sure he’s who introduced us. And
DC (08:04):
It was NSA actually
RV (08:06):
Through Jess. It was the NSA. Anyways. So as the speaker world, I tell this story sometimes, cause I, I remember going to NSA and I was 20 something years old. And the first time I was at NSA they, they have this hall of fame award, right. That they give out to people and it was amazing. And, and, and there was a speaker that, that I knew and had heard before that he was honored by being in getting inducted. And I think a lot of people would go, oh, well, that’s amazing. Like it’s a far off goal. The thought I had in my head literally at like 22 was like, oh yeah, I’m going to be inducted into the hall of fame someday. But I didn’t, I didn’t know when, and I didn’t be like, I’m going to do it in two years or five years or, or, or 10 years.
RV (08:54):
But I literally thought I’m 20 years old. I’m going to do this the rest of my life. So even if I suck, like it’s 50 years from now, even if I suck, like after 50 years, I’m probably going to get this award at some point. So I love it. It’s like, if you’re really doing the thing you love, if you’re really doing the thing you got, you’re committing your life to, and you go, I’m going to play the long game because this is the thing that matters to me. It’s not vanity or money. It’s like, it’s like your calling then. You know, it ended up, it ended up taking me like 17, I guess, 16 years. So I was, I got inducted in 2018. So it took a minute, but it did happen. But I, I like your five-year answer. I mean, in, in terms of a practical answer, I, I like your five-year answer because like, you’re not going to change your life completely. Typically in a year or two. Now we had a, we’ve had a client, we helped to get a viral Ted talk. She got 3 million views in a year and it has made a pretty substantial change, but it’s still at this point, you know, now we’re like two or three years in, it’s still mostly a trajectory change the fruits of that really. Aren’t, she’s going to start reaping here in the next 2, 3, 2, 3, 5 years. I think your five-year answer is a good one.
DC (10:21):
Yeah. Thank you. And I, and I appreciate what you said, Rory, because one of the ways, I mean, you know, always the question right, is okay. If you’re going to slog through something for two or three or five years, how can you keep yourself motivated when it feels so long? And when you’re not typically in the early stages getting much positive reinforcement,
RV (10:40):
How do you keep yourself motivated Dory for five years when you’re slogging through this crap Fest of just getting punched in the face. And it’s like, I’m putting 70 hours in. I got three views on my YouTube channel. I got eight downloads of my podcast. I’m speaking for free. Or, you know, I’m an entrepreneur and I’m working 80 hours a week. And I still feel like I’m doing everything. How do you keep yourself motivated Dorie Clark?
DC (11:04):
Well, I think one, one of the ways that we can answer this is to, to choose activities that we’re doing, that we can nonetheless derive a short-term payoff from even as we’re pursuing the longer goal. It’s, you know, we can think of it as winning, even if we lose meaning, you know, hopefully the long-term will pay off that’s, that’s the goal. That’s the thing we’re all after, but let’s pretend it doesn’t for some reason, how can we make sure that the time we spend is not time that we are wasting? And so just as one example, let’s say that somebody has decided, all right, I’m going to start a podcast. And the goal is that they want to establish themselves as a recognized expert in their field. And they, you know, maybe they want to have something that one day becomes a huge podcast and they could get advertising revenue and things like that.
DC (11:56):
That’s, longer-term, that’s harder, but in the short term, the value of a podcast or a blog or video series or whatever you choose choose your methodology is that you could be using that in the here and now to connect with other prominent people in your fields. You could be connecting with potential clients. You are using it as a lever for relationship building, which is something that presumably you want to be doing anyway. And so at the end of those five years, even if you don’t have, you know, iTunes, top 10 podcast or something, you have a heck of a lot better network. You have a lot more business prospects, more people know who you are and know what your name is. And that is something that is going to be valuable no matter what the long-term outcome is.
RV (12:44):
Yeah, I will. I mean, I love that you and I were catching up on our personal story of when we exited our last company and starting over. And it was like, all we had was our reputation. We didn’t have the followers, we didn’t have the client list. We didn’t have our email, we had nothing. But what we had was a bunch of people that we’d met, that we had helped here and there along the way with stuff. And that made a really, really big difference. And I love that winning, even if you lose idea, the other thing about this I want to see your thoughts about this, because I think it’s funny how let’s use YouTube. So my car we’ve been slogging through YouTube. That’s a good real life example. Like I think our new YouTube channel, I think we’ve been doing a video every week and we’re on like, I don’t know all coming up.
RV (13:32):
I think maybe on two years and our video, we’re still getting maybe like a couple hundred video views. And it’s like, we’ve been doing this for two years. We got a couple of hundred views. And I think what people often forget is you go, you look at, you know, XYZ, some other person, right. You know, grab whoever Tony Robbins and you go, Tony posted a video and they get million views. I got 200 views. And yet we forget that if you were standing in front of a room of 200 people that were live for most of us, that would get our heart rate pumping like even 50, you know, or a hundred. But we go, ah, you know, my, you know, my Instagram video got a hundred views and it’s like, if there were those a hundred people were standing in front of you, you’d be jacked. And I think we lose that perspective digitally. Sometimes
DC (14:25):
I think that’s a really right on observation. I mean, sometimes people who are not authors will ask me, are you doing a book tour? And the, you know, the first thing of course is like, well, hashtag COVID no, not really. I mean, it was hard enough to even get a place to have a launch party in New York because like a lot of the bookstores have stopped doing events. So are, you know, hopefully will get better and that we’ll get back to normal. But, but even regardless of that you know, publishers are very, very hesitant to pay people, you know, pay for people to do that now. And you can understand why, because if you were to travel all around, you know, the planes and the hotels and the trains, and you’re going to different cities, if you did a bookstore event and it had 50 people in it, or 75 people that would be a path to bookstore, it would be like, wow, this is so huge. This is so amazing. Meanwhile, if you stay at home, even like literally the worst podcast has 50 people that listened to it. And so thinking about just how we deploy and leverage our time digitally, it’s a, it’s a really big difference.
RV (15:39):
Yeah. I love that. I love that. So what are all the ways that we play the long game? Okay. So I know that that’s the premise, which I love, we’re totally aligned on that. I mean, I think you go, okay, choose activities that you can win. Even if you lose what are like the other places or prac practical kind of like expressions of which the long game plays out. I mean, we’ve kind of used the content marketing example here, right? Like YouTube being, or doing podcasts or something, where else in our business and our brand is this really, this concept matter.
DC (16:20):
Well, one area that I talk about in the long game, Rory is actually applying a concept that many of your listeners may be familiar with in a slightly different context to our own lives. And that is the concept of 20% time, which Google has really popularized. And the idea for people who are not familiar with it is that Google employees are encouraged to spend up to 20% of their time working on, you could call them speculative activities or experimental activities that are outside their typical job description. And, you know, a worthy caveat here is that even though technically, you know, oh yeah, you can do that. It’s actually a very small percentage of Google employees who do do that because the, there there’s always such a lure of the short term, you know, people are like, oh, how could I possibly do that? I have so many emails to answer.
DC (17:10):
You know, it’s always easier to just do the thing at hand to tend to the urgent, but there is real power. I think for all of us, whether you work inside a company, whether you are self-employed, whatever your circumstance is, number one, we have to realize nobody is going to hand us experimental time. We have to, we have to carve that out and protect it for ourselves. And number two, I think it is one of the most valuable things that we can do because, and, you know, if 20% sounds outrageous, fine, make it 5%, make it 10%, whatever you can do. But we all know, you know, if anybody, with the most rudimentary knowledge of investing principles has heard, it’s a good idea to diversify your portfolio. Don’t put all your bets on one, on one, you know, square, don’t put all your money in one stock.
DC (17:58):
Well, similarly we tend in our professional lives to do exactly that. And it’s great while it’s great. And then if the market changes, if there’s disruption, if there’s some kind of a, an alteration in circumstances, it can actually be devastating. And so making sure that we are actively carving out space to learn new things, meet new people, develop new skills and new interests is actually the kind of hedge in our life portfolio that we need to protect our downside and also give us an opportunity for potential upside in ways that we can’t quite imagine yet.
RV (18:36):
Hmm. Yeah. That’s, it’s interesting. There is that I think it’s in the year, I want to say the year 1969, Charles Hummel wrote that essay, the tyranny of the urgent and just constantly pulled to whatever is short term and right in front of our face, which doesn’t require as much of the, the creative thinking or even just like the, the freedom to kind of daydream a little bit. I wanted to ask you like, to the point of strategic planning, you described this to me when we were chatting as the long game is a little bit of like the strategic, the kind of strategic planning that companies would do, applying that to your own personal life. Can you talk about that a little more? And what, what does that mean? And actually like how, like what actions or what behaviors would we engage upon to do that kind of strategic planning for our own life?
DC (19:40):
Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, it’s interesting because a lot of the folks that I work with, I mean, they’re, they’re smart, you know, educated professionals and it’s, it’s almost second nature in their day jobs to be doing strategic planning for their business, right? Oh, that’s what we do. We come up with the 10 year plan, the 20 year plan, the one year plan, the five-year plan and then you execute against it. We are very familiar with that, but what I have often seen is that the things that are intuitive to us in our business, we often fail to make the parallel and turn the mirror on ourselves to realize, oh, wait, I should probably be doing something similar for myself. And so at a really basic level, it’s, it’s asking ourselves questions like are the daily actions that I am taking lining up to put me in the direction of where I would actually like my life to go.
DC (20:37):
That’s one important question. Another one that I find useful is asking ourselves as often as we can, what are the things that I can do today that would make tomorrow easier or better and tomorrow, you know, could be literally tomorrow. I mean let’s, but, but it also can be this sort of endless tomorrow. I mean, if we take, if we take a sort of a clear example, like physical health, of course, if you’re 40, you, the 80 year old you is going to be grateful that you worked out and that you took care of yourself, that, you know, there, there’s no doubt that that is going to be a helpful thing for the longterm in the moment we know you’re busy in the moment, it’s hard. But if we literally bring it back, okay. You know, so yes, that’s a thing I can do that I’ll be grateful for in the long tomorrow, but in the short tomorrow, maybe it’s something as simple as laying out your gym clothes. So it’s the first thing you see on your dresser in the morning, so that you’re predisposed to go to the gym instead of mucking around in the morning and reading the paper and wasting time. And then suddenly you, you ran out of time and it, and you have to go to your work calls. So it’s, it’s just thinking through that alignment between today and where you want to go.
RV (21:55):
Yeah. I like that a lot. And I think one of the places that people seem to struggle is figuring out the long-term it’s like seeing the picture, but the older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve become convicted that the single like greatest difference probably between people who end up with an amazing life and those who end up with just like whatever is, they think long-term and most people don’t, they’re not good at thinking long-term, they’re actually, they’re not that great at figuring out, like, what do I want to be? Who do I, what do I want to do? Who do I want to be? Why do I want to have because I think it’s like, if you nail that, if you get, if you’re somehow clear on that, then it becomes more naturally obvious that it’s like, well, I’m doing a bunch of stuff. That’s taken me this other, this wrong direction and it’s not lined up.
RV (22:58):
Do you have any tips for people that are going like, gosh, I just, yeah. I don’t know. Like I think about you know, any small business owner and even any big business, a lot of big businesses just run off doing a hundred things that they’ve always been doing and nobody’s actually going, like, what do we want to be in in 10 years? So think applying that kind of strategic thinking to our personal life, do you have any hints or tips or ideas for like determining what your long game should be or clarifying what your vision or purpose is?
DC (23:30):
Yeah. I have a couple of thoughts, Rory. I mean the first one is I always like to ask my clients, who are you jealous of? And I like this question, because so often we think of jealousy as this terrible thing. Like, no, I’m not jealous of anyone jealous. He’s awful. I wouldn’t do that. But the truth is sometimes, you know, we read about people, we hear about people, they could be folks in your life. They could be people that, you know, you are just, well-known in your field and there’s a piece of you that it’s like, oh man, I wish I could do that. Or, oh, how do you get that? And that is actually, you know, you know, of course we don’t want to be riven by jealousy, but it’s actually, I think in many ways, a trail of breadcrumbs, because there’s something in there that you admire, there’s something in there that resonates with you.
DC (24:21):
And if we are thoughtful about asking the questions and saying, well, well, what is it that appeals is it that you want to live in the same place that he lives? Is it that you like the manner in which she’s working and you’d like to have a schedule like that? Is it that you would like to also write for a particular publication? Like, what is it that is sort of sticking with you where it’s like, oh yeah, that you can actually begin to explore that and create a sort of wishlist and reverse engineer it for yourself. So that’s, that’s one way I think we can begin to get at it. And you know, the other way, the other thing that I’ll just mention is I think we’re a lot of people get hung up sometimes is they feel like they have to choose quote unquote, the right goals.
DC (25:06):
They’re like, what if I chose the wrong goal? And I just like, I’m S I’m a fan of like lowering the bar. I’m like, okay, you chose the wrong goal. Like who cares? It’s okay. Change it. Like, that’s really okay. You know, the, the point is we monitor things enough. I mean, you don’t want to be working 20 years toward the wrong goal. And you know, suddenly you’re like, oh, I never bargained for this. But if you choose something that is a goal, you work toward it and you reach a certain point where you say, gosh, you know, this doesn’t seem right anymore. I didn’t realize it would be like this, or, oh, wow. There’s been a huge market change. And this is no longer a good idea. That’s the moment where you can pivot. And it is okay. The work is not wasted. You have been working towards something that is a relative of where you want to go. The question is now we can fine tune it a little bit. So I think if we hold the goals lightly, it, hopefully it takes the pressure off a little bit.
RV (26:00):
Yeah. I love that. The jealousy thing is, is interesting, right? Because it’s it is such as seen as such a negative, but then you go there, something in that that speaks to you, it calls, it calls to you almost in the way that like if you were going to build a house, you would drive down the street and you go, Ooh, I don’t like that house. Ooh. But I love that house. If I were going to build the house, I’d want my house to look like that. Like, it kind of just speaks to your tastes until your desires and probably to like the, the, the divine design of what your life is supposed to really be. That’s really, really cool. And then, yeah, we can actually direction. Let go, just because you set the goal doesn’t mean it has to be your goal for 50 years.
RV (26:48):
You could, you could change it. That’s that is really, really good. Well don’t worry. This has been a delight. I just, I love your insights. And I’ve always just enjoyed just kind of being in your presence. And obviously the book is called the long game. If you want to pick up a copy of it, it’ll be around for a long time. You can go get that anywhere. The subtitle is how to be a longterm thinker in a short term world. Where else Dory, do you want people to go if they want to like connect up with you and what you got going on.
DC (27:21):
Thank you so much. It’s awesome to get to hang out with you here. And if folks are interested in these concepts about long-term thinking and how to apply it in your life, in addition to checking out the book, the long game, there’s a free long game, strategic thinking self-assessment that you can download it’s at Dorie clark.com/the long game. And of course if folks want to check out other stuff, including 700 free articles that I’ve written over the years for places like Harvard business review and fast company, you can go to Dorie clark.com.
RV (27:52):
Love it. Well, we will link up to all of that Dorie, thank you for your encouragement. And for the perspective of this, this has been super insightful and tactical as well. And we wish you all the best in your journey from here.
DC (28:06):
Thanks, Rory.

Ep 229: Create Funnier Presentations with David Glickman | Recap Episode

RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brandbuildersgroup.com/podcall brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:54):
Hey, welcome to the influential personal brand podcast. Recap. It is Rory Vaden here. Rolling solo today, breaking down the interview. This recent interview with David Glickman that I did, who’s a long time friend and somebody who is one of the funniest people that I’ve ever met and somebody who has a knack for understanding comedy and writing comedy for other people. And I’m going to talk about five, five keys to creating comedy in this recap inspired by some of what I’ve learned from David is not with us today. So sorry about that. You got them, you got yours truly, but we’re going to make it awesome because this topic of, of humor, we we’ve had a couple people come on where we have started talking about it. But you know, this is an important, an important topic to me.
RV (01:49):
And it always has been because I was not funny. Like I wasn’t the funny kid and, you know, to, to have my dream of being a speaker and, you know, like reaching millions of people, this was one of the skills I felt like could help me. And I thought it was just something you either were born with, or you did not. And of course I’ve learned over the years that that comedy and humor is very much a skill. It is a science it’s, it’s rooted in, in our brains. Like there’s, there’s neuroscience behind it. And it’s, it’s such a practical thing. It’s not easy, but it is something that you can learn to do. And so anytime I get to have one of these conversations with, you know, these like professional comedians, these, these people like David who are really truly funny and, and understand how their mind works.
RV (02:41):
I just get excited about that because, you know, for someone like me, it’s just super, super empowering. And so I’m going to share with you my top three takeaways, but one of them is, is really broken down into a four parts or five, five parts. So I’ll start with the first one. All right. So my first, my first takeaway here on the subject of humor, and this came up, we did another interview with another one of my comedy mentors, Darren LaCroix, while backs may a few months ago where we talked about some other, other elements of comedy, but David brought it up here in a, and I just think it’s, it’s almost like an unnecessary disclaimer that you, you stay away from controversial or emotionally charged topics. Like that is one of my takeaways is just a good reminder of just going like, look, if you don’t, first of all, you don’t need to go down that road to be funny.
RV (03:39):
Like you just like, you don’t need to swear now if swearing as part of your personal brand, fine, like, yeah, that is that’s up to you, but you don’t have to do it. You know, a lot of times people think of being like a standup comedy comedians. It’s like, oh, they’re really grotesque. Or they’re, you know, they, they cuss a lot or, you know, they’re very graphic. You can do that and be funny, but you also don’t have to do that to be funny. And in many ways I am much more impressed by the people who don’t from an artistic standpoint, not even from like a philosophical belief or whatever, but from an artistic standpoint, because the foundation of all of humor is very simple. It is misdirection. It is causing people to think you’re going to say one thing, and then you say something else.
RV (04:30):
And that is, that’s kind of the, the, the, you know, the grand Poobah of premises, as it relates to humor at our we have a members only event called world-class presentation craft, where we talk about the nine psychological laughter triggers and then nine laughter techniques that you can do immediately to get more laughs. But the foundation is this misdirection. So anytime that you say something unexpected, that’s part of laughter well saying things that are gross or offensive or flagrant or cussing or whatever those things get lasts because they’re, you know, they’re missed they’re unexpected, but it’s kind of like not artistic, right? I mean, at least that’s how I think of it. So I, there are some comedians that I really love who cost a lot. I mean, and there’s some, you know, that I think are really, really funny, but I really admire the ones, you know, like Jerry Seinfeld, as an example, who, who almost never cusses, like even a little bit or Ellen degenerate, because it’s such an art and the, the, the, the big takeaway here is going, I would encourage you and advise you.
RV (05:42):
And, and again, everything that we teach at brand builders group, including the stuff that we’re sharing, you know, here for free on this podcast are things that we actually do and don’t do. And so my encouragement would be just stay away from controversial or emotionally charged topics. You don’t need to go there. You there’s, there’s better, safer, more inclusive ways of, of getting laughs. So, and it was, that was, that was a takeaway that you prob probably should go without saying, but I don’t think that it does. Even for myself of just being reminded like, Hey, you know, always have that filter of like, who am I offending here? Who might I be offending? So the, the second big takeaway, which to me was the, the re was the big takeaway. This was the big idea from this interview with David is, is understanding the first step in being funny.
RV (06:35):
Like if you are going to try to create a joke or write something that is funny, whether it is for you on stage for an interview, a line in a, in a movie or in a TV show or a line in a book, the very first step is a step that most people overlook in. The magic really starts from nailing this first step. And if you miss this step, it kind of just feels impossible later. But if you become a master at this one first step, then the rest is all doable. Especially as you learn more about it. Like I said, you know, we teach a bunch of techniques and triggers and psychological things that are our actual tactics are our tactical ways that you tactical things that you can apply to actually create a laugh. But if you miss this first thing, man, you, you missed it.
RV (07:29):
And, and it’s not this first thing doesn’t even take that much of a blessing. Like it’s not even a a talent. I mean, certainly it could be a natural talent, but of all the parts of comedy, this is probably the part that requires the least amount of talent and the most amount of discipline. What am I talking about the first step to writing? Great humor is observation observation. And that really stuck with me from this interview with David in a way that I’ve never has never really been, I’ve been so clear on is that if you can be a great observer Andy Andrews would call this being a noticer. By the way that the podcast interview we did with Andy Andrews was, was also about humor. He’s one of the funniest speakers I’ve ever seen. But if you can observe, if you can notice, it’s almost like you have to identify the, the, the key to great comedy is identifying the opportunity for humor.
RV (08:35):
It’s, it’s going, ah, it’s like setting this mental alarm. Like there’s something funny here, or there could be something funny there. And if you can identify that ripe opportunity, then it’s just a matter of mechanics and, you know, some practice and, you know, training your brain to think in a certain way to make it funny. But the real first thing is, is observation, and you have to master it. And that’s what David was talking about. So I’m going to share with you the five CS of comedic observation, five CS of comedic observation. So this is all undertake away. My second takeaway, and I, and I got a third one too, but I thought this was, you know, even for myself just capturing this. So the first C is characterizations characterizations. So this is self-deprecating humor. You can, the first opportunity to observe, or the first, if, if I was looking for sources of potential comedic material, the first place to look is with yourself, it is self-deprecating humor.
RV (09:41):
And so I call it characterizations because it’s like, if you were going to get a sketch of yourself by like a, like someone who made you into a character, what are your most salient features? What are your most noticeable characteristics? What are the most obvious physical traits, or even, you know, demographic traits about yourself that, that somebody might point out. And if you can just like, look at yourself and your family and your life and your expertise in your industry through this lens of like, what if you were a character, what parts of you would, would I exaggerate? You know, if, if we were on the streets of France, you know, and, and somebody was just like drawing, drawing you out on a page is, is, is, is to, is to characterize to over, over or, or just to exaggerate the most salient features that you have.
RV (10:40):
That’s a huge opportunity for humor. And obviously if it’s about yourself, that’s a much safer, you’re less likely to offend people. The second C is challenges, challenges everywhere. You’re experiencing a frustration in your life everywhere. You’re annoyed, everything that makes you mad, everything that drives you crazy. Those are the most ripe opportunities for humor, because we laugh as an exhale of tension. We laugh as a, as a way of releasing stress and releasing pain. And also, you know, Andy Andrews, if you go back and listen to that interview, he talks about how humor is basically zooming really close in on things it’s zooming in really close and things that everybody sees. And so you go, what are the things that just drive you nuts about your kids, about being married, about owning a house about, you know, being a man or a woman, or, or, or like just, you know, being on the phone with Verizon or going to the mall or traffic or airports.
RV (11:48):
I mean, if you, you sit back for a second, you realize like so many comedians taking these everyday parts of our lives, and they’re just, they’re zooming in on the challenges. So you got to train yourself to go, I need to keep a challenges list of anything that frustrates me. I’m going to, I’m going to note that as a potential, that’s an observation. It’s a place that I can draw comedy from. The third C is culture culture. Anytime you can make cultural references, it’s going to be, it’s going to be funny. And it’s going to give you a really easy way to naturally create a laugh. And you just got to go, what is popular right now in culture? What is the thing that everybody’s talking about? What are the big TV shows, who are the, what are the big movies who are the big actors and actresses, the musicians, what are the big, you know, the sports teams the sports teams in your area, what are the, the, the most popular books?
RV (12:54):
What are the big things in the news cycle? Anything that has like national attention is, is pop culture, anything inside a culture, if you can just reference that, somehow people will think it’s, it’s funny. So again, you, the first step is not to create something funny. The first step is to identify where you might have an opportunity to create something funny. And it’s, it’s these observations. So that’s the first C was characterizations. Then you had challenges. The third C is culture. The fourth C is customization, which is really what I think most of this interview was with David. So if you you know, this recap is a little bit of a, you know, I’m kind of also turning into a teaching point for myself and, and hopefully for you, of things that I’m putting together from various places, but this was really about customizations and, and talking about how do you find basically the challenges and the characterizations of like the group you’re speaking to and pulling that into you know, you’re basically just commenting on it and by the fact that the virtue of commenting on it, everybody laughs and so customizations are an easy opportunity for humor.
RV (14:17):
The bomber about customization is also part of what makes it the magic, which is that you can only use it once, right? You can only really use that joke for that one particular audience, but it also doesn’t have to be so super funny which is actually what my third takeaway was, the more narrow, the customization, the more forgiving the audience. So the, the more hyper-specific your reference, you know, if I referenced Ted lasso, that could be very funny. It is a pop culture reference that a lot of people are talking about or aware of. And if I can make some comparison, you know to the way we run our organization is like Ted lasso or so-and-so, it’s like total at Ted lasso, or, you know, our, our, our email list is growing faster than Ted lasso. Those could be funny, but the, the more specific to the audience, which is like, you know if I’m talking, I’ll just grab pampered.
RV (15:17):
Chef is one of my past Keno clients, right? If I’m talking to pampered chef and I make a joke about the pizza stone, which is like one of the products they sell, that it doesn’t have to be written as well. It doesn’t have to be academically as funny as like a, a perfectly structured joke would be because it’s so custom to that audience. Right. And if I’m in front of pampered chef, everybody’s going to know what a pizza stone is. And you don’t, but anybody there would, and that’s, that’s the, that’s the point. So this is another opportunity for you for humor is anytime that you’re in front of any audience, you just kind of ask yourself, what are the key terms for this audience? It’s the same exercise as like the pop culture, except instead of thinking at a national level, you’re thinking at a very localized level of, you know, that community or that industry, or that company, et cetera.
RV (16:16):
And then the fifth, the fifth C for comedic observation is callbacks callbacks. So you’re just looking, you’re just referencing things that other people have said that was funny. And if it was funny the first time, then you can call it back just by bringing it up. So you, you know, inside of callbacks, I would be listening to who were the other speakers before me? What was the funniest thing that happened? Whatever that was, all I need to do is kind of mention that, and everybody will laugh. It is both a callback and it is a customization. And you know, it, it likely could be a challenge as well. If, if, if it was originally commenting as something that was frustrating, the other place you can look for callbacks is your own stuff, right? So as you start to master your presentation and world-class presentation craft, that’s where we kind of go through the detailed mechanics of how do you structure a truly brilliant masterful presentation?
RV (17:20):
Well, and humor is one of those parts as you start to get laughs and you, you, you do your presentation, you get better and better at it, and you start to get people to laugh, pay attention to your own laughs and then ask yourself, okay, this was a big laugh earlier. How do I bring it? How do I bring it back later? How do I, I, I referenced it back. And then the other, the other place for callbacks in terms of observation where this is the whole skill here is observing where’s. The opportunity for humor is with hecklers. Now, hecklers are people who yell stuff out in the middle of your presentation. Well, if somebody yells something out in your presentation, there’s not much you can do in that presentation. I mean, you might be able to turn it into a call back somehow later, if everyone hears it.
RV (18:11):
And it was funny, but hecklers are, are, are often saying out loud, the thing that kind of like everybody is speaking, and you just want to pay attention to when people heckle you and, and try to like meant to make a mental note of it. And then as soon as you’re like done with your presentation, you go write it down. Or if you’re running a webinar, read the comments, or if you did an IgE TV, read the comments or your YouTube video, read the comments because when people make smart Alec remarks on what you said, you can often take that and then kind of massage it. And it will be funny. There’s almost always an element of truth in what there’s. I mean, there is an element of truth in what they’re saying, even if we don’t like it, that’s what hecklers are doing. They’re they are they are commentating on what is happening.
RV (19:04):
So if you can then take that and some of my best jokes are where someone came up to me after a speech and said, oh, you know, I thought you were going to say this, or they’ll blurt something out in the crowd. And then we go, ah, I’m going to take that. And I’m going to deliberately put it in an and manufacturer that as a, as a joke. So anyways, you can do this. It starts with observation. It starts with observation. It doesn’t start with comedic timing or billion being brilliant or having, you know, perfect charisma or delay. It starts with observation. The first step is to like, identify the opportunity using these five CS. If you can do that, you can be com funnier. Just one of many skills that you will learn is if you hang around brand builders group and give us a chance to help you continue to grow your business, grow your brand, grow your message, grow your impact. So keep coming back here to the influential, personal brand podcast, Hey, share this episode with somebody who you know, cares about being funny or someone who you want to make a funny or someone who can help make you funnier. Make sure you send this out to them, say, Hey, I think you, you would like this. Cause we’d love to meet your friends and your network. Thanks for tuning in. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 228: Create Funnier Presentations with David Glickman

RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:55):
Well, my journey to become a speaker has been a, a fun one through lots of different twists and turns. And one of those things was having to learn how to be funny because I was not funny. And one of the people that I learned from in that journey is the man that you’re about to meet his name is David Glickman. I first attended one of his trainings. Oh gosh, I was in my twenties. And it was one of the most transformative pieces of my entire career. David and I now are kind of colleagues and we’ve known each other for years. He’s in the professional speaking hall of fame and he is kind of known for corporate customized comedy. But before he was in the speaking business, he was in show business and he worked with Steve Martin, Ellen degenerate. He appeared on evening at the improv.
RV (01:47):
He owned a chain of comedy clubs. And he’s just a funny dude and I’ve learned so much from him. And I actually recently we hired him because one of the things that he does is he owns a company that helps people write funnier speeches. And so I had a new bit that I was working on for a new audience. So it was a brand new piece of material and I wanted to get David’s eyes on it in his input. So he is continues even to this day to be one of my personal speech coaches, specifically in the realm of comedy. So I figured you got to meet David, we got to have him on, so welcome to the show.
DG (02:24):
Well, Rory, thanks so much. It’s oh, and again, you and I have known each other for probably close to two decades here, but but it’s great to see you evolve and you know, your humor has grown. I watch you now and I just go, ah, you got it. You, you know, you understand how important humor is to, to what we do for success here.
RV (02:44):
Totally. And, and it’s amazing. I, I I’ll say like, I, sometimes I’m genuinely amazed at how much of a skill this is and looking back at where I started to go, you know, if someone hires me do a speech, now they’re laughing their butts off. And I go, man, that is not who I was like, I did not know how to do that. And I think that’s, you know, the first thing I wanted to talk about is you really believe that humor can be learned to some extent, right? I mean, do you, do you, do you still feel that way? Do you feel more that way than you did 15 years ago? Or do you
DG (03:23):
No, I, I, no, I, I truly believe it’s a skill that can be learned. It can be refined. And it’s funny when we talk about humor, it, it, it’s almost like a dissecting a frog while they still alive. It’s just, you know, it’s, it’s people will listen and say, oh, well, that sounds very, very cut and dry. Well, the science of humor is cut and dry. It is, but yes, absolutely. You can learn it. And and as you’ve experienced, as you learn some of these tricks and techniques, you’ve just learned how to think. Funny.
RV (03:58):
Yeah. So w what does that mean? All right. So let’s, let’s dive into that for a second. So what does it mean to think funny? Like, why do we laugh? Or, or like, what are there’s different techniques here that apply, but like fundamentally, what do you, what are you trying to do that causes someone to laugh?
DG (04:21):
You’re trying to do something. That’s a surprise, something they’re not expecting. I’ll give you an example here. So I’m going to go back about 10 years, Rory that’s when you wrote your New York times bestselling book which was take the stairs. Everybody remembers
DG (04:38):
Copying seven steps to a trading, true success, but, okay. So let’s fast forward 10 years. You’ve learned through many of your clients. Not everybody has the same work ethic as Rory Vaden. So your new book for 2021 would be take the escalator seven less steps to achieving true success. Now, those who are just listening to the podcast on the video version of this, we’re actually showing a book. That’s a parody of Rory’s original book. So what we’ve done is just we’ve taken something that was already existing, and we’ve tweaked a word we’ve tweaked something by tweaking the original of something just a little bit, whether it’s a rhyme, whether it’s a letter I once spoke at a conference where the theme was together we’re better, but it was for the American wastewater association. And I said, oh, the original theme was supposed to be together. We’re wetter. You know, I just changed one word and it became funny. So to, to your question, it’s looking at words, looking at themes and how can we adjust, adapt them?
RV (05:51):
Hmm. Yeah, the surprise. I mean, I guess in one word you could say surprised that you’ll hear misdirection or, you know, you’re saying tweak, but like take the stairs, you know, as established as a theme. And then, you know, you kind of do that, that play and you’re it. And you think that’s basically what all of, all of humor comes down to is sort of this like element of surprise.
DG (06:13):
Right. But there there’s surprises. Step two, step one is observation. It’s looking it’s, it’s, it’s seeing. And again, I know this sounds kind of cut and dry, but the research that’s involved in any kind of, of, of making something funny is, is important. You have to kind of know the bigger picture, if that makes sense to, to be able to switch and adapt and adjust. Now, again, we’re talking primarily on customized humor, Rory for evergreen humor, you don’t need as much research. What I worked on for you was evergreen. That story will work anywhere anytime, hopefully for the next 10 years. Do you know what I’m saying? So there’s two types of humor, evergreen humor, and customized humor.
RV (07:04):
What’s the difference? What are,
DG (07:07):
Yeah. Evergreen should work all the time. There are comedians out there who have an act who they haven’t changed one word of it in 20 years. That’s evergreen. That means that humor. And again, for most speakers, professional speakers or professional business folks, if they create a presentation, they don’t have to necessarily change it. The humor that’s in there that’s crafted will work forever, but the customized humor is often funnier. If, if that makes sense, because it’s of the moment people are hearing it just about them in that moment. And it’s like, we’re all in on the secret together. We’re all in on this because only we know what that particular joke.
RV (07:55):
It’s like a inside. It’s like a big inside joke basically,
DG (07:58):
Right? Exactly.
RV (08:00):
A whole audience. Well, and I think what what’s super powerful is going so like for most of our clients and most not all of our clients are trying to be professional speakers. In fact, I would say even most of our members and clients, they’re just speaking as a marketing vehicle to like, to, you know, to, for people to find out about their service or their product or whatever it is that they offer. And it’s wonderful when you can have evergreen humor, because you have like signature stories about your life and your, whatever that you tell all the time. And once you have that down, then you kind of have like this sort of baseline of entertainment. And then the customized stuff is kind of like where you can have more fun and you can experiment. And I do think that’s part of what your magic like your secret sauce is customized. So talk, let’s dive in on the customized humor a bit. How do you even approach this? Because writing a joke is frigging scary by itself, but then going, okay, how do I write a new joke? Like a new thing that I’ve never tried out before. And I may never do again and go, but I’m going to try this because I think it’ll be funny this one time for this one audience, how do you, like, how do you even start with that?
DG (09:24):
And first of all, I want, I want to just, I’m going to back up to one thing you said there were, you saved, try it one time. If it’s a line you can use multiple times, one time is not always enough to get the reaction you want to test its efficacy. If it’s going to be funny now, if it’s the American wastewater association and that’s the only time you’re in front of them, then yeah. The, the water joke might be the only time. But to your, to your question, how do you figure out what’s funny, again, it goes back to the research. I always ask the same exact questions and looking at who the audience are. And again, for your clients, maybe who their prospects are, what are their pain points? What keeps them up at night? What are their frustrations?
DG (10:10):
And then you, you look at that and see, okay, how can I possibly find something about them that twists it? I call it the comment on the comment. If you ever look at a football game, you’ve got, you typically have two people broadcasting the game, the play by play guy and the color commentary guy. The play by play guy is the guy doing the content. The colored commentary is the funny line. In other words, here, I’ll give you, I’ll give you an example. I just wrote this for a client last week, he had a line in his presentation where he said by a show of hands who here is a multi-tasker and people would raise their hand. And then he’d go on to talk about multitasking. Well, the funny comment on the comment that I added was he says, by show of hands who hears a multi-tasker well, a really good multi-tasker could raise both hands and still be texting.
DG (11:08):
So that was the funny line. And it got a big laugh. He said, he told me later, you know, comment on the comment. It again, if your, if your audience Rory goes in, trying to be funny first, they’re going to be frustrated. They need to come up with their content. First, their sales presentation, first, their website. First don’t put the pressure of trying to be funny first, then look at it for how could we tweak this? What could we comment? What’s funny, what word could we change? What word is in our name of our company that could now be a funny acronym?
RV (11:46):
Yeah. Well, and so we, and we would, we would tell them, like, you know, we kind of think of it as baking a cake and you first got to get like the core ingredients in place, which is your content. And then you put the icing on, which is kind of like your stories. And then when you get to like the fancy frosting and the sprinkles, that’s more of like what the, what the, what the humor is. But what’s really cool about what you’re saying is even though, even though it’s kind of scary the idea of writing a joke and then writing a custom joke, that is this one time, what feels pretty safe and predictable to me is the idea of going, yeah, but if they’re frustrated about it, if this annoys them, if they’re angry about this, or if this is the thing, driving everyone nuts, it’s pretty safe.
RV (12:34):
It’s a pretty safe bet to go. Even if I can just find a creative way to bring it up, they’re going to laugh. And even if they don’t laugh, they’re going to feel special. They’re going to be like, oh, look at, look at what you, what you, what, you know, but it’s, it’s just the frustrations. So that’s, that’s weird to me. Like, why is it that things that are frustrating make us laugh? It’s kind of seems almost opposite. Like you go, if, if this is the thing that frustrates us, I wouldn’t want to bring that up.
DG (13:05):
Knowledging it you’re, you’re, you’re talking about what everybody is experiencing and the same thing works for a sales call, or, you know, if there’s a dentist and, and he, or she has prospective patients, you know, you, you, you then make, do you make note of the tooth pain and then you come up with something clever in your marketing materials to that. The way I look at it is, you know, we, we do business with people that we like. We like people that make us laugh. It’s this natural progression. So every opportunity you can have to add, the humor is going to just build your brand that much better.
RV (13:49):
Yeah. And, and the growing, just like to use the dentist example, you know, is to put yourself. So it’s one thing, if I’m a speaker and I am coming to speak at an event, and I’m sending them a pre-program questionnaire, I’m doing, going to their website, or I’m doing interviews, and I’m saying, Hey, what are the things that frustrate you? But if I’m a dentist, I don’t have to ask. I know I already know, because I hear it every day. It’s just kind of thinking, like, I think this is huge. That step one is observation. As you’re going ask yourself, what are they scared of? What are they afraid of? What is annoying to them? And then, and then basically just find it, find a clever way to, to bring it up. Is that, is that
DG (14:33):
Yeah. Okay. So your, your example there of the, of the dentist I did a punch up for a gentleman who consults in the dental industry not too long ago. And I don’t know how we got to it. He had something in his original content that drove my idea because I was thinking of, well, what frustrates your prospects and their eventual clients. And we came up with something where it says on the website the tooth, you can handle the tooth. And we had the picture from a few good not a few good men, the the Jack Nicholson one. So by doing, instead of the truth, the tooth, you know, this becomes now something very funny on the website. You can handle the tooth and tooth is italicized. Again, as you and I sit here, maybe not hilarious, but for the person looking at it, who’s thinking about their tooth. That hurts. Bam. We, you know, we’ve, we’ve hit, we’ve hit a nerve, no pun intended.
RV (15:32):
Well, and yeah, just for everyone to know, like the reason why it’s not funny to hear two people talking about comedy is because there’s no surprise. Surprise is the whole element of laughter. And when you, when you’re sitting here listening to it, that’s what makes comedians so amazing is like, it’s one thing when you’re in a business presentation, like for all of us, we actually don’t have to be that good because no, one’s expecting us to be funny. Like you come in as a, as a speaker, as a financial advisor, as an accountant and attorney as like, like no one expects you to be funny. It’s different. When you tell people you’re a comedian, they they’re sitting there expecting you to make them laugh, which is way harder. So it’s a, we have a little bit of it easier. This is like you know, almost like just a little covert operation for, for most of us. And people will laugh because they’re not expecting it. And so the bar is set a little bit lower. Okay. So you first observed, so I liked that. I get that, that feels doable. And, and by observe and research, I’m just going, like, what are their pains? What are their annoyances? What are their frustrations? And then what’s, and then what’s next.
DG (16:45):
Well, the, and you, you look at it. There, I mean, again, there are certain tricks and techniques the rule of three, I mean, that’s an old comedy route, a rule where you, you list three things in a row, the first two normal. And the third one is the surprise. It’s the, you know, the, the derailment, the, you know, the one you’re not expecting again, most of your listeners are just listening to this. They can’t see I don’t have a lot of hair, so my three might be. I remember when I first started, I had dreams, I had hopes I had hair, you know, boom, boom, switch like that. So that’s a rule of three. Here’s a stupid one, but it works. Odd numbers are funnier than even numbers. Rory, I have no idea why, but I have tested this. I have road tested. This a seven is funnier than a six. I don’t know. I don’t know why planned mispronunciations, if there’s a word in your, you know, your audience’s a vernacular in their, in their industry that is hard to pronounce, perhaps you pretend to mispronounce it twice. And then the third time you give a synonym. So you might say something like, they know there’s an old colloquium, there’s an old colloquium. There’s an old saying that sometimes would it be okay, so you, boom, boom, switch like that.
RV (18:16):
Yep. Well, and even that is kind of, it comes back to that frustration concept is it’s like, it’s this annoyance the of saying the word colloquialism is so difficult, it’s so difficult. And you’re, you’re like commenting on the thing that frustrates them, which is exactly what comedians, that’s, what stand up c’mon comedians do. And it’s nonstop, right? They’re telling jokes about being married. They’re telling jokes about their kids, about going to the airport, about paying their taxes about like, and all they’re doing is commenting on the things that frustrate us somehow, which is it’s amazing how simple that is.
DG (18:53):
It really is. And I have yet to come across an industry. I mean, I I’ve either spoken to or punched up, you know presentations in a myriad of industries. And I’m yet to find one industry that doesn’t have at least top 10 frustrations. I mean, I’m, I’m on a, I’m on a call tonight with a group of pharmacy students to get my research done for a presentation for pharmacy. So I’m gonna you know, just ask them, you know, tell me everything that’s frustrating too. I’ll, I’ll get 40 things and I will then turn those, what we should do is do a part two. I should come in, you know, in another podcast and tell you here’s where the 40 things that were frustrating. And here’s what I found funny in them or how we made it funny.
RV (19:41):
And, but the, the essence of that is going, what is sort of a surprising way I can bring that up or like a natural way to kind of bring it into the presentation? Yeah,
DG (19:51):
Yeah. I mean, and again, it’s hard to explain it without you know, without a concrete examples. So again, if for argument’s sake like going back to the customization, if you’re in a venue, if you’re doing a sales pitch or a speech in a room that is freezing, you know, like you know, there’s just, you know, the, everybody is sweaters and this and that. You’d acknowledge it by saying something like, I’m not sure if the folks at this hotel know, but there is a brand new invention it’s called a thermostat or something like that. Again, you kind of soft and then boom hit. Now. We’re not trying to make people comedians, you know, that’s, that’s not sure that that is not the goal here at all. It is just to find those moments of levity and the way I always look at humor, it’s like an EKG. In other words, you’re talking, you know, normal, normal content laugh, normal, normal content laugh. And that these moments of humor should be as, as much as possible throughout your entire, you know whether it be your website, your pitch, your, your speech, your presentation, whatever that might be.
RV (21:07):
So other than frustration. So I get that one. And, and again, like, even though you’re saying it helps to have a specific example, but it would be like, okay, let’s pretend for a second. If you were a standup comedian and you were going to write a set or a bit on marriage, the very first thing you would do is go, what frustrates people about marriage, right. And it’s like, whatever my wife is telling me, always what to do, or my husband is in spends forever in the bathroom. Or is that the, is that the best place to look or are there, are there other places additionally, that you look or do you kind of focus on frustrations as like that’s the, that’s the, the safe, go-to
DG (21:47):
Easiest thing, because it’s the commonality of everyone. If you were doing something on marriage and you, and again, you just give the example, let’s say of the bathroom. And again, this, this isn’t anything like I would say for a corporate audience necessarily, but and again, I’m just riffing here, but something like you know, my, my wife says you know put the seat down. But you know, she only has to remind me about 117 times per day. You know, it’s exaggerates exaggeration, you know, normally it’s a once or twice, you know, but the, it’s the exaggeration of that watched comics, study comics, all those books, but your, your listeners can’t see it, but there’s hundreds of books behind me. Every single one of them is either a biography or an autobiography of a comic or a textbook on humor. And you learn, you observe, you watch.
RV (22:42):
Yeah. Exaggeration is is is a core part of this, but like, even on social media there you know, th there was one that is like you know, all these mommy blogs, like mommy accounts and stuff. And there was one that I saw that was like this, that said, I birthed a baby and less time than it takes my husband to take a poop. Right. And it’s like, so they’re, they’re taking a frustration, then they’re acknowledging it, and then they’re exaggerating it. And it it’s almost like you observe it, you acknowledge it, and then you exaggerate it.
DG (23:18):
Yeah. That’s, I mean, you, you kind of nailed it on the, on the head there. I mean, that is, that’s really it, but at one word of caution, though, especially for folks who are not used to using humor, you do have to just make sure that your humor is appropriate and relevant. That’s where some newbies get into trouble sometimes. My mantra is when in doubt, leave it out. You know, if you’re, if you’re, if you’re the least hesitant, oh, good. This offend somebody, you know, and that, and that, that bar keeps, you know, changing on what, what might be appropriate and what might not be. So I, I wanna make sure we put that in the podcast today that when in doubt do leave it out.
RV (24:04):
Yeah. I mean, that, that’s really huge because that’s the one time it can backfire is, which is one of the reasons why self-deprecating humor is so wonderful because you’re just like, you’re less likely to offend someone you’re less likely to like, run into a I mean, they just, they tend to be a little bit more forgiving when you’re, when you’re talking about yourself, like your hair joke, right. If you call someone else bald, that’s more dangerous than if you you know, use it. You’re like on yourself.
DG (24:36):
And also there’s, there’s a misconception out there that that humor, that tragedy plus time equals humor. People always, oh, you can’t talk about something bad now, you know, in the news, but you can talk about it later tragedy plus time equals humor. That’s not always true. There are certain things that are topical that just you know, I speak a lot in the healthcare world and I’m yet to write one joke about COVID, you know, I’ll write things on the periphery of it, but the disease itself, you, you, you know, you can’t poke fun at it. So again, again, watching your subject matter it just, you know, you just wanted to be very careful.
RV (25:21):
So news topics is another great place to look, right? Cause you know, like when you say observe it, there’s a couple things that jump out to me, you know, the safe one is like self-deprecating stuff, which has also ever evergreen as you describe it. But it’s like if I come out in shorts, which I don’t, but if I did, everybody would notice that I have skinny legs. That’d be like every single person would notice it. And so I could acknowledge it, exaggerate it. Like if I just go, what are people thinking? When they look at me, that’s observe it. Then I come out and acknowledge it. And I say, you may notice that, you know, my legs are, you know, make, make flamingos jealous or something like that. Right. So the, the, so you’ve got that, then you’ve got sort of the customized just frustrations, but then another place to, it seems like to pick up some good humor is in inside of pop culture. Now you you’re talking about COVID is like a bad example, which I would agree, right? Like that’s not a laughing matter and it, you know, it, it, it certainly wouldn’t be for at least a very long while. But, but there’s certain things in pop culture that you can get away with you.
DG (26:32):
Oh, absolutely. Pop culture. I, I subscribed to entertainment weekly, not so much because I want to, you know you know, read, you know, all, all the nuances. I want to go big picture. I want to see what shows are the most popular, what movies, what podcasts. So I can drop in a reference to Ted lasso. And 80% of my audience is going to know if I say, well, I’m not going to go all Ted lasso on you here with some homespun wisdom dropping in just a pop culture, reference, you know, the audience. He said, Ted lasso like that. And to your point earlier, it doesn’t have to be as funny because you’re perceived as in the know. And a lot of times when I would hit a town I would look in the local news. You know, whether it’s online or some, some towns even still have hard copies of newspapers. It’s pretty cool. But I’d look at the local news and see, you know, okay, let’s say there’s a restaurant that’s closing. So let’s say it’s called the spaghetti barn. So everyone knows the spaghetti barn closed in, you know, Cincinnati. So I might open by saying, well, your, your, your meeting planners have been so, so kind to me, they gave me a free dinner for 10 at the spaghetti bar and everybody
RV (28:03):
Goes nuts.
DG (28:04):
Yeah. They gave me something of no value. So again, that little bit of research have you ever had Sam Richter on as a guest on your podcast? I don’t know if you’ve had,
RV (28:14):
Oh man. I don’t know that. I don’t think we have, but I, we should, because he’s a genius. He’s a great speaker, but he’s got some great systems and stuff I’ve learned. I’ve learned some cool stuff from him over the years.
DG (28:25):
Yeah. Cause he’s the master at learning research of research you know finding stuff that you can then, you know, make funny. I use a questionnaire and I’m great at interviewing. I look at my own programs. I do probably 80% of my time is spent researching you know, and, and tweaking and writing and then presenting it’s the easy part.
RV (28:53):
Gosh. Yeah. And when you’re, when you’re back to the pop culture things, you’re really just looking at headlines cause it’s gotta be a big enough, which makes it easier for you research wise, because if it’s not a major headline, not enough of the people in the audience will know it. But if it’s a, if it’s a major headline, it’s pretty safe to think that like everybody’s going to know it. And it almost feels like the more recent something is and the more relevant or like customized it is. The more forgiving the audience will be in terms of how funny it has to be. But it’s like, if you’re talking about the spaghetti barn, if that just happened, you know, last week and everybody knows about it and it’s hyper specific to town, that’s even funnier somehow than what’s going on in the political election that everybody knows about.
DG (29:49):
Absolutely. And, and just, just again, another little caveat there I never do political humor or write political humor. It it’s just become, unfortunately, just too risky. Because in any given audience or any given prospects 50 up potential, 50% of that prospects, you know, or, or audience will not agree with whatever that humor might be. So, you know, the late night talk show guys, you know, th th you know, they certainly show, you know, what their thinking is, but for those of us in business, my opinion is that you can’t show it. For, for the purposes of humor, you, you just
RV (30:35):
It’s a mixed, a mixed audience,
DG (30:38):
Right. So I do look for current things, pop culture things, but I’m very cautious to steer clear of the you know, there’s, and there’s great political humor that you could use, but it’s, it’s risky.
RV (30:52):
Yeah. So I guess you’d say any, anything that’s super controversial or emotionally charged is best to just kind of stay away from it. It’s more, but it’s, but it’s more like the lighthearted things like Ted last was a great, a great example. Our pastor this last Sunday made a reference to Ted lasso. And everybody went nuts just because he said Ted lasso in church.
DG (31:13):
Yeah, exactly. That. Or if you just look at again entertainment weekly or in any kind of pop culture kind of thing, you know, we’ll just give you those high level things. My point on it is you don’t have to necessarily know it, let, let the you know, the, the other, you know, pop culture writers do all the heavy lifting for you. Although I started watching Ted lasso and it is funny and it is,
RV (31:39):
Yeah, it’s great. It’s super, it’s, it’s, it’s super cute. We, we love it because J doesn’t like to watch any shows that have violence or drama or sickness or anything, she only like shows that make her laugh. So we’ve been, we’ve been all into.
DG (31:55):
And, and that’s a great example. So something like the Ted lasso, the dialogue in there, what you’re laughing at most of the time are those comments on the comment, you know, it’s, it’s the storylines being driven. We’ll call that the content, or, you know, in your listeners world, that might be their sales presentation. But what you laugh at are those comments on the common Ted lasso, we’ll make some remark that is hilarious based on what just happened or what just was said, if that makes
RV (32:27):
It’s kind of that, like, that analogy used earlier of like, you’re basically a commentator, like I’m comedian is basically a giant commentator on life. It’s like, here’s everything we all go through and they’re like, just commenting on it. Right.
DG (32:42):
And then another thing, if, if your listeners can find something that works in a humor vein and can put it early on in their presentation, there’s a thing called a callback. And I think you you’ve talked about that before in other podcasts, a callback is where you bring back that thing that got the laugh again for you. No more lamps.
RV (33:04):
Yeah. So yeah, we, we haven’t talked, we haven’t we teach callbacks in our in our world-class presentation crafted event, but we actually haven’t talked about it on the podcast. So take a sec. Cause, cause here’s, you know, part of what I’m hoping people see, and this is something that I’ve learned from you and others is like, you don’t have to just like sit down and think of a joke. It’s there’s these places that it comes from and you go, what are self-deprecating things I could bring up? What are frustrations that people have what’s going on in pop culture. And then callbacks is another easy place to look for for humor. And it’s like, it’s a lay-down right.
DG (33:46):
So there there’s a piece I do in my own presentation about I use a funny prop it’s a, it’s a restaurant pager, like where you’re waiting for a table. And again, your listeners won’t see this, but anyone watching the video it’s hard to see because of the lighting there, but I have a little one it’s actually an ad specialty, put my name on it. So early on in the program, I get a huge laugh on my tables, ready, my tables, ready to go. The, the premise is that I carry my own with me, you know, my own restaurant pager. And it gets a huge, huge lamp. Well, what I do Rory is, and then I put the blinking one in my pocket. And then later on, you know, there, there are, I think, three other moments in the speech where I got my tables ready, my tables ready. And again, out of context right now, it’s not that funny in the moment. It’s hilarious. Cause we’ve called back to a laugh again. That they’re all kind of in, on, in, on the secret there.
RV (34:47):
Yeah. All you have to do, what’s amazing about callbacks is it literally doesn’t even have to be a, a setup or a punchline or any, like, all you have to do is say the thing that made people laugh earlier. The other thing that’s really clever for using callbacks is it, it doesn’t have to be a callback to your own stuff. It can be a callback to the speaker who was right before you, or earlier that morning, people go bananas over that.
DG (35:11):
They think you’re so much more clever than you might have snarly.
RV (35:17):
That’s why I’m in it. That’s why I’m interested in. That’s why I like, I like it. We’ll lose her.
DG (35:22):
Those are all tricks and techniques that will work. If I’m, if I’m speaking in a morning program, if there’s a general session speakers before me, I always go in the day before, you know, assuming my schedule can, can make that happen, to watch every other general session speaker. I do a, you know, a wrap-up of every other one who’s gone on before me. And again, it’s just acknowledging certain things they said. And then I comment on their comment, not my comment, like you said, I comment on their comment. So even if you have a business professional who might be following other sales presentations, you know, you, you know what your competitors are selling, what their bullet parts are, bullet points, excuse me, are, you can chew, you can gently make fun of your competitors. You know if I’m working for a T-Mobile and I, and I’m pitching against Verizon, you know, Verizon says they have great coverage, you know? Yeah. In, in zip code 3 7, 9 1 9, you know, again, I mean, again, I’m just riffing here, but you know, poking fun, gentle fun at your competitor and the prospects will laugh. Hmm.
RV (36:33):
Yeah. That’s and hecklers actually I’ve noticed are another place that you can get call backs to. Sometimes someone will say something out funny from the audience, some of the best lines I’ve ever written came from something I said, and a heckler said something and everybody laughed and I wrote it down and I’m like, thanks for that gift. I’ll I’ll add that myself next time. Because if it, if it worked in that moment, it’ll it’ll work again. Well this is awesome, David, and, and, and a couple of things you all, so you can tell by listening there, there’s, there’s, there’s a science to this and an art. There is there’s skill. A lot of this is experience. And I would tell you listening that w if you can have some evergreen content, like, for example, your backstory and almost every presentation you give at some point, you’re going to tell people about who you are, where you came from.
RV (37:31):
I think having your own little mini kind of semi stand-up comedy routine about your backstory. If you could work on that one little bit, you can use it in pretty much every presentation you give for the rest of your life. And it doesn’t have to be Ellen degenerate kind of funny. It can be two or three little chuckles that just give you confidence and break the ice and, and, you know, help you feel comfortable before you move into your speech or your podcast interview, or your sales presentation, or your internal company meeting. And if you struggle with this, David David can help you. So he’s, he’s one of our trusted vendor partners. So if you email us, if you go, Hey, I want some help writing this, just send an email to info at brand builders, group.com and put funnier speeches in the subject line. So email info at brand builders, group.com put funnier speeches in the subject line. And then we’ll connect you with David. Of course you can go find him, you know, on your own, but we’ll, we’ll connect you with him. And you know, he’ll talk with you to see if, if, if you’re someone he can help and hopefully he can help you because if David can’t help, you know, but
DG (38:46):
I think I can, I have worked with, with other business professionals, who’ve dealt with counting law and, and some of the most, you know, you would think dry subject. I believe that every topic, every industry has room for humor. I really do
RV (39:06):
Totally. And I like, I really am taking away. One of the big things from this conversation is don’t, don’t do it in a mean way. Don’t, don’t do it in a risky way. Don’t offend people. You don’t have to there’s enough light, safe, common frustrations that we all have. There’s enough pop culture references. There’s enough callbacks. There’s a there’s enough little quirks of everyday life that you can just observe it, acknowledge it, exaggerate it, and, you know, get a chuckle and have a great day for everybody. So David is thanks so much for coming on the show, man, and as always, thanks for your, for your mentorship and counsel and yeah.
DG (39:46):
Oh my pleasure. Thank you so much. It was a great to be with you today.

Ep 227: How To Find Your Big Idea with Jeff Goins | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):
Holy moly. Jeff goings blew my mind. It blew my mind. Obviously say AJ this where we’re, this was, this was one of my favorite interviews as it relates to content, like your big idea, like how do you find like the kind of idea that can build a career off of? What’s really good, really clean. And anyways, I’m talking to AJ our CEO, my business partner, my woman just we’re here breaking down. We’re about to break down the interview with Jeff Goins and it’s good stuff from Jeff Goins.
AJV (00:45):
Yes, really, because it’s really, really good. I’m guessing that was my transition. You want me,
RV (00:51):
That’s a transition. That was my casual toss over to my cohost. Well, you, but you invited him to do, to come and talk to our members.
AJV (01:00):
So excited about this. I think this is going to be awesome. In terms of like, just like really leaning into what are you creating content about. And, and this is like really about, you know, book content, but you could really take this and apply it to any sort of content that you’re building, which is what I love about interviews like this is there a universal, even if they have a targeted emphasis on the actual interview. But here’s the thing. I love this. I love this because it reminds me of my celebrity crush J-Lo. And so my first takeaway is that good ideas make bad books, reason being, is that a good idea is just that it’s a good idea and that’s not good enough. Good ideas are average. And I love this. And lo if you guys have ever watched the show world of dance, it did not renew.
AJV (01:46):
I don’t know how that happened, but three seasons, four seasons can’t remember, it’s really, really good, but I loved one of the things that Jlo said. I think it was season two and she was like, it’s not good enough just to be good. You have to be different. It has to be unique. It has to be original. There’s just too many people who are good at something, but what is it that is unique and eye catching and scroll stopping what goes, wow. I never thought about it that way, or I’ve never heard it that way, or it’s never been explained that way, or that is a novel idea in terms of how we’re approaching something that maybe we had a construct in our brain that was very set in stone, and then someone comes along and goes, no, it’s not about how you calendar stuff. It’s about how you think about stuff, right. To tee up to my man.
AJV (02:42):
But I think that’s really good. And that’s a really important it’s like, you don’t have to create new stuff. You just have to go, how do you rearrange this and put your spin and your take on it. Right. And I love that because I think so often we think we have to come up with this brand new idea and it’s like, are there any new brand new, new ideas? I don’t think so, but it’s the way that you rearrange it. It’s the way that you, we explain it. It’s your interpretation that makes it so original and unique. And it’s not good enough just to be good. It’s gotta be different. It’s gotta be original. It’s gotta be your take on it. And so I think that’s just a great place for us all to start. The more you can just leave live into your uniqueness in that the better it’s going to be.
RV (03:26):
Hey man. I mean, that was there, there were a couple of lines. That was my, my first takeaway is very much related to this. Like you’ve picked up that one where you said good ideas, make bad books. Another line that he said that was kind of in that same vein was ordinary ideas get forgotten. And that really hit me as like kind of a sobering thing. And then the other thing I loved about the interview, so that was very kind of like alarming and guide, oh, man, it really grabbed me to go, what, what is different? Like what, what are we doing? That’s different and unique. And then he kind of gave two really tactical formulas kind of all throughout. But, but you know, I, as I went back and reflected on the interview, there was sort of like two tactical formulas for how to not be forgotten and for how to not just be, you know, consumed.
RV (04:16):
And the first one was, he said, an interesting idea is something that is 80% the same as what we’ve always heard, but then 20% different. And so that was really powerful to be like, it’s gotta be close enough that it’s familiar to people and we can go, oh, I like that. I get it. That is true. But then 20% different to go, oh, but I’ve never thought of that. I’ve never heard it like that. And so I thought that was a super tactical way to like position the same, but different. And then the other thing he said, which is something actually we’ve, we’ve taught our members about specifically with Ted talks is that you think X, but really why that’s a really great formula for a big idea is you think X, but really why. And it kind of also lends to that sort of like 20%, 20% different rule. And I mean, I could see this 20% different role becoming something that we use a lot. We might have to like coin it after Jeff to be like the goin’s the goins rule of 20% or, well, maybe we’ll have to come up with something. So anyways, I had the same, I had the same takeaway as you, as you have the first one.
AJV (05:28):
Yeah. Well, I would just like tag on one little quote that I would add in there. And I thought he was really good. It says, you, you change the world by changing people’s minds. And that’s like very much like a tag, what you just said. And it’s like, that’s what people fall in love with is like this idea, right? It’s like you change the world by changing people’s minds. So I just thought that I would add that in there. So that’s kind of like a transition it’s I just flew my earphones out of my ear almost. So here’s my second one is that people buy the idea of the book before they buy the book. And I think that’s really important because they’re not buying the words on the pages, that’s what they get after they buy it. They’re buying the idea of the book.
AJV (06:21):
And I think we get consumed with the words on the pages and going then, and then the note, why are people going to buy this? It’s the idea that the book represents, not just the words on the pages, because they’re never going to get there. If they do not pick up that book or put, turn, play on audio to listen to it. And it’s like, how much have you spent going, what is the idea of this book? Like, what am I trying to change someone’s mind about what am I trying to make better or easier, but what is the idea of the book? And I think to me, the reason that’s so important because that’s the sales strategy, right? That’s the marketing strategy. I love one of the things that he said, at some point in this really good interview, he goes, once the book is written, basically your marketing hopes are over, right?
AJV (07:14):
And it’s like, you’ve got to have the hook of why are people going to buy this before you write the book? Right. And I think there’s some real, real power in that I’m going, it’s like, what are people going to buy in terms of the idea? Because I think that that is the sales and marketing strategy of the hopes. Even if the book ends up being a real let down. So I think there’s a lot of power in that is like, what is the idea of it? Because that’s what people are really going to buy into. That’s also a huge part of the sales and marketing concept.
RV (07:47):
Yep. That, that stuck with me too. And I think we, when we teach one of the things we help with our members, a lot of times is helping them come up with titles. And we talk about, you have to learn to separate the truth from the title. The truth is inside the book. Like it’s the thing, that’ll change their life, but the title is the transformation. It’s the promise of what the book provides. And that’s what you’re really selling. It reminds me of a couple of the metaphors that we use where it’s like, you know, if you need to get a dog to take medicine, you put the medicine inside a peanut butter. And so it’s like the title of the book, the marketing of the book is the peanut butter. And then the text, the words on the page is, as you say, J that’s the medicine, but so it’s so difficult for an author to separate those two because we’re so attached to the medicine where we’re so attached to the truth, to the, to the concepts that we’re writing about.
RV (08:45):
It’s hard to kind of separate ourselves and go, okay, this is the thing I’m teaching, but what’s the bigger idea that I’m selling. What’s the, what’s the payoff that I’m promising? What is the destination that I’m, I’m taking people to. And, and so I think you gotta be able to separate those and then even think about, okay, how do I package this idea so that they, people will buy the idea? And that’s really what they’re buying is, is the idea. But if you can’t, if you can’t separate in your mind, those two things, then you’re going to have a hard time. And, and frankly, most of us, like most, most authors don’t separate them because you’re not trained to, and publishers don’t teach you to, cause they’re, they’re focused on the book itself. Unless you really have somebody who understands marketing, who’s coaching you and guiding through the process. You’re, you’re not going to think of it in that way. So that’s yeah, so that’s good. Separate got a separate the, the title from the truth, the cover, the cover from the content and the idea of the book versus what’s in the book. So what was your third one?
AJV (09:57):
Yep. So my third one kind of similar, but just a little bit different and it’s really just how you actually put the book together. So thinking through chapters and the words on the pages. So I kind of thought to like big idea to like the tangible, like, how do you outline a book and how do you get in process? That process started. And I loved what he said on that. That was really, really good. It’s like, front-load the book with the big idea, like the entire front part of the book to be just front-loaded with the idea of the idea. And then the rest of the book should just illustrate that idea. But it’s like, front-load that book with those big ideas that are, I’m not going to say controversial in a negative way, but that are thought provoking that are different. That would go, I thought it was X, but he’s saying it’s Y but not how or why or what. It’s just the idea to get people going. I got to know where this is going to go, then use the rest of the book to illustrate that big idea. And I loved that. It’s like, you’ve got to sell the idea, then you can illustrate the idea. And that’s kind of like a way of outlining the book. I thought it was really good, simple
RV (11:07):
Save, save the best for first that’s one of our mantras around a brand builders group always saved the best for first, push it up front, you know, capture their attention. For me, a part of why I love this interview is because you could just see, Jeff’s like, you could hear, Jeff’s love for the art of writing and not just his love for it in the way that like, oh, he’s good at it. And he really likes it, but he, he places a value on it that, of, of the importance of it. And you, you know, Asia, you actually said this earlier, which was what my third takeaway was, which is that you can change the world by changing people’s minds. And for him, it was like, he really cares about helping people write better ideas, not just to sell more books, but because better ideas make a better world.
RV (11:59):
Like he actually said that like better ideas make a better world. And I really felt aligned with him on that as this kind of like, just like for us, it’s like, we’re not trying to just help people grow their, their reach or their platform for like vanities. Cause we’re, we’re trying to make a difference in the world. And I really felt that heart from him of like, don’t forget, don’t forget to work on the book. And I think, I think so many authors are like, oh, they think about writing the book. And then they come to brown doodlers and we’re like, Hey, you got to build the audience before you build the book. And you know, it’s not New York times bestselling author it’s New York times or not New York times best writing author. It’s New York times bestselling author. And we teach a lot of the authors how to do it.
RV (12:39):
But, but I think this was a good like reminder of like the return to good create good content, like original like create, create great ideas because they’re interesting because they’re fascinating because they’re new, but because they make the world a better place, like put together, put in the energy to come up with ideas that make the world a better place. And so we want to do both. We want to help you create amazing ideas. And then we want to help you tell the whole world that there, there is that you can make a lot of impact and a lot of money doing it. So I just loved it. Great episode, definitely a top one, go back, listen to the Jeff Goins interview and keep coming back here. I mean, th the interviews are just incredible. We learned so much hope. We hope and trust that you are too. Thank you for being here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 226: How To Find Your Big Idea with Jeff Goins

RV (00:07):
Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:54):
Real artists don’t starve. That is a philosophy that I believe in that is the title of my good friend, Jeff Goins book. One of his books, he’s written five books. I believe he also wrote the art of work and he is a true writer, a pure love, amazing, talented, gifted writer, which I admire because I write because it’s necessary to speak and do the other things we do. But he is he [email protected]. He’s been featured in psychology today, entrepreneur Forbes. He lives here in Nashville, so I’ve known him for years now. At this point, we just kind of like grew up in the, in the business together. And he’s just one of the coolest dudes and he spends a lot of time with manuscripts, ones that he’s writing. He’s helping a lot of other people write their own manuscripts these days. And one of the things that he told me recently was we don’t let people write bad books and I love that. And that’s what we’re talking about. So we have Jeff Goins here, who I brought on for free consulting and writing advice for me. I’m going to take advantage of it. You’re welcome to listen in to the conversation. Jeff, welcome to the show, buddy.
JG (02:11):
Rory, happy to be here. I am looking at your backyard, which looks like a painting. And I’m remembering a time when you had a dinner party when I didn’t know where the door to your house was. And I came through that backdrop. I’m like, is this where we go anyway? Happy to be here. Love that house. Yeah.
RV (02:30):
You been to the real, you’ve been to the real Veda and Villa. You’ve been to the real. You’ve been to the real spot, man. Is that the name? Vaden Villa. Yeah. We call it Vaden Villa and that cause if we ever put it on the market in Nashville, it’s like, I think we could probably sell it for like 10 times over asking price,
JG (02:48):
Right? Yeah. Dave Ramsey’s house is on the market. You could probably get something similar.
RV (02:52):
Yeah. We can sell ours and buy one of Dave’s garage bays. Exactly. Well, buddy. So I want to talk about writing an awesome book. And first of all, like let’s talk about the, the, the, the ideation process. You said, you said something. We were G jibber, John, before we got started here. And you said that good ideas make bad books. Why do you say that? What does that mean?
JG (03:28):
Everybody’s got an idea for a book and they think that idea is pretty good and I wouldn’t disagree with them. And the problem is that a good idea is not good enough. Good ideas are average. They are taken for granted. What most people call a good idea is a somewhat obvious observation about something true in the world. That thing could be your story. This is where a lot of people get stuck. They have something significant happened to them. They beat cancer, they lost 200 pounds. They you know built a business, whatever. And, and they think the story in itself because it’s so significant to them. And they talk to a handful of friends. I go, yeah, like they can see that it’s significant to the person that it happened to. And so their friends often encourage them. Right? If you have friends who are not professional writers, encouraging you to write a book, which is what I hear, 90% of all my friends say, you know, I need to do this.
JG (04:23):
90% of people are saying that they’ve got a good idea and their friends are telling them that’s not enough. And I’m not here to dissuade anybody. I’m here to challenge you to write something that people would pay attention to. And you can go do that. That this is what most people do is they have a good idea. Their friends were not professional writers, right? Who are unqualified. Right. Think about this for a second. Nobody thinks about this, but just because your friends. Yeah. All my friends, I’m pretty good at swimming. So I should become an Olympian Olympians. Do they know what it takes? Writing a book is as you know, Rory Vaden and a limpic act, it’s hard. Lots of people want to do it. Most people who start don’t finish it. And I want to help people finish their books. But I also have a commitment to the book itself, to the world of books, to the Pantheon of literature, that we’re not gonna let more bad books go out into the world because it’s easy to put a book into the world that is relatively easy.
JG (05:17):
I could write something on Microsoft word today, upload it to kdp.amazon.com and it would be published in a day or two. And so the fact that that opportunity exists is one amazing. And two, it should feel, we should feel a burden of responsibility. Any time something becomes dramatically easier. We should take a moment and stop and go. Just because I can do this doesn’t mean I should. And if I’m going to do this, I want to do it well. So everybody starts with a good idea and good ideas are average. They’re ordinary and ordinary ideas get forgotten. The book itself could be great. You know, they often are good books, but that is not enough to get people talking in the way that you so, like what makes that an idea? Yeah.
RV (06:08):
I thought I love this. Like what you just said, ordinary ideas get forgotten. Like that’s very sobering. And you know, like, I mean, you can see that just on any social media posts, right. You post it and it just immediately buried, like buried, gone disappears. So like if good ideas make bad books. Yes. What are the ideas that make great books? How the, how the heck do we find them or make them
JG (06:32):
The idea is not to be better than good it’s to find your interesting edge. So the opposite of good is not great. It’s interesting. Ordinary ideas, good ideas. What I call a good ideas, an ordinary idea, really the sky is blue. People should be nice. You know, littering causes pollution, right? These are obvious ideas. They’re not untrue. They’re not even bad ideas. They’re just boring. And the way that you change people’s minds that you change the world as you change people’s minds. And the way that you change people’s minds is you introduce enough novelty to them that they remember it. So consider a spectrum on one end of the spectrum, you have ordinary, that’s boring, ordinary ideas get forgotten. And the other end of the spectrum, you have absurd, absurd ideas, get rejected somewhere in between ordinary and absurd, as interesting and interesting is always more like towards absurd than you think it should be.
JG (07:33):
Right? And so one of the things that I experienced in my own writing and in working with other people on their book ideas, and we have to start at the idea because as Ryan holiday told me years ago, when I hired him to help me market real artists, don’t starve. He said, as soon he goes, I’ve got to work on the book while you’re writing it. I said, what? No, no, no marketing happens after you write the book. And he talks more about this in perennial seller. If you want, if those listening along what to read more about it, but he said something I never forgot. He said, once the book is written, the marketing is over. And there’s some truth to that. I would imagine in the work that you guys do where, you know, you can’t you can’t put lipstick on a pig, right?
JG (08:12):
There’s that’s Ogilvy quote, good marketing makes a bad product fail faster. You’ve got to be able to innovate the thing. So we want to do stuff that’s interesting and interesting. I define as 80%, same, 20% different, you know, this, this, that Don Miller StoryBrand same but different concepts. You want, you want it to be something that people go, oh yeah, a business book or a memoir. I know how those are, you know, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. But here’s the 20% difference. Here’s the thing, because we know it works like books are a 500 plus year old technology and they really haven’t changed that much. They they’re they’re words on a page, that’s it. Right. And instead of using paper, sometimes we use screens, but it’s still the same thing. Or you read it into a microphone, but it’s just words. Right. And so the technology hasn’t really changed that much. So you don’t want to mess with it too much. You know, I remember when people want to do like video books and all kinds of crazy, crazy multimedia things, and it didn’t really work. And here we are 30 plus years into the internet and books still are books. And so 80%, same, 20% different find something that everybody’s saying and then add some novelty to it, make it interesting. Change it up.
RV (09:29):
How do you do that? Right. Cause that’s like a, there’s like a delicate balance that you’re talking about here. There is. If it’s too unfamiliar, I can’t understand it. I can’t get my mind wrapped around it. I don’t know, word that
JG (09:43):
We call that absurd.
RV (09:44):
Okay. If it’s too much the same, it’s like, okay, I’ve already heard it. This is nothing new. This is same old thing, regurgitated. This sounds like this person or that person or whatever. So how do you, you know, I almost kind of visualize this as like, I’m, I’m looking for, I’m looking for the goldmine. Like where do I dig? Like where do I go on? This is the, this is the part where I can nuance it.
JG (10:11):
Yep. It’s like cooking and interesting newness. Novelty is like salt. And, and if you’ve ever cooked, insulted your own food or, or gotten a meal, you know, at a restaurant or that somebody cooked for you and, and, and added a little bit of salt, I was like, this is, this is kind of better. Right. And added a little intro. This is kind of better. And then he had too much in there. Like now, now all I taste is the salt. Novelty is like salt. As soon as you can taste, it there’s too much. Right. So it is like, it is kind of an intuitive feeling thing. It is a thing that as somebody who’s been doing online marketing for 20 plus years, it’s a thing that I have a knack for, which is why people hire me to do it. But anybody can do it.
JG (10:59):
If, if you can become aware enough of what that line is. And the way I do that is I start with category. What is this thing? Right. You have to start with category. If people tell me nobody’s ever written a book like this before I go, well, that’s a problem, right? Nobody, nobody can, we can’t wrap your head around it. Right. And, and so the phrase is, it’s like this, but different like that. Right. Same but different. So take the hunger games. For example, you know, the hunger games is like the running man which was a short story that Stephen King wrote in the eighties. And it was turned into a movie with Arnold Schwartzenegger classic, amazing, terrible eighties movie that you should definitely go watch. And it’s awesome. Yeah. The running man is a story about a bunch of convicts in the future who fight have a battle to the death on public television and people watch them do this.
JG (11:59):
And of course that’s a rehash of the gladiator story, not just the movie, but the actual, the people who lived in fought, you know, 2000 years ago in the, in the Roman Coliseum. Right? And so there’s a historian that says nothing is new will. Duran says nothing is new except arrangement and real artists. Don’t start by talking about the concept of borrowing ideas, stealing like an artist as Austin Kleon would say, how do you, how do you take an idea that’s already been done before and do it better? You take something old and you make it new. So you start with category. That’s 80%. If you’re going to write a business book, 80% of what you do is going to be kind of what everybody has done. It’s probably going to be about 200 to 250 pages. You’re going to have some success quotes in there. It’s going to have like easy approachable language, some illustrations these days that might have some science backed studies. Cause that’s really popular now that’s, that’s the boring, you’ve got to be boring before you can be interesting. Cause you’ve got to meet people’s expectations. Yeah.
RV (13:04):
As you, as you talk this out, like as I just think about myself, cause you know, one of the things that we tell our members all the time is this quote that I love from Larry Winget, which is find your uniqueness and exploited in the service of others. And we really love this concept of find your uniqueness. But then when I tell the story of take the stairs, I say, well, you know, the take the stairs book more or less as a book about hard work, which is like the most unoriginal on unique, it’s normal. I mean, classically right in the 80% now we call it discipline. We call it overcoming procrastination. So we, we, we try to take it through that lens. And then, you know, the metaphor of doing things you don’t want to do is a subtle distinction versus just doing something that’s hard. Is that kind of like what you’re talking about?
JG (13:52):
I was thinking to take the stairs and my my belief, my contention is that before someone buys the book, the idea has to spread people by the idea of the book before they buy the book itself, they have to, because they’re hearing people talk, you can’t read a book, you can’t test drive. You can’t really test drive a book, you read a sample or something, but most people hear enough. People talk about a book that they go, oh, well, I guess I’m going to check out that book everybody’s talking about. Right. and you had it baked into the title. Right? You’ve got the, that, that classic you know, success quote, is that your record? Is that somebody else’s quote, right? Like you know, you’ve got a,
RV (14:39):
About the rent is due every day. Yeah. I popularized it. It’s a, it’s a twist on something I heard in college, but I, I definitely popularized that made it public.
JG (14:51):
What’s the vote against I don’t, but
RV (14:53):
Success is never owned. It’s rented. And the rent is due every
JG (14:56):
Day. Yeah. And then you’ve got the metaphor of like, I’m going to go out of my way to do something hard every day I take the stairs versus the elevator. So the metaphor is baked into the title and that’s the obstacle is the way is another example of that. It doesn’t, it doesn’t always happen that way. But if you can bake the big idea, that’s, that’s an 80, 20 same, but different shifts people go. Wow. That’s amazing. And so you start with a category. So what I would recommend if, if you’re writing, take the stairs today. Okay. Right. Go find at least five best-selling popular business books.
RV (15:32):
Abbott’s yeah. Like just habits. There’s, there’s been, there’s been a bunch. In fact, there’s a bunch that is sell way better than take the stairs. And I’m like, crap. What is different is because they nailed, they nailed it. And somehow we missed
JG (15:47):
And it’s, and it’s basically the same idea, a different approach, right? Like atomic habits, once it’s that’s tiny habits, it’s one small change. A 1% change. Every single day is better than massive change, you know, infrequently. So read five popular business books, see what they all agree with too. What they all say, ah, they all say, you’ve got to work hard. You’ve got to do this and you’ve got to do that. Okay, cool. Got it. Say that. Cause that’s, that’s what works. So it’s not like you can say like we’re not going to work hard cause people won’t believe that that’ll seem absurd and then find a 20% difference. That’s your uniqueness, something unique, some flare that you can add to it. Ryan holiday has done this really well with the subject of stoicism. He’s taken something old and made it new again.
JG (16:34):
But he’s using modern stories, not just a bunch of like 2000 year old Roman dead guys. Right. And so that’s, that’s how it works. Category. Start with a category, find out what they all have in common, intentionally break, a rule or two to kind of stand out. Right. There’s a scene in Braveheart where the Nobles finally join William Wallace and, and he goes, all right, let’s go. You know? And he tells the, he tells the Nobles, cause they’re on horses. Nobody else on horses. Cause they have horses. Right. And he says, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to go. I want you to go, go hard. Right. Go out and like go into the, the, the, the forest over there. We’re gonna, we’re gonna go this way. And we’re gonna, we’re gonna meet the English and you go that way. And they don’t, they’re confused.
JG (17:20):
And then one of them goes, oh, they think we run away. And he goes, exactly. And then I want you to flank them. Right? Come in on the side, like a flank is when somebody comes out and then you come in on the side, you attack them on the side. Completely takes them off guard. So they do that and they win the battle. That’s what a big idea is. It’s going, you think I’m going here then fly, right? Like I hit your heart and you go, whoa. And the brain loves a little bit of cognitive dissonance, a little bit of like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That can’t be true. Is true. That might be true. And there’s 80% safety. There’s like, yeah, it’s packaged in a lot of safety cause too much novelty. A friend of mine is a neuroscientist says, you know, you really throw anything more than a three to 5% daily change in terms of habits, attitudes, et cetera, is too much in your brain. Your soul, your whole nervous system actually shut down. If you try to change too quickly, which is a whole other conversation. But the point is enough change just like enough little change, enough knowledge. It’s like inception, right? Where you inject a little tiny idea that changes everything. That’s a big idea.
RV (18:29):
And then you’re finding that you’re you’re you’re so that’s what we’re looking for. We’re looking for that 20% twists, novelty change, adaptation, flank, whatever you want to call it, but does it have to be true? And is it making it better or is it just different or can it be
JG (18:58):
It’s different? It doesn’t have to be true. You know, have to be honest, you can lie and get a lot of people to believe you and you will be interesting for awhile and false ideas eventually get found out. So I don’t recommend it, but the truth is that I, that an idea doesn’t have to be true for it to be interesting. It just doesn’t, you know, there, there are plenty of memes and urban tales or been fables that spread that are not true. Right. But they spread for awhile. And, and so we liked them. I think it was that book by the Heath brothers made to stick with the opening story is about that like internet story of the like guy going on a date and waking up in a bathtub full of ice. And his liver has been removed. Remember that story forever ago. And they said, this story is not true, but it spread like crazy Y and they kind of break it down. So I would say it’s like a good idea as a true idea. And most people think like the truth will set you free and it may set you free, but it doesn’t necessarily make for great marketing. You know, if, if people can pardon my saying that what makes for great marketing and let’s just go to Jesus for a second, because Jesus said the truth will set you free is
RV (20:12):
For you to burst into flames right now. Just keep going. Well, Jesus,
JG (20:16):
He’s this, didn’t this and all great political religious and thought leaders do this. They go, everybody thinks X, but what I, but what’s actually true is Y you have heard this. Now I tell you this, you have heard eye for eye tooth for tooth. Now I tell you love your enemy. Those are big ideas. Those are interesting ideas. What does he do starts with the familiar, familiar, and then add some novelty to it. So if you don’t remember anything else, remember the phrase everybody thinks X, but what’s actually true is why everybody thinks that success is just something that happens to lucky people or everybody thinks that you know, like once you get to a certain level of success, you don’t have to keep trying. But the truth is it’s a daily battle or, you know, whatever that would be the big idea of take the stairs. And then the last thing that I would add is there are tropes that you can use to do this better. And that’s a trope. There’s a literary trope is like, bring it,
RV (21:18):
Bring it down and not a trope. Definitely.
JG (21:23):
Trope a trope is something that just works. It’s a, it’s a tactic. So for example writers talk about tropes in writing fiction telling stories because, because fiction stories are, are formulaic. You know, if you’ve ever read Robert McKee’s book story or save the cat that’s a trope, save the cat as a trope. And, and the, the trope is if you want people to like your hero, you have to get them to do something noble within the first 20 minutes of the movie. So, you know, Rocky is just kind of this, like, you know kind of dumb, you know, Italian guy in Philadelphia and you see him like doing nice things for his neighbors saying hello to the nice guy, et cetera. This works even with like antihero stories, like you know, the godfather or like breaking bad, Walter White in the first episode you see, he’s this hardworking science teacher, who’s got a disabled son and you like him.
JG (22:29):
Cause he’s, he’s kinda, he’s just trying really hard. And that’s the, that’s the excruciating thing about that show is this guy gets progressively worse and worse. He is a villain and there’s part of you that still rooting for him. So that’s a trope. And when we think about big ideas, things that just work there are, there are just the formulas. Everyone thinks X, but what’s actually true is Y and then some skins that you can put on that would be like old, as new, old is new is stoicism. Old is new, is any like I dunno, church that says Hey, we’re doing things the way they did in the new Testament 2000 years ago. And we assume that just because something’s old, it’s authoritative, right. But you see this all the time. Ah, th this is you know, I paleo, right?
JG (23:18):
Like this is how the caveman ate. Well, like didn’t, they live to like age 40. Why are we doing caveman? Did it? It’s good. Right. We just, it, it doesn’t make sense. And it doesn’t need to. It’s interesting. So oldest new, good is bad or bad is good. Would be another one. Malcolm Gladwell’s book, David and Goliath, all of Malcolm Gladwell’s books do this, but David and Goliath is about why strength is weakness and weaknesses. Strength. That’s good as bad, bad as good. We think strength is good. Well, sometimes it’s not good. And the ketogenic diet would be an example of that. You know, you and I are roughly the same age, I think. And I remember growing up in the eighties and nineties being told that fat was bad, low fat diet, no fat. Like you were reading the labels, looking for fat, don’t eat fat.
JG (24:00):
Now you have, it’s actually old as new cause it’s, it’s a version of Atkins, right? But a different take on it. And it’s like, Hey, this thing that you were told was bad fat. We want you to eat as much of that as you possibly can. And so the ketogenic diet became popular, not just not because of the science, but because an entire generation of people were told something was bad. And now they’re being told it’s good. And this, the backing of it, this is, this is being predictably. Irrational. People are predictably irrational, the quote, Dan Arielli the, the, the rationale behind it, the science convinces you of something you already emotionally want to be true. So good is bad. Bad is good, biggest, small, smallest, big, anything that appears to be one way and as some. And there’s another way these are, these are tactics and books that work well. Another one would be chaos is organized, right? Chaos disorder. What appears to be frenetic and crazy and chaotic actually has a hidden organizational structure to it. That is the, that is the plot to every mystery movie. Every ocean’s 11 movie you know, like w what’s going to happen, what’s going to happen. There’s the plan that goes completely wrong. And by the end of it, you realize this was George Clooney’s plan all along. And so these are, these are tactics that, that work well. So, you know,
RV (25:20):
That’s how you’re digging in. And that’s what you’re looking for. You’re just kind of going like, okay, where is the, where is the repositioning or the, the re-imagining of the 80%? Yeah. Yeah. It’s almost like a punchline. I mean, in comedy, right? That’s how I teach to teach the psychology of laughter is your, you want to get the audience thinking something, and then you twist. And that’s where the that’s where the laugh happens.
JG (25:46):
That’s this, that’s the same thing. The science of comedy is interesting because it’s about surprising people, but when you delightfully surprised somebody, they laugh. When, when the surprise goes in another direction, they cry, right? So comedy and tragedy are the same thing. The result is just different. Ken Davis, a comedian, I think, you know, Ken told me one time, here’s how you tell a joke. You you get a table and you put a tablecloth on the table and, and you set the table, you put plates and some silverware and a napkin and a glass and another glass. And then you pull the table cloth. Right? That’s I tell a joke. That’s how you get an idea to spread a joke is actually just an idea. That’s, that’s a funny idea. That’s spreading, right? Like a really good joke. You remember, and you tell other people and they laugh too, if you told it. Right. And so a big idea is that you set the table, that’s 80%, and then you pull the tablecloth, you change the game. And so then one of the ways that you changed the game is you just say, what you think is big as actually small, or what you think is small is actually big. That’s the idea of the tipping point. People think that big things lead to big change. No, no, no little things lead to big change. Oh, wow. Right. Good. As bad, bad as good chaos has order orders, chaos and so on.
RV (27:02):
Yeah. Fascinating stuff. Okay. So so now that, so what I hear you saying here is that, you know, writing a great book, much of writing a great book is, is nailing this core premise, this, this big idea, this, this twist. And then after that, like, I guess once you’re clear about that, then you’re just kind of like extrapolating that out into a, like a fairly systematic presentation of that.
JG (27:33):
Yeah. And, and to be fair, I mean, this is probably not all books. It’s a lot of books, I think, but the kind of books that I’m interested in working on the kind of books that I want to write, and I want to work on with other people are big idea. Non-Fiction books that can be memoir, personal, develop business, whatever, but they’re going to change the way people think about something. Because if you change the way people think about a given topic, you, you change the world. I’m not trying to like change the world, but I want to add, you know, something good to it. And this is, this is where we’re trying to do that. So yeah, you would come up with the big idea because without the big idea your book dies, it just does. That’s, that’s, that’s the thing that we’re dealing with these days is nobody’s going to the library or Barnes and noble and pulling your book off of a shelf and buying it out of curiosity.
JG (28:21):
And if, and if they do, that’s like maybe one to 2% of your sales. And so you want it to have some backbone. You want it to have some gravitas and S and some umph to it. And so you’ve got to start with the idea, and then you, front-load the book with the big idea. You don’t, you don’t get to page 204 and go, oh, here’s the thing that I want everybody to remember. And I want you to write a good book, and I want the whole thing to be good, and I don’t want it to be fluff, but you front-load with the big idea. And then the rest of the book should illustrate that idea. And you can illustrate it narratively through an arc format. Meaning every idea is building on itself. And you’re telling a story, or even like a Malcolm Gladwell story.
JG (29:01):
These are or Malcolm Gladwell book. These are, there’s a narrative arc to the book itself. And there’s some big payoff at the end. There’s an initial big idea. Then there’s a bunch of little stories. And then there’s like, it feels like it feels theatrical, or it’s like a movie and you go, oh, wow. That’s, that’s what all this means. Or it’s modular start with the big idea and then module by module by module illustrate it. So if I, if I’m writing the tipping point you know, little things lead to big change and I’m writing it modularly, every chapter is a module in that as if you were almost like teaching a course on it. So, okay. Little thing, number one, looks this little thing. Number two, looks like this little thing. Number three, looks like that. And that’s how you would do that.
RV (29:48):
That’s fascinating. I, this is so cool and interesting. And like the formula that we used for my Ted talk you know, we did this big ordeal about why my second book title sucked. Cause we called it procrastinating on purpose, but we call it the Ted talk, how to multiply time. And my talk went viral. And is this twist that you, you know, you don’t manage time, you multiply that you multiply time.
JG (30:19):
Yeah. Yeah. That’s it. And can I pick on that idea from it? Yeah. So we’re everybody thinks X, but what’s actually true is Y so everybody thinks you manage time. And the truth is you blank time. This is where most people get stuck, because the way that you come up with an interesting idea is you don’t just come up with the opposite of the thing that you just said. So everybody thinks you manage time, but you don’t. Well that’s what do you mean you don’t? Why not? That’s, that’s an interesting enough. The interesting, the 20% has to sound absurd. Right. But it’s just a little piece of it. So it can sound absurd because it’s been in case in a lot of normalcy, if that makes sense. And so everybody actually managed time, but the truth is like, I’ve heard you manage energy, right? Like, I’ve heard that before, but you took that one step farther into the stratosphere and you go, you multiply time. Well, that’s absurd where you can’t multiply time. Time is time. And that’s what makes it so interesting is it’s absurd.
RV (31:13):
The next part is actually not that you manage time, the X is you think you can’t create time. Oh my God, actually you can multiply time. And the way that we say is that as you go, well, you can’t create time inside of one day, but that’s why the way you multiply time is by spending time on things today that create more time tomorrow. And it is possible to multiply time if you think out into the future. So it fits that for me. But anyways, it’s like
JG (31:40):
And I would say to your credit, cause I read that book you’re not just, it’s not just some vague esoteric idea that you’re trying to get people to agree with you. It’s, it’s a kind of absurd idea, at least in theory. And then you have all these. I remember still, like you said something, he said something like, you know, most people think it takes like, like twice as much time to train somebody to do something for you. And the fact is it takes how much
RV (32:06):
30, 30 X, we call it the third, the 30 eggs. But if you spend, but even if you spend 30 times, the amount of time it took you to do at once is what you should spend training someone to do it. But then even over the course of a year, it’s like a 733% return on that
JG (32:24):
Time. So what I found interesting about the book is you had all these super practical research, like you’ve done all this stuff, research, backed ideas. You’re like, Hey, here’s how this works. That’s how that works. You start with an absurd idea and then it’s in case then a lot of practicality, like you have to prove your idea. And if you can’t prove your idea, then you just have some crazy idea. And what we want is a big idea that has some grounding to it. You go, no, no, no. See, this is how this works. Then you’ve got something that will spread. Hmm.
RV (32:52):
Yeah. well my friend where this is, this is so stimulated Jeff, like it’s so cool. And a fascinating and fun. Where should people go if they want to learn about you? You’re obviously one of our preferred vendors at brand builders group that we recommend for folks. And so if you’re one of our members, you can just go in your portal and request an introduction to Jeff. We’ll make it happen for you. But like in terms of people following you and staying connected, like what’s the best way to do that.
JG (33:23):
Sure. You mentioned my website, [inaudible] dot com. You can go there and find stuff about me if this is stimulating to you. And, and you think you have a big idea for a book feel free to email me and send me your big idea. And it shouldn’t be eight paragraphs long. It should be a sentence or two. And I would challenge you to think, what is the category? Where are you starting? How are you going to add some novelty? And if you’d like feedback on your idea, I do this on every podcast these days. Cause I really do care about better ideas going out into the world because better ideas make a better world. And I want the ideas to be true and good, but I also want them to be interesting because most good ideas die before they have the chance to make the impact that they want.
JG (34:05):
So if you want to share your idea, feel free to email me [email protected] and the formula that I would encourage you to use is everybody thinks X, but what’s actually true is Y and use Rory’s example of you know, everybody thinks that you can’t create time, but the truth is you can multiply it like you want to get like that’s what makes it such a good idea? Such an interesting idea is that the second part is surprising. Wait, like multiply, like you can’t just create time. You can actually multiply it. You can get more of this thing that we all kind of feel is a finite resource. That’s powerful. And I want everybody to have a big idea like that and to not start writing until they do, because otherwise it’s a slog and you need the energy of a powerful idea that you think is going to change the world in order to get, to get through the really difficult parts and process of writing a book. So feel free to email that to me, Jeff, at Goins writer.com, G O I N S writer.com.
RV (35:04):
I love that better ideas make a better world. I’m grateful that there’s people like you, that care about the quality of the ideas and the shaping them. And in a weird way, I feel like the more, no more noise that’s out there and the easier that it is, it’s, it’s starting to get a point where everything looks like noise. That if you have a really sharp idea, people are keen to notice it quickly. And so we appreciate your work. Brother we’ll stay connected. We wish you
JG (35:31):
All the best. Sounds good. Thanks for sharing.

Ep 225: How To Get 1 Million Followers with Brendan Kane | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):
Brendan Kane was this week’s appearance guest on the influential personal brand podcast right now, myself and our CEO, Amanda Johns Vaden are going to be breaking down this interview. Which was, whoa. It was awesome. This, I loved it. This is one of, probably the most where I, like I learned the most personally AJ so anyways,
AJV (00:30):
Heavy content episode where you will undoubtedly, no matter what level you’re at, learn something, it is really good.
RV (00:38):
Yeah, totally. And it, it, there was like a few things that it changed my mind on. And then there was some things that were, that were very different than I expected. And I guess I’ll start, I’ll start with that. So, so my first takeaway was like really early on where I was like, I was kind of joking with him, like, yeah. So how do you hit 1 million followers, which he has, which you know, is kind of the premise of his first book was how he did it. And I was, I, I, you know, I was kind of saying it tongue in cheek, like, yeah, what’s the secret. And he just very like approached it very systematically. He’s like, yes, there are four ways to hit 1 million followers and, and, and just started like rattling through them. And I was like, whoa. And so, you know, one is organic and algorithms and playing that game, which is why I think what most people think of.
RV (01:26):
And the thing about that, that I loved that he just nailed was he was like, look, it is, there is not any sort of slant or favoritism or politicalness to the content. There’s no way they could keep up with all of the content creators in the world of what they’re saying. He said it is completely objective. It’s completely democratized based on one thing. Does your content keep people watching? Yes or no? That’s it like, it is a very straightforward, fair metric whether you like it or not, doesn’t matter, but it’s like, does your content hold people’s attention? Yes or no. If yes, it will get shown to more people. If no, it will not get shown to more people. And that was, that was really like good to hear. But then he also said giveaways, giveaways are a huge way that people get lots of followers.
RV (02:25):
Now. They often get, you know, the, the question is, do you get the right followers? And people will unfollow, but giveaways work and you don’t, we haven’t heard anybody really talk about the power of doing giveaways on social and then influencers and doing trade for share for share, like you do a post for me, I do a post for you. And then pay paid, but specifically with paid. And this is the thing that I want to highlight was, you know, we’ve been, we’re really set, been setting the stage to some paid campaigns, but he said specifically for followers, I would not run paid ads. If the goal is to get more followers, he was saying, I would do promoted posts. And I would pay me my accounts to do a post that’s, how you’ll get the most followers is by being tagged in someone else’s posts, which is like, duh, that’s true. Like we know that organically, but, but don’t think of that as like basically a brand deal, like go pay people with lots of followers to tag you in their posts. Like that’s a much smarter way to go about doing it. So anyways, that was, that’s all I know, that’s a lot, but that was those, those were good things and hit me
AJV (03:39):
Hard. It was that all one takeaway.
RV (03:42):
That was all one takeaway. That was, that was one fun four-part takeaway.
AJV (03:48):
So yeah, it was my first one was very similar to that and it was kind of around that question. It’s like, you know, how would you grow your following? Right. And I think you asked that in the very beginning. And it’s like, if I had money at all, I would be using it to build growth. But building your audience is a longterm play. Right. And so it’s like, you gotta be doing it in a few different ways. And so the kind of thing that I highlighted was harnessing the traffic of a different source, right. It’s go where the traffic is. And if your platform doesn’t have the traffic, then how do you get your content on a platform? That’s got a lot of traffic. Right. And I think there’s just a lot to that. And I think the one thing that came up to my mind and all of these different interviews is I’ve kind of been adverse to like getting on Tik TOK because it’s not for me.
AJV (04:36):
But that’s where tons of our customers and consumers are. And Roy’s like, they, we got to get them ticked off. I’m like, you get on ticked up, but it’s kinda like one of those things, it’s like where you’ve got to go where the traffic is and the traffic is on tick-tock. So it was like, then how do you use that to harness all of these different things? And so I think that was like the big one for me. It’s not just go to the platform that you prefer to consume content, which is something we just picked up from the Jasmine star episode. She go check it out. But it’s like have a preferred platform in which you create and you need to create where your customers are. So where are the customers? Where is the traffic? And I just, you know, it’s like, tick-tock just you know, labs YouTube for most time spent on any platform. And it’s like, kind of undeniable, it’s no longer should I it’s like, well, you need to, but it’s in an effort to grow your following. And so I thought that was really good and it just connected a few dots for me. So that would be my first one. It says, you just have to go where the traffic is.
RV (05:36):
Yeah. And that was, that was my second takeaway was, was just talking about that, which is we, you know, in our high traffic strategies event, we teach it that’s the kind of the central premise of the whole event is find an existing audience and figure out how to get in front of them. But, you know, here he was referring to it as like content distribution, which is a little different from going, okay, search engine optimization is like, there’s people searching this. I want to get in front of them versus he’s, he’s kind of going, yeah, just get your content distributed to somebody who has an audience. And I’ll tell you one of the things that our team immediately did after this episode or after the, you know, the interview was we immediately started researching meme accounts on Instagram. So for our topical areas, we immediately started going, okay, we gotta go, we need to go identify.
RV (06:30):
And just so you know, if you’re, if you haven’t listened to the episode, a meme account is an account that is it’s themed. So it’s not like a person’s account, like a Rory Vaden or an AIG Vaden. It’s not a company account, like a brand builders group. It’s like, you know well, like the one that came up a couple of times was the good quote and that’s a huge account. It’s got millions of followers and it’s, it’s all just like inspirational quotes. And then, you know, you can pay up a truckload of money and they’ll, you know, for certain people they’ll do, they’ll do promoters partial posts, but basically it’s is the, you know, do you know, do you know what those accounts are? And those accounts exist for the purpose of doing what we’re talking about here. Like that is their business model is to find great content and build an audience around it so that people who are interested in that topic will come and pay them to do those posts. And just like in my mind, that was just a big, giant disconnect and just got super clear and went immediate into action mode. So that was my second takeaway. I’d say, what was your second one?
AJV (07:40):
My mind was the content itself and asking yourself is your content holding someone’s attention? Because at the end of the day, that’s the only care of the platform is can you keep people on the platform? So if you want to win, it’s like, are people staying in tune with your content? Is your content holding attention? And then I love this. Cause I thought he shared some really amazing like little stats. He said one of the big ahas we had with the 28 seconds of content versus the 21 second hold. And if that’s like a very, like, you’re talking about seven seconds, right? And this isn’t like three minutes or five, no seven seconds. And attention span of like, how do you go from this to this? And if you can’t keep people’s attention for 21 seconds, you will lose. And so to that, I go, wow, that’s really amazing.
AJV (08:31):
And like, and I thought to myself, it’s like, how much content can you really teach in 21 or 28 seconds? And the answer to that is like none, pretty much none, but you can tell a really good, quick story. And I think those are like those kind of like, what are you doing in those first? Let’s just call it 30 seconds to get someone latched, to get someone hooked. And I love, he said, it’s not about super high production. It’s not about like tons and tons of content. In fact, the content doesn’t even have to be that great, but it’s got to have an emotional tug, right. You’ve got to be pulling up those heartstrings. So it needs to have a good story and it needs to be something that can suck someone in really, really quickly. And so it’s like, how are you starting all of your videos?
AJV (09:15):
And that’s like, I know for a while, we’ve since done away with this, but it’s like, we had all these like bumpers that were seven seconds. And I was like, gosh, we probably were losing tens of people for it. I get to the end of the bumper. And so it’s just to me, it’s coming, going back in, it’s not about high production value. It’s about the realness. It’s about the stories. And then he talks about a couple of different accounts to go and follow. One of them, he said was the Dodo. But then I actually thought about Jay Shetty’s Instagram accounts because Jay Shetty’s Instagram account is like every single time I watch one of those little videos he shares. I’m like heart love, like so good. So funny. But here’s the thing it’s like, he didn’t produce probably 90% of those, right.
AJV (09:53):
That’s already existing found content, but it’s like, I love that account because they’re all inspirational motivational, like heart tug stories. And they’re really short and they’re quick someone who hasn’t seen a loved one in like 21 months for, because of COVID or, you know, a dad coming home from, you know, overseas and surprising his kids at graduation. And it’s like, I love all of them. And I thought, well, movies. And like, when I listened to this, that was what dawned on me. It’s like, you don’t even have to be the creator of a lot of really good content to build your following, but you need to be a curator of really good content. So there’s some that’s created and there’s some that’s curated. How can you make a combo of both?
RV (10:34):
Yeah. That, and that that case study he was using was a, I think it was from Alex stamp where he said one video got 90 million views. The other got 5 million views. And the difference was a seven second watch time. So it’s like that even making an incremental improvement in the watch time of seven seconds can be the difference between 5 million views and 90 million views. And and that, you know, this was my third takeaway too. I mean, just moving people emotionally, it’s gotta be what moves your audience emotionally? Like, it’s that inspiring? Or, you know, and even the angry stuff. I mean, like, I don’t know that you want to like do stuff that makes people angry. But if you, if you think about it, it’s like, why does the very political content get, get so much reach on social media? It’s not because the platforms are going, yeah, let’s put this political content in front of people.
RV (11:39):
It’s saying people are engaging with this. They’re reacting to it. They’re responding to it. So the things that activate our human emotions, the things that make us laugh, the things that make us cry, the things that make us mad, the things that, that make us sad, the things that make us inspired or ambitious, like those are the things that people watch and they watch it all the way through and they share it and they comment on it and they engage with it. And so you got to find a way to make your content more emotional. It’s gotta be more, more captivating and just understanding the kind of funded, you know, fundamental things. And like, you know, you’ve mentioned the word AAJ. It’s like, if you don’t know how to do that on purpose, just tell a story, like stories inherently keep us hooked because we want to know how the, how the story ends. So just really, really good stuff. And, and you know, you, you also said this, like, it’s not the quality of the production that matters. It’s just the quality of the storytelling. That’s, that’s, that’s the part. So I loved, I loved it. So what was it? The third
AJV (12:47):
Oh, mine are mine is, is kind of like the summary of like the three things to be asking yourself, which I thought were just really simple and powerful. It’s like one, how are you stopping the scroll? So what are you doing to make someone go? I need to watch that. I need to read that. I need to look at that. So question number one, how are you stopping the scroll question? Number two, how are you holding their attention? Right. So what is it that’s going to pull those heartstrings and suck them in. We’re not going to start to see what happens here, right? So what are you doing to stop the scroll? What are you doing to hold their attention? And then how are you going to monetize that attention? Right? So if this is a part of your business, it’s like, what is the next step? Right. So it’s like, is the next step, just a follow me? Is it subscribed to something? But it’s like, how are you using that to grow your audience and to monetize your business? So just again, it’s like, how are you going to stop the scroll? How are you going to keep their attention? And then how are you going to monetize it?
RV (13:52):
Simple stuff, simple stuff. But it works really, really, really powerful interview. I was totally impressed with, with Brendan. And he clearly lives in the world all day, every day,
AJV (14:04):
Very content rich. It’s really, really good with, I think really actionable, like, okay, that’s what you do. That’s how much you spend. And then also some really good, quick case studies that really back it up. It was really good.
RV (14:17):
Love it. I love it. So go listen to it. Listen to all the episodes, dang it. They’re all really good and listen to it for a long time and then share them with everyone, you know, and be like this At least 30 seconds, 27 seconds worth. It’d be like this podcast is amazing. So we are grateful for you. We love doing the show. We love reading your comments over on iTunes and seeing all the testimonials and stuff. So make sure you drop us one of those, if you haven’t yet. And keep coming back, come back next week. And we’re going to be talking about Jeff Goins and being an amazing writer and finding your, your, your brilliant idea. So we’ll catch you soon. Bye bye.

Ep 224: How To Get One Million Followers with Brendan Kane

Speaker 1 (00:05):
[Inaudible]
RV (00:07):
Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:53):
So I straight up overnight manifested 1 million followers. And some of you are out there like trying to get a million followers. I manifested it. I literally like went to bed thinking, ah, what, what do I need to do to get a million followers? And the next day, the next afternoon, I got 1 million followers. It wasn’t 1 million followers on social media. Someone dropped this book off at my house the next day, true story, 1 million followers by Brendan Kane. And so I read the book 1 million followers. I’ve read it, cover to cover. You’re about to meet Brendan. We’ve kind of hang out in some of the same circles we’ve never met in person though. This is our first time interacting. He has a new book called hook point, how to stand out in a three second world. And he’s worked with a lot of celebrities. He’s worked with Rihanna and people like that. Taylor swift and for years, like at MTV working like helping with that. And some of my other friends, I know Vishen from mind valley and people you would recognize, but kind of like his personal claim to fame was that he built a million followers in 30 days. So anyways, I’m just really excited to meet him in person and introduce him to y’all. Cause you might not, you may not know him or maybe you do, but anyways, Brendan, welcome to the show.
BK (02:21):
Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to connect with you and everybody listening to this.
RV (02:25):
Yeah, man. So how do you get a million followers? I mean, that’s the name of the book? That’s like what you did and you know, just to kind of dive in to that as, as a, as a starting point, like if you had to sum it all up in a couple sentences, how do you, how do you do it?
BK (02:44):
Well, I mean, in a very simple high level is you create a piece of content. You put it in front of somebody and that motivates them to click the follow button. That is the simple way to do it. Now it’s not necessarily because there’s a lot of nuance that comes into specifically the content side of things. There’s many different ways that you can do it. You can do it through paid acquisition, through paid advertising distribution of content, through other channels or influencers giveaways. You can do it that way, or you can do it purely through the content and playing to what the algorithms are looking for and get mass reach because the algorithms deem your content is playing to the goals that they’ve set for us. We’ve done it every single way. We’ve tested every single way we continue to test every single way. But first and foremost, it comes down to what is the piece of content that is going to motivate or inspire somebody to be like, I need to go and follow this account.
RV (03:51):
Yeah. Well you, that’s interesting just in and of itself, you kind of lifts it off like four big buckets there paid influencers, giveaways and organic. And like when I think about my personal journey, like we had we had six figure followings and then we sold our accounts when we sold our company back in 2018 and actually had to start over in 2018. And most of the followers that we have now are from influencers. They have come from just our network appearing on other people’s shows. We’ve never done a giveaway. We do do organic. We’ve never done paid. So let’s talk about paid. If you had, let’s just say, let’s say you had $20,000 and I say, okay, I’m gonna just go. I’m going to put $20,000 aside sheerly with the objective of growing my reach and growing my following. How would you spend that 20 grand?
BK (04:55):
It depends on the business. So it’s a, it’s a great question. And the, the first place that I always start when working with a client is really understanding the fundamental goals because there’s, there’s a lot of people out there that will think, okay, if I get 10,000 more followers, a hundred thousand, a million followers, my business is going to take off. I’m going to sell a bunch of product, my profit margins, going to go through the roof. I’m not going to sit here and say that that never happens, but it’s a longer term play like building an audience is a longer term play for the business. So if, if it was a business to be like, I need leads, I need revenue. I need to generate profit. Then we’re going to take that $20,000 in and work on lead gen campaigns or conversion-based campaigns to drive that revenue, drive that profit that can then be reinvested in the growth because is it as effective if you sell a product and correlate that purchaser into a follower versus going after a follower?
BK (05:57):
No, but does it happen? Yes. Like if you sell a lot of product through paid acquisition, it will lead to followers. If your product really resonates with you with if your brand does now let’s just put that aside. That’s the first step that I take now, if we’re just like, no, we’ve got our revenue, we’ve got our lead gen campaigns. We’ve got all of that set up. I just want to go after followers. Then it heavily dictates the platform that you’re going on. But one of the most successful ways that we found and you’ve alluded to it, cause you did it organically is if you have other people sharing your content on their channels, that will lead to follow our growth. It’s all a distribution model is like, how can I get my content distributed in other channels that will lead back to mine?
BK (06:52):
And there’s several different ways. Like you said, organically, I do interviews on podcasts or I’m friends with influencers or work with influencers and they talk about me in their posts or they have me on their podcast or they talking about me on their stories. That’s one way of doing it a second way of doing it. One of the successful ways with Instagram is meme accounts, you know, accounts that are all around a specific niche, like there’s meme accounts around quotes, like the good quote or inspirational pages, like note for me, there’s one’s around food or fitness and things like that. And that whole ecosystem is built off of selling advertising, quote unquote, like a shout out on their accounts to correlate back to the followers. So if you don’t have those influencer connections, meme accounts are kind of that next best thing.
BK (07:39):
The next best tactic that you can do, you can leverage the paid advertising networks, but we haven’t really see seen a high enough conversion rate to warrant the spend behind that. I’m not saying that I haven’t heard of people having success with it. We’ve tested extensively ourselves. Facebook super easy to use those platforms for follower acquisition. The other platforms, not so much, but I think at the, at the high level we look at just, how do you get your content distributed across? And I’ll look, let’s look at some larger examples is like you look at the rock. For example, who I think is still like the most followed person on Instagram, people will say, well, he grew that completely organically. No, he didn’t. Every movie he’s in that marketing budget for that movie is a hundred million dollar plus he was in the WWE for years.
BK (08:31):
The, that that company, you know, spends tens of millions of dollars to market their people. Or if he follow tennis recently a young girl, an 18 year old girl won the us open. She went from, I think like a hundred or 200,000 followers to 2 million followers in a two week span. Wow. Because of that distribution of her being on television there was another breakdown that I saw a guy hit a million sub sub subscribers on YouTube. He did a collaboration with Mr. Beast. So if you want to just think about generating followers at a high level, it’s all about how can I get my content distributed in front of the audience that I want and making sure that, that story or that connection to that content that they’re seeing will correlate back to them saying, well, I want to follow this account.
BK (09:22):
So it’s like what I learned early on in the movie industry when I first started is go where the traffic is. Don’t start it from scratch. And even the, the, the core social platforms we’re talking about were built this way. So YouTube was sold for $1.7 billion. And I think it was under 24 months. How did they do that? Well, the predominant player at the time was my space and my space didn’t have a video player. So YouTube had created one of the first embeddable YouTube players. So people that had my space profiles would see their friend upload a video to YouTube or take a movie trailer or something, put it on their profile. And then when you saw your friend had one, you would click the YouTube logo. Cause you’re like, I want one. So that’s how YouTube scaled their traffic so quickly is harnessing the traffic of a different source. The same principles apply to growing a social following. And as we mentioned, there’s many different ways that you can get your content in front of people, but it’s all about how do we get our content, our brand, our message out to where the traffic is and then drive it back to follow our account. What,
RV (10:31):
Yeah, that is such a simple, but powerful concept is interesting. And so when I said, if I was going to put money into it, your thought would be not going promote your page or take a piece of content and like boost it or run it as an ad on Facebook or Instagram. But your thought would be to go, where can I find like a meme account more, more like you’re paying an influencer or you’re paying whatever you can, whoever that person, more like a brand deal rather than running it as advertising. How do you find those? Not, not, how do you find those accounts and then how do you contact them and like get their rates and pricing and stuff.
BK (11:16):
Yeah. Finding them is just searching like one of the greatest assets in the reasons that we’re successful that I find other people don’t do is we are constantly doing research. Like I’ve been in the social media space since 2005 and still to this day, me and my team are always passing, references back and forth, looking at content, looking at content creators. And if you do that, it’s pretty easy to find like you just search. Like if you’re a fitness instructor, go into Instagram, go into Facebook type in fitness, see what type of accounts come up that are driven. Again, it’s not an influencer. It’s not a brand. It’s an account all about that. Or like travel. There’s a lot of travel based ones. Like beautiful destinations is a perfect example of a meme account around travel. So it’s, it takes a little bit of time, but it’s pretty easy to find if you’re actually looking for it.
BK (12:11):
And then most of these companies, even influencers themselves, they’ll have an email for business opportunities, contact us email, or you can direct message them and you can straight out ask them like, what does it cost to work with you? So it’s not super difficult to find it takes some time, but I recommend that if you’re spending any dollar, don’t go with the first person you find, you know, it’s like, actually do your research, do your due diligence of who works. And then always test don’t, don’t spend all of your money with one account until they’ve proven themselves with you. And it’s the same with like in 1 million followers, as you remember. I interviewed a friend of mine who is the chief growth officer for a company called fab fit fun. They reached a billion dollar valuation in a matter of a few years.
BK (13:00):
And it was all through paid acquisition and they’ve tested over 10,000 influencers. The last time I talked to him, it’s probably well over that. And the thing is that, that they know the model they have written on the walls is we love low CPAs. So that’s their benchmark is they love low cost per acquisition. So everything that they do is benchmarked across that. And that goes again to influencers is like they would test and constantly test these influencers. They wouldn’t put all their money into Kim Kardashians. They would test to see who’s generating the content who’s generating the, the reach, the engagement and that, that key KPI that we’re going after, same principles apply here is you test and you iterate to find what is the best growth mechanism for hitting our key KPI in this case, we’re talking about social followers. Interesting. And so there was actually, before you move on, it was interesting.
BK (13:55):
I was watching a video last night and I haven’t seen the show, but squid game and Netflix is the hot commodity. And I think it was Colin and Samir was doing a breakdown of it. And they said that one of the actors is now at 19.6 million followers off of that shell vans, which the key characters are watching their sales are up 7000%. So again, it just goes back. And the thing that I want to engrain in everybody’s head is go where the traffic is, harness it to your ability. But just because you go where the traffic is, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to correlate if the content is not there. Like for example, if squid game was no good, if the show sucked, would that actor have hit all those followers? Would vans have that increase in sales? No. So just because you get on Netflix, just because you get on a meme account or if you’ve ever run a paid ad, just because you’re getting in front of doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to correlate to the action if the content is not designed properly.
RV (15:01):
Yeah. So I want to talk about the content, but on the topic of dollars, I mean, this is, I think, I mean, there’s so many takeaways. I mean, I’ve got like just all these pages, all these pages that are earmarked in here, but you know, like one of the, I mean, you hear about it a lot, but something, it seems like you’ve done as you just kind of split tests. And so like in my mind, I’m thinking, okay, if I’m going to go target like a meme account, not only do I want to do a lighter budget with them, I probably want to test that piece of content organically on my own place, put some money behind it to see how it responds and cold traffic, even just like whatever few hundred bucks or something, and then try to show up and could play the hits basically like give them the best, the, the, the the best stuff that I already know performs, and then just basically use them to throw gasoline on the fire. Yeah.
BK (15:52):
Yeah. I mean, I wouldn’t put, so the way that I would approach that is see how it performs organically. If it’s not performing organically putting paid behind it. And we can talk about the algorithms if you want, but you’re basically training the algorithms that your content is not good. So I would rely heavily on the organic and your best performing organic ones, because I know people like Jay Shetty prince EA even a Gary V they have built massive audiences off the distribution of their content. However, their content performs well, so well organically that when a meme account takes it, and I’m not, you know, most of these people will do kind of like share for share deals or distribution deals, or like in your case, just friends, reposting content their content is designed so well that it’ll perform. So let me give you an example, like there’s, there is a, a meme account called the good quote, and I don’t know what they’re at followers wise.
BK (16:52):
Now they gotta be over 20 million, but I know prince EA and Jay Shetty have a relationship with them. I don’t believe it’s paid, but the good coat will post their content because it’s valuable content. And by the good quote, posting their content that can lead to 25 to 50,000 followers off a single post. However, if you, and we’ve tested with them, if you have a non-optimized piece of content that goes to a good quote or any meme account of that size, and it’s not designed properly, especially from an organic perspective, even if you’re posting it on an account of that size, it may lead to like 500 followers or less. So again, it comes back to how, how good is the content designed to a play, to the reach of what the algorithms are looking for? And then designed in a way that’s like, this person is really fascinating. This person is really interesting. I need to follow them and consume more of their.
RV (17:51):
Now, when you say that, like, people like prince EA and whoever that they have, they have built their followings based on distribution. That’s what you’re saying is that basically they either, you know, their content performs well organically, and then they either build organic relationships with influencers, like what I’m talking about, or they will be able, they’ll just pay to have their content displayed somewhere where there’s a lot of traffic.
BK (18:20):
Yeah. Well, I’m not going to say that Jason,
RV (18:24):
It’s not those two people specifically. Right. But just conceptually.
BK (18:27):
Yeah. And listen, their content is so dialed in that they’re getting organic reach, which is leading to your followers. They’re like the best content creator. So, but they also understand the power of distribution of content on other channels that just fuels that growth even further. Again, going back to the analogy of like the rock, the rock started on the WWE, the wrestling Federation. So that was one channel. And then he’s like, okay, this is interesting, but I want to diversify my brand. So then he was in movies and then he was on magazines. Then he was on television shows. It’s, it’s syndicating out that reach, which keeps amplifying that brand. You know, it keeps amplifying and going in these different directions. It’s not just pigeonholing yourself into one distribution outlet, being your own channel. It’s going to all of the different audiences and driving it back to you yourself.
RV (19:24):
I love it. I love it. So you you’ve mentioned the content, obviously the, which is normally where we, we probably should, you know, start the conversation. I think what’s awesome is you go, yeah, you post it organically. If it’s a winner organically, then it should perform some somewhere else. Is there, is there anything, cause I do want to talk about hook point. I’m fascinated. I think it’s a wonderful title and concept, but on, on the topic of content is there any thing that you feel like we, I mean, I know there’s a lot, you’ve got to say about this and people could obviously get the books, but on content design specifically, is there anything you think that we should know that we maybe haven’t heard somewhere else or you think people overlook?
BK (20:08):
Yeah. And this is one of the core focuses of how we work with people today is working with solo premiers all the way up to companies that are doing 30 billion a year in revenue. We find that that most people are struggling to achieve success with social, whether it’s paid or organic or struggling to break through to the next level is they’re lacking process. And we have a viral content engineering process. That’s backed by over 50 billion views, organically, we’ve generated hundreds of millions of followers for our clients using it and billions in revenue. And that is the biggest thing is most people are just designing content in a vacuum. They’ll basically, you know, set brand guidelines and ideate off of that. Or they’ll just come up with ideas that they like without actually having a process of how to engineer virality. And there’s a lot of misinformation in the market today, mainly because a lot of it has been outdated.
BK (21:11):
So you’ll hear a lot about consistency, frequency, hashtags, time of day, all of those things to drive growth. And yes, was there a point in time in social media that that stuff worked? Yes. but it really doesn’t work as well anymore if your contents not dialed in. And the reason is the amount of people on social media. So we, I remember when I first started in this space you know, Friendster was kind of on the fringe, but MySpace was the big player. And I remember when MySpace hit a million users were like, oh my God, that’s a ton of people using this social media platform. And this was like 2005, 2006. You fast forward to today, there’s 3.9, 6 billion people on social media. And there’s hundreds of billions of pieces of content seated on these platforms every single day. So we went from a million people on MySpace to 3.9, 6 billion people producing hundreds of billions of pieces of content every single day.
BK (22:16):
So what does that mean? I mean, there’s only when you open up any of these apps, no matter which one, they can only see you. One piece of content at a time. It’s not like they can see you a million pieces of content for you to choose from. So the algorithms, and there’s a lot of conversation around the algorithms, what they are. There’s a lot of demonization. There’s a lot of myths about it. Like one of the biggest myths about algorithms. They’re there to get their suppressing, your reach, to get you to pay for it. And it’s completely false because then that means nobody would go viral organically. If that was the case, the algorithms have one job and one job only to keep people on the platform longer because the longer you stay on the platform, the more ads they can serve you. In addition, that means they’re having a better experience and it takes your attention away from the other social platforms.
BK (23:04):
So these algorithms have billions and billions of pieces of content to choose from to keep you on the platform longer. So that’s where people are really struggling is, and I’ve seen it across the board. I’ve seen people generate purely organic followers and have suppressed reach. And I’ve seen people that have generated purely off of paid and are going viral. So I’ve seen it across the board that the most important thing is the content is the content playing to what the algorithms are looking for, which is holding people’s attention. I’ll give you an example. As I’ve, we’re launching a magazine called viral content engineering, and I was interviewing a friend of mine that just hit 20 million followers on Tik TOK. And his name is Alex stamp. You should look him up. He’s amazing. And we were doing an analysis of his, of his content.
BK (23:56):
We looked at his highest viewed video, which was 90 million views. And we looked at another video that was 5 million views, which is kind of like the 5 million, three to 5 million is his average. The 90 million view, the retention was 28 seconds average. The 5 million was 21 seconds. So we’re talking about a seven second differential that made up 85 million views and performance. Wow. That’s the world that we’re, we’re living in. That’s, it’s, it’s just a cutthroat world based upon the amount of content that’s published out there. So that’s where it’s really having a solid process to follow in creating content is critical so that you’re not relying on luck.
RV (24:38):
Yeah. So basically you’re talking about a structure and a process for ideated shooting, editing content that just holding people’s attention for as long as possible. And in this case it’s it’s that, that, that extreme like seven seconds can make a massive, massive difference. But that’s really, it’s really the game. It’s not even necessarily to make good content. It’s just to make content that holds people’s attention, which doesn’t necessarily have to be
BK (25:10):
Good. I don’t know that. I agree with that. I would say that to hold people’s attention, there has to be something that’s good about it because of the, because of the amount of choice that we have in terms of content. Because if the content is not good, I know that there’s 50 other pieces of content I can find. And I would say the best content creators in the world that hold attention are doing a good job, but that doesn’t mean it has to be high production value. Doesn’t have to be a motion picture, but the storytelling technique is, is good. Like I can give you some examples is like the Dodo is an amazing account. It’s all about pets and rescuing pets and things. And most of it’s found footage, or if they’re doing interviews at zoom interviews, the quality of the production is low, but the storytelling is amazing.
BK (26:00):
Like it really connects with your heartstrings about these animals and these rescues and things like that. Another thing is like the top YouTube is used. What’s called the Jenga effect, which is if you’ve ever played Jenga, you know that you have all these blocks stacked up on a table. And with each one, you pull out your closer to the outcome, which is the whole thing falling. But with each block that has pulled out the tension built, you know, what the outcome is, but the tension keeps rising. So an example of it is there’s a YouTuber. That’s amazing named Graham Stephan. And he teaches like millennials about financing. And he did a video. His number one video, I think is about how he got a Tesla for $76. And you watch that video. He doesn’t reveal the math of how he actually did it until like eight or nine minutes in. But that doesn’t mean that he’s filling it with fluff, just to rig the system. He has a storytelling technique that kind of ebbs and flows and builds that tension to the eventual outcome. Mr. Beast, one of the top YouTubers in the world does the same thing is you look at his crazy stunts and you think, oh, it’s just a crazy stunt pulling people in, but it’s not. It’s a storytelling that builds to the ultimate outcome that you came in for,
RV (27:14):
Man. Yeah, that is, that is fascinating. Okay. I, we have to spend a few minutes on hook point. This is, this is what you’re talking about now. So you hear people say this all the time. What’s the, like, what’s the hook, what’s the hook. But they say that in music, what’s the hook. Like they say that, or the cover of a book title, like what’s the hook? What the heck is the hook? Like when people say that, like, what do they mean? And what, what is a hook?
BK (27:40):
So for us, there’s three key pillars to a successful hook point. So first is like, how do you grab that attention? How do you stop the scroll? How do you earn the click? Because without that, in the world that we live in with those billions of competing messages, people are going to move on because there’s so much choice. So your first job as a brand, as a marketer with any piece of content you’re creating, whether it’s organic or paid is how are you stopping the scroll? How are you earning the click? How are you getting that email open? Because without that, you’re never going to get to your store. You will never get to retaining the audience’s attention. So you get completely lost in the noise. And that’s the first signal to an algorithm that your content is not going to retain attention, because if they see people’s filling, plants are not clicking, they’re automatically suppressing reach.
BK (28:28):
The second part is once you have the attention, how do you hold it? Because we don’t, you know, clickbait is kind of gone in a way that the algorithms have picked up on it. I’m not going to say that there’s nobody that’s that successful with it, but the algorithms and even the auctions too, are looking at your ability to hold that attention, because all the attention to the world with no substance doesn’t mean anything. So how compelling is your story to maintain that attention? And then third and finally is how are you monetizing that attention? How does it play to the overall growth of your company of your brand? Now that doesn’t mean that every piece of content has to sell something, but there has to be an underlying foundation and monetization strategy to make it sustainable because otherwise you’re going to burn out or you’re not going to have the time or the resources or the money to keep reinvesting in it. So again, the way that we look at a hook point is a holistic picture is how do we grab attention, hold attention to that, monetize that attention.
RV (29:30):
And in terms of stopping the scroll, grabbing attention like you mentioned clickbait, right? So that would be the sort of like the lowest form of it. I mean, how do we stop the scroll? I mean, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s one thing. And I’d like to you to think specifically about like experts here. A lot of our audiences experts, if you’re an entertainer, it’s, you know, I think it is a little bit different if you’re, you know, you’re showing a cat hanging up the side of a building that grabs our attention, or if you’re a news channel, you’ve got some scary statistic or something
BK (30:05):
That grabs our attention. But if you’re just a, an expert trying to like teach people how to, you know, save money on their taxes or, you know, a lawyer trying to do, you know, just talk about your business or an author, something, how do you grab the attention without like, what are the ways to really capture attention without kind of the you know, kind of, I guess, spamming this kind of things. Well, the first place you have to do is you have to start with research. You have to identify the patterns of what people are talking about of your subject, and also identify the patterns of what’s happening in content. So let’s break down both of those first understanding what and how people are saying about your subject in your specific niche, because the minute somebody sees something and they think that they already know what you’re going to say, they’re moving on.
BK (30:55):
Even though you may have a completely different spin on it. It’s like if you’re a meditation teacher and you, you say in the first three seconds, meditation is the key to content or success or whatever. And I think, okay, I already know that I’m moving on. I’m not giving it a second thought. So identifying the patterns of what everybody else is saying so that you can break those patterns and stand out. Secondarily, you have to understand that people are scrolling through social media. So they just watch LeBron James dunk, a basketball, they watch the squid games trailer. They watch Kevin Hart tell a joke. Now your piece of content comes up. So understanding how do I break that pattern of all these things that they’ve said already? So that is the fundamental core of where you start now, there’s nuance details for each specific sector or industry that you can play with. But in order to design an effective hook point, you have to identify the patterns so that you can break them. And that’s where most people are going wrong with it.
RV (32:00):
And that’s what I heard you say as both the pattern of what other people are saying on your topic and the overall pattern in the way that content is being presented by anybody, which is, which is interesting. It’s like even a video on certain platforms a couple of years ago. Just the fact there was a video would be a pattern interrupt. And today it’s, it’s not at all. Cause we all, we all are used to seeing content that way in the feed. Phenomenal stuff. Brandon, where do you want people to go? This, this was awesome, man. Like I you’re really, really brilliant and just have a real natural mind for this. And I love it cause I don’t find it to be something we’re pretty good at making money, but I don’t think we’re as naturally good as the Martha marketing pieces. And I love this. So where do you want people to go if they want to learn more and connect with you?
BK (32:49):
Yeah. If they want to learn more about the process, they can go to hook point.com. There’s a video that breaks down what we talked about in more detail. And there’s a deck that they can download for free, or they can schedule, call with our team, or if they want to check out the books for hook point, they can buy it anywhere. Or if you go to book dot hook point.com, there’s additional there’s additional ad-ons there or book that 1 million followers.com. But I think like really, if you, if you were intrigued, you want to dive in a little bit deeper, start with hook point.com. Cause there’s a lot of free information there that people can dig into.
RV (33:24):
I love it, man. Well, we will, we will put a a link there. Fascinating, absolutely fascinating stuff, practical stuff. And just a lot of fun I think in breaking this down and I definitely, I definitely recommend it obviously. That’s why we had Brendan on the show and thanks, man, for the gift of your, your wisdom and spending some time with us, we wish you the best.
BK (33:44):
Yeah. Thanks for having me. It was true. Pleasure to connect with you and everybody listening to this

Ep 223: Secrets of Growing a Social Media Following with Jasmine Star | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):
Welcome back to the influential personal brand podcast recap edition today, me and Aj are breaking down the interview with the one and only Jasmine Star, which is pretty awesome to get a chance to have a conversation with her and just get some of her thoughts and behind the scenes kind of secrets on how she’s built a huge, awesome personal brand and social media following. So AJ, welcome to the show.
AJV (00:32):
Happy to be here.
RV (00:34):
Yeah. so we’ll share our top three highlights. I’ll go first. I think, you know, the first one that jumped out for me was where she said, I’d rather be liked for who I am than for a carbon copy of who I am or for a pretend version of who I am. And she said, this is, this is the line that she said, having lukewarm followers, isn’t powerful having lukewarm followers, isn’t powerful. I want to attract or repel. And that really stuck with me about just like the lukewarm part of it. And just having people that are really engaged in the way you have people really engaged just by being like yourself and letting people, letting people see you. And I, that kind of hit me of like, I wonder how much I’m doing that online and should I be doing a better job of that and doing more, you know, but anyways, that I thought that was super powerful. So that hit me hard. I knew that was my first takeaway.
AJV (01:35):
I love that. I love that people do fall in love with who you are, not the carbon copy. I love that. That’s really good, not my first one, but I love that. I think that’s really good. My first one was when she was talking about a platforms of choice and she said, I’m not choosing a platform on where I want to be. I’m choosing my platform based on where my customer is. And I think that’s really good because so often we hear so many people talk about, you need to be on every single platform and it’s going, I just hear more and more these days. Well, is that really true? And why would you invest time on being on a platform that your audience is not on? And I think that’s just really good. And I think it’s really important to go, where is my customer?
AJV (02:23):
And I think the second part of what she talked about that I thought was really connected to this and like really like close the circle on this was if you have to choose just one platform, then divide the platforms and how you choose them. In other words, separate where you want to consume information versus where you want to create information. So if your platform of choice is Instagram, because you love it and you love pictures and you just love keeping in touch well, that’s where you consume information, but if that’s not where you’re gaining traction and that’s where your audience does not live, then you don’t need to use that platform to create you have one to consume and one to create, which really allows you to have a preferred platform in which you consume information because you enjoy it, but a separate one where you create information because that is where your audience lives. And I just loved that. I thought it was very clear. We’ve heard a lot of conversations around that over the last few months. And I just love the way that she just split the two and to have a place where you consume, have a place where you can create, maybe they’re the same place, but if they’re not make sure you’re creating where your customers are.
RV (03:30):
Yeah. Amen. I love it. The second thing for me was, was it was towards the end where we started talking about monetizing kind of your following and going okay, how do we turn this into money? And she said, basically people get discouraged because they try to launch something or do something. And nobody buys and they have these really low conversions. And she said, don’t think of low conversions as a no think of, think of it as a, not yet. And that shifting is really good. I that’s the thing I’ve shared before on other episodes that I learned from you AJ that you you’ve always said, like, basically there’s no such thing as a, no, like everyone will buy eventually. And that, so hearing her say it was a good, it, you know, I guess edification and iteration of it, even on like social media and your funnels and stuff is just like, you can’t think of it as a fail or a no.
RV (04:25):
Or I don’t like you, or I don’t want you, or I’ll never buy this thing. It’s just the idea that you have a lot of trust to build and you have to add value for a long time. And if you out serve them in the meantime, eventually it catches back up with you. And I don’t think we can ever hear it enough. And the other thing I want people to hear, which is between the lines on that is I also hear her saying even I don’t convert massive percentages of my following, right? Like you don’t, you assume that people are like, oh, they make millions of dollars. They probably have 50% of the people that buy, but that’s not at least our experience. She didn’t say that directly. But you know, we see behind the back behind the scenes of a lot of these funnels and even the biggest names in the world convert 1, 2, 3, 5%. And so the way they keep going is, is this mindset. And so don’t be discouraged if that’s you, you just need more people and more time don’t give up.
AJV (05:24):
Yeah, I like that. And my second one was kind of connected to that. I’m very similar to, it’s not just a it’s not a, no, it’s not a, not yet, but not just that in terms of helping people get to know you, you have to have multiple points of entry. So multiple funnels. And I share this because I just know so many of our clients have one it’s like one lead magnet, it’s one video funnel, it’s one webinar funnel. And I’m just going, it’s like, really think about how do I have one of each right, for the people who just want the immediate gratification of here’s this immediate thing, I’m going to get a PDF. We have to be able to fulfill that desire and our audience and for the other people who want a really short video course, or for the people who want longer form content and a 2, 3, 4 hour webinar, it’s like we have to be able to create multiple funnels so that once they complete one, we can feed them another one.
AJV (06:20):
And once they complete that one, we can create another one. And it’s funny because this is literally what we were talking about on our internal marketing today is our marketing cycler of how many different funnels do we want to constantly make available to our audience, that people who haven’t bought yet? Because it isn’t a no, it’s a not yet. And people have to know you and trust you before. They’re really willing to give you their money. And it can’t just be one quick PDF. And you’re like, why didn’t I buy or one video funnel? And you’re like, well, that didn’t work. It’s like, no, this is a relationship. And that takes time. But it’s about that relationship building process. And multiple times the more you can have multiple times in front of them, the better you’re going to be. So similar to yours with just a little add on of like how many different points of entry do you have and then how do you combine all those? So people can constantly get fed all of your information over the course of time.
RV (07:19):
That’s funny, AJ and I literally came off of a call like a 2 hour call. And if you ever hear us use the term marketing cyclers. So that’s the term that we use, which is like we’ll cycle people from one free training to the next free training to the next free training, and basically just drop value, value, so much value that it’s like, eventually they have to go. These folks are awesome. I want to talk to them. So that’s so good. My, my third takeaway, it was funny cause it’s, it was actually more like emotional. You know, she used a word that is is sort of near and dear to my heart is this it’s in the subtitle of our second book permission. And when we wrote procrastinate on purpose, we talk about the emotional side of productivity. And we say, what people are missing is permission.
RV (08:07):
They have to give themselves permission to say no permission for imperfection permission for the incomplete. And Jasmine hit that word really hard in this interview with just permission to succeed. So it was a different, a different context, but I love where she said, one day, I’m going to write a book. And the last page in the book is going to be a permission slip that you have to fill out for yourself. And you’re going to write your own name in and say, I give myself permission to blank. And that really hit me hard because I was like, how many of us have a dream? But we don’t even give ourself permission to daydream about it. Or we have a tactic we know we should do, but we haven’t given ourselves permission to try it. Or there’s something we’re doing that we D we, we don’t really want to do. We feel like we should let it go, but we haven’t given ourselves permission to just let that thing go. And I just thought that was really good. Like, what do you have to give yourself permission to? And the permission slip. So I, I, that really was simple and clean and powerful and inspiring for me.
AJV (09:18):
I love that. I think that’s really good. And I thought for a second, that your third one was going to be my third one. Cause when you said emotional, I was like, oh wow, we’re gonna have the same one. But it wasn’t, it’s completely different. And so my third one was give people who follow you the opportunity to have an emotional response, to getting to know you. And I thought that was really good. It’s, you know, social media is giving someone the emotional response to knowing you. And I know that oftentimes we can get stuck in the content side of what we do, and it’s all about information and content and value. And at some point it’s like, but who is the person behind this information and this content. And it’s like, how do we create that emotional connection to the human being who is creating this?
AJV (10:12):
That’s allowing them to get to know you, to get to know your family, your likes, your interests, your dislikes, what you believe in. And although that’s connected to your content, it is different. It is less letting people know you for who you are, not just for what information you can provide. And I thought that was really good of, I think that the idea of these perfectly curated Instagram accounts or social media accounts, although in theory and even visually they’re real pretty, it’s like people don’t really want pretty, they want real and authentic, and they just want to know that it’s not curated, that it’s just who you are. And I really appreciated that. And also it’s like, don’t be afraid to, you know, have a series of content next to you making spaghetti with your kids or Halloween costumes, or just the, the realness of who you are as a person. Because that’s what really makes people fall in love with you. It isn’t just what you teach them, it’s who you are. So I love that.
RV (11:11):
That’s really, really good. And y’all, I mean, this is an episode. I mean, Jasmine is, I mean, she’s one of the best in the world that organic content, viral marketing, social media, like go listen to the full episode. If you haven’t already there, there are so many nuggets and we talk about Instagram reels and how they’re, over-indexing lists a lot of like really important practical tips. And also some, obviously some inspirational ones like we just shared, but check out the full length interview. Thank you for being here. Keep coming back. We got lots of amazing guests and you know, we’re, we’re getting people to tell the stories of exactly what you need to do to be successful. We’re glad you’re here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.