Author: AJ Vaden

Ep 222: Secrets of Growing a Social Media Following with Jasmine Star

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):
Oh my gosh. I am so excited to introduce you to Lee legitimately. This is my favorite bio point about Jasmine star is that she is one of my favorite people to follow personally on social media. I love her content. It’s so practical. It’s fun. It’s inspiring. You can just tell that she is one of you, a mission-driven messenger, and she just has become one of the most influential creative entrepreneurs in, in the world. She started as a photographer. She dropped out of law school, picked up a camera, was doing her photography business and has just since grown this huge personal brand. I got to meet her a few years ago. When I was with Louis at his mastermind event, she was there and then we kinda lost touch. And now all of a sudden we’re like seeing each other three times here in a matter of two weeks. And her most recent project is something called social curator. This is a subscription that is for business owners to help them do social media marketing and keep up with all the trends that are happening, understand how to do it right. And I’m hoping that’s a little bit of a preview of what we’re going to get today. So Jasmine, welcome to the show.
JS (02:04):
I am so happy to be here and right, lest you forget, we did not lose touch. Your girl was creeping from a distance. We are just now happy that I can creep openly. So now, you know, I’m creeping on you openly as opposed to privately. I’m happy. I’m happy to be here. Thank you.
RV (02:18):
Yeah. Well, and, and I know, and so AIJ, so my wife business partner, our CEO, you guys shared the stage at Amanda tresses event for faster way, and Amanda’s a close friend of ours. And and you and I are speaking at Christy Wright’s event here in a few weeks, and it’s just awesome. All good. It’s weird to say, I feel kind of weird to say this, but like, I’m, I’m so proud of you. Like, I, I love that you’re winning. I love when good people win. I feel like a lot of times, not always the good people win, but you’re like doing it the right way and,ly winning. And so yeah, so I have to share us your shares your ways.
JS (03:00):
Oh, well, okay. Well, before we get, before we get to the ways, cause I’m like, you set that bar really high. You set that bar like Olympic level high. Let me lower it a little bit. I have to say that one of the things and part of the reason why I still feel such a closeness to you and to your business and an affinity for what it is that you teach is when you had started this podcast, you had said, oh, and we with Lewis one that is like an aspirational model. I hope that one day you’re in a podcast like, well, when we were a Jasmine, when you become just your first name, you know, you’ve made it. It’s kinda like when we were Louis, everybody knows it was like Lewis house. Like
JS (03:42):
There you go. You know, very few can get to that singular letter like Oprah. But oftentimes I feel your presence when I really do talk to a business owners, because one of the things, I was a member of Lewis house mastermind, which is where you and I met. And one of the things amongst many that I had learned, and you had an hour presentation and I just had a book full of notes, but one of the things that just has stuck with me for years since that point is what I believed you call. At least I attributed to every time I say this, I’m like, well, Rory Vaden calls it the five X role. And it was one of the things that you had said is when you are teaching somebody to do something, you do, it will take them five times as long to do it, which was such a profound thing.
JS (04:24):
Because when our paths first crossed three years ago, we had like two people on our team. And now we have upwards of 23 and it’s always going back to man. It is really, you got to slow down before you speed up. And so I always think to myself, if it takes me X to do this thing, it’s going to teach me and take somebody else at five X. So let’s build that into our plan. And it’s just given us so much permission to slow down before we speed up. So thank you friends for that legacy.
RV (04:51):
Well, and you nailed the word, so that permission. So for those of you that are listening. So this is from my second book procrastinate on purpose five permissions to multiply time which was what my Ted talk was based on. And that word is permission like it is. So this is the delegate chapter you’re talking about. And we, we call it the per the permission of imperfect and granting someone else. The permission of imperfect allows you to free yourself. Which I think is interesting. So that conversation is about time. And one of the things that we learned when we were studying and putting that together was that 80% done right by someone else is always better than a hundred percent done right by you.
JS (05:33):
Oh, hold on, hold on. We need to slow that down that you need to say that again for the people in the back, because you say it because it’s just your truth and you know it, but oftentimes it’s like, Rory, like, say that again, say it just to me, I’m sure your audience is like, he says it all the time. Listen, I need to hear it. in Rory’s voice so that it sits in the back of the crevices of my mind. Please
RV (05:54):
I’ll say it. And then I want to segue to why saying it again. So 80% done right by someone else is always better than a hundred percent done right by you. And we call it the permission of imperfect and it’s it’s it’s the struggle is what got you here as a performer, won’t get you there as a leader because you got here by perfection and being good and crushing it and doing everything neatly and tightly in organized. But when you become a leader, it’s not about doing things yourself. It’s about getting other people to do. And so you have to grant yourself some imperfect. When I hear you talk about getting on camera and doing reels, that same emotional permission of imperfection is something that I’ve learned from you is just like, it’s the same thing where you go, you’ve got to give up that feeling of control and being perfect so that you can create I mean, I feel like that’s a big part of your message. [inaudible]
JS (07:00):
A hundred percent, a hundred percent. If I, if, if we can just get down to that, like I’ve often said, if I could write you a permission slip, I would, in fact, I’m telling you why I have no, I’m not writing a book right now. I have no plans. I’m not pitching. So if people are listening, I was like, I’m an agent. No, no, no. I don’t need to get the DMS. I’m nowhere near that. I know the title of my book. I know the purpose of my book. I am not ready to be a vessel for the book, but let me just tell you that what I know to be, to be certain is on the very last page, I am going to have a template for a permission slip, and people are going to write their name in, and they’re going to write the thing that they want permission to do.
JS (07:39):
Now, I don’t care what you do with that piece of paper. You can put it on your fridge. You can put on a wall, you could take a picture of it. It could be a screensaver because oftentimes we are looking for people to give us permission. When the only people who can give us permission is ourselves. But sometimes it’s nice to hear it from somebody else. I asked you Rory to repeat it back to me because that message is something I needed to hear this week. And I’m going to keep on replaying it because 80% perfect by somebody else is better than a hundred percent perfect by me. And that’s the thing I needed to hear. So yes, and amen. That’s where we started this conversation. We are hitting the ground running. I don’t even know if people, I don’t know if people’s hearts are prepared. People need to prepare their hearts for the heat that the Jay star and Roy are bringing in
RV (08:27):
And let it be done. When you get off this call, you’re just going to have to shorten your Instagram handle to J-star this is happening. So can you tell us about the early days? That’s one of my favorite things about this show is, you know, people are listening and it’s you know, they see, they see you and frankly go, holy moly, like this, this woman’s awesome. She’s crushing it. She’s up. People should make money, like tons of followers and stuff. And one of the things we want this show to be is tell me how it was when nobody was there. Tell me how it was when you posted a video. And there weren’t hundreds of thousands of people. And there weren’t views, like, take us back to how you got started and like, what did you do? And, and how did you feel? And like, how did, how did this come about for you?
JS (09:18):
Well, before I answer, I actually do want to call something out and it’s like very, very, very clear. And it is my truth is that for every person who says, wow, she’s crushing it, she’s doing a great job. I know there’s about three. Who’s like, she’s a hot mess. She’s not that talented. She’s not saying anything new. That’s not a great idea. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, I was accidentally BCC on an email where somebody said, oh yes, yes. Not that innovative. I’ve seen better in reference to the thing that I was working on. And I’m like, I sat on it. Right. I sat on it and I was like, should I say something? Am I going to be a petty, Betty? And I let it go then, and then said, person asked for a favor. I agreed to the favor. I shared my insight and advice.
JS (10:08):
And I also sent a screen grab. And I just said, I saw it, but we’re still cool. But the best thing that you could do in our relationship moving forward is if you tell me directly and this person agreed this person, so let’s just start there, right. Because I don’t wake up and be like, oh my God, it’s so great on social. Everybody loves me. Everybody sees I’m crushing it. No, there are more people who do not like what I do. And to that, I say yes. And amen. I would rather be disliked for a hundred percent of who I am than to be liked for a carbon copy of who people think I need to be. So thank you for you thinking I’m doing great. Thank you for being a champion of who I am. But I also realize there’s a ton of people who don’t like me, but I would rather have somebody not like me or entirely like me being lukewarm.
JS (11:00):
Having lukewarm followers is not my cup of tea. That’s never the thing I would want to do. One of two things. And this goes back to building a brand. I want to attract, or I want to repel. If I am not doing one of those two things, I’m doing a disservice to my brand, into the experience. I really believe with all my heart that a personal brand goes farther with a small group of people who wildly believe in the mission and the ethos and who you are. Then a lot of people are kind of like cool, forgettable, not sure I care enough to have an opinion. And so I know that it might be a little counter opposite or a little intuitive. So as I get into like origin stories, like, please know, I don’t think I’m the best thing since like flour tortillas. That’s not the case.
JS (11:39):
I just do my thing. And if some people like it great and have others, don’t, it’s equally as great. So I so one of the things as we kind of started building things out was I am the, of an immigrant I’m first-generation Latina first generation college student first-generation post-grad. I went to UCLA law school on a full academic scholarship, and I’m also first generation law school dropout. My mom had brain cancer and she had a relapse when I was in my first year of law school. And it really brought to the surface asking a big question of why, what am I doing? And I believed that getting a degree or having multiple letters after my name would be the ticket out of the body of would be a way for my family to move from one socioeconomic level to another. But I never asked if that was the thing I was supposed to be doing.
JS (12:30):
And so in combination with my mom’s relapse and culmination being me being wildly unhappy, and in combination with me having my first bout with depression, I was like, I’m unhappy. And this isn’t working. And when I gave myself again and let’s talk about permission is I couldn’t give myself the permission to truly ask what it is I was supposed to do, because that’s not, when you do, when you’re a daughter of an immigrant, like you see your parents do whatever it takes to put food on the table. And so all of a sudden it felt very luxurious for me. Like, let me punch suffocate. What makes me happy? It’s a very American notion what makes me happy? And that’s all the thing that my parents wanted, but I felt like the weight and the responsibility being the eldest of five children. And again, it was a story I’m telling myself.
JS (13:11):
So then we’re sitting at dinner and my husband has the conversation and says, well, what do you want to do? And it was the first time in my entire life where I’m like, what do I want to do? And I vocalized that I wanted to be a photographer. And he said, great, but you don’t own a camera like that might help. So decide to get a camera. And the thing that I realized as most people starting, any, anything, this is the conversation happens in 2005. I get a camera 2006. Okay. I get my first gig paid gig late 2006. And then 2007 is when I file a DBA, like 2007 is my first year of business. And I was terrible. I was terrible. I wasn’t even bad. It was like, so my daddy is the pastor of a church in east Los Angeles. And so, you know, you’re really bad when parishioners of the church don’t even want you to shoot their photos for free.
JS (14:08):
Like, you gotta, you gotta be real bad. I was like, yo, they’ll look, God, like, you know, it’s like, there’s like, where’s the nepotism here. So you know, that’s the case. But the thing that I started to do, which was very new at the time was to share what I was learning. And a lot of people who were seasoned in the industry, if they happen to see the content that I was putting out. And by this time there wasn’t social media, it was just putting out on a blog. I was putting out the blog on my journey, what I was doing, what I was learning, the pitfalls and the struggles and people who are seasoned, who happened to see that would be like, well, that’s a stupid idea. Nobody like nobody cares where you’re going on vacation or nobody cares what you’re shooting, sweetheart.
JS (14:42):
Why don’t you just get a camera and get some practice? And number one, I agree with the sentiment, but what happened was the climate of the way that businesses were being built was wildly changing. And the thing that I understood early on as a result of putting stuff out imperfectly, was that people were buying a highly emotional pro service wedding photography, which is the thing that I was doing, having no idea of the intellectual property or the talent that it took to create the thing that we did. So photographers want to lead with the camera, the gear, the awards, the studio, the albums, the flash, and then along comes somebody and breaks the paradigm of listen. You’re selling something that people really don’t understand. If I could sell on emotion, that somebody would invest with me as the photographer, in addition to the photography, the game shifted.
JS (15:29):
That’s what I started to do. So I was writing blog posts when nobody were reading blogs, I started getting on Twitter early days of Twitter. And I’m just like, let me just see what I can do here. And I realized that what was happening on the blog was unidirectional conversation. I was writing about what I was doing and people would come and read, but it was coming to me. Very little dialogue. Twitter changed the game in that the dialogue became two-way. And I started realizing that I can create experiences. Having somebody have an affinity toward me or the thing that I was creating simply by responding. Now, this is not, I was having a two-way conversation because my work was so good or my business savvy was so impeccable. It was truly, people started caring about what I was producing simply because I cared about them.
JS (16:11):
So I learned that in 2009, 2010, and that has been foundational when it comes to building a brand on social and on the next big thing, people are like, oh, well Jasmine’s about Instagram. And I was like, yes, but I was about blogging heavily. I was getting 25,000 unique views a day before social media came around and I started realizing, okay, I’m going to start building a hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. And then all of a sudden Facebook came around and I did the same with hundreds of thousands on Facebook. So you tell me the next thing I need to do. So worry. If you were to tell me Jasmine, to build a personal brand, you need a ride to donkeys and a clown suit and be whistling to kazoo. Watch me buy a kazoo. I will do whatever it takes to make somebody feel something about me. And I’m less concerned about being perfect. The most talented, the most qualified or the richest that’s in me. And I could be wrong to me. A foundation of a brand is what somebody says about you when you’re not in the room. And the way that you buttress, what people say is about caring about them first, before you want them to care about you.
RV (17:06):
Yeah, that was so good. Although I do think J star could be a kazoo.
JS (17:13):
Why don’t we, why don’t we for every person that leaves a review for the podcast, we send a little J star kazoo
RV (17:19):
Is blown up a Shopify store, J star. Cause yeah, so, well, I mean, that’s the irony of the whole personal brand. Like even the, even the, even the name, personal brand, it’s like, it makes you think it’s about you. And it’s like, it’s not about like the more you, the irony is, the more you care about yourself, the more you’re worried about what other people think. The more you’re trying to put out perfect content for you, like the less effective, it feels like it’s such a great paradox. Yes.
JS (17:54):
A thousand percent, a thousand percent. Like you have a stronger personal brand when people have an opinion about you. Like you have a stronger personal brand when people feel like you are never above taking the time that you have to respond to a question or comment. Now, do I think that you need to respond to every comment in every DM? Well, it depends on your bandwidth, but as long as you know, you’re walking in integrity that you’re doing as much as you can, however you can, than anybody else can’t expect enough. And people feel it, people do feel it.
RV (18:24):
Yeah. So I want to talk about the platforms for a second. Cause, cause you know, the principle here is the same and I think brand builders group operates more in principles that we do in tactics. Like we’re where frankly, we’ve never been that strong at like the keeping up. We’re not moving fast enough. I think a lot of times to keep up with some of the tactics and algorithms and things like that. But the, you went from blogging to Twitter, to Facebook, Instagram, these
JS (18:53):
Youtube in the middle, the YouTube in the middle and then Snapchat and Pinterest and clubhouse.
RV (18:58):
Are you still doing all of them? Like, so are you still doing all them? Is there one that you’re hanging out in and you know, people talk about all the platforms are different. Do you feel like they’re really different or is there, are there principles that make them the same and then kind of like, where are you now? Like where do you see this going?
JS (19:17):
So they’re, they’re different enough. And that’s the thing that I really want to put like a little, a little bit of a pin in is that I am not choosing a platform based on where I want to be. In fact, my preferred platform is not where my customer is now, but I do believe it’s where my customer will be in the future where I, if I have free time to spend on social, I’m going to tech talk. I just think it’s fascinating. I think the algorithm is spot on. I think that they serve content. So it almost feels like, you know, you like lift your head up and you’re like, where did two hours ago? And you know that they’ve hit on something when you hear that quite often from a lot of its users. And so am I still active on Facebook?
JS (19:56):
Yes. Am I still active on YouTube? Yes. Am I still active on Twitter? Yes. Do I have a Pinterest strategy? Yes. Am I still blogging? Yes. Am I on Instagram? Yes. But oftentimes we talk about like having a pillar strategy. So it’s quite often and I have a podcast, the Jasmine star show. So we have two pieces of anchor content. It might come in the form of a long form blog post or the form of a podcast. And then based on the topics of the blog post or the podcast, we then can create subsidiaries for each of our social platforms because Facebook, you can get a little bit more long form than people are used to normally reading on Instagram. So what we can do is we create like our primary, our primary platform. And that for me were our customers for social curator are right now is Instagram.
JS (20:37):
That’s where they’re spending. Most of their time, my focus is on Instagram. And then we have like a, like a tailwind from there. So it’s like a week and four hours later that post slightly different copy. So that it’s tailored for the Facebook group, Facebook users. And it feels native. So anything that at mentions or hashtags that existed on Instagram, they’re not going to be pushed over automatically to Facebook. We have to contextualize the content that we have. And then another four hours later, we’ll be putting that out on LinkedIn. If we created a video and like an IETV that is edited in a vertical format. So it feels native to the platform, but then it’ll also be edited in a horizontal format so that when we put it on YouTube, where we put it on Facebook, it feels native to it. So I don’t think that I am like, so all-knowing to create and choose a platform. I am just saying the more that the social curator content exists on these platforms, the higher likelihood it is to find a customer. Now I know that sounds wildly overwhelming to a lot of people, but I’ve been doing it now a decade. So I can think, I think
RV (21:38):
Content on the team. Yes,
JS (21:41):
But it’s not for my personal brand. That’s where social security that’s for social security. The vast, yeah, the vast majority. Definitely. So are
RV (21:48):
You editing all that? You’re not, I
JS (21:50):
Don’t edit, I don’t edit videos. I have a videographer, but when it comes to creating reels, I am creating reels. When it comes to recording podcasts, I’m recording the podcast. We do have a podcast producer, but it’s like, for us, it’s like, I’m doing like intro, body outro and we don’t have any ads. So it’s, we try to keep it as streamlined as possible. We want to work smarter, not harder. Now having said all of that, if somebody is listening and immediately hears, this says, this is so not for me. Great. It pushed you. Remember, I only want to attract a repel. So if I’m repelling you in situate, let me see if I can bring you back into the fold with one thing. Can you choose just one platform? And it’s not the platform that you really like, because you might just love Instagram, but if you know your customers on Facebook groups, okay, then you separate your time with where you want to consume versus where you want to create. And once you’ve chosen, where you want to create on the platform that you think is most inclined where your dream customer actually exists, then your strategy is just to focus on that platform and crazy enough. And just test me on this. The more that you’ve become familiar with one platform, the easier it is to scale when you go to a second, but right now resist the temptation to create for all platforms and always focus on one, build out the strategy, see what’s working and see if you can duplicate it on a secondary platform.
RV (23:01):
Yeah. And to what you’re saying, cause we, we teach something called the content diamond, which is a very, you know, similar kind of thing where you’re just taking one piece of content and, and fractionalizing, if you have the team, you have the capacity, you can do it. So it’s not that you’re creating unique content for each platform. It’s that you’re contextualizing the content you have for each platform.
JS (23:24):
Correct? Correct. And whereas right now, you know, Instagram is heavily indexing on Instagram reels. Well, there was a time where I was testing, repurposing the reels onto Facebook and it just didn’t work. That was just like the views weren’t there. It just sat, there was a really low engagement. And so what I took from that, and which is very clear is that people on Facebook are not about, so when I’m posting a reel, I will not be repurposing it on to Facebook. I might repurpose a real on Facebook stories because it disappears after 24 hours and a real on Facebook stories looks a little bit more native to that platform, which is fine. But what would go in its place would be something entirely else. That’s going to be serving the Facebook audience in a way that they deem most valuable.
RV (24:07):
And so how do you know, like you’re, you’re you you’ve said a couple of times like go where your audience is, by the way, you know my personal brand, when we exited our former in 2018, we had to start over from scratch all our social media, zero podcast, zero email database back on zero. So it’s been interesting building it from 2018 on versus when we had originally started back in 2008, but our team kind of runs, we run the content diamond on my stuff, but what AIG does, we’re just now starting to build AIG has been built in most of the companies, just the CEO, like she’s really been focused on the company. We’re starting to build out her personal brand, but what she’s been doing in the interim is exactly what you said. She consumes on Instagram, but she creates for LinkedIn.
JS (24:54):
Oh, I was going to say that I was like, y’all know, you guys are on LinkedIn. Like that’s, you know that that’s your platform easily. Yeah.
RV (25:00):
And she has a lot of traction there and you know, she just like has a lot of that background that like B2B. So she, she does it. But when you say go where your audience is in terms of where do you create for, are you doing that based on demographic data of who the users are? Are you doing that based on UTM tracking based on who’s clicking through and coming into funnels and buying, is there some other measure? Like how do you, like you’re saying your, your audience right now is on Instagram, but you’re not, you’re not saying that’s because you like to be on Instagram yourself necessarily. So how are you coming up with that answer?
JS (25:39):
So we know that our dream customer is 33 years old and she lives in Manhattan beach and she has two boys aged three and five and she drives a white and black range Rover. And her husband is a lawyer and they met in college. We also know that she was raised on a goat farm in Ohio, California, which is where she developed her craft at creating goats milk soap, which he started selling in Manhattan beach farmer’s market, where she came across a buyer from anthropology who really liked her product. And then she just realized that if she wanted to create a business, you can no longer have a hobby disguised as a business, but to actually create a business. And at this point in time where she’s looking at, how does she create the marketing resources and building brand resources online. And that is how our paths intersect
RV (26:21):
And you’re, and you’re, you’re saying she’s on Instagram.
JS (26:24):
That in order to determine with the platform you should be creating on, you must first and foremost know who your customer is, because if your customer is 33 years old with two kids in an affluent area and educated at this point in time, she’s on Instagram. Now, if you’re creating resources for millennials and it’s a printed tea shop, despite what people say, Snapchat is alive and well, I would over-index on Snapchat. If I was creating that type of content, I would also go over to TechTalk. Now, if my target demo is a 49 year old professional male or female who has expendable income to invest in like my business, coaching, marketing resources, whatever the case may be, I’d be on LinkedIn. So again, part of why people have a difficult time choosing the platform is they need to first and foremost clearly identify who they’re selling to. And then you could just simply look at the analytics, where are those people at? And then you go there.
RV (27:19):
Yeah, yeah. Got it. How do you make money from all this? Like so you put in all this work and you never sell on social media. Like it’s all this value you just don’t, you know, like where does the money happen? Like because if you just go online, you make reels of like five reasons you should, you know, buy my program, right? Like, no, one’s going to watch that. So how do you, how do you make that transition from I’m providing value and adding content to I’m converting a customer and collecting money. Cause mama has got to pay the bills.
JS (27:59):
So it’s not a one size fits all answer, but what I can say, and you and I had a conversation earlier today, and so forgive me for repeating, but I firmly believe that a strong entrepreneur does three things in their business. They build a brand, they market their business and they get sales. That’s like, that’s sort of the three. I mean, obviously there’s a lot of minutia and nuance in that, but those are the three main pillars. Social media is so good at building brand, giving somebody an emotional response to who you are or what it is you sell. The more that you give a K the more that you give away content, when you share your insight, your resources, how you’re set apart, bringing people on your journey. That’s all brand-building. What is somebody saying about you when you’re not in the room? AKA, when are they sending a post to one of their friends who says, you really got to check out this brewery guy?
RV (28:41):
That’s the litmus test right there when they, when they send their best friend. And they’re like, thank God to see this. That’s like,
JS (28:47):
But that’s brand. Now when somebody is getting somebody else to co-sign that brand experience, they’re going to get to your page. And once they scroll past two or three posts, you’re now marketing. You are then there to set somebody up to educate them on what it is you do. That’s marketing. You’re not selling at this point in time. You’re just talking about the benefits of drug testimonials. Talked about insights. You talk about how it is that you do what you do when you talk about this diamond thing. I’m so intrigued. One thing that I could do a heck of a lot better job is like owning frameworks. They’re like the five X role I member. Now. I’m like he’s diamond ring fraction. You know his content. And here I would like, we have pillars either way. We can definitely get better at that, but that’s marketing.
JS (29:25):
Now, if you will, you’ll be hard pressed to, for me to be creating a lot of content selling social curator. What we try to do is to create multiple funnels of getting people in by giving value. We know that our conversions are quite high because far before that they have typically been on our list or in a funnel for more than four months. Now let’s pause here. Social curator is $49 a month. For some people that’s like blink away money for other business owners. That’s a considerable chunk of money each month. However, if it took on average four months to convert somebody new on the list or in the funnel to actually a paying subscriber, how much more longer will it take for somebody to convert somebody at a $500 price point, a $5,000 price point of $50,000 price point. A lot of the misconceptions when it comes to I’m doing this work and I’m not getting sales.
JS (30:16):
And I’m like, yeah, how much is your product or service? The more expensive it is the longer the gestation period will be to convert them strictly on the back of social, which is why whenever I get a DM and someone says, Jasmine, I really want to learn how to build a brand. I’m not using my two thumbs to be like, well, first things first make like one, you’re not paying me for consulting. So what I want to do is I need a list of top 10 frequently asked questions. And then I created a free resource. That number one serves the heck out of them. Number two gives them such high valuable content. And number three empowers me to build trust. And when somebody says, Hey, Jasmine, I’m really wanting to build a personal brand. What I do is like, I’m so happy you’re here. Let me give you a download link to a free brand building guide.
JS (30:54):
I dropped the link for them when someone’s like Jasmine, I’m having a difficult time with Instagram rules here. Here’s a link of a resource that I created. Step-By-Step on how for you to do that. Jasmine, I really need an Instagram marketing guide. Got that for you. So what I’m doing is list building in my DMS because having somebody a paid to click from an Instagram post is so, so, so, so, so highly unlikely and largely happens for lower ticket items. And I’m telling you that as a monthly subscription for $49, the push to click to buy is so low. We have to do is cultivate. Give trust, gives so much value that they believe when they hand over their credit card, they’re going to be getting a five or 10 X return based on if that’s what I got for free. Imagine when I get on the inside,
RV (31:35):
That’s that’s so convicting to hear you say that to just your level, going, even for me to get someone, to pull their credit card out for 49 bucks a month, it’s hard. Like people, people have, you know, they have 25 people show up for one webinar and no one buys and they go, this stuff doesn’t work. And it’s like, no, like it takes trust. It’s trust. You have to build trust. And oh yeah.
JS (32:00):
So Roy, if we, if we tap there for a second, you have just said 25 people come on a, on a webinar. Now, if you’re converting on a webinar, I tip my hat to you. That’s hard. That’s where the gangsters play because you’re giving your heart and soul. And you’re speaking for 35 to 47 minutes before you get into a pitch. And then you sit and you hear crickets. And even though you had 25 people to show up for the webinar, you know, by the time you started pitching about four to 5% of them just completely clicked away. And they’re just waiting to get to that free Q and a, and then you’re like giving your last breath and you don’t see anything conversion. Now we have to say that none of that was in a void. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum. That’s just their inception point.
JS (32:40):
When I teach a webinar where we will get on average 30,000 people to sign up and around 3000 people will convert. You think I’m crying or bemoaning about the 27,000? I say, no, you might’ve said no, but I don’t hear no. What I hear is not yet. My objective is to come back and out, serve you so that you’re like me. I tried, I tried and I couldn’t resist giving her my credit card for the 27,000. I just want to be like, thank you for coming to the party. We’re just getting started. I think that that approaches so much of a better cause it keeps you going and it gives you a reason every day to get up and out serve,
RV (33:11):
Hey man, that is what we’re going to land the plane. Jasmine, where should people go to learn about you and social curator and everything? Your,
JS (33:20):
I appreciate you so much and all social platforms, you can find [email protected].
RV (33:28):
Huh. It will be J star, but not yet. [inaudible]
JS (33:33):
Let’s build on, let’s go and get that URL like J star kazoos let’s let’s make it happen on Shopify.
RV (33:39):
I love it. Well thanks for encouraging and just, just the honesty here and just keep doing what you’re doing. Like you’re, you’re inspiring people and yeah, like just keep winning because you inspire me. I know you inspire ha and so many people, it just it just get it’s tactical and all that, but it also gives you hope that you don’t have to be a shyster to do this. Like you don’t have to be someone that’s Hocking your stuff and pitching your stuff and making wild claims and you don’t have to use flashing yellow boxes all the time. And like, you can just out serve people and just love on them and build, build trust. And it still, it still, it comes around. So.
JS (34:27):
Oh yes. And amen. I thank you. I thank you. A thousand times over.

Ep 221: Using Quantum Physics to Build Your Brain and Your Brand with Mark Victor Hansen & Crystal Dwyer Hansen | Recap Episode

AJV (00:07):
Hello, and welcome to the recap edition of the influential personal brand. I am AJ Vaden and the CEO and co-founder of brand builders group. And I am also riding solo today without my counterparts husband, business partner, all the things were evaded. But today I am here on myself to give you our recap on a recent interview that we did with Mark Victor Hansen and his life at crystal Dwyer Hanson on the basis of this new book that they had come out, not that long ago, but it’s called ask the bridge from your dreams to your destiny. And I love stuff like this because we don’t do a ton of it on this podcast. I feel like we get very technical and very technical, and it’s all about how to, and it’s not that this is not a how to episode it most definitely is, but it’s a how to, in a very introspective way, which I think is unique and different.
AJV (01:11):
And I also just love the insights that they have on going from where you are to where you want to be and the power of questions and the power of asking. And I really, this was like one of the best interviews that I’ve listened to in a really long time on just that power of asking. Right. And I also really love this because it type takes it down to a Gary, how to tangible way on a kind of Ethereum topic. And so, okay with that, any more explaining, I’m going to get right down to what are the three big takeaways from this interview with mark Victor Hansen and his wife crystal? So the first thing was this thing that he said, because I am a mom of two toddlers and I am bombarded with questions all day long about all the things a million times.
AJV (01:59):
So I loved something that they said he said, is that as children, we are uncorrupted askers of questions. There is no fear and asking for what you want and doing it repeatedly with guard lists of what the answer is. And I love that phrase where uncorrupted askers, and at some point down the line, me and you and everyone else on this planet has been corrupted by fear and rejection and not getting the answer we want or not getting the outcome we want. And so we stopped asking, we stopped asking why we stopped asking how we start out. We stopped asking what, and I think that was a really aha moment for me because I recently had some other questions that have been asked of me. And I will kind of give you a little parallel of something that really clicked for me on this very particular topic is I have a life coach and he’s awesome.
AJV (02:58):
And his name is Pete and I have been working with him. Well, I dunno for the last several months and he asked me not too long ago, he said, how much of your life do you feel like is being lived by default? And how much of your life is a created lights that you’re, you are intentionally making. And that was a really big question, because I think naturally as an entrepreneur and as someone who runs a business, I’d be like, I am making it like it is a creative life. But if I was really honest with myself, I bet it’s like 80, 20, 80, 20 is default in what just comes my way. And at some point along the lines in last few years, I have really stopped asking myself, what do I want to be doing? What business do I want to be in? Why am I doing this?
AJV (03:52):
How can I do something differently? How do I have more time with my kids? How do I have more white space? And I’ve just said, there’s so much to do. I don’t have the time to do that. And I’ve become a corrected asker and I’ve stopped. And instead over the last few years, there’s been this default life that has been created unintentionally for me instead of a created life by me. So when I heard him say this, it was this combination of these two conversations that I’ve been having here lately. And I thought, wow, I can’t be the only person having these internal and external dialogues about why am I not asking for the things that I want, even if they’re of myself. So that would be my first big takeaway is just how do we become uncorrected askers? And we start asking ourselves those big questions that can be life-changing and life-giving but it’s like, we actually have to ask, what do we want and how do we get it, but also why do we want it? Why is it so important? And I think that that’s kind of the first thing, and I love what he said about this. You said that quantum physics and one simple sentence is just simply what you expect is what you’re going to get.
AJV (05:07):
And to me, that is a default lives or created life. And so how do we become uncorrupted askers of the things that we want? So that was my first big takeaway. I thought it was really, really good. My second one is kind of like a multi-piece component. And his, I love this. He says, you are not a human being. You are a human becoming. And I loved that. I love that reminder that just because we are where we are, does not mean that is where we’re going to be good, bad or indifferent, right. We will change, things will change businesses, economies, markets, friends, family, life, it will change, and it will all evolve. We are not human beings. We are human becomings. And because of that, we, the power and the ability to change those things for ourselves to get what we want, what we expect is what we get.
AJV (06:03):
So what are we expecting? Right? And then he said, there’s three simple things that you need to be asking of to get there. It is, ask yourself, then ask others and then ask God, not necessarily in that order, right. It’s probably ask God, ask yourself, ask others. But those are the three different places where we should be asking questions, right? It’s asking God for guidance. It’s asking ourselves what we want and then asking other people for help and a mix of all those things, right? Asking God for help asking ourselves for guidance. It’s like all the things that it’s ask yourself, ask God, ask others. And I love that too, because I think so often we forget that there is a higher being that cares and has intention of where our life goes. But he’s also one who wants us to come to him and ask of him.
AJV (06:58):
And I think that too was a great reminder for me is sometimes I’m too self-reliant and I’m too independent. And I forget to lean into the places that have already been designed for me to lean into. But I definitely don’t know best. And I definitely need the help of other people. Right. I, I, you know, I love this African proverb. If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go with others, right? It’s like, you’re not meant to do this by yourself. You’re not meant to do this life and business or personal brand by yourself. You need help. You need guidance, you need support. So ask yourself, ask God and ask others. And I, I loved that. He reminded us like right, there are billions of other people on the planet, but how many people have we actually asked?
AJV (07:52):
Right. And if the first a hundred thousand said, no, guess what, there are billions of other humans on this planet. And how often do we ask like 5, 10, 15 people? And we get told no, and we’re like, she’s never going to happen. There are more than 7 billion people on planet earth. And we’re asking five, 10 or 15 people. And we think it’s over. And we think they, we can’t be helped because of that. Like that was a mind blowing moment for me, just to remember, it’s like, oh yeah, I could ask like five or six people and get told no, and be like, it’s hopeless. Then to remember that there’s billions of other humans on this planet. And I haven’t even began to scratch, scratch the scratch of the scratch of the surface when I stopped at this nominal number with just the people in my local community.
AJV (08:43):
So it’s asked and knowing who to ask and how to ask and why you’re asking, okay, I can easily go on a tangent with all of this for a long time. All right. And then here’s my third one. And I thought this was really good. And he said, no, I want to also dig into, and I keep saying he, but it’s he? And she and mark Victor and his wife crystal. And it is both of them. It is a really great interview. And I really encourage it, encourage you to go listen to the full thing. But my last one here is just how this was really powerful. is they talked about the different roadblocks to asking, and why don’t we ask if like we know these things and we can buy into this idea, but it’s also like, we need to have some self realization of why don’t we ask these things.
AJV (09:23):
And they said there are seven roadblocks to ask, and I’m going to give you a very high level. But this is where you really need to go and get the book and actually read it for yourself. But here they are. So the first one is unworthiness. It’s like, well, we don’t think that we’re worthy of asking for the things that we really want and desire. The second thing is naivity, right? We don’t even know what we could be asking for. And I think that was really, really good. Three is doubt. Like, is this really possible, right? Could this really happen? Like, would anyone actually be able to help? Like with God really listening, there’s doubt. And then there’s excuses. I don’t have time for this. This isn’t what I was designed for. Right. I’ve already been told, no, can’t do it again.
AJV (10:03):
It’s like excuses. And I think that’s where a lot of us live. We live in this false reality of excuses that we’ve made up that are not real. We think they’re real because I live in our mind, but they are not real in the real world. And then five was fear, right? We are afraid to put it out there. We are afraid of rejection. We are afraid of being persistent. We are afraid of all the things that actually may be even what happened if these things did come true, but there is some fear associated with asking six, there’s a pattern paralysis, right? It’s a, this ongoing idea that it’s like paralysis analysis too. Right. But it’s, this whole idea is like, at some point we prepare repair, we prepare, we prepare, but then we never do. Right. And then that’s a repeat that happened so many times in our life is we get into this pattern and we don’t know how to get out of it.
AJV (10:57):
I, and I think about that as a, as a mom, I often pull most of my examples because I’m in the thick of it. It’s like, at some point it’s like, you get into this repetitive pattern and you’re like, oh my gosh, am I ever going to sleep again? It’s like, as those newborn, those first few months, it’s like, you kind of get in this pattern. You’re like, oh, I don’t even know what to do when there’s dozens, if not hundreds of things you can be doing, but we’re, we’re paralyzed in the moment of this pattern that we’re living in. Right. And that happens with asking for what we want in life too. And the last, but not least is disconnection. We are disconnected from ourselves. And what we really want are disconnected from our relationship with God and we’re disconnected from our relationship with others.
AJV (11:40):
So we don’t even know who to ask and we don’t even know if they would want to. And I think these going through these seven things and really talking about why aren’t we headed in the direction where we want to be, and how did we get in this default life versus a creative life is really powerful part of this interview of this episode. And I so highly recommend you go back, listen to the whole thing with Mark Victor and his wife crystal also go check out their book. And then also come back and listen to more episodes and more recaps on the influential personal brand with myself and Rory Vaden. And until next time I hope you guys have a great day.

Ep 220: Using Quantum Physics to Build Your Brain and Your Brand with Mark Victor Hansen & Crystal Dwyer Hansen

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, what a special treat for me today to get to introduce you to a married couple who I’m meeting as a couple, really for the first time, mark Victor Hansen, who I actually met years ago at the national speakers association, I was of course mentored by the late Zig Ziglar personally for several years. And mark was there. Jack Canfield was there. There was a lot of legends and mark is best known probably for being the co-author of the chicken soup for the soul series, which has sold get this over 500 million books worldwide. And today we’re joined by his wife, crystal Dwyer Hanson, who I’m just meeting for the first time. She is also an international speaker. She’s a consultant, obviously an author. She co-authored this book that we’re going to talk about, but crystal is amazing. She is a researcher in specifically in the, in the area of neuroscience, epigenetics, quantum physics, and she’s really just kind of an expert overall in the, in the general field of human potential. She knows a lot about nutrition and overall health. And so we’re going to call on some of her scientific knowledge to talk about the conversation of today, which is based on their new book. Their book is called, ask the bridge from your dreams to your destiny. We’ll put links to the book in the show notes, which you can check out and anyways, mark and crystal, so great to have you. Thanks for being here
MVH (02:28):
To be with you. Thanks for inviting us. This will be great. Fun.
RV (02:32):
Yeah. So first of all, so this book about asking I, it spoke to me personally. Okay. So when you guys sent the manuscript over and I start going through it, I found that I even at, you know, my stage in life or career I still struggle with asking and I think I have spent much of my life struggling with asking was raised by a single mom. We were very poor when I was young. We grew up with, with almost nothing. We were never homeless, but we were pretty close a couple of times. And I don’t know if it comes from that background or just the world at large, but I find that not only me, but a lot of people in the world struggle with asking. And so I just wanted to kind of like ask you why this book, why now, what was kind of the, what was kind of the mission on your heart for you know, letting this out into the world right now,
MVH (03:34):
What happens is we traveled to 80 countries, talk to some 7 million people loved every minute and met great, wonderful people. But the difference between somebody, the little successful and vastly successful, we discovered is one thing only the ability to ask to GEP what they want. So what we decided to do is write a book that would be chicken soup on steroids. If you don’t mind, my goal is to sell a billion books. I’ve asked myself, how do you do that? And so we said, well, we’ll do a book that, that transcends every chicken soup was magnificent. Wonderful, still doing great, but we’re learning that you got to add free levels of asking, ask yourself, ask others, ask God, and alluding to what you said is that we’ll talk about the seven roadblocks to asking that, that behooves, everyone to look at in the mirror. So they say, wait, that’s me, I’m stuck here, here, here, and here. And if I transcend that I can go fulfill my destiny because we believe last line is a God coded each and every one of us at birth with a destiny. That’s great. And most of us get so distracted in life that we don’t fulfill our destiny.
RV (04:38):
Hmm. Yeah. I, one of the lines I love this is later in, in the, well it’s, it’s, it’s after the prologue, but it says that basically like our destiny has already been created and our job is to, to, to unlock it and to find it. And I, I thought that was, I thought that was super good. I mean, so crystal coming from your vantage point, you know, I imagine this is, this is connected directly to some neuroscience here in terms of w why, and, and I’d love to talk about the seven roadblocks to asking because it, most of the people listening here are personal brands have some sites of some type they’re they’re a speaker asking to get booked for a fee. They’re an author asking for a book deal. They’re a coach asking for a client, or, you know, asking, you know, the spouse or God for more abundance in their life. But this is something we really struggle with. And you guys talk about these, these seven, seven roadblocks. So what’s some of the kind of like science part of this,
CDH (05:36):
Right? So I, it’s such a good question where there’s so much to it, but I think we all come to this earth feeling this inner calling, because we are all seated with this destiny. But then life starts to happen. Experiences happen, we get shut down and our brains are designed to store those experiences just in efficiency, right? So, so we haven’t had an experience, a negative experience. That’s attached to emotions, emotions create chemistry, the chemistry, the chemistry really cascades through our entire body. So our body remembers those things remembers when someone rejected us remembered when someone said, you’ll never do that, you know, and all these things happen suddenly we feel like we’re not good enough. So then we stop asking, we S we hold back. We don’t, you know, every time there’s an opportunity presented we, we want to do it, but then there’s some inner programming that’s stopping us.
CDH (06:30):
And it’s interesting because the S the science, we looked at the studies show that everyone going into this study had this belief that if they ask someone for help information advice, or just assistance, you know, in accomplishing something or getting something done that the perception was that they would be perceived to be stupid ignorant or just pushy and annoying. Right. And the truth of it is the studies revealed that none of that’s true, that if we’re just willing to put ourselves out there and ask another human being for something there’s an 80% more likely chance that they will help us if they can. And, but, but the other part of the study revealed it. They’re not people don’t just insert themselves into your life if you need help. So if you just sit there thinking, right, thinking that someone’s just going to come and somehow help you, it’s not going to happen.
CDH (07:23):
You have to be invited, right? People have to be invited into your life. And there are also studies that show when you really personalize that invitation, even when it came to they did an interesting study where people stood by and watched this woman get killed right. In, in New York, this was years ago. Right. And, and like, why didn’t anybody intervene? Cause no one asked specifically, but the further studies that they did, they, they, they determined that if you call out someone very specifically like, Hey you in the red jacket and black hair, I need your help. When we personalize our requests, people immediately feel bound to us. And so that’s, it’s so interesting in human psychology, you know, the psychology of asking, but like mark mentioned we identified the seven roadblocks to asking and mark and I found that every single person that we’ve met or talked to carries at least one, if not more of these roadblocks, sometimes all of these roadblocks at one time in our lives. Right. And I’ll just go through them really quickly. But those are unworthiness. Doubt, fear, pattern, paralysis, naivety disconnection. What do I miss? Excuses. Yes. Excuses. Yeah. And we can go deeper into each of these because each one is so important for us to understand. And it’s funny when we start going through them, everybody goes, oh, that’s me. I’ve I’ve stopped myself before.
RV (08:51):
Yeah. There were some, there were some almost gut wrenching stories that you share in the book around you know, somebody who gets divorced, I think maybe it was your uncle or somebody uncle and they got divorced and they never let go of it. And they carried, they, they, they held on to that, just despair and discouragement. And they had too much pride to sort of ask for help, ask for forgiveness. Or I think mark shares the story of dropping somebody off at the airport or something. And they just, they missed their flight because they, they never asked, they don’t know how to ask. And it’s like, it’s crazy. The lengths of like the amount of pain we will allow ourselves to endure because we are willing to embrace the level of humility. It re is required to ask for help. Like, is that which of the roadblocks is that? Or is that just like all of them?
MVH (09:50):
Well, the one on excuses is my brother had been way older than me. He was at some levels my role model, but he came down to visit us right after his wife had died. And he’d been in Alaska panning for gold and goofing off. And then, you know, I had to get up at four 30 to get him to a six o’clock flight, got him to our airport here in Phoenix, Arizona. We live in Scottsdale. I said, big brother, you need any help? Getting to the thinkers. I traveled a quarter million miles for 44 years, as you know, Rhonda Wolf speaking every day. And I thought everybody had airport protocol down and I didn’t realize it. And I get called late in the afternoon. I called his daughter, Jodie. And I said, Jodie, how’s dad doing your dad do. He said, didn’t, you know, he’s been in the airport 13 hours since you dropped him off.
MVH (10:32):
Excuse me, I get goosebumps telling you that. Could I go, what did I do wrong? Didn’t you know, the dad was dragged through the airport, by his wife, Priscilla, who is a love. We just adored both of them, but here’s a guy with a photographic memory. Here’s a guy, who’s got everything going, right. And so I wrote in this story, seven things you could have done. He could have asked me, I would have taken it to the gate. Right? I know protocols out. He could have asked to purple coat at our airport. We have purple coats to help you enter. There are 24 7 all kinds of stuff he could have done, but instead he sent messages, playing and ended up getting pneumonia and dying a little bit after it, it just, to me, it’s heart wrenching because I’ve got excuses. I can’t do it because I’m black. I’m too tall. I’m too short. I’m I got white supremacy problem. I got blah, blah, blah. You can have anything you want. There’s an excuse. But you got excuses in life where you got results and I’ve chosen and crystals chosen to have results. And we want everyone to go for positive, happy, healthy party. Well-Being results that manifest and source everyone and hurt Noah.
RV (11:34):
Huh. Yeah. You know, when you were talking crystal, this is so interesting. When you, you said this, I’ve never heard somebody referenced like a study about how if you ask people, you know, are like 80% more likely to help you. But if you don’t ask, they don’t just insert themselves. And that’s me, like, I never offer unsolicited advice to anybody. Like, it’s one of my rules. Like, but if somebody asks me, I’m like, oh yeah, I can, I can tell you how to become a New York times bestseller. I could tell you how to, you know, do you know, build a speaking career. I can tell you like all these things, but if, if no one asked me, I never just say, Hey, did you think about doing this? And now I’m realizing in my own life, how many times have I walked past someone who knows like the back of their hand, exactly what to do that could help me. And I never, I just, I missed it because I didn’t stop and ask them.
CDH (12:28):
Right. It’s such a good question. And it’s true. We don’t, as human beings, we will not impose ourselves upon someone else. Unless I ask now what you just said about walking past someone that really goes to the naivete roadblock. And that’s a really important one for people. And we don’t realize it. I tell the story in the book of our Filipino helper, who we, my girls were born 16 months apart. She’d come every day and help us and cook these amazing meals. And one day she shows up with this fruit and cut it up on a plate and hands it to me, this juicy orange fruit and I bit into it. Milda what is this? This is phenomenal. She goes, it’s mango. And I go mango, where did you get mango? I’m thinking she imported it from the Philippines. Right? She goes, I got it at the grocery store.
CDH (13:13):
And I’m like, these are the grocery store. How did I not know the best fruit in the world? I thought I was so worldly. You know, I traveled all over the world. I’ve been to Europe somehow. I missed the mangoes, but it made me think about what you’re just talking about. How many times do I pass by some person that could really be my greatest advocate and my next best friend or someone whom I could help with something. Right. And I don’t even wonder, I’m not even curious about that person or that opportunity or that business or that thing. It’s just because I’m naive. I don’t I’m so I’m naive. I grew up in, in Idaho where we have a lot of potatoes, but no mangoes. So part of our, that is one of the huge roadblocks is just our own naivete. We’re in our own little box, in our own little subjective experience.
CDH (13:59):
So it’s important to come out of that. And I have a tendency to be more curious. It’s part of that asking journey, wonder curiosity, inquiring about things, looking at people and experiences and opportunities with more questions in our minds, right? What is that? Who is that? I wonder what they do. I wonder what, what, you know, nuggets they might share. I wonder what wisdom they might have. Every person you encounter could be something or someone very important to your journey. But we get stuck in our lane and as entrepreneurs, we’re like, no, I’ve got my to-do list. I need to do this, this, this, we could be missing the greatest thing. So it’s important to look at that, that curiosity piece is something we talk about at the beginning of the book, because you know, as children, we come into this world as these kind of uncorrupted askers, right?
CDH (14:54):
We want to know everything we want to know. Cool. When, where, why, how right. And we’re also not afraid to ask for what we want. We’re not pretty much not afraid to ask for anything. And then depending on how we were parented, you know, stop asking so many questions, I’m tired of hearing from you, you know, or just what happened in our school years. You know, we got rejected by friends or the teachers said, stop basking, put your hand down. I haven’t called on you. You know, and your business experiences, your, your ideas and opinions. Aren’t valued. You start to shut down, you start to shut down and shut down and shut down. And that beautiful inborn, natural ability to ask it’s crushed out of us. And until we realize that that’s happened and look at our own roadblocks and, and start to open up our awareness and determined that we’re going to get rid of those roadblocks and rekindle that inside of ourselves, things won’t change for us.
CDH (15:47):
We have to use this ability to ask to move ourselves forward in life. That’s why we, you know, the subtitle of our book is the bridge from your dreams to your destiny, because we all come into this life like seated with these, these abilities, this innate ability and, and the things that we’re supposed to do. And then, you know, until we start, if, if we don’t keep asking and keep moving forward on that bridge, we’ll get shut down. We’ll get detoured. And so this journey into what mark and I call becoming a master asker is, is one of the most important journeys you’ll take in your overall success in life. And that’s not just for your career. It’s for your health and wellness for your relationships. The same thing applies relationships, get shut down because we’re not asking the right questions of ourselves. Remember it’s the three channels through which task, ask yourself, ask others and ask God. And I’d like to go into the, ask yourself part a little bit more to where I, because that’s really important.
RV (16:48):
Sure. Well, yeah, so I mean, I, I, I want to hear about that. And I also, as I’m looking at these, these seven roadblocks to asking again, and you talk about unworthiness, naivety, doubt, excuses, fear, pattern, paralysis, and disconnection. The, as I look at my own life, I think Mo the one that affects me the most is, is that I guess would be under fear. I fear imposing on other people. I mean, there’s a part of it. I certainly fear rejection. Right. But it’s more of like, even that it’s more like, I fear making someone uncomfortable for hat, for them having to reject me, like, even that is a burden to carry or that you know, why, why should they go out of their way to, to, you know, to have to help me. So in the spirit of free coaching live on the podcast, what would you tell Rory Vaden who struggles with that, that portion of, of, of this. And is there something I need to be asking myself to what you’re saying crystal about like, why I have that road,
CDH (17:55):
Right. So if you think about what you’re actually doing, Rora, you’re replaying your past. Okay. Cause you’re imagining that you’re, you’re imposing on somebody. You’re, you’re imagining that it’s going to bother them. So that’s probably coming from something that happened in your past where, you know, you felt like you bothered somebody or somebody shut you down or something, because honestly, if you think about it, you have no idea what they’re really going to feel, think, or, or say or believe about, about what you’re requesting. But it’s almost like at some level of your subconscious mind, you’ve already pictured the outcome. And so, you know, in the world of quantum physics, right, what we imagine is what we get truly. I mean, quantum physics summed up in one sentence is what you expect is what you’re going to get. If you want to know what you’re thinking right now, if you want to know what your thought programming is right now, look around at your life.
CDH (18:51):
That is the evidence, that’s the residue of what your actual thought programming is. And so you might go, Hey, I kind of liked my life, but I’d like to, these are the things I could improve on. So I have more work to do, or I might go, oh my gosh, really? Is this what I’m creating? Is this what’s going on inside of my mind? Because it is. And it goes on at the subconscious level. So you really have to start with that clean slate and start asking yourself, there are all kinds of questions in the book, you know the holding up the mirror questions, but it’s really starting. We say there are three critical phases of asking yourself to really start doing the self examination. And that is where am I now? So it’s really like looking at your life and saying, what do I have here? Do I like it? Is it working? What’s missing. Where am I at? Where am I?
CDH (19:40):
Where am I right now in my life? Like, where am I now in my life? Is it good? Is it, do I like it? Is that what I wanted to create? Start examining that all the little sub questions that comment or come under that, where am I right now in my life? And do I like it? Or do I want something different? Then the second phase, right, is where do I want to be in my greatest nth degree of my greatest career? My greatest ends degree of my greatest relationships, right? This is where you have to unleash your dreams, because if you’re just imagining little things, you know, mediocre things that that’s what you’re going to get. So you have to let yourself go into that place. Like where do I really want to be in my life right now? You know? And, and obviously things happen on this planet in a little bit of a delay, which is good because it gives you time to really sculpt your leg. But ask those questions from, from your imagination, imagine yourself on the stage of your mind and say, you know, who do I want to be in my greatest career? And then ask those questions backwards. Like, who am I talking to everyday? How are they responding? What services and products and I sharing and why are people, why do they like them? Why do they like what I’m sharing? What is it about?
RV (20:54):
So scary. Like, I don’t know why, but it’s like, it’s so scary to even sit there in silence with no one else around to even to even acknowledge that this is what I would want for my life. Like, and there’s a line that you say in the book and this is like another fear, I think. Cause you know, like for the most part I look around my life, me and AIG, we’ve built everything together and I go our lives pretty freaking awesome. And it is everything I imagined and it came a lot faster than I thought it would. But then it almost is like, I, you know, I think I’ve kind of stopped doing this to some extent. It’s kind of like I did this for a long time and part of it is going, it’s like, you know, what else do I need more?
RV (21:41):
But, but this is what you wrote. It said the perfection of our being causes us to want things or move at an even higher experience of life. We’re always evolving and wanting more want is a spirit jabbing you in the consciousness to move you to a better place, a higher level of expression. We always want more than what we’ve got. This isn’t necessarily just to have it, but to experience the growth within ourselves, we’re created to expand and grow. But it’s so scary, like to sit there and go, I actually want like to even dream and imagine this is terrifying.
MVH (22:20):
So, so let me talk to that. First of all, we’re saying by the end of the book, that same thing, you’re not a human being, you’re a human becoming. And what you said is that at some levels, I’m just reiterating back to you as I’ve heard it, that you sort of plateaued out because you dreamt it, you achieved it, achieved it faster than you thought you would. What we’re saying is you got it. Remember three things, ask yourself, ask others, ask God. And when you’re asking yourself, it’s a little, it’s a little sense of self that’s, stifling and Steichen is stopping it. So when you’ve got to go to this God who God sends us out and say, Hey, wait a second. If I Rory was doing my absolute slam dunk best, how am I going to positively affect this many people over this amount of time?
MVH (23:03):
And the question we have at the end of the book from, from a friend of ours, you know, Dr. Peter Diamandis, who’s wonderful. He’s got his own accolades, but he said, what are you going to do positively do affect 1 billion people during this decade. And that’s a giant question, but once you do it, like we’re going to sell, I will blow past a billion books, ask the bridge from your dreams, your destiny, cause Ron schedule. And we’re doing more than anyone ever thought we could do. And they said, nobody could do that. And I got a lot of critics, but the point we’re saying about this book, because now we’ve had it out a while, is it everyone that’s getting it? It has super successful fathers. Read it and go, they wake up the wife and say, you got to read this first story, fable and McKayla.
MVH (23:40):
And then they read it to their teenage kid or other teenage kid read it. So what we’ve discovered, don’t get one of these books, ask the bridge from your dreams. You’re definitely get two and go over it with your spouse or spouse equivalent, your mastermind partner, your business partner, your church, Harper, temple, Afro mosque partner, whoever it is. And you’re going to break through because everyone needs a mastermind partner for those who are watching one and one equals power of 11. And this is what Christ said, the kingdom of heaven is within and go out. Two of you can accomplish it. One of you can move a thousand. Two of you can move 10,000. Well, what if we really have that mind using God’s mind looking at our thing, then we’re invincible. In this story we have, as you know, is, is I studied in India as you know, and mother Theresa picks up this untouchable who had leprosy.
MVH (24:32):
And so Christ in his eyes went to the head of the Archbishop and said, I’m going to start. The ladies of charity said, how much you got, you said three sentences. You can’t do that. So no we’ve gotten 3 cents. I can do anything. And obviously she did monstrously, powerful, wonderful, impactful things. And what I’m saying to you and everyone listening, every author, we, all those of us that can think there’s only a few percentage. What we need to do is help the other 4 billion people that aren’t in the equation out of 8 billion people. And you have to monster challenge. What we’re saying. The only tool that works is ask God gave human beings. Only three things you gave is curiosity. And the ability to ask an imagination, to transcend our limitation and, and have new materialization. If that’s what we want.
RV (25:16):
I mean, it’s funny how, you know, the, there’s such a connection to the divine here, right? Because if you go, if you believe, if I just believe in myself, then it seems like, oh, this thing that I’m dreaming of is so impossible so far away. And like, my life is definitely evidence of that. Like from where I started as a kid to right now is like, it would, there’s no way, like it’s so far, but you go, but it’s nothing for God. Like it’s easy. Like it’s not, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a snap of a finger. And, and yet the doubt that we experience, I think is so connected to we’re placing that trust inside of ourself and evaluating our ask compared to what we’re capable of versus the ask compared to what God’s capable of and like the divine calling on our life, which is, you know, you write a lot about that and kind of filing your calling and, and live in your, your your purpose.
RV (26:13):
So, so one great thing is it’s funny because we haven’t really talked about the authors and speakers at all through this whole conversation. Mostly I’ve used this, this as a chance for free coaching, which I don’t apologize for. But they for people who have the dream of, you know, writing a book that sells a million copies, or, you know, in your case, you’re, you’re aiming at a billion copies now and you’ve sold 500 million. So like what are some of the things that you think that authors and speakers and entrepreneurs, you know, this is anyone professional service providers. You know, people who listen to our show executives, they’re, they’re usually like driven individuals. They’re, they’re what we call mission-driven messengers. That’s our audience. What are some of the things you think they need to, to really ask for or prepare themselves for, to, to access that calling inside of their life?
MVH (27:14):
So three things. One is I love him to get a copy of asks. So they start asking themselves bigger, better, stronger, healthier questions. Number two is I finished a book called you have a book and you’re not liking to read it in three is I’d like them to go to they can go to reception of mark, Victor Hansen. If they come to us, we want everyone to write a book. If they’ve written a book, we want to help them sell that book and market it. And we’ve got a multiplicity of ways. We’ve got everything from, you know, 12 videos online at, at Hansen institute.com to if they can’t write in 95% of people can’t write something. Anyone wants to read. We will go with them at mark Victor Hansen library, which is a brand new company we’ve just started. That is, that’s why we say good reception of work, the grants.com because we don’t need another website up for another couple of weeks, but we are going to help everybody catapult themselves to greatness because we’re finding markets. Most people can’t see their market for, you know, I was doing up to 250 talks a year. So I respectfully understand it. I see markets, nobody else sees, and there are more markets now than ever before. And we’ve got to go in crystal. I’d like to have her add to that.
CDH (28:21):
Well, I would just say for everybody, it all starts with a vision. So whatever you’re doing is going to have to start with the vision. And the more clear you get about your vision, the better it’s going to be, the more you’re going to manifest that vision. And the only way to get clear with your own vision is to spend time with yourself. It’s that ask yourself part, because that is the reflective journey, right? So sitting with yourself, asking, you know, where am I now? Where do I want to be? And what specific action steps do I need to take to get there? Because as you start asking yourself, and then you start to sculpt your own vision and your sculpt, your vision, you start with your vision, but then you sculpt your vision by asking the right questions. You know, what does it look like?
CDH (29:04):
What does it feel like? What am I doing? And all of a sudden you get a really clear, beautiful sculpted vision of what you want. And then when you start to get that, you’re going to start to get ideas. You’re going to start to think of a plan that you never thought of before, because here’s the other part of the science story. When you ask yourself a question, a different part of your brain lights up, and it’s the part of your brain that does critical thinking. Okay. So all of a sudden, just by asking yourself the right questions, you’re suddenly your brain is a better resource to you. Okay? So it goes to work for you. And the minute your brain goes to work on the visions, then start to connect at the quantum level. Okay? Because people don’t realize this, but your energy light field is, goes like three meters beyond you.
CDH (29:51):
And it, especially, it gets bigger when you’re envisioning something with a positive emotion. So the more you can envision and sculpture vision with a positive emotion feel what it feels like when you’re already that person be that person before you’re that person in the real world, right? Because your energy field gets bigger. And all of a sudden the quantum field starts to connect this isn’t whoop. This is absolute proven science. And it’s really actually where science is now meeting spirituality. It’s the sciences, meaning everything. Jesus talked about. The, you know, the kingdom of heaven is within all of the things, all of these scriptures you know, it’s basically you get to create the life you want. You’re created in the creator’s image. What does that mean? You are, you are created to create things. And we do that starting with our imagination and our emotional energy, the emotional energy is important.
CDH (30:46):
So it’s just very important to get quiet with yourself. Use this book as a guide. It will really, really help you. And more questions will come to you in sculpting your vision and really taking it forward. You will. I know I’m excited. I get excited for people because of the feedback that we get. I mean, it’s really life changing and the fable of McKayla that mark just mentioned. It’s really every woman in every man’s story because it’s, it’s a fictional story that, that I ended up writing mark and I were going to go back and forth on it. And I just started writing and it just flowed out of me cause I’m McKayla has these dreams. And I I’ve been blessed not to have these like dreams that have really guided me in my life. So I kind of, you know, made McKayla’s dreams a little bit similar to some of the dreams I’ve had, but anyhow, she gets guidance.
CDH (31:34):
She’s, McKayla’s basically lost everything. Her, her life every day is about moving heavy rocks from one place to another, literally. And then she has this dream she’s taken up by this being and he admonishes her to ask and never stop asking and little by little as she starts to wonder as she starts to look around her miserable life. Start to wonder, start to be curious, start to inquire, start to ask about people. Start to ask questions of people. Start to ask questions of herself. Her life changes 180 degrees by the end of her story is a completely different person, living a completely different life. And that is exactly what can happen to every single person. Listening. If you’re willing to take that inner journey and start asking,
RV (32:26):
I love it. Well, we will put a link to those URLs that you’ve mentioned. Mark. Obviously we’ll link up to the book again. We want to get in is called ask the bridge from your dreams to your destiny. You’ve been listening to mark Victor Hansen and Dwyer Hanson. One last question, just curious, who asked who on the first date between the two of you?
MVH (32:50):
Great long story. And I don’t know, we have time, but it was great. I was at Walker one-on-one. Her mother had sent her there. We were in a BIP room and I had a throng of people around me and somebody spilled red wine on her white pants. I rushed over to her, grabbed her hand and said, I know exactly where the club soda is. Let me take you there. And then I asked her, I said, look, it’s about nine 30 at night. It’s a little late. But if you don’t mind, if you’re hungry and she’s, I haven’t eaten. I said, me either, I got to take you off property because a thousand people that are here want to have two minutes of my time and we won’t get to talk. So I took her to the best restaurant in Hollywood and there was like 50 people lined up and I go, oh my gosh, I’m never going to get in with a hundred dollars bill.
MVH (33:29):
This isn’t going to work. So we walked up and because for those of you just listening and not getting to view, I’m sorry, but my wife has a radiant beauty. And she, her, she just emanates out wisdom and the guy looks at her and says, okay, who is she thinking? She’s a movie star and cause reteach questions. I always answer a question with a question. Everyone listening knows that. I say you don’t recognize her now is mine’s steroids. And I’m just goofing with a guy. The guy says, okay, I give up who is she? I said, now we’re Danish descent. Each of us. I said, my parents came from Denmark and said I give up who is she? I said, goofy goofing. I said, she’s a queen of Denmark. He said, no, she’s not negative. Oh my God. She is. And he asked the question, who are you?
MVH (34:13):
I said, well, who travels with the queen? Oh my God, you’re the king. Hold on one second. And then like that, we had a table. And not only that, we had the best table, 50 feet away. We get right in there and we have the top chef serving us. And we just felt indefatigably in love. I mean, we just resonated. I mean, I wrote it, but I had written 267 things I needed in my, be a woman. He attributes the characteristics or qualities of values or virtues. And I said, you never cross it out. I got the milk, eggs and butter. You write down victory in purple. And before we got married, I never pulled her what all those were, but she hit all of them. It’d be monogamous. We had to have exactly the same value spiritual. And she had to want to travel with me if we each had kids, which we did, our kids had to love each other. And, and you know, it’s going to be an eternal match. And it, we were two hearts and became one soul that it went from soulmate to twin flames. So it’s like I told you a second ago, it’s a long story, but it has been a more magnificent journey than I could ever have imagined.
RV (35:14):
Yeah. Well, that’s so great. And it is such a powerful book and a powerful concept. It’s really causes you to stop and reflect in a really deep way. And thank you for your time. We wish you the best. Everyone listening, go out and ask and you shall receive. Thank you so much, guys.
MVH (35:33):
Thanks for your loved every minute.

Ep 219: Optimizing Your Amazon Book Sales with Naren Aryal | 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 (00:55):

I love talking about books and selling books and writing books and making books and changing people’s lives with books. And that is why I’m excited to do this special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. I am breaking down the interview that I just did here with Naren Aryal. And he is someone that has been a friend of a friend for awhile, and now we’ve got some of our clients that have done projects with them. He’s becoming one of our preferred vendor partners that we’re we’re we’re using and introducing, introducing people to. And so it was, it was time for us to sit down and have a chat and it was awesome. I mean, I love it. You maybe aren’t familiar with Aaron and I, I think it’s like some of these, some of my favorite episodes are ones where it’s like, you, you don’t know these people because they work in the, behind the scenes part of this whole space and an industry and, and business of building personal brands, but they have the secrets, like they’ve got the knowledge and they’ve, they’ve got you know, the tactics and this episode was one of those.

RV (02:04):

And so definitely go back and listen to it. Of course, I’m going to share with you my top three takeaways and highlights from the, from our chat together. But I’m rolling solo today. We don’t have AJ and so you’re just going to get me, and I’ve got three big takeaways from this, from this interview, from this episode, but each of these have a ton, like I got so much out of this, which is, which is crazy, right? Like we’ve we do. We help people do book launches all the time where we teach how to do book launches. We’ve done book launches. Like we’ve got friends that are launching books, like constantly, almost every week. We have a friend doing, doing some type of a book launch. And, and yet I learned a ton and that shows you that there is a lot to learn about and it, it doesn’t happen by accident.

RV (03:01):

It doesn’t happen by luck it’s it’s strategy and knowledge like so many things. So here’s my first takeaway was very simple and high level, but even for me, this was so clarifying. It was the five parts of book production. And just going like this was so powerful. And these are like the phases of writing a book, which most of us don’t even think about and writing a book can be intimidating yet when you understand and break it apart and break it down into these five phases. Now there’s, there’s another phase of which is actually writing the book, which is the first step, which is what we help people with at brand builders group, right? Like we help you figure out what’s the problem you solve. What’s the message in one sentence, who are you writing to? And then we help you in our captivating content event, we help you do the thinking of the book, which is the, the, the most important part, in my opinion, is, is the original thought leadership pulling out your true expertise, organizing it into pillars, creating true intellectual property that is truly unique from you and not a regurgitation of stuff that other people say.

RV (04:14):

So we do that, but then what happens once you have a manuscript, right? That’s where a lot of people get lost and Naren broke this down. I thought so well, and just these five phases, these five parts of book production. So like once the manuscript is sort of done, then what happens? So first of all, there’s the editorial and all of these phases also have costs, right? So this is something you got to think about when you go, should I traditionally publish, should I self publish? Should I use a hybrid publisher? Like, you know a lot of our clients do on like maybe their first or second project. So there’s a lot to it. So editorial is, you got to edit the manuscript. It’s gotta be sharp and tight and clean and, and punctuated. And, you know, the thinking has to be good first, but then the writing has to be good.

RV (05:03):

And those are two different things. And so you’ve got editorial, which could be ghost writing could be coaching, could be editing, could be just proofreading. The second phase is the design. So there is, there is design, which is more than just the front cover. I mean, that’s what we think about is what’s going to go on the cover, which is part of it, but it’s also what goes on the back cover and what goes on the spine and what goes on the flaps. If it’s, if it is a hard cover book. And then also, how do you lay out the book in on the pages? Are there pull quotes? How big is the font? There’s something called the gutter, which is how close are the words to to the, how close to the words line up to the crease in the book, like all these things you don’t think about, how much margin should you have around the outside of your pages?

RV (05:52):

How many pages are there? What visuals have to be designed, right? Like there’s a whole of stuff in that second phase of design, then there’s publishing, which is a word that we hear a lot. And most people sort of assign, I think publishing is like a blanket statement for all of this, but actually publishing is really just one part of this. And so that’s why I think a lot of authors are let down when they find out how little marketing that publishers do, because they don’t realize how much work there is to do in just publishing the book. So that is the, the, the, the creation of the book, you know, finalizing the, the, the files, pulling it all together and then printing the books, listing them in, you know, the, the library of Congress, getting the ESPN, getting them uploaded into retailers and into distributors.

RV (06:46):

And it’s actually like inventorying the book into the system that, that makes books available world worldwide, or at least, you know, domestically then the fourth phase is warehousing and distribution. So when you publish you, you now have a bunch of physically printed books, and you’ve got that book is now available in a variety of places, but it’s not physically there. So now you have to physically get this book to these locations, to these retailers. Now if it isn’t, if it’s an online, even if it’s an online retailer like Amazon, they have to have your book in their inventory, or you have to use their like print on demand service if you’re self publishing. And so a lot of people do that, but you know, if you’re working with a publisher, whether it’s a a hybrid publisher or traditional publisher, someone’s got to print books and ship them somewhere, and then they gotta be stored and there’s costs associated with all of these steps, right?

RV (07:49):

And then finally there’s marketing and, and platform development. In our case, we would call it launching. And it is, it is the book launch. And this is where brand builders kind of steps back in a lot of times. And you know, one of our, one of our flagship events is called bestseller launch plan, where we teach the whole systematic step by step process of exactly what needs to happen to get people, to buy the book, which is an eight month process. We, our checklist starts eight months before publishing date before the pub date. So that’s just that fifth phase. So when you back out from there, okay, warehousing distribution, and then publishing and then design and then editorial, and then the manuscript creation, and then the ideas and flushing out all of that it’s, it takes years like it’s, it’s a couple years at least to do a book the right way, at least the way we would teach.

RV (08:42):

So that was powerful. Five parts of book production. And really there’s, you know, six, if you count the whole ideation, which is really important. And then that last stage platform development that happens years and years before, during, and after the book launch, which is actually my second takeaway. It was really great to hear, Narren talk about the importance of platform development because not every, not every author gets that. I mean, I’d say most authors don’t get that. There’s this myth that you’re going to write a great book, and then someone’s going to publish it and it’s going to become a best seller. It ain’t true. Like it’s not what it’s about. Y’all like the, the, the biggest bestselling books are not the best written books. The biggest bestselling books are not the best thinking books. They’re not the best advice. They’re not the best strategies necessarily.

RV (09:41):

They are the books from people who have the biggest audiences. Did you catch that the best selling books come from the people with the biggest audiences? That is what it’s about is you got to build an audience. And so, you know, the, the, one of the things that we’re always telling our members, right, are our coaching clients at brand builders group that we work with one-on-one is, we’re always saying, you’ve got to build the audience for the book before you build the book. So you even back that stage up to go, you’ve got to build the audience for the book. Just like when we, when we talk about the ideation of a book, so this is another thing. Cause because we do help our clients with creating original IP and their thought leadership, but we don’t deal with all the nitty gritty logistics of like making the, the book, an actual physical thing.

RV (10:37):

With the ideation we tell our clients build you know, build. So first of all, build the audience for the book before you build the book. And then we say, right, the book has a conclusion, not a hypothesis. So you shouldn’t publish a book and share. And this is our opinion. This is our opinion is to say it shouldn’t be ideas that you think might be true. That would be hypothesis. A lot of books fail because the author is writing a hypothesis. Well, what a book should be is a conclusion. It should be the final finished, tested work that you’ve tested on your clients on yourself. You’ve got data behind it. You’ve got actual case studies and strategies and stories. And it’s, it’s the conclusion. So that is with the ideas in the book, similar though, with your platform development, this is a big shift that authors need to make.

RV (11:32):

You know, if you ever have a chance of being a best selling author is you have to realize that you have to think of a book launch as the culmination of a relationship, not the Genesis of a relationship. A book launch is really the culmination of a relationship, not the Genesis of a relationship, meaning you don’t write a book and then people find out about you. People find out about you and then you write a book for them, right? You build the audience before you build the book. And if you wrote a book and it didn’t sell well, don’t misconstrue that as thinking like your book was a bad book, it wasn’t at all. It means you probably didn’t have the audience built for it. There’s a lot of very average mediocre books that sell lots of copies because they come from people who have the biggest audiences.

RV (12:23):

And so the first people don’t buy your book typically on first exposure, they buy your book because they’ve had lots of exposure to you consistently. And then they see your book and you go, you know what I’ve I’ve heard of this person. They’re really good. I like their stuff. I want to see what this is about. Now in reality, sometimes the book is the Genesis of relationships. But it’s usually because somebody who had a relationship with you bought the book and then told someone else, you gotta read this thing, right? So there are some people who find out about Rory Vaden still to this day, because someone said, you got to retake the stairs. This book will change your life. That happens a lot. But a lot of people it’s, it’s more of, they hear me somewhere. They see my Ted talk, they see me speak.

RV (13:10):

They hear me on a podcast interview or interview, or they, they stumble across me on social media, from hashtags or from they stumble across my blog because of search engine optimization, all these other things that we teach. And then they kind of follow, follow, follow, come into the email list, get loved on, you know, they subscribe to the podcast, we’re dropping value, value, value constantly. And then we release a book and they go, man, I I’ve learned a ton. I, I wanna, I wanna, I want to get serious about learning more from these folks. That’s how it works. That’s the culmination of a relationship in reality, it is a, can be the Genesis of a relationship, but you got to understand the flip in the switch in your brain that most authors think, okay, I will write the book and then people will find it and I will become famous.

RV (13:55):

Or the book will become a bestseller. No, no, no, no. That that’s not how it works. It’s the other way around. So build the audience before you build the book. And then the third thing which we talked about, which I love, which I do not do, have never done, don’t know anything about. And, and I’m going to start learning and diving into is Amazon specific strategy. And so there were two parts of this. One is the category, which we are aware of, but we never do this because we traditionally publish. And so our traditional publishers set the categories that it’s in, but if you’re self publishing, you know, Amazon has, I don’t know, thousands of categories and subcategories and subcategories of subcategories. And you, when you self publish, get to determine three categories to rank your book for. And what Darren said, which is a simple strategy, is go take two of those three and pick the categories you want your book to actually be in.

RV (14:55):

So that other people who are interested in those categories will find your book, but then take one of your three categories and choose a very non-competitive category so that you can become a best seller an Amazon bestseller in. And the way that happens is you become Amazon publishes bestseller lists that are updated every hour and they have bestseller lists that are done category by category. This is why there is an explosion in the world of bestselling authors. The vast majority of them are Amazon bestselling authors and there they are category best-sellers and often sub category of category bestsellers. But that’s a great, I mean, that’s a, that’s a great win. That should be a first, you know, when to go, you’re truly a best seller. Like according to Amazon, your book is the best selling book in that category. At least for an hour in compared to all the other books in that category.

RV (15:55):

So that’s a good strategy to do to legitimately be like, Hey, I’m, I’m a bestselling author. Now we’re going to teach you how to kind of, you know, if you really want that title best-selling author, you need to not just have the title. You want to have more, more and more credible versions of that, right? Like to be the number one book, Amazon worldwide as much more difficult, or even the number one in your sub, like your, your category, your like your main category, like business versus marketing versus marketing for dentists, right? Those are how they go. And then outside of Amazon, of course, there’s wall street, journal, bestseller, New York times, bestseller USA today, they’re all, you know, difficult to reach much more difficult than an Amazon bestseller because it’s only Amazon is just for an hour. And it’s compared to all those other books in the category.

RV (16:46):

Anyways, that said, I think it’s a great strategy, brilliant, simple, easy there it’s completely authentic and validated, like you’re the best seller in your category. So choose one of your categories strategically for that purpose. So simple, so simple. And then the other thing that he said, and this is one I’ve never done is by, by bid on the ads for the terms of books that are like yours in your category in Amazon. So Amazon is a search engine, just like Google is a search engine, just like YouTube is a search engine and they make money off advertising. And you apparently we can bid on terms. And so if you say, I want to bid on this term when people, you know, look for this book, show them my book as well. I think that’s pretty clever way to use advertising spend. So it’d be tricky to figure out how many of those convert and do you make your money back on that?

RV (17:40):

But I think this is this is a world we’re going to get into. So holy moly, like that’s a lot of information that I just dropped and spit at you for the last few minutes, but there’s so much to learn. This was such a practical podcast. I picked up a ton of stuff, helped me organize my thinking, go back and listen to the whole episode and, and just know like the, if you’ve got the dream of being a bestseller, it’s possible, it’s probable. I mean, it’s very likely if, if you stick around here and you follow the things we’re teaching and the things that our guests are doing, that you will do it because it’s very systematic. It’s not easy, but it’s fairly predictable and systematic. If you’re willing to do the work, as long as you know exactly what the path is. And that’s why we’re here every week is to help you find the path, know the path. And then at some point, our invitation to you is to join and actually become one of our paying members where we’re working with you. One-On-One and we’re actually helping you do the path for your own personal brand, but either way, keep coming back week after week. We’re so glad you’re here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 218: Optimizing Your Amazon Book Sales with Naren Aryal

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 the man you’re about to meet was introduced to me by a good friend, a trusted long-time friend. And then I just found out that Naren and I are both DU alumni. So we both went to the university of Denver and his name is Naren Aryal and he is the CEO of a company called amplify publishing and also mascot books, which are hybrid publishers. They do a lot in the nonfiction space and we’re going to talk about what hybrid publishing is and when does it make sense for people and you know, just kind of like how it works, but Naren is someone that we’ve started recommending to our clients if, if they are in the space of looking for kind of like hybrid publishing, but he’s got degrees obviously from the university of Denver, but also from Virginia tech. And he, it’s just really cool to that. He’s also a lawyers by, you know, so he’s got that training and background and he’s the author of a book called how to sell a crap load of books. So that is something that we all care about and there, and I had a conversation a while back and we started diving into some Amazon stuff that he was sharing with me that I had never heard before that I thought was super fascinating. So anyways, Naren welcome to the show. Hey,
NA (02:09):
Thank you, Rory. Great to be here. And yes, my book is how to sell a crap load of books and it underscores the importance of a, a catchy title. So there you have it. Yeah.
RV (02:20):
Yeah. Well, so I want to start with the conversation about hybrid publishing and what is that exactly? Cause I think when people think of publishing, they understand traditional publishing and like, okay, you know, literary agents and book deals and flying to New York and, you know, Simon and Schuster and penguin random house. And there’s that. And then they also understand self publishing, which is you go Amazon create space or whatever, or just like printing a book off at Kinko’s and you know, you’re an author, what is hybrid publishing and how is it kind of different from those two things?
NA (02:57):
Great question. So hybrid publishing is a hybrid between the two options that you just mentioned. And specifically what that means is we create and there are other companies that do this other than amplify. We create books that are on par in terms of editorial quality and book packaging, and provide our authors the experience that they would otherwise get from a large publishing house in terms of marketing and distribution under a slightly different model maybe not slightly the model is, are authors contribute to production related costs, but in exchange the author since they’re contributing to production related costs get the lion’s share of royalty split. So in our case, it’s 85% to the author and 15% to us as a distribution fee, which is typically just inverted from the splits that you’ll see at a large traditional house.
RV (03:57):
Yeah, so the author’s keeping 85%. You guys are getting 15%, which has a pretty spot on with the inverse of how it would work with traditional, but then they’re covering some costs out of pocket upfront where you wouldn’t normally have that with a traditional publishing. So they’re just covering the cost of like getting the manuscript edited, getting it printed, like what are all the, what are the costs here that we’re talking about?
NA (04:21):
Sure. So the costs are editorial. So sometimes we’ll work with folks that need a ghostwriter. Sometimes we’ll work with folks that give us a fully edited manuscript. So there’s editorial, anything from, or I needed coaching to various levels of editing to proofreading. So editorial is one bucket and then the other bucket is design related. So cover design, interior design. And then the other piece of it is production publishing related costs. So, you know printing of books we do eBooks and we do audio books. And then the last piece of it is warehousing and distribution. So you know, we, we have a fulfillment center from which where we ship books to retailers, invoice them collect. So the author doesn’t have to really worry themselves about that piece of it. And I said the last one, but there’s, there’s one other, we also offer a host of marketing book, launch, author platform development related services, and those are on a LA carte basis because, you know, some folks have PR folks that they’ve worked with before, some people have a social media or a website developers.
NA (05:34):
So whatever the project requires, we can sort of backfill and offer those services as well.
RV (05:40):
Got it. Yeah. Well that, even that in and of itself is pretty educational just to be just even knowing, like, what does it take to write a book? You got editorial design publishing, warehousing and distribution marketing, and then you know, in like platform development. And I think a lot of people don’t even realize those are like the big buckets. And so then and then now with hybrid publishing, you’re saying that you can get some of the kinds of things. Like, I, I think, you know, when you think of self publishing, obviously you’re covering all the costs, you’re keeping all the royalties. But you also are not getting any of the distribution. Like you almost never see a self published book on an, a, on an airport bookstand or in, you know, Barnes and noble or, you know, featured on I mean it never, almost always never on a bestseller list or something even because they’re not like index properly. So talk to us about how does distribution work and why do you need a hybrid publisher or a traditional publisher to do that? Like, why doesn’t that happen with self published books and sort of what’s the advantage of having that kind of distribution?
NA (06:53):
Yeah. So let me say this first about self publishing. I’m a big fan of self publishing today more than ever authors are successful at self publishing. The problem is today more than ever authors are self-publishing. So there’s just a glut of content out there, and it’s just very difficult to get any sort of traction in terms of a marketing and distribution specific to your question about distribution. Most self-publishing authors go by means called print on demand. So if a retailer is interested in a book and they learned that it’s print on demand they just won’t carry it. That’s just the bottom line. And so we don’t do print on demand. We publish some number of books, print, some number of books, and we use the distributors that Barnes and noble for example, uses to get stock into their store.
NA (07:42):
And we do so under you know, terms that are per industry standard. So for example, you know, we use Ingram as one of our distributors. Everyone knows Ingram. And if a Barnes and noble wants to bring in a book, they’ll go look at Ingram’s database and they’ll see, oh yeah, we can get it directly from anger. Might have to go through a publisher and author. It just makes makes it easier. There’s less resistance to going through normal channels. And, and that’s, you know, that’s the advantage of working through somebody like us is we’ve got those channels established. We got relationships with book buyers and you know, our books are, as they say, sold, wherever books are sold. You know, just because you may have a deal with a large publishing house, you know, the chances are shelf space is still limited and it’s growing more limited by the month. And so, you know, you just have to be creative in terms of where your book is being seen by your potential readers. And, and we really try to have a strategy for each and every title that we work on to soy.
RV (08:45):
And when you say book buyers, okay. So you say there’s relationships with the distributors like Ingram, which makes, which makes sense to me to go, okay. If, if I hope if I have a bookstore, whether it’s Amazon or Books-A-Million, or it’s a local bookstore, it’s just easier for me to source all the titles. I want to carry in my store from one place versus 50 or a hundred different places. So that’s, that makes sense as to go, okay, I go to Ingram and say, Hey, these are the titles I want, or we’re selling books in these kinds of categories. Can we, what do you have in that category? W when you say the term book buyer, that’s a funny term who are you talking about when you say we have relationship with book buyers?
NA (09:29):
So places like Barnes and noble, you know, they have buyers for specific categories. And, and so if you can, you know, get your book in front of those buyers. Sure. It would, it’s available via Ingram, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily going to get consideration. So if you can somehow get your book in front of a a person that is making a buying decision that’s always better than not. There’s no guarantees that that will result in your book being at Barnes and noble coast to coast from day one, that’s unlikely. But it definitely does help the odds.
RV (10:01):
Yeah. So in other words, you know, the contacts at these places, Books-A-Million Hudson, whatever, like whoever like Eve the, the bookstores and then independent, even independent bookstores.
NA (10:17):
Yeah. We’ve been doing this a long time. So this is our 19th year in business. So, you know, you just get to know folks, right? I mean, you mentioned Hudson news. We have two, three books there right now on the, in the airport market that that’s a little different in that it’s a pay to play it’s, co-op marketing dollars that, that we need to spend, but, you know, we know those folks and we also know, you know, the, the, the iconic, independent bookstores across the country as well. You know, those help, if you got, have a good content that is going to drive traffic into a store that’s a prerequisite, but having those relationships really helps as well.
RV (10:57):
And so you’re just helping, you’re helping the books that you publish, like your authors actually get Barnes and noble to say, yeah, I want to carry that, that title at our store on our website. And that’s what you’re talking about. If you’re self published author, your book probably isn’t even carried by Ingram. And if it is, there’s nobody at Ingram calling on, Books-A-Million saying, Hey, you should put X number of, of these copies in your inventory.
NA (11:25):
Yeah, that’s right. And I don’t want to make it seem like it’s easy because there are far more books being published than there is a space. It’s not easy, but there, it’s more likely if you, if you have a partner that has some relationship.
RV (11:43):
Yeah. Okay. Of course. Yeah. So I love that that’s super helpful. I just, I think, you know, I noticed that people like you are in the industry, almost like for someone who’s not in the industry, we don’t even understand like the basic flow of like how these things work and all the different people that are involved in the supply chain of actually getting a book on a shelf. So that’s, that’s super helpful. Now, one of the things that’s fascinating to me is whether you’re a traditionally published author which we have been twice, like our two biggest books were both traditionally published, but a lot of people don’t know this. We also are self published author early in our career. We really several self published titles. And then what y’all do is hybrid publishing one of the places or at the end of the day, no matter how you publish, a lot of the sales are coming through Amazon. And in most cases, and you were sharing some ideas with me about things that you can do to kind of optimize your, your books representation, or, you know, just presentation on, on Amazon, which I think applies whether you’re self hybrid or traditionally published. Yeah,
NA (12:58):
For sure. It’s critical.
RV (13:00):
So, so can you talk us through some of those just ideas of like cause like for me I’ve never even like paid attention to it really. I just kind of let my publisher throw up whatever they throw up there. And I’m not even sure how much access or control I have. I know that some of our brand builders group clients, you know, when they self publish, they got full control to go in there and like change, copy and do different things. What are, what are some of the biggest things that authors should be paying attention to in terms of optimizing their Amazon profile?
NA (13:31):
Yeah. Great question. So it really is a sales pitch opportunity. Getting somebody to your Amazon book page is important. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to convert that somebody into a buyer. And so there’s some things that you can do to increase the likelihood of that happening. First you mentioned copy you know, you have to write to your potential reader, you have to write copy that is going to make your potential reader hit that little buy now button. So clear and concise copy need to speak to why this is important for your target audience. If you have testimonials, you should put them in the copy. And then, so that’s on the, on the copy. There’s some beyond that. We like to really spend a lot of time thinking about the categories where the book appears.
NA (14:22):
And there’s a real science to that. So, you know, Amazon will give you a three for hardcovers three categories, and these are genres sub-genres sub sub genres. And so what we like to do is come up with two that makes sense that are closely aligned to the book’s content. And then we like to come up with a third one that is you know, maybe somewhat ever reach in terms of the alignment between the books, content and the category. And we do it, we did that with the third because maybe it’s less competitive. So you just have to keep in mind how many titles there are, and I’ll give you an example, right? We have done many, many leadership books or know presently. We’re doing a lot of diversity and inclusion titles. So some of those categories are just filled right now with some, you know, big titles.
NA (15:11):
And so, you know, your ability to get to rise on the best seller list on those subcategories is just a little bit harder. Whereas if you pick a third that is less crowded you know, your likelihood of getting a orange or yellow ribbon that says Amazon bestseller is increased. So those are some things to keep in mind in terms of the listing itself. And then the other thing that you and I talked about is Amazon ad words Amazon ad words are a fantastic tool. I will say that generally advertising for a book is not something that works. And, you know, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll routinely talk to older authors who recall advertising in the classifieds in the New York times, for example, and, and they’ll say how effective that was. And so that doesn’t work of course today. But what does work is advertising on Amazon? And so there’s a couple of suggestions that we’ve got in terms of Amazon clicks pay-per-click campaigns. So,
RV (16:11):
So, so basically what you’re saying is Amazon has its own self-contained universe for running ads just throughout their website. Their banner ads have images of their various products, similar, similar to how a Facebook has its own ecosystem for that Facebook and Instagram, and similar to how Google ad words would have like Google and YouTube areas. Amazon has its own. Amazon is its own universe for running ads, and you can just buy that placement.
NA (16:42):
Yeah, that’s right. And so how it works is two ways people go on on Amazon and search for books, right? And so let’s say you have a book on leadership or remote work. This this is applicable to a project that we’re doing right now. We do a lot of post pandemic, remote leadership type books. And so if you go on Amazon right now and type in, you know managing remotely it’s likely that one or two of our books will show up as books that follow into the guidelines that you’ve typed in. So that’s one way, and you’d be surprised how effective this is. The other way is let’s say there’s a remote leadership bestseller national bestseller, and we know the title. And so what we could do is we, if we have some book that is in a similar category, we will use book a and by that search term. So when somebody buys book a, they’ll see our book B as a suggested a title that they might like, because they’ve demonstrated an interest in the subject matter.
RV (17:49):
Interesting. And you’re saying, you’ll buy the same title of book a or just the term,
NA (17:55):
No, we’ll buy the w we’ll buy the title of okay. As a comp title. So anytime somebody buys book a, because we know bill K and we think that the readers of book a would be interested in, in our book B we’ll buy the title.
RV (18:10):
Interesting. Yeah. So then yours would show up kind of above, and then they’re directly underneath, and then Amazon searches to see those sales kind of track together. And so it’ll start to organically, like recommend people who bought people who bought this book, also bought this other book.
NA (18:25):
That’s right. That’s right. And so particularly with non-fiction titles particularly with thought leadership titles this is an effective way to, to advertise and, and the analytics you get from Amazon are fantastic. They’ll say you spent $200 on this campaign. It directly resulted in, you know, $350 in sales.
RV (18:49):
Hm. Yeah. And that is that part of your Amazon author page that you see that like in author central, is that where you do that?
NA (18:59):
We have we have a Amazon account where all of our authors are in our authors do have Amazon central or author’s page. But we do it from our overreaching account.
RV (19:11):
Okay. But if you, so if you theoretically wanted to do this yourself, you just have to whatever search on how to start an Amazon addict, Amazon ad account, and then you, whatever you go in there and you have to input some creative and a headline. And how much does it cost for a click? I mean, I know it’s all over the board, but is it, is this a dollar, a click? Is it $10 a click?
NA (19:31):
It’s pretty cheap. It’s surprisingly cheap. So you know, any, anything from two to $10 a clip.
RV (19:39):
Okay. and, and that’s, that’s interesting. So, and then when they click that, do they go to your author page or do they go to the book? Page?
NA (19:52):
Book. Page.
RV (19:53):
Okay. And is that like a, when you’re talking about like writing the copy and the categories, that’s all focused on like the book page itself, not the author page. Correct. Okay. All right. I gotcha. So in terms of Amazon, are there any other obviously, so the category thing is interesting and there’s, I dunno if there’s got to be thousands of categories, maybe tens of thousands of categories. And so you guys are monitoring how competitive each category is, and then you’re making recommendation that, and that’s one advantage that you have with a hybrid publisher or self-publisher is you can actually, you get to choose which categories you want to index your book for in Amazon, right? Correct. Yeah. So that’s one thing we do not have that advantage, at least we haven’t or are the clients that we know of that have worked with publishers. They select that for you. So you don’t, you don’t have that. But the and then obviously, and then I’ll even the copy. Like you don’t have this, this is one of the things that’s really powerful. I think about hybrid publishing and self publishing is you just, you have more control in general. Like you get to decide what words you want to put on the back cover of your book or what words you want to use on your, on your Amazon page.
NA (21:15):
Yeah. And, and to that point I’ll just point out that you know, whether you self publish, go with the hybrid publishing company or you’re with a traditional house and, you know Rory, you know, this, the author must be engaged in marketing. And so some folks have this notion that if, if I get a traditional deal, I can just turn over the marketing to somebody else. It doesn’t work that way. So that should sort of factor into your thinking in terms of publishing pathways.
RV (21:45):
Yeah. Well, I’d like to what you’re saying, it’s like that one is a simple one, which is if you’re not willing to do the work don’t publish at all, like it, doesn’t it traditional publishers, aren’t going to do more marketing than that, a hybrid publisher. And obviously if you’re self publishing, there’s, there’s nobody else. There’s nobody else there to do it. Like it comes down to you. So I, you know, on that topic, Narren like what do you think are some of the big differences that separate the successful authors from the unsuccessful ones in terms of what they do to launch? I mean, obviously they have to be engaged. I think the idea of just going like, well, Hey, my book is up and, you know, I maybe hire a PR firm is one thing. But beyond that, what are some of the activities that you see the authors doing that are more controllable in terms of like directly driving the sales of their book?
NA (22:41):
Sure. So I think a baseline is you have to have fantastic content. You have to have good content that really resonates with your intended target market first. And so in order to have that, you have to really have an understanding of your target market. Many times I’ll hear from authors saying they’ve got a book that they that they’ve written and everyone will, everyone will love it. And so that’s when I immediately think to myself, great, you don’t know your target market because saying everyone is going to love it, that doesn’t work. So you have to do the work in terms of figuring out who you’re writing for and why they’re going to care. And then the other thing that I would say is it’s important to have, of course, as I just said, good content. But the book has to be a piece of a of a larger content plan, right?
NA (23:29):
It’s gotta be supporting your social media, your blogging, your op-eds your speaking, your consulting rarely is a book enough to persuade a person who has never heard of you to go out and buy your book. So those authors that understand that a book is a part of their overall platform and understand that it takes a lot of work to cultivate an audience and readership before the book actually comes out. Those are the ones that will reap the rewards of all that could flow from a positive and you know, a good book project.
RV (24:14):
Yeah,
NA (24:14):
Sounds simple. It sounds simple, but you know, you just kind of put in the work to gain trust of your potential readers and you know, have them invest time in you before you make an ask of of them to buy a book.
RV (24:30):
Yeah, yeah. That, and I think the there, there is a whole conversation there around just like building it out and there’s, I’ve heard different, I’ve heard different, different statistics on this before about like how many times somebody has to, has to hear your name before they actually buy something. But, you know, I’ve heard is like as high as 17 times, whereas like they have to see your name 17 times, whether it’s your social media feed in their inbox, you speaking at their event on someone else’s podcast on a local TV show, like, and they just have to like, hear your name and then they see you in Amazon. And they’re like, oh, you know what? I think this, this lady looks cool or this guy looks cool. I think I’m going to try this. I don’t know if you’ve, if you’ve heard any exact data on that, that’s always been, I’ve always heard just kind of very loosely cited statistics around that. But I do, I do very much agree with the concept that it’s like, you know just to what you said, rarely is it like, I’ve never heard of you. I see your book, I’m going to buy it. It’s usually more of like a culmination of, I’ve been hearing your name and now I see it and like, okay, I’m gonna, I’m going to give this a shot.
NA (25:47):
Culmination is a great word. And it’s fitting here because you’ve demonstrated that you are an expert in a particular field. You’ve introduced content that the potential purchaser finds worthwhile the potential purchaser has invested a time in your thoughts. And then at that point, you go in with your new book, just work.
RV (26:16):
Yep. Well, I love it. So y’all, if you ever want an introduction to narrow and I mentioned, so he’s one of our preferred Vitor providers here. You know, every author we work with is at different stages of their platform. You can always email us info at brand builders, group.com info at brand builders, group.com. We’ll gladly connect you directly to Narren. Of course you, you can find him in his company where, where do you want people to go near? And if they want find you directly.
NA (26:44):
Sure. If you go to amplify publishing.com, that is our thought leadership division, where we publish business political policy leadership type books, again, amplify publishing.com. And then we also have another imprint called the mascot books, [inaudible] books.com. And there we publish across various genres, everything from children’s titles to cookbooks to fiction. But I think, you know, most of your audience are in the brand building and thought leadership space. So amplify publishing probably would be a good source. You can feel free to email me. It’s Narren and a R E [email protected].
RV (27:27):
Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. We, we are mostly like, I would say in that thought leader space, but now they’ve been around a few years. We, we have some cookbook authors, we’ve got some diet books, we got some children’s books going on in there. And I actually would say among my circle of author friends, I feel like there is an a rising interest in doing children’s books that correspond with their business books. So they, they release a business book and then they’ll take that same, you know, core principle and they’ll make a kid’s book out of it, which I’ve always thought was interesting. I think my first book take the stairs would lend itself really well to that. And I was just like, maybe I should one day do a kids’ book, but anyways, that’s great. As always, you know, you can email us info at brand builders, group.com.
RV (28:12):
We can connect you directly as well. And Narren thank you for being here and thanks for what you do. I think you know, it’s, it’s, it’s really, really empowering to know there’s an option like you out there. I know for years early in our career, one of the biggest things that we struggled with was self publish or traditional publish. You know, and we have a, one of our courses is called bestseller launch plan, where we talk about all the steps that have to happen to like orchestrate a really great launch. And one of the stories that we talk about is just how much of a conundrum in this internal battle we were having between self-publishing and traditional publishing and hybrid offers offers you a lot of the best of both worlds. And so it’s, it’s a really, really good option. And so far we’re enjoying working with you and, and looking forward to having more of our clients go your way.
NA (29:03):
Well, this is fantastic. Enjoyed it. Thank you for the invitation and looking forward to working with a lot of reclined.
RV (29:12):
Awesome. We wish you the best.

Ep 217: Masterful Storytelling with Craig Valentine | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):
And we are here influential, personal brand podcasts, recap. I love it. When AJs here, life is better when wifey is here, she of course is our CEO Xtrordinair. And we are breaking down the interview with Craig Valentine, which was a blast from the past, for me, someone who had a major shaping on my life and career early on. And so anyways, this was a chance to AJ got to listen into our interview. And we’re gonna, we’re going to share with you are our top three takeaways each and bay. Why don’t you go first?
AJV (00:38):
Okay. so formal these podcasts recaps, babe wifey. So formal and professional. Are we so my first one is actually something you said in the very beginning, which I then thought it was hilarious that he then talked about it later on. And he said this comment in the beginning, he said, what I realized really early on, I said, it’s not good enough to get ready. You have to stay ready. And then he used that exact same thing, like five minutes later when talking about creating statements that people don’t just remember that they can repeat. So my first two takeaways are kind of like a combo deal. And the first one is this concept of getting ready versus staying ready. And I think this is really, really important for the audience that we really want to serve. Because when you think about storytelling is not about just telling stories in a keynote, and that’s so much of what people prepare for.
AJV (01:37):
It’s like, I have to think about these stories for a book that I’m writing or a course I’m creating or a keynote. And those were very singular activities. And it’s like, what about the stories that you tell in everyday interviews or your content creation on social media or a podcast or TV or radio or whatever. And I think that’s really important. I’ve just being able to stay ready. So at any minute, if a reporter tweets you at 9:00 PM at night, that you could be ready to go for an interview at 11:00 PM, which is exactly what happened to us just a couple of months ago. And because we were ready, it landed on good morning, America, totally unexpected, but we were ready. Didn’t need to get ready. We were ready. And I think that’s just a really great story is if you get ready and you stay ready, then it’s easy to accept the opportunities as they fly by, because it would have been equally as easy for someone to go. I don’t know what I’m going to say for that and turn down I mega opportunity just because you weren’t ready. And so that was my first big takeaway. And also gave you a teaser to my second one that I’ll share in just a minute.
RV (02:47):
Well, that’s good. I mean, that is just as like being in that mindset of like, I can go at any moment. It reminds me what you said reminded me of our friend Navy seal Joe. And one time I asked him, you know, why don’t, why don’t you drink? And he just said, well, cause at any, any given moment, you know, I might have to defend somebody. I might have to do something
AJV (03:07):
That’s a different
RV (03:08):
Kind of stay ready. Right. But it’s like that when you’re a Navy seal, it’s like, you’re always
AJV (03:14):
Ready,
RV (03:14):
Always ready. So one of the things for me, I mean, Craig is I think one of the masters of teaching storytelling, and I think it’s part of the impact he’s had on my life has helped me tell a great story. And even after all these years, as I was listening to him, I realized I don’t always have a clear conflict in my stories and you need to have a clear conflict. And that was my takeaway, which I’ve, I’ve been reminded of by him before, but somehow still forget. And, and in any story like the story is in the struggle, the story is not what happens at the end. The story is this one step forward, two step back of what the main character is trying to accomplish. And the moment that the conflict gets established is the moment that something gets in the way of your goal.
RV (04:09):
And so you have to have a character who wants something who has a block. You know, we, we refer in our a world-class presentation craft. We talk about how you have, you have the main character and then you have the enemy. You, you have to have a main character. Who’s trying to achieve something. Who’s being blocked by an enemy, which doesn’t necessarily have to be a person, but often it is. But if your stories are falling flat, it’s because you don’t have a clear conflict, which means you either don’t you, you don’t have a clear picture of what the main character is trying to accomplish. And there’s not clarity about what is standing in that main characters way. And if you don’t have those two things, you don’t have a story. You’re just, you’re just sharing words. And that is so simple, so simple, but just really hit me as profound. And it’s like, gosh, I should know this. I should know better, but I just don’t. And I, and you just forget that the fundamental, so that you got to have a clear conflict. That was my first big one.
AJV (05:12):
Yeah. Well, on that note Craig talks a lot about this in the interview is the importance of both conflict, but then also character dialogue. And those were equal parts of a great story is like, yeah, the story needs conflict, but there also has to be some character development I E through dialogue. And so it’s helping get to know each point of the characters in the story, even if it’s only one character that conflict and dialogue are of equal importance. And I think that was a really unique part because often sometimes the heart of the story is missed because you only get a one-sided character perspective.
RV (05:52):
Yeah. That was that your second takeaway was dialogue.
AJV (05:57):
That was a side tangent.
RV (06:00):
Since you, since you went there, I’ll just do my second one. Cause that was, that was my second one was that dialogue was my big second takeaway because of exactly what you said is you flesh out the characters, you get to know them by knowing what they’re thinking and what they’re saying to each other, which again, you don’t always think about. So anyways, that was my second one. I did two in a row. Okay. Back to you.
AJV (06:22):
Yeah. So my second one was something that I said at the very beginning, because I thought they were, they were very much connected, but it’s this whole concept of, you know, don’t tell stories just to be remembered, but tell them in a way that can be repeated. So it’s creating statements little taglines but easily remembered, but also easily repeated statements that actually carry through conversations. And that’s a huge part of a brand recognition it’s that people don’t just remember that, you know, you talk about, you know, overcoming self-doubt or you talk about in our case, personal branding, but it’s like, we’ve got these statements that are defining part of our personal brand and it’s easy for people to repeat them because they’re catchy, they’re easy to remember, but they’re also easily repeated. And I thought that was really good. And so it’s like, what are the conversation centerpieces that you have in your personal brand and in your stories, but in your content that allow people to go YAG tweet that I’d retweet that it’s like, I post that on my social.
AJV (07:26):
It’s like, I would, I would talk about this. Like, this is a, this is a good conversation starter. And it even, it doesn’t even have to be all that catchy. Sometimes it just has to be somewhat controversial in terms of like, this is different. Like one of the things that caught my attention when listening to this podcast with Kregg is this whole concept of, you know, in our opinion, that personal branding is the future of marketing and that’s somewhat controversial. I’m going like really like really it’s the future of marketing. And it’s like, that allows someone to go. It’s like, Hey, there’s this firm out there that did this study. And they’re saying that personal branding is the future of marketing. It’s like that personal branding is the way to build trust. And so again, it’s, it doesn’t even have to be like a tagline for it to be catchy, but it’s gotta be interesting enough that people can remember it and repeat it and that they would want to. And I thought that was a really huge part of stories are there to get people engaged. But then what’s the point, what’s the takeaway of the story. And are you giving it and little snippets that people can remember and want to repeat?
RV (08:37):
Yeah. Amen. It’s like, what’s the story, but what’s the, what’s the point? What’s the takeaway? The story is like the entertaining part, but then the point is like the educational part or the inspirational, the part that adds real value to our life. And you know, we call them pillar points internally, obviously like those, those catchy, those catchy phrases, and that kind of points to my third takeaway, which is which was, was actually nothing about the technical stuff of what Craig was teaching related to how to tell a great story. It was his kind of catchy pillar point from his wife. Your dream is not for sale. And I have heard him tell that story so many times about you know, him trying to quit his job to go pursue his dream and, and his, his boss offering him more money and him almost taking it.
RV (09:29):
And then his wife saying your dream is not for sale. And that has stuck with me that has stuck with me for almost 20 years now, from the first time that I heard that. And that is so powerful as a concept that like, you know, if you have a dream and there’s something that you’re dreaming about, like you literally want, and, and it is placed on your heart, that this is the thing that you’re supposed to pursue. Don’t let anything distract you from it. Don’t let anything pull you off of it. Don’t let anything convince you that you’re not worthy of it or that you can’t have it. And certainly don’t go chasing money in as a, as a way of avoiding chasing the thing, you know, that you’re called to. And even though, you know, that wasn’t a technique that he was there to teach, you know, he’s teaching us secrets of storytelling to hear that story risk recounted over and over is just such a powerful reminder for me in my own life to just go, yeah, your dream is there for a reason, your dream is there because you’re supposed to pursue it.
RV (10:33):
You’re supposed to move in that direction. There’s other people that you inspire by doing it. There’s other people that you help by chasing after it just don’t allow yourself to get sidetracked with other stuff.
AJV (10:45):
That’s good. That’s good. All right. Well, I’m at this up my third one. And I find a line and I, again, this wasn’t necessarily new, but it was a great reminder for every single person who is listening to this podcast is that it is not about selling a product it’s about selling results. And the best way you can do that is in storytelling. And it’s like, if all you do is talk about your product. It’s like, people get burned out. It’s like, you can only talk about it so much, but it’s like, what are the results that you will achieve or experience because of your product or your service. And he goes, you know, he gets that great story about when he was buying his first car several decades ago. And the first dealership he went to, they talked all about the car right here are the features of the car.
AJV (11:34):
Here’s the gas mileage. Here’s the rates that it at a desk, second place. He went and said, why are you buying a new car? And he said, oh, you’re going to look good in this car. Just think about all the ladies you’re going to get in this car. But it was, it was the results, but it was also the story. Like when you tell story, you’re able to put yourself in the character, see and experience it. Like when you talk about, oh, in this car, you’re going to look so good. I just want you to imagine, like, for me, it’s like how clean and organized a new car would be with your two toddlers. And if you owed, you had that captain seat, you wouldn’t have to climb over the seat to get in the back, or you’re going to have this extra space.
AJV (12:13):
Like you can tell I’m a mom of two small kids right now, because that’s what appeals to me like that if you put me as the character in the seat of the car, it’s like, oh yeah, I want that. I want clean carpets again. Yeah. I want seats where my kid’s little legs, can’t kick the back of them. That, how do you get me bad versus just telling me about just safety features and just the components of a car, but it’s like, how do you use a story to put your audience as the character in the seat to help them actually experience what your product or service is without making it all about just the facts and features and components of what you do, but it’s, what is it going to give them in peace or happiness or in my case organization. Right? So it was like, what are those things? And how do you use stories to help sell results? Because at the end of the day, people aren’t buying your product, they’re buying what your product or service is going to do for them.
RV (13:13):
So good. So good. And just storytelling. I think it’s, it’s easy to underestimate the power of stories because they’re so simple. It’s easy to forget the fundamental parts of that should be in a story because you just overlook them. And, and, and certainly just easy to forget, to use stories in your selling, your writing, your emails, obviously your presentation. So listen to this episode, go back. If you didn’t and listened to the episode with Craig Valentine, it is fantastic. He is a gifted speaker and also extremely gifted at teaching the art of story, which will help you and make a difference as does every guest. At least that is our hope every week here on the influential personal brand podcast. That’s all for this one comeback soon. We’ll see you then bye-bye.

Ep 216: Masterful Storytelling with Craig Valentine

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):
Well, it is time that you meet one of my legendary mentors. One of my personal coaches up as I kinda came up through the speaking ranks was this man Craig Valentine. He’s one of my favorite people ever as you’re about to learn, he is a wealth of knowledge and just a really, really cool dude. So I met him because he was, he is the 1999 world champion of public speaking for Toastmasters international. That was a contest that I came in second in 2007. He was one of my coaches for that. And it’s a worldwide competition where 25,000 contestants compete from, you know, over a dozen countries to be called world champion. He won that when he was still in his twenties. He also has an MBA from Johns Hopkins university. He’s the author of a book called the nuts and bolts of public speaking and the co-author of a number one, Amazon bestseller called world-class speaking in action. And so he’s built a career largely out of presentation skills coaching, and he’s also a speaker. He speaks on some different things, but in my mind, he was one of my speaker original speaker coaches still to this day, he runs something called the speak and prosper academy and he has a coaching certification program. That’s also called world-class speaking and a piece, just one of my go-to trusted authorities on, on all things presentations. So Craig, my man is so good to see you. It’s been way too long, brother
CV (02:21):
And way too long. It’s great to see you. I remember those days when we were working up to the world championship, you had a lot, I still believe if you had used the Jessica Simpson line, you would have won the world championship, but you took it out, but that’s okay. I thought I saved face for her, but that’s that a lot about you that you were, you were willing to take that out and, and be the type of person that wouldn’t be remembered for that type of thing. So you were a champion in my eyes. Always. I can tell you that when I won the world championship, Rory, I’m telling you like two days later, I realized it was a blessing and a curse, a blessing and a curse. Yeah, because if you have been walking towards me in the Chicago two days after I won the world championship, you would’ve seen my wife on one side of me and me carrying is right there. This gigantic crystal trophy, right. Just walking through the Chicago airport, everybody’s looking at me like, well, who is that? Yeah, right. I thought, Rory, I thought I heard a lady say, is that Denzel Washington? Right? But this is what I realized my life would never be the same. This petite lady in a pink dress runs up to me in the middle of the airport and everybody’s watching. And she starts reading the bottom of my trophy and she says, Hmm, 1999 world champion of public speaking. Wow. Say some things.
CV (03:40):
And Rory, I was speechless, but that’s when I realized no matter where I go in life, people are going to say, would you mind saying some things? Right? So I came to a fundamental understanding about my life as a speaker and really about your life and anybody listening, I can no longer get ready to speak. I have to stay ready to speak. Yeah. That’s my new, my motto is don’t get ready, stay ready. Because then you can take advantage of all the opportunities that exist. And so what I help people do nowadays is stay ready to speak and learn how to craft and deliver and sell their message. So people take the exact next step. They want them to take you know, and also get them to present in such a way that keeps the audience on the edge of their seats and makes them glad they came. And speaking of that, I’m very, very glad that I’m here.
RV (04:25):
Well, man, you know, it’s interesting to me because my, my dream originally was like, I wanted to be a speaker. And then I kind of learned, oh, you gotta be, you, you know, it helps if you’re an author and I became an author. And then now it’s like these days, I viewed myself probably more as an entrepreneur business-wise then than anything. But it’s amazing how much, those skills presentation skills, they apply to everything. Podcasts, interviews, webinars speaking in front of an arena or five, 10 people, or you’re at your, your leadership meeting or doing a prayer at the family dinner table. I mean, this stuff is everywhere. And you just, you don’t like, if you, if you didn’t go through Toastmasters, you might’ve had a class in college that teaches this stuff.
CV (05:13):
Exactly. It’s almost like personal financial management. You usually go through college without even knowing that, and you get out there to make this money. You don’t know what to do with it. Right? So to me, it, it’s always interesting because of what happened with you is what happens with a lot of people, including me, which is you get on this road. People say, stay in your lane, but they don’t realize that sometimes the road curves, right? And sometimes the market tells you what to do next. So for an example, for me, I got a call like maybe two months after I won the world championship from a guy who said, Craig, this is Wade Randolph. And I’d like you to coach me on my speaking. And I’m Rory. I’m like, I’m not a speech coach. I’m just a speaker. I wouldn’t even know where to start. And he said, I’ll pay you. I said, that’s a good place to start.
RV (06:01):
As I said, I must be.
CV (06:05):
And I’ll never forget. We met in the Martin Luther king library in Washington, DC. He drove up from Virginia and I started coaching him, but I had no idea what I was doing, but he kept coming back and I kept learning more and more ways to, to help Wade. And then I started getting other clients and other clients. And it wasn’t until Darren LaCroix, a buddy of both of ours said, Craig, once you realize you’re also a speech coach, you’ll be much better off because I was like, no, no, that’s not what I am. Once I embraced it. And I do what I call a jump into what you fall into. It opened up a whole new world of opportunities for me. And I’ve been living in it ever since.
RV (06:41):
So, you know, present on that note presentation skills is one thing that’s universal underneath that, or maybe next to that is another skill, which in my mind, I’ve always thought of you as a master of, and this is something that I’ve always struggled with. And even in this interview, I don’t know, it’s probably been 10 years since we’ve talked, I am reminded of how good you are at storytelling. You are a master. You you’ve already told at least two stories in the first like five minutes here where I’ve just been captivated. Like I got this whole laundry list of questions I was gonna ask you and I am drawn in to your stories. And that was one of the things you helped me with. And I’m also reminded like, man, I still have a lot to learn in this area. And it, because that applies even more universally than speaking does is just the art of storytelling. So what can you talk about what makes a good story? Like why are stories important? And like, you know, just for the average person out there, that’s doing lives on Facebook or running webinars, or maybe they’re speaking and they’re hosting a podcast. Like what should we be thinking of when it comes to how to tell a good story and why do most of our stories suck?
CV (08:06):
Well, I think the first part is the why is not, why do they suck? But why do we tell stories is because you want to be remembered. But not only that worry, I’ll learn this a little bit later in my career, you don’t speak to be remembered. You don’t tell stories to be remembered. You speak to be repeated, right? If you get repeated, then your brand grows and people can talk about, like, for example, people will go around right now and say, Craig, Craig Valentine says, don’t get ready, stay ready. Right. Just from the message I told you earlier. So I think to make a good story, you want to have a story and a foundational phrase. That’s a phrase that’s repeatable. That’s you focused meaning focused on your audience. And that’s fewer than 10 words, right? Give you a quick example. One of my foundational phrases is don’t sell the product, sell the result, never a product sell the result case.
CV (08:57):
In point decades ago, I went to buy my first car ever in life, went to the dealership. Salesperson came up to me. He says, are you looking at that car? I said, yes, sir. He said, great. Let me tell you about it. This car has these types of Mo this type of motor, this type of window, this type of engine, this type, what was he trying to sell them? The car, right? I just said, never sell a product. Always sell the result. So I said, no, thank you. I’m not interested. And Rory, I went to a different dealership on the same day, different salesperson, same car. Now I gotta be honest, bro. He must’ve anticipated where I was mentally and emotionally at my life. In that time, you know, I was, I was young and single and looking to mingle. And so he walks up to me. He says, you looking at that car? I said, yes, sir. He said, you’re going to look good in that one. He said, you’re going to be flying down the road. The winds gonna be blowing through your hair and the girls. Let me tell you, the girls will be all over you, Roy, what do you think I did sign
RV (09:53):
Me up. I said, where do
CV (09:54):
I sign? See he made the sale. Not because he sold me the car, but he sold me the results. And he lied. I was lonely in that car. I’m telling you, but do you see what I’m saying? Or I tell the story, I make the point and then I’ll give them the foundational phrase. So never sell a product. Always sell the result. Now what goes into a good story is having some kind of conflict. What goes into
RV (10:19):
On a positive right there before you do so. So this is kind of age old, you know, national speakers association, classic Toastmasters, tell a story, make a point. And what you’re saying is like nail that point. First we call them pillar points, the foundational phrase, just like that tweetable moment, that, that catch phrase, that like one liner don’t sell the product, sell the result. And then
CV (10:42):
No matter what, no matter when it comes up, it could come up at the beginning. I could come up at the end, but it has to come up at some time so that they can walk away repeating it. And not just remembering, you want to be remembered, repeated, re, posted, retweeted, all of that. That’s going to help build your brand. Okay.
RV (10:57):
And do you come up with the point first and then the back, the story into that? Or do you just go like, okay, here’s a great story. And then I figure out some point to make out of it.
CV (11:08):
The answer is yes. The answer is yes. Both, both. Like, I’ll give you an example. He’s probably over there listening right now, but when it was 2012, the, the summer Olympics, the oldest participant in the summer Olympics was a 74 year old equestrian from Japan. Right? 74 year old, a question from Japan. So my seven year old son and I are watching this on TV and Roy on, unfortunately all the commentators kept harping on was the guy’s age. And they just kept saying, he’s 74. Can you believe he’s 74 by golly, he’s 74. And finally my seven-year-old son looked up and said, well, how old is the horse? Right. And I could not stop laughing. I could not stop laughing. So then at that point, I said, I’ve got to make a point out of this. I got to make a point out of this.
CV (11:51):
And so maybe a couple of months later, I realized, you know what? My son asked questions about everything, about everything, and yet he’s going out there. My son is going out there and winning national championships and track and field missing. How is he doing? And then I realized, never stop asking questions, never stop it. So I turned that into that point, not the most original point, but it’s an a, it’s a point that allows me to slide into questions. I can ask my audience. So I tell that story. I make the point, never stop asking questions, and then we move on to something else. So in that case, the story came first and I said, I got to find a point to make with this. But sometimes it works the other way around.
RV (12:31):
So, all right. Yeah. So it can be either way, right? You can have a great story and go, okay, what’s the point? Let me translate that. But or you go, all right, this is a great point that I need to make. And then let me back it into the story. Yeah. I think a lot of people can’t tell a good story and they don’t understand conflict. So, so talk about what you were just saying. Cause I said, what’s the most important thing and you immediately said conflict.
CV (13:01):
Yeah, I’ll go to conflict. And then I’ll go to dialogue, hearing what the other characters say to each other, hearing what you say to yourself. But conflict is the most important part. I’ll give you just the beginning of this story, Rory. So you can get a sense for what the conflict is. But I mean, let me ask you, cause you’ve been around. What do you think is the number one thing that stands between most people live in their dreams? What do you think that is?
RV (13:23):
Self doubt.
CV (13:24):
Self doubt. Yeah. And a lot of people will say fear and the fear of change and this and that. And those are all great answers. But the number one thing is not what you think. See, I used to work for an internet company and I wanted to go full-time into professional speaking. That was my goal. That was my dream. Right, right. I was asked Molly, raise your hand. If you have a goal, raise your hand. If you want to do anything in life. Right. Me too. So I went to the vice president of this company. His name was Steve John. I said, look, John, I’m going to be leaving because there’s always been my dream to be a full time professional speaker. He said, that’s your dream, Craig? I said, yes. He said, well, that’s great. I really admire you for having one, but you can’t leave. I said, hold on now, what do you mean? I can’t leave? He said, well, Craig, we’ve been thinking about it. And we’re going to raise your salary up to this. Now Rory salary means the same thing in Nashville right
RV (14:13):
Now. We’re talking
CV (14:14):
Now you see my dilemma. I said, John, this is not a financial decision. This is about my dream. In fact, I call this a dream decision. He said, okay, I understand. I really do. How about if we raised a salary up to this? I said, this is not a financial decision. This is a dream decision. You know, he raised it four times. I kid you not. I kept him going to raise the salary up to this. I said, this is not a financial decision. This is a dream decision. He said, okay, Craig, how about if we raised your salary to well above six figures? I said, dreams are overrated. Now that’s a funny line. But let’s look back at the conflict. Let’s look at the conflict. The conflict in that story, the reason had people’s interest is because I set the conflict up for him to say, you can’t leave.
CV (14:57):
Boom. That’s when the conflict was established, that’s when the Titanic hit the iceberg. But Rory, the thing that makes a great story is not just the establishment of the conflict. You got to escalate it. You got to escalate it. Think about the movie, the Titanic, the Titanic hit the iceberg, but how did it escalate? The water started to rise on the Titanic, right? If the water never rose on the Titanic, I’m telling you right now that would have been a terrible movie. So what I’m saying is how do you raise the water on the Titanic in your own story? If you look at mine, it was, he kept offering me more money to stay. I kept getting more frustrated, more flattered, more frustrated, more flattered until something had to give. And so if you get your audience to that point, they’re like, well, what did he do? What did she do? How did they get over it? And the reason why conflict is the hook to your story is because your audience wants to know, did you overcome the conflict? If so, how, what tools did you use? Can I use them? Can I use them? And that’s why conflict is so important. But the other part that’s so important is dialogue. You’ve got to hear what the other characters say to each other.
RV (16:03):
Yeah. So I want to talk about dialogue in a set in a second, by the way, one of the things that I have quoted you for is the rest of this story, which is a dialogue from your wife, which is his amazing line, which is not just as, is a great line, but it’s actually had a meaningful impact in my life personally. But so is conflict. Like what is conflict exactly. Like, like, especially if I’m architecting a story, like to the point of, you know, let’s say, I, you know, like I’m actually working on this right now. I have a presentation. I have a presentation tomorrow. And I’m working on kind of a new story and I’m sitting kind of trying to craft it to make it sharper and more sort of state stage. Ready? What are you doing there? Like what are you looking for? Like, I, that I really love escalate the conflict. I don’t recall you saying that. You probably did say that to me a long time ago, but that’s a new thing for me is just raising the stakes, intensifying it. But when you establish conflict, how do you establish it?
CV (17:02):
Yeah. You have to recognize where, where it’s established and what happened. So when I ask people the question in that story, where is the conflict established? A lot of times they’ll say something like when you wanted to leave or when he was giving you more money. No, the moment the conflict is established is the moment something gets in the way of your dream or your goal. So it’s not when I wanted to leave nothing’s wrong yet. It’s when he said you can’t leave home, that’s it. So what you would look for in your story, Rory is the conflict is the moment where something gets in the way or someone gets in the way of what you’re looking to accomplish. Okay.
RV (17:40):
By definition means you have to have a goal. And that has to be clear. There it is. And then there’s gotta be something that gets in the way in order for there to be conflict.
CV (17:52):
I remember Darren LaCroix used to talk about Charlie Chaplin. He had, he had Charlie Chaplin had broken it down really well. I think he had like a, there was a bench and there was a girl and he was trying to get to the girl. And then it was something that got in the way. And that was in a nutshell what conflict is. Right? And that’s what a good story will do. You will establish the conflict. And here’s the, here’s the other thing about the story, Rory to many people, pre ramble, they pre ramble. What I mean by that is they take too long to get to the story in the first place. And then once they get to the story, they take way too long to get to the conflict. You should get to the conflict as early as possible. Because the earlier you get the conflict, the earlier you have them hooked in right away.
CV (18:34):
And a lot of times I try to get to the conflict in the question like I’ll tap into my audience’s world before I transport them into my story. I’ll tap into their world by saying, what do you think is the number one thing that stands in the way of most people live in their drinks, some already starting to establish some of the conflict in their own life. I learned this from Charlie, tremendous Jones, about a year before he passed away. One of the greatest speakers we had, he said to me, Craig, don’t get people to listen and memorize, get them to think and realize. So that made me become a master of asking questions at the beginning of my story in the middle of my story at the end of my story, to make sure that even though the story is about me, the message is certainly about them, them being the audience.
RV (19:18):
Yeah. I’m just thinking about my story. The problem is I don’t have a goal. The problem is the goal. Isn’t clear in my story. The conflict is the thing I’m struggling with is clear, but what’s clear is not, I don’t have the goal clear.
CV (19:31):
It’s almost like that old saying that, that, that if you, if you don’t, what’s the old saying, you don’t know where you’re going. Any road will take you there. Right. So we need to have,
RV (19:42):
Yeah, you gotta, you gotta know. So, okay. So let’s talk about dialogue and I don’t want to leave our audience with an unanswered question about this brilliant line that your wife delivers that changed my life and clearly changed your life. So let’s get back and talk about, okay. The F the most important part of a story is conflict. The second or a close second is dialogue. Why? And what do you mean?
CV (20:06):
Well, let, let, let’s give an example. Let’s give a reference. I’ll get right back into that story right after I say you dreams are overrated, right. And I’m laughing. And I say, I looked at the John said, look, John, I got to talk to my wife about this before I go, before I say, yeah. So I went home to my wife. I said, honey, I don’t know what to do. What do you think I should do? What should I do? And my wife looked up at me with her big brown eyes and said, take the money fool.
CV (20:34):
And then I’ll go into another part of the story. But here’s the thing about dialogue. I always ask people, raise your hand. If you’d like to add humor to a speech. And of course they all raised their hand. I said, add humor to a speech, uncover humor within it. How do you do that? You uncover humor within the story, within the characters, within the characters dialogue, and within the spaces and faces in between the lines. So if you think about my story, you only heard about half of it. Think about the funny lives. Dreams are overrated. Funny line dialogue, take the money, full, funny line dialogue. And then later on in the story, my wife says to me, I don’t care how much they try to compensate you. Your dream is not for sale. Your dream is not presented. So even the poignant lines, it’s dialogue, but guess what?
CV (21:23):
Rory, here’s the secret to storytelling in the story. She said it to me, but in reality, she said it to you, right? Anybody listening in that audience right there will hear it the same way. I heard it feel it the same way I felt it. And she speaking directly into their hearts and minds. And I know this because people have come up to me years later and said, you know, I was looking at leaving this company and doing my own thing. And, and your, your wife’s words popped into my mind. Your dream is not for sale. It made a big difference in a lot of people’s lives. So dialogue. Yes.
RV (21:57):
So Nan, so, and you’re saying uncover humor, because humor is one of the things that we teach. I know you talk about it. I’ve learned a ton from Darren on it and other other people, and you go, it’s, you know, adding humor. There’s a, there’s a lot to it. But one of the easiest, fastest ways to add humor is to just uncover humor. And you said, uncover it. What did you, you kind of breezed through that you said uncovered
CV (22:22):
From it. First thing you want to do is look inside of your story because the only thing worse than no humor is forced humor, right? That makes the audience cringe that that’s going to disconnect. You I’d rather have no humor, but you look inside your story. You look at your characters and you look at your characters, dialogue, what they say to each other and what they say to themselves as well. You know, I have a story. I say, raise your hand. If w if you feel like sometimes the reality hurts. Now, be honest. Do you ever step on a scale and been forced to face reality? Not, I know what you’re thinking. You’re probably looking at me like, Craig, what do you know about stepping on a scale? I mean, look at you. You’re obviously built, like, I don’t know some sort of Greek statue.
CV (23:07):
So if we just take it right there, there, there are different types of dialogue, right? In that story. And one of my favorite lines of dialogue or uses of dialogue is what I call projected dialogue. And I know this is a little bit advanced, but it’s when you project dialogue onto somebody based on how they’re looking at you. So my audience didn’t say that, but I can look at my audiences that I know what you’re thinking. You’re probably looking at me like, Craig, what do you know about boom? So I’m projecting dialogue onto them to uncover some humor. So I have usually five different types of dialogue that I like to use. It’s character to character dialogue, what they say to other it’s inner dialogue. What you say to yourself, because that’s very funny. Often it’s projected dialogue. What you project onto them based on how they’re looking at you.
CV (23:56):
Like right now, if I was teaching this in a class, somebody, I would say, John is looking at me like, Craig, I have no idea what, this is, what this means. Right? I’m projecting dialogue onto them. And then of course there’s actual audience dialogue. There are things that will your audience members will say while you’re in a story. Like, even in that story, I’ll say, raise your hand. If you have kids, then you know, the doctor is always going to measure their length and their, and Rory, inevitably, somebody is going to say height, and I’m going to say somebody say hi, let me explain the length. When you turn them, that actually becomes the hot, right. But so I can use actual audience dialogue. And then I can use quotations that are from outside of the story that pertain to the story. Right? For, for a quick example, when I was in prison visiting an inmate came up after one of my presentations, he said, Craig, I’m getting outta here in a few months. I’m feeling good about life. And I’m back on the right track. I said, well, there’s a quote by will Rogers who says you might be on the right track. But if you just stand there, you’ll be run over. So I can bring in quotations like that. That might uncover some humor as well.
RV (25:06):
I heard about it. The internal dot, the inner dialogue is inner dialogue is a gift because you can make up whatever you want. Like, and as long as it’s like exact, you know, it’s an exaggerated, there’s like no rules. They inner dialogue could be anything.
CV (25:24):
And here’s the key, Roy, if I thought it, then I can say it. Now, all I have to do is use a stem, like, and I was thinking, boom. And I thought, boom. And at that moment I thought, boom. And I promise you, the line of dialogue will land just as hard as if you had actually said it. So yeah, it really is a gift. But guess what? So as per the dial, because based on how they’re looking at you, they might not be thinking that it’s like when I went to share the stage with my, with my speaking hero and I said, oh my gosh, I’m Craig Valentine. I get to introduce you today. You’re the man who made me want to get into this business in the first place. Thank you so much for being here. Nothing. He just looked at me as if, to say you don’t belong on the same stage.
CV (26:09):
So it doesn’t have to just be humor. It can be poignant moments like that, but he didn’t say it. He looked at me as if, to say you don’t belong on the same stick and worried. That is the look he gave me, make no mistake about it. And I feel like I interpreted that look correctly, but it still gives me the freedom. And I think that’s what you’re talking about. It’s a gift because it gives you the freedom, freedom to say, now what you thought then, or to say what he looked like he wanted to say. And those are two very important ways to use dialogue. And, and, and there are, I like the way you put that.
RV (26:44):
Yeah. I mean, those are, yeah, that, that, it’s just like, all bets are off. You can, you can do so many things with that.
CV (26:52):
You see how I brought, I was able to bring in quotation from will Rogers to help push that story forward. It’s actually a Patricia Fripp story that I was going to, it’s my story, but it’s about Patricia Fripp. So anyway, that’s, those are the types of quotations types of dialogue that I like to use. And so if I was to really break it down, conflict is the hook dialogue is the heart because dialogue is what really pumps blood and pumps life into your story. If you’re ever watching a story. And I say to you, when did that story really come to life for you? You’re going to say when so-and-so said something to so-and-so right in that story, but dialogue is what makes it breathe and brings it to life. Mm.
RV (27:33):
Yeah. That’s that is interesting and powerful. And you know, to the, to the point of what you were talking about earlier as you, we call pillar points. I think you said you call them foundational phrases. One of the other lines that you, you said, and we quote you on this, like, I believe with a picture of you and as well as your name is you tell an eye focused story with a, you focused message that stuck with me for 15 years, man. Wow. can you talk about what that means?
CV (28:06):
Yeah. It’s kind of like what I was saying when it comes to Charlie, tremendous Jones, that the story is about me. Right? But the point needs to be about you. So even yelling back to the audience, you, the audience, even going back to the story about my son and me watching the Olympics, right? That story is about us. We laughed. We had fun. When I got to bring the point around to be about you never stop asking questions. The moment you stop asking questions is the moment you stop growing. The moment you stop growing we know from nature is the moment you fall, never stop asking questions. But what I also like to do is do what I call you focused. Check-Ins just like you heard me do in, in, in the one story where I, that I started to tell, I said, now raise your hand.
CV (28:52):
If you have kids, boom, that’s another check-in with them. Or now be honest, you ever stepped on a scale and been forced to face that’s another check-in with them. So I like to check in throughout the entire story so that they keep understanding, oh yeah, the stories about Craig. But this point in this message is about, is about me, the audience member, and I can use it. And that’s one of the things I just came out with a product about four months ago with Les brown called legendary speaking course. And that’s one of the things we’ve talked about all, all the time is info bites. He called them info bites. I call them foundational phrases, but they should be three things in my mind, foundational phrases, fewer than 10 words, you focused meaning focused on the audience and rhythmic. Now I don’t mean they need the rhyme.
CV (29:38):
I mean, they need to be easy to say and they need to roll off the tongue. Your dream is not for sale. Don’t get ready, stay ready. What got you here? Won’t get you there. I know that’s Marshall silver, but I had been talking about it for like five years before he wrote that book. But what got you here? Won’t get you there. Never stop asking questions. Average speakers placed blame, average leaders, place, blame, exceptional leaders. Take it. If you make, if you, if you make them visible, they’ll make you valuable. These are all of these foundational phrases that I have. And they’re all you focus. So I focus story message about me. I’m sorry. Stories about me. You focus point where the point in the message and the application is for you.
RV (30:18):
Yeah. You know, and this is so powerful. I mean, you can see why, like, what what’s amazing about this is, you know, when I stepped into speaking in the world championship and started learning from you guys, to me, it was like this very unattainable, almost like mythical skill of how to captivate an audience. And the more I studied this, the more I realized there’s so many techniques like dialogue and conflict that, you know, and using a foundational phrase that exponentially improve the impact in the experience for the audience. And it’s, it’s, it’s not that you’re, it’s not that you’re not amazing and charismatic as an individual, but everyone can be charismatic. But these mechanics, these are, these are practical things you can learn to do. And Craig is one of the masters, as you could tell, just by how these little tweaks make such a huge, huge difference. And Craig, that’s why I was like, I gotta have you on, got to introduce you to everybody. Where do you want people to go? If they, they want to learn more about, you know, this kind of stuff.
CV (31:31):
Remember we talked about never selling the product, always selling the result. This is what I would say to my audiences. I, if I’m in front of an SRO, raise your hand if a year from now, you’d like to be at least three times better than the speaker or presenter you are today. All hands go up. I said, well then great. You can go to one of my websites for free 52 speaking tips.com. That’s five, two speaking tips.com. And every week for a year, you’re going to get an audio lesson for me. And at the end of that year, you will be at least three times better than the speaker presenter you are today. So Roy that’s where I would have them go. But also if we just broke that down for a second, what was the result? Three times better? What was the resource? The website 52.
CV (32:12):
Speaking to which one that I mentioned first in an audience, somebody will say free. They will always say, but it’s the result. And that’s what I like to get across to people never sell the product, always sell the result, but always put the result before the resource, always as a leader, find a way to state the result before the request. Because if I did it the way most people do it, Rory, even people who are marketing people, it would have sounded like this. Raise your hand. If you’d like to receive 52 emails from yeah. And I don’t think my opt-in rate would be as high. So you go to 52 speaking tips.com and you’re going to be three times better than the speaker you are today within one year.
RV (32:50):
Yeah. This is Craig Greg Valentine. This is one of the people who coached me and still coaching me. I mean, this, this conversation is powerful and sharp. There are so many things you can listen to my recap with Aja here in a couple of days, we’ll break it down for you. What our big highlights were in the meantime, go follow Craig. You know, give him some comments, share some social media. Love, let them know that you’re listening. Say hi, check out the 52 speaking tips.com. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes, Craig dude, thank you for your impact on my life. I mean you and Darren and ed and mark and Dave, like, you know, David Brooks, I’m referring to like you guys helped shape me in a lot of ways that I can look back and go a lot of, a lot of what we have done in our career and what the people we’ve been able to help points back to. A lot of these things that we’ve learned from you.
CV (33:42):
The Royal, I just want to tell you, you, you were a champion on the day that we met and you still are, and I’m glad you’re doing what you’re doing and keep touching lives.
RV (33:51):
Thanks brother.

Ep 215: Video Content Systems with Marley Jaxx | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):
Youtube and video domination. This is a topic that I am growing more and more interested in. Hey, it is Rory Vaden. Welcome to the influential personal brand podcast recap edition of the Marley Jaxx interview. I am doing this recap solo. I got no, AJ with me side-by-side today, but I’m going to break this one down for you. And I’m telling you, like, this is something, when I think about Rory Vaden, a Brand Builders Group, and in two years, it’s like, we better be dominating YouTube. Like we better be figuring this out. And so we’re learning a lot. And this, this interview with Marley was just fantastic because I just, I think this is so important. I think this is such a big part of, of the future and such a big part of like content marketing for professionals as is YouTube because you know, the, the big thing here and I’ll get into my, my, my top three takeaways from Marley.
RV (01:13):
But at a high level, the thing that I hope you’re getting, not just from this interview with Marley, but from some of the, several of the interviews that we’ve done with some video folks, and you know, some of our, some of our various friends, people like Sean Cannell and others that we’ve had on the show is just that, you know, video is the future of marketing period. I mean, it’s also the presence and in some ways it’s the past, but content marketing is, is video. And this even, even Instagrams found, or it was several months ago at this point, but Instagram sharp started as a, as a photo sharing app, right? That’s how it started. And, and, and Instagram, not their founder, but Instagram CEO announced that the, it is now a video tool, and that it is focusing on video.
RV (02:12):
That why, because the engagement is higher for everybody with video. And that’s what these apps want you to do is create content that keeps people on their platform. That’s what they’re interested in because of advertisers, which is how they, they make their money. And so the longer you keep people on their platform, the more ads they can show up their advertisers and the more money that they make. And so that’s why they want to keep people on these platforms. Well, that’s, you know, something like Instagram, Facebook, any of the social media platforms, but YouTube is really different because YouTube isn’t social media in, in a lot of the ways that you think about it because YouTube gets better over time. It’s like search engine optimization and you know, on Facebook and Instagram,
Speaker 2 (03:00):
The, the, the posts that get the most traction are the ones that were posted most recently. And so you have to constantly be pushing stuff out there. If you want people to see it, people don’t see, there’s not a lot of traffic to your old posts, but YouTube is the opposite search engine is the opposite. Like an article that you wrote on, on a blog 10 years ago is worth more in value than an article that you wrote last week. It’s got that one of the it’s got like more Google juice, so to speak, right? It’s got more history and everything with Google, which YouTube of course owns Google. So it’s, it’s all about kind of the legacy value of a piece of content. And, and it grows, it can grow over time, more like a fine wine. And so creating and producing video content and optimizing it in an intelligent way is a really big deal.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
And of course, you know, go back and listen to this, this interview, this episode that we did with Marley. But I just want you to really get that, or at least make sure you, you catch the gravitas of which I’m viewing that. And, and, and part of it is this, cause I think I’ve just missed the boat really badly on, on this. And so it stings a little bit every time I hear someone talk about YouTube and, and we’re still not there yet, right? Like we still don’t have our ducks in a row to like do this or working on other things. And our clients are going really fast. So our, you know, we’re focused on servicing them, but as we’re, as we turn towards scaling and ramping up our team, it’s like, this is a, this is a game that we up, we got win and, and video just lends itself well to professionals and experts because it’s all about trust.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
And I need you, if you want people to trust you and they trust you more, when they see you, they do. And they just, you trust the people that you see every day. That’s why we trust celebrities. We see them on TV. We trust them. So video is a big deal. But anyways, here’s my three by three takeaways from Marley, which I thought were acute not cute. Acute. They were acute. They were sharp. They were poignant. They are they’re, they’re not things that you always hear in the first one is more emotional. And it really hit me when she said, look, you’re going to be judged either way. Like the reason why we don’t turn on the camera is because we’re afraid of being judged, right? We’re afraid of some kid that made fun of us in elementary school, like seeing this video and be like, hi, you’re stupid, right?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Or, or the online haters or we’re, you know, we just, aren’t confident with how we appear on camera or whatever, whatever. You know, and, and her point is like, in your life in general, there is always a risk of doing it, but there’s a risk of not doing it. Also there there’s, there’s a, there is a cost of doing it. Like there’s a potential loss there. If you do something and you make a mistake, but there’s a bigger guaranteed loss and not doing it, not trying for it, not going for it, feeling this, calling this prompting in your heart, that, that you’re supposed to share your message or that you’re supposed to teach, or you’re supposed to encourage, you’re supposed to educate, inspire entertain, and you feel this prompting on your heart. And yet you’re losing to this, this self doubt, this, this fear, this fictitious imagination, like imaginative dream of all the bad things that could happen.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
And you’re not counterbalancing that with all the good things that might happen and ignoring the fact that if you don’t take this risk, then all you’re going to have is more of what you have right now. And that’s guaranteed. And so you’re going to be judged whether you do it or not, there is risk whether you do it or not there, if you do it, there’s gonna be, there’s gonna be losses, but there’s also gonna be wins. But if you don’t do it, then there’s only losses. There’s just, there’s just no attempts. And, and grasping this idea and go, and look, we got one life. Like we got one shot at this. We got one chance to show up and bring our best to the world. We got, we got one opportunity there. There’s one season that you’re going to be of like healthy mind and healthy body.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
We’re living in this incredible era where never before, has there been such an opportunity to use a tool like video and social and digital and, and, you know, whatever the internet to just impact the world. Like this is a very unique time in history. So do it like go for it. What are you waiting for? Take your shot, take a chance, start doing it. And, and, and who cares about all the reasons you might feel silly or what people are going to say that you don’t care about and, and, and do it. And by the way, like maybe you’ve been waiting, like you’ve been listening to this podcast and you haven’t done a free call with our team. Go freaking, do it, go to free brand free brand call.com/podcast. Right. Go there right now. Let me double check to make sure that link works here.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
A free brand call.com/podcast. It does work. Okay, great. Go there and request a call with our team and we will help get you started. Right. So, and if you’re not ready for that step, or maybe you’re already a member and you just haven’t turned on the camera, turn on the camera. Like I loved when I asked her, what’s the right, what is the best camera to have? And her answer was so perfect. I said, what’s the best camera to use. And she said that, she said, whatever camera you have, that is such a great answer. So you got to do it now. Now there are two things are more technical and these are just super quick ones. So that I thought, gosh, these are really interesting. I’ve never, I’ve never really heard someone say this so sharply. So my second big is the concept of an engagement break and engagement break.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
And so you, you often see people do a call to action at the end of your video, which you should do, right? Like whatever, like share this post with someone who needs to see it, or leave me a comment below or whatever. But especially if you’re creating content natively for YouTube, and it’s more like a nine minute, 10 minutes, 12, 15 minute video, whatever, having engagement breaks along the way, like in between the points of your video. And so if you’ve got three points that gives you a chance to say you know, between point number one and point, number two, you go, Hey, if you are not, if you, if you’re not already subscribed, press that subscribe button, like there’s a lot more to come. I got two other points to share, but make sure you’re tuning in and subscribe to what we got going on.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
All right. Point number two is right. And just that little kind of, it’s a great little break in the action. It’s an opportunity for another, you know, conversion. And I think it’s, it’s, it’s really brilliant and elegant and simple. It’s super simple and it’ll make a big difference. And the other thing is, you know, a lot of times you don’t keep people all the way to the end of the video. So take advantage of this. And I really, really love that. And you can tell people to leave a comment like rate, subscribe, share or give them a link to go off and do something else and buy whatever, whatever. So use engagement breaks, how simple, how Al straightforward, how practical I love it. And then number three was to put your link right in the description of the video below. And for me, like that should be obvious probably for someone like me, but it wasn’t.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
And so maybe it’s not as super obvious to you is to go, you know, the concept of a funnel, which is something that we, we teach. It’s it’s in our more advanced trainings for our members and our community. We teach them funnels in the strategy and the psychology and the technology and all the things you have to do to like make a funnel work. And they’re, they’re amazing, but like version 1.0, can just be a video of you providing value with a link down below for someone to click and request a call or click and go to your sales page and buy. And that’s so simple like that, that is a funnel like a funnel as anything that is proactively nurturing somebody in a way that you’re giving value. First, you’re giving first giving first giving first you’re adding value to their life. And then you offer them an opportunity to take a next step.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
What could be a more simple, elegant way of doing that than just posting a video on YouTube, teaching them some stuff, and then saying, Hey, if you want more click the link down below in the description, you know, or, or and, and that’s it, that’s a simple call to action. And when you do that, then it’s like each video that you create is like a warrior out there. Who’s like recruiting for you. It’s like a marketing warrior. This soldier who is living out there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, that anyone in the world can watch you click on when you’re not there. It’s this, it’s this scalable vehicle mechanism. It’s, it’s like if like hiring an employee for your company or something that is always there and you go, what happens if you create a thousand videos like that? Like somebody’s going to find you, somebody is going to buy from you.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
And if you’re just talking to them and you’re adding value, and then you offer them a simple call to action, click the click, the link in the description below, that’s it, that’s the whole call to action. Give value, click the link down in the description below that is a funnel, because a funnel is not about a certain amount of technology. It’s about psychology and the psychology is give before you ask help before you sell, right, like offer before you, before you inquire and, and a video does that. And that’s just something that it’s like, there’s just, there’s just no excuse you carrying around a phone in your pocket. You can record a video in literally, you know, two minutes you can turn on and record a video. And that’s what I’m starting to do. Like that is what’s crushing for us on social is no fancy graphics.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
No, you know, fancy borders. No, on-screen text no B roll, no music underneath. Just literally hold the phone up, hit record and talk and, and pro and say something inspiring. You know, it’s basically the three E’s it’s entertaining educational the w hold on, let me think here, you got, you got you’re entertaining. Oh. Or encouraging you’re entertaining, educational or encouraging in some mix of those. You have that power, like never before. The only thing that’s holding you back is fear is the only reason why you wouldn’t do it. You’re afraid, silly. Don’t be afraid. Don’t lose to your fear. Don’t let some stupid made up story in your mind about what might happen, be the thing that holds you back, right? Like if you could fast forward your life in two paths and go, okay, what if I could see ahead in the future?
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Well, one path I took action. And the other one I did not. And you, and what if the one where you took action led to every single dream that you have coming true. If it’s like all of the, the deepest desires of your heart were all available and you could actually see and go. The only reason I never got to have that in my life is because I allowed myself to lose to a fictional made up story that I allowed to play in my head over and over. Imagine all the people that you could have helped that you didn’t help because you allowed yourself to fall victim to this fake fictional made up story. It’s not worth it. It’s not worth it. So don’t let it happen to you. You got to stay encouraged. You got to. And by the way, that’s why you got to stay plugged into what we’re doing.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
If you’re not following me on Instagram and AIJ and brand builders group, like you should be following us on LinkedIn and follow us on Instagram and make sure you’re tuning into the podcast. And goodness, if it’s, as soon as you can please become a member of the community, because we’re going to give you the encouragement, keep you going. We’re going to plug you in to other people who are on the same journey as you, because a lot of this battle is just, it is emotional, man. It, it is, it is about fear. It’s not just the tactical, it’s emotional, but if nothing else, please keep listening to podcasts. Please keep coming back. Yeah, leave us a comment. Let us know on iTunes, give us a review and tell us your feedback. What kind of guests do you want to hear more of? Like, who do you love? What are your favorite episodes? We read that stuff. We’ll pay attention to it. And just more than anything, just keep coming back, stay encouraged. Listen to that. Calling in your heart, go out, make something happen, serve somebody. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 214: Video Content Systems with Marley Jaxx

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):
One of the greatest mistakes that I have made in my career as a personal brand is I missed the boat on YouTube. I missed it badly. And then and then we sold all of our social media and I had to start over anyways. And so I started over on YouTube right away, but it’s difficult to build a following from scratch. And that’s one of the reasons why we brought in Marley Jaxx today. I had an opportunity to see her live. She spoke at an event called funnel hacking live with Russell Brunson. She shared the stage with him and Tony, Tony Robins, and Tom bill, you and Frank Kern. And she’s worked with a lot of other, she’s worked with other friends of ours. Alex Charfen has been a long time friend of ours. And we really just enjoyed her content talking about video and her specialty, I think is, is understanding video and YouTube and specifically using that to drive leads for your business. And also I think another specialty of hers is selling high dollar offers and kind of like more complex offerings, not just the, you know, the $200 video course, but you know, converting it into high high-dollar offers and high ticket stuff. So anyways, Marley, welcome to the show.
MJ (02:09):
Hello. Thank you for having me.
RV (02:11):
Yeah. So I wanted to just start with the, like the, the camera in general. I think, you know, a lot of people are still uncomfortable. They’re kind of camera shy. They you know, they, they get a little nervous about YouTube and just kind of video in general. Do you have any, like, what do you think are some of the big mistakes that people make or do you kind of have any advice for somebody who’s kind of sitting in that mode going like, yeah, I kind of want to step out of this, but I’m still nervous and reluctant. Yeah,
MJ (02:44):
Definitely. When people say they’re, they’re afraid of the camera, I usually try to lighten the mood and kind of joke. Like you’re not afraid of a camera, it’s a piece of metal and plastic, what you are afraid of. It’s the fear of stepping out of your comfort zone, but we know that nothing grows there, right. And the fear of what other people will think, but you’re going to be judged no matter what, whether you’re doing something you hate or that you love. So you may as well be judged for doing something that you love that you know, is making an impact and is part of your passion and purpose. So when people say that they’re afraid of the camera, it’s typically or shy, you know, it’s typically something like time tech or talent. It’s what do I say on camera? What kind of equipment do I use?
MJ (03:27):
What, what do people actually want to hear from me? And that’s where that’s kind of the, the personal development, the self discovery and the research of, of your audience around you and what you’re good at that people are asking you for that they want to hear your stories and your message. And, and just starting, you know, sometimes I compare Gary Vaynerchuk, who a lot of us know, he’s, he’s a very popular figure online and he’s got like, whatever, 5 million people following him now. But when he first started his YouTube channel years ago, wine library, TV, he didn’t have many people watching at the beginning, but he kept going. He kept finding his voice. You don’t always get to see the 10,000 hours someone puts in to find their voice. So when you start creating content, you first start creating content for you to find your voice. And that’s, what’s going to build the audience.
RV (04:17):
That’s interesting. Well, and on the tech thing for a second, cause I do think that people get tripped up and you know, at this, at this point, even now, like I have, I have a ring light and and my phone and I shoot all this stuff on the phone, but w w is there like a camera that you recommend or like a, something that’s not super intimidating just to get going, or like, what’s the, what’s the big tech thing that you, you just need to know? Like, if you just want to hit start and you just want to go and you don’t want to spend like six months learning about equipment and all that, but, and you also don’t have a bunch of money to hire a team. Like, what would you recommend for that?
MJ (04:56):
The best camera to use is the one you have. And often in these little smartphones that are attached to our hands or hips at all times, lady Gaga, Selena Gomez, they filmed some of the recent music videos on their iPhone and they’re good quality. And honestly, you can get a little tripod from Amazon. You can get a ring light, or you can even be in front of a window for natural lighting. And those can be really high quality. And the thing is, people want to watch people that are relatable. So sometimes when you think, oh, I got to get all this big fancy equipment and gorgeous luxury is backdrops. That can almost take the personality out of it. So I say, start with your iPhone and what you have.
RV (05:37):
Th th this is one of the things that we learned is you know, every week we kind of do like a little five minute video and we re we have some editors, they run a process, you know, just some, just some basic stock photography they drop in there. And some like royalty free music, those videos perform about a third as well as when I just am in a t-shirt with, with my hair on done. I turn on the camera and I just talk for two minutes and post a to GTV. It will outperform the professionally thing, three, two on every single time.
MJ (06:11):
Yeah. We want to see people that are relatable, that we can see ourselves in them to think they’re just like us.
RV (06:18):
Hmm. Yeah. I love that. I love that the best camera that you use is the one that you have. So, so, all right, so now we get up the courage to record you know, you mentioned time tech or talent when it comes to talent. I think of that as like, what selecting, what do I talk about? What do I say? You know, and everyone that listens to this podcast is, I mean, we have literally billionaire billionaire entrepreneurs who listened to this. We have New York times bestselling authors, and we have, you know, 16 year old kids, like in high school, trying to figure out how to make money on the side. So you’ve got a broad mix of people, but how do you know what to talk about? Or like, you know, what your talent is in terms of what you should put on camera?
MJ (07:07):
There’s a few different places that I recommend looking when you’re trying to come up with, what, what do I talk about? What are the topics to speak to? The first one is the frequently asked questions. You get, what are people asking you all the time? What are the, what’s the experience, the expertise, or the stories that they want to hear from you, that’s going to help them along their journey, or even think about the questions that you were asking that you wish that there was someone like you to answer for, for yourself years ago. And it’s also pretty easy to look right on YouTube or Google and see what are people searching for. Like, you know, when you start to type in the search bar and it autocompletes a tries to finish your sentence, to, to suggest what it thinks you’re typing. Well, that is auto-populated based on what people are searching for.
MJ (07:48):
So if you start to type in how to train your dog underneath that, it’ll be like how to train your dog, to sit, how to train your dog, to stay, how to train your dog to bark. All of those suggestions are video ideas, because that’s what people are searching for that like Google is giving you the data right there. You can also look at other people in your industry or niche and see what kind of content they’re creating. And you could do a similar topic with your own spin, your own story. And, and that’s going to be able to help your audience. And especially when you’re on YouTube, you want to be creating content that, you know, your audience is searching for because YouTube is a search engine, not a social media platform.
RV (08:26):
Yeah. That’s a big distinction to understand. And I, it’s almost like you know, the, the search thing, like you know, there’s all these, these different tools [inaudible] you know, SCM rush and yada yada, that will just, or even just Google, even just a Google like analytics. I forget what the, I think it’s Google keyword research, keyword research tool that will tell you, these are the topics that people are searching. Like these are the, the phrases people are searching for related to your topic. And it just gives you the content calendar. Or the other thing is Quora that website Cora has like a bunch of questions that people are asking. and so you just basically answer one video, answer, one question per video, you’re like off and running
MJ (09:10):
Done. And like, there’s another tool that we like there’s answer the public there’s SCR, where you can just type in a keyword and it’ll populate with tons of suggestions based on exactly how people are typing them into search. And you could make all of those videos, like you, you will never run out of content ideas as long as you just know where to look for them. Yeah.
RV (09:29):
I love that. So, all right. Now when it comes to optimizing and I will, I will openly admit here, this is where we are lazy. Like we is even saying it out loud. It’s so stupid. Cause it’s like, why bother doing all this work? And then not then not optimize the video, but we, we haven’t, we, I think the reason why we haven’t is because we’ve been like, just start just, you know, we have to start over our channel rebuild from scratch. It’s already discouraging. And it’s just like, let’s just get con like, just get going, but now I know we need to optimize and why do we need to do right. So, like after the video is up there, is there anything, or as you’re putting the video up there, like, are there a couple kind of key things that we should be paying attention to and spending the extra few minutes, like they’re worth the time to do? Yeah,
MJ (10:21):
Definitely. Well, the first thing is the title of the video. And you should, you should know what the title of the video is before you even start filming it so that you’re framing the message the right way that you’re answering what people are coming to. You don’t want to bait and switch them and you know, make them click off because they’re like this, isn’t what I clicked here for. So the title of the video based on how people are searching for it, and you’re just going to put that title of person, the headline of the video, and then in the description of the video, you want to be reiterating that title and other keywords similar to it. So that when YouTube and Google takes like just a snapshot of this video, they know this is the topic. And typically in my intro of the video, like when I’m physically, when I’m speaking on camera, I will say the title of the video in the beginning, in my first few sentences, because YouTube also they’ll transcribe your video. So then that also gives more keywords and input to what the video is about. And your thumbnail is also one of the most important things, because when you’re searching for a video topic and all these all these options come up underneath, you’re typically going to choose the video based on the thumbnail that stands out the image that’s more cooking or engaging or someone that you might think might look familiar if you know them already, someone that you already follow, or just that it captures your attention.
RV (11:39):
Yeah. That, you know, it’s interesting. So like one of our close friends is Lewis house. And, you know, I noticed that the titles of his videos and the thumbnails don’t match and his, his YouTube channel has really been a big, it’s really been a big focus this, this last couple of years, and they’ve, they’ve really done a great job of adding the optimization and you know, so like that thumbnail is interesting. It’s almost like it’s a whole separate strategy in and of itself to just go, like, what I mean, other, do you just basically go, what would someone need to see in order to click on this? Or like, is there any other kind of thought process that you use or for what makes a great time nail?
MJ (12:24):
The, the thumbnail is a whole other opportunity to hook people in. Like, it, it’s something that is, you know, is thumb stopping worthy. Like it’s going to stop their scroll because it, it, it stands out among the rest. So it’s not just like you smiling and the title written on, on the thumbnail. Again, it can be another like curiosity hook. Like you’ll never believe what this person said to me, or how did I make a million dollars in 12 months or whatever, like something that’s different than the title of the video. And then the picture next to it that really demonstrates that, like I saw one the other day from Alex, her mosey, he’s a channel that he’s just blowing up so fast he’s. So well-spoken he and his wife, Layla they’re both, their channels are incredible. And Alex had I think the title was something about like spending a hundred thousand dollars and the image was like influencer, like other influencers that we recognize, like grant Cardone and things like that. But then there was also like a supermodel in the background. So it makes you think like, what did he spend a hundred thousand dollars on? So it’s something that leaves that curiosity hook, or that question in your mind that you’re like, well, now I got to click this video to find out what exactly he’s talking about.
RV (13:35):
Yeah. I mean, the neuroscience, there is super powerful as the brain hates incomplete things and the brain hates unanswered questions. So it’s like, if you can create a question of some type with the thumbnail, it’s almost like we’re addicted to watch it to just to answer whatever that question is. Some people call them opening, like opening a loop or opening a question. So I love that. So then, all right, so now we got this put together, we’ve done some keyword research. We know people are searching for we’re answering this question. You mentioned early on you say in the first few minutes, what the video is about. Is there anything in terms of like, when you put together a video and you think about how to structure, like the outline of it in terms I’ve also heard competing answers on how long a video should be.
RV (14:33):
Some people are like, oh, they should be short. People’s attention spans are short, but then it’s like, well, no AVD average viewer duration is the primary metric on YouTube. And so they want it to be long, but they also pay attention to how many people watch the whole video. And if it’s too long, then people don’t watch the whole video. And I’m just like, oh my gosh, like what’s, can somebody just tell me what the answer is? Do you have a philosophy on the right kind of length of time and then like a general kind of outline for structuring one of these videos?
MJ (15:01):
Yeah. Typically, like we aim for an average of 10 minutes. And in that 10 minutes, we can insert about three content hooks, three different stories or frameworks, or three steps of one general framework inside that video. So that also makes it fairly easy to reach 10 minutes. When you’re thinking like, well, how am I gonna, what do I talk about for 10 minutes? So our formula for kind of putting together the script of the video is any intro. Like I mentioned, you want to repeat kind of the title of the video. So I’ll give an example. One of our clients, Cristy code red maybe her video is how let’s say that people are searching for, why am I dieting and exercising and not losing the weight? She’s a weight loss coach. So she could be like, if you’re someone that you are stalled, you’re at that plateau and just tank it that last few pounds off you’re in the right place you ever asked yourself, why am I dieting and exercising and not losing the weight?
MJ (15:54):
I’m going to answer that question for you in today’s video. So she reiterates the title in that intro. Then before going right into the topic, she’s going to give three content hooks. So this is teasing what’s coming up so that people hear that and they go, oh, I got to stay for 0.1 0.2 point and three for the things she’s about to talk about. But we want to introduce these again, as curiosity hooks, things are gonna, that are gonna open up that loop or that question. So she might say something like, first of all, I need to share with you the number one biggest lie in weight loss. This is one that we have all been fed to believe. And one that you no longer have to believe. And so that makes you think like, what is the number one biggest lie? Like I’ve been lied to.
MJ (16:33):
I need you to know, then she can go. And after that, I’m going to make sure. And then she could say and you know what? My clients come to me when they are stalled, when they’re plateaued, I changed these two things in their routine and they hit their weight loss goal faster than ever. Ooh, what are those two things? And then she said, and lastly, I’m going to share with you my strategy for how to get 10% of your body weight off every month without diet pills, shakes, or exercise. Oh, that sounds amazing. 10% every month. How do I do that? And so that creates these three bullet points. These three content hooks that are typically going to make people stay to the end because we’ve now opened up three loops and we want to keep people watching as long as possible.
RV (17:12):
And it almost sounds to me kind of like a table of contents to what a table of contents would be for a book, but you’re, you’re titling. And that actually made my mind go. Hmm. We should probably put more focus on the titles of our chapters, in a book for the same reason to help people to just like actually reading it. And that’s sort of what you’re doing, you’re doing here. So you tell them who the videos for, then you kinda like roll the little like bumper and then you just go in and you just do 0.1, 2.3. Yeah. I mean, it’s pretty straightforward. I mean, it’s pretty straightforward. Yeah. So how does it turn into money? So let’s not, let’s talk about that for a second. Right? Cause it’s like, okay, now I’m making videos. I’m, I’m putting them out there. How do we, yeah. How do we make this into, into money?
MJ (18:11):
So the greatest thing is that you’re creating content based on what, like we already said that people are searching for. So we know that by the time people land on our videos, they are already problem aware. They’re coming to solve a problem for themselves, that your video is now answering and sure you’re giving them lots of value. You’re giving them these steps, but then you’re like, Hey, if you want the framework or if you want the next thing you need, or if you want a done for you template or some kind of resource, that’s going to help you to now get results from what you just learned, click the link in the description below. And that is your lead magnet. It’s a freebie. Maybe it’s a low cost, low ticket thing to bring them into your value ladder, but that’s going to be the most important part is that you take them from YouTube into your funnel so that then you can nurture and ascend that relationship.
MJ (18:58):
And you can even bring them right on to maybe like you maybe bring them into a challenge. Maybe you bring them into a webinar, or we have clients that will bring them straight to a webinar or a challenge. And then from that can very quickly sell into high ticket because the clients that come through YouTube, like I said, they’re already problem aware. And often they’ll binge watch a few of your videos and then are just like, look at how much value I’ve gotten for free. Imagine how much I would get if I invested, if I spent some money and actually invested emotionally and financially into getting this result. And we have clients that say, if they get on a sales call with someone that has come through from YouTube, they’re like, they’re as good as sold. Like we have a a very high conversion rate because they’ve been warmed up so much through YouTube.
MJ (19:41):
So YouTube turns into an evergreen lead generation machine because people are finding this content completely organically just by searching for it. So this isn’t like Facebook lives where you can do a Facebook live or an Instagram story or whatever that disappears in the timeline. Like the algorithm pushes it down to put the more recent stuff up at the top. But with YouTube, like you can have content from years ago that is still showing up at the top of search. I have videos from 2016 that I made once never put any ad spend towards it. And it’s still generating leads for my business. Like I don’t even touch it. If I were to stop posting any more videos, these videos would still be building my email list. And because we have the funnel set up on the backend could still be driving sales consistently.
RV (20:24):
Gosh. Yeah, it’s so true. I mean, sometimes it’s like I did one Ted talk and it’s years ago we get more speaking leads from that Ted talk. Then every other thing we have ever done added up all together and multiplied by two, like I’m going, I should not do anything except just do another Ted talk. Like, because it’s, it’s that evergreen, that power of evergreen of YouTube, it’s totally different than the other, the other platforms. And so w you know, generally speaking, like here’s the thing that I always kind of struggle with is you go like one piece of content, one call to action. That’s super simple. Like, what you just said is basically deliver a 10 minute value bomb and then offer them a lead magnet to take the next step. And then that drops them into whatever your funnel sequence is, which is super simple. When, and how do you do the, like, hit the subscribe button? Like, do you w which one, like, which one do you do first, or do you do them both together or is it sometimes one and not the other, like, does it matter?
MJ (21:34):
So I never want, and this is what I recommend for clients is that we don’t wait until the end to ask for that subscribe. We want to be able to just go straight into the call to action. And even when we do the call to action, I don’t, I don’t want to lead my audience into thinking that I’m ramping down the videos. So you’re not like, all right, thanks so much for watching. I hope you liked this video. If you want some more value, click the link below, like we just go straight into it as if it’s another content hook. So like with the example with Christie about weight loss, and she’s talking about like the, how to lose 10% of your body weight every month, like this strategy works, I’ve seen this person, this, you can give some social proof and I want to help you with this next.
MJ (22:10):
So click the link below and join my 10 pound take-down challenge. That’s so she’s not like slowing her role. She’s, she’s going right into the call to action. But the best time to ask for that engagement is between your content hooks. So let’s say between content hook, number one and two. Now, before I tell you the two things that I change in my client’s routines, this is something that I’m talking about every single week. So hit that subscribe button to my YouTube channel. So I can help you with your weight loss goals, or it can be an engagement break asking for for a comment. Now before I go into my next point about the two things, I change in my clients for teens to help them to lose the weight I want to hear from you, what weight loss programs have you tried tell me in the comments below what’s worked, what didn’t work. Let’s all, let’s all collaborate here. So she’s, you’re always asking for the engagement in the middle of the video when people are still engaged and present. If you wait till the end, typically people are, you know, they’re losing their attention span by them. So we ask in the middle.
RV (23:05):
Yeah. So that’s the other one is about the comments. So you really have subscribe, comment, share, and then like opt in. So you just, you just kinda like vary them up and mix them in, but you do. I like, in-between the content, like, like I like that term engagement break. I’ve not actually heard that. Like, you take an engagement break, almost like a little commercial. I mean, it’s like, how, what on TV? It would be like a little commercial break, but it’s an engagement break.
MJ (23:33):
Yeah. It’s just subtle. So like, you don’t have to stop. And like, before I go into my next point, you could do that. That’s just the example I gave, but it could just go straight into the question. And by the way, I want to hear from you, like what, what weight loss programs have you tried comment below? I’d love to hear what’s worked or like, Hey, and by the way, I’m, I put out videos like this every week. So hit the subscribe button if you’re loving this just quick.
RV (23:56):
Yeah. That’s that that’s super quick. And then what about like the editing part? Like you know, multiple camera angles putting B roll footage under it, stock footage, all that kind of stuff. I mean, you know, jump cuts back and forth is all that pretty important. You can live without it. You do it if you can, or it doesn’t really matter. Yeah.
MJ (24:21):
Do whatever you have the capacity for. And honestly, I’m a huge proponent of outsourcing. And especially when you can hire people overseas who have a lower cost of living, that you can bless their lives by paying them more than even, you know, I hired my first video editor for $15 a video. And that was incredible for me, starting out as an entrepreneur. And that was more than what he, they were actually asking for at the time and my time, like how long it would take me longer to fill, to edit that video, then how long I could make $15 back. And then now knowing that that video can be an evergreen lead generation machine, I’m likely going to make more than $15 from that video. So I highly recommend outsourcing that, but when it comes to the editing quality and that can be a personal preference, it can you know, we want to make sure that it’s aligned with your branding, but typically you can totally go simple.
MJ (25:15):
Of course you want to cut out any ums and AHS or sometimes leave those in because it makes you human. But cut out any parts where maybe you tripped over your words and you restarted. One of the things that I really like to do though, is have attention resets. And that’s just very quickly like subtly moving the camera angle from like, you’re zoomed in now, you’re zoomed out. Now you’re a little to the left. Now you’re little to the right. And it’s very subtle that people don’t even really notice that it’s happening, but it just, it changes the view, but you don’t have to have different cameras to do that. It’s just all in the editing. And especially when you’re starting, I don’t film with multiple cameras. I think that that would be complicated. And what I want to focus on is the message that I’m sharing and who I’m speaking to. I don’t want my head to be caught up in the tech.
RV (26:03):
Yeah. I love that. Cause they’re just zooming in, zooming in zooming out to the side, they do all that. They can do all that in post-production. So the video, where do you find these people? So like you’ve mentioned this, this person and, and I, I’m a little bit shocked that there’s not, maybe I’m just looking in the wrong places, but in my mind, I would think that, you know, like there’s gotta be a whole bunch of kids graduating high school or college that are just like been editing YouTube videos since they were 12 years old and they can make good money doing this, but I’ve, I’ve had kind of a hard time finding these video editors. Are you just looking, where do you go to look? I mean, is this are you posting jobs on like job boards? Are you going to like Upwork and Fiverr and just doing that or, or like, where do you find them?
MJ (26:58):
My favorite ones to go to or Upwork online jobs.ph is specifically for people in the Philippines. So that’s another one that you can find people overseas. Fiverr is good fibers. Okay. I’ve just found more success on things like Upwork. And I think a big part of finding the right people is also you setting the right expectations and giving them what they need to be successful. So for us, like we have a very specific job description and examples of the videos that we want ours to look like. We have a branding guide of, of here’s what our colors are. Here’s here’s examples of videos that we’ve made even giving them some of the editing templates, like my lower third, how my name comes up on screen. It’s the exact thing. Every time I don’t have to ask him to, or my editor to recreate the wheel of here is the resource that I already have.
MJ (27:49):
And then from there, like go expecting that there’s going to be back and forth. Like I rarely even editors that I’ve worked with for years, we rarely have a, we call it like a one hit wonder, like it’s, it’s rarely perfect. On the first time there’s typically little things to go back and forth like, oh, the music I’m going to, I want to change this here to match the emotion a little bit better, or that lower third came in a few seconds too early. Let’s change this or oops, little typo here. Or the B roll. Let’s change out to this one. So expect that back and forth. And then the longer that you continue to mentor or nurture that relationship with your, with your new employee or contractor they, they can improve and get to know your branding and your style. So it’s, it’s just to be expected. And I actually have some YouTube videos on my channel where I talk about our hiring process for hiring video editors. So people can go check that out. Cause it’s, it’s quite a, kind of an intensive process because we want to make sure that we are finding the right people and that we’re setting them up for success.
RV (28:53):
Yeah. And the pay for this. I know I’m a very, it’s like you, you, you said you’ve been able to find people in the Philippines that can edit a good video if you give them some instruction and it’s, well, I mean, what’s the pay range that you’re usually seeing to like edit a video? Yeah.
MJ (29:09):
Sometimes people will will ask for like by the hour and they can be like five, seven, $10 an hour. Typically, and this is something that I learned from experience was I like to pay them by the project that we were both incentivized. Like you get paid quicker, if you are quick and efficient with this. And then I get quality of work at a, at a good timeframe. And we’re both incentivized. I had an editor once that would take longer to, to edit things so that they would get paid their hourly rate. So I just think it’s a win-win to be by the project.
RV (29:42):
Interesting. Yeah. I guess I’ve never thought about that. That way. You think of it as like, well, if they do an efficient job, they’ll make more money doing it by the project, but you’re in, you want to do that because if you’re happy, they still, you still have to be happy and sign off. That’s really cool. Well, Marley, this has been super helpful and tactical which is awesome. You mentioned, you know, you’ve got your YouTube channel. Where else do you want people to go? If they want to learn about you, connect more and see, like, see some of your other tips and stuff that you’ve got here on you know, video and you’re, you’re managing your YouTube channel and converting that stuff into revenue. Yeah, that’d be great.
MJ (30:20):
Well, YouTube is great. Instagram, instagram.com/marley jacks. I respond to all the direct messages there. So if anyone has any questions, please reach out. And we also have a free training. If you go to hello to high ticket.com, it’s a system that teaches you how to generate leads the hello through YouTube and the send them all the way to high ticket. So that’s hello to high ticket.com.
RV (30:43):
Well, there you have it friends Marley. This is just empowering. It’s just very clear and direct and straightforward. It makes, makes it feel like it’s doable. And that we could, we can pull this off. So thank you so much for sharing your expertise and your insight and your time. And we look forward to watching you. It feel like you’re a very much a rising star that you’re yeah, you got big, big things coming into your future, and we’re glad to catch you on the way up.
MJ (31:10):
I appreciate that. Thank you so much for having me

Ep 213: Moving Past Limiting Beliefs with Celinne DaCosta | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):
Well, not every interview on the influential personal brand podcast turns out to be exactly what we thought it was going to be. And I would say this is one of them in a very delightful way. At least for me personally, I thought this interview with Celinne Da Costa was really a treat and different than what I expected. I thought it would be more in the area of sort of like branding and marketing, but it was really a level, a level deeper than that. It was really about the limiting beliefs that we all have, which then show up in our marketing. And so AJ and I are going to break this interview down for you. We’re going to share with you our top three takeaways. AJ is here with me. She is the CEO of brand builders group, my wife, best friend business partner and baby mama all at the same time. So babe, what what did, what did you think of this? Cause you, you haven’t interacted with saline really until this, this episode,
AJV (00:59):
Just through listening to the podcast. So I like all of you, it’s just a listener along with all of you. So I, here’s the first thing that I took away, and I think it’s really important because I think it’s also something that maybe just connects to even what we do at brand builders group. So my number one takeaway is that when it comes to building your brand really first and foremost, you have to know what your uniqueness’s like, what’s your X factor. What’s that one thing what we say is your uniqueness or your super power, like, what is it about you? That is a God-given gift to the world and to those around you and owning that. And one, you have to figure out what it is. And two, you have to figure out how to harness that. And then three it’s like, how do you get it out into the world?
AJV (01:50):
And so that’s kind of like the biggest thing, because I think so many people struggle with this and I can speak for all of our clients. Not all of them. A lot of our clients at brand builders group is I really struggle with owning. What’s already naturally amazing about them is that they downplay their accomplishments. They downplay all of their accolades, they downplay their education or their experience or their client roster, whatever it is, but they downplay it and they just think of, oh, well, that’s just what everyone else does. And it’s like, no, it is not. And sometimes I think for yourself, it’s really hard to even identify sometimes what is your natural super power, because you are so used to it that you don’t see it as all that unique or that powerful even. But it’s like all of us have that one thing, we all have something and many of us just haven’t taken the time to explore and ask the right questions and really try to figure out what is that thing that is really unique to me.
AJV (02:55):
And how do I use it to service the world and service humanity, but you do have it and it is within you somewhere. And so I think the first thing, and I love this because it’s also where we start is just figuring out, like, what is your uniqueness, your super power, that X factor, whatever you want to call it, but what is that about you? And that’s just where you start of telling your story. It’s what is that uniqueness? So I think that just resonated with me off the get go, because that’s a lot of what we talk about at brand builders group.
RV (03:27):
Yeah. Yeah. There’s, there’s, there were some themes there with you know, what we do at brand builders group of kind of that deep dive sort of internal work. And I’d say that was my number one takeaway too. Is there, I don’t know if she said this or this, I wrote this down. I’m not sure if she said it or if it was an adaptation of something she said, but this was one of my takeaways. And it’s, it’s right to what you were talking about, where the big journey here is coming into yourself and revealing and remembering who you already are. And it makes me think about AJ you know, like one of the things that people always get a tremendous amount of value from, from the work that we do. And our team does is when we write their expert bio, we take people through this exercise, right?
RV (04:14):
Of like, we go through this brainstorm of all these things that they’ve accomplished. And almost every one of our clients is like, oh my gosh, you made me sound amazing. You guys are so good at this. Like, this is incredible. This, this one little thing you did is worth the price of the whole program. And yet all we’re doing there is reflecting back to them. Exactly what you said, everything they already are. We’re just packaging it in a way that they wouldn’t package it because they don’t, they don’t see it. And they don’t think about it. And in a way it’s kind of sad that we, you know, we don’t see how, how awesome we are. And so this idea of revealing and remembering who you already are, is, you know, like where the uniqueness lies and that’s good. Yeah. So that was, that was, that was my, my first big takeaway. What was your second?
AJV (05:09):
And it’s kind of similar to that too. I think because I, you know as a mom as you are also a dad, but as a mom of two young boys, like I’m constantly terrified of screwing them up, right? It’s like, I’m constantly terrified of changing them into something that they are not. And all I want to do as a parent is channel their uniqueness, channel their greatness and not try to amend it to what’s convenient to me, but to help them explore, like, what are they naturally gifted at and interested in and how do I channel that into greatness and whatever greatness may mean for them. But it’s like, I don’t want to, you know, cover up or muddy up what is their super power, but I want to help them bring that out. And I think it’s like, if we’re not really intentional about as human beings that you know for yourself.
AJV (06:02):
And I even think about this with my kids, it’s like all this beauty that lives out there just gets muddied up over the years because we, what is truly your gift is seen as an inconvenience or a seen as the opposite of a gift, right. It’s seen as what needs to be fixed or what’s broken. And, and I think it really starts at a really young age. And then we get to adulthood and our, you know, in my case, in my late thirties, and it’s like, oh man, I’m trying to like wash off the mud. I’m like 30 years of trying to really reveal to what you said, what is already so awesome about who you are. And so I just think about my kids and they’re at this like really pure state I’m in existence at two and four. And it’s like, how do I not keep them pure?
AJV (06:50):
But how do I make sure that this, this brightness that is within them, doesn’t get covered with mud. And then it’s, how do we do that for ourselves? Right. And I think in a lot of cases, you can’t, I think you need someone else to come and help you wash that mud off. I don’t think that you’re able to do it all by yourself sometimes. And you, you really do need someone to walk along with you. And rather that is someone like Celinne or someone like brand builders group or somebody else. It’s like, you really need someone sometimes to remind you of who you are, because we can’t do it for ourselves. It’s amazing to me because I often get to help people craft their expert bios to what you were just saying, Rory and I often will, you know, they’ll do a draft and I’ll send it to me and I’ll make a few edits and I make a few suggestions and send it back.
AJV (07:39):
And here’s the number one response that I get when I, what I would say is I just pretty it up a little bit as I go, wow. Like, I feel like an imposter and it’s so interesting to me. And I’m like, okay, well, let me just make sure that I didn’t make anything up in here. You did this, right? Yeah. You were featured in this, right? Yeah. Okay. You worked with this kind of company or person. Yeah. Okay. You were awarded this award, correct. And it’s like, I go through the checklist. Yes, yes, yes. What part of this makes you feel like an imposter and it’s somewhere along the lines. We, we have told ourselves what we do, isn’t good enough, or someone else is better than, and it’s like, then you take a step back and you actually bring all of this amazingness to the surface and you put it on paper and it doesn’t even feel like you, and that’s because we don’t even take the time to celebrate our own greatness.
AJV (08:37):
And that isn’t about being prideful or full of ego. That’s about just acknowledging that you are worthy and good, and there is greatness within you and you were born with it. And those are the things that we forget. And so I just think I’m at my second takeaway was a lot about like, how do we like uncover the layers that we’ve spent so many years or someone else’s spent covering up that bright shining light within us. And how do we get back to what is that X factor or that uniqueness to begin with? And I think a lot of the times, it’s just, you need someone to do it with you, not for you, but you need someone to walk along and help you clean off that mud and remind you that you are worthy and good and special and unique and all the things, right. It’s like sometimes we just need to allow someone to come into our life and, and speak good. And to our ears and into our heart.
RV (09:35):
That’s so powerful. I mean Hey man, who rah like that is that is it. So in my second takeaway, what I wrote down was were we are all still looking for external solutions for internal problems and know
AJV (09:54):
A much more succinct way of saying,
RV (09:58):
Well, I think it, I think it’s really related to what you were saying, right. Is cause we, we, we have like we think we need to hire some perfect vendor to like solve some expert problem like this, this, this external problem, or that there’s like some skill set that we have to acquire. And really it’s this internal struggle of feeling like we’re good enough, that’s the real issue. And I would say that we’re even seeing this in brand builders group a lot right now, because we teach so many, I mean, we have 14 different today experiences like there’s 14 parts of our whole curriculum. We have all of these tactics and strategies and information and people, I think, love that, but more and more it’s becoming about the community and the comradery and the belief that they get from being around our team and each other, because the real thing that’s holding them back is their own limiting beliefs that they’re not good enough or that they haven’t done enough or they don’t deserve it.
RV (11:01):
And then, you know, you sit in a room with other people and you realize, oh my gosh, we all feel this way. And yet we look at each other, like we’re all superheroes, but we don’t look at ourselves. And, and out of that comes tremendous power. I know these application events that, that you you’ve basically invented for brand builders group AGA that you’ve been running where we now have a 15th type of event, which is is we call them application events because we don’t teach anything like our other 14 events are all like we’re teaching stuff. And these new application events are nothing but getting feedback and live coaching and instruction and, and community and networking. And, you know, we just happened to have one. So it’s fresh on my mind. And I think that, that these application events you created, they really speak to the internal struggles that people have and that the real power of brand builders group is moving away from our content and our education. And it’s really becoming the power of the community and the people they’re helping each other believe in themselves.
AJV (12:07):
Yeah. Well, both are needed. This one, one becomes more relevant at a certain time than another. But yes. Okay. So my last takeaway would be is that the vision has to be bigger than the fear, right? And I love this conversation and this isn’t necessarily brand new. I, man, it was a really good reminder of if the vision isn’t big enough, the fear will always win the fear of, well, what if it doesn’t work? Or what if, what the killer is? What if right? That’s just, it just whatever, whatever is after that, that’s the bad part. What if but it’s, it’s truly, it’s like the vision has to be bigger than the fear and whatever comes after. What if this vision this purpose has to be bigger than anything that comes after. What if, and that takes some work and conversation and brainstorming and thought.
AJV (13:07):
And in my case, a lot of prayer it’s like it, but it’s gotta be bigger than that. Otherwise, the, what if is going to be always the thing that holds you back, it will always hold you back. But the vision has got to be bigger than the fear. And that was such a great comment. It’s such a great reminder, no matter where you are in your business or in your personal life, wherever you are in your life journey, your personal brand journey, the purpose and the vision must always be bigger than whatever comes after. What if
RV (13:33):
That’s so powerful? And that points to my, what my third takeaway was, you know, my third takeaway was actually a quote that saline shared from somebody else, which after she said this, I was like, wow, this is so powerful. I cannot believe I’ve never heard anyone say this. Oh my goodness. It was, it was so huge. And so it’s from Carl Young. And he said until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate.
AJV (14:08):
Mm that’s so good. Yes. I remember this now. That’s so good.
RV (14:11):
It’s so powerful. Right? Cause it’s like, we, we have these habits, these, these deep rooted beliefs, this, these years of conditioning, like you were talking about earlier age, where of, of things that we tell ourselves of other things that other people have said about us, that we accept as truth. And we allow them to live there in the unconscious. And then we, our life turns out a certain way and we think that’s our fate, ours, it’s our destiny. And it’s really just the by-product of these beliefs. It’s the by-product of these habits that we never questioned that we never challenged that we never see. They just live there in, in the unconscious, the subconscious, and yet they dictate our life. And and then we can transform our life. We can break through, by moving those doubts into the conscious, challenging them, changing them, rewriting them. And then those become the new programming for in a future that is wildly beyond anything that we imagined until you make the unconscious conscious. It will rule your life and you will call it fate. I hit me hard. Hit me hard.
AJV (15:21):
You should print that out, tape it up somewhere and read it every day.
RV (15:26):
Yeah, absolutely. Or you could come back and listen to the influential personal brand podcast on repeat over and over. You could listen to the episode, the interview that we did with saline, you could listen to this recap. You could just keep coming back. If you, if you get value out of these, please share them with your friends. Please tag us on social. Let us know what your favorite parts are of these interviews. And you know, leave comments on AIG’s profile or mine or the company is we want to know what parts are connecting with you and what is landing with you and what you’d like to hear more of, because all of that for us is unconscious. We don’t know what it is that you like unless you tell us. So bring it into our conscious so that we can rule over it and create a bigger future for all of us. Thank you for being here. We’re so grateful for you. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.