Author: AJ Vaden

Ep 212: Moving Past Limiting Beliefs with Celinne DaCosta

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):
How much of the work that we do at brand builders is helping people to clarify their position and understand and present who they are in the marketplace in a way that’s really, really clear. And people often think they have a copywriting issue, right? Like what are the words I use to tell people what I do? And, and they often don’t realize how deeply connected the words on their website are to their own personal life and their personal story. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today with someone who I think is one of the masters in the world at that specific topic, her name is Celine de Costa. She is a fairly recent friend of mine and she is a brand story and life design coach. She’s also a contributor to Forbes, which is how we met. And I think she does a lot of this, the deep work with people of understanding how their past connects into who they are and who they’re supposed to be and turning that into a story. But anyways, she is absolutely wonderful. She’s in Bali has been in Bali for the last couple years, and it’s just really been a bright spot of someone that I’ve run into here, you know, networking through the world. And I’m so glad for you to meet her and welcome to the show saline.
CDC (02:07):
Thank you. That was a beautiful introduction. I’m extra excited.
RV (02:11):
Nice. Well, so, so yeah, I guess a good starting point would be to just tell us like what you do and, and why there is a w w cause one thing I love about you is I feel like what you do is just like a very specific thing that is really important and it’s, it’s, it’s really meaningful and a lot of people struggle with it. And I love that. I love finding people who really feel connected. I mean, that’s what we teach people to do, find their uniqueness. And I, when I look at you and your brand, and that, I really feel like you’re living in your uniqueness in this really wonderful position of strength and power, but explain what it is you do and why, why there’s a need for it.
CDC (02:54):
Yes, of course. So the super condensed version is I help people tell their story. And the way that that manifest is I specifically work with people in leadership roles to help them connect to the story of who they are, not who they think they are, not who they’ve been conditioned to believe that they are, who they really are at their core. And I help them communicate that to the outside world so that when they show up in their brand in their company and they share what they have to say, their vision, their why, their values it’s packaged in a story that deeply connects to the hearts of their audience. And because of that, it helps them grow their influence. It helps them grow their income. It helps an impact more and more people. So this is really, really powerful work. And you’ll see in this episode that I’m very, very passionate about because when it comes to, you know, building your brand, to putting yourself out there in the world, it’s really important to understand yourself and your uniqueness, your gift, your X factor, and all of that.
CDC (04:09):
Your story is the map. It’s the treasure map to everything that you are. It contains all the codes of what’s important to you, why it’s important to you and why it matters and why you want to help the people that you want to help. It’s all encoded in your story. So I really help people go through this beautiful, powerful explanation process to help them understand what it is and how do you transform that into a message that you can share in the outside world that is going to get you results in your life and your business. Hmm.
RV (04:40):
Yeah. I love that. And I love how we’re going to think. We believe the same thing there that
Speaker 4 (04:48):
So often
RV (04:49):
People look externally to figure out what the story is. They should tell, they go, well, what am I compared to my competitors? Or who am I supposed to be? Or like, and they’re not looking internally, which I think are probably some of the mistakes to go. Like, like you said, your story is the treasure map. I love that. So why don’t we do that? Like what, what is, what is the, what is the roadblock or the cause of that, like going, you know, I come up with these kinds of artificials, you know, words are this artificial kind of surface level story that I tell the world, why do we, why do we do that instead of connecting and going in deep into who we actually are, and then bringing that to the surface,
CDC (05:38):
Rory one word conditioning, and I’ll explain that. So many, many, many, many of us, I would say most of us grew up in certain circumstances where, because of our environment, because of our society, because of the way that we grew up, we were conditioned to believe certain things about ourselves and we all have. And the reason why your story is so unique, because we all have our own unique map. And my map is not your map. It’s not someone else’s map. It’s, it’s really like your map. And so for example, and you know, I can, I’ll, I’ll, I can speak to my own experience, which is that growing up, I grew up as an immigrant, the us conditioned to believe that if I wanted to be successful, I needed to work really hard. I needed to get this kind of job. I needed to climb a corporate ladder in this kind of way.
CDC (06:30):
And so ever since we’re children, we have all these beliefs, these habit patterns, these complexes that we come to believe is true, and that shape our reality. So a lot of you know, the big, the big journey of coming into yourself and really revealing and remembering your true identity is looking at all the things you assumed to be true a lot, which are in your unconscious that are not even conscious to you, looking at those things that you assume to be true about who you are and actually being, questioning them and saying, is this true? Is this actually who I really am? And I’ll give you an example. You can be an extremely successful entrepreneur. You can make lots of money, get featured in lots of places. And at your core still feel that you are unworthy of your success. You can still feel empty.
CDC (07:22):
You can still feel like you’re overworking because you keep need to prove yourself that you need to prove to other people that you are this person, which keeps you in this condition loop of generating lots of success, but without ever having fulfillment. So when we look at your story, we need to not only look at the amazing things you accomplished and the heroic things you’ve done and how many people you help and all the beautiful things about you. But we also need to look at what are the pieces that the beliefs and habit patterns and complexes that you hold about yourself that are holding you back from that next level of success. So it’s really looking through the lens of, okay, here’s my talents or my skills, then what is unconscious and how do we bring what’s unconscious into the conscious so that you can heal it, release it, let it go and rewrite the story from the inside out once and bra. Mm. I love that. So
RV (08:19):
How do we do that? Or like, how, how do you, how do you take yourself on that journey? So part of it is awareness to go, oh, interesting. I might be defining my business, my personal brand with words that I think whatever the public understands versus telling my own story. And you wake up to that and then you wake up to the idea of going, w what I have been telling myself, maybe isn’t true, or what, I’ve, what, I’ve, what the world has told me, which I have now accepted or taken on. Maybe isn’t true. And then I hear you saying kind of the part is to question, who am I really like to question all those foundational assumptions? What happens? What happens next? Like what happens after that?
CDC (09:04):
Yeah, of course. So the first step is especially, you know, when you’re your personal brand, you’re an entrepreneur you’re, you’re growing your, your brand and your company. You have goals, you have things that you want to set, whether it’s, what is that next income goal? What does that next you know, how do I get known more in industry? How do I grow? How do I help more people? There’s always something that you want to get to. And there is a reason why you’re not getting there. And so what happens is a lot of times, and this is how we go down the hamster wheel of more money, more success, more fame, and then not actually matching that internal story and that feeling of self-worth or, or wellbeing from within. And so we, you, you first start with, where do you want to go?
CDC (09:49):
Where do you want to end up what’s that next milestone for you? Because I, you know I’m not going to say, okay, where are you got to go meditate? And now, like, really think about all these things that you want to like fix about yourself and, and which are unconscious to you. And to begin with, and to sit there and question the truth of who you really are. I mean, yes, you can do that at a, at a monastery there’s many, if you want to go do that amazing. But a lot of us, you know, we got to do. We got places to go and we want to accomplish really amazing things in our lifetime and still feel good while we’re addicts. So setting that goal of, okay, here’s, I’ll, I’ll use a really simple one which is here is the next level of income that I want to hit in my business.
CDC (10:30):
That that one is common for many people. So the mistake that a lot of people say make is that they will want to find the next hack, the next strategy, next thing that they can do, oh, let me implement this funnel. And let me implement this strategy. And like, this group is saying that I should be doing this. So let me do that. Let me hire a copywriter. So we’re still looking for an external solution for what is an internal symptom. And so you’re gonna, you know, you might find some that funnel that will make you more money, but again, you might feel like you’re still overworking. You’re still stressed out. You’re still unhappy. So looking at your goal, it’s important to realize what is actually on my way. And it’s not the thing that you think it is, and it’s not going to be an external band-aid, but what is actually in my way, and what you will find is that usually what it comes down to is that there is something around your money story that you don’t believe you’re worthy of that next level of success.
CDC (11:28):
That there’s a part of you that believes that if you do make that next level of income, you are going to have more responsibility and you don’t feel like you can handle it. You might feel like you don’t have the capacity to hold that kind of money or you’ll lose it. So obviously I’m giving a few examples. There’s 1,001 ways, which is all going to be found in your story, but you have to look at the reason, you know, when my clients come to me and they’re like, okay, I want to tell my story, help me tell my, and we look at what their goals are in telling their story, which ends up being around the realms of influence income and impact. The first question I ask them is why are you not telling your story in the first place? What is holding you back?
CDC (12:09):
And then I’ll get back some answer that is along the lines of, well, I don’t think my story is interesting enough, or it’s too boring. I’m really afraid of what people will say about me. I’m afraid that my peers will reject me or ridicule me. I don’t know where to begin. I feel like there’s so many pieces and I don’t know how to string them together. So those are a few examples. And then if we dig even deeper and ask the question, why are you afraid that your peers are going to judge you? Why do you think your brand is boring? And we dig a layer deeper, and then you start to see that there’s all these little stories that were formulated often. We were young around, well, you know, growing up, I was, you know, this is common for people like in, in the like UK or New Zealand or Australia where there’s like that tall poppy syndrome where it’s like standing out.
RV (13:00):
Explain what tall poppy is for the Americans that listen, because that’s a really interesting concept. That’s, that’s UN it’s it’s it’s counter-cultural it’s counter American culture.
CDC (13:11):
Yes. Yes. So tell poppy is a syndrome where basically you know, if you look at a poppy field and you have a poppy that stands out it’s, you CA everybody needs to be the same. Everybody needs to be equal. And if you stand out, you’re going to get made fun of or alienated because essentially you’re, you’re not with the tribe. You don’t, you’re not doing what everyone else is doing. So classic example is growing up in a small town and you have these huge dreams and huge ambitions, and you want to go travel the world and everyone around you is not doing that, or they’re perfectly content with their everyday mundane life. And and then you’re getting made fun of, or shamed by your colleagues, your peers, your family, because you’re dreaming about something bigger than what you have. And so now it’s like, oh my God, look at Rory.
CDC (13:58):
Like he wants to grow this big company and travel the world, what a loser, right? So you get this almost like, and I know in it for Americans, it’s very counterintuitive Judah, but the reason why I bring this up is because someone, for example, this is super common in Scandinavia, super common in Oceania in the UK where you’ll get a successful, you know, I’ll get a very successful businessman, a business woman who grew up in one of those countries, and they don’t want to show, have a beautiful story that they’re sharing their irons because they don’t want to stand out. They don’t want to, like, they don’t want to be unique because they have these deep rooted fears and from childhood where they were taught and conditioned that if you stand out, you will lose friends. If you stand out, you will be alienated. So you carry that with you. And even if you do leave your small town and do amazing and start an amazing business and make lots of money, you’re still carrying this old internalized story of, I cannot stand out too much or I’m going to get alienated. So that willfully, you know, that’s just one small example. There’s so many different ways. There
RV (15:08):
Are so many of these, I think of like like in the Christian community, there is this massive, massive story that it is holy to be poor or that to be, to be holy, you can’t have money, or if you have money, then you’re not dependent enough on God. And so it’s like, if, if you even pursue making money that somehow you’re not spiritual, or you’re not a good Christian, or you can’t follow Jesus because you’re chasing, you’re chasing chasing money. And that, that is an example of a story that is just, you know, very deep rooted in people which is funny because scripture doesn’t actually say any of those things, but it gets it, it gets translated or assumed. You know, so like the Bible does say that you can’t, you can’t serve two masters. You can only serve one, but that doesn’t mean you can’t serve one and half of the other.
RV (16:08):
Or, you know, it’ll say, you know, you shouldn’t have a love of money. A love of money is the root of all evil, but a love of money. And having a lot of money are not the same thing. So I, and the tall poppy thing is fascinating. I remember when I spoke in Australia was the first time I had heard this and they were like, yeah, the tallest poppy is the first to get cut, which was like, you don’t want to be the number one you don’t want because you’re, you’re the one that gets criticized and, and, and ridiculed and all the things that you’re saying. And that was so counterculture to me as an American going, what, like, I go, what a weird way of thinking. And yet in our own life, or like, in my own life, I have, I have silly beliefs about myself that hold me back.
RV (16:51):
That if someone else heard them, they would be like, that’s so silly. Like, how do you not think you’re good enough? Like, you’ve done all these amazing things. They’re like whatever. So you, so you, so basically you’ve started out with what you want. You figure out what’s really holding you back, which is not it’s, it is very often not a, a technique or a strategy or a tip. It is more of a a mental block, a story, and then you dive in and go, okay. And then as you do that work, does it just kind of start to surface and you go, well, I guess I’ve always thought if I had money, my family wouldn’t love me anymore. Or if I became successful. And, and is, is that basically is that most of the work is just identifying the story or is there more, more, more to it?
CDC (17:42):
There’s more so I have you know, when, in my work with clients, I have a four-step and it is called unlock and body design and amplifies. So unlock is really the phase as the name suggests is where we need to unlock what’s going on. What’s blocking you. What is in the unconscious and bringing conscious. There’s a really amazing quote by Carl Young. And I might not, I might not be saying it verbatim, but it’s something along these lines, which is until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate. So the first phase is really understanding what is ruling your life unconsciously, that you’re just calling fate, and you’re just allowing to dictate the way that you’re showing up in your life, in your business and your messaging. So the online part is really understanding, yes, there’s all these little niggly stories that are holding you back, that we, the moment you start to bring them from the unconscious, into the conscious, you can actually do something about them because when they’re unconscious, they’re just operating on autopilot and screwing up your goals and, and, you know, and, and getting in your way.
CDC (18:49):
But when you bring into the conscious, then there’s a process that I teach to really start to dissolve them on a mind-body level, because a lot of times, without going deep into neuroscience these things are so visceral, very, they’re so stuck in your body. There’s almost overpowering, which is why some people, you know, when they, it comes to like your money story, it’s not just a thing, a thought the story is like, it’s an emotion, it’s this, this your heart beating faster, it’s this gut wrenching feeling in your stomach. So there’s a lot of processes that come into play to actually really be able to release this so that it stops having you grip on you once and for all like on a mind body somatic level. And so the next piece is the embodied. So once you, you, yes, it’s Superman.
CDC (19:34):
And I can literally do a whole podcast just on the neuroscience of this, but I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll keep it high level for, for this. And so now that you have identified, okay, here’s all the internal stories that I’m telling myself, they’re disempowering me. Well, the next step is all right, cool. What are the ones that are going to empower me? Because you know, the, and this is true for not just for your story, but for any venture that for you to overcome a fear for you to overcome an obstacle, your willingness and desire, and why needs to be bigger than the thing you fear your vision needs to be bigger than your fear. And that’s how people are able to do really scary things, really uncomfortable things. Even, even when they don’t want to do it is because that Y is bigger.
CDC (20:17):
And this is the piece around embodiment, which is, you need to understand the you need to embody your story before you tell it, like it needs to be who you are, and you need to feel it in your body. When people ask, how do I get confident telling my story saline? How can I get in front of a stage and really feel like what I’m sharing is true and authentic. It’s not a script. It’s not something a copywriter has written for you. It’s not a five page manifesto that you memorize and read. It’s actually remembering and connecting to the big reason why you do this. So in this space, it’s really understanding what is that bigger? Why, what is that big, overarching, right? Of why you’re doing this. A lot of entrepreneurs confused there wa there what, with our, why? So I’ll ask people, what’s your why?
CDC (21:03):
And they’re like, well, I want to help women build better businesses. I’m like, no, that’s what you do. It’s not why you do it. And oftentimes your why is not even what you think it is your, why might be, I want to be a role model for my child. I want to, you know rediscover what it means to be a human living, a spiritual experience. And then you’re like, well, I sell socks. So what’s, what’s the connection. There is a connection. So you always need to go back to your why and then be like, okay, what’s your vision?
RV (21:33):
What is a spiritual experience? Just for anybody? It just, as a random side note, I mean, fuzzy socks on your toes, like that is a spiritual experience, but, you know, as you’re talking, it also occurs to me that like, you know, everyone’s like, oh, I need to hire a copywriter to write copy for my website or for my funnel or my, whatever, whatever my press kit. And then they get the copy back and they go, this copy sucks. And in reality, it’s like, it often has less to do with the copy. And it has more to do with either the copy doesn’t align with my identity, because I’ve been too scared to share who I really am with the copywriter or the copywriter might be writing it even in a more aspirational sense than I believe to be true about myself. And so there’s an emotional disconnect and we blame the copywriter and it’s like, well, really it’s our own, it’s our own internal work that hasn’t been resolved here.
RV (22:26):
And, you know, when you hear about the embody thing, you know, I think of like athletes and I think of, you know, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan tiger woods. Like whoever you hear these athletes talk about visualization and like experiencing the game in their mind before they go out and play it. And they, the brain cannot delineate. The brain has a hard time delineate between what is real and what is made up like dreams are very real. Your body responds in a physical way to a dream, even though it’s not quote unquote real and using that in our advantage. I love that. So basically we’re now going to go, who do I want to be? And how do I experience that? You know, start to experience that now, before I even begin
CDC (23:14):
[Inaudible] and getting very clear on what your values are, who it is that you want to serve what is it that you want to create? And this is really connecting to your soul and really understanding and what, like you’re saying, you’re hiring, you’re dumping all this money on copywriters or brand experts or whatever. And then basically, you’re, you know, if someone’s just copywriting something for you and you, they can be the best copywriter in the world, but how can they know what you want? If you don’t know who you are, if you don’t know how to articulate and why this matters to you, you’re going to give them some kind of like, oh, I think this is what I’m supposed to say. And they’re going to come back to you and they might do an amazing job, but you’re not going to connect with it because you, yourself, aren’t embodying the story of who you are.
CDC (23:58):
So once you figure it out, you’re like, okay, this is who I really am. And by the way, Barry, I love the example you said around you know, visualization, because it has been scientifically proven that the brain does not know the difference between imagination and reality. Like it just, it, the subconscious cannot differentiate. So our visualization is really powerful. And when it comes to the embodiment work, not only is it powerful for you to become more confident for you to get, become more clear on who you really are, but also when you’re working in a team or you’re hiring contractors, you actually know how to direct them in an, in a way that isn’t is like, you’re transferring your authenticity to them so that they can actually do something with that instead of them having to do a bunch of guesswork around who you are and what you do based on their filter of the world.
CDC (24:45):
And so once you’ve done the embodiment work, then we move into the design piece. So the unlock and embodiment is all about the internal story, clearing out the gunk, clearing out the that’s holding you back and reconnecting to the bigger, why the vision, the values, the truth of who you are. And now that you have that connection, now that you’re anchored into that into what you would call, you know, the brand DNA and like really that the soul, the essence then you’re like, okay, now what is the story that I need to tell? And this is the part where I work with people to help them design a bespoke story that aligned with
RV (25:22):
Theirs. It means customized for those of you Martin’s out there.
CDC (25:28):
Yes, I have an American accent, but I’ve spent quite some time abroad. So sometimes I get lost in other terminology. Bespoke
RV (25:35):
Bespoke also means you can charge twice as much for the suit. If someone is, if there is a tailor selling you a piece of clothing, so be aware of the, the word bespoke means you can, you can charge, you can just charge more
CDC (25:50):
Premium. Yep. I love it. Yeah. So this really beautiful practice premium story. And and now we look at, okay, what are the parts that I want to talk about? What’s my hero’s journey. How do I tell my story of, you know, overcoming obstacles and achieving success and being able to essentially what I say, you know, the easy way to explain it is what’s the story of you going from being lost, Luke Skywalker, to bad-ass Luke Skywalker, to being Yoda, and how do you show people, your audience, and now you’re Yoda, and you can help out all their Luke Skywalker’s out there. And what’s that for brand story that you can then transfer into your social media, into your website, into your sales page. It goes everywhere and it’s uniform. It’s not like all over the place. And a really scattered it’s becomes a very coherent narrative that can live in a five page manifesto.
CDC (26:43):
You feel like it, but what makes it really powerful brand story is that it’s a narrative of the emotions and the facts that you brand and bays. And it doesn’t have to be, doesn’t have to be constrained to a document because now it’s an essence. It’s just a story that permeates everything that you do and all your messaging. And when you have that story, that beautiful, premium, powerful, rounded story. Now you can take that story and do where a lot of people want to just skip ahead to this step or eight. Now you go and you amplify the hell out of it. You know, you get in front of Forbes, you get that TEDx, you publish that book. And you just, you know, just put fire on the gasoline, but a lot of people want to just skip ahead to that. And then they’re like, why isn’t Forbes picking up on my story? Like, why doesn’t TEDx you answer me? Like, why am I so stopped writing my book? And it’s like, well, I’m not surprised because you’re, you’re just trying to skip ahead to the part where you get the fame, the glory, and you know, the influence, but you haven’t gotten clear on what is that deeper message that you’re delivering with to the world. And the way you get clear on that is getting clear on it, first meeting yourself, and then you amplify it out. It’s an inside out process. No,
RV (27:55):
Amen. And that I think is the much harder work. It’s the much rare work. It’s the more difficult work that less people are willing to do. But so many of the, the biggest influence of the, of the world have experienced deep pain and they’ve been able to walk through it. And that’s what gives them the foundation and the power to go out and then amplify a message. So well, this has been awesome. Where do you want people to go saline? If, if they to learn more about you and to connect up at the risk of having all of our brand builders group clients leave us and go work for you and us going broke and living in the gutter. Cause this is really, really beautiful and wonderful. And I really believe in what you’re saying. No, but in all seriousness we we’d love for, for people to, if, if, if what you’re talking about is speaking to them, we’d love for them to check you out. Where, where should they go?
CDC (28:46):
Yeah, absolutely. So the first place I would direct you to is my website. The only thing you need to do is know how to spell my name, right? Cause I know this people get there’s a lot wrong. It’s a one L two ends. So it’s C E L I N N E D a C U S T Selena costa.com. And there, you can learn everything about my programs, how I support learn a bit more about me as well, and this work that I’m doing and as well, if you want to reach out and contact me for any questions you can do everything is in the website. So number one, I would direct you to go there. And then number two, I will also direct you to go and follow me on Instagram at Celine D’Acosta. If you’re listening to this and you’re like, wow, I really want to know, how is this done?
CDC (29:30):
How has this executed, what is this story thing all about? Or you want more tips, more advice then every day I’m posting some posting talking about this. And not only that, but also showing, showing you, not just telling you how it’s done. So and also some fun stories showing you Bali life and my beautiful ocean views. So selfishly also a little bit of lifestyle and there’s also definitely go at, hit a follow on Instagram. If you have any questions for me, feel, feel free to DM me. And and yeah, we’d love to connect.
RV (30:00):
Awesome. Well thank you for the work that you’re doing and helping people get clear on, I think it’s, it’s inspiring and it’s, it’s much bigger than just telling, coming up with words for a website. It’s it’s the real impact is the healing. I think that it has on each individual person and from that, it gives them the power to go out and help other people. So really important. Thanks for your time is so great to see you. We wish you all the best.
CDC (30:28):
Thank you so much for having me today.

Ep 211: Gaining Instant Attention with Mike Michalowicz | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):

Here we go. We are back on the influential personal brand podcast recap edition today. We’re talking about the interview that we had with Mike Michalowicz, who is a long time friend of ours. Now at this point and a really brilliant author. We spent a lot of time getting to know Mike here in the last couple of years. And I know AJ has read some of some of his work and he’s just a friend, a friend of the community, and I am joined by AJ our CEO of brand builders group AJ. Welcome. Good to see you

AJV (00:32):

Always happy to be here.

RV (00:34):

Why don’t you kick us off today and share you know, let’s just kind of go back and forth. Here are our top three takeaways, but why don’t you get us started on, on what did you learn from Mike?

AJV (00:44):

Well, first of all, I had a really hard time watching this interview because all I could focus on was this enormous beard he has grown. So all I was like distracted the first 10 minutes of going, how long did that take? How does he care for this? Why is it so long? So first of all, just note like the first 10 minutes, I wasn’t quite focused, but what I did take away in those first few minutes, and I thought this was really interesting. So I don’t think this is necessarily like a tip or a technique or anything. I thought it was fascinating. And it’s that 98% of businesses in the United States are considered small business. Only 2% are considered enterprise businesses. So like, you know, your Amazon and your Googles and your Teslas only 2%, 98% are considered small business. And all of that, 98%, most of them are considered micro business, which means they’re doing under $1 million in revenue.

AJV (01:46):

Like that’s insane. And I just was like, wow, I think we forget because we focus on these huge companies all the time and the media and everyone’s case studies and comparisons. You’re talking about the Coca-Cola’s and the Amazon’s and Facebook. And it’s like, yo, that’s only 2% of us business. 98% are the rest of us like myself and Rory. And most of you listening and even a huge percentage of the 98% are micro businesses, which are doing less than a million dollars in revenue. And I think that’s really, really important when you choose what outlets to listen to. What books do you read what entrepreneurs to follow it’s. I think that’s really significant because I think there’s amazing. There’s amazing opportunities to learn from these enterprise businesses. Like I love learning about Disney and Nordstrom at the same time, I don’t have the ability or the funds or the Reese’s resources or the staff or the time to implement some of those things at that level.

AJV (02:56):

But if I was looking at someone who was just a slight step ahead of me, like, how are they doing this? I would be able to act so much faster and probably with a lot more confidence in going like, no they’re doing it. They’re just one step ahead of us. We got this versus like one day I want to have a customer service team, like the Ritz-Carlton and the four seasons, and we’re going to deliver, you know, Hain tattles to everyone who comes to our events. Right. and so I thought that it was really, really important just to take a step back and remember that for all of us, especially beaver, if you’re B2B and some capacity, it’s like, we’re really selling to other businesses who are considered small business and a huge percentage of those are micro business. And so how you reach those people, I think is fascinating, which is what the majority of the interview is about is your lead attraction process. But it’s just taking a moment and realizing 98% of American business or small business. And that’s what we’re going after. That’s who we’re selling to that’s who we’re a part of. And I guess that was a good statistic that I hadn’t heard in a really long time. So, you know, I was attracted to the, the statistic. But I just thought that was really good. So that’d be my first

RV (04:08):

Interesting, well, I think, you know, you make a good point there about like, if most businesses are micro businesses, then what would be relevant most relevant for us would be to learn from other micro businesses or ones that are a step ahead. And I think a lot of this conversation really was about gaining instant attention. And one of the things that he said was about relevance. He said, you know, our brain is designed to efficiently ignore things that are irrelevant. I thought that was such an eloquent, eloquent quote. Our brain is designed to efficiently ignore things that are irrelevant. And basically in marketing, you’ll hear this phrase. It’s, it’s a good phrase. It’s a good concept. It’s called a pattern interrupt that, that people, as they’re scrolling through their social media feed or zipping through their inbox, or just cruising along down the highway, you have to do something like that is a pattern interrupt that is sort of jarring or jolting to even get the split second opportunity to tell them what you do or introduce yourself.

RV (05:17):

And that you don’t, we don’t realize how much the brain is constantly ignoring and that the brain has to ignore there. The, I loved when he was talking about like, you know, if you just look around your office space, there’s so many things there that your brain is ignoring and you have to ignore it for survival as a way to like conserve mental capacity, to focus on like things that are really important and go that’s, that’s the battle here that marketing is really neuroscience and understanding the way that attention works. So I, that was, that was my first big takeaway.

AJV (05:50):

Yeah. I think that’s really, that’s really good and important. And similar and I had highlighted that as one of the, I thought that was a very interesting and what you said eloquent way of describing that the followup to that, and I’ll make this, my second point is don’t confuse different without rages. And I thought that was really good because I think some people think in order to stand out in order to differentiate, we’ve got to do something that’s completely outrageous. That’s never been done before. And that’s not necessarily the case, right. It’s just because you want to be different doesn’t mean you have to be so outrageous that it’s completely polarizing or it’s, you know, so outlandish that it takes some incredible ideas. Like that’s not really what we’re saying here. And I, I loved that whole concept of pattern interrupt and what it made me think about.

AJV (06:42):

And I thought about a couple of different examples of this. And for those of you who don’t know, you can go and Google the videos on this because they’re so stinking hilarious, but just a pattern interrupt, right? Just not outrageous, but different would be the advertising of some of these brands like Poo-Pourri right. Like that is just enough where it’s got personality to the brand. So you kind of fall in love with the personality of these people who were behind Poo-Pourri, which is like, you know, the spray that you spray on the toilet before you, you know, go to the bathroom, but the commercials are hilarious and they’re like these like mini series, like it’s, it’s not your typical 32nd commercial. They’re like three minutes. And it tells this whole storyline and you’re like, I got to see what happens next. What, what are they going to do?

AJV (07:27):

What are they going to say? And then the other one is the Squatty potty, right? It’s like that thing, which you put your feet on. I don’t know why are these are all about in the bathroom, but they’re so hilarious. And it kinda like gets you trapped in, and you’re no longer even paying attention to the product. You’re paying attention to the story. So it’s a true, you know, pattern interrupt. But that doesn’t mean it’s so outrageous that, you know, no one else could do it, that it’s just different enough that it catches your attention in a new way. So asking yourself, like, what is everyone in my industry doing? And then just think about how could I do it or talk about it or communicate it just a little bit differently. And I, I won’t go on a tangent on this because I could, but I thought about one of our clients and I hope he doesn’t mind me sharing the story.

AJV (08:16):

But one of our clients, his name is Matthew Davis and he’s an attorney, right. So he’s a lawyer and he’s got a law firm in Oklahoma. And, but here’s what I love about it is like, he’s also this like old school, like gun metal rocker. Right. So it’s like, you know, like eighties hair and like hardcore, like, you know, like I think about like seventies rock but just like Jammin, right? So I’m like white snake. And that’s like, that’s a huge party, like who he is deeply then this like professional, like white shirt and tie. And so they’ve got this whole new idea of talking about the lawyer. And they’re going to make all these hilarious, like, you know, F the law stuff. And I just think like, part of that is like, well, that is not what you would expect from the typical normal everyday attorney. Right. But it’s like just enough different where he’s infusing his personality. They’re not trying to be outrageous. They’re just living into how they’re already different and infusing that into their business. So a couple of rants there, but I thought those were all very relevant of you don’t have to be outrageous to be very different.

RV (09:24):

Yeah. That’s a good distinction. I, I, I made it, hadn’t made a note of that. My second takeaway was just kind of related to the first thing, but was that the brain immediately processes something as threat opportunity or ignorable, like threat opportunity or ignorable. And if you just think about like your website or your social posts or the start of your video, and you just go, okay, step back, detach yourself from the content for a second. And just look at the thing that you’re creating and ask yourself, is, are people going to see this as a threat and opportunity or an ignorable? And, and for most of us, you know, personal brands, we’re living in that space of opportunity. We want them to see opportunity. We want to, to quickly tell them what is in it for them, so that the viewer hears it.

RV (10:20):

And you know, this is, I recently heard a, an advanced training on like growing your YouTube channel. And this was one of the things that they were talking about is that basically the start, like the first seven seconds out of your mouth on a YouTube channel should be something like, Hey, welcome in this video, you’re going to learn blankety, blankety, blankety blank, and three reasons why you shouldn’t blankety, blankety blank, stay tuned, and we’ll get, you know, stick around. And then you go into the trailer and think, and so they’re like immediately hitting people with that opportunity. I think of the title tests that we teach at brand builders group to our, to our clients in our phase one course, one brain finding your brand DNA event. We talk about why most titles are terrible and it’s, it is very much connected to this conversation with Mike about just going, you have to demonstrate within milliseconds how, what you’re communicating is an opportunity for the viewer, for the reader, for the listener. And it’s very simple, but it’s, it’s super, super difficult. And you just, you just gotta be intentional about it.

AJV (11:26):

Yeah, no, I think that’s really good. You really went on like the science brain.

RV (11:31):

I know. Yeah. I was on the, I was in the nerdy. I was nerding out over this. I was like, Ooh, I like this.

AJV (11:37):

That’s awesome. Okay, so this is my last one. I’ll make it short and sweet since my other ones were really long. But it was he asked a simple question, like, what’s your number one source of lead generation. And for most small business, it’s word of mouth and words. It’s somewhat reactive, not a whole lot of proactive. And I think this is really true. It’s like even in our business, you know, ad say we’re just exiting our start-up mode from brand builders group. We’re three years in. And most definitely a hundred percent of the business that we have garnered in the last three years has come from word of mouth, through affiliates or clients or through friends and family and past clients. But it’s definitely been word of mouth. And here we are three years in and we’ve built an awesome, you know, multi seven-figure business off of word of mouth, but probably to go to the next level, we’re going to have to do something else.

AJV (12:31):

So it’s like, at what point do you prepare yourself to move from this reactive? You’re just doing such a good job. Everyone is talking about it to no. Now I’m intentionally going after growing and expanding, scaling my business with intentional proactive marketing. And if you really want to grow, then you’d have the responsibility to market. And if you believe in what you do, then you have the responsibility to go out and tell people about it. Right. And I think a lot of people very much put marketing off to the side of like, oh, we’re, we’re, we’re doing just fine. We’re going to let it grow organically. And I think that there’s no problem with that. And then there’s another school of thought of, well, if you really believe in what you do so much, that you think it helps and you think it changes lives, then you have the responsibility to get out there and make sure people know about it. And I think there’s, you know, somewhere in between is where a happy medium is probably where you should be. But I also believe that it’s like, you know, if what you do really helps, then it is your job to get out and tell people about it. I E marketing.

RV (13:34):

Yeah. That’s I think a marketing is just like one of those things. It’s a skill you have to learn to do it. You’ve got to do it consistently. You got to choose to do it over and over. And yeah. I think what you said there AIJ is so true. It’s like, so to scale, at some point you got to extend beyond just the, just the word of mouth. When I think about marketing lessons that we’ve learned which is also my third takeaway here, because Mike reminded me of it was that in your marketing, you have to tell people exactly what to do. Like the marketing cannot just be like brand awareness or impressions. You have to include a direct call to action, which would say, you know, make sure you like, make sure you follow, make sure you subscribe, make sure you share, leave a comment, register, click this link, sign up, go like you have to include the actual instruction and the order and the command because otherwise people don’t do it. And it just because you, they have to be told exactly what you want them to do. So don’t just tell them who you are, tell them what you want them to. And that’s a big, that’s a big thing that I’m trying to focus more on. And cause you see like all the top marketers are doing that all the time. They’re very clear with what’s the instruction that they are, they are driving with their audience. So on that

AJV (15:06):

Of you who are listening, what we want you to do is go and subscribe to the podcast, the influential personal brand podcast. Here’s what you need to do. Subscribe, make it very clear, just like that,

RV (15:20):

Just like that. And if you haven’t yet requested a call with our team, go to free brand, call.com and request a call with our team. And we can start working with you formally on, on crafting your custom personal brand strategy plan to help you build and monetize your, your impact in your influence. So check that out. Also keep coming back every single week. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand. Bye-Bye.

Ep 210: Gaining Instant Attention with Mike Michalowicz

RV (00:07):
[Inaudible] Hey, brand Builder, Rory Vaden here.
RV (00:10):
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. Well, my man, Mike Michalowicz is one of my favorite thinkers on entrepreneurship.
RV (01:00):
I, you probably have heard of his book profit first. He’s the best selling author of that book has got thousands of reviews on Amazon is very popular among the entire entrepreneurship community. He also has written several other books, clockwork fix this next. And he’s got a new book coming out at September of 2021. It’s called get different, which is what we’re going to talk about. But by age 35, Mike had founded and sold two different companies wanting to private equity, another to fortune 500 he’s a former small business columnist for the wall street journal. He was a make-over specialist on MSNBC and he travels the world speaking to entrepreneurs. He’s he? He is a speaker he’s on stages. We’ve met each other, gotten to know each other a little bit over the years. And I just think he is one of the most influential thinkers and thought leaders in the space of entrepreneurship. So Mike Michalowicz welcome to the show, man. I was in
MM (01:57):
The house. Yeah.
RV (02:00):
So get different is it what’s this is, this is the newest, you’ve got a nice, you’ve got a nice building brand, like a very consistent just body of work that you have done, which I love. So what’s, what’s get different. Why, why the need for this book? Why now?
MM (02:22):
So it’s the why I want to do is boil down what the essence of effective marketing is. And the reason is most small businesses are highly ineffective at marketing. Actually that’s the whole reason your business exists is because so many people, we can’t do it on our own, but what’s interesting is you know, this is kind of pre COVID with all the traveling that’s going on and starting to come back. But nothing like it was in 2019, is that when I go to events, I just ask people by show of hands, like an informal survey, what is your number one source of lead generation marketing cash lead flow. And I would say, raise your hand if this is the number one source word of mouth and like 90% of the hands go up. I like the whole survey is done with the first question and realized that most businesses are dependent upon their clients to do the marketing for them.
MM (03:18):
It’s a blessing. If your client wants to refer you business shows that they trust in your service. They think of you to a high enough degree to refer you. But at the same point, that means you’re at the whim of the customer to market for you. And so I said, what was the consequence of this? And consistently it’s these pendulum swings of too much opportunity for me to handle. And therefore we stopped doing service effectively, or we fumbled the sales process and we actually disappoint people, even in marketing and sales before they do business with us. And then the flip-flop side is no opportunity. We’re panicked. We have to start cutting costs. And as this kind of maniacal bipolar existence for business. So I wrote at different, I spent 10 years working on this. I’m in the research phases, extrapolating knowledge and stuff, but really in the last three years actively writing the formula and testing it and then writing the book and what it boils down to is a, a, we have responsibility to market like you, I, we, the listeners, if, if we have a offering that is of service for our clients, if our offering is better than the alternatives are considering competition doing it themselves, if what we offer is better, we have responsibility to market because if they don’t discover us, that’s going to be the client’s problem.
MM (04:41):
It’s, it’s admittedly our fault for not exposing our brand. So the first component is, is like, wow, people are afraid to market because we think it’s invasive. And the reframing is you must mark it because it’s the only way to be of service. Then I go through the elements of effective marketing and there’s, there’s these three key elements that if you miss any single one, your marketing is going to fumble. So that, that’s what the book’s about.
RV (05:04):
I love it. So maybe we’ll dance this into some of those three things, but the first thing is just going you know, word of mouth, isn’t predictable. It’s not scalable. It’s not controllable. There’s not a, there’s not a button that you can push or a lever that you can pull that says, bring me more clients. Right. And if you don’t have that, like if you don’t have that one button or that one lever, I feel that’s a pretty freaking scary place to operate. And you’re saying you think that, I mean, do you think most businesses, like the massive majority, the large majority, most som all, like, just kind of like how many people you think are living in that world.
MM (05:49):
Yeah. Yeah. So I’ll give you the shocking observation on buggy tobacco numbers. So the massive majority are highly ineffective and marketing, meaning they’re not doing any marketing whatsoever besides getting a referral from a customer which is not marketing in the first place. It’s this customers referring us out now, here, here’s the data that backs it. Over 98% of businesses are defined as small business in the U S so it’s only the, the very few that the mega corporations, the names recognize the Amazons and the Facebooks of the world are truly the exception. And others, 98% of small businesses 90% of them or thereabouts are micro enterprise, meaning they do less than a million dollars in revenue. So your company is Rory is the exception to most businesses. Most businesses are a handful of people. And the, the marketing is a kind of a shotgun or pot shot approach reactionary.
MM (06:50):
So we don’t have enough leads. Oh my gosh, why are clients referring us? We better do some marketing. Hey, I heard some potent rent. Someone ran Facebook ads in our industry and had great results to start running Facebook ads. So we go in, ill-prepared not understanding what the marketing is or how it works. And then when it fails to succeed, we’re like, oh, Facebook socks, no, we didn’t even understand the basic principles of how functions, but more importantly, we didn’t even know the basic functions of effective marketing. So it’s a very kind of knee-jerk reaction, which has no marketing at all. And sadly, that’s just the majority of business.
RV (07:23):
Yeah. Well, and it’s like, not only is the business vulnerable, the, the, you know, certainly the revenues vulnerable for the owner, but even the, the viability of that business. And so the job security of those people inside the business is a little, that feels, that feels pretty vulnerable. So what should small businesses be doing? Okay. So if they’re not, if they’re, if they don’t want to do that, or in addition, let’s say in addition to that, right. Cause you’re not saying word of mouth is bad. You’re not saying referrals.
MM (07:52):
I think it’s wonderful, but it’s Hey, right?
RV (07:55):
Yeah. Like what should we be doing if we’re not doing that?
MM (07:59):
Yeah. So if client referral is the icing, we need to be in a deliberate process. That’s the cake and what we first need to do. And we talked about this to some degree already is see that marketing is not a burden. It’s not to the client or prospect. Your targeting is not offensive. Marketing will either be ignored because it’s irrelevant or not seen. In fact, most cases it’s just not even seen. But when, and we’ve all been there, I, I need, you know, I’m, I’m so hungry. I need somebody to eat right now. I, gosh, I’m driving on the highway, going back to visit my Alma mater. Thank God for those marketing signs that say, you know, restaurant or diner this way. And that’s marketing because it’s satisfying a need. I have. If those signs didn’t exist, I wouldn’t find the restaurants. I wouldn’t know where they are.
MM (08:50):
Thank God for GPS has made. I can find it that way. So marketing satisfies need. And so we have to realize that marketing is a necessity, a responsibility that we also have because it serves clients. But then to market effectively, we have to go into these three elements that explained in the book. The first one is the acronym is called dad, dad. And the first one stands for differentiate marketing. Doesn’t get noticed once the same as everyone else’s. So you have to do something that is unique for your target audience. So for example, if my community of readers all get emails from other authors, all saying, you know, read my next book. Well, my message gets blurred into that. So I have to find a way to differentiate, to get noticed. And why is it so important is the human mind is wired to ignore what we expect and already qualified as irrelevant.
MM (09:48):
The classic example is, Hey friend, the first time I got, Hey, friend, email, Rory, I was like, who is this friend? Like, you know, it’s probably five, six years ago. I’m like, Hey friend. I’m like, oh my gosh, I have a friend called me friends. Like, which friend is this friendly friends? Like I told you, and as I was reading it, then I’m like, oh, this is not a real friend. This is a marketing message. That’s totally not applicable to me. Well, the next, Hey friend that came in a day or week later, I was like, Hey friend, last time was a marketing message. I read this, this one’s a marketing message. The third one, everyone, since the tens of thousands that got sent to me or hundreds, I don’t know what it is. I’ve never looked at one again because it’s habituated. Habituation is where our mind is designed to efficiently ignore stuff that is irrelevant.
MM (10:35):
And if you mark it and a common method that everyone else uses, you’re deemed irrelevant because it’s already known to be irrelevant. So stage one is do something different and don’t confuse different or outrageous. I’m not saying you’ve got to wear a bozo, the clown costume with those big floppy shoes. And you know, Wakawaka lapel and tell people to do business with you now will get noticed, but it may not pass some other tests. Just what is uncommon in your industry. Maybe you can take something from another industry introduced to your clients and there’ll be enough to awaken them. It’s like, if you and I were outside in your yard behind you there, and somebody squiggled on the ground, if it’s unexpected, we will take notice of it because we have to qualify it as a threat or opportunity.
RV (11:18):
Huh. Yeah. This is a kind of the concept of a pattern interrupt. Yes.
MM (11:24):
Right? What it is, it’s exactly what it is. So our mind, there’s a thing called the reticular formation. There’s a thing called reticular activating system that some people are familiar with. But reticular formation is this neural web that says the brainstem it’s job is to ignore 99.999. He goes on for a long time. Percent of the stimulus round is, and right now, where if you look around the that’s you’re at I look around mine. There’s stuff that could just draw our attention and go on for hours and hours as picked up this blue pen, I could look at it and say, well, you know who, why blue? First of all, who invented the word blue? Hello? You know, why is that rhyme with two? And whoever had the word and you know, it just goes on and on. It could just be endless consideration, but our minds are wired to ignore all the stimulus so that we can pay attention and gain value.
MM (12:11):
Hopefully the dialogue we’re having. So differentiate breaks the pattern and it works, but here’s the deal. It works for one 10th of a second. So I call us the blink test. If you do a deliberate blink now, as fast as you can, like your fastest blink ever, that’s still slower than how much consideration we put into something. Meaning as subconscious level, our mind can evaluate is something worth considering further or can it be flushed out in less than one 10th of a second? So differentiate gives you this one 10th of a second window, that gets you to the next part of our brain, which is the prefrontal cortex where conscious thought happens. And this part of our brain, the mind then says, okay, this guy know this got prioritized as something to consider that squiggly snake in the grass. Now I’m looking down at it.
MM (12:58):
I’m consciously considering this is this a snake. Does someone turn the hose on? It’s kind of flopping around what is this? Our brain is looking for three things, threat opportunity or ignorable. If there’s a threat, we’ll go into fight or flight or freeze. There’s other things, but we’ll, we’ll basically combat it. So you don’t want your marketing to be a threat. I can sell you, send you a mailing piece and say, you know, direct mail works so effectively when you put white powder in it, everyone pays attention. Yes. Yes. Everyone pays attention to the white powder coming out of the envelope, but it is a threat. I will go to jail. You know, you will call 9 1, 1. You will never want to receive or open that email, that message I sent. The next thing we go through, is this an opportunity? So by the
RV (13:37):
Way, on this one, so, you know, like people always, I was always confused. Cause I heard people say stuff like the first thing that people look at when you meet them is your hands. And so, you know, I heard someone say like, oh, that’s a reason why you should have, you know, get manicures or like take. And then I realized, I learned later that it’s like, no, they’re not inspecting your hands. Like, are they lotioned? They’re looking to see if you’re carrying a weapon. Like that’s what, when people say that, that’s what they mean is your brain is instantly calculating. Like, is, is there a, is there a threat? But even, but even that it’s, it’s almost like even a threat would be better than being ignored. People like to be like, you don’t, if, if you’re doing the same marketing as everyone else, you don’t even get that consideration. Like you don’t even make it to level two without the pattern interrupt. That’s correct. That’s correct.
MM (14:29):
A threat though. Causes problems down the marketing chain, but you’re right. Again, it guarantees attention. Like if you and I have a meeting, I said, Roy, we got to have serious conversation here. And I plopped down a gun. We’re gonna have a serious conversation. The thing is, you’re gonna punch me in the nose is the second. You get a chance. And take that gun away from me. So it causes conflict. The ignorable is a risk. Like if, if it’s, if we don’t see it, but once we get the attention of the prospect, if it’s not a threat, they will then say, is there an opportunity and an opportunity? Is there something that delivers value to me
RV (15:04):
By the way today is this attention, is that the D is differentiation, is this? And then the next
MM (15:09):
One is called attraction. Oh, okay. Yeah. So differentiate is stage one and it gets to the prefrontal cortex and the prefrontal cortex says, is this a threat run? Is it an opportunity consider or is it ignorable? And then it just, it qualifies it. Or it puts in the catalog to ignore in the future. If you get the opportunity at the differentiate level, you get forwarded on to the next step, which is attraction. Once I say, Hey Rory, I got I have someone that you got to meet wherever I get your attention. I got someone you gotta meet. Now I’ve positioned yourself for attraction. Attraction is where we go through the qualification process. Like, well, tell me about this person and why is this an opportunity? Our mind is now going into incremental segments of, should I continue this conversation? Is there a continuing value to me?
MM (15:57):
And yes, it plays out at multiple levels and we have a rapport. If I say someone you should meet. And that person is of no value to you. Since we have rapport, you may want to maintain that so we can maintain rapport, but the primary level is, are you going to derive direct benefit? And when I’m marketing, I have to show that very quickly, that direct benefit could be solving a problem. It can be entertaining you in some capacity, if we arming you for the future education it could be just a curiosity factor where you’re you keep people engaged in something as they learn more, as you kind of drip it out. The key to attraction is it happens in these millisecond increments also. So we’re, we’re looking to constantly stay engaged or dump out. And so our job during the attraction phase of our marketing is to keep people engaged.
MM (16:41):
The thing is the longer you try to maintain attraction, the less compelling it is to stay. And therefore people over time, if it’s not building a compelling argument, people are gonna drop out. So be concise and grow the compelling nature of it. So if it’s going to be long, make sure that keeps on building more and more interest engagement, not Dwayne waning, but growing. And then the final phase of effective marketing is the direct phase. So we differentiate to get attention, attract for engagement and then direct to compel the audience, to take a specific action. And is your, is your friend, our mutual friend, Don Miller says, you know, if you confuse, you lose and most people just kind of leave their clients or prospects in ambiguity. It’s like, w what do I do? I guess nothing. And they fade away. So here’s where we give them a specific action to take.
MM (17:33):
But the key for this is it needs to be reasonable. So say you’re in the market for a car and on the sorts of the sales guy and you come in and I’m like, Hey, we’re already nice to meet you. Give me a hundred thousand dollars. Now I’ll start searching for your dream car and wherever the distance difference is, I’ll it to you. You big? No, but what could happen is that you can come to the showroom and I say, Hey, Rory, would you be willing to give me your cell number? I will then text you pictures of the cars in our inventories. We discovered the cars to see if they match up with what you want. And we find the one and we can take the next step together. That may be much more reasonable action. And I have permission to market to you. So the direct stage for me, the person trying to do the sale, I want to move you or matriculate you as fast as I can toward the ultimate transaction by the car. And I need to balance that with you feeling safe at every step of the way. So that’s the three elements that
RV (18:26):
Huh. I love that. The, the, you said that last, that last line is, you said, I want to move you as fast as I can towards the transaction, but I need to be able to balance that, that you said an interesting phrase, you said with you feeling safe. Yeah. Why did you say that?
MM (18:48):
Yeah, because a threat is the trigger for avoidance or conflict. And so you’ll see every step of this, if the threat presents itself, transaction’s over. So if I differentiate, because I walk into the room with a gun, you’ll notice, but the transaction’s over. It’s about survival during the attract phase. I am putting threatening messages out there. If you don’t do this, I’m gonna destroy you. Now, I’m going to combat a situation at the very end, as I’m trying to direct you to take action. The second you feel threat, you know, you’re out you know, we’re, we’re like any other herd animal that the second that CA the antelope sniffs, a hunter it’s bolting. So I need to make sure that I’m moving you in reasonable substance, kind of the Goldilocks porridge. It needs to be just right, that you feel safe and comfortable taking that next step together that there’s trust building in these, these different interim transactions before the ultimate transaction. But also I need to do as quickly as possible
MM (19:42):
If I move so slowly,
MM (19:43):
We may never get to that transaction. You may be engaged in another marketing campaign or sales campaign. That’s moving into a transaction much faster, and I lose out. So I want to move you expeditiously to get to the transaction, but also reasonably so that you maintain a comfort level throughout.
RV (19:58):
Mm. Love it. Y’all I mean, that’s what I’m saying. Like these are so sharp and concise and understanding, you know, what I love about what you’re doing here, Mike is this book get different, is connecting the neuroscience of the brain into marketing strategy and the, and the fundamentals of marketing. So this has been so powerful. I think there are there’s, there are at least three ideas here that are going to stick with me for the longterm. Where do you want people to go? If they want to get, if they want to get a copy of the book or keep up with you and all, all the things you’re up to.
MM (20:38):
Yeah. I invite people to go to the one place, singular direct, right? Go to go get different.com. And the reason I invite people to go to site is if you want to get the book, there’s ways to get it through that site, all major retailers and so forth, but more importantly, there’s a resource link there. It has always different case studies. So we ran hundreds of companies through this, and we came up with these case studies. Some that you can apply immediately in your own business, out of the box marketing that is different, attractive, and gets results and case studies where you can just see how another company went through in the experience of implementing campaign like this. So it’s go get different.com.
RV (21:17):
We will put links to that. Go get different.com. I like the dad method. I like the dad model. Cause I’m dancing. That’s the stage of my life.
MM (21:29):
[Inaudible]
MM (21:29):
You’re saying at the end, any marketing you look at simply ask yourself, does data prove certain context is a little bit creepy when you’re older, but you
MM (21:36):
Know that doesn’t approve. We ain’t doing it.
RV (21:39):
I love it. I love it, man. Well, thanks for sharing your time and your wisdom and your insights. So sharp. I know we’ll see you again soon and we wish you the best. Thank you, brother.

Ep 209: How to be Funnier with Darren LaCroix | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):
Welcome back to the influential personal brand podcast recap edition joined by my wife, my business partner, my beauty, my favorite person in the whole wide world. AJ Vaden also our CEO at brand builders group. Today, we are breaking down the interview that I did with Darren LaCroix, who is the 2001 world champion of public speaking from Toastmasters. One of my OJI mentors. And really, I would say without a shadow of a doubt, Darren has taught me more about being funnier than anyone else. And it’s been a huge part in my career and just just a point of learning. So AJ and I are breaking it down. AJ welcome. Good to see you.
AJV (00:47):
Glad to be here. Ready to give you all my opinions.
RV (00:52):
I like it. I like it. Well I’ll go first with my first takeaway. You know, we’re sharing our top three takeaways each. I think one of the biggest things about humor is just realizing and, and identifying where are there opportunities for natural humor and not trying to force natural jokes, like not, not trying to force unnatural jokes, but just identifying these opportunities. And Darren talks about four ways to identify humorous opportunities, which I thought were so straightforward and clear. And these are, these are F’s, they’re all F’s. So what are your flaws? That’s an opportunity. What are your failures and talking about your failures, people love hearing about your failures. What are your first, like the first time you ever blanked and what are your frustrations? What are your flaws, your failures, your first and your frustrations. And, and I think the only other thing I would add to this is that not only are these great opportunities for humor, even if they’re not funny, these are great opportunities for stories. So AJ that I think is going to stick with me as a, as a big highlight from this episode.
AJV (02:04):
Yeah. And I know in his interview he gave some really great examples of how to do that. And I think one of the things that really stood out to me as he talked about this, and it was similar to this because he was talking about, you know, the frustrations failures first and flaws, but then he said learning how to do it in the moment. So it’s and so one of the things that I wrote down that it, it’s kind of similar to what you said, but I wrote down is that learn how to create humor for specific audiences, locations, industries, or companies. And then from there, it feels really custom and in the moment, and he tells this really funny story about, you know, this example is what I remember is the Hussey and G right? You’re at this big convention, everyone is frustrated about not being able to find this one ballroom HASI ended G so he found the frustration, but then he also did it in the moment and real time, which made it way funnier.
AJV (03:07):
Right. And so I think it’s one it’s figuring out what is the frustration of the moment. And I think that’s really easy because we all have them. I think one of the biggest things that I just kind of jotted down as a great reminders to myself and I used to do this and I haven’t done it in a really long time. I know if you’re listening, you can’t see what I’m doing, but if you’re watching, it’s like I used to have this little notebook and I would carry it around and I would write down stories. Right. It’s like when my kids say the most hilarious thing, it’s like as much as I think I’m going to remember that by that night, when I’m trying to tell, you know, you worry about this story. I’m like, wait, what did he say? And it’s like, really conditioning yourself to like, jot this down and be like, I don’t know where I’m going to use this or where I’m going to tell this, but this is just too good not to include somewhere. So I don’t forget it. And I think the same thing happens in just everyday life and then being able to filter it through those four apps. But then also really focusing on, you know, to me it’s about a location, an industry, a company or even like a specific audience of a type of people. And I just thought that was a really good way to make it super neat. And also relevant to the people that you’re talking to.
RV (04:27):
Yeah, yeah, that actually was, so my second takeaway is very much related to that. I wrote down, convey the emotion of the moment and I think just like what you said, what’s amazing is when you write spontaneous humor like that, it doesn’t have to be nearly as well written. Yeah. cause it just like, it’s just, you know, it’s so in the moment and it’s so special that that people, you know, are just completely unexpecting that. And and so, you know, I think identifying those frustrations and then also just conveying whatever the emotions are of, of any of those moments. So if you’re talking about your flaws, like you have to talk about how did you feel when you made this mistake or like when you had this failure, if you’re talking about your first and you’re telling the story you got to share with the audience, what was your emotion in that moment?
RV (05:26):
And because that’s what we really relate to. That’s the human, the human experience is emotional. And I think one of the, one of the hallmarks of a great presenter is that you can move the audience emotionally. You can take them on this rollercoaster ride of emotions. And part of the way you do that is just by sharing all these stories from these different parts of your life and just sharing the true real emotions that were there. Even if it’s not funnier, it’s more engaging. And it, it just kind of breaks up this monotonous of information that your presentation might otherwise be. So I, that was, that was a big thing for me. That was my second takeaway.
AJV (06:05):
Yeah. So my next one would be, is kind of on the same lines. And I’ll try to make these at congruent points when we can, but it’s that humor is probably more about the delivery than it is the words. And I think that’s a huge part of it. And I loved in the interview, he was sharing that example of some guy who had memorized all of these Robin Williams jokes, but they didn’t land because of the delivery. And it’s like words, aren’t what necessarily engage people when it comes to stories and humor. It’s the emoting, right? It’s the vocal quadrants. It’s the hand motions. It’s the facial expressions is everything that goes into the delivery and something that really isn’t that funny. If you just say it, when you add in the necessary hand gestures or facial expressions or vocal variety, all of a sudden, it’s hilarious. And then, so it’s like, it’s not just about figuring out what to say. It’s how do you deliver this in a way that’s authentic, but it also really creates this light-hearted emotional feel around the entire experience. So I thought that was this important because we talk so much about what to say, but really that’s just a teeny part of it. It’s also how you say it.
RV (07:27):
Yeah, for sure. It’s amazing how adding one little gesture or facial expression, you know, an eyebrow raise or something like that, just like completely enhances the, the whole story and the joke that’s I love that. That’s a good reminder. So on that note, you know, you’re talking about delivery, which is huge. One of the other takeaways for me, which was something that I’ve heard Darren say before, I’ve heard lots of comedians say this before, but it is such a great reminder is that great lines aren’t written they’re rewritten. And so when you do think about the writing, you got to realize like, nobody, like almost nobody, even Jerry Seinfeld or Ellen degenerate, they don’t just sit down and just like write a perfect line. They identify an opportunity for humor. They apply some of the basic kind of principles of the psychology of what causes people to laugh.
RV (08:23):
They write it, then they go deliver it. Like you were saying, they enhance it, they test it, they tweak it, they edit it. And by the time we ever hear it in like a stand-up comedy set in front of an arena full of people or on HBO, or, you know, some nighttime late night television show, they’ve delivered that line hundreds of times, it’s totally polished, totally dialed in. And so, you know, if you think, well, I don’t know how to write jokes. Yeah. Welcome to the club. Even the people who do it as they don’t do it, it’s a craft. It’s a skill. It’s something that can be practiced, just like any sport or artistry, you know, humor is, is a form of artistry. And a lot of it is, you know, there’s certainly some that is talent and gifting and that, but a lot of it is just discipline and practice and regimen, which for someone like me who was not born naturally funny, that’s really, really great news.
AJV (09:22):
Yeah. Well, I think if you just kind of go back to that though, it’s like for the people who are going, I don’t want to have hundreds and thousands of hours to go and practice how to do this. It’s go back to the whole point of it’s about looking around your real life. Real life is the best place to tell humor. And without having to write any jokes, you can be incredibly humorous by just capturing the ridiculousness of life. Right? It’s like we have two young toddlers. There is at least an incident or a shenanigan every single day that it’s like, I cannot believe this just happened. And it’s like, there’s no writing to that. It’s capturing the essence of life in the moments that you remember to do it. So a little hope for all of those who are like, I don’t, I don’t know how I’m going to learn how to write jokes.
AJV (10:12):
It’s like, don’t remember to write down the funny stories that already happened. You don’t have to create anything. You just have to remember the things that actually happened to you that are funny. And my last thing, and I, this is a little quote that he said somewhere, but it really stuck out to me. And it said a comedy cuts down, humor lifts up. And this isn’t about comedy. This is about humor. This is about lifting up. This is about lightening, the mood. This is about giving that mental break to a serious subject or creating that break where the audience needs a little relief from this. Isn’t about making fun. This isn’t about cutting anyone down. This is about lifting up and using the humorous parts of life and situations in order to lighten the mood, not cut anyone down. And I really loved that.
RV (11:03):
Hmm, amen. Just a little levity to the whole conversation. Well fantastic. Always love getting A’s thoughts. Go back. Make sure you listen to the full episode. The interview with Darren, you hear from prince own mouth, what he’s talking about and make sure that you share this recap and both Darren’s episode with anyone out there, you know, who might want to learn how to be funnier,
AJV (11:25):
Basically, anyone, you know, who’s not funny that listen to this, you need help with your stories. That’s who this is for.
RV (11:33):
Yes. And don’t send it to me. I will be personally offended if you do that. So don’t send it back to me, but we’re so glad to have you keep coming back here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 208: How to be Funnier with Darren LaCroix

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/podcast. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:54):
Well, if you go back to the very beginning of Rory Vaden speaking career, one of my mentors told me I needed to join Toastmasters, and that was how I would get stage time. And shortly after I joined Toastmasters, I learned about a contest called the world championship of public speaking. And one of the legends of Toastmasters who I then made my mentor is who you’re about to hear from today. His name’s Darren LaCroix. He was the 2001 world champion of public speaking for Toastmasters, but he was one of my personal mentors early in my career. In fact if you come to our world-class presentation craft event, and then I start talking about humor, I share the story of how I spent my last thousand dollars on buying a ticket to Darren’s class and then buying an airplane flight to go see him in California in a hotel.
RV (01:50):
It was like the last I had in my checking account as I was coming out of graduate school. And it was the best thing that I ever did. Darren’s training on humor, which is not the only thing he talks about. He teaches all sorts of things around presentations, mechanics, and business. And we’ll talk about stage time university and some of the other things that he’s got going on, but, but that commitment to come and spend a few days with him changed my entire career. And the things that I learned from Darren have stuck with me for years and years and years. And we’ve never actually made the time to go back and do an interview. And I saw him last week at the national speakers association. I said, buddy, we got to bring you on to share the secrets. So welcome to the show.
DL (02:32):
Hey, thrilled to be here. Rory and I, as I told you, before we even started, I am so proud of you and what you’ve done and what you’ve created. There’s nothing cooler to a mentor than seeing the students surpass the mentor. You have stolen the pebble from my hand.
RV (02:50):
Well, I really appreciate that, man. I you know, you and ed Tate and you know, Craig Valentine and Mark Brown, I mean, you guys were, I really learned the craft of speaking and specifically with you. And when I often tell your story, I, it most comes up just around humor because that was, that was the thing. Like for me, that seemed the most unrealistic. Like I knew when I said, if I’m going to win the world championship of public speaking, like you have to be funny. And I said, I’m not funny like that. So that was, that was like this big roadblock. And also to be a professional speaker. I was like, this is going to meet my biggest dilemma. Like my biggest barrier is that I’m not funny. And then I met you and you had gone through all of this work and this research of figuring out and making it, making it practical of going, actually, this is a skill it’s not, it’s not just talent. So do you still believe that? I know it’s been 20 years since
DL (03:59):
I believe it more than ever, you know, that’s the one thing you’re either born funny or you’re not, and that’s a, that’s a big myth. I remember when I first was working up the courage to ask a comedian for advice to go through this crazy thing. Cause I just like, you was not funny. I was quiet. I was shy. I had no business being on a stage and I just decided I was at such a low point in my life. I’ve got to just try it because I can’t live with the regret of wondering what if, and I asked this comedian, that was, he was a headliner, never been to a comedy show before. And I said, what do I need to do? And he asked me a question. He said, are you funny? I said, no. And he said, good. And I’m like, good.
DL (04:40):
What do you mean? Good? And he was the one that first explained that people who are the class clown, people are the naturally funny people. He said, that’s one skillset. He said, but if you handed them a microphone and put them in front of a group of 100 strangers, they couldn’t make them laugh. He said, but that skillset can be learned. You know, I turned into Scooby doo. I’m like, what? You know, he just handed me an ounce of hope. And as you know, just like I told you, number one, he said, go get the book. And I’m like book, there’s a book about standup comedy. And so, yeah, of course his books about everything, but I wasn’t thinking that way. And you and I both got the book by Judy Carter, stand up comedy, the book and going through the exercises. I realized comedians don’t want you to know that they actually go through a lot of work to get there. But what I learned was the structure of comedy, the structure of humor and that just like anything can be learned. And eventually I was able to find a way to make it work for me and my style.
RV (05:44):
Yeah. Well, and I, I did read that book as well as every other book that you recommended. Yeah. And then, and then wrote one. And, and I, I actually, after I went through all those, I, one of the reasons that I wrote, and this is, you know, Darren knows, but nobody else does because my very first book, people think take the stairs was my first book. Because we set the world up to be that way. It was my first traditionally published book and our team, you know, we did the huge bestseller launch and all that stuff. But I actually wrote a book called how to be funny, to make more money, which was a self published book before that Darren remembers, that was how I paid my bills in the early days. And I was disappointed with a lot of the books that I read because they weren’t as straightforward and practical.
RV (06:29):
They felt still artsy and not science-y. But when you taught it to me, I felt like, yeah, there’s there’s structure here. There’s a, there’s a, there’s a systematic process to the, to the, to the whole game of, of of comedy. So can you talk about what that is? You know, just like what, what, what is the premise like you even say that because you go, even the class clown, can’t grab a mic and suddenly make everybody laugh. I think that is that’s worth everybody knowing. And so when you dive in or you think about, okay, what is it then that makes an audience laugh and what is the work that comedians are doing that they don’t want us to know about as a part of like, you know, getting to that place.
DL (07:17):
Yeah. I have presenters and speakers come to me like I got to write a funny speech. How do I write a funny speech, especially in Toastmasters, around humorous speech contest time. And they’re like, what’s funny, what’s, what’s a subject. What’s a funny subject. I’m like, I don’t know. I don’t know your life. And just like you and I went through the Judy Carter book, she said, what are your flaws? What are your failures? So Craig Valentine. And I say, what are your failures, your flaws, and your first, your failures, your flaws and your first. So again, it’s understanding the process, a class clown. If you force them to go up on stage in front of a hundred strangers, what they would do is they’d go do movie quotes. They’d do characters, they’d rip off Robin Williams or Jerry Seinfeld. And they’d tell other people’s material.
DL (08:03):
Well, that’s, that’s illegal. It’s not right. And you would never get booked as a speaker or a comedian if you’re doing other people’s material. I remember in my early days of standup by Saara, I was studying Robin Williams, so much word for word and writing out his jokes. And I was doing an open mic night. I saw this guy go up for his very first time. And he was literally doing Robin Williams, word for word. And he bombed. And that was a whoa, it’s not just the words. It’s the character, it’s a persona. And it’s also coming from your life. You know, one of my first jokes written out of the Judy Carter book was what’s a failure. Well, my subway sandwich shop, you know, that was a huge failure. And then she walks you through a process and understanding the delivery part of it, the attitude part of it.
DL (08:53):
I think, you know, Rory, when people telling stories, whether they’re funny or not, but it’s that storytelling bringing it to the point of dialogue where we hear thoughts or their internal thoughts, or we hear the conversation. That’s where the vibrant emotion is. So I looked at my $60,000 debt and she said, okay, brag about it. I’m like what brag about it? And that’s not how normal people think. So if you’d agree with this, that funny people think differently than if we want to be funny, or we need to think the way funny people think. And what we’re saying is we’ve got to look at it the way they look at it. And that’s what you discovered. That’s what I discovered was there’s processes that comedians and humorous go through to create the humor. And then there’s still some testing and tweaking and testing and tweaking great jokes.
DL (09:50):
Aren’t written, they’re rewritten, great speeches. Aren’t written, they’re rewritten. But most people, when you see somebody on their own comedy special, or on one of the late night comedy shows or tonight show or something, you’re seeing the culmination of years and years of one little five minute routine, you don’t see the work. And I think that’s the thing. If you’re willing to put in the work, you could make something funny. You know, the fastest way would be to hire a humorous joke writer, but still you’ve got to own the material they’ve got to interview you. They’ve got to dig it out of you. And then you could have somebody quote, unquote, punch it up, but you still have to deliver it. And so the Judy Carter joke, as you know, my Mark Brown story, that wasn’t even in my championship speech. And mark said, Hey, you know, your speech is about failure.
DL (10:40):
We need a failure. And I’m like, oh well, I used to do this joke about my shop. And he said, go ahead and do it. And I delivered it right there in the board room. No one else is around. And I said, you know, I don’t want to brag, but I took a $60,000 debt. And in six short months I doubled that debt. And so, you know, but it’s a bragging about failing and without the structure and understanding from Judy Carter and going through the exercises like, but when you go through the exercises, what you’re doing is training your brain to look for those things. I mean, you know, you probably watch comedy now and after you learned it, you can see the joke coming. You can see the twist, you can see the punchline. Why? Because you’ve trained your brain to think in a funny way.
RV (11:27):
Yeah. And I, I think, you know, you’re, you’ve, you’ve mentioned a couple of components here that I want to draw out for everybody because you know, the way that I’ve kind of even teed up this conversation is the writing of the joke, right? Like, okay, how do you write the joke? But you’ve already touched on that. A huge part of it is the delivery of the joke and the persona. But then there’s this other part, which I P I think people overlook and even I overlooked for a really long time, which is that identifying the opportunity as the first, like the first key step is to identify, oh, there’s something funny here. And I think it’s like, if you could, it’s, if you can capture it, like, if you can set this alarm, like, ah, there’s something around it, and then you can run it through the mechanics of writing it.
RV (12:20):
And then you get enough stage time, which, you know, I’m surprised we’ve made it a few minutes into this conversation. And we haven’t talked about the Darren LaCroix mantra is stage time, stage, time, stage, time. I mean, that was the thing that was just drilled into my head and thousands of Toastmasters over years and years and years just hear Darren say stage time, stage, time, stage, time. Cause that’s the delivery part. Like you can’t learn the delivery part without just practicing, but coming back to identify, because I’d like to talk about writing and then maybe delivery a little bit as well. Now you, you said earlier, you know, your failures, your flaws and your first. That’s awesome. I’ve never heard you say that before. Where was, where was that? 20 years ago when I needed it. So are there any other tips you have around identifying the opportunity? Cause it’s, I think that’s kind of what, what, I didn’t know, which I do now, and you’re alluding to it is that there, nobody just sits down and goes and writes this brilliant line. Right? It’s, it’s a process that we take people through and if we can go, how do we, how do we identify? Is there anything else around like us noticing it? Yeah.
DL (13:32):
And I know your audience, there’s a lot of people who are presenters. There are entrepreneurs, there are coaches here listening. So one of the ways is if you can create some humor for your specific audience and we’re, we, I don’t know if you knew this early on. When I came from a stand-up comedy into keynote speaking, I basically had no speech. It was just, what is the humerus? So what I would do is I took my clean jokes and I turned them into corporate jokes. And then I was just, I didn’t have enough content for 45 minutes. So what I did is I overcompensated and I customized about them because I still had a day job. And I had a lot of time. Cause I wasn’t speaking that much. So what I would do, one of my secrets leading into what your question is, is I would always call up the clients.
DL (14:22):
And I would ask for 10 names of people who are being in the audience, not just the board of directors, I want the people on the ground, whatever that means in that organization or association. And I want to interview them. And what I ask them is what are your pet peeves? And then I’ll ask them, what are your frustrations? It’s pretty much the same question, but it actually kind of like jumps into a little different part of their brain because humor, okay. Different. Let me differentiate bringing comedy and humor. Comedy cuts down, humor, lifts up comedy. It cuts down means there’s a victim means where, you know, we’re making fun of someone. Well, you can’t really do that in the corporate world, unless it’s the competition. That’s, you know the exception then they’ll love you, but humor lifts up. So when we mean lifting up, what are we talking about?
DL (15:12):
Well, we’re talking about a release of tension. So finding the humor is where is the tension? Where is the tension in their lives? So if I’m talking to a bank, okay. At that bank, where is there tension? If I’m talking to entrepreneurs, where is there tension? Okay. So for entrepreneurs, it might be their employees or staff. If I’m talking to employees or staff, it might be the boss. So where is that frustration? So we need to find where the tension is in order to release it, find where it is order to release it. And then one of my favorite principles, I don’t know if I learned this before I worked with you or after, but I call it the registration desk principle. When I go to a convention or conference, when they’re live, I go to the registration desk and when no one’s around, I pull aside the people who are working the desk and I say, why are people complaining about because their complaints are their frustrations.
DL (16:07):
So I’m not looking for one rogue thing I’m looking for. What is that commonality? So just to give you a quick example, one, I was speaking to save international society for the advancement of value. Engineers still don’t know what that is, but that was, and it was in San Antonio, Texas, and you know, every convention and conference, there’s the tension of those people, the engineers, but there’s also the tension of the event. So I was asking them and at first they said, no. And then they said, well, yeah, everybody can’t find a, one of the meeting rooms HASI and the G. And I was like, oh, that’s interesting. Cause all the meeting rooms are in one area, but they had one more meeting room and it was way off the beaten path. So when I walked up there on stage, I said, you know, good morning, Hey, if you’re looking for HASI and the G and boom, okay.
DL (16:58):
Because it is the common frustration. It is top of mind, I got them. And then I just tagged it. I said, just go out the back door, go through the kitchen. It gets a laugh, go out to Crockett avenue, go about a mile and a half down. When you get to the Alamo, take a right. And they were just rolling, but I identified their tension and that would work anywhere else or would it I’m speaking at the Rio and I was speaking for contours express. These are owners, entrepreneurs, owners of a workout place that used to be, I don’t even know if they’re still in existence, but they were the, the competition to curves, you know? So a woman’s workout place and they’re all the owners and they’re here in Vegas at the Rio. If you know the Rio if you don’t know the Rio, there’s like one tall of rooms where all the rooms are.
DL (17:52):
And then the convention center, you’re going to walk a mile and a half down a hallway, take a right walk, another mile and a half, take a left, walk another it’s far. And so the cool thing about being a middle-aged bald guy is I blend in and nobody notices me before I go on stage. So I just go in and I’m listening, I’m listening. And I hear women. It was 99% women. I hear women in the hallway. They’re wearing their heels. They’re like, wow, this is a long walk. Oh my gosh, I should’ve wore my sneakers, dah, dah, dah, dah. And so I go up on stage and I say, Hey, welcome to the Rio. Isn’t it beautiful. And everybody claps. And I say, I don’t know if you know this or not, but Rio is actually a native American term, which stands for long flip and hall.
RV (18:40):
And in that moment, boom, boom.
DL (18:43):
He loved it. And you know, it won’t work in anywhere else unless there’s a similar frustration. So
RV (18:51):
Go ahead. Well, how do you, so, so I love this, cause this is, you could add this to your list of apps, right? You’ve got your first, your failures your, your flaws, your failures, your first, the frustrations. So like, so how do you write it now? What is one thing that you know, these are, these are such great examples. And in my experience, this is also true. That anything that is real-time in the moment, it’s like, it doesn’t even have to be funny. Like, all you have to do is mention Hacienda G it doesn’t matter how you get there. You just say HASI and to G you know, couldn’t find it. Like, it, it, it’s hilarious is that basically all there
DL (19:32):
Is it’s about them. Well, that is easy. That’s a first step. And the more you do it, but again, just like you, the more you study it, the more you can identify, but you also have to be careful that you’re not upsetting the event planner. You know, if you’re brought in as a speaker. So I always go and have a conversation with the person who paid me, not the person who works for the person who paid me and I run it by them just to make sure I said, look, they’re already upset. They can’t find Hacienda. G like, if I can relieve that tension, you’re going to get less complaints later on. If you don’t want me to bring that up, that’s fine. It’s your call. So I kind of run it by them. And usually they’re like, oh, please do something. Cause they’re complaining.
DL (20:16):
Anyway. So, but as you know, going through the books like that, what most people don’t know, but comedians do is that there are formulas. There are comedy formulas that we learn that you go through. So Rio is a native American term means long flip and hallway. Well, Robin Williams, believe it or not, even though he’s unbelievable at what he does, nobody was better at improv than him. And he would just, you know, fire things off like that photographic memory, but even used formulas when the formula works. So knowing the formula and then how you can take that frustration and pop it into a formula. So for example, Robin Williams had a joke that was a divorce coming from the Latin term, meaning to rip a man’s genitalia out through his wallet. But it’s the same exact formula. What’s the word. Okay. Rio. They were all in his divorce. And then you take the term and I call this, I didn’t invent the formula. I just noticed it. And I named it redefining the redefining formula. So I redefine a word named that the audience is aware of, but I redefine it tying into the frustration of the audience. Right. So that’s just one example, but knowing the formula, so first step is like, Hey, go and learn all the formulas and then you’ll start noticing patterns. Yeah.
RV (21:48):
Yeah. And, and, you know you teach the formulas, we teach them that we’ve come to. But you know, I think all of them, all of these formulas kind of come back to this one idea, which is around the, like basically predicting the brain predicts what it thinks it’s going to hear. And when you say something different than that, that’s kind of like, that’s kind of like the twist now, the thing that’s cool about the F the frustration part of this is like, you don’t even have to know the formula. You just have to, you just have to say it. Once, you know, once you know, the formulas, it’s super powerful because you can, you can, you can kind of like quickly fill in the blanks for things, but on, on that one, w would you say that half, half the battle, at least half the battle is just identifying, this is what everyone’s talking about. This is what they’re frustrated about it. And you just kind of like, bring it up. Yeah. Yeah.
DL (22:43):
That’s 80% of it. I would say because you’re, what’s top of mind set up and a punchline. So a setup is already in the mind of the audience. So what we’re looking for is what are they thinking about? What’s top of mind. Now, if I go back to a convention or a conference two years ago, of course, COVID, isn’t even on the radar screen now it’s top of mind, but now it’s also over done. You want to puke when you hear the word pivot, you’re like, oh yeah, that’s a brilliant idea. So, anyway, it’s knowing what’s top of mind, but again, asking the question. So frustrations change over time and going back to what you just said, the twist, the best analogy I’ve ever heard was George Carlin. He said, it’s like a train going down, a train track. You can see clearly and exactly where the train is going.
DL (23:31):
You see the tracks, you know, the train is going that way. We laugh when our mind is successfully tricked. We laugh when our mind is successfully tricked. And what that means is we laugh when the train is derailed. When we an expectation, what I say, the way I define it as a setup is creating an expectation. A punchline is changing that expectation. So in my championship speech, I talked about Dr. Goddard’s rocket launch, and I said, the rocket took off and it went vertically and I do a big motion, really enthusiastic. And then I say, landed in Auburn. So I create the expectation the rocket went far, but then I do a very matter of fact delivery that it landed in Auburn,
RV (24:18):
Right. Where it took off. Yeah. And that’s, I mean, there’s, there’s there, there’s so many great moments in that speech, which I think is that it’s on, is that on YouTube? Can you go just Google, Darren LaCroix, 2001 world championship speed is still, is still on there. So not, not all every year is up there, but certain ones are, and yours is one of them
DL (24:37):
For the rights to put it up there. Yeah.
RV (24:39):
It’s just, it’s it’s it is literally just classic. I mean, seeing the, the punchline after a punchline. The, the, the other thing that I wanted to talk about in terms of identifying slash writing is callbacks. So frustrations and callbacks to me have a very similar I guess like characteristic of one another, which is that you don’t really have to know the formula. You pretty much just have to comment on the thing and everybody laughs you know, that you got frustration. So can you, can you talk about what a callback is? Cause I think callbacks are one of the easiest ways to get laughs immediately, if you literally just know what it is and just like, you just gotta like flip the switch in your brain and go, okay, I need to be looking for callbacks. Can you, can you talk, talk us through the concept? Yeah. When
DL (25:34):
I get to a convention or a conference, I try to get there and spend a day with the people at the convention, just sitting there listening and observing. But what I’m looking for is what are those big emotional moment or what are the funny moments? Like if a speaker has a funny line and it’s lampshade, like I want to in my speech, see if I can hide it, but then bring up lampshade because it’s gotta be an automatic trigger. So a callback is literally calling back or referring back to a word or a moment. Now we don’t want to just call back to anything. We want to call back to either big emotion or big laughs. So I always, if I’m not able to be there a day ahead of time, I will literally walk around asking people, Hey, what was the funniest moment? What, what do you remember? And it’s looking for commonality, that’s the key I’m looking for commonality. If one person thought one thing was funny. That is not enough. We’re looking for that commonality. So, eh, I don’t know if you were there, but in 2002 I was speaking, I was doing ouch, my winning at the NSA convention from the main stage and it was in Arizona and they had this big opening pomp and circumstance and a guy’s riding in on a horse. Do you remember this
RV (26:57):
Guys? I don’t know if I was there.
DL (26:59):
Okay. Guys riding in on a horse, playing a banjo and it was a big pomp and circumstance opening. It was great. He was awesome. He was talented and the horse goes right up to the front of the stage and he’s playing his banjo well in the middle of the song, the horse poops, but he’s got, but he’s got a bucket on, but the horse overshoots the bucket. Oh. And now, and so yeah, it was a funny moment. It’s like, Hey, it’s a horse. That’s what horses do. So I got Michael on, I don’t know if you know, Michael on a pass world champion, ed Tate and a couple other people. And I sat down and I was like, okay, tomorrow morning, I’m speaking on this stage. How can I use that? How can I call back to that moment? So I’m looking at the opening of my speech.
DL (27:44):
And if you remember, I CA well, I came out and I follow my face in my winning speech. And I give Potter my speech intentionally from the stage. So I do it the same way. I always do it. And then I just go, is this where the horse did it? And it was an 11 second laugh. It was the biggest laugh I’ve probably ever got then people in NSA, still talk about that moment. I’m like, this was a setup from God, you know, like to be able to do my speech the next day, where I fall on my face and the horse pooped the night before and everybody, sorry, you know, that’s the thing is if everybody didn’t see it, it, wouldn’t be funny, really looking for that universal callback in that situation. So if there’s a speaker who talks about microphones and you know, the microphone fell in the toilet, you know, you want to, okay, how can I use it? How can I call back to that? So you look in the middle of your speech or maybe at the opening, how you can connect. Cause it’s taking that emotionally charged moment and tapping into the goodness, the good energy of that moment. So it’s one of the simplest, most powerful things that anyone can do. The callback.
RV (28:55):
Yeah. That’s and if, if I were to follow you, I would go, oh, Darren LaCroix laid off, fell on his face and was laying on stage. That would be an opportunity potentially for a call back. Like, I wouldn’t know exactly in that moment, just like you didn’t in about the horse, but you go, this is a big moment that everybody saw. Everybody will remember this moment. And so that’s where you identify, I love what you said. I did not know that backs, that backstory that you said, okay, you identified it. And then you grab some of your buddies and said, Hey, this happened, how could I use this? And again, it doesn’t have to be the, the beautiful part about both frustrations and callbacks is they have to be brilliantly written, like 90% of the game is just like mentioning it. And I, I love that. So I want to ask you about delivery too, but before we do that, so I got one last question about delivery. Darren, where should people go? I know we’ve had, this has been an awesome deep dive in, into the world of humor, but you teach storytelling stage mechanics, like all the components of also, you know, creating speeches, getting books for your first speeches. Where, where do you want to send people to, if they want to learn more about what you’re up to? Sure. Thanks for
DL (30:19):
Asking. If you want to know the top 10 mistakes speaking mistakes, I’ve been coaching for two decades all around the world, executives, speakers, coaches, and just go to be a sponge.com and it’s a free download. It’s a PDF and yes, you would get my newsletter. So if you want to just get the PDF and opt off, no worries. Just do it. And also the top 10 virtual mistakes. If you want to know about my [email protected],
RV (30:47):
I love that. So we’ll put a link there to be a sponge.com. You can download that. All right. So we talked about identifying a couple of tips on writing when it comes to delivery, what would you say is the, the, the biggest thing that you have to know or understand about delivering the moment like delivering the punchline? You know, the joke, the set up like just the, you know, standing on stage and saying, saying the bit.
DL (31:16):
Yeah, to me, the biggest thing is understanding the power of dialogue. You know, I had been a Toastmaster for seven years in four clubs work my butt off part-time professional, but it wasn’t until I met my coach, Mark Brown, where he showed me that I was telling my stories in the past tense. What I needed to do is bring the audience into the moment. In the first version of my speech, I told people about telling my parents, I wanted to be a comedian. He said, no, no, no. Bring us to the moment, let us hear it, which is dialogue. And then piggybacking on that, my delivery, like one of the places I stand out, every speaker has their skills as a coach and as a speaker and one of mine is character delivery. But what I do well is I convey the emotion, body language, not gesture.
DL (32:04):
A gesture is a rehearse body movement that has no emotional connection to the moment. So what I teach people to do is go watch a Pixar movie, but keep an eye on the eyes of the two dimensional character on stage, because they, the shape of the eye changes with the emotion of the character. When we’re delivering, we need to say it in dialogue, whether it’s internal or external, but we need to convey the emotion of the moment. And then the third biggest thing is we need to show a shift of emotion. So if the story, if we’re telling a story for business purposes, for entertainment purposes, the heart of the story, there’s a shift in emotion. So I always get people, identify the emotion at the beginning of the story and the emotion at the end of the story. And if there’s no change of emotion, that’s not the story.
DL (32:58):
You have the wrong part. There has to be some shift and at least one character. So to show that, you know, you can record yourself and go back and watch the recording shut off the sound and would, you know the emotion of the character. Now, you don’t, I’m animated, but that’s just me and my style. You’ve got to do it your way in your style. But when I went home to tell my parents, I want to be a comedian on stage. It was. So I was all excited. Imagine, you know, my parents’ reaction after stretching their budget to help me through college. And I go home and I walked in the door, mom, dad, I want to be a comedian.
DL (33:37):
I was met by silence. Ouch. So if you’re listening to the podcast, you couldn’t see my face change, but you probably heard it in my voice. Same thing. They’re connected. So I come in excited. So if I was to break down that story, just break down your story, look at your characters, name, each of the character and that one, there’s three characters, mom, dad, and Darren. And what’s their emotion at the beginning. Okay. Mine’s excited. Okay. Mom and dad, they don’t even talk, but they have a beginning emotion, which is they’re anticipating what their son’s going to say. They’re eager. They want to hear. And then boom, I asked that question and mine goes to shock. There’s Kosta, shocked and dismayed. So in that tiny little 17 second story, there’s a shift in at least one character. So if you you’ll be a better storyteller, if you can identify the beginning emotion, the end emotion and make sure you convey it through dialogue, using body language,
RV (34:34):
Love it. Love it, love it. Y’all this is just the beginning. There’s so much to explore here. Obviously we’ve been students of it, our whole career, myself, a J our team. There’s, there’s so much just in the mechanics of presentations that everybody thinks they’re a great speaker. When they, when they come to work with brand builders group, nobody said like, very few people are like, oh yeah, I need help with my speech. Everybody goes, oh, no, I got that part down. And it’s like, you have no idea. Like you have no idea the level of crafting, and it’s not just what Darren does or what we do. Like you said, it’s Robin Williams. It’s Jerry Seinfeld. It’s it is every like the greatest orators on the planet are that way, because they have worked at this. They’ve had stage time, stage, time, stage, time, they’ve been coached through it.
RV (35:25):
They, they, they work onlines, as Darren said, grade lines, aren’t written they’re rewritten. And anyways, Darren, thanks for giving us a little bit of insight into that today. And some practical things that we can do to, to be funnier. I’m so grateful for you, man. And the impact that you’ve had on my life our life, you know, and then yeah, now the, the hundreds of members inside a brand builders group that we’re trying to help, you know, go make a difference in the world through the stuff that you’ve taught us. And man, we just wish you the best. Thanks buddy.
DL (35:55):
Thanks for having me and congratulations on all your success.

Ep 207: How to be a Better Writer with John David Mann | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):
A bit of nostalgia for me on this edition of the influential personal brand podcast recap, because we’re breaking down the interview from John David Mann, who was my very, very, very first media appearance ever. He was the, yes, he was the, he was the first person from the media, whoever interviewed me for an article. And it was a really nice feature article and that was like full, full, full circle. So as you can hear, I’m joined by my partner, a J Vaden, the CEO of brand builders group. We’re talking about how to be a better writer, although as John David Mann says, which I love he’s he, his new ebook is called how to write good or at least good or great. So AIJ why don’t you kick us off, we’ll share our top three takeaways each of, of, of what, what we pulled out and what we learned from John David Mann.
AJV (01:02):
This first one I had, this was so good is that the hero of this story is not a person that the hero of a story is a concept or an idea. I just love the whole idea around not making any one person the hero, because there’s never a hero. There are heroes in every story. And how do you define who is the hero of a story? I think really demotes all of the other contributions to the other characters real life or in fiction. And so removing that fresher away from a person I think just elevates everything that you do and you go, no, the hero is not a person. The hero is a concept or an idea that might be taught by a person, a character, but it is not that person. It’s the idea or the concept itself. I thought it was so good.
RV (01:56):
That’s so good. You, you took it right. You took it right off my list. That was my number one. Takeaway, have the hero be a concept or an idea and not a person and what it made me, what it made me think of. So you know, so one of our events that we have is called bestseller launch plan, and it’s very specific around, we teach the mechanics of how do launches work and how do bestseller lists work and dah, dah, dah. And, you know, we go through this whole thing and this whole system, there’s a ton of stuff to know and learn. It’s just one of my favorite events that we have. But one of the, one of the moments at the, at, towards the very end of the two days is we say there is no such thing as a New York times bestselling author.
RV (02:40):
There is only such a thing as a New York times bestselling team. There, there is only such a thing as a New York times bestselling team. It’s a group of people like that. That that’d be true. I mean you never, nothing great in the world is ever accomplished. Single-Handedly great. So I, yeah, you, you, you nailed it what a cool idea and what a cool way of writing to go. Okay. Even if you have a hero character in the story, the real hero has to be bigger than that, bigger than a character. Cause that’s, that’s the truth of, of, of the real world and the human experience. So yeah, we both have the same first one. Yeah.
AJV (03:26):
And my second one is kind of similar to that along this character idea. And a lot of this conversation right, is around like writing. So writing books, writing articles by writing, but I thought this was really interesting. It’s spend as much time getting to know the character, the voice of whatever. You’re writing a blog and article a, but spend as much time asking yourself who is this character as you do anything else, it’s like a, I think he would have said, is, are you sad? Or he said, I don’t remember, but I know the character better than you know yourself, right? It’s like, ask yourself, like, who is this person? What do they do? What do they love? It’s a find out all the intricacies of this character then start writing. And I think you could do the exact same thing if you’re not writing like fiction, but you’re writing to your audience is you must know your audience that well.
AJV (04:19):
So this is a huge part. And I think what connected to me as we spend a lot of time at brain builders group and our signature content called finding your brain DNA helping you really define who is your core target audience. And we spend a lot of time on this, like, who is your primary audience? Who is your secondary, who is your tertiary? Who is that ideal avatar? And when we get to that ideal avatar, who is in the very core focus, like right here in the middle, like right here you need to know every single thing about this person. And so we have a list of like 30 questions that we go for. It’s like, what are their dreams? What are their hopes? What are their aspirations? What are their fears? What are their limiting beliefs? What questions do they have?
AJV (04:58):
What do they like to eat? Drink? Where did they live? Are they married? Are they single? Are they divorced? Right? It’s like, how many kids do they have? What are their kids’ names are their kids’ ages? Like we really build out a profile and it’s for this reason, right? It’s like, you have to know your audience as well, as you almost said, as good as like, we’ve got good in my brain, as well as you know yourself. So ask yourself, who is my audience, or who is this character? And focus on that before you start worrying about content, because the content is only going to be relevant if you know exactly who it’s for.
RV (05:34):
So once again, you have taken the words out of my mouth on my second, my second takeaway, which is that characters develop through curiosity about who they really are. And w th the so, so amen to everything you just said, that’s exactly what I was thinking. One nuance to add to this conversation is specifically in the area of humor, when you are, when you are trying to add humor to a presentation, a lot of times humor is revealed naturally through stories by just asking yourself who are the characters and how they would interact together, of course are probably number one. Favorite TV show of all time is modern family.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Definitely, definitely.
RV (06:23):
And, and, you know, if you, if you, if you step back and you look at modern family, it’s basically, there’s a bunch of characters who are all very strong. They all have salient features. And then each episode is they just, they just mix and match different characters together in a scene. And I don’t know for sure if this is how they do it, but we’ve watched it so much. I have to think this is what they do is they go, okay, let’s take Jay and Gloria and, you know, Phil and put them at a carnival, what would happen? And so they just, they take these characters and they, they, they never run out of ideas to write because they’re exploring the depth of not only each character, but how would that character interact with another character? And you could just, you know, put, pull these together.
RV (07:15):
And so it’s just, I think really, really brilliant. You can tell that you know, John is an amazing writer. Again, you probably heard this in the interview, but if you don’t know this, he, he was the co-author of the Go-Giver with Bob bird, which is one of the best-selling non-fiction books of all time. And probably in my top five favorite books. I mean, it’s just, it is an amazing book. And so this characters, it’s like, there’s there’s room for humor and entertainment and depth and emotion drama. Yeah. All, all the things. All right. So AIJ why don’t you go ahead and just tell everyone what our third takeaway is, even though you don’t know for sure what mine is there it’s
AJV (07:57):
Possible. There’s often interviews where it’s like, well, we’re probably going to have the same ones which is always fine too. But my third and final one is that I just know so many people who would have what they call writer’s block. And I would really like to say, there is no such thing as writer’s block, there’s only memory block. And this is what I mean by that. It’s like the only reason you’re not writing is because you’re not remembering all the things that you have to write about. Right? It’s like, you know, you have memory block, not writer’s block. Like somehow you have forgotten about all the events that have happened to you or to someone, you know, or to someone that, you know, know someone, you know, right. There are these stories and these events that happen all day long, every day, all around the world in your life and in the lives of those around you.
AJV (08:49):
And then when you sit down to write, you forget about all of them, right. And it’s not my first block, it’s a memory block. It’s like, somehow your memory, just those white. Right. And you don’t remember all the things that have happened to you. Hardships, successes, failures, happy moments, surprise moments. And it’s like, instead of trying to figure out what should I be writing about? It’s this think about all the events, all the stories that you’ve had in your life. And then what was the point or message behind that? What did you learn from that? What did someone else learn from that? But it’s like, I believe that truly every great piece of content that I’ve ever read, book, article, interview, whatever, there is a story behind it. And it’s like the whole message or the point of the story happened because it happened to someone like it was a real life event.
AJV (09:37):
And so it’s like, as you get going into writing, it’s like, just ask yourself, like, what does this look like in real life? So if you are a, you know, in my example an entrepreneur is like, what does entrepreneurship look like in real life? It’s messy. Right? It’s messy. And what does it look like for a working parent then it’s real messy. And what does it look like for a working parent of two toddlers during COVID? Well, it, then it’s just frigging chaotic, right? So it’s like, what does it look like in real life? And let that be the conduit for your content and what you write about and what you talk about. You don’t actually have to come up with much. You just have to remember all of the things that already are happening all around you every single day, and then use those as the template, the outline for your content.
RV (10:28):
Yeah, that’s good. I mean, that’s really good if you just you know, and we always say, if you’re your most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were, and that happens through what you’re doing, what you’re talking about is telling stories about your life and you never run out of, you never run out of stuff to say you get 24 hours of news stories every day, or maybe not 24 hours, but lots of hours. So that my third one actually was different. And th this was a very technical, technical writing tip, which I, I love because I love the technical tips. He said this, which I thought was super eloquent. He said, suspense is creating questions. And then unwrapping details on the way to an answer. Suspense is creating questions and then unwrapping details on the way to an answer.
RV (11:24):
And there’s, there’s so many parts of this that I love. So one is what is suspense? It’s creating questions. It’s going, what’s going to happen? Why did they do that? Where is this going? You know, what’s the next step. And, and that’s part of what creates engagement is that is suspense. That’s what draws the audience in is it’s, it’s creating these questions. And then this is the part I love unwrapping details. What a illustration and way to think about telling a story. It’s like a story is a gift that you slowly unwrapped for people. And you expose a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more, you know, on the way to the answer on the way to this wonderful destination, where you, where everything comes together. And there’s this, this, you know, this moment where there’s a lesson the, the questions are questions are answered. Problems are solved, lessons, lessons are learned. And I just thought that was super cool. And, and to go, oh, if you want to create more suspense, all you have to do is create more questions. And don’t leave and don’t leave a question, unanswered, answer the answer. You just answer them one at a time and, and make sure you systematically work your way through. So I, I thought that was just delightful.
AJV (12:47):
It’s good. That’s a very good technical dev. I like it. I like
RV (12:50):
It. I think in my you know, it’s funny. Cause I started with like when I was a teenager, my dream was like, I want to be a speaker. And I think as I’ve gotten older, it’s like, I more really loved writing and it’s like, I want to be a really great writer. And you know, this is, this is really cool. So getting a chance to learn from one of the best writers of our time, John David, man, what a tree go back, listen to the episode check out his new e-book how to write good or at least. Yeah. Which I just love was so great. And then share this episode with someone in your life who wants to learn to be a better writer or just a better storyteller in general. Leave us, leave us your comments on social. Come say hi over on Instagram to me or LinkedIn to AIJ. And keep coming back. We’re grateful. You’re here. We’ll keep that. We’ll keep the content coming. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 206: How to be a Better Writer with John David Mann

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):
I would consider my first major media appearance ever to have been in an outlet called networking times magazine. And I got, I want to say I was maybe 22 years old when I got a full, like three page spread story that was written about me. That was huge because it was huge for my confidence. We got some great reach out of the article, and then we included screenshots of that article in the book proposal that we ended up using to get our, our first book deal for take the stairs. Well that the writer of that article is the man that you are about to meet today. His name is John David Mann, and so we had been friends literally since the beginning of my career. And then he Koa, he he’s written about 30 books. They’ve been translated into 35 languages. They’ve sold millions of copies.
RV (01:50):
I still to this day, my, my favorite book and John has written so many since then, but the go giver is my favorite book. He coauthored that with my friend Bob Burg, and that book has just been one of the top five books of all time for me that I’ve ever read. John’s written several fables and just released his first fiction book, which is pretty fascinating. We’ll hear about that. And he also has a new ebook out that’s exclusively only as an ebook called how to write good or at least good, or, and so anyways, my old friend is really great to have you, I can’t wait to pick your brain on some of the writing secrets. Thanks for making time for us.
JDM (02:39):
It’s great. It’s a cliche to say, but it has been too long, but the time is just right. So yeah, good to be here. Good to see you.
RV (02:46):
And I feel like, you know, we, we kind of have touched base every couple years for now, like 20 years and it’s like a few, a few years ago by, and then it’s like, you got a new book or we’re doing something and you know, tell me about so I want to hear just about the fiction book quickly. I mean, I wanna, I wanna understand your writing process, or maybe you can merge these together. What I’m really interested in knowing you know, this podcast is all for personal brands. A lot of what we talk about is digital marketing and branding and positioning and messaging. And we actually don’t talk that much about writing, like at its true core, writing a story, creating content, and you’ve done this non-fiction, you’ve done fables now you’ve done fiction. And I, you know, my only goal today is to try to like steal all your secrets about your writing process for F to get, to get those out of you for free. But you, you just did your first fiction book. So I’m curious, how, why did you do that? How is that different from the other stuff that you have done and like, what are some of the lessons that have come out out of that experience? Yeah.
JDM (03:56):
You know, it’s in the course of all these books, you know, as you know, this, there’s been a lot of different kinds of books. I’ve written a handful of memoirs, which is interesting. It’s like basically telling somebody else, tell me your story and I will make it into a book. And so when you read a memoir, your you’re, you’re taking an existing story. That’s reality that really happened to this person. Right. But you’re still trying to find the story in it. So in a sense, you’re taking that person’s story and you’re rewriting it as you’re not making stuff up, but you’re choosing stuff. You’re framing stuff. It’s like making a biopic. If you’re a movie director. Right. And you’re going to write about, you know Freddie mercury are going to write about you know, Gandhi or whoever you’re gonna write about what events do you choose?
JDM (04:42):
How do you string them together? So you’re fashioning a story and you know, about writing in general. My belief is that no matter what you’re writing, whether you’re writing somebody else’s memoir or a straight non-fiction book, like some of the books I’ve done that are sort of business nonfiction, concept books, or a parable, a fable clearly, or a novel like this was, it just came out or Hey, if you’re writing a blog post or you’re writing a Facebook post or a LinkedIn article, or you’re writing a promotional piece, you’re telling a story, you’ve got a beginning, middle and end. You’re, you’re creating an arc, you’re creating some suspense, you’re creating some interests, you’re creating some intrigue and you’re answering some questions or at least you’re posing some questions. It’s all kind of the same thing. I mean, they’re really different, really different forms, but there’s this, there’s this basic sort of storytelling, DNA imprint.
JDM (05:41):
We’ve all got inside us, huddled around a campfire or huddled around, you know, in a cave however long ago hearing about the saber tooth tiger that one of us killed. We’ve all still kind of got this. Tell me what happened next gene in us. And that’s what expresses itself in story in any medium. So yeah, the novel was wild and completely different experience in one sense. You know, as I think it was telling you before we started that, that I feel like I’ve been climbing these lovely little Hills for 15 years. And all of a sudden I’m like with an oxygen mask on the top of Mount Everest, climbing this novel, say, how do I get up here? And how do I get down, especially how do I get down without breaking my neck? Cause 400 plus page novel. That sounds, that’s a thriller on top of it, which means you can’t let up the tension for a moment. You can’t let it dispense for a moment. You can’t let up the pace for him keeping someone’s attention. So they’re turning pages for 460 pages. It’s a whole different challenge and a whole different world than writing the golden giver which has to do the same thing. But in this little tiny form, it’s like the Go-Giver is like a miniature.
RV (07:00):
I know in a lot of your books are so short, like, like the fables there, you can sit down and read them in one sitting like 400 pages is it’s totally different.
JDM (07:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s totally different. By the way, out of all the writing I’ve done, I’ve come to a point where the two things I love to do most are the, are the fables and the novels. So it’s, that’s like, that’s, that’s my, that’s my career, Catherine. I love those parables. I love taking a life message or, or a life principle and spinning that into a story that feels real, that feels compelling, you know, about people that you care come to care about. And if a parable, you know, I say it in the book, how to write good. I say a parables are really easy to write poorly.
RV (07:50):
Yeah. I mean that, like, to me, it freaks me out because you know, I just think the power of a parable, like I think of AIJ. So my wife my business partner, this, our CEO of brand builders group, she, you know, she always makes fun of me for reading boring business books. She calls them boring business books. And, and she loves, she loves fables cause she gets hooked on the story and she, you know, she, she loves to read fiction. And so the, her, her favorite, you know, books, business books are fables and some of mine are too, you know, I think of like the five dysfunctions of a team from pat Lensioni. And then of course you guys did a whole bunch in the, in the Go-Giver series. But like, so can you so here’s my question. Here’s what I don’t think I’m very good at. And I think a lot of people aren’t good at both in writing and speaking is how do you create suspense? Like you just mentioned that for 400 pages, you can’t let off the gas for a second. How do you, like, what is suspense? How do you create it? And then like, how do you know how to write it?
JDM (09:07):
Yeah, I think that’s, that’s a great question. And I think that you know, contact kind of thinking, I’m kind of framing my, my thoughts in the parable space at the moment, because there’s the Go-Giver books. I had the opportunity to write the sequel to who moved my cheese, which was a experience on the other end of the spectrum, right? Cause steal fear. The novel is like 450 page thriller about a serial killer on an aircraft carrier at a wholly different thing who moved my cheese is written at the level of a child it’s Spencer Johnson wrote children’s books. And, and he actually wrote literally children’s books in addition to his adult books. And so to write in the style of Spencer Johnson and write a SQL to who moved my cheese, it’s called out of the maze, was like, I had to, you know, put your brain into that, into that container.
JDM (10:00):
But there’s still suspense in there. And the suspense of the Go-Giver because there’s, you know, in the Go-Giver for those of you who haven’t read it, there’s this character called the connector and you don’t know who he is. And there’s this character called the Friday guests and you don’t know who he is and Joe has got this problem and you can’t imagine how he’s going to solve it. And there, there are these various questions that you don’t really see how they’re going to resolve themselves, but they do the, the, the requirement for the ending of a great mystery or a great suspense novel. Even the book, I would say like the Go-Giver requirement is that when you reach the end, you go, wow, I never saw that coming. And yet the moment you see it, you go, of course, that had to happen. It has to be inevitable, but a complete surprise at the same time, if it’s a surprise and you go, like Yvette came out of left field, I have no idea how that happened.
JDM (10:58):
That’s not fair. You broke the rules of the game. It has to be believable and inevitable and yet I didn’t see it coming. So, you know, actually our lives are like that. I mean, my marriage is like that. I’m, I’m married to my best friend, this amazing woman. And I meeting her was a complete surprise. It’s not something I ever could have planned, you know, writing the Go-Giver with Bob Berg was a complete surprise. It wasn’t something I sought. I’m getting off topic there, but so how do you create suspense? It’s kind of the opposite of giving a lecture or, or lecturing in the worst sense. You’re lecturing in the sense of, of just talking at people. Obviously if you give a great public talk, you don’t do this. You tell stories in a great public talk, but when you’re just lecturing at people, when you’re just telling people something, when you’re just talking at, let’s say you’re mansplaining, I’ll use current terminology.
JDM (11:58):
Like that’s, that’s this awful form of communication where you’re not listening. You’re just talking. Suspense is created by questions. What creates suspenses you pose questions. And not only do you not know the answer, but you can’t even imagine what the answer is. Like, where is this going? Like, where did that come from? What, you know, the classic thriller is kind of a, who done it, you know who somebody’s got dead, it’s murder in there. So who, who killed the person, but you don’t need murder to have mystery. There’s mystery in the seven habits of highly effective people, because the moment you see the title, you go, wow, what are those? How well does Stephen Covey unwrap those, those seven habits? The stories he tells that reveal them. It’s not a super suspenseful book, but he unwraps beautifully. So suspense is about setting up a question and then unwrapping the answer piece by piece in a way that every little morsel is delicious and every little morsel leaves you wanting more. That’s I don’t know if that’s a good way of describing it, but that’s the best way I can think of. I
RV (13:16):
Know. Well, I know it’s, it’s, it’s just hard, you know, I think of storytelling and there’s like so many things, it’s this beautiful blend of both science and art, right? Like there’s structure, there’s a lot of structure to it. And I think you know, a lot of it is artistic even, even to hear you describe it, I mean, to go, okay, I know I need to create an ending that is inevitable, but unpredictable, I’m gonna, that’s how I captured what you were saying. Right. It’s it’s like, of course it had to end that way, but I didn’t see that coming. And then you go, okay, I have to create questions along the way. And so, you know, do you just create questions through characters or like what, what if it is a non-fiction type of writing? I mean, obviously if it’s a parable, which I, which maybe is what you’re saying, like, you you’ve really come around to enjoying payables and novels, because you’ve got, I presume that you’ve got these characters and these kinds of dynamics that can create questions without just kind of posing. Well, I was on a, I was on a mission to understand, you know, the answer to this problem. And so I spent five years researching it and here’s what I found is that, that kind of thing. Yeah.
JDM (14:28):
And if you look at I mean, if you look at great non-fiction writing and I’ll give you an example Malcolm Gladwell, you take a book by blink or, or a book, the tipping point, or, you know, he’s got so many of these that are there along the same lines where they take the hero of the story is not a person. The hero of a story is a concept. It’s like an idea, like the tipping point, it’s how little things make a big impact. That isn’t the exact word, but something like that. Right? So he takes an idea and he unwraps it, using a lot of stories. He does exactly what you do when you’re on stage or what any good speaker does when you’re on stage. You have an idea you want to convey to your audience and you convey it by, by stringing stories together, little vignettes from your life or other, other people’s lives.
JDM (15:19):
Because when you can, you can, you can frame a principle around real people or real characters. It comes to life for people. So Aesop could have said, you know, if you’re slow and steady, if you’re careful what you’re doing, you’re gonna, you’re going to get there sooner, but people will go. Yeah, actually, that’s great. So instead he creates this hair and this tortoise, and now you go, well, who’s going to win the race. I think the hair is going to win. It’s obvious. Right. But it must be not him, but it must be the tortoise because he’s the slow one. But how is that going to work? You know, it’s like, it’s interesting. Suddenly that’s an example of a story at the parables in the Bible, in the new Testament are great examples of teaching tools, teaching stories that are, that, that make principles come to life with characters.
JDM (16:01):
But so back to your question for me, the answer is, yes, you said, do you create these questions through characters? I do. I do. I set up, you know, for me, whether I’m writing a novel or a parable, there’s a basic idea of kind of the setup. Like when Bob and I started working on the Go-Giver, he already had the title. We kind of knew the point of the story. Not kind of, we knew the point of the story. The point of the story was if you put your focus on others, more than yourself, on what you can provide in value, as opposed to what you can get in a value in any situation, your life will be better. That was the point, oh, we could have done the Go-Giver in a sentence and then a sentence. Yeah, that’s it. The point of my novel steal fear is a disgrace Navy seal stocks, a serial killer on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Pacific ocean.
JDM (17:12):
And obviously you figure the point is going to be, he gets caught. We think, we hope you can kind of tell the story in a sentence. But then you, you create these characters and then you, you just breathe enough life into them so that they feel real. And then you see what happens and you start asking the questions like, well, what happens when he goes here? What happens when he goes there? Joe is beginning of the Go-Giver has a problem. What’s his problem. He’s in a business he’s frustrated. What’s, you’re frustrated about. I don’t know. We didn’t know. So you start asking questions. The beauty of, of doing that in both a parable and a novel is that I, the writer don’t necessarily know the answers. It’s like, I work to figure out what the answers are. I work to follow the story and see where’s this going? And so when, when the reader, when you, the reader start to follow the breadcrumbs from page to page, I was doing the same thing. You were a few months, I didn’t know either when
RV (18:17):
You have the whole arc mapped out, like you kind of know the ultimate destination, like you’re saying like the premise that he will have the book, right? Like you kind of know, okay, this is the very end. And then you kind of go, okay, let’s, here’s a couple of characters. And then, and then you just kind of like day by day, you go, what if this happened? What if that happened? Like how, how would these people interact? That’s right,
JDM (18:38):
Exactly what feels right. What seems, and I’ll give you a great example. There’s, you know, the Go-Giver has several books in the parable series and by the way, there’s a fourth one coming. We’ve got the, give her a leader that Go-Giver influencer, which I want to talk about for a sec. Cause it is an example. And then in the spring, we’re going to have the Go-Giver marriage, which my wife and my wife and I co-wrote this one. So we’re excited about that. But in the Go-Giver influencer, the third book, the basic premise of the book is it’s about seeing other people’s points of view. It’s like we could have called it. The Go-Giver negotiator. It’s about people who see things differently, turning an argument into a resolution, turning an opposition into an Alliance. That’s the basic thesis of the book. And so we start out with two characters who are in a tough negotiation and they’re basically opponents.
JDM (19:30):
And we knew that by the end of the book, there was going to be some really cool resolution that neither of them saw coming, but which would totally work. And the thing of it was neither of, neither of us saw it coming either. Like we didn’t know what that resolution was going to be. So it’s like we set up the situation, is it, I wonder how this is going to resolve. We knew what was going to happen at the end was going to resolve how, you know, we were discovering it in the process. So I think there’s, you mentioned earlier, there’s a balancing act. You have sort of the science and the art. There’s, there’s a structure side to writing and there’s kind of a flow side to writing and you’ll hear writers debate about whether you should use an outline or not. They call them plotters versus pantsers, plotters figure out a plot first.
JDM (20:21):
This is what James Patterson does figure out a plot. And then you kind of write the story. Pantsers like writing by the seat of your pants. Pantsers just start at page one and go, Stephen King says he’s a pantser. And I think this debate is a little specious because I really think that if you look got inside their brains, everyone’s doing a little bit of both or a mix of both. I know for me, I always have an outline, but it isn’t where it starts. This is by the way, true for a novel, a parable, it’s true for a blog post. It’s true for an article I’m going to write, I’ll have an outline, but I don’t, it’s not where I start. I start with just like an idea, a concept, a situation, a character, a piece of dialogue, whatever, from something that just as a spark and it’s always going back and forth between taking just random ideas and spontaneous writing stuff and kind of molding it into a structure and then taking the structure and saying, yeah, but then what happens over here? And then messing up again? So I go back and forth between structure and flow. I even have two different places in my, in my room where I, where I do it. I’m sitting at my structure place in my desk and over there in the corner, I can’t get over there in the corner. I have my overstuffed chair, which is where I sit with a pad of paper and a pen and just make stuff up. And I have no idea what’s coming.
RV (21:55):
So how do you get, how do you, well, maybe talk, talk to us about characters, right? Like how do you develop a character? Cause I, you know, like I’ve started watching I’ve started paying attention to this a lot in recent years because one of the things I realized is like, gosh, I have to become a better storyteller. Like to what you’re saying. I’ve realized if I want to get my points across more effectively, I have to become a better storyteller, which actually for me has been frustrating. Like I love the boring, just give me the information. Like I, and it’s hard because as a consumer, I actually do like that, but it’s, I think it’s very rare. Like people, they have to be engaged and entertained and you know, if you just deliver the punchline, it’s not punchy. If there isn’t that suspense or that conflict along the way, it doesn’t sink in. And then so I’m like, well, crap. I have to like, learn how to do this thing. I’m not naturally good at it. And I don’t really love, or didn’t really, I didn’t really love storytelling. And so, you know, like I think of, I think of one of our favorite shows as modern family. I mean, it is, it is our favorite show. We’ve watched it. Have you ever, have you ever seen the show
JDM (23:01):
Completely? Totally. Yes.
RV (23:03):
So we have seen every single episode in every season, every one of them we have seen at least at least six or seven times every single episode. And you know what I realized finally, after years now of watching the show is going, oh, there is a formula to this, which is basically each episode. They start with these characters who have very salient features. So each character has very distinct features. And then every episode they basically say, okay, what if we put these three characters together in these two characters together and these ones, and then go, what would happen if these extreme personalities got paired up in these different arrangements? And then I, and I kind of feel like, oh, that I think that maybe is how they’re, how they’re writing like a chemistry set. Yeah. Like I’m mixing these things together, but you know, so how do you develop characters? Where do you come up with these, you know, ideas? And if you’re just, you know, if you’re doing it, if you’re a pantser and you’re just kinda like letting it flow, how do you do it to where it doesn’t suck and isn’t boring. Yeah.
JDM (24:09):
So for me, by the way, I’m much more structure oriented than, than, than, you know, flow oriented. It’s kind of a very methodical nature. I come at it like a composer and I S you know, I was a composer before I was a writer and classical music was my training, my upbringing. And so I think like, like, you know, a symphonic composer which is a very structural thing. So a couple things about, about characters. First thing I want to say is the fact that you said you’re naturally suck at this is awesome. Because if, if you, if you come to something from a place of nothing naturally inclined to do it, you can become so great. Like, I’ll give you an example. I, I started doing these military books with Brandon Webb, my Navy seal friend. I know nothing about the military. It’s like writing a book in German when I don’t speak German.
JDM (24:57):
And I have to learn the language just to write the book. But, you know, there’s, there’s no one who loves the English language, like somebody who was brought up somewhere else who learns it as their second language. That was my dad’s case. He came from Germany and he like, no, he loved English, like no native American, whatever love. So that’s the first thing I don’t come up with these characters automatically. I’m not, I don’t consider myself a gifted at this naturally, like Stephen King just kind of shakes his arms and colorful characters, spill out. I’m not like that. So I’ll start out with a character, with a character. And by the way, one of my writing teachers says that before you start a novel, you spend weeks and weeks and weeks writing character profiles, where like you ask all these questions, you answer them all, and you, and you come to know this character, like better than, you know, your brother.
JDM (25:50):
Then you start the novel. I tried and I couldn’t really do it. And interesting when I S when I start a character, when I create a character, he’s kind of a, like a stereotype or a caricature at first. So like, you know, Joe and Pindar Joe is this, you know, struggling young business guy. And Pindar is this wise old mentor or in my novel, there’s this captain, the ship captain who a jerk he’s, he’s, he’s a, he’s an. And it was, it would have been so easy to make him like a cartoon villain.
JDM (26:28):
So then what I do is I do something very much like what you do in real life. I used to run a sales organization, and I had people who were terrified and making cold calls and terrified and making sales calls. And they would say, when I get, and they would say, when I get in the phone, it’s like, you know, I freeze up because I feel like, I don’t know. I I’ve got all this stuff, I want to say, but it feels can, that feels hollow. And so my thing was, when you get on the phone, ask yourself the question, who is this person I’m talking to? Yeah, you got your product or your service. You got your stuff, you got your pad, or you’ve got your, your, you know, all of that. That’s already in your head. So just let that go for a moment, ask the question, who is this person I’m talking to?
JDM (27:16):
Not like, what do they need so I can sell them. But just who are they? I’m just curious, be curious about the person and not, you can’t grill them like third degree. Where did you come from? Where’d you grow up? How many siblings do you have? But just be curious. That’s what it’s like with a character. Curiously, these characters, this guy is, is a jerk of a leader. He’s an aircraft carrier captain that is terrible leader. He doesn’t have any sympathy of risk people. He doesn’t talk to his people. No one really looks up to them. They just do, because they have to go that’s the position, but they don’t naturally because they think all things is a jerk. Okay. What is he most worried about? What concerns him most, when a problem comes up, how does he react? It’s like, I just get curious about asking questions and you see just like popping up little detail tales about somebody, the way they, the way they respond, the way they say certain, like catchphrases will come out or certain ways of talking will come out.
JDM (28:24):
And they start to come to life. It’s I still find it challenging for me. It’s not something I, I I’m, I come to naturally, so I have to work at it, which is good, because that means I have to make it happen. You know, that’s true with, with everything, right? Whether it’s a parable or it’s a novel or, or anything else, or for that matter, if I’m writing a like a principal, like I’m writing a blog post about, you know, leadership. Well, I say to them said, give me an example of that. I try to think of an event that’s happened in my life that somehow reflects that. And I think of the people in that event, I always ask myself questions. What does that look like when it actually happens? So that’s, you know, that’s, that’s kinda where it’s at in the novel.
JDM (29:13):
There are a lot of things that happen. There’s a lot of situations or characters. They were vaguely echoes of real characters and real just because that’s, you know, that’s where I went there. Well, I dipped into to start to make it the life. You’ll hear film actors, talk about how, in order to play this role, they had to excess this memory of their own, his own experience. Like in order to play this greeting father, they had to access when their dog died and how sad they were. And I used to think that’s so pretentious. That’s like actors speaking, Hollywood actors. That’s how they talk. But I, as a writer, I started realizing that’s really true. You know, when you want to write somebody, who’s grieving, you go find a place in your life where you’ve grieved and you remember that, and it kind of opens that door for you. And so I think the, the real skill to answer your question about where characters come from, it’s empathy, it’s all empathy. You tap your empathy. And that’s where I think stories and characters kind of that’s the wellspring that they come out of.
RV (30:23):
Wow. That is so good. That is so, so powerful. I think suspense, plot lines, being curious, characters, you know, coming from empathy really, really great stuff, John, I I just admire so much what you do and, and you’re truly an artist in the way. You’ve been able to apply it across so many different things. Where do you want people to go? Okay, you mentioned this book how to write good or at least good, or which is a, is an ebook that you have, or, you know, where, where do you want people, if they want to connect with you or people who are aspiring writers or just wanting to be better at the craft of writing how can they learn more about you?
JDM (31:06):
Yeah, it’s funny because the book itself grew out of podcasts and interviews, just like this conversations like this, where people would ask questions about writing and I’d come up with an answer and say, oh, I should write that down. I only meant to do a little like 12, 14, 18 page, little sort of ebook article. And it turned into a full fledged book. So I hear it is masquerading as a physical book. I’m doing it right now, as you said, just as an, as an ebook, it’s a free download on my website. I imagine someday I’ll really publish it. And it’ll be, it become a a real boy like Pinocchio, but right now there’s a new book that you can buy. You can get free on my site, which is just my name, John David mann.com. And you go to Johnny batman.com and you’ll see up there, you know, ebook free ebook, whatever that’s, that’s, that’s what this is. I love
RV (31:54):
That. I love that so much. Well, you know, thank you for the work that you put into this because your, your characters are delightful. And they’re everything that you just described there they’re dynamic. They are real, they are multi-dimensional, they, they are people that we have all met in real life, which makes sense, because there, there are people that you have met they’re based on those, and, you know, specifically the way that you weave a tale into you, you can take one simple principle. That is a sentence like it literally could be a tweet. And from that you extrapolate this, this beautiful, wonderful, entertaining, uplifting, curious page, turning, sorry, that’s just such a bit more, it’s just such a more enriching way to get to that destination and a more effective one too, you know? And so we really appreciate your work and we appreciate you very much sharing several of your secrets here with us for free.
JDM (32:56):
I certainly appreciate it too. I love being here. And I have to say, you know, in the balance between telling a story versus teaching a principle, either paranormal, you’re always doing both. It’s a tricky balance because in my mind, the story, the story has to always lead story has to be king because the principal only works with the story as king. I got to the end of steel, fear, the novel, and turned around, looked back and realized that it was teaching a leadership principle. It’s like, it’s a parable, it’s a leadership, parable disguised as a crime novel. My parable, my parable, I have it’s, you know, w we’ll never die, I guess. It’s like they don’t go away.
RV (33:32):
That is awesome. That’s awesome. Well, we wish you the best, my friend. Thanks for being here. And thanks for your support after all these years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ll do it again. A couple of years away.

Ep 205: How to Start a Keynote Speaking Career with Shep Hyken| Recap Episode

RV (00:02):
Welcome back to the influential personal brand podcast. This is the recap edition of the episode with Shep Hyken. It’s your man, Rory Vaden. I’m rolling solo today on the recap, as you know, AJ my wife, our CEO at brand builders group. My business partner is a run and gun and a hardworking woman and mom of two toddlers. So we don’t always catch her, but I am excited to walk through this recap of what I’ve learned from Shep Hyken. And I’ve learned a ton from Shep Hyken over the years. I do every single time that I talked to him. And of course, you know, the focus I would say of this whole conversation ended up being like how to start a keynote speaking career. Shep is in the professional speakers hall of fame. He’s the New York times best selling author. And you know, here’s one thing that we probably don’t say enough directly, that we should is like, if you want to be a speaker, join the NSA, the national speakers association, like it’s ridiculous because people like Shep are walking around there and you know, so many of the people that we have on this show just walk around the halls and you can just like meet them and build relationships with them and the national speakers association.
RV (01:20):
So just a special shout out to y’all unpaid advertisement, voluntary promotion of NSA. It’s been such a huge organization for me, such an important point of my life, of our career and just encouragement. And you get you learn, you know, from really, really amazing people, which I, I have always. And you know, it just took me a back a little bit on memory lane, listening to the Shep, talk about how did he build his career in a lot of ways, very similar to how we have built ours, but you know, here’s what it boils down to. And even if you don’t want to be a keynote speaker, I would say, you know, this, this is it. Wasn’t specific to keynote speaking. It’s really specific to marketing any, any personal brand. And I’d say specifically in like a B2B environment business to business but really just marketing yourself in general.
RV (02:14):
So here’s, here’s my very first takeaway. Okay. here’s what shep’ said. He said, find a list of people, tell them what you do and get really good at doing it for them. Find a list of people, tell them what you do and get really good at doing it for people. It doesn’t get much simpler than that. And at a high level, that’s what this is. I remember hearing Larry, Winget say one time, he said, you got to have a really good product and you got to ask a lot of people to buy it from you. And if you’re not generating revenue, it’s because one of those things is broken. You either don’t have a really good product or you’re not asking enough people to buy it from you. And chances are, it’s a little bit of both, if not a lot of both. So Mike, if you’re frustrated and you go like, Hey, my side hustle is not working my business.
RV (03:08):
Isn’t growing dah, dah, dah, like you can’t blame brand builders group or your marketing agency or your social media assistant. If you’re not doing those two things, if you don’t have a really good product or if you aren’t asking a lot of people to buy it, that is like, that comes down to, to you. That is your fault. That is your responsibility. That is your decision. Like it comes down to you. You gotta make sure those two things are happening. And how do you have a really good product? Well, that’s, that’s a bigger conversation. That’s a lot of what we’re going to help you with a brand builders group. We have our captivating content curriculum, which is where you create true original IP thought leadership and intellectual property. We have world-class presentation craft, which is all the mastery level mechanics of preparing it for the spoken word.
RV (04:02):
But then when you go, how do you get a lot of people to buy it? That is, you know, a lot of the other curriculums we teach around marketing, but like one of the things that Shep said, that’s so simple as that LinkedIn is the new telephone, especially in a B2B environment. If you’re selling something business to business, which means, look, if you’re a personal brand, what are the things that we sell B2B business to business simple. You’re calling on companies for sponsorship deals. Usually it’s companies who sponsor you, not individuals, companies have big marketing budgets. They will pay for impressions. Without having to hold you accountable for specific results, they just need awareness. They’ve got money set aside for that. So that’s a brand deal. If you’re selling consulting, you typically consult with companies, you coach individuals, you consult with companies. If you are trying to sell keynotes, right?
RV (04:54):
That’s a B2B thing. It’s typically a company or an association or an organization is gonna hire you to speak. And if you’re selling B2B, like you gotta be crushing it on LinkedIn. If you’re not on LinkedIn, like, what are you doing? I literally just got off the phone with one of our longtime friends, brand builders, group clients, his name’s Ian. And he has been following our formula to a tee doing a weekly five-minute video every single week, week in and week out for two years. And two years ago when he was posting his videos, you know how many people were watching them for six, eight, like 10 views, three views, 14 views, 25 views two years later because he followed what we told him to do. Save the best for first teach what, you know, give away everything you have for free in one bite sized chunk and all random miscellaneous order and do it week and week out, hit the schedule no matter what be consistent.
RV (06:01):
He’d been doing it for two years. His average video now on LinkedIn, 8,000, 10,000 views, he’s doing multi-six figures as a side hustle. Like he’s making money on as a side hustle more than what most people make in real life. Just from inbound leads coming from the fact that he’s been following the system, teaching what he knows adding value to people’s lives give first. And if you’re in a B2B environment, do it on LinkedIn. Look, the number one reason people hire you to speak is because someone has seen you speak. It has never been easier than it is now too. To show people what it’s like to hear you speak. You can push a button on your phone, hit record and post it, show people what you do. Show them that you have a good product. And if nobody’s hiring you guess what? It’s either because you’re not showing enough people or what you’re saying, not that good, right?
RV (07:00):
It’s one of those two things. There’s a good chance. It’s a little bit of both. Maybe a lot of both, but, but LinkedIn is, you know, the B2B world there. Everybody has gathered in one spot and you just, you gotta be consistent and you gotta be, you gotta have quality and you just gotta keep on it. And and, and this has never changed, right? Like it never will change. It takes a lot of work to build a good product and a lot of work to tell a lot of people about it. And you gotta do it consistently. But if you do it for a couple of years, you’ll change your life. You do it for a couple years. It’ll change your life. That is something that we told the in few years ago, three years ago, it took them a year to believe us.
RV (07:41):
Then he started doing it. Two years later, changed his life. Like you can do the same thing, but you have to start. You have to start now. You ha you cannot wait. Now you, is it discouraging to go? Well, I’m starting from zero. Yes, it’s discouraging. We had to start over three years ago, we had to start on zero, zero emails, zero followers, zero connections. Like I spent a lifetime. I spent a career 15 plus years building something. And then I had to start over again. Zero. It’s very discouraging, but it’s the old Chinese proverb. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is right now. Right? So plant the tree, do the work, build the reps, dig the ditches, build the infrastructure and give, save the best for first. Give, give, give, teach everything, you know, for free one bite size chunk and all random miscellaneous over order and hit the schedule consistently.
RV (08:44):
And you do it. You’re going to showcase that what, you know, people are going to love you. And eventually a bunch of people are gonna show up. So you can shortcut that by doing actual sales, rather than marketing and content marketing, and actually picking up the phone and calling someone or sending a messages and send an emails and doing all that. But at the end of the day, find a list of people, show them what you do get really good at doing, doing it for them. Number two, takeaway from my conversation with Shep, which was kind of a modification of something that he said, but it reminded me. It made me think of this, which is why you don’t really market a speech. You, you market your expertise and then you deliver it in a variety of ways, or, you know, even a better way of saying it.
RV (09:34):
Like, you know, we say at brand builders, like one of the big mistakes that people do is they market the, they market the solution. They market the answer. You don’t want to do that as much. You want to market the problem. You want to be an ambassador of the problem. You want to promote the problem you want to celebrate the problem you want to sell. The problem you want to agitate the problem by talking about these are the problems. This is what people are. You know, this is what people do wrong. If you do that, people will buy from you. So you’re like, you’re marketing the problem. I mean, think about this way, right? Like if I start talking about the solution, the right way to do something, most people won’t even understand it or connect to it because if they understood it or they connect it to what I was saying, they would have already done it.
RV (10:20):
They wouldn’t have the problem. So what they do understand though, is the problem, because that’s the thing they have now, the problem is what’s right in front of their face. The problem is what is like damaging their life, what they’re struggling with day in and day out. And so when you talk about the problem and they hear you talk about the problem, they go, oh yeah. Like, this is me. This is what I, I, this, this guy, or this guy gets me. They understand me. This is what I’m struggling with. And if you can demonstrate that you understand the problem, clearly the people will hire you because they’ll automatically assume, you know, the solution. So you don’t just market your speech. You, you market your expertise. And, and I would say the first step of that is marketing the problem, celebrating the problem. You know, talking about the importance of, of what it is that you do.
RV (11:13):
I, I remember another hall of Famer at NSA is a guy named Nito Cobain who is, you know, very, very smart. One of the wealthiest people that I probably know, he also started high point university in North Carolina, which is amazing university, very entrepreneurial minded. And one of the things that Nieto said one time, this was a private group that he was talking to. There’s probably, I don’t know, less than two dozen people in the room is he said, you know, if somebody hires you to come do a speech and then they never hire you again, you missed the mark. Because if someone just hires you to come to a speech, basically just entertainment. You’re, you’re basically just a talking head for an hour. But if you’re a real expert, if they view you as an expert, if they view you as having the answer to their problem, they’re not just going to hire you for that speech.
RV (12:09):
They’re going to try to find ways to bring you into their business over and over again, because you’re demonstrating an understanding of the problem and understanding of the solution. And they are hiring you for your expertise, not hiring you to deliver a speech. If somebody hires you for a speech, you’re just a spot on the agenda. But if someone’s hiring you for your expertise, now you’re an essential part of their business. And that’s how, you know, you have real expertise. Not only do you have real expertise, but that the marketplace views your expertise because they want a relationship with you on an ongoing basis because they understand the value of your expertise. They trust that you have it. They know that they need it and your, the door, the person that they’re choosing for that. So repeat business, deeper business long-term relationships. Those are indicators that you’re really an expert in that you’re marketing yourself as an expert, and that people understand you as an expert.
RV (13:12):
Now, you know, you may say, well, no, I don’t care about that. I just want to do speeches. That’s fine. Like, but nonetheless, when Nieto talks, I listened closely any time that anyone’s super successful talks, I listened closely. And that has stuck with me. And, and that’s a little bit of like, what Shep was talking about here is you, you don’t market your speech, you market your expertise, you market a problem, and you market your ability to solve that problem. You know, the problem I’m solving is not, you need a speaker, hire me to speak the problem that I’m solving. Is there something going on in your business that is a breakdown, and you bring me in to come talk about how to move past that that’s the real value, right? And, and even when you look at the price of a speech, you go, if you’re just hiring me to come talk for an hour, then you’re just paying me for an hour of my time.
RV (14:07):
That’s going to be hard to have a lot of value. If you’re hiring me to help you solve a problem, then the value I’m bringing is not the value of the hour of my time. It is the value of solving that problem inside of your company forever into the future. That has a huge value, right? So, so that’s, you know, when we talk about breaking through she Hans wall and finding your uniqueness and marketing the problem, like all this stuff ties together. Long-Term and then the last thing which came from shep, which was super simple and super powerful and, and, you know, he’s, he is an expert on the customer experience. So it makes sense that we naturally couldn’t have a conversation without stumbling into this at some point, which where it was, he said, you have to realize that every single interaction you have with the client shapes their opinion of you, every single touch point, every single interaction that somebody has with you, your website, your brand, your team, your marketing, collateral, your emails, your social media, your podcast, hearing you on some other, other media channel, every single interaction shapes their view of you.
RV (15:28):
And you gotta be mindful of that. And you, your team’s gotta be mindful of that and your copywriters and your graphic designers and your video editors. Like everybody has to be super mindful of that. That is creating the customer experience. So what experience are you creating for your prospects and your customers? What energy are you giving off? Is it uplifting? Is it inspiring? Is it positive? Is it trustworthy? Is it credible? Do you follow through on the promises you make? Do you do what you say you’re going to do? Are you adding value? Are you giving first? And, and I loved, you know, tactically, what Shep was saying is create a journey map, create a, create a journey map around just going, what is every single touch point that a client might have with you and plot the entire process it’s big and it’s long, and you go, we got to optimize each one of those touch points to maximize the customer experience.
RV (16:27):
Make sure you’re responsive. Make sure you’re, you’re quick to get back to make sure that your emails, your voice, your energy for yourself, your team, your website, your salespeople, your videos, that they are all in alignment with the values of your company and with the reputation that you are wanting to build every single touch point, day in and day out. And that’s why we keep coming back to you every single week as part of this podcast, which hopefully if you’re loving this, would you do me a favor and just tag someone and share this with somebody who you think needs to hear this this episode or any of our other episodes. We want these to be touchpoints for people and, and we want them to be valuable to you, and we want you to keep coming back. So we’re striving every single episode weekend and week out to make it more valuable. Let us know how we can do that. Also leave us a review on iTunes and all these things that we talk about is super helpful to us and create your customer journey, map, optimize your interactions and keep showing up, keep adding value. Keep coming back. We’ll see you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 204: How to Start a Keynote Speaking Career with Shep Hyken

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. I love
RV (00:55):
When I get to introduce, to introduce you to some of my long lifetime or career long friends, and that’s what we get to do today with Shep Hyken Shep is one of those people who is amazing. And he truly is out there as a leader in his niche and his vertical and this entire industry. And a lot of people say, they’re speakers. And I know if they’re really speakers by whether or not I speak on the same stages with them. If I lose events to them, if I say, who did you have last year? And Shep is one of those guys where it’s like, oh yeah, we’ve had Shep. We’ve had him. We loved him. He’s here next year. Dah, dah, dah, dah. So he is a, in the professional speaking hall of fame. He is also a New York times and wall street journal, bestselling author.
RV (01:40):
He is a customer service and customer experience expert. And this is the author of several books moments of magic to a loyal customer, the cult of the customer several others. And anyways, we’re his here gonna share some war stories about how do you actually build a real speaking career? How do you, how do you actually sell, write and sell books? And and then also I think, how do we create a better customer experience as speakers, authors, coaches, financial advisers, small business owners, let’s call it for our customers. So anyway, Shep, welcome to the show, man.
SH (02:17):
Hey man, it is so great to be here, Rory. You’re awesome. I’ve known you for, I’ve known you for years. Many, many years. I was a kid. I was like, you were in the program when I first met, you know, you were running.
RV (02:31):
I was a volunteer that I was, I was, I was I think the first year I met you, I was the chair of the youth program because Eric Chester was like, you know, leading the thing or sometimes I got volunteered through it. But anyways man. Yeah. It’s, it’s great. So, and I would love to hear about your start to little bit. I think that would be helpful. You know, people hear these terms, New York times, best-selling author hall of fame speaker. Right. And it’s like, well, It happens overnight, right? Yeah.
SH (03:00):
It takes 20 years for it to happen overnight, but it happens. Yeah.
RV (03:04):
So how did you get, how did You get started? Like how did you get your first gigs? Like what did you charge? And you know, like in the very beginning, how did it come together?
SH (03:13):
I’m going to tell you everything, nothing will be held back. I’m going to speak a hundred percent from experience, no opinion. I want to give you data and information and if it works for you fine or not fine, if it doesn’t, but it worked for me or if it didn’t work for me, I’ll tell you that as well. So I’ve been doing this for quite a while. I don’t have gray hair that you can see, but 1983 was the year that I started my business less than a year out of college. And what had happened is go back gosh, 10 years, even before I graduated college, I was about 12. I started a birthday party magic show business. And from there I grew into working in nightclubs and eventually corporate events and other types of private parties, maybe for adult parties. But the point is, is I had a background in performing.
SH (03:59):
Now. All that meant is when I saw a couple of motivational speakers shortly, like I say, less than a year out of college, I thought I could do that. I, I, I don’t stage before. I, I, I, I think I could do that now. I just have to something I have to write about something and I don’t know what it’s going to be yet. And, and so understand that my parents taught me some great customer service skills when I was younger, like saying thank you, calling people up and asking them how they liked the show and getting specific feedback to make the show better. And I had no idea that was all about customer appreciation, process improvement, getting feedback, but that those are tenants of customer service. So I saw Zig Ziglar and Tom Hopkins and we all made, I hope most of us know who they are Zig since passed away, but Tom’s actually out there still kicking.
SH (04:46):
And I bought two items that night. I bought a set of audio cassette tapes and some of your audiences too young to know what that is. And there were eight of them. It was called see with the top, it was total motivation goal setting. I also bought a book how to master the art of selling. And I believe it’s still available today. And I read that book in about three days and I listened to those tapes over and over again, over the next maybe three, four or five days, I was immersing myself in Zig Ziglar and Tom Hopkins. And I went to the bookstore and I bought every, I went and I said, what am I interested in? I bought like three or four books in the entire, the entire bookstore business section was maybe six feet. It’s one shelf. That was it. There wasn’t racks and racks of books.
SH (05:32):
And I was drawn to the customer service experience books. So that’s how I decided I wanted to do this. And that’s how I, I kind of chose my topic at 22. You’re like early twenties, actually 22. When I saw them, I might, I did had just turned 23 when I started my business. Okay. And when I graduated college, I was asked to go to work for the family business, which they own gas stations and they own I mean, it was a small chain of station, so it was kind of a cool job. And I would go from station to station, a little dirty, getting, doing audits, going out in the, you know, checking the tanks and all that with the meter stick anyway base that was in June when I started full-time and in September they said, Hey, we’re selling the company.
SH (06:18):
I went, what am I supposed to do now? So I stayed with it for a short time as they won some things down. But that was it. I mean, a few months later I’m without a job, but that’s okay. I mean, I never really thought anything of it. I just thought this is all part of life and this is what you have to do. So when I went to the bookstore, I’m attracted to like in search of excellence from Tom Peters. And I believe Waterman is his name. And then I saw a couple of books by Ron Zemsky and Carl Albrecht on customer service. So I bought these books, read them. I said, this is it. And how am I going to get clients? And this is to your point, this is how I really got started. I went to the bookstore, I mean, to the magazine store.
SH (06:55):
And I bought every magazine. That was a business magazine, which was like, you know, there weren’t that many, I can’t remember what they were business. We, whenever they were, if they had a full page ad, I thought they’re big enough to be selling something. They probably got a Salesforce. Then maybe they need a speaker. And always the phone number was never the right phone number, take it to headquarters. It was like a call center. I went to the library. There was no internet back then. Remember you wouldn’t remember, you weren’t even born back then,
RV (07:25):
Were you? I was born in 82. So I was [inaudible]. I’ve
Speaker 5 (07:32):
Been in business almost as long as you are. That’s
RV (07:35):
Right. That’s right.
SH (07:38):
Anyway, I tore out all the full page ads. I went to the library and they had these directories. Some of them were on microfiche. Some of them were actually in big volumes of books that I can open up and find out who the current president C you know, executive VP of marketing, you know, all of the salespeople
RV (07:56):
To get clients, but you looked at it as like they’re advertising for, for them to become a client of yours. I love this. So you look them up and you’re like, this company must have some money. And so you, and so you look up their contact information every day and you could
SH (08:11):
See their sales and, and it was, you know, so I went to these directories and I made this list. I call it the target 100 and I made a list of a hundred companies. And I said and by the way, it took me, I don’t know, month and a half to go through. Because even though I said, I’m going to make 20 calls a day. You might only reach two or three people. And there was voicemail. There was no email. It was just, it was, it was, and I put everything in little file cards and I had my little tickler file and
RV (08:40):
CRM,
SH (08:41):
Like, yeah. So there wasn’t such a thing as CRM. Now I did get my first computer. One of my clients was Epson EPS. When they make printer, they also made computers and I, the guy wanted me to do a regional sales. So I went and did the meeting in exchange for expenses and a computer. And I remember my, my first database was floppy disks. All of the A’s were on this disc. The B’s were on this, this, this, oh, wow. Yeah. And so
RV (09:12):
Sorry. So you just called these people up and, and you said, you just said, Hey, I’m a speaker. And you just said, I’m a speaker. I speak on customer experience. And, and, and then you just, and they said, what’s your fee. And you just gave him some number and that’s how you start
SH (09:29):
It. And I don’t mind, you know, I share, I would tell you, I would share my number. It was $500 for a speech. And my goal was in 1983. Remember I’m only 22, just turning 23 if at the end of the year. So this is about, I would say the official start date of my business was I mean, I ramped up a little bit. I had everything ready to go, but August 1st was doors open. Yeah. And so for the next five months, my goal was to get at least two speeches. That would be a thousand dollars a month. I remember my living expenses with apartment and utilities room and board was about 11 or 1200 bucks a month. I had some money in the bank, not a lot. I said, but if I could make a thousand a month, I can make it through this year.
SH (10:12):
If I could make 2000 a month by next year, I’m in the profit zone. And I wanted to double every year. So I learned this from Zig. I created a ten-year plan from age 23, the age 32. Okay. And I hit that plan at around age. I’m going to say right around age 30 or so, I hit my mark five or six years. Yeah, well maybe more like eight, eight years, but it took eight years to where I’m ma so I had a thousand, 2,004,000, so 4,000 and then 8,000. And so it’s like, then I got a hundred thousand gross than a hundred thousand net. And then eventually my goal was a quarter of a million a year in income. And then when I hit that, I had to reset my goals. So that took me to age just under age 40. So now I had a goal for my next decade of my life.
SH (11:01):
And by the time I hit age 40, my goals were starting to change from 100% financial to lifestyle mixed with financial. I even had my wife tell me one day, chef, you’re doing really well. You’re working so hard. You’re never home. And one day you’re going to come home and nobody’s going to be here. The house will be empty. There will be no furniture and you will be on your own. And that was a big eye-opening, you know, whoa. I need to get some balance in my life because I was churning and burning. And but the part I was burning was my life was my personal
RV (11:36):
And all of this just comes from basically finding people that have meetings, contacting them, letting them know that you’re available to speak on X topic, which has not changed. Like it has not changed in 50 years. It’s, it’s, it’s the same thing now where you doing some speeches for free early on?
SH (11:58):
I, you know, I $500. It’s almost for free. Yeah. But, but I would do anything. I mean, it wouldn’t
RV (12:05):
Be considered that today, but back then, I mean, 500 bucks was still like $500,
SH (12:10):
Like making 1200 or 1500.
RV (12:12):
I mean, it’s still something. Yeah.
SH (12:14):
Yeah. And so yeah, the short answer is yes, I would do free. So between 1983 and 1988, I was really rogue on my own, no support. Nobody told me what to do about anything I had. I had found Dottie Walters, which is a name from the past, which you may or may not know. She was very involved in the national speakers association. She had a speakers bureau and she had a directory of other speaker bureaus. And somehow another, I came across her publication. So I bought her book. And so I was learning about the industry, but I was really out on my own, but in 88 I joined the national speakers association. And this is a, this is definitely a plug for NSA national speakers association in that even if you’re a coach, a consultant, even an accountant or a lawyer, if you go with the idea that all you’re going to do is learn how speakers market themselves. It’s the exact same way that every what I would call entrepreneurial and for lack of a better term, I’ll call it a practice type of business would market themselves. Yeah. There’s a lot of advantage there. Right. Anyway. And I would
RV (13:20):
Say too, when we, we S we talk about this a lot, that both, whether you’re cause a lot of our clients are financial advisors, they are accountants, they’re lawyers, they’re chiropractors, they’re whatever is that. And, and as a speaker cause, cause, cause our story about how we started would be very similar. We called out of the phone book, the yellow pages phone book, and we went and spoke for free. But even to this day, the fastest way to take, we tell, we say to clients the fastest way to go from being a stranger to a lifelong fan is a one hour presentation. And so if you just go deliver, I mean, in financial services, they call this the like dinner seminars they’ve been doing that for decades. It’s still work.
SH (14:04):
It does. And you know what, if so over the years a transition from me making those calls to my assistant, making most of those calls doing nothing, the only people I would talk to is if it was set up in advance is an appointment to talk to someone. Not because I’m a that was just seemed to be like, it’s hard to not know because
RV (14:24):
You’re a prima Donna, even though you are, but that’s not why
Speaker 5 (14:28):
You did it that way. It’s not because it’s
SH (14:30):
The same way. Right? It’s positioning you, you know, the guy who’s groveling for money is probably not the expert you want to hire well and it saves you time. Yeah. And, and you know, it was, it was efficient by the way, in the beginning, when I didn’t have an assistant, I just doing this on my own. I would be really, really busy and then nothing. So what did I do here? And that nothing time I would get back the phone and smile and dial, and then I get really busy again. And then when that war wore off, because I couldn’t make phone calls and it was really hard to, to stay and do calls from on the road compared to what you do today. You can’t, we didn’t have a cell phone back then. So anyway, what happened over time is yes. I transitioned to my assistant making most of those calls today.
SH (15:13):
It’s a little different. I mean, my business today is tons of word of mouth. I am, I don’t consider myself just a speaker. If you ask me on the airplane, what I do for a living, I’m not going to say I’m a professional speaker who, you know, but we can get, well, what did you say? I w well, I would ask you a question. Have you ever walked away from a business or gotten off the phone and you thought, wow, that was an incredible experience. That was amazing. Those people are just unbelievable. And of course, you’re going to say, yeah, I go, well, that’s what I help my clients achieve. And it begs for how do you do that? And I said, well I actually write books and hundreds of articles on customer service and experience and companies hire me either to speak at their events, industry events, corporate events, or my trainers go out and deliver training. We have online on demand, virtual video based training, you know? So then we get into the how tos, but we want to set up like, yeah, I totally understand what that concept is before we get into how I do it. But I love that guy. That’s a cool, I love
RV (16:14):
That of going to the average person on an airplane. If you say a speaker, they go, oh, that’s cool. And they would be like, I can never hire you. I don’t know anyone who needs like, but if you go this amazing customer experience and they would go, you should work with my friend. Cause they S they suck. Or you, you would like these people because they really like, you know, customer experience. That’s great winds up
SH (16:35):
A conversation as opposed to a, because sometimes, oh, I’m a professional speaker. Okay. I don’t even know exactly what that is, but it sounds good. And I’m just going to start reading my book again. And by the way, I prefer if they would read their book and that just all
RV (16:49):
You have to do is tell them you’re a pastor or you sell insurance. Or if you say like, Hey, I, I raised money for political foundation. Then they stopped talking
SH (16:58):
To you. There you go. And we won’t say which one, if we can find out who they love, then we go the opposite direction, no matter who it is. So I can be conservative. I can be liberal, whatever it takes to get them to leave me alone. So, but all kidding aside today I’d even said it, you know, we’re coming out of the pandemic, right? And we need to spend more time doing the direct interaction we need to get back in front of our clients. That’s not going to happen by hoping the phone’s going to ring. It’s going to happen because we’re emailing more. We’re going on. Linkedin. We’re finding people that whose titles and their companies match up with my criteria. We’re asking them, Hey, we’re just connecting with people that you think would be interested in my content, you know, or you and I were talking about our annual reports that we’ve created from studies, by looking at different parts of the population.
SH (17:52):
Mine is on customer service and experience. So last year we created the achieving customer amazement report. And we went out and did a study of a thousand consumers, you know, weighted to the census of the U S and we’ve got great insights. That’s what we send to our potential clients. They go, wow, this is pretty interesting. What would you like to talk about it and how it applies to your business? No charge. I would just like to learn what you do. You learn what I do, and maybe we work together. Maybe we don’t, it doesn’t matter, but we’re all friends when it’s over. And the LinkedIn is the new telephone. And it’s great because it seems like the response, first of all, you can send out a lot more queries through LinkedIn or, or make more potential connections. The percentage of getting responses are much higher, you know, based on the effort you put in, I might make a hundred calls in a week.
SH (18:40):
And I’m lucky if I talked to 10 or 12 people, and I’m lucky if it goes 12 people, maybe one of them, maybe two could be interested. And if I can amass a group of about 20 people that might turn into one or two speeches of those people that are really interested. So I actually had, at one point we tracked every number and that’s so important to track what works and what doesn’t work. So as I learned from going to the national speakers association conferences, when I make those calls, there are certain questions that I want to ask that qualify them for me. Now, I got to know my industry pretty well. So I would ask, do you hire professional speakers? And if they say, no, what’s a professional speaker, then we know they’ve not paid for one. I’m happy to explain it to them, but I’m very quick to get off the phone because I don’t want to make a two-step process in the sale. I don’t want to convince them they need to spend money and then convince them it’s me. They need to spend, I just want to find out if they go, yeah, we’ve hired speakers. Well, tell me who you’ve hired. And sometimes they’ll tell me, well, we brought in our best customers. Well, that’s not a professional speaker, but if they say, yeah, we brought in Rory Vaden, or we brought in, you know Scott McCain or Jay Baer, all my friends, I knew
RV (19:52):
Awesome. They got at least 500 bucks. If they’re bringing, if they’re pulling in those guys, they got at least 500 bucks,
SH (19:59):
Right? So, I mean, the time I got to NSA, true story, I was charging a thousand to $1,200 a speech in 1988. And when I joined NSA. So you remember I did magic as a background. I was still doing some magic shows, but I said to myself, as long as they’ll pay me the same thing as it is to speak, I’m happy to do that magic show. So for a thousand dollars, that’s a great gig for a magician. But as my fees started to go up, not a lot of people willing to pay a thousand bucks for a magic show. So I, when I joined NSA, I found a mentor. His name was Phil Wexler, still around, just as birthday, the other day, same as mine and Phil. I went and we did it. I recommended him for some speeches. And he said he was going to send me a commission.
SH (20:45):
And he owed me quite a bit of money. And it isn’t like he owed me money, but he would have paid me that money. But I said, before you write the check and send it to me, would you keep it? But I want a day of your time. I flew out to San Diego. I spent an entire day with him. And when I came back, I tripled my fee. I said, no more magic shows. And I became laser focused on just what I wanted to be hired to do. Now, could that have happened a year or two earlier? Sure. But it doesn’t matter. I was doing pretty well. Anyway. I was booking 150 dates a year. Things were good and I was making a thousand, 1200 bucks a speech. So I went up to 3,500 and never looked back. It was a little scary right away because I lost all of these clients that were used to paying me lower amounts of money.
SH (21:30):
But with by the middle to three quarters of the end of the year, I was making a gross wise as much I’d made the following year. And of course, you know, now we’re, we’re in that sequence. So it worked out real well. But the point is, that’s what I did to get started today. It’s, it’s content marketing. I really think of myself more of a media company than I do a professional speaker. And I do have a business versus a practice. Now, the speaking is like a practice. If I don’t speak, I’m not getting paid, but I’ve got trainers out there delivering my content. We’ve got influencer activity where I’m hired for several months to tweet, write articles. You know, we’ve got all kinds of, I have seven different streams of income that help offset, you know, areas that might get hit hard by a pandemic or by an economic downturn. Yeah.
RV (22:25):
Well, and I think it’s just an interesting shift in general. Like, you start out going, Hey, I want to be a speaker and you, you and I have this in common. I think there’s less and less people today. Maybe not, maybe that’s not right to say, but it’s not like, oh, I want to be a speaker anyways, you and I started going, I want to be a speaker. And then it kind of has it evolves to more of like, I’m not marketing myself as a speaker, I’m marketing my expertise of which I can deliver that to you in a variety of different mechanisms or mediums or, or outlets. And do you think that’s a necessary evolution that that happens or do you think there’s power in just going, Hey, if you want to be a speaker, just market yourself as a speaker, go knock that down. And just, that is what, you know, that’s what you deliver and that’s, that’s the only thing you do.
SH (23:16):
So a great question. And I think the answer really lies in what you want and where you are in your career. If you are an executive who worked as a high level executive fortune 100 company, and you’re at about age 55 or 60 and ready to hang it up whoever that executive is, he, or she might say, I had a lot of experience. People are willing to pay a lot for that. I’m done with the corporate world. I’m going to just go out. And this is kind of like my retirement you career, then it’s okay to have that practice. And I’m totally cool with that. You may be in that world where you’re, this is what you love more than anything. And I say, go for what you love. And if you can make a living at what you love and you actually have stability in it.
SH (24:00):
Great. What concerned me is that I know we’re not invincible, so you always have to worry about, am I properly insured either through life insurance, health insurance, you know, business interruptions, insurance, that kind of thing. But you also need to realize that, you know, you’re not in control of, you know, a pandemic shut people down for a year. You know, I know people that had the leave, the speaking business because they never did. I thought they were successful, but they didn’t save anything. And they weren’t prepared for a downturn. Well, maybe they think, oh, how long could it last two or three months? I was kind of thinking we’d be back in March. Oh, well you backed by September. Right? I didn’t realize it would be September 20, 22, right. Or whatever it is when he went. But anyway, I digress. So to your point, the question is where do you want to go first, 2000 nine 11, 2001.
SH (24:55):
Was it, was it? Yeah. And when nine 11 hit nine 11, 2001. Yep. Yeah. So in December of that year, I’d already signed up to spend the weekend with needle Cobain. We all know Nieto in this, our industry, he’s a guru. And one of the exercises he had us do is an amusement park exercise. And he says, draw your business. Like it’s an amusement park. Now I started in 1983. This is 17, 18 years later. Right. My amusement park, I thought of it in terms of like six flags. There’s that big stage, the main stage where they had that show. And then as you walked out, there’s a gift shop kind of like even going to a Disney, you know, going on the ride and then you have the little gift shop. And then my amusement park had nothing else around it that was in the parking lot.
SH (25:38):
But then I looked to the guy next to me and he was drawing an attraction here in the corner. And another one, I go, what is that? He goes, this is a mastermind group that I put together of my top clients. This over here is a membership group. I created that has, you know, 500 members that are paying me X number of dollars a month. And he had these four or five attractions. And I looked to the guy next to me, same kind of thing I want, okay, what are they doing? They’re bulletproofing themselves from having this as part of their business being wiped out because they have other areas. So I quickly pivoted, if you will, I hate that word because like you turned your back, but I was flexible. That’s the word I showed flexibility. And that I said, I know what I’ll do.
SH (26:20):
I’m going to create a training program from my speaking. By that time I’d written no, maybe two, three books. And so I went to a course designer. I found a freelancer and for about 3000 bucks, maybe 3,500 bucks a week, much more than that. They wrote my training for a two hour, half day full day and gave me ideas for multiple day programs. And then I went out and did my first full day training program. I hated it. It was like, I got to talk for a little bit. Then I have to let them work. And then I got to listen to a lot more that keynoter. But the brilliant thing was I started hiring other people to deliver this content because it was written with the idea that a person who could just pick up a facilitator guide, study it and go do it if they knew what they were doing.
SH (27:04):
And that started the second phase of my business because we were in my mind, one terrorist attack away from the annihilation of being of going to a hotel to have a big meeting, because nobody was going to put their sales people on an airplane or send them to a hotel where, you know, somebody could detonate a bomb and wipe out their company. And I know that sounds morbid, but that was the way I was thinking one terrorist attack away from the end of my business. But as a trainer, I could send trainers to their offices. They could have a training room and my people could train their people. And that’s really what started the expansion of my business. So I, you know, what’s right. It just depends what you want to do, but realize as you get into business, you know, Rory asked me how many people I have working for me,
RV (27:51):
How many people you have working for you about half of them.
SH (27:56):
But seriously, when you want to get into doing this, you start to hire other people and you can hire freelancers, but you’re still hiring a force. And you want to try to, you have to keep motivated. You have to meet. It’s a totally different game. I enjoy that game. It’s fun to me. So that’s where I am today. We’ve evolved to I have seven ways that I make money speaking, sending out trainers on demand, video based training selling books when they come out, by the way, new book coming out, I’ll be back how to get your customers to come back again and again that’s book sales influencer role where companies now hire me just to have me tweet about them, write articles about them, because I’m considered a thought leader in my space after all these years sponsorship, if you go to my YouTube channel, you might see a little ad sponsored by whoever the company is. It’s sponsoring me that month. And we have them sponsor my blog, my YouTube channel, my podcast, et cetera, et cetera. And, and so we’ve got packages for that is that six. And then, oh, number seven is special projects. Like we’ll do special video projects or consulting type projects for companies. So interesting, but it started with
RV (29:07):
One, it started really as a speaker at the speech. And then, and then you, you expanded and turn that expertise into something else. Wow.
SH (29:15):
Well I love
RV (29:18):
That ship. I mean, this is, this is super interesting and I think powerful for anybody out there, you know, going okay, how do you get started? Cause to me, you know, you did this in 1983. You know, I would, I would say for me, I did this really, I feel like between 2006 and 2000 and, and maybe 12, 2 13, and there’s not that much difference. And there’s not that much difference from today. It’s like, you got to find some people who need what you have, let them know you have it and then do a really good job delivering it. And like was pretty much that’s all there is. And then you just do it over and over again. And then at some point you get other people to do it, to do that, to do all of those same parts. Yeah. If you want to, if you want to go that route. So it, I think it’s, it’s super encouraging. And yeah. I wonder where do you want people to go ship if they want to connect with you or like learn more of what you’re up to?
SH (30:17):
Sure. Go to hike and.com pretty easy. H Y K N. There’s lots of free resources. You know, I give away pretty much everything I have. From there you can find my YouTube channel, but it’s, you know, I have 600 videos on YouTube. People watch him chairman meetings. My goal is the more you give, the more you get, they come back and give you information, you know, book you to, to share their information.
RV (30:42):
Well, and I’m, I’m curious to know, okay, so what is you? We didn’t really get into the customer experience stuff too, too much. But what would you say is one great customer service tip that personal brands could do immediately just to like, whether it’s love on their clients or love on their team or like when you go, okay. When I think of like all the speakers, coaches, consultants, practices out there, this is like a small business tip that you go, oh my gosh, like, this is a, you could just do this right away and it’ll make a, make a huge difference in your, your expense.
SH (31:17):
Well, I’m going to give you three. One is kind of strategic and this must always happen. One is a bigger project and one is something you can do right away. And I’ll do them quickly recognize that every interaction that you have with the customers, an opportunity for them to form an impression about you. So manage that interaction. It’s called the moment of truth. I can go on and on about that one, but you get the ideas. You need to see what every interaction is now. That’s number one. Number two is how do you look for those interactions? Create a journey map of every interaction that your clients would have of you from the time they might see something in a website, search on Google to get to your website, how they get to you, you know, do they reach out to you via email phone and the whole plot, the entire process, all the way to where they book you, and then what happens after the booking or what happens, where they buy you or after the sale. And so that’s number two. And that journey, map process is going to take awhile because you think you got it. And then you’re gonna find more and more and more, every little tiny interaction counts. And number three, just return people’s emails and phone calls immediately. And you’ll see what a difference that makes you can do that. Starting this moment.
RV (32:29):
Huh. That’s funny. That’s a big one for AIG. She’s super big on responsiveness. Just even you let them know, Hey, I’ll get to you. Like I saw your email, I’ll get to it tomorrow. Like yeah.
SH (32:40):
You know, it’s holiday weekend. I’ll call you first thing Tuesday or Wednesday or whatever it is. Yeah. Which
RV (32:45):
Is interesting. Cause like, you know, I think of all the people we hire that are vendors, contractors for the house, for the business. And it’s like, the number one thing is like, are they staying in communication with us? So that’s really great. Well, hyken.com. Y’all we’ll put a link to that. You can follow him, get a lots of awe. I mean his, his depth of knowledge and expertise around the customer experience, you can see a super powerful chef. Thanks for sharing. What I think is probably the, not so often shared story about how you got started in this career and have built everything that you’ve become, man. We wish you all the best.
SH (33:17):
Thank you, sir. Great to be here.

Ep 203: How to Hire Great Contractors with Hanson Cheng | Recap Episode

Listen to the episode below In today’s episode, we revisit our conversation with Hanson Cheng, a rapid skill acquisition expert, speaker, and multi-million dollar earner who helps CEOs optimize their time to ensure more freedom and flexibility. Tuning in you’ll hear Rory and AJ discuss their top three takeaways from Rory’s interview with Hanson, from […]