Ep 507: How to Generate Massive Warm Referrals | Jordan Montgomery Episode Recap
RV (00:04):
Let’s talk about how to generate massive, warm inbound referrals In your business. And we’re not gonna talk about it. I’m gonna teach you exactly how to do this, and I’m telling you, I’m gonna, I’m gonna tell You the secret of what I personally do that
RV (00:29):
Floods our Business regularly in a recurring fashion with massive warm referrals. And I can teach this to you in one sentence, and then I’m gonna share with You four Reasons for why you should do this beyond just getting warm, massive, warm referrals, even though that’s what we’re talking about here. Okay? So How do you do this? How do you generate Massive warm referrals inside of your business? It is simple. If you want to get
RV (01:06):
Referrals, you need to give referrals. That’s it. If you want to get referrals, you need to give referrals. You need to become an expert at giving referrals. You need to have great systems for giving referrals. You need to develop a heart for giving referrals. You need to develop a faith for giving referrals. If you want referrals, you have to become a master at giving referrals. And if you become a master at giving referrals, I promise, I promise you’ll get referrals in return.
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Of the leads that come into your business, mostly because you’ll be working all the warm leads and all of the normal leads that come in. It’s like you gotta have somebody to help you
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Work, work Through those. And that’s like a big part of what becomes your team.
RV (02:50):
So that’s the Secret in one sentence. I’ve done this again and again. I’ve watched AJ do it again and again, I’ve seen the clients that do this in, in their life again and again. There’s, there’s people in my life that I, I am the recipient of, right? I, there, there’s a couple people here. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll give a couple shout outs. One, I will say Randy Garn is a, is a human that just focuses on giving referrals. And he seems to have, you know, no lack of referrals coming to him, and no lack of business coming to him. John Ruland is a, is a person in my life who loves to give referrals, and he seems to have no lack of influence and, and referrals and relationships coming to him. It is there, there, there’s so many others. There are so many others. We have so many clients, so many friends who have so generously give referrals to BBG.
RV (03:41):
And they get, you know, they, they are, they’re people. I look in their life and I go, yeah, sometimes. And here’s the thing you gotta know, is that when you give referrals, sometimes you get referrals back from that person, but sometimes the referrals you get are not back from that person. They come from somebody else. But it’s, it’s creating this abundance mentality, this abundance mindset, this abundance energy, this faith mindset, this faith mentality, this, this, this, this faith mindset that pours back into you. And you have to do this. And you go, man, if I really want to get good at getting referrals, you might need to flip a switch in your brain and go, why am I not getting more referrals? Right? Like, why am I not getting more referrals? If that’s you, like, if you look at your business and you go, I don’t think I really get that many referrals.
RV (04:37):
I’m certainly not flooded with a massive number of warm referrals. And you go, then I would ask you to say the second question. How good are you at giving referrals? Because I’ve never met someone who is great at giving referrals, who doesn’t also sooner or later, eventually over time, have a flood of warm bound of, of warm inbound referrals. So you might be thinking about it wrong, right? You might be going, oh, I, I need to have better product or a more sharper system, or a, you know, something in terms of like, why don’t I get more referrals? Or you might think, oh, my clients don’t refer people. Of course they do. Everyone refers people like, we refer people that we like, and we, most of us prefer not. Most of us, all of us prefer to do business with people we know. We prefer to, to buy and sell and transact with people that we trust.
RV (05:31):
And that happens through shared relationships. So what I wanna talk about is four reasons why. Beyond just getting more referrals per se. I wanna talk about four reasons why you should become a great giver of referrals for reasons why. Okay, first one, again, you probably overlooked this. Most people that I have this conversation with overlook this point. And yet this is a key point of getting referrals. And it’s a key reason to give referrals. One of the most amazing, beautiful byproducts of giving referrals is that you keep in touch with your past clients. You keep in touch with your past clients. When we say give refers referrals, who are you going to refer? You’re, you’re, you’re probably going to refer other vendors that can serve the people that you know, like, and trust. And if it’s inside your business, the people that you know, like and trust are the people you’re transacting with.
RV (06:39):
It’s your clients and going, who can I introduce to my clients? That’s the mindset here is to go, okay, I have all these clients. A worthy referral from you is to someone who is, you know, a legitimate person, a legitimate buyer. Maybe they’re, maybe they’re a legitimate vendor. And you go, I need to think about who can I introduce to my clients and who can I introduce my clients to? What’s amazing about that, and this is the number one reason beyond just getting referrals about why you should become a great giver of referrals, is that keeps you in touch with all of your past clients. Like, the reason why I book so many people on podcasts and, you know, social media like lives and stages, you know, speakers and stuff, is not ’cause I’m in the business of that. I’m not in the business of that.
RV (07:32):
We don’t get paid to do that. What the reason that I do that is because it keeps me in touch with past clients. I’m going, oh, you need to meet this person and you need to meet this person. Well, when I am constantly thinking about who can I introduce to my clients that would be helpful for my clients, whether it’s another vendor to them or if it is potentially introducing them as a vendor to somebody else, either way it keeps me in touch with my past clients. That is why you should do this. The second reason why you should give referrals and become a master at giving referrals is because it builds reciprocity. You may have heard this, that it’s called the Law of reciprocity, and I would argue emphatically that it is in fact the law of reciprocity. It is not the theory of reciprocity.
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If you give and support and help other people, it’s not that you might have other people give and support and help you back in return. It is a law. This, it is guaranteed to happen sometimes. It doesn’t always happen from the person you’re giving to, but it always happens. And often it does happen from the person you’re giving to. Almost always it happens, although it may not be in the same form, right? It’s like, I might give a business referral and they might, they might help me, you know, move my furniture when I move my house or something like that. So it’s not always the same currency, but it is always this balance of relationship equity that, that, that, that holds and maintains. It’s it, and it is a, it is a law. So you want to learn to proactively tip this scale in your favor.
RV (09:26):
Now this Bible verse, I’m gonna share with you a Bible verse. Okay? This, this is a, a this is a, a Bible verse about tithing. Okay? So this is specifically about tithing, but it, it nails the attitude and the mindset here of reciprocity. So this Bible verse is Malachi three 10, I think. Make sure that I send that right? Yep. Malachi three 10. This is one of my favorite Bible verses. Okay? So this is from the Old Testament, and here’s what it says. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house. Test me in this, says the Lord Almighty, and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. The God of the universe is saying, test me in this.
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Now he’s specifically talking about tithing to him and saying, trust me with your money, trust me with your resources. That’s the tithe. The first 10th percent, which is what tithe means. It’s a 10th, right? The first 10th is give it back to the Lord and test me In this. There’s not very many things you know, the Lord says, test me in this. In fact, I can’t think of anything else where there’s a few things where I say, you know, do not test the Lord, but in this one, the Lord is saying, test me in this and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing. Now, this is true about giving in general, which is why I’m using this. Now, if you’re giving to another person, that person may not throw out the floodgates of heaven on you.
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They may not have the ability to, that they may not do that, but God will. You can’t outgive God. You can’t outgive the universe. It’s, it’s a law of, of nature. And, and the God of the universe who created the universe is saying just in giving money to him, saying, trust me as a, if you become a giver first, then I promise you’ll receive much more than your fair portion. And it, it, it is a measure of faith. And that’s one of the reasons why to do this is it, is it builds reciprocity, but specifically it strengthens your faith. When you are giving anything, you are learning to say you’re learning grace. Grace means giving without expectation of receipt, but it is giving. It is giving and trusting that it somehow some way will come back to you. That is a measure of faith.
RV (12:09):
And if you can learn to do that with humans, men and women, if you can learn to do that with humans there, it will also then help you develop that relationship with the Lord. And if you can do that with the Lord, it will also help you learn and develop that relationship with humans. Now, humans are not perfectly just like the Lord is, but I think the Lord often fills those gaps and go, well, I’ve been given to so and so and I was taking care of them, and they didn’t really give me anything back, and maybe they couldn’t give anything back, but it shows up somehow. And, and it is, again, it’s the law of reciprocity. Third reason why I want you to become focused on being a master giver is it forces you to become systematic. A huge part of growing a business.
RV (12:55):
Look, in, in, in my second book, procrastinating On Purpose, I said, no business can outgrow the strength of its systems. And I firmly believe that to be true today, as much as when I wrote it almost 10 years ago. Like, no business will ever outgrow the strength of its systems. A business is nothing other really than a product, a set of people and a set of processes or systems, right? It’s the three Ps. So you have to create great processes. Anything that forces you to create great processes is likely to force you to create a great business and in order to be a great giver, right? A a decent giver is someone who occasionally thinks of like, oh yeah, hey, I have a friend you should meet. But a great giver. A master giver develops systems like to systematically, proactively go, who can I introduce this person to?
RV (13:49):
Who can I introduce this person to? Inside of our members or in our, in our membership portal. For those of you who are members, if you’re a brand builders group member, you know that I have a whole training called the relationship switchboard, and I show you the actual switchboard I use. It’s just a simple sheet where I track it’s a spreadsheet where across the columns are all like, you know, the media opportunities or the speaking opportunities, and then the rows are like people who are great guests or great potential speakers for that. And all I’m doing is tracking all of those connections and relationships. And so whenever I get a new client, I am systematically thinking, and this is a private client, right? I’m talking about someone who I am working with personally, and I’m going, okay, who can I introduce this person to that would be useful for them and who they could also be useful to?
RV (14:41):
It’s systematic, right? Giving referrals to be a master giver requires you to be systematic, intentional, proactive, deliberate strategic. That’s what, if you become a master of this, it will force you to do that, which will also help force you to develop those skills and those character traits, which will help you in other parts of your business. And it will namely, help you with massive lead generation. So that is another reason to give referrals beyond just the fact that you’re gonna get ’em, is it’s gonna force you to be systematic. And then the fourth reason why I want you to become a master at giving referrals is because it reshapes your heart from a posture of self-centeredness to service centeredness.
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And I believe that that is a big part of the journey of mankind. I believe that that’s a big part of the challenge of our humanity. I believe that that’s a, is is one of the big trials of our lifetime. It is one of the biggest opportunities for growth. It is one of the biggest opportunities for personal development. It is one of the biggest calls on our life as, as, as Christians or just as good people, even if you’re not a Christian, is to go, can I mature from my childish, my childish, immature self-centered nature of only thinking about myself, wanting what is best for me, looking out for me? Can I at some point mature to being service centered, looking out for the needs of others, trying to provide for those around me, trying to make the world a better place for everyone, not just for me.
RV (16:25):
That transformation from self-centeredness to service centeredness is one of the sources of great happiness and joy and purpose in your life. And learning to give referrals makes you a master of that. I don’t think it’s an accident. Again, to give you a Bible verse, this is an Acts chapter 20 verse 35. So this is in the New Testament. This is shortly after Jesus, you know, dies, resurrected, you know, appears, and then is ascends into heaven for the final time. Paul, in the Book of Acts, this is like all the disciples talking about what happens right after Jesus ascends into heaven and how the, the movement of Christianity begins. Paul quotes Jesus directly in Acts 20, verse 35, and he says, remembering the words, the Lord Jesus himself said, it is more blessed to give than to receive. It is more blessed to give than to receive.
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Again, this is a posture that’s worth pursuing. This is a journey of a personal development transcendence that I think is, is, is a, is worth taking. This is a, a trial worth triumphing over is the journey from self-centeredness to service centeredness. And being a master referrals forces you to go on that journey and to, and, and it, and it helps shape your heart. It shapes the posture of your heart and your character in a way that is healthy for you, even if you never get another business referral. So there you have at four reasons why, to become a master at giving referrals, even though and above and beyond the massive number of warm referrals that you will get. If you just do these things, go find someone and serve them. Be helpful to your past clients in a way more than just selling to them. Introduce them to useful people and stay plugged in here for more great inspiration and tips to hopefully help you in your journey.
Ep 506: How to Scale a Coaching Business from Scratch with Jordan Montgomery
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To, you know, every once in a while I meet someone and I go, man, this person is a rolling stone. Like, this person is making a big impact in the world, and they’re gonna be big. And that’s how I feel about Jordan Montgomery. I’ve heard this guy’s name for years and we’ve kind of gotten to know each other a little bit. He became an official client, a brand builders group. Through that, our team’s really gotten to know him and he’s really, really impressive. So he is an executive coach. He coaches you know, top, top athletes high performing CEOs, entrepreneurs, et cetera. He’s also a very busy speaker, keynote speaker. And so he speaks to sales organizations, small business owners, and just talks really about high performance in general and, and has worked with he, he was a sales manager and managed top performing sales teams. So he came, he comes outta the financial services industry. We’ll hear a little bit about that. He’s got a new book coming out called The Art of Encouragement. We definitely want to hear a little bit about that. And you just wanna hear his story about how he has made the transition from somebody working in professional services to moving into, I think, becoming one of the fastest rising stars in the, in the space of sales and leadership and communication and just like personal development in general. So, Jordan, welcome to the show, man.
JM (01:24):
Rory, thanks for having me, man. So fun to be with you. Honored to be here. Fun to share some time with your audience. And for so long, I’ve respected your work, respect, what you’ve built at brand Builders. Actually heard you speak circa 2013 in Chicago, Illinois. Really, it was my first experience being in, I remember this, a Marie Vaden room, and I just thought, man, this is a guy that I wanna follow I wanna learn from. And man, just fun to grow a friendship and kind of surreal man, longtime listener. First time caller to be on, to be on your show. So thanks for having me,
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JM (02:00):
Was it, man. Yeah, you got it.
RV (02:01):
You got it. You were a speaker. You were also speaking, right? I also speaking, you were working for the company at the time. That’s
JM (02:06):
Right. That’s right. Yep. And so I was a manager at the time, and you were the outside, you know, keynote speaker, and I think it was after you had written the book, take the Stairs, and you delivered a great keynote message. And I just remember thinking, I gotta follow this guy and learn from him and continue to spend time with him. So 11 years ago, man, in a ballroom in Chicago.
RV (02:25):
So, so that’s really cool. So tell us the story about how you transitioned. You know, I think particularly in like professional services, we meet a lot of people who are, you know, they’re successful lawyers, they’re, you know, accountants, they’re doctors, they’re financial advisors, and they grow a great practice. And a lot of times they grow a great practice because they’re consuming personal development content and knowledge. And it’s a pretty common path that they go, man, I think I wanna do more of this. I wanna spend more time teaching, training, coaching others. But it’s hard to, you know, like not many people make that leap fully successfully. You’ve, you’ve done a really great job. So can you talk to us about, like, how did you go about doing that? When did it all happen? How did you kind of structure it and like, when did you kind of, you make that transition? Hmm.
JM (03:18):
Well, I wish my story was one of like, extreme success meets like extreme success, but it wasn’t that way. There were a few bumps in the road. There was actually a really large bump in the road, and the bump occurred April 1st, 2015. So I get a call from my then supervisor. I’m working in financial services for a Fortune 100 firm. I have one of the top offices and organizations in that firm. It grew really quickly. I came from kind of a blue collar background, Rory. So my dad’s a painter. Mom’s a teacher, didn’t really have any relationship with money growing up. The
RV (03:53):
Right? Iowa.
JM (03:54):
Iowa, man, small town, Iowa. Yep. One stoplight town. God bless, Kelowna, Iowa. And so, man, like when I graduated college, I just knew like I’m willing to work and my dad taught me the power of like, working hard. So I got that from dad and I worked, man, and I, I just, I was putting in the 70, 80 hour weeks. And so from 22 to 25 that business consumed my life. And I had some success. I had a lot of success. To kind of paint the picture before I tell you about April 1st, 2015, I’m traveling the country. I’m speaking at all these major conferences. I’m flying private. I’m the closing keynote speaker at a lot of major industry events. Matter of fact, I was the closing keynote speaker at one of the largest industry events. It’s 15,000 people sold out MBA arena.
JM (04:38):
I am living in like the proverbial penthouse. But I had an issue, Rory, I was overexposed and I was underdeveloped, meaning my character wasn’t really keeping pace with my influence. Hmm. I was so young and so naive. And I had sort of been on this rocket ship to like this crazy professional space that I really wasn’t ready for. And so April 1st, 2015, I get this text message from my then supervisor and he says I need to meet, I need to meet with you right away. To which I respond because I was naive. I don’t have time. My calendar’s full. Not today, but maybe some other day,
JM (05:31):
So then I’m thinking, Rory, someone on my team must have made a grave mistake. I gotta go clean it up. ’cause I’m, you know, sort of player coach. I’m running an office, but I’m still doing financial planning. I walk into his office a couple hours later, and this is what he says to me, Rory, he said, you haven’t been malicious or intentional, but you’ve been careless and casual. And when you’re casual, you create casualties, said, Jordan, this is gonna be really uncomfortable for you, but today you’re the casualty. This will be your last day with our firm.
JM (06:03):
The story was, there was a person on my team who had taken a test on, on be on my behalf, was a continuing education assessment. And that industry, that’s an infraction. It can’t happen. But moreover, there were just like things that I was missing, Rory, in my development and my leadership wasn’t dotting i’s wasn’t crossing the T’s and it was within his right to say, I don’t trust your wisdom, discernment, your leadership, your development, and so you can go work somewhere else. You just can’t work here. Well, this was devastating for a 27-year-old man. He found all of his identity in achievement, status, accomplishment. It, it becomes more devastating. The company sends out a company wide email with my name on it that explains my termination, kind of at a high level. I get about 3000 text messages within a matter of, you know, 24 hours.
JM (06:54):
And I just sort of go into hiding. I didn’t just lose my job. I lost all my money. I was involved in some real estate deals. They go sideways ’cause they weren’t structured properly. And I literally, Rory go from like the penthouse to the outhouse overnight. A guy by the name of Tim Bohannon scoops me up, says, you can come work for me. Same firm, min apple, Minnesota, I’ll give you a second chance, but here’s how this is gonna work. No speaking, no training. You’re gonna rebuild your business and rebuild your life and I’m gonna help you do it, but it’s gonna be really tough. And it was tough. So for two years, man, I’m in this valley season I think God does his best work in the valley. And I read my Bible and I got connected to a church and I started to call home to mom and dad and rebuild some relationships that I had sort of let go of.
JM (07:40):
And God just met me in that place in a really, really broken place. And I met my now wife who was coming out of a rough divorce. So we kind of met both in a broken place. And what I didn’t know, Rory, is God was preparing me for my biggest leadership job, which was gonna be becoming a daddy to two little girls, ages five and three. I dated Ashley for six months. We got engaged, we got married. Six months later I moved back home to Iowa. I’m still doing financial planning. I looked at her and I said, babe, I just, I got this itch for coaching. I started coaching five people. Coach 10 got open doors, 10 turned into a hundred, a hundred turned into a thousand. And I left the financial planning business behind. And I say all that to say this for most of us, we wanna pivot from a place of strength.
JM (08:28):
Like we think that it’s like, again, extreme success meets extreme success. But for me it wasn’t that way. Like I think God’s preparation was packaged as pain and I had to go through some really, really tough stuff to ultimately get to where I’m at today. And I want people to know that about my story. And I write about that in the Art of Encouragement. It’s actually the first chapter. And we talk about the art of character, encouragement and encouraging people in valley seasons. And man, God just met me in a really unique place and I was fortunate to have some people that stepped into my life who encouraged me and cared for me in a really unique and special way.
RV (09:09):
Mm-Hmm.
JM (09:28):
That’s right. So I moved back home to Iowa, kind of moved the practice with me. I still planned to grow that business, right? So I’d rebuilt the business. I didn’t plan Roy to start a coaching business. I just thought I’ll coach a few people on the side as I’m running this financial planning business. But I, I can’t explain it other than like, I think God blessed it, but I think I also had to I had to be humbled. Like there had to be something in me that changed for me to really be ready to do that work at a high level. And so it’s that old adage that like, sometimes God asked to do something in you before he can do something with you. So I think he just changed my spirit, my empathy, my compassion, my heart for people and, and then blessed it man. Like yeah, today we get work with pro athletes and high level CEOs and I got a team of 22 people who does this work at the highest level around the country. And it’s been a, a real joy.
RV (10:20):
Mm-Hmm.
JM (11:01):
Yeah, so let’s speak to some brand builders who wanna scale and we didn’t do everything right. So full disclosure, there was so much that I did wrong and there’s things that I would redo. But if there’s one thing that we did right it’s that I think I was willing to let go early on and trust and empower some other coaches. Hmm. And I’m really proud of that. I think for so many of us, we, we can be control freaks as type A, you know, leaders of people. But I realized early on, like, unless I’m just gonna sell my time and fill every slot on my calendar and live sort of a miserable life that’s totally consumed every hour of my day by work I’m gonna have to figure out a, a different way to do this. And so Rory, I I just started connecting with other people who do some coaching. They were established leaders who wanted to take on a handful of clients. And we sort of just organically grew the business and I wanted to make sure that I over-delivered in every situation. So we had a really referable brand. We grew our business through word of mouth scale to team, but I let go early. And our friend Craig Rochelle says this, you can have control or growth, but you can’t have both.
RV (12:15):
Mm-Hmm,
JM (12:18):
Up control was really scary. But I learned to just sort of step into the pain of being less than excellent. I didn’t have all the answers, I just realized that I needed to build the plane as I fly it. And I had to do that with the help of other good people. And also that there’s other people that had expertise that I didn’t have. And so yeah, letting go early was for sure a, a key move for us.
RV (12:42):
Mm-Hmm.
JM (12:50):
Yep. Yep. So they’re all 10 99 independent contractors. Some of them have 40 clients, some of them have five clients. Some of ’em will speak 50 times a year. Some of them will speak five times a year. And so they’re all different in terms of their capacity, their background, their skillset. But I wanted to build sort of a robust team where from a personal development, leadership development place, we can help and equip just about anybody in any situation. So if somebody comes to us, says, Hey, I wanna coach, I wanna grow my development in most cases we have an answer. Not always, and I certainly don’t have the answer, but because we have a team, we’re I think uniquely equipped to help a variety of people.
RV (13:31):
Mm-Hmm.
JM (13:45):
Okay, so I’m gonna say this tongue in cheek because this is the Brand Builders podcast, right? And we’re talking to people who wanna build a brand. So you should build a brand, but you should also just be really, really, really good at what you do. I was having this conversation with John Maxwell the other day, Rory, and he said, you know, so many people come to me because they want me to like, put my stamp on them. You know, they want me to sign off on them or help them kind of build their name or thrust them out into the world and give them a bigger platform. And John said, I, you know, I can do that in some cases, but what happened to just being really, really good at what you do? Like he said, a lot of young people should be worried less about like their reputation and brand and more concerned about being really good at what they do. Now, this is the Brand Builders podcast, Rory, you’re thinking, okay, hold on. Like, we still want people to build a brand. They need to,
RV (14:42):
No, I’m not. I, that that is, that’s how we define brand is reputation. Like it is, right? Brand is not, it’s not reputation. You’re, you’ve got pretty websites and nice videos and beautiful colors and, and, and nice fonts that pair well together. Like, that is not what brand is. Brand is reputation. That’s, that’s how we do, that’s the core of how we find it. It define it. So like, I’m, I’m Amen. I I think I’m, I’m, I’m behind that a hundred percent.
JM (15:11):
Well, you and I, yeah, you and I align in terms of, I think how we think about growth and scale and brand. And you know, for me, I just realized early on, like, I need to overdeliver and I need to make sure that I’m really good at what I do. And we’d ask for, you know, an endorsement, a testimonial, connection, introduction. And, but I think it was really through being good at what we do and developing reputation that allowed us to scale.
RV (15:33):
Mm-Hmm.
JM (16:02):
That’s part of the reason that we’re working with brand builders full disclosure, is because we have a lot of work to do and, and we have opportunity to grow. And, and I would say, yeah, a lot of what we’ve done is, you know, we’ve built the brand around me, which is both good and bad. But I think again, we’ve, it’s gotta be less about me and more about the company. And I think we’re in that transition phase sort of right now, transparently Rory, of figuring out like, how do we move this away from Jordan and more towards team? Because we we’re fortunate that we do have a lot of just inbound, you know, inquiries based on building reputation and brand. But then there’s some strategy that goes into it as well. We host some webinars, we do some live events, virtual events. So we’ve been really fortunate to spend off opportunity from that. And then when those opportunities come in, my brother, who’s the director of coaching sort of filters those opportunities to the appropriate team members. But we have a lot of work to do. You know, I think we’re just getting started in so many ways in terms of what God’s called us to and what we hope to eventually build.
RV (16:58):
Now you’ve also done speaking so simultaneous. So you’ve, you’ve built a great coaching business, which I love. And I, I love the coaching model ’cause I just, I think it applies massive value to the customer quickly. It app it, it applies real significant meaningful revenue to the coach. And it’s, it creates, there’s a scalable opportunity and great, I think great content comes outta great coaching conversations and all that. But then speaking is very different. That’s a very different skillset. It’s a very different business model. It’s like more of a B2B where coaching, coaching is like business to consumer speaking is like business to business coaching is one-on-one speaking is one on many. You know, I think coaching is, is like, you know, very organic and I think speaking is much more like polished and like you, you know that, so how did you, when did you really start? Did you, when did you start building the speaking side of things and how fast did that take off compared to the coaching business?
JM (18:02):
Well, they’re uniquely tied together to your point. I would speak and then because I spoke, I would naturally have, you know, inquiries on the coaching side of the business. And like any other speaker just like you, Rory, like I’ve become more selective over time on what fits and what works. In the beginning though, if I’m talking to some folks who wanna speak or maybe you’re doing some speaking and you’re trying to scale that business, like I, I would just go back to be good at what you do and also be willing to do stuff either for free or for very little. If there’s one thing I’m proud of, like when we started that business I would just, I’d speak and I’d speak to small groups. I’d speak to churches, I’d speak to youth sports teams. And I just, I never I was never too good for that.
JM (18:47):
And I’m, I’m proud of that. And some of our best relationships that we have today, Rory came out of those environments and I see so many people that wanna speak who aren’t willing to do that work. I’m talking to one of the top speakers on the planet, like Rory Vaden is a, well-known, unbelievably gifted keynote speaker. But I think part of your magic, Rory, is you had humility and still do today to serve and add value and jump in where God’s called you to reach people. So, you know, in the beginning it was like, man, I do stuff for a cup of coffee or a really small check or sometimes, you know, again, just for free for the relational opportunities. But I was always really keen on follow up, making sure that I communicated the fact that I didn’t want this to be a one-time engagement.
JM (19:34):
Like, Hey, I would love for our impact to go beyond today. I would love to better serve your organization in a deeper and more intentional way. And so we had a really strategic follow up process to engage with the company beyond the stage. And I think that’s where so many speakers go wrong, is they come in for an event, they get a 25,000 check or whatever the check is, they feel good about it and they move on. And there’s really no process for engaging with that culture or with that group of people in a deeper way. So for us, that became a big part of growing the company, is making sure that we had a follow up process that was really dialed in.
RV (20:07):
Mm-Hmm.
RV (21:01):
I was doing high schools, I was doing cheerleading teams, I was doing standup mic, you know, open mic nights to four people at some crummy like com. Yes. You know, comedy bar like a anywhere and everywhere. And I did, you know, hundreds of Toastmaster groups that were all like between three and three and a, a large audience was like eight people. You know, local real estate offices and car dealerships. Like, I mean, I was going anywhere that people would listen for for like three years, four years, like a, a, a hot minute. Did most of your speaking engagements evolve out of that? So basically was it like, speak for free, do an amazing job, get referred to people who have money, or was it like, let’s build a system to go prospect people who have money and pitch me as a speaker?
JM (21:55):
I think it was a combination of both. I think, again, what worked for us is I knew the audience that I would work well with. So first off is like, be really thoughtful. Like as you continue to grow experience and you gain confidence, then I think be strategic and thoughtful about where you would work. Well, so I knew my, my deal, Rory, is I would work really well with folks. You know, the emerging professional, typically under 40 years old, he was trying to grow a sales oriented or people oriented business. Mm-Hmm.
JM (22:38):
And we, and then we’d have, you know, a lot of coaching inquiries that would come off of that. From a speaking standpoint, I would just follow up with the person who booked me to speak and I would just be really candid. I think, you know, so often this isn’t complicated. Like, I think we just, we overthink it. I’d just say like, Hey, I really enjoy being with your people. I love speaking to organizations like yours. If there were three to five people that you think I should be spending time with, I’d love to know who those folks are. And in the spirit of adding value yeah, I’d love an endorsement or testimonial. Like I just, it’d mean a lot to me if you’d be willing to share a couple, you know, kind thoughts, remarks about the speech. And so it was never like, invasive and it, I didn’t, never felt like I was asking for too much. But I wanted their feedback I wanted their endorsement, and if they were kind enough to make it an introduction, I would always gladly take it.
RV (23:26):
Mm-Hmm.
JM (23:44):
Yeah. And I, lemme say this, I think a lot of folks focus on the referrals that they get and they’re not focused on the referrals that they give. So like, if you’re a speaker, for example, if you’re doing what we do, I wanna try to out-give, I wanna try to give more than I get now over time, that, that, that takes on a new shape and form. But in the beginning it was like, okay, if I spoke to an organization, I knew I could introduce them to other speakers or other thought leaders or other people in their industry that they needed to know. And so I was always trying to be really strategic about that as well. Like, Hey, you need to meet Rory, or you need to meet David Nurse, or, Hey, for your next event, you need to bring this person in. Maybe I can get ’em at a discount or maybe I could get ’em to do something for free. Here’s this event that I’m gonna be a part of. I’d love to take five of you with me. You know, I I just was trying to find unique ways to add value. But then that also helped on the referral side, right? Like people, people were more willing to give me referrals, Rory because they knew I was reciprocating and I was interested in adding value and, and giving referrals.
RV (24:47):
Yeah, I mean, to this day, to this very day, that is the number one way I get speaking engagements is because I’m introducing my friends to my past clients. And it’s probably, the ratio is probably like three to one, probably for every three I give, I get one back. But if you keep doing that and doing that, then like, it just keeps growing and growing. And what’s interest, what, what I’ve realized is it’s it that actually is my follow up strategy for keeping in touch with my past clients is introducing them to other speakers because they need a speaker every year, or multiple speakers. Most of ’em at this point, you know, a lot of times I’m one of like several speakers and going like, it gives me a reason to stay in touch with them and see how they’re doing and what’s going on with the business.
RV (25:38):
And like, a lot of times what happens is they go, Hey, it’s been four years since we’ve had you, we should bring you back. And it’s like, I’m not even trying to do that. I’m literally trying to go, how can I give to, you know, who, who, whoever our, our friends or up and comers and that, that kind of a thing. You know, and to your point, I think it’s important to speak in front of other speakers for that reason is like when, when a speaker sees you, sometimes they’re the, they’re the re the best marketing strategy you have. Like, you know, like I’ll sometimes I’ll speak at speakers events, you know, like, I just did this for John Maxwell and I was like, look, the requirement is you have to sit here and watch me speak. That’s all I want. I just, but I want you to sit here and I want you to have the experience as an attendee of what it’s like to be in the audience because I know that that always turns into more fruit for everybody. And you know, so amen. About, and that’s, you know, the, on the referral side of giving out, you know, giving more than you get, get, it’s like that applies for every business at every level. That’s right. Services. Like, that’s right.
RV (26:48):
The key to getting referrals is to give referrals. It’s that simple. And nobody does it. Nobody does it.
JM (26:53):
It’s crazy, isn’t it? Like I’ll say this because you’re a really, really well connected person, Rory because you’re a connecting person. Mm-Hmm. So like, if you’re listening and you’re like, man, I wanna be more connected, then start connecting. Because connecting people are connected people and connected people are connecting people. So like, if you understand just the art of adding value, you might be listening and going, well gosh, I’m not Rory, I don’t have high level introductions that I can make. Well, here’s what you can give, you can give your attention, you can give your time, you can give your empathy, you can give your counsel. Like, it doesn’t always have to be an introduction, but just get obsessed with giving and adding value to people. Overdelivering, somebody says, Hey, what do you look for in a new hire? Like if you’re gonna hire somebody in your organization, what do you look for? I would say I look for the person who’s hardwired to overdeliver. Mm-Hmm.
RV (28:15):
That’s so good. That’s such a wise, I I love that Jordan, that that connection between just be connecting because like yes, today I am introducing people to the biggest stages in the world. I mean the biggest speaking stages in the world, but it’s like all I’m doing I was is I’m doing the same thing I was doing when I was speaking at Perkins. I was like, Hey, I spoke at this gig at Perkins, like there’s this little book club that meets like, would you wanna speak there? It’s, it’s just the same habit but at a different scale and a magnitude, which is just the, you know, happens organically over time if you do that. I love that idea. If you just you’re a well connected person because you’re a connecting person. Alright buddy, I know we only have a few minutes. So you have the art of encouragement. You’re a fantastic encourager. You’ve encouraged me in and out of just this conversation alone,
JM (29:20):
I think encouragement for so long has been a topic that people either engage in or they don’t. So a leader will say something like, I’m an encourager or I’m just not much of an encourager. So I think it’s sad that we see it that way and we don’t see it as an art. I think it’s an art form. It’s an art form just like any other leadership skill. And so we wrote the book, the Art of Encouragement. There’s 10 Arts if you wanna truly encourage and recognize the people around you. I think it changes relationships. I think it’s a universal language that people understand. And I think it taps into our most basic social and relational psychological need, which is the need to be known, seen, and valued. And so my belief is that if we can get busy encouraging people in real and authentic ways, we can change relationships, change lives, and help people feel seen, valued, and understood. And so yeah, I’ve just been the beneficiary of some world-class encouragers and it was a book for me that was easy to write because it’s been such a huge part of my life. So that’s why we chose the topic.
RV (30:21):
Yeah, I remember Zig Ziglar used to say all the time, encouragement is the fuel on which hope runs. Which was basically to say, if you keep encouraging people, they will continue to have hope and they will keep going. If you stop encouraging people, they lose hope. And so they stop, you know, they stop pursuing. And it’s like, what, what blows my mind about encouragement is that it’s free and it’s unlimited. Right? Right. Like, you can give it, you can give it. And I think to take what you said about connecting the same thing applies to encouraging is like if you’re a great encourager, you will always be encouraged.
JM (31:00):
That’s it.
RV (31:02):
Yeah. And I think your life is evidence of that. Jordan and I, I watch, I watch What’s Happening to You and it excites me. ’cause I feel like I love it when I go, oh, there’s the good people are winning. Like, it’s still, you know, there, there’s a lot of places in the world where like, oh, you know, the, the best marketer is, you know, looks like they’re winning or the, you know, the richest person is winning. But it’s like, nah. Like ultimately it’s still the good guys still win. If you, if you do all the work and you do and you do the things, and I see that happening with you, that’s very convicting to me. And and I love what you’re doing, man. You are, you’re on the right path. I mean, it’s just like you can’t do all the right things, right? You can’t like do all the right things and have it not end up in a good place.
JM (31:46):
Hmm.
RV (31:48):
And so where do you want people to go? So Art of Encouragement is the book July coming out July 24th. So right now, July 24th, 2024. And where do you want people to go to get the book? Because you’ve got some bonuses and stuff that you’re giving away. Yeah,
JM (32:06):
Yeah, yeah. Go to the Art of encouragement book.com. You could register for a free webinar John Gordon Ryan Leak, David Nurse and Jess tro. We’d love to have you that webinar’s taking place on July 12th. There’s some other freebies and we’d love to hang out with you, get to know you better have you a part of our community. But or the book, we’d love for you to read it. We’d love for you to share it with a friend. Yeah, I think this is a universal language that the world understands. And to your point, Rory, it’s free to give our our listeners, I’ll, I’ll leave us with maybe this final question. John Maxwell asked this question one time. He said how do you know if somebody needs encouragement? Like, how are you to know that? And then he answered his own question and he said they, they have a pulse.
JM (32:54):
You know, like the world needs encouraged. I don’t care if you’re the most successful person on the planet or the least experienced person in your industry. You need to be encouraged. And I do think it’s fuel. And we’d love to help people with that. And so yeah, go to the go to the website Art of encourage book book.com. We’d love to have you for the book launch webinar on July 12th. Book drops July 24th, Rory, God bless you. Appreciate your friendship man, and all the help that you’ve offered. Let me say this. Your company is top-notch. You communicate at the highest level you follow through, you touch base, you connect. Like what you are building at Brand Builders is so significant and so special. We will work with you until the end of time because we just feel cared for, valued, seen, understood. And again, the fact that you’re having me on this podcast is just more evidence of the way that you care and the way that you show up for the people that you work with. So thank you, man, for your support and your friendship really means a lot.
RV (33:55):
Yeah, buddy. Well, it’s, it’s a pleasure. We, we started this company to find mission driven messengers that we could get behind to go. These are people that we want to teach, what we have, what we’ve learned to go help them, like make the world a better place. And, and, and you represent every part of that brother. So we wish you all the best. Thanks for being here and we’ll catch everybody next time on the influential Personal Brand podcast. Good luck, Jordan.
JM (34:20):
Thanks for having me, Rory. Be well. God bless.
Ep 505: What’s Your Competitive Advantage | David Avrin Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
What is your competitive advantage? Okay, that’s the conversation for today. And this really spawned from a conversation that I had on the influential personal brand podcast with a really good close personal friend Dave Avrin. And he just wrote a book called Ridiculously Easy to Do Business with. And part of our conversation was, what makes it easy for people to do business with you? Or in other words, what’s your competitive advantage? And so this was a good enough conversation that I thought, this is the pullout of what I would like to talk about in this recap version of that conversation. So number one, let’s talk about what is not your competitive advantage. It’s not your people, right? I think we could all say we have great people. I say brain Boulder’s Group. Our people are our secret sauce. And not one of them, but all of them, they are amazing.
AJV (01:00):
They care, they have integrity, they have work ethic, they are smart, they are fast. But I also have like 10 entrepreneur friends who would say the exact same thing about their people. And so I would just encourage you that it’s not your people, right? Having great people should be a prerequisite for being in business. I know not all companies would say that, and there are some cultures that need work, but I would just encourage you that your competitive advantage is probably not only your team. I think it’s a part of what makes you awesome, but it may not be your competitive advantage. Okay? Second thing that it’s probably not is your high quality product. There are lots of high quality products and services. I am in three different coaching programs right now and for three different reasons, right? I’m in the EO Entrepreneurs organization and it’s a huge part of that is the business community that I have and the business education and business resources.
AJV (01:59):
I have a life coach Pete Wilson is my life coach, and he has a phenomenal program. It’s a high quality service. I’m in the Wellspring Mastermind, which is for Christian entrepreneurs, and it’s about how do you turn your, your business into a kingdom building empire, right? It’s say, I wanna do God’s work. I really genuinely do. I want my business to be reflection of my faith in Jesus Christ. And that is an, it’s a great quality program, but I don’t know if I would say for any of them is a quality program, a quality service, a quality product, their competitive advantage. ’cause Again, having a quality product or a quality program should be requirement for entry, right? Because if not, the market’s gonna snuff you out, right? You’re not gonna have growing customers, you’re not gonna have exceeding revenues because if you’re, if the product isn’t good, if it doesn’t work, if the program or the service, if it’s no wino, people aren’t going to keep buying it.
AJV (03:00):
They’re not gonna refer it. And so I would encourage, it’s also probably not a quality product. I would say low prices. It’s also probably not your competitive advantage. Tons of places have low prices. I would encourage you that it’s probably not your customer service, right? I would encourage you that it’s not a laundry list of other things, but I think what most people say is it’s our people, or they say it’s, it’s our unique program. It’s our unique service that’s our high quality product. And I would just encourage you that those probably aren’t it, right? That’s probably not your unique competitive advantage. And so how do you figure out what is your competitive advantage? Because if you would’ve asked me what our competitive advantage was before I had this conversation and before I did this work, and before I really sat down and thought about, I probably would’ve said our people, right?
AJV (03:52):
It’s our people. And if not that, I would’ve said it’s our community, which is also our people, right? It’s the community that we have built within Brain Builders Group. And then I started really thinking about it and I’m going, okay, maybe that’s not it. And how to rephrase that question is what makes it ridiculously easy for people to do business with you? And if you don’t know the answer to that, then I would encourage you to do a couple of quick things here. One, ask yourself, what would your customer say? And if you don’t know, go ask them. Be like, Hey, what do you like about doing business with me? What do you think are competitive advantages? And what would you say is the most easy thing about working with us? Or perhaps the question is, what’s the hardest thing about working with us?
AJV (04:45):
What is not easy? What do you wish was better? And perhaps there’s some gaps that you need to fill there. Second thing I would do is I go through your own processes as a consumer. So like one of the action items that I literally have here on my to-do list post this conversation is I need to go and go through our funnels as a consumer with a new email address so nobody can identify it. I need to schedule a call with their sales team. I need to request a customer care call. I need to email all of our different community listservs and check our response time. How do they respond? I need to be like, how many clicks does it take me to do this? I need to go through our funnels. I need to make sure no links are broken.
AJV (05:32):
I need to go through and, and experience what it’s like to be a new customer as well as a, a veteran customer, a brand builders group. And what I wanna do is I wanna go through that process and look for friction. I wanna look for all the places that there’s rub. Where is there a delay in response time? Where is it that you can’t have a human conversation? Where is it that the automation isn’t firing correctly? Or is it our calendar isn’t available enough or opportunities aren’t present enough or what is it? And I don’t know where the points of friction are, but it’s my job to find them. It’s not my customer’s job to find them. It’s my job. It’s the business owner to find those points of discomfort or challenge or, or friction. And then it’s my job to help remove those, right?
AJV (06:22):
And so when I was sitting here and going, okay, if I don’t know the answer to that, I’m gonna ask my team what do they think? And after that, I’m gonna ask our clients what do they think? And then I would also like to ask our affiliate partners, our referral partners prospects who never bought from us. It’s like, can you tell me why
AJV (07:07):
And to be able to say that with full authenticity and integrity and confidence of going, we don’t get it right a hundred percent of the time, but man, like we get it right most of the time here. And this is what you can expect. This is what makes us different. And this is what makes us unique. And I think that’s a really important thing that we all need to know, not only for us as individuals and our personal brands, but for the extension of that which is our business. And I think if you don’t know, you gotta go through the process of asking the questions to yourself, to your team, to your customers, to vendors, to prospects, to referral partners or affiliates, whoever you have, right? Whoever interacts with your business. The next is you have to go through the process of what it’s like to be a prospect for your business, to be a consumer of your business, and find those points of friction and also identify those points of ease, like what worked really well.
AJV (08:01):
And take all of that and go, man, if I were to boil it down and go, what is my competitive advantage? Here’s what I would say. Here’s what I would say. And so the question is, what is your competitive advantage? And if I’m telling you it’s not your people and it’s not your high quality product or service, and it’s not li it’s not likely your cost and it’s not likely your technology and it’s not likely your customer service team and it’s not likely those things, then what is it? What makes you truly unique amongst everyone else who does what you do? And I’m not talking about just your personal brand right now, because as a individual, I’m already unique, right? There is no other AJ Vaden on the planet. No one else has my unique set of brand DNA. No one has my life stories or experiences. They don’t have my
AJV (08:54):
Thoughts, feelings, emotions. They are not me. I am already unique. I am talking about your established business which is an extension of your personal brand, but it’s a, you know, a conglomeration of your products and your service and your team and your people and your clients. Like, what is that competitive advantage? And if you don’t know, we’ve given you several different action items to go through. And if you’re still pondering that, then I would highly encourage you pick up this new book which I’m a major advocate for by David Rin, which is ridiculously easy to do business with. And you can pick it up on Amazon. There are 28 things that it questions you on. It encourages you to investigate, it challenges you and it really gets you to ask those deeper questions that help you really uncover what is your real unique advantage in the marketplace that allows you to continue to do business, but not just do it, but do it well, do it exceptionally well in the service of other people. So what is your competitive advantage?
Ep 504: Ridiculously Easy To Do Business With | David Avrin
AJV (00:01):
Hey everybody, and welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is AJ Vaden here, one of your co-hosts. And today is Uber. Uber, super duper special because I get to interview a very good close personal friend. In fact, we’ve been online together for already 17 minutes, and I just finally hit record.
DA (00:24):
It’s time for others to join in this conversation just a little bit
AJV (00:28):
AJV (01:22):
It’s why books are so important. It’s like you can’t do for yourself what others you can do in community. And that’s what you did for Rory. And Rory still tells everyone that you’re his mentor for it’s a lifelong mentor. But you’re a close personal friend. I think you’re just so wicked talented. You’re the best dad, awesome husband. So anyone who is listening, I would just encourage you, this is kind of one of those episodes that you just wanna stick around for because we’re gonna be talking about what it’s like to become a highly paid professional speaker. What it’s like to write several books and more importantly of what his new book is about is how do you become ridiculously easy to do business with? And it doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re at in your journey, what your business is, we all should want to become ridiculously easy to do business with.
AJV (02:11):
So this is an episode for you, right? Sometimes I go, here’s what it’s for. Here’s what it’s not for, but today it’s for you. It’s for all of you. So with that, let me give you a little bit of the formal accolades and then we’ll jump right in. All right. Here’s what you need to know about Dave Rin. He’s one of the most in demand customer experience speakers out there. He also does tons of consultings for companies all around the world. He is A CSP, which is a certified speaking professional for the National Speakers Association. He’s a global speaking fellow. He has spoken in 24 countries around the world, and, you know, you have a lot of years left. So I’m, I’m thinking that you could probably hit 50, right? So I think you should be going for 50 countries at minimum. His insights have been shared all across all media, all around the world. And at this point, what, how many, is this your fifth, sixth book?
DA (03:06):
This is my seventh book altogether. My seventh book, sixth business book. I also wrote a sappy Dad book in there. But yeah, my sixth business book,
AJV (03:15):
Y’all,
DA (03:17):
Y’all
AJV (03:18):
Such a lifelong. And here’s what I would say. It’s like, I think this is like one of the, those great conversations where there’s just a, a firsthand wealth of knowledge, right? Like the co the day’s conversation isn’t gonna be about things that you pulled from other places or things that you learned. It’s what you do. It’s what you live. It’s, it’s how you’ve done this. And that’s kind of where I wanna start. As you might be somewhat newer to some of the people in our audience, and we have a lot of people in our audience who aspire to write a book one day Sure. And speak on stages one day. So what I would love for you to share with everyone is, how’d you get into this? How long have you been doing it? And what should that aspiring speaker or aspiring author know? What do they need to know?
DA (04:02):
Sure. Well, I, I think first I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the, the, the lovely introduction and the acknowledgement, you know, it was, or in my careers. I, I look back at, at you and, and Rory and the, the tremendous work and the, and the pride I have welling, welling up inside me. I, I feel very paternal, but, but very proud. I, when I met early or met Rory, he was 19 years old and in incredible potential. And I, I love that line that says, for those of us who have enjoyed a measure of success, it’s important that we send the elevator back down and, and, and to help up. And I watch what you do now, and both of you and the audience and the, and the people and the brands that you’ve built, and the careers that you’ve bolstered is phenomenal.
DA (04:44):
I mean, my, my background and everybody has a background, right? Everybody starts somewhere. And, and I was in marketing and public relations for many, many years. I helped organizations craft the words they use to better describe what they do. That was the early part of my career. I, I worked for some, some major brands and, and was on staff. I was the PR director of Children’s Hospital in Denver, Colorado in my early twenties. And I had great success in generating publicity and coverage and on Good Morning America and Oprah and today’s show and all the magazines. But the world has changed in a significant way. And what was then back trying to get on magazines on our radio shows. Today, of course, it’s blogs and podcasts and different ways for us to communicate. But I, I made a transition about, about 25 years ago as I realized that that you can actually get paid to teach what you know.
DA (05:37):
And so after having a, a reasonable career in this work, I, I was invited to speak at an organization and, and it was just, it was to the core who I was. ’cause I think I’m, I’m a teacher at, at the core. And, and it just grew from there. So now we’re in my 25th year. I speak for a living full time, and I leverage that for consulting. And we have a, a variety of others, you know, assessments and, and, and that as well. But, but to the core, it’s, it’s, I I love sharing from the, from the front of the room. As you had mentioned, this is my, my sixth book. And I think all of that’s important because it’s important to stay relevant. It’s important to stay current. And we look back at what we knew 10 years ago and, and we better know something different today if we’re teaching the same things and sharing the same information and strategies that we did 10 years ago.
DA (06:28):
It’s antiquated how we buy, how we connect, how we learn and pay, and, and, and share is all different. So it’s exciting for me because there’s always something to, to learn. There’s always some new strategies and tactics to share. And I’m fortunate, actually, it’s been 26 countries now that I, that I’ve spoken in around the, around the world. In, in November I’m in, oh boy, here’s some geographic name dropping. I’m really fortunate ’cause I gotta bring my lovely wife with me. We’re, we’re speaking in London, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Malta Vienna and Gdansk. I love that. So it’s just, it’s a tremendous, it’s a tremendous time of life.
AJV (07:07):
I love that. And you know, one of the things you said that I want you to circle back on, ’cause I remember my early days, and this was Lord, 18 years ago when I was, you know, joined the Nationals of Speakers Association, my early twenties, and was going to all these sessions, learning from people who’d been in the business for 10, 15, 20, 25 years. And I remember sitting in this one particular session, and a question was asked, like, you know, how do you book speaking gigs? Like, how, how do you get on these stages? Like, I want to do that. And I remember one of the speakers was like, well, you know, you just need to answer the phone when it rings. Oh,
DA (07:43):
Wouldn’t that be nice?
AJV (07:45):
Why did you make the phone ring?
DA (07:48):
Oh, yesterday year,
AJV (07:49):
DA (08:10):
Well, you know, I, I, let me, let me start by saying, here’s what many of us have learned. Speaking is not a business. It’s not getting the gig is the business speaking’s the performance. We love to do that. I, I we talk to countless people who, who have, is something burning in their heart, this passion I wanna share. I want to touch lives. Nobody’s hiring speakers because you want to touch lives. The, the nobody’s hiring speakers because you want a cathartic experience and exercise your demons or your therapy on stage. I’m actually fortunate that I’m on the main stage at, for the National Speakers Association this year in my session, my very first slide is somebody putting on a pair of blue rubber gloves. And I’m gonna say, hang on friends, this is gonna be uncomfortable. You’re gonna feel a little pressure. And there’s just a lot of nonsense in this business.
DA (08:57):
And I love sharing what it really takes. And I’ll talk about sort of the marketing aspect of it. But one of the interesting things is we have a very interesting profession because arguably, it’s the only profession where most people get into this business because they’re encouraged by somebody who has no idea what it really is. Oh my God, that story about you and surviving cancer, when you climb that mountain and you fell into that crevasse and you say, you should be a professional speaker, I love the way you tell stories. You could touch people’s lives. And I wanna say, I think you should just feed your family. Now, if you can use that story and leverage it to help companies increase their sales and guard against disruption and future proof their engagement or motivate their people, that’s legitimate as well. Then there’s something there.
DA (09:39):
But the reality is, the business of speaking is, is marketing. I, I, I hear people say, listen, I took a, I took a three day bootcamp on hand gestures, and I can’t get the phone to ring. And I’m like, pick up the phone. You know,
DA (10:21):
It’s not who you know, it’s who Knows You had come out. And I was 20 years ago, and I was doing very well, and I was talking about my speaking business. And I was sitting around with some colleagues and our, our mutual friend, Dave Horse Hager I talked about my business and he said, dude, you don’t have a business. And I looked at him, I said, what are you talking about? I said, this is my best year ever. He said, no, no, no. You have gigs. You don’t have a business. And I said, what’s the difference? He says, what, how much are you gonna make next year? I said, I have no idea. I said, of course you don’t because you have no process. How are you finding contacts and turning ’em into leads? Are you turning leads into prospects? How are you leveraging and converting those prospects into paying clients and, and beating out other speakers for that, for that particular slot? He says, you are so headed for a fall.
DA (11:07):
He says, I’ve seen this before. I’ve seen speakers make seven figures and they can’t pay their mortgage two years ago because what they were talking about was hot. He says, you need to put a business behind it. And so that’s what we did. And I went home that night and I didn’t sleep. And I went home and I talked to my wife at the end of the conference and we talked about how do we do this? And how do we find a way to hire staff and create systems and process. And to be clear, it’s not an automated system. I don’t automate anything. Yeah, I could, I could hit one click and reach 50,000 prospects to say, Hey, hire David as a speaker, and 99.9% will never be opened. So we have gotten very good at creating a process. We, we find ways, we find organizations that hold meetings.
DA (11:51):
We look ’em up, we find out who they had for LA last year, when their next meeting is. We know when to pitch. And we try and make it very simple. We know that the, the one behavior that is predictive of our success is if I can get prospects, people who hold meetings to watch my preview video, if I, it’s pretty good. And if they watch that, I have a chance. If they don’t, they don’t. So I don’t wanna go too deep into it. It there, but, but you’re right. It’s a business. It’s a business. And it’s a business that I’m, I’m up at 5:00 AM I go to the gym. I try and be at my desk no later than six 30 or seven. ’cause I wanna get a little bit of work. And because I have a lot of clients internationally. And so, you know, it, it’s a business. And I think the, probably the most elusive thing in the speaking business is longevity, because most speakers starve. We, we like to call new speakers, ignorance on fire. They, they’re so passionate that, and I’m, I’m, I’m on a mission to help speakers feed their families so they can do this for a long time.
AJV (12:51):
You know what I love about this? And, and I kind of knew what you were gonna say, which is why I asked it. But I think it’s such an important message for everyone to hear, because what people love is creating content, sharing their content,
DA (13:05):
Performing. Yeah. Performing.
AJV (13:06):
It’s great. But what you have to become amazing at is the sales, the marketing. Right? Absolutely. I, we had this conversation not too long ago at one of our events, and someone said, well, you know, I’m, I’m running out of, you know, you know, kind of running outta rope before I’m gonna have to go back and get a full-time job. And my question is, well, how many sales calls are you making every day? And they kind of looked at me and I was like, every week. And they kinda looked at me and they’re like, what do you mean by sales calls? And I was like, okay, wow. We need to, we need to talk about actually how you get booked on stages. Yeah. Yeah. And that seems that you’re calling people, you’re emailing people, you’re doing outreach. This is sales.
DA (13:54):
So much of the conversation is around the passion and the story and, and stepping into your truth and, and or stepping into your power and speaking your truth. It’s nonsense. It’s nonsense. And, and people, that, that’s really hurtful for people. I don’t mean it to be because it’s coming from a good place. People are telling other people, speakers are telling other people their friends and family, oh my God, you have this, you’re so good at telling stories. If you have passion in your heart, if you have a drive, you can be a No. It’s, I mean, that’s, that’s the foundation of it. I mean, you don’t have to be great to make it as, you don’t have to be great. You have to be good. Mm-Hmm. Your content has to be great, but you have to have sales and marketing. And, and I don’t know why that’s scary for people.
DA (14:37):
I, I think some people are, are reluctant to be, seem overly self-promotional. But the reality is you will touch very few lives. You’ll make a very small impact if you don’t get booked. Yeah. And think of it like any other, other business. And you and Rory have been teaching this for years. People don’t know who they don’t know. Hmm. And I’m not, I’m not famous. I’m good at what I do. There’s a lot of people who are good at what they’re, I’m not on Shark Tank. Right. I don’t have that kind of a platform. So we hustle and we work and we work and and half of the, the presentations, the gigs that I get are from organizations who had no idea who I was until we reached out to them.
AJV (15:16):
Perhaps. I think everyone needs to pause and let that sink in. It’s like, if you think some bureau is gonna fill up your calendar, or you think some agent’s gonna show up on your door and magically get you booked or any of that, the truth is you’re the agent,
DA (15:32):
Well, you’re your sales director. Yeah. That’s the other partner as well, is even when I got staff, and this is sort of the, the, the, the quintessential E-Myth, right? It’s Michael Gerber. That, that we feel like as long as suddenly we have help. So we kind of push it to them like, good, finally you go do it. You can’t abdicate, right? We, we, we think that, that we’re delegating. We’re not, we’re abdicating. You go do it. It doesn’t work that way. You have to be the sales director of your own organization until you get big enough to actually hire a sales director. But if you’re big enough to be able to, to have an assistant I I, I love that line. I’m trying to think who said it that if you aren’t, if you don’t have an assistant, you are your assistant, right?
DA (16:11):
And so, but, but we also have a responsibility. We can’t bring on that second person until we are confident that we can cover their salary for at least a year. Right? ’cause it takes time, but it’s time, it’s process. But here’s the best part, aj, it’s worth it. It’s worth it because you gotta feed your family while you get to do what you maybe were, were born to do. But, but ultimately it has to be in the service of others. It has to be to help them do what they do. They’re not paying you 10, $15,000 for you to have a cathartic experience and bring joy to people’s lives. Right. and so, and, and, and because I’ve had a measure of success, and I’ve done this for a long time, I’m, I’m approached by a lot of people who want to tell me their story. Right? Here’s what I’ve done. Here’s what I want to do. You know, I survive cancer. I I won this Olympic medal. And, and listen, I’m not mocking ’cause I haven’t done any of those things. But the, your business is not about your story. It’s about how do you leverage your story in the service of others. And, and it has to be unique enough. So there’s a lot to go into, but yeah. Sales and marketing, sales and market, I love that.
AJV (17:18):
How do you think books play into this meeting? Very
DA (17:23):
Important.
AJV (17:24):
So, you know, clearly you think so because every time I talk to you, there’s a new book coming out and maybe we just need to talk more
DA (18:16):
Absolutely.
AJV (18:17):
And, you know, digest and actually act on. But in terms of the power of a book and how it can help you build your business. Yeah. Like how, how, how would you say that all integrates?
DA (18:29):
Well, it, it, it doesn’t in a big way. And I’m gonna, and I’m gonna challenge one small thing that you said. First of all, I, I write books not because it’s time for another book. It’s, it’s relevance, it’s gravitas, right? It’s that credibility that they’re the person that wrote that book. But I’m also very cognizant that a lot of people aren’t gonna read it. Larry Wingett is, is is a little cynical about it. He says, I sell souvenirs in the back of the room,
DA (19:09):
Or take the stairs or atomic habits. So I look like a big deal. I hope people read my books. I put a lot into it. But, but even if they don’t, here’s, here’s the value. And it’s a tremendous value. It’s credibility. They’re the ones who wrote X or Y. We find that in our marketing and in our sales processes, we’re introducing people to me as a speaker and a, a good resource for their next conference. Just the fact that I have a book coming out there in peaks their interest, which is really interesting that it’s just as valuable in the lead up phase as it is to when you publish it. And of course, the time afterwards because you don’t want it to be an event. You want it to be a process and a marathon. But books are really important to legitimize that.
DA (19:54):
Why are we turning to this person for consulting or speaking another ’cause they’re the ones who wrote blank, right? Most people’s first book tends to be just a compilation of blogs and articles that they’ve written. If like, I’ve written all of this stuff, let’s put it all together in some reasonably linear fashion, but it doesn’t really work. And I’ll freely admit, that was my first book. It was just, here’s a compilation of all my writings. But I try and be much more intentional now. Everybody comes up with a title they think is the, the Cure for Cancer that tastes like chocolate. And then we learn. I learned, I learned from Rory, I learned from Rory when, when he learned the lesson and realized that and what he teaches and, and I took this to heart, was that title has to be something aspirational.
DA (20:40):
Like I want that. And I didn’t learn my lesson. I had a book I that came out during Covid called The Morning Huddle, which was the physical manifestation of a video series that I had created. And it’s all these great conversations for your morning huddle. Nobody sits around and says, I need the morning huddle. Right? I don’t I need, but do they need to know how to be ridiculously easy to work with? Do they or to to do business with? Do they need to know why customers leave? My book, why Customers Leave and How to Win Them Back is in six languages now because it’s perfectly aligned with Rory’s lesson about that’s aspirational. I want that. I wanna know that. And so there’s a whole process. I’m actually holding a, a, a retreat to help people write their first book.
DA (21:24):
And there’s so many people, you know, people come up to you all the time saying, how do you do that? God, I wish I could write away. Well, you can. But I think there’s also a, a, a fallacy that writers enjoy writing. I I don’t, I think I’m a good writer. It’s just, it’s agony for me, but I’m disciplined. I do it because I need to feed my family. I’ve got five colleges. I’m paying for five colleges and, and four employees. And so I work, but I, there’s a famous line, A woman was asked, famous author, I can’t remember her name. She was asked if she, she says, they were asked her, do you enjoy writing? And I loved her answer. She says, I love to have written
DA (22:18):
Like, I, I did this. Like, I, I wrote a book and, and you’ve seen it on the screen and, but now you can touch it and hold it. It’s, it’s powerful. It’s really powerful. And, and it’s something that many millions of people talk about and a much smaller fraction actually do it. So it’s incredibly important. It’s a legacy thing, depending on what it is you wanna write. It’s a galvanization of the content and the knowledge that you’ve learned over the years that you can, you can put down on paper and is there for, for history. It’s an accomplishment. But for a business, it’s credibility. It ab it absolutely helps. They don’t have to buy your book. They don’t have to read your book. But the fact that you wrote it and take some time and write a good book, don’t have ai, write it for you. Write your book. It’s credibility. And that’s really important. It, it drives, it drives your fee structure. It drives your visibility. Very, very important.
AJV (23:15):
Yeah. You know, one of the things that we talk about all the time is you can actually look at the trajectory of any speaker’s kind of financial path in terms of their fees and literally go no book, book bestselling book, right? A Wall Street Journal, bestselling book, New York Times bestselling book. And it’s like, you can literally watch, you know, the, the escalation percent when it comes to fee structure with the enhancement of that credibility. And so, so I think that’s just a really important conversation also leading up to this new book that you have released, which I think it’s a killer title, and I think everyone wants that. So let’s talk a little bit about this new book, ridiculously easy to do business with. And I think we would all like to know how do we become that, right? So what, what’s, what’s the book about?
DA (24:10):
Sure. the book is about, I mean, at the, at the core, it’s customer experience. I spent the early part of my career as a speaker and a consultant, probably the first 15 years, talking about marketing and branding. How do we better describe what we do? How do, how do we choose and craft those words? But I saw a significant change happening in the marketplace. And this was of course, with the advent of social media and social proof and, and mobile devices and everything else. And it became very clear that what we say about ourselves while not unimportant, is far less impactful today than what other people say about us. And so that was the research that went into my book, why Customers Leave. And we’re in a time, a really remarkable time. It’s a great time to be a customer or a client.
DA (24:54):
The, the conveniences are, are off the charts. It’s a tough time to be in business. And so, as I have spoken, because I I’m also a former Vistage chair, I, I led CEO Roundtable groups for years, and I spoke, I’ve spoken to 539 CEO Roundtable groups over the last 15 years. And as I would go around the table, I say, what’s your competitive advantage? Why you, what’s the secret sauce? It’s always some version of the same answer. It’s our superior quality, commitment, caring, trust. It’s about our people. Here’s what the research shows. People are prioritizing. Speed. Customers are prioritizing speed, speed of access, speed of answers, speed of of resolution, speed of delivery simplicity of process, accommodation for unique circumstances. Don’t be rigid. And of course, convenience in many ways. Our, our colleague Sally Hogshead talks about that different is better than better.
DA (25:49):
And I would submit that convenient is better than better. ’cause We’re in a time of pervasive quality. Everybody’s good, everybody’s good. So where are the real opportunities for, for distinction, for standing apart and standing and standing out. And that’s what drove the book ridiculously easy to do business with. It’s about reducing friction at every point possible in the process. If you have a business process an interaction, a purchasing process, or ordering for your clients that was designed 20 year, 10 years ago, it’s already outdated because we’re used to being able to buy with one click. And, and we can lament the loss of iconic brands. You know, we can lament the loss of, of Bed Bath and Beyond, or Toys Are Us. I guarantee you, nobody’s struggling to find toys. Nobody’s struggling to find toys. Why did they go? They, because we have other better options, better by some measure.
DA (26:43):
It’s more convenient, it’s more prevalent, whatever that might be. And so in the book, I I, I came up with 28 different ways to to be ridiculously easy. And, and I, on our business, I was on a podcast and somebody was asking me how, why is it that business just doesn’t get it? And I said, I think they get it. Of course they get it. It’s very smart, very good people running businesses. But I think there’s a grand experiment going on, which is, how much can we cut? How much can we push to the consumers? How much self-checkout before it’s that law of diminishing return. And they say, this has gotten so frustrated that frustrating, that now we’re gonna go somewhere else and we’re still figuring out what that is. There, young people I, I heard that somebody said, for the first time ever, we’re serving five generations at the same time.
DA (27:30):
And I was, and young people want to buy very different than older people, and we have to find ways of serving all of them. Those points of frustration, some of ’em are pretty obvious about being ridiculously easy to reach or to resolve issues. But I even cover chapters. You need to be ridiculously easy to see. Most marketing collateral, material, business cards, and others are designed by people in their twenties and thirties. 65% of all is by people over 50. I can’t see any of that.
DA (28:23):
And my job is to bring an external perspective of saying, here’s what’s frustrating for your customers. And why is that important? Because we have a bullhorn that reaches around the world now. We have Yelp and TripAdvisor and Rotten Tomatoes and, and Glassdoor. Everybody’s good today because if you weren’t, you would be outed very, very quickly. And so in the book, ridiculously easy to do business with, it’s sort of a here’s an outside perspective on all of your systems and processes, and here’s how your customers really feel about it. And it’s also a way to sort of future proof your engagement and say, how do you think business? How do you think your customers want to do business with you? Or will wanna do business with you not 10 years from now, two years from now? What do we need to start doing now to, to make those tweaks and adjustments?
DA (29:09):
We’re all competing against Amazon and Uber in terms of simplicity of process. And I think there’s a lot of lessons to be learned. I’ve been very gratified. We’ve just been out as of the recording of this, this podcast. We’ve just been out for a couple of weeks. We went to number one very, very quickly in the consumer relations category. I think we were number two in, in entrepreneurialism or something else. And of course that’s Amazon. I mean, let’s talk legitimate. The goal is Wall Street Journal or New York Times or others as well. But it’s a process. And it’s for anyone in business to be not just competent, not just capable, but preferable. And that’s the key that we don’t talk.
AJV (29:49):
You said this and I’m curious to know in the book, like what are some of the biggest frustrations that customers have with companies? Like what are they?
DA (30:00):
Yeah. Well, the, some of the frustrations are obvious ones, which is just when we’re literally yelling into the phone. Real person, real person agent, I think you said no. Oh, right. You know, and, and there’s, I unders I’m not naive. I understand that AI and chatbots, and it’s, it’s all part of where we are and it’s all part of where we’re going. But when they make it so difficult to get an off ramp to a real person when you need one I’m, I think I’m the only person on the planet. I’ve never had a a question that’s frequently asked apparently, because I can never find my issue. And one of the things I talk about is, is there’s a strategy, is that if you, if you are really frustrated and you can’t get through, whether you’re typing in a chat bot or you’re on the phone, just start shouting profanity into the phone and, and AI recognizes that it’s frustrat and they’ll transfer you to a real person or, or just yell, know, cancel membership.
DA (30:54):
And then you get to, and, and people laugh and, and it’s true. It’s unfortunate. Why, why do we have to yell profanity, right? In order to talk to get mad to get attention. Why do we have to get to that point? And then here’s the thing. ’cause I have a real heart for customer, customer service agents. What a tough job. But now organizations are, are, are frustrating their customers to the point where by the time we talk to a real person, they’re being inundated and abused all day long. I think it’s incredibly unfair that they do that to, to those representatives. What else? It, it’s, it’s an inflexibility that it, that shouldn’t be. Somebody was asking like, how could this possibly be getting worse if we’ve been talking about customer service or experience, whatever for 50 years, how could it be getting worse?
DA (31:41):
And it is, and here’s why is because we’re getting more rigid. We’re trying so hard in our companies to have some level of predictability in the process. Here’s how they reach out or learn about us and, and, and inquire and buy and negotiate and pay and deliver and, and it works, right? ’cause And if we can have greater level of predictability of that process, we can predict revenue and cash flow, right? And we can plan for that. We can hire for that. The problem is, your customers haven’t read your employee manual. They don’t know how they’re supposed to buy from you. They just know how they want to. But that’s changing. So we get rigid and we say no to stupid things. You know, I was checking out of a hotel and they’re like, sorry, we’re not doing any late checkouts. I’m like, I can’t get out.
DA (32:26):
I’m going to a And they say, yeah, we’re gonna charge you for a second day if you can’t be open. I’m like, okay, then I just won’t check out of the room. There we go. I just pay for another. And it’s, it was an easy yes, but the manager said, no, they checkouts today. Right? And the pushback I get for this kind of flexibility, I think is really important. I get this pushback and they say, well, if we do it for you or if we do it for him, we to do it for everyone. And my answer is, no, you don’t. It’s your business. They, it, it’s such a crutch. Well, if we do it for you, we have to do it for everyone. You do whatever your works for your customers. Most won’t need the special accommodations. And so when I talk about being ridiculously easy, like I have clients all over the world.
DA (33:05):
I’ve got clients in Mumbai and Singapore and Johannesburg. When I have a call with a client, a Zoom call, I’m the one talking at two o’clock in the morning or three o’clock every time. It’s never them because I am ridiculously easy to do business with them because my competitors, my colleagues, our friends, they’re phenomenal. I have, we are, we have such great colleagues who are so good at what they do. What’s my competitive advantage? Yeah. I’m gonna knock it out of the park on stage, but I’m also not gonna make you search for a phone number. I’m not gonna make you fill out a contact form in order to reach a real person. I, I, I thank speakers all the time, and I’ve spoken at nine of the international associations. I said, I want to thank you all for putting contact forms instead of emails on your website because you put my kids through college because I’m, I’ve already sent over a a contract by the time they’ve responded to your, your, your contact form.
DA (34:03):
I, I, and, and to be fair, I’ve got multiple small business, they all have contact forms and I have cell phone numbers for every member of my team. We have email addresses. I’m ridiculously easy to get in touch with. I mean, there’s, there’s some maddening things, AJ of, of companies that make it difficult to reach you. I mean, are are you that good that your customers are gonna put up with that? And, and people say, well, you don’t have life balance if you’re, I’m not talking to three o’clock in the morning every day, but this feeds my family. Hmm. And my, my clients ask, and the answer is yes. What’s the question? Hmm. Right, because
AJV (34:39):
That’s good. I literally, yesterday as you’re talking, I’m like, this would, like, this literally happened to me yesterday. I signed up for this health portal and I won’t share their name, but it’s like this supposedly amazing thing that was referred by a very good friend, and you do all this blood work and then it’s kind of putting the patient back in control of all of your panels. Yeah. So doctors don’t own it. And it was like a really cool concept. So I’ve been trying to schedule my second round of blood work, right? There’s no email address, there’s no phone number. The chat bot keeps saying, can’t accept request right now. So I’m like, I can’t chat with you. I can’t call you, I can’t email you and it won’t let me schedule my appointment and it has to be in a certain period of time, which now has expired. Now I have to wait 30 more days to use what I’ve paid for. And it was like, I to the point of like, if I can’t use it, I want a refund. I can’t talk to anyone to even request it. Right? And so it’s, but
DA (35:35):
That, but that’s the other thing. That’s the other thing thing. And you talk about where the frustrations are about organizations that make it ridiculously easy to cancel. Well, they do that on purpose. I think it’s slimy. Or, or here’s the other one is they they give you a free trial, but it’s not a free trial. Right? Sign up for a free trial. What’s the requirement? You have to give ’em your credit card information. Right? And then we have a, that that wall comes up that, that trepidation. It’s the number one reason for abandoned shopping carts in membership trials is a requirement for financial information. So I go through all of that. Yeah. But it’s one of those, it’s like, who designed this process? And that’s the difference between product centric and customer centric. That product centric is, we’re very good at what we do, and so let’s deliver that and sell as many as we can and create market share. Nothing wrong with that. Right. I love that
AJV (36:19):
Too. One of the things that I love, like we’ve had this conversation so often, and like, one of the things that we’re really big advocates of, and I love, like there’s an entire book about this is give it all away for free. In fact, give it away. Give everything away to the point where your customer says, man, I feel like I’ve gotten so much value from you, I need to pay you. And that’s so counterculture, right? It’s, and we brought that up and somebody said, well, aren’t you afraid that people are just take advantage of you? And I’m like, no, I’m not at all. Because they could go get this information for free at tons of places, right? They’re not paying for the information at that point. They’re going, I want it from you because that’s who I’ve begun to trust. That’s who I’m gonna, I, that’s who I like.
AJV (37:08):
Now, this is who I have a relationship with. It’s like the information is out there. Buy a book, listen to a podcast, read a blog, watch YouTube, you know, watch any of the social media platforms. It’s like whatever it is you wanna know, you can go find it. You are not paying for information at this point. You’re paying for experience, relationship, trust, organization, application, execution. You’re paying for those things. So don’t be, don’t be afraid to give things away so that people understand like, there’s real value here. I want to give you my money, not I have to.
DA (37:40):
You know, I think for many of us, we’ve come to realize sometime back, the biggest competitor out there is free, right? I, I think when, when newspapers stopped running the presses and they thought, we’re gonna just think about how much money we’re gonna save and we’ll have everybody use subscription. I’m reading an article online and all of a sudden I get stopped and something pops up that I have to subscribe to the New York Times to read the rest of the article. I don’t because free is pervasive. But, but I like what you said, but I think it goes even further. And this is where you have to accept the, the compliments and realize that some people, when you’ve built a really strong personal brand, when you are known for the wisdom and the content and the value that you provide, there’s a certain category of people that want to touch the robe.
DA (38:24):
They wanna be there because it’s you. They want to, to pay more and get a deeper access to you and information because it’s you. And, and you’ve earned that. And you have to earn that, which is the other part. You can be well known and have a great personal brand, but if it’s not a brand of value and that people aspire to be you to some extent there are people who will come to that workshop to learn from you. There’s things that we can learn almost anything online. You can go to YouTube and you can learn how to use YouTube, right? But when you have built that strong service oriented, high content personal brand, there’s a category of people that will only pay that money and do more than what they could do free because they want to touch the robe. And that’s something that, that you build and something to be proud of, and it’s something to leverage.
AJV (39:17):
Hmm. So if you were going to, you know, kind of summarize some of the highlights of the book and go, all right, everyone who’s listening, clearly we don’t have time to talk about all 28 things, but if there were two or three things that you’re like, hands down, yeah, you love me doing this to be ridiculously easy to ba do business with, what are some of those things?
DA (39:38):
I, and lemme go a little bit broader and which is the importance of, of sort of the concept. I was about to keynote a conference and the, the CEO was on before I was there was a huge organization. There was probably 800 people in the audience. And the CEO was doing the big rah rah speech. And at the very end, he said, and, and remember, we’re gonna win on quality. At the end of the day, it’s about quality. And everybody cheered and went crazy. And I thought to myself, I could not disagree more. At the end of the day, it’s not about quality. It’s not, everybody’s good. Everybody’s got quality at the beginning of the day. It’s about quality. Quality is the entry
AJV (40:13):
Requirement for entry.
DA (40:14):
Quality gives you permission to do business in the marketplace. You better be good or the marketplace will figure it out. But at the end of the day, it’s about competitive advantage. It’s not what do you do? Well, what do you do better than others who do it well? And so back to the book, I I laid out 28 short chapters of here’s all the things that you can do to gain a competitive advantage. Recognize that your competitors are all good. And here’s the worst thing about competitors, and nobody says this out loud. Most of those competitors are very, very nice people. They’re, they’re, they’re not our our enemies. They’re, they’re our, our our colleagues in arms. They’re all, we’re all trying to feed our families. And, and if you, if you believe that you’re so good that, that everybody has to discover you and they’re gonna reject everybody else.
DA (41:00):
I heard somebody saying that, that they what makes us different is we actually do what we say we’re gonna do. There you go. And I look at ’em, I said, you actually believe that. Don’t you? Do you actually believe that your competitors are consistently underperforming and that they have yet they have, but to discover you, everybody’s good. You need a competitive advantage. And the competitive advantage is eliminate friction. Don’t, don’t make your customers do business the way you want them to do if they want it to do differently. So it’s taking a step back. It’s understanding what customer centricity really means. And all of this, of course, profitably but we’re in a very competitive environment. I think the theme of the book and the examples are all about, here’s how you do it, here’s why. It’s, it’s a challenge for us. And here’s, here’s a different way.
DA (41:47):
And each one, each chapter has stories and examples and marketplace examples and research to bolster the points. But it’s very, very, I mean, even the, the tagline says it’s a practical guide to giving customers what they want, how and when they want it. And it’s an ongoing process, and it’s of, of reexamination. And it’s also my mantra and my message as I, as I travel the country and travel around the world my presentations are, there’s a lot of humor. It’s very entertaining. But I use that strategically to temper a tough message about what it takes to compete and win today. And whether you’re in small business, whether you’re building your brand, whether you aspire to be a speaker or consultant, it’s a business and you treat it like a business.
AJV (42:32):
Hmm. So what would you say if I were to ask you, when you say, sure, you know, this cocom competitive advantage, and that’s a part of what you’ve gotta figure out, like what is, as a speaker and an author, what is your competitive advantage?
DA (42:46):
My competitive advantage is, is a, I’m always relevant. And I, and I am committed to delivering it, knocking outta the park on the, on the stage every time that I think is the entry fee. I I am, I’m really good at what I do, as others are as well. My competitive advantage is I never stop marketing. I never stop selling. Through covid, through all of that as well, I did 87 virtual presentations on a webcam in my home studio because I don’t, I don’t, I don’t have a plan b hmm. And I love what I do, but I don’t get to do it if I don’t have clients to do it for. And so my competitive advantage is that I will outmarket. When we have somebody, we have a, a potential hit, I do a, a BombBomb video message, and I talk to ’em, hi, it’s David Verin, thanks for this. Here’s what we, I can’t wait to work with you. Here’s all the books that I’ve written, and we send ’em a book and here’s what we do on our first email. And here’s what we do on our second email. If they don’t respond, here’s how we put ’em back in the system. We don’t automate anything. My competitive advantage is we are relentless and we are diligent, and we are strategic, and we are ridiculously easy to do business with.
AJV (44:01):
I mean, honestly, see a great
DA (44:03):
Way to wrap that up.
AJV (44:04):
What competitive and competitive advantage should be. I always do outreach, right? It’s
DA (44:09):
Always that. There’s, there’s, that’s, that’s a good way of synopsis, synopsis, outreach never stops. I’m not famous. I’m good at what I do. The people who I do business with love me. My friends and family love me. You guys love me, I love you guys. But there’s a huge portion of the population who has no idea who, who, who I am and that I exist. I talk to people. If you’re in a, in an auditorium or a conference center and you’re speaking to 600 people, there’s 4.3 million people within a a 60 mile radius who have no idea you’re there. Yeah. So how do we leverage proximity? How do we leverage? So yeah, outreach is incredibly important. It’s probably the most important thing for my longevity.
AJV (44:52):
I love that. And I think for everyone who’s listening, if you would just take a minute or five or 10, whatever you got and ask yourself like, what is my competitive advantage? And it’s not that I care a lot, and it’s not that I have a superior product. It’s not that it’s a high quality product or whatever else. It’s like, what is your competitive advantage? And I think also asking yourself the question, which hopefully is similar, but what makes it ridiculously easy to do business with me
DA (45:24):
Or ridiculously easy to choose you, right? That, that’s a whole chapter in the book as well. It’s not even just how you do business. Make it ridiculously to easy to choose you over your competitors. And to do that, you need to be really clear what others are doing. We never denigrate them. We never criticize competitors. I love com. I love complimenting competitors. They’re phenomenal. But this is what I do. They do this and this and this and this. They’re really great. But this is, but I specialize in this, but well, that’s what I need. I I think it’s a better choice. So that market analysis is important. We could talk all day, but I know you have time constraints.
AJV (46:02):
I know this is so good though. I love it. And y’all, I would highly encourage for you to go pick up the book. I already have the book. It’s on my summer read list. And I’m even more intrigued now to go, what are these, you know, 28 things? And and now I’m like, well, I need my team to know what these 28 things are. And I love that what you said too, it’s like you have to identify the friction points, right? And that just means all of us have to take a step back as a consumer. And I, that would be like a, a great, I think just even for me, I’m just going like, man, I wonder when the last time I, like, I clicked through our website, how easy is it to get in touch with me? And if I wondered if I, like with an anonymous email hit our customer care at email, how quickly people would respond. And it’s like, I’m so curious now to go through our own systems and process.
DA (46:52):
You could shop yourself. Yeah, that’s a great idea. Where
AJV (46:54):
Are our friction points as a consumer? And as a, an entrepreneur business owner you should know those, right? And so ask yourself, when’s the last time that I actually went through my own processes the own systems with our team to go, where is it hard? Where is there friction? And how can I make it easier? And I love that. ’cause I think what you said earlier, and I wanna kind of like wrap it with this, is speed is really becoming an increasingly important part of why people do business with you
DA (47:25):
Very much. Jay Bair did some groundbreaking breaking research on that recently as well. Great colleagues, Jay Bear and Shep Hyken and Roger Dooley wrote a book called Friction that changed my life. I, I, I am so annoyed looking at the world now because he’s made me hyper aware of things I hadn’t even thought of before. So we have wonderful colleagues in this space. But, but yeah, go pick up the book, Amazon,
AJV (47:50):
Amazon,
DA (47:51):
Easy to do business with.
AJV (47:53):
And I will put the direct link to pick up the book and the show notes. And for everyone else, make sure you stick around for the recap version, which will be coming next. Dave, love you, love what you’re doing too. Such a rich conversation. Thank you so much for being here. And if people want to follow you, stay in touch with you. What’s your preferred platform?
DA (48:13):
My, you can check me out on my [email protected], and then it gets a little complicated. And on Instagram, it’s the real David Aver, and that’s a catfish for another day. But yeah, check me out. Instagram, the real David Rin TikTok, it’s I think real David Rin. But if, if there are hundreds or thousands of followers, it’s the real account. Otherwise, it’s not me. Go to my website, david rin.com.
AJV (48:36):
So go to his website, david aver.com, go to Amazon, pick up the book ridiculously easy to do business with. Thank you guys for being here. We’ll see you next time.
Ep 503: 3 Ways to Make One Million Dollars With a Personal Brand
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What are three ways to make a million dollars from a personal brand, three fastest ways? This is a good question, and we’ve done all three of these, and I’m gonna walk you through each one. So the first one is speaking. Speaking is, here’s how you make a million bucks as a speaker. $20,000 speech times, 50 gigs a year, 20,000 bucks a speech times 50 gigs a year is a million dollars. Now, to get to be a $20,000 speaker takes work, right? It takes hustle, but you can get there. I mean, I got to that fee range probably in four or five years, not even four to five years. You could really get there. I’ve got friends that have gotten to that range in like two to three years. So if you know what you’re doing and you’re good on stage and you get, if you get good coaching on how to be amazing on stage, and you have a clear message and clear positioning, that’s how you get to a million bucks as a speaker.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
What about membership sites? We’ve also made millions of dollars with membership sites. So how do you make a million dollars a year with a membership site? Super simple. You charge a hundred dollars a month and you get a thousand customers, right? Simple math, a hundred, a hundred dollars a month, a thousand customers. If you get a hundred, if you get a thousand people who are paying you a hundred dollars each a month, that’s a hundred thousand dollars a month. That’s $1.2 million annually. And that’s doable. Now you gotta get a thousand customers, but you’re only selling something that’s a hundred dollars a month. Most people spend more than a hundred dollars a month eating out at dinner, and they certainly spend more than that on, you know, car payments and insurance and a whole bunch of stuff. Like, so a hundred bucks a month is a very doable price point.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
And you get a thousand customers. You also could cut that, right? And say we could do $50 a month and get 2000 customers, and that would be another way to get to a million bucks. And retention is gonna be key if you do membership site, but it’s doable. Third way, I would make a million dollars fast with a personal brand. I would say for that one who would be courses, because if you sell a thousand dollars course, you can get a thousand people to buy it. That’s a million bucks, a thousand dollars course. A thousand people to buy it. It’s a million bucks. Now, is it easy? No, it’s not easy, but is it doable? Yeah, it’s doable. I mean, there’s courses, people sell courses for $2,000, $3,000, and you have to be super clear on what course it is that you’re creating. Like, what problem do you solve? What problem can you solve in the world that people would pay a thousand dollars for? Another way of thinking about that is what problem could you solve for people that would be worth $10,000? We call that the rule of 10. The rule of 10 is simple. We always like to price things at like one 10th. The value of what it provides if you solve the problem for somebody. So if I’m gonna sell
Speaker 2 (02:59):
A course for a thousand dollars, I wanna be able to solve a $10,000 problem for people, or I wanna teach them how to make $10,000 at least, hopefully more. But if you can figure out what that is, and you can create a, a course that systematically shows people how to do that, that’s worth a thousand bucks. And then you only need to get a thousand people to buy that thing. And that’s, that’s a million dollars. There’s 8 billion people on the planet, like a thousand people is all you need. So those are three ways to quickly get to a million bucks with a personal brand. There are lots of other ways that you could do it, but those are three of the best ones. But I’m gonna save the best for last. The best one, my favorite one, the, my, my, my absolute favorite way to make a million dollars from a personal brand is to use your personal brand as an engine for monetizing the thing you’re already doing.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
So the fastest path to cash is to sell the thing that you’re already selling. So if you, if you are a doctor, right, you’re gonna sell more patients. If you’re, if you are an accountant, you’re gonna sell more tax services. If you, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing. If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re gonna sell more widgets. Use your personal brand as just an extension of your current business. Just make it a piece of the marketing function of whatever’s already in front of you. If you’re in network marketing or direct sales, just use your personal brand as jet fuel for the business that you already have, and it will be a multiplier and it will help you exponentially make more money faster. And you don’t have to build a new product or a new service offering. The fastest path to cash is to monetize the thing that you’re always doing. So that’s 1, 2, 3, and four ways to quickly make a million bucks with a personal brand.
Ep 502: The Messy Truth of Entrepreneurship with Alli Webb
RV (00:02):
Well, I am so impressed and inspired by this next woman you’re about to meet. Alli Webb is someone who has become a friend. She’s a brand builders group client, and she kind of famously sold, founded and sold Drybar for $255 million. This is back in 2020. So she started Drybar in 2010. It exploded into over 150 locations. Very, very successful product line. She became a New York Times bestselling author as part of that journey, and she has since kind of evolved and, and adapted and diversified into starting many different businesses and using her personal brand to really create enterprise value. She one of their current projects is called Squeeze. I’m AJ and I have been to Squeeze. We love it. It’s, it is massages. They have you know, kind of like health spa sort of situation. And they, Brightside and Beckett and Quill is other businesses that she’s involved with.
RV (01:01):
She’s got a new one called Canopy, where she joined as the, the president Canopy’s, super chic reimagined, humidifiers are making big waves in the beauty industry and innovative beauty device category. So lots of stuff around beauty and health. She’s been a board member of several companies. She’s been on the cover of Inc. Magazine’s, how I did This Issue, she’s been named the hundred most Creative People in Business by Fast Company. She’s been featured on Fortunes 40 Under 40 List Marie Claire’s most fascinating women. And she’s just an amazing, amazing woman who has accomplished so many things. We got to work together on her recent book, the Messy Truth, which of course became a USA Today National Bestseller. And Ally and I became friends, and I was just like, you gotta hear this woman’s story. It’s really, really powerful. So, ally, my friend, welcome to the show.
AW (01:55):
Thank you. And thanks for that warm introduction. I appreciate it.
RV (01:59):
So, I am curious, you know when I think of entrepreneurs, I, I, I almost sort of divide the world into the entrepreneur world, into two categories. There are people who are entrepreneurs, which are like content creators, and, you know, they like do speaking or coaching or, or whatever. And and, and then there are also people in this category who are like you know, professional service providers, financial advisors, CPAs direct salespeople, you know, real estate agents all like actual on, they’re, you know, by definition entrepreneurs, independent contractors, stuff like that. And then I have like a different category. I, I don’t mean to be offensive to either group, but I call ’em real entrepreneurs, which are people who like actually start a company, build it, build it, have to create the marketing, the sales, the product development, the hr, like the whole, the whole thing.
RV (02:57):
They’re not kind of using someone else’s operating system. They’re like building it. And I feel like a lot of the quote unquote real or regular or traditional, maybe traditional entrepreneurs would be a a, a better sense. They kinda look at the people who use their personal brand entrepreneurs and go, eh, I don’t need to build a personal brand. I’m building a business to operate without me. And that’s the whole point. And then you are different. You’ve done both, right? You have straddled both. You’ve built so many real businesses, successful scaling operating entities, but you’ve also put a lot of time into your personal brand. And so I’m just curious, why have you done that? How do you think about that? How do you value it? How do you, how do you justify the quote unquote, time away from your real business to like, kind of build your personal brand? So I’m just curious about that,
AW (03:55):
About that. Well, gosh, I love that framing and that question, and I sitting here listening to that and thinking like, it’s so nice to be asked these kinds of questions now. Like, I feel like I’ve, like graduated from, like, so tell me how you build Drybar, which, you know, is like a, an honest question that most people ask me. And, and, and I’m always happy to share it, but it’s not, it’s, it’s interesting to be asked a question in that framing. So anyways you know, I think that it was a progression, like a gradual progression. And, and it’s funny, and I’m sure you, you experienced this too, as you speak to different entrepreneurs you know, who want different things. And there are those entrepreneurs who, to your point, want to build and grow and scale a company that doesn’t potentially need them eventually, and they can step out and do something else, and they wanna be behind the scenes.
AW (04:46):
You know, I think it’s a, it is, it is a bit of a personality trait. And I, I was just like talking to an entrepreneur that I’m mentoring yesterday, and, and she was saying that her team is really pushing her to be out front and build her own personal brand. And she’s like, I don’t wanna build my own personal brand. I don’t like being in front of the camera. I don’t like being out front. Mm-Hmm. She likes being behind the scenes. So it’s a real, like, personal question of what you like doing, what gives you energy? And, and, and I didn’t, I wouldn’t have known the answer to that question until it was like, thrust upon me. And, and I was, you know, rightfully so, the, you know, brand ambassador for Drybar. It was my idea, it was my baby. I was the hairstylist. Like I was the mom.
AW (05:26):
I was catering to women, like I was the client. So it made sense on multiple levels for me to be the, the, the face of the brand. But you know what, what, what happened as a result of that for me anyways, was like when I, you know, started being on TV and I started being in front of the camera, and I started like, you know, speaking on the brand, like, I really fell in love with that aspect of it, you know? And but it wasn’t like, I wanna go be an actress and be on TV in that regard. Like, I really loved talking about these brands that I built, and more so, because I learned so much as, because I didn’t, you know, this, I didn’t go to college. So I don’t have like any like, degree or any real like pedigree in building a business.
AW (06:11):
I didn’t, I didn’t know a lot when we started, other than the fact that my parents were entrepreneurs. And I had, I had that a little bit, but, you know, I learned on the job. Like, I always say, I feel like I got like a, you know, a business degree growing and building Drybar, and I did, I learned so much. And so I feel so compelled to share all of that. Like, I have so much in my brain that I don’t ever think about, but if you ask me a question about a certain thing, I can usually pull it up a pretty good answer and experience around that thing. And you know, and I think like a lot of, as I’ve gotten older and I’ve been through some, some like pretty crazy hard things, you know, I think it’s brought out this like, you know, piece of me that wants to be of service in lots of different ways.
AW (06:57):
And I think that like my, one of the best ways I can be of service to people is by giving back, like what I’ve learned and being that you know, that place for people to go for when they feel like, I don’t, you know, you’ve done this and, and done that. Like, can, can you, you know, paving the way a bit. So, so I think the decision to build a personal brand ca that’s where it came from, is like a real love for all of it, you know, like, I, I love being on stage. I love talking about my story. I love giving back. And so that’s just, that is a love of mine. So that’s what I’m feeding, you know? And, and I don’t, you know, after, I mean, I built Drybar and I can tell you a hundred things, hundreds of things about how that all happened.
AW (07:41):
But like with Squeeze, for example, Brittany Driscoll, our head of marketing, she, or, or former head of marketing, Drybar, she’s the CEO of Squeeze. She’s in the day-to-Day. I’m not in the day-to-Day. I don’t care to be in the day-to-Day anymore. I’ve done that. I don’t, it is not where I get my energy and life and light from. So, you know, for me, graduating more into the building of a personal brand at this stage felt right. I couldn’t have done this so much in the dry bar days. It was towards the end of the Drybar days that I, I recognized that I wanted to do that.
RV (08:11):
So is, and you think that’s really is how it is, like the success of Drybar, you started to get noticed? Did, did, did, did media outlets start reaching out to you, or did you reach out to them? Like, how did that transition even happen? Like, you’re just, were you minding your own business building, trying to build a successful enterprise? Or were you like hiring PR firms and really trying to get like placements and stuff?
AW (08:34):
Well, I mean, I had, I had a lot of different careers over, you know, like in my twenties, which I highly recommend, you know, people like if you’re, if you’re young and you’re, or even if you’re not young, if you’re listening to this, like go try all the, all the things, you know. And then that’s what I did in my twenties. Like, I, I became a hairstylist, but I also like worked in retail and I was, was, you know, I, I ended up working at Rogers and Cowan, which is a massive PR firm for, you know, this guy named Paul Fur, who was ran the music department. And that was, that experience really taught me how to write and all, all the stops. My point is, all the stops along my journey would, would turn out to be really important. But, so because I worked in pr I really saw firsthand how important PR was.
AW (09:17):
And, and I think it, it looks different in today’s society because it’s like kind of a different kind of marketing PR used to be just like magazines and tv. Then that was it. It’s obviously the social media has changed a lot, but I knew early on before we even opened the, the Doors to Drybar, that we were like, I knew we, I knew we would be able to get good PR because we were such a new concept. So it was like a no brainer. We were gonna go do that. It wasn’t until, you know, we were crafting the pitch, which you do when you’re, you’re working on a, you know, trying to, you know, pitch sell something out there that it was like, oh, okay. You know, in con early, early conversations with our PR team was like, what, what makes sense here? It’s like, well, this was Ally’s idea.
AW (09:57):
This is Ally’s baby. And my, my brother and Cam were, were integral parts. It would never have gotten to what it did without them. But from a relat relatability standpoint, and to sell this to the public, I knew we knew that. Like I needed to be the one out there talking about it. And I didn’t know anything about that. I didn’t know how to do that, you know? But I, you know, we, we recognized that, you know, it was only one person that was gonna really be able to speak to the brand, and it made the most sense for me to do it. So, you know, from the get go, I was doing that, like the first week we opened Drybar, because it was such a new concept. Like, we had TV crews coming in, and I was the one talking to them. And, and I, I mean, I was like, I mean, I, I couldn’t even bear to look back at those interviews because I was so green and I didn’t know how to speak to media yet, and I’ve had media training and, and all that.
AW (10:43):
So it was this kind of slow progression. And I was also really fortunate and, and amazing timing that I was really at the forefront of the entrepreneurial craze that we’re in now. You know, it’s like I, in 2010, like nobody knew people, founders, and CEOs yet. Like, you know, it was like, I remember like looking around going, who else is like me here? Nobody. It was like, maybe, I always think like maybe Donna, Karen, like, there were very few female founders that were known that had started. I mean, the landscape is so incredibly different now, but like, I was at the forefront of that alongside like Candace Nelson and who started Sprinkles and like other, there’s so many female founders now, which is awesome. But, you know, so I, I was at the front of that getting a lot of, you know, talking a lot.
AW (11:31):
And then Drybar became such a big craze, and it was such a love brand, and people fell in love with it that they wanted to talk to me about it, you know? And so it just kind of came, it all really, I mean, we hired PR to build the brand, but I was always the spokesperson. And so I was always the person that people wanted to talk to. And then, and then it kind of, they people became interested in lots of things about me, not just my founder, at not just me being a founder of the company. Like what was I wearing and what trends did I see happening and that kind of stuff. And that was
RV (12:02):
Fun. Well, I wanna talk about that because, you know, there’s this, there is this thing of like, oh, you know, started a company grew, you know, had TV crews there. The first week we grew the company, I was on magazines and then, and then we sold it for 250 million. Like, all of that sounds like a pretty Cinderella story. But then as you became popular and we’re in the public eye, I feel like your life took a little bit of a different direction. So like, what is some of what happened like after Drybar for people who don’t know the story?
AW (12:36):
Well, it’s certainly not a Cinderella story. I mean, and if, and if you know, you know, my book The Messy Truth, like, I, I really talk a lot about how hard it was. And like the first shop, yes, it was very popular and people were showing up left and right. The second shop, crickets, third Shop, crickets. It took so much effort and marketing to get us there. So it wasn’t just like, we opened it, it was amazing. We sold it for 255 million. I was at, you know, on a Shark Tank and on covers of magazines. Like, it did not, it didn’t happen like that. It was a, it was a lot of blood, sweat, and tears without a doubt. And my life fell apart during Drybar. It wasn’t even just after Drybar, you know, it was like my first marriage to my co-founder, you know, fell apart.
AW (13:18):
And my son went through rehab and, and, you know, and Maria, you know, you know a lot about this, and there’s a whole chapter in my book about my son and, and what, and, and the, and the pain that he went through. And, you know, it is as bad as like it can get for a parent. I mean, it was like literal hell. And it was, you know, and the company was like six or seven years in like, still on this like, upward trajectory. But luckily we had built out such a strong foundation and like such an exec, great executive crew, that the company was able to keep going because I was not, you know? And, and so, yeah, I mean, there was so much falling apart in, in the building of Drybar that happened to me personally, you know, that I, you know, gosh, it was, it was so, so hard. It was so, it was definitely not a Cinderella story, for sure.
RV (14:07):
Yeah. So, so then, so, so that, that’s interesting. ’cause I think of it as being after, but it really was, it really was going while, like as you guys were still growing,
AW (14:18):
There was a really, then there my life fell apart again after Yes. But even during it was there was like, I am navigating some really tough waters for
RV (14:27):
Sure. So what, so, so tell us about the Messy Truth. So you mentioned the book, right? So the, the book is the, it, it talks about some of this. So, so why this book? What’s in the book? Like, how does that apply to your entrepreneurial story?
AW (14:40):
Well, it was been an interesting evolution for me. And the fact that I am, I mean, I decided, you know, I was, I decided to call the book The Messy Truth because I wanted, I felt really comp compelled. I think I always thought I’d tell the story of my, the growth and the, the fascination of, of, of how we did Drybar. ’cause People love it so much. But I didn’t, I don’t know that I ever thought I would tell like such a personal, such a, such a personal side of it, you know? And I think that that, that came from when I was in the thick of, of Dry Bar and my life fell apart, and I felt, and social media had, you know, was a really big deal then. And I just felt like I didn’t wanna be inauthentic with, with where I was and, and showing this version of me that was like shiny happy on tv, growing this massive brand and all this greatness in when really in the background I could, you know, get barely get off the floor and I, it it at in a period of time.
AW (15:40):
And so I think I, I couldn’t like lie about that. And so I was, I was, you know, transparent about it to a degree. And what I learned, the feedback that I got, which was so beautiful, was that like, it was really resonating with people because it was like, oh, the polarity of like, she’s got all this success, this company that’s thriving, but holy, her life is falling apart. And so showing that and, and that connection that was formed with so many people that I didn’t even know who were like, oh my gosh. Like, it was like a, it was like a sigh of relief that like, oh, you can both can exist and frankly, both do exist. I mean, I don’t, I don’t think anybody lives a life that’s like perfect and not hard at different times. And so I felt like, I felt like such a, a calling to that, oh, you’ve gotta show all of it.
AW (16:32):
You know, I have a great life. Like, I’m very blessed. I have, I’ve, I’ve had a really great life. I’ve also like, you know, been on the floor and felt like I wanted to die. So I’ve had the extremes of both. But I think that, that, talking about that more the messy truth of it all and, and making that the underbelly of my book, that it’s very much a business book, but I, I always say it’s like a, a business book and a and a, you know, and a memoir had a baby, and this is the book, you know, and it’s because the book does really highlight all of it. And now I just feel like I’ve really taken the messiness to a whole new level. And like, you know, like I was telling you before, starting this messy collective, which is, you know, all the lessons and all the things that I’ve learned, but like, really capitalizing on the, capitalizing is not the right word, but like you know, and you can edit that out, right? ’cause I hate
RV (17:27):
That. Yeah. We can edit, we can edit that if you want.
AW (17:30):
Yeah, edit that out because I don’t wanna say capitalizing, but, but more like, you know, becoming like
RV (18:19):
So talk to me about how’s your personal brand evolving now? I mean, you, you’re, you have clarity on sort of like, it, it seems like this sort of unfiltered, open, honest is like what it is. But from a business perspective, are you still building companies? Are you investing, are you operating, are you boards on, like on boards? Are you just trying to try to like, own minority stakes and let people run it? Like what, what, what are, what does this next season look like in terms of the evolution of the business side of your personal brand?
AW (18:57):
Yeah, I mean, honestly, like a little bit of everything you just said, you know, it’s like we, we do have, you know, companies like Squeeze and Brightside and Okay, humans and these brands that are kind of, you know, that I’m an investor advisor in, I show up to the board meetings, give my thoughts, help where, where, where it’s needed. That’s like one bucket. And then I am on some boards I have a harder time sitting on long phone calls. So I don’t know if I’ll continue to do that. I, ’cause I was experimenting the last couple years of like, what do, how do I wanna spend my time? I do mentor a lot of different entrepreneurs. Like there there’s a, a site called Intro where you can, you can pay to like, have time with CEOs and founders. It’s amazing. And I do that and I enjoy that.
AW (19:41):
You know, and I am, which I haven’t publicly announced yet, starting another brand in the hair space, which I’m gearing up with my brother to do right now. So yeah, it’s like I can’t really stop. I have so many, I have so many ideas and so many things that I wanna do. And I have like, you know, people talking about optioning my book, and then there’s like a, a show idea in the works. I mean, honestly, I couldn’t even, like, it would take a, it would take me a pretty long, long, long list of like, all the things that I’m working on, but it’s all in this vein of like, let me, like, I’m throwing a lot at the wall and let me see what sticks, which is so funny. Rory, and I don’t know if you you’d wanna cut this or not, but I remember when we were sitting in that room and you were talking about Lewis and how when you met him, he was doing so many things and you, like, you helped him like distill it down. My focus.
RV (20:31):
Yeah,
AW (20:31):
The focus, which, which I think about that conversation a lot because I am in that state of, I’m doing a lot of things right now, but I think I’m doing it purposely and I’m aware of what I’m doing because I wanna see what works, resonates, is, you know, is, is is lucrative, like all the things. And I’m not quite sure. And there’s, there’s a handful of them that I’m working on right now which is, which is fun. And I, I almost feel like I’m, like, in my early twenties again, like, I’m like, I’m gonna do this and I’m gonna do this, and I’m just gonna see what, what feels best to me, what, what seems to be working? And so I’m, I’m at this like really fun stage, but
RV (21:07):
You’re kind of experimenting with different Yeah, yeah. Totally different things. The, the tell me about what, what’s the difference between being on a board and being an advisor? Like I, ’cause I think that does happen that we see this a lot with clients es especially as they get more notoriety and as they become more successful, there’s, you know, brand deals sometimes then become equity deals and like consulting relationships sometimes become equity relationships. In your mind, how do you delineate, you know, what, what’s the different to be a, on an, to be an advisor to a company like advisor, investor, board member? Like, how do you think of those roles differently and how do you choose which companies to play each of those roles with?
AW (21:56):
Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s all like, it, it can look anyway you want it to. I mean, and, and I’ve tried it a handful of ways, you know, I mean, in, when I first, you know, sold the company and made some money, I was pretty, like, I wanted to join some boards and I did that. And like I said, it, it didn’t seem like exactly the right fit for me. It’s different being a board of my own company. But, you know, and then I also was like investing in a lot of brands. Like, I have a lot of, I have a probably like 20 or so investments in companies that are like my friend’s companies, or just like a company that I really believed in, you know, re regardless of what my financial advisors were, like, this feels like a real risky deal. I’m like, I know, but it’s like one of my best friends and I’m doing it more for like, you know, for them to have, to be able to like, use my name or call me up and get some advice and like, you know, kind of a loose relationship, you know.
AW (22:51):
And then there’s like, and then there’s situations where I’m like an advisor for equity, and I didn’t put any money into the company, you know, so they’re able to leverage my experience, have a conversation with me, and I’m not getting financially compensated, but I do have a little stake of equity in the company, you know, so it can, it can look a lot of different ways and you can negotiate really whatever you want. And, you know, it’s just kind of, it is a negotiation depending on what you want. I have, I’ve been through so many different scenarios at this point that I can kind of, you know, at this point I’m, I’ve decided to not invest mostly in most companies unless it’s something really that really gets me and rather say, Hey, I’m not gonna invest financially in here, but I’m happy to be an advisor to the founder, whatever, for equity. You know? So there’s, there’s lots of different ways you can, you can form it and it, it really can be, it’s just a negotiation.
RV (23:44):
Uhhuh
AW (23:55):
I mean, it all depends. I mean, all depends. It just depends. Yeah. It just kind of depends on what’s happening with the company. Like what your, you know, what your outlining as is, what you’re going to contribute to, you know, the company, the founder, how much, how much time and energy you’re gonna give them. You know, it’s, it’s really, it can run the gamut.
RV (24:11):
Mm-Hmm,
AW (25:08):
Yeah. I mean, I was
AW (26:10):
And also, like, I’m just a different person. I’ve been through some real life changing things and I have, you know, as you know, I’ve, you know, really come to find faith in my life. And I think that, like, I didn’t have that sense of, it’s all gonna be okay. It’s all gonna work out one way or the other. You know? I really truly believe that now in a very profound way that I didn’t have that back then. You know, back then I was like, I felt like I had to work myself into the ground, you know, I had to work constantly. And there was, it was like some sort, I talk about this a lot. Like, it was like some sort of badge of honor to work, you know, these crazy days, you know, days that you just like, like are working for the moment you open your eyes to the moment you close your eyes.
AW (26:54):
And like, this was like, and that is a little bit of like the entrepreneurial, you know, plate that we have because we, we breathe this and sleep it and drink it, and it’s just like all consuming, which, which it is. But again, if I had it to do over, I would like put it down a little bit more than I did and, and try, because I did get burned out so much. And there was a, you know, there was a lot of my life that I wasn’t paying attention to my health and to my wellbeing and, you know, things that were, were really important because I thought if I took my, you know, my hands off the wheel for a second, that the whole thing was gonna implode, which it wasn’t, and it didn’t, you know, and, and, and being, you know, like I was saying before with my son, and like the divorce, like that was probably around, I don’t know, year six, seven, something like that.
AW (27:40):
You know, it’s like I, I, I literally, somebody was saying this to me, I heard somebody talking about this not that long ago, that like, you set your company company up in a way that if, like, god forbid something happens to you, that the company will still exist and be okay for many, many years. I don’t think that was the case with Drybar. You know, it was like, I was firmly at the helm of that company, which is great. But like, you know, because we brought in a professional CEO at like two or three years, and then we built up this great team when I did have to dip out and deal with a lot of personal stuff, like nothing, nothing happened in the business was fine, you know? And that I think is a really important thing to point out, you know? And so it just also points to the fact that like, I could have done that sooner and enjoyed my life more than I did in that time when I was so worried and stressed all the time. Mean I, you know, and it’s like, like, you know, life’s too short for that. And I, and I, I, I would do that differently and I just, that’s how I kind of approach things now. I like, you know, and I have to remind myself of that, like, it’s a self-awareness thing, which by the way, self-awareness is probably the greatest gift of all of this, is like having much more self-awareness now than I’ve ever had in my life.
RV (28:53):
Mm-Hmm.
AW (28:58):
RV (28:59):
Tell us, tell us. Put it on the air.
AW (29:02):
I can’t, I mean, I’ve
RV (29:59):
Mm-Hmm.
AW (30:17):
I, I really am. And, and like I was telling you, you know, I ask all like the people in my life who are, you know, who, who would know, I’m like, who’ve like, read the Bible and know, I’m like, I don’t wanna watch this unless it’s like legit, you know? And, and I’ve been given the light green light that it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s pretty accurate. So it’s such a better, you know, and it’s really interesting. It’s like, it’s such a easier way for me to ingest it. And from a storytelling standpoint, you know, my, my best friend Paige and I talk about it now. I mean, it’s like, it’s all I talk about now. And we, you know, and, and a lot of people have said to me, even, even like Mariah Irwin’s daughter has Erwin McManus, which, you know, we all know and love, you know, she’s like, it, it, you probably want to, you know, interpret it in your own way too. Like, watching it from a movie standpoint through somebody else’s lens is, has been really great. But like it, I do, I do have a little bit of like, oh, I should probably ingest it my own way. And, you know, because there just seems to be so many interpretations of it all that I am curious, like what my interpretation would be. So yeah. Yeah. I’m in this conversation a lot with myself,
RV (31:25):
That’s really, that’s really, really cool. Well, you know, you seem really happy. You can, you can sense, you can sense the sense of peace that you have, which is like, it’s just amazing how that comes from faith and not from a dollar figure, or being on a cover of a magazine or having celebrity friends or being invited to the red carpet. Like, it’s, it’s like
AW (31:50):
That’s wild. I mean, I, it’s interesting that you bring that up because it is true. I mean, I’ve had all of that, all those things that you mentioned, and, you know, it was never really fulfilled by it, you know, and, and it’s, it’s fascinating how, how profoundly different, and I feel now you’re right. You know, with this like this, those are not, those are, you know, those are just not real things. It’s really, and I, and they’re cool, and I, I mean, I like ’em, but it’s not, it’s not the thing,
RV (32:21):
Not the thing. So I love it. So we’ll link up to the messy truth is that so people can, can check out the book if they wanna learn more about it. Anywhere else you would point people to if they wanna connect with you.
AW (32:32):
Yeah, I mean, you know, the, the Messy Collective, which is the online community that I’ve just launched which you can get to by just going to ally webb.com or my Instagram, which is just Ally Webb and, you know, this community that I’m trying to create and foster for female entrepreneurs who are in the throes of building their companies and want some advice and community. And I feel really excited and good about it. So I’m, I’m excited to, you know, keep fostering that, that world.
RV (32:59):
That’s really cool, friend. Well, thanks for being so open about everything going on. And it’s, it’s your life is a movie. It’s going to be, it’s gonna be a movie. Your life is Your life is a movie. So I’m waiting for the, I’m waiting for the movie, movie premiered. Oh. I’ll
AW (33:14):
Be calling you to, to help me promote it. Don’t worry.
RV (33:18):
Yeah. So, all right, well, we’re, we’re cheering for you and we wish you the best. Ally Webb,
AW (33:23):
Thank you so much. Awesome.
Ep 501: 3 Insights to Build More Mental Toughness | Dean Stott Episode Recap
RV (00:05):
Let’s talk about how to be more mentally tough. I’m gonna share with you three insights that I think are a requirement for anyone to understand. Who wants to be stronger mentally, right? And when I say mental toughness, what I’m talking about, I, I’m talking about the, the, the, the, the process of training your brain to think in a way that allows you to continue in the face of adversity. Everyone who has ever been successful has faced adversity. You’re going to face adversity again and again and again. Your ability to overcome adversity is completely connected and tied to your mental toughness. The way that your brain processes rejection, the way that your brain processes pain, failure, setbacks, tragedies, challenges, however your brain responds to those elements will determine whether or not you are successful in this life. It will determine whether or not you have or achieve, or gain or acquire the things that you desire.
RV (01:20):
Because
RV (02:21):
Now, the first one I’m actually gonna take directly from Dean from this interview, ’cause I had never heard anybody say it this way. I’ve heard lots of people talk about this concept. So I know this is a truth because I’ve experienced it and I’ve heard lots of other successful people talk about it in, in our research, in our coaching, and working with people. But I’ve never heard anybody say it the way that Dean said it. And this is so powerful. He said, anticipation is always worse, almost always worse than participation. Anticipation is worse than participation. What is he
RV (02:58):
Saying there? He’s saying that whenever you are going to set out to conquer something meaningful, whenever you’re gonna set out to do something significant, whenever you’re chasing a new dream, going after a new goal, attempting a new endeavor, the anticipation is worse than the participation. Our minds make things up to be much more difficult than they really are. And by the way, if your brain does this, which I know it does, this doesn’t mean that you are someone who’s doomed for failure. When your brain does this, this is what the brain is supposed to do. Your brain is designed to keep you safe. So when your brain is doing this, it means that you have a perfectly normal, healthy, functioning human brain. Why? Because the brain is designed to keep you alive. Survival is the first and foremost function of the human brain. And the way that you keep somebody alive is by keeping them safe, which means doing things that are comfortable, which means preventing you from doing things that are new and unfamiliar and un uncomfortable and uncertain.
RV (04:14):
So the brain holds you towards certainty, safety and repeated behavior where you already know the outcomes. And so fear is the tactic that your brain uses to keep you safe, right? That’s why my favorite definition of fear is the old acronym FEAR for fear, false evidence appearing real. So what does your brain do? Your brain by design biologically goes into mental mushrooming. It goes into forecasting the worst possible scenario. That’s what the brain, it’s doing what it’s supposed to do. It is forecasting all the negative things that could happen might happen. What if you know, like, what if there’s things you don’t know? What if you fail? What if you go broke? What if you die? And that’s the brain’s mechanism for keeping you from pursuing new things which are risky and keeping you doing the things you’ve always done, which is safe, which keeps you alive.
RV (05:15):
However, if you’re gonna be a successful person, you gotta overcome that. If you’re going to do something that nobody else has done, you’ve got to think in a way that nobody else thinks. If you’re going to achieve things that you’ve never had, you have to do things you’ve never done. You have to become a different person than you are. You have to set out on a trail that you’ve never been down before. And so it doesn’t mean that your, your brain is somehow faulty when fear shows up, but it also doesn’t mean that that’s the truth about what’s gonna happen. In fact, it’s almost never the truth. And what Dean is saying is the anticipation is worse than the participation. It’s thinking about it and thinking about how hard it could be and how hard it might be. Much more that is much more difficult than the actual doing the things.
RV (06:09):
And so you have to just know that in order for you to be mentally tough, you have to know a little bit about neuroscience. You have to know a little bit about psychology. You have to know a little bit about how your brain works so that you can go, ah,
RV (07:06):
People who are mentally tough have resolved to say, if I’m gonna fail, I’m gonna fail to something that’s real. If I’m gonna endure setbacks, I’m gonna endure setbacks to things that really showed up. What I am not okay with is I am not gonna allow myself to never achieve and to never even attempt or pursue because I am going to enable myself to be a victim of a figment of my imagination. I am not gonna lose to what is fake. I am not gonna lose to what is made up. I am not gonna lose to what is not real. You have to make that resolution. You have to decide that if you’re gonna lose, you’re gonna lose to a real opponent. You’re not gonna lose because you were too afraid to step onto the field. And 95% of people, probably 99% of people can’t get past that one hurdle.
RV (07:59):
You get past that one hurdle, you’re on your way because you realize that anticipation is often worse than participation. The second insight that you need to know to build your mental toughness is that you have to build a great plan and put your confidence in the plan, and then simply execute the plan, right? So what you don’t wanna do is be dependent on you having courage in every given any given moment, on any given day, in any given circumstance. What you don’t wanna do is be completely reliant on your gut instinct all the time. What you don’t wanna do is say, woo, you know, I’ll just fly by the seat of my pants and hope I figure this out. What you don’t wanna do is just run blindly into a fire. Like you want to have a plan, and you want that plan to be based on reality, data, experience, logic, rationale, other people’s experience, interviews, coaching, education.
RV (09:08):
You want to create a plan based on pragmatic logic. And what you do, and this is what all like peak performers do, right, is they create a plan and then they focus on executing the plan. Every professional athlete, professional coach, this is what they do. They create the plan. This is what the military does in life and death situations. What do they do? They create the plan. Do they sometimes have to deviate from the plan? Sure, they do, but they have a plan and they work the plan. They put time into creating the plan, and then they execute the plan, right? That’s what a budget does. A good entrepreneur creates a budget. Why? What is a budget? It’s a plan. It’s to go, look, if we have these financial goals, these are the things that need to happen. These are the inputs that need to happen to drive the revenue to this number.
RV (09:57):
And out of the revenue that comes in, we will plan to spend this amount on each of these things, and we will reinvest this amount to, to grow the revenue again. And then we’ll plan to spend X percentage of, of the revenue on each of these line items. It’s a plan. You create a plan and then you execute the plan. Now, greatness sometimes requires that you deviate from the plan, but you have to have a plan first. And you, you put, you put your self-esteem. This is something that I said and take the stairs all the way back in 2012. You put your self-esteem, you put your in your work habits, not into your production. You put your energy, you put your focus, you put your faith, you put your conviction. You, you, you, you put your discipline, you, you put, you put your, your, your faith into your work habits, into the things you control into the plan, executing the plan that you’ve laid out, doing the things that are pragmatic and functional and actionable, not in the results.
RV (10:54):
Because there’s things that show up that you can’t control. And you can’t always control the, you can’t always control the result. You can’t only, I can’t always control the circumstances, but you can control whether or not you set a plan and then you just work the plan. And part of how you overcome your fear of failure, part of how you overcome the fear of failing is, is to say, if I fail at something, my self-worth and my identity is not gonna be wrapped up in the fact that I failed at something. ’cause It wasn’t that I failed, it was that my plan failed. It’s not Rory as a person failed. It’s, I took the time to create a plan. I thought the plan was gonna deliver an outcome. I thought the plan was gonna deliver a result, and then my plan failed to deliver that result.
RV (11:44):
I didn’t fail. The plan failed. I only fail if I didn’t execute the plan. But that, or if I don’t have a plan, but I create a plan and then I execute the plan. Sometimes the plan works, sometimes the plan doesn’t. But if the plan didn’t work, you go, oh, I need to modify my plan. That’s it. It’s not, I’m a failure. I’m horrible. I’ll never be successful. I’m not spiraling down into some sort of de depression, and I’m not, my, my, my confidence, my self-confidence isn’t affected by the fact that I fail. See, people who are not mentally tough have fluctuating confidence when things are going well. They have confidence when things aren’t going well, they don’t have confidence. But people who are mentally tough constantly have confidence even when they’re failing. Why? Because their confidence isn’t based on the outcome. Their confidence isn’t based on result.
RV (12:37):
Their confident is based on their work habits. Their confidence is based on the plan. Their confidence is based on their effort, their discipline, their energy, their confidence comes from controlling what they can control. And if they’re controlling what they can control and they’re failing, there’s nothing to be upset about because you can’t control whether or not you succeed or fail. You can only control what you could control. So if you stay focused on that, you go, I don’t have confidence that fluctuates. Even when I fail, it wasn’t that I failed, it’s that my plan failed. I need, I needed a better plan. The plan was the issue, not me. Now, if I failed to execute the plan, that’s more of something that I have to face accountability for, and I have to take self accountability for, or I have to have accountability with a boss or a, you know, spouse or coworkers or colleagues or partners to say, yeah, we created this plan. I didn’t execute my part of the plan. I gotta own that. That is a, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a personal failure, right? That’s a character failure. That’s a, my me not executing. But that’s why you create the plan, put your confidence in the plan, and then you work the plan and you put your self-esteem and your self-confidence and your self-worth in your work habits, not in your results, not in your outcomes. Mentally tough people do that. Number three. Number three, this is big secret, big secret of successful people.
RV (14:01):
It’s not that you have to be willing to do whatever it takes to be successful. You just have to be willing to do the right things for however long it takes, right? A lot of people talk about doing whatever it takes. Eh, I don’t know about that, right? If it requires me to kill someone, if it requires me to steal, if it requires me to, you know, compromise my own personal health ever, if it requires me to like, turn my back on my family or not be available, right? It’s like, nah, I don’t know. What, what, what I will do though is I will say, if I want something bad enough, I will do the right activities for as long as it takes. Sometimes it takes a month, sometimes it takes a year, sometimes it takes a decade. But if I really, really want it and I still want it, I will continue on course until the mission is complete.
RV (14:58):
You know, I love the, the old sort of tongue in cheek saying that says, I’ve never lost. I’ve only been behind when the, when the clock ran out.
RV (15:44):
But here’s the thing, if you stay focused on that goal, I promise, like if you stay focused on the goal and you really focus on it, you will get the goal. Don’t be discouraged by the deadline. That’s a big part of the point here is don’t be discouraged if you don’t meet the deadline. I think deadlines are important. Deadlines drive stress. That’s what deadlines do. They create stress. Some amount of stress is healthy. A deadline goes, man, we are gonna prioritize this to be completed by this date. And part of that stress creates, you know, it moves you from the inertia of standing still, and it gets you moving and you go, Hey, you better start moving because there’s a deadline. That to me, is healthy. The unhealthy part of deadlines is to go, man, I’m doing everything I freaking can. I’m working the, the most I possibly can.
RV (16:33):
I’m doing everything I know how to do. I’m laying it on the line. I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m doing the best I can do, and I’m just not gonna get there by the deadline. Well, if that’s the case, you shouldn’t be stressed and you shouldn’t be beaten up. You certainly shouldn’t be beating yourself up. You shouldn’t have let that affect your self-confidence. You shouldn’t have let that affect your self-worth. You shouldn’t have let that affect your self-esteem. You can’t control those things. If you go, man, I am control. I’m working as fast as I can, and I haven’t been able to get there by this deadline, that’s okay.
RV (17:05):
The question is, are you doing everything you can do? Are you doing the best that you can do? And are you willing to do it? If it’s a goal that really matters to you, are you willing to do it? Are you willing to pursue it for however long it takes? Right? And you go, I always thought this, this is gonna sound arrogant, this is gonna sound arrogant. I don’t mean for it to sound arrogant. This is just the straight up truth. The first time I went to the National Speakers Association meeting, I think I was 22 years old, and they were you know, they do this awards banquet every year where they induct up to, I think it’s up to five, maybe six. They up the induct up to five or six people every year into the professional speaking hall of fame. And I’m telling you, I was 22 years old, and I decided, I sat there, right there, and I was like, I’m gonna be a, I’m gonna be the Hall of Fame speaker one day I will be inducted into the professional speaking hall of fame.
RV (18:00):
I made that decision at 22, and it didn’t feel like a big gamble at 22 because a lot of the people who were getting inducted were in their fifties and sixties, and they didn’t start speaking until they were in their forties. And I was like, well, gosh, if I’m, if I’m half as good as these people and I do it, you know, like for twice as long I’m gonna get there. That’s kind of what I’m talking about. Now, what I didn’t say is I didn’t have the pressure to go, I’m gonna be inducted into the Hall of Fame, the Hall of Fame in five years, or 10 years or 20 years. It was just like, no, this, I’m gonna do this. This is gonna, one day, I’m, this is gonna be me. And I was inducted into the professional speaking hall of fame when I was 37.
RV (18:35):
So was that a success or a failure? Well, on the one hand, you could say that was pretty successful. I’m the youngest American in history to be inducted into the professional speaking Hall of Fame. 37 years old. That’s pretty, that’s pretty amazing. But on the other hand, you go, it took me 15 years. Like, that’s not any faster than it took anybody else. Like, that’s not some child protege. That just means, I started earlier, like straight up somebody who gets inducted in their late fifties if they started speaking in their forties, like I didn’t do it any faster than them. I just did it earlier, right? I did it sooner in my lifespan, but like, I didn’t get there any faster than anybody else, even though I was the youngest person in history. So that’s what I’m talking about is I’m saying like, if you want something, if there’s something that you want bad enough and you go, I’m gonna freaking get this.
RV (19:33):
I’ll tell you, one of mine right now is I’m gonna get a house in 30 a, there’s an area in Florida that I love. It’s just, it is the perfect, to me, it has everything that I dream of when I think of relaxation and God’s creation and what family life should look like and what a community should be like, and assuming that that community doesn’t change sooner or later, we’re going to be there, right? Like, we’re gonna have a place in this one particular area. Why? Because I’m committed to it. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take. It might take the rest of my life, like, or I’ll die trying, but like, it’s gonna happen and there’s a good chance it’ll happen sooner than that, which would be great if it does. But if it doesn’t, like this is gonna happen. Now, my goal might change at some point, and you know, that that area might become run down or whatever, and I go, oh, I wanna do a different area. But like, the point is, you have to be willing to say, I will do this for however long it takes.
RV (20:37):
And I think people go, I’m a failure. Like I launched a podcast and I didn’t get a million downloads. I, I started posting on Instagram and I don’t have a million followers. I wrote a book and I didn’t sell a million copies. Like I wanted to be a speaker, and I haven’t been on a thousand stages. And you go, well, you failed. By whose timeline? Like, is the clock? Did the clock run out? Like, who’s the person that said the time has expired? You only, you extend your horizon, extend the timeline, be willing to do it for however long it takes to get there. You say, I’ll do it. That person is mentally tough because that person isn’t looking for the shortcut and that person can’t be beat. You go, you go, even if I go slow, I’m not stopping. Even if I take one step, I’m going forward.
RV (21:24):
Even if I fail, I’m failing forward. You, I cannot be stopped from achieving this goal when I decide I will pursue it for however long it takes. And that’s tremendously freeing and it’s tremendously confidence boosting to go like, oh yeah, I’m 22 years old. Like, yeah, I’m a hall of fame speaker. I, I mean, I may not be today, but one day I will be, but like, I already, I already know I will be, I just don’t know when. And then when it happened, it was like, yeah, awesome. I was so excited about it. But it, like, it wasn’t a surprise. It was like, of course. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I’m so grateful. I’m so happy. I’m happy it happened when it did. I’m kind of bummed it didn’t happen earlier, but I knew it was gonna happen eventually. And it happened, it happened sooner than later.
RV (22:05):
So I’m happy about that. This is like, this is something that I’m gonna do. And then you get to live your life as operating. Like, yeah, this is gonna be me. I’m, I’m gonna, I’m gonna become a top salesperson. I’m gonna, I’m gonna become a great spouse. I, I’m gonna, you know, I’m gonna gonna be a great, I’m gonna, I’m gonna be a great CEO. I’m gonna, I’m gonna become a great author. Like, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next year, maybe not the year after. But like, if something matters to you and you go, yeah, I wanna change the world. I wanna, I wanna, I wanna start a podcast that changes the world. Can you do that in a year? Me? That might be difficult that you do it in three years, still pretty hard. Can you do it in five years? My guess is if you podcast for five years, even with as many millions of podcasts are out there, I bet five years from now, you start today, you’ll have one of them, you’ll have a very significant podcast that will make a difference in the world.
RV (22:52):
You do it for 10 years. I can virtually guarantee it. Why? Because most people die and they give out, like all you have to do is outlast most people, like straight up. The strategy for success in many ways is you just gotta outlast most people. And it’s the tortoise in the hare, right? This is the old story of the tortoise in the hare. And you’re just like, I’m just gonna keep trucking along. I’m not worried about speed, like whatever. I’ll get there when I get there. So this is what mental toughness looks like. You go, you can’t mess with that person. You can’t stop them because they, they, they’re un mess with a bull because it’s like, I’ve already given up on pressuring myself to do something by a certain time. I just know I’m gonna get there. So it’s like, you can’t stop me. You, you, you can’t, you can’t distract me. I’m on target and I’m committed to be like however long it takes and I’m going, you know, I’m already taking action because I know anticipation
RV (23:45):
Is worse than participation. And my identity is not gonna be thrown astray. I’m not gonna feel sorry for myself or beat up myself or be too arrogant, egotistical if I do achieve it or if I don’t. ’cause My self-esteem is in my work habits. My self-esteem is in the plan, right? If I get success, that means the plan worked. If I don’t get success, that means the plan didn’t work. I gotta modify the plan. But it’s not about me as a person. It’s about the plan and it’s about my habits. And I will show up and do what I said I’m going to do. You do these three things, you’ll be unstoppable, literally unstoppable. You will be mentally tough, and I promise you do these three things. You will be different than 99% of people. So just outlast everyone. Build these into your psyche, decide however long it’s gonna take. Put your self-esteem into your work habits, work to plan, and it will come true for you. I promise.
Ep 500: The Mindset of Relentlessly Pursuing Excellence with Dean Stott
RV (00:02):
Every single month, we probably get about a hundred cold pitches for people to be on our podcast. And we say no to at least 99% of them. We usually only meet guests by people that we know personally, but every once in a while, there’s one that will grab me and I’m like, this is a no brainer. And this is one of ’em. And I am, so I’m just meeting Dean Stott, who you’re about to meet. We’re just meeting for the first time ourselves. But when you hear this guy’s story, it’s gonna blow you away. So he started out in the British Special Forces rose to the ranks to be in, you know, the, the kind of the, the premier in that whole world, right? He was in Special Boat Services. And then what happened is, after that, he got into private security.
RV (00:48):
He has evacuated people from Israel and Benghazi and like, I mean, this guy has been in the middle of like the craziest war scenes you can imagine. So he also is a world record setting cyclist. So fast forward here to a couple years ago and he rode, I want to get this right. So he began training to cycle the longest Motorable road in the world, the Pan-American Highway. He completed a 14,000 mile route from Argentina to Alaska. In May of 2018, he achieved two world records. He raised 1.4 million US dollars for mental health awareness charities. In the process, he passed through 14 different countries on this expedition, crossing some of the most dangerous passages in the world. And in the very final stretch, he continued for 17 hours and covered 340 miles on his longest day. So he then recently released a book called Relentless, just kind of sharing this experience, this inspiration, and I think the overall mindset of unrelenting pursuit of excellence.
RV (02:02):
And so I was blown away by a story. Plus I like having a lot of personal friends who are in special forces. And, and so with that, welcome Dean. I’m so honored to meet you, man. Thank you for being here. Morning, Roy. Thank you for having me. So I wanna start with what your dad told you Yeah. Early in your life because I am someone who I pretty much do everything to avoid physical pain. And so whenever I meet people who do the extraordinary physical feats, I’m just blown away. And you’ve, you, what part of what amazes me about you is you’ve become, like the number one in the world in three completely different, at least three completely different areas that are very competitive areas. But it started, the first one was this British Special Forces journey, and it started, and it didn’t sound like your dad was so much behind what you were doing there in the beginning.
DS (02:59):
Yeah, no, my, my father, he was in the military himself, which was quite shocking when I, I know, I, I always wanted to be a fireman. And I went through school went to college, and I decided that I didn’t really want to go through college. And I, I, I’ve always surfed since a young boy. So I went on a surfing holiday, which was supposed to be for two weeks, and it turned out to be six months. And this was long before the mobile phone. In 1994, my father found me working in a surf shop and sort of highlighted to me that I’d, I’d wasted my education and what was I now gonna do in my life. And so to silence him, I said, well, I will join the military. You know, I’d always wanted to be a fireman, but at the time, I think there was 2000 applicants for one job.
DS (03:37):
There was a huge recession in the uk. So I was not gonna get that, that job straight away. So my mindset was join the Army, do three years, get get what I can from the military, get some discipline, and also build up in the way I wasn’t the physique that you, you see nowadays, I was about five foot seven and weighed about 130 pounds. But my father told me I would last two minutes. It wasn’t the, the comfort and words of motivation I expected. And so for me, I was like, well, I can argue with my father all the way back home now for the next five hours, or I could just be silent. And the best course of action was action itself. So the Monday morning, I walked into the careers office and I joined the Army. But then my father, once he saw that I was being serious, he then started to get, get behind me.
DS (04:22):
But I never had aspirations of doing the Special Forces. My father was the the Ted Lasso of the of the British Army. He was the Army soccer manager and coach. So his career was very sports driven and not like special forces driven. So I didn’t really have an insight into that world. And in a very short period of time, within three years, I’d done every arduous course you could do in the military. I was a para airborne, I was a commando. I was a diver. And already in the tier two special forces. And then the next, the next option for me was tier one Special forces. And as you touched on in the opening dress, I joined the Special Boat Service which is your, your, the equivalent here is SEAL Team six. But I was in ar I was in the Army, and I was told I couldn’t go to the Special boat service.
DS (05:10):
It was just for the Royal Marines only. But unlike here where Delta Force and Seal Team six have their own training, ours is actually combined. And so again, I ignored them. I, I still put my application in and we started with 200 candidates, and then six months later, I was one of the eight candidates that was successful and the first, one of the first to join a special boat service. And I think now 15% of the special boat service come from the Army candidates. So again, yeah, there was a lot of times in my career and in my life that I was told that I couldn’t do anything and I just, just kept my head down or tried to keep my head down. As they say, they tell you to be the gray man on these courses. I was the gray man for about two minutes.
DS (05:51):
RV (06:29):
Yeah, I mean, I love what you said of like, rather than arguing with your dad, like you just take action. I like so many people, their first step is to run their mouth and like brag about all the stuff they’re going to do, or they tell everyone like, here’s the new thing that I’m doing. And they receive all this praise before they’ve actually done anything or, or all this resistance before they’ve actually done anything. Like that must be one of your core philosophies.
DS (06:59):
Yeah, it is. Yeah. And a lot of people, you know, yeah, as you said, they’ll run their mouth off. And some people don’t. I don’t think they realize what’s actually involved. And a lot of people, you know, I personally, I get a lot of messages from people I want to join the special forces. What, what can, what do I need to do? And they almost think it’s, it’s one pill, you know? Or it’s, it is 1, 1 1 one course that you go on. It is, it is an accumulation of, of stuff. You know, I’m not here now in front of you telling you my story because I did it in the last two years. It’s what’s I’ve done over the last 30 years to get here. And I think some people when they, they have the right intentions in their mind to do it, but actually when they realize how difficult or what’s involved, you know, and then there’s also things that can come in a way, you know, I’ve said it before, I’m gonna go do this, and actually something else happens and changes the course direction of my life, and then it, that doesn’t actually come to fruition.
DS (07:49):
So for me, I just think yeah, have it intentionally in your head. And also, I’ll give an example for some people say, I’m gonna run the LA marathon. I only only say that ’cause it’s next weekend. They have the intentions of doing it, but no one actually believes you until you’ve actually put a date in the diary or you’ve actually signed up for it. You know, that’s when I start to think, right? ’cause Once you’ve signed up for it, you’ve let the world know of your intentions, and then there’s that additional motivation to do it. Just talking about it, you know, you could keep talking about it for the next three or four years.
RV (08:20):
So, so this leads to a a, a question I wanted to ask you is, what happens when you sign up for something
RV (08:31):
And you have this moment where you suddenly realize it’s harder than you expected? Right? So, ’cause there’s the, there’s this like honeymoon period when you first sign up for something like, all right, I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna run a marathon, or I’m gonna join, you know, special boat service, or I’m gonna be the the first guy to like ride 14,000 miles on my bicycle. And then there’s gotta be a moment where, you know, you’re in training and you go, whoa, this is harder than I, like, this is harder than I thought it would be. It wasn’t just proving to my dad, like in the moment, like, oh, I was gonna prove to my dad. But then you get into, you know, training or whatever, there’s, you’ve gotta have had those moments. What do you do in those moments? Especially the first ones?
DS (09:15):
Yeah. Well, like, like the 14,000 miles, and that was in 2018. If I was a young 18-year-old boy, I probably wouldn’t have achieved that, you know? So when I was in the military, as I mentioned, I had no aspirations of special forces. But each time I went on a course, whatever course it was, I was physically getting stronger, but mentally I was getting stronger. And so I sort of took that experience in, into the next course and then into the next course. So I do, I, I always say you can’t be experienced without experiences. So my bike ride was an accumulation of everything I’d experienced in my time in the special forces for my time in the private security. And I just adapted that to that. So, so for me, I was confident that I could do it, otherwise I wouldn’t have put my name to it.
DS (09:57):
So for me, I think, yes, it depends where you are in your life and whether you’ve had experiences before that’s gonna help you with, with the new challenge. But I like to get out my comfort zone. So for me, I’ll, I’ll go back to the bike ride. I’d only cycled 20 miles before I applied for the world record. Wow. But what they did is I managed to get as much information as I could from books that I was reading. I spoke to the previous record holders. And I just literally used that information. I got the experts around me to help me. I knew that I could cycle. I knew I had the endurance and the mindset, and I had to choose cycling because I had a parachute accident, which ended my special forces career. So I had to find a sport, which, which wasn’t gonna hamper my knee. And so for me, I, I had been tested before, physically and mentally, so I knew that I just had to do that on, on a bike. But everything else, it was the planning, the coordination, the logistics. My wife ran all that as well around me for me. So also having a good team around you helps you as well. And getting, and getting knowledge of the experts as well.
RV (11:02):
Yeah. So I, I hear you on that, like sort of preparation, research and sort of strategic selection. What about, what about the moments though, when you want to quit? Or like, I mean, like you’re talking about building this mental toughness. Mm-Hmm.
DS (11:50):
Yeah, I think you have to, you have to have a motivation, which is personal to you. You have to be motivated to do, to do that. You know, when I was in the Special Forces, there was some guys there and they, they were there because their dads were in the Special forces. Oh, that’s not a motivation. ’cause When it gets hard, you know, it has to be personal to you. Why do you want to be it? Why is it, you know, when it gets hard, when it gets scary, you know, you need something that’s gonna, that fire to, to push you through. So that, that was that. But with the, with the bike ride, you know, we did it for, as you touched on, for mental health charities, there was 11 mental health charities that we raised the money for. And so I knew that one of the charities called Place to be the, they were gonna get a hundred thousand dollars, a hundred thousand pounds, which enabled 14,000 children to step into a school psychologist.
DS (12:41):
And so I would then revert that into miles. So every mile I was cycling enabled a child to do that. So there’s ways of tricking, tricking the mind. But actually, I, I never had pressure from the sponsors. I never had pressure from the charities themselves. I actually put my, it was my own pressure. I told the world that the ethos of the UK special forces was young, relentless pursuit of excellence. So how does it look to the world if I don’t finish this challenge? So I put myself under my own pressure, but my own motivations. But I also, that’s why I, I aim for the world record. So that’s why I applied for the world record. Sorry. So I had something to aim for, you know, in the military we’re very objective driven and target driven and mission driven. And so that was the mission.
DS (13:22):
And you know, I think after the first week I was 39 miles. The world record was 117 days. And I was aiming for 110 days because when I’d put all the planning together, looked at all the potential scenarios, it was natural disasters, coups, things that are out of our control. You know, you can’t control the uncontrollable. So I gave myself a week’s fudge. So should we encounter any of that along the way? It was eaten into that week. And I think the worst position I was in on the whole challenge was the end of the first week. ’cause We had such strong winds. I was 39 miles behind Target, but my target was still a week ahead of will record. And from then on, it was always gains. And so mentally wise, I was always in a, always in a good place. I was hitting the targets and I was now a ahead of target.
DS (14:06):
So I see people, other people doing challenges or doing, doing things, and they’re like, well, I’m 10 miles behind today, I’ll catch that up tomorrow. But you dunno what’s gonna happen the next day. You could have another bad day and then be 20, 30 miles behind. So that message with your head mentally when you go to bed. So I always say, stay on that bike, stay in that canoe, make those extra five phone calls at work. Make sure you where you are, where you are supposed to be at the end of the day because you are then in the right mindset and head space going in on the next day. You are not trying to catch yourself up.
RV (14:38):
Uhhuh.
RV (15:31):
I know that you have become perhaps what many would say is the, is the number one leading expert in the world in evacuations. Yeah. You’ve done evacuations in, you know, the, the highest stake situations you can imagine. Mm-Hmm. There you’re not facing pain as much as you’ve gotta be facing fear. Yeah. there is, you know, literally you could turn around at any second and lose your life. Yet you’re running into those situations. You’re going there repeatedly you’re thriving. How are you, what is your strategy for managing the fear in those moments of the, you know, the potential life and death at any moment?
DS (16:15):
Obviously there, there’s fear comes in all shapes and sizes. You can, there’s so many fears for me with, with this, I was confident in the plan. You know, I would be more fearful if I wasn’t confident in my plan or there wasn’t a plan in place. So the, the, the very first time I did this was back in May, 2011 in, in the Arab Spring in Libya. And I soon identified these, these largest security companies were charging six, seven figures, sums of crisis management evacuation plans, which weren’t actually in place. And that still seems to be a lot of the cases today. So I bought 30 weapons off the black market. I buried them between tuna and Egypt, and designed my own evacuation plans. And I put them in place. And then when your American ambassador got killed in Benghazi, I was there that evening and got an oil company.
DS (17:01):
And yes, there’s a lot of things going on, but where I’ve been successful in this is I don’t bring in westerns my own teams, guys that look like me. I use local resources. I use as many local people as possible. It’s understanding the demographics, the politics, and the tribal influences of the countries. So actually the success of the majority of mine has been down to local influence and, and support and sort of capitalizing on that. Because as you, as you touch on the Special forces, Hollywood doesn’t help matters. You know, what you see on the movies is called the offensive action. The bo the, the bombs, the bullets and the biceps. You know, that’s, that’s 25% of what we do. 50% of what we do is, is support and influence its hearts and minds. It’s being embedded by locals actually understanding what’s happening on the ground, ground truth, and not what’s being reported on the media. And so that’s where the success has been for me. And that’s, and going back to your question reduces my fear because I’m not fearful ’cause what I’m seeing on TV, because I actually know what’s going on the ground, the ground truth, where things are happening. And we are probably one or two stages ahead.
RV (18:08):
Interesting. That’s fascinating. So you said 25% is bombs, bullets, and biceps, 50% is influence, you know, the support,
DS (18:16):
Support, support and influence hearts and minds. Yes. Small things just being embedded with locals, working with better winds, working with tribes in all these countries and really understanding, you know, especially for ex for example, Libya. Libya has 167 tribes. You, you know, I mean, you have to really understand the nuances with that. So when I had the the Benghazi incident, the easiest option would be to drive from Benghazi to Tripoli in about eight hours along the coastal road. But coming from Benghazi, you can’t get a driver from Benghazi to Tripoli. You’ve gotta go through Misrata to Tripoli. There’s various tribes along the way. And so what I did is I headed south to Zella. I had a safe house in Zella. We stayed there for 36 hours. We just actually see what was happening because at this point we still didn’t know what was going on.
DS (19:04):
We didn’t realize the American ambassador had been killed. And that gave us this soap period. But unbeknownst to the drivers, I had other drivers coming in from Tripoli. And so I could send those drivers home and use those. Because again, if you didn’t really understand those tribal in infants and, and things like that, you could, you get yourself in trouble. You could think, right, I can just drive to to, to Libya. So they’re, they’re the sort of things I needed to understand is what people can I use, who are the best people that are gonna help me get to certain areas? And when I evacuated the Canadian embassy from Tripoli to T is 18 military in four diplomats. My fixer, he was from ra, which was the border of Tuni. So he knew everyone along there, but also his cousin was the president of the GNC, which was the new interim government.
DS (19:51):
So it’s really just having the right people, the right key people. And also the key to me is it is showing respect to the locals as well. So the British Embassy, when, when I evacuated the Canadian Embassy, the British Embassy got shot at, at every checkpoint the week before, which was obviously worrying the Canadians. So myself and my fixer went out to the checkpoints. We didn’t speak to the guys with the guns, we spoke to the tribal elders. And we actually just sat down with, and we were just very transparent. We’re like, this is who we are, this is our intentions, and this is when we’re gonna do it. And they, they let us in, let us through. It is just because the British embassy decided to speed through without stopping or even negotiating. So a lot of it’s, you know, it’s just simple communication and respect.
RV (20:36):
What’s the other 25%?
DS (20:38):
The other 25% is probably
RV (20:45):
Yeah.
DS (20:45):
‘Cause You obviously, you can’t act on, on any of that without without the, without the information itself. So surveillance.
RV (20:52):
Yeah, it’s fascinating. I mean, it’s almost like what you are doing also with like your bike ride you’re talking about. It’s like a lot of this is the gathering information and the intel on the front end. Yeah. Then, then creating a plan. And if you do that, then the last, it’s only the last 25% is like the muscle.
DS (21:09):
Yeah. Well, I, I, you know, one of the things we do in the special forces is I think that you guys in America, they call it a, a washup, we call it a hot debrief. So every time we came off the ground, whether it’s on operations, on exercise, anything we do daily before we clean our weapons, get showered, have food we do a hot debrief. ’cause It’s still fresh in your mind. And so as soon as the helicopter landed, we’d be off and the the ops officer would have us in. And it was three simple questions. It was, what worked, what didn’t work? And if you were to do that again, what would you do differently? And these are great lessons because each operation’s slightly different. So when I did the bike ride, I was getting information from books that I was reading and, and articles, but I wasn’t getting that critical information for my plan. And so I reached out to the previous record holders and I asked them those three questions and all their issues were in south and Central America, bureaucracy, languages, spares to the bikes. They all started in Alaska and finished in Argentina. So for me, I was like, well, why take a gamble with a second half? Why not get address those issues early? And so that’s what I did. I turned it 180, I started in Argentina and finished in Alaska. And that, that was my plan, and that was literally from the information I got from them.
RV (22:22):
Wow, that’s wild. They were willing to, they were willing to just talk to you and share it.
DS (22:26):
Yeah. Which was a great, a great surprise to me. Yeah. It seems to be, you know, with the world records, you’re there just to set a bar, you know, you want other people to help. You know, I’m helping a young gentleman at the moment who’s wanting to beat the world record next year. And so, yeah. You know, for me, I wasn’t a cyclist. I dipped my toe in it just to, to prove a point. I started cycling at the age of 40. And so, you know, he’s a younger guy. And so for me, I was like, well, here’s the information, here’s what I learned. And, you know, hopefully you can learn from that. But there are other factors that you can’t control. Weathers, you know, when I went through Nicaragua, I think four weeks later, there was a coup, you know, there’s certain things that are outta your control.
RV (23:05):
Yeah. So I’d like to talk about that for a second, because, you know, let’s say you do all the planning, right? Like you’re gonna launch a business or pursue some goal or dream, right? You do all the planning, you get all the surveillance, you get the right people on board, they go to help you, you then, you know, overcome your fear. You’re in the situation, you’re doing the stuff, but then sometimes there are things that just happen outside of your control. Yeah. There, like, you could do everything. You could do everything, right? Yeah. And suddenly there’s this thing that takes place that you, there’s no way you could have planned for, you didn’t plan for. What’s the mindset that you use in those moments to, to sort of deal with or reconcile and move past the things that happened that are like, that you didn’t prepare for that just were completely out of your control?
DS (23:55):
Well, there, there was a, the, I would use, probably use the bike ride as a good example. You know, I, I headed from south to north. I 10 days off the South America world record. My wife was the campaign director. My wife, you know, she, she’s the team. You know, I would talk about the success of individuals, you know, people would’ve seen me on social media, but it was the team around me. My wife was very much the, the lead for that. But actually we had a a, a RV and a four by four, which was gonna get shipped from Fort Lauderdale to Panama. Because coming from south to north, we were having to change vehicles at every, every border crossing we could get one from Alaska to Argentina if you crossed the Darien gap. And so my wife rang me when I was in Ecuador to tell me the vehicles hadn’t been loaded onto the shipping container.
DS (24:39):
So that was out of our control. But my wife and my pa and a couple of friends they drove, they flew over and they drove the vehicles 4,000 miles in eight days from Fort Lauderdale down to Panama, through Mexico and all the la Central American countries. Wow. So that was, you know, we didn’t see that, but we reacted to the situation change, and it kept to the team moving. I then get into North America on day 70, and I’m 14 days ahead of the world record. So mentally I’m, I’m in a good place. You know, I’m now in America. Everyone speaks my language, the culinary options a lot better. And my wife then rings me five times, and I think, you know, normally she keeps distractions away from me. I think there’s something wrong with our children. And she then tells me that we’ve been invited to Harry and Meghan’s wedding, which was, which was nice.
DS (25:26):
No, prince Harry and, and Meghan. Wow. So I was like, and this was their, this was the charity that we were doing for, was for Harry, William and Kate. It was one of their charities called Heads Together. And I said to her, I said, that’s nice. She goes, no, you don’t understand. You are now one day behind. So going into that phone call, I was 14 days ahead, 10 minutes late, I’m now a day behind, because the last flight out of Alaska in time for this wedding was Day 102. So I had to change that I way that I cycled in, in North America. I had the luxury being able to cycle at night because in South America and Central America, it’s safer to be off the road. And so I I cycled North America. I had 17 days planned. I did an 11 and a half days.
DS (26:06):
I literally, I got to Lubbock in Texas the next day. We had 16 mile an hour winds in tornado. So it’s now two days behind. And there’s a, there’s an app on your phone called Windy tv, which is very popular with sailors and cyclists. And it gives you the strength and directions that the winds forecast for two weeks every hour. And so I just put pen to paper. I had to cycle 340 miles in the next 36 hours to miss the next weather window and just played chess with Mother Nature. So I was using what resources I had available to me. I picked up a 50 mile an hour tailwind in Cheyenne, you know, which covered 270 miles in 11 hours. And so that’s where I gained that time. And so, you know, the, the situation that the objective hadn’t changed the timelines had.
DS (26:52):
And so I got a week outside and then I got a in a town called Whitehorse. And I get a, a phone call from a friend saying, have you seen this guy who’s, who’s a professional cyclist sponsored by Red Bull? He’s already got free hover endurance wheel records. He’d come out on social media that day and said he wanted to be the first person to cycle the Pan-American Highway under a hundred days. So every time I kept hitting my objective, my objective kept moving. And so I was, I could have stayed on the bike and just, you know, come in at reasonable time, but I just, for me, I wasn’t happy. So I, I pushed myself even harder. I cycled I cycled for 20, 28 hours in the last 36 hours to come in, in, in in 99 days, 12 hours and 36, 56 minutes in minus 18 winds and snowing in,
RV (27:41):
It was what it was 99 days.
DS (27:43):
99 days. 12 hours and 56 minutes. So again, and I think on the, on the last two days, I had 250 miles to do. And I was like, well, I’ll do 150 miles today, I’ll do a hundred on the last day. And we’re well in under a hundred days. I did the first 50 miles and we got to a a roadblock and they, they, they were like, you cannot pass. I, I hit the roadblock at noon. They said, you cannot pass till eight o’clock tonight. So they took eight hours off me. So even to the very last day, there were things that are outta my control. So I just, you know, the success of this was a, was having a plan, but also being flexible with that plan, just reacting to the situation changes. You know, for me, first question is, is anyone gonna die? No. Then we can always make a plan, get the kettle on, and we’ll make a plan. But yeah, that wasn’t, when I was back in UK making that plan, I didn’t factor this other cyclist. I didn’t factor tornadoes. I didn’t factor royal weddings. There was stuff that were outta my control.
RV (28:41):
Those dang royal weddings, man. I mean, you get invited to those things, they just screw everything. They just really screw everything up.
DS (28:48):
Yeah. Yeah.
RV (28:50):
Well that’s so cool, Dean.
DS (28:51):
Yeah.
RV (28:52):
I so, so the book is, the book is called Relentless Ya. Where do you want people to go to like, learn more about you and the book and stay in touch with what you’re doing?
DS (29:02):
Yeah, so you go to my website, deans.dot com. You know, a lot of this stuff will be up on there. I’m on the normal social media, media handles Instagram and Facebook. And you can also buy the book either on the website or through Amazon.
RV (29:17):
And then if there’s somebody right now who’s listening, who is in one of those moments where like either they are experiencing pain, right? Mm-Hmm. They have a goal. They’re either experiencing pain, they, it’s harder than they thought, or perhaps they’re experiencing fear. There’s some threat that has showed up, or perhaps they’re just facing some, you know, outside circumstance beyond their control. Yeah. And you know, they’re sitting in that moment right now debating whether or not they should keep moving forward and sort of pressing towards the objective and towards the goal and towards the mission. What, what encouragement would you give that person right now?
DS (29:58):
I think what I used to use for some of my recruits on the commando calls when they were fearful on certain tasks that we were doing was anticipation is worse than participation. You know, your mind plays tricks on you. You think that is impossible. I’m scared. And actually, once you push through, once you leaned in and got through it, you look back and think, actually that wasn’t as bad as I thought. So that was probably my, my leaving comment for them.
RV (30:23):
I love that. I love that anticipation is worse than participation. Make the plan, take the action, have faith in the plan. This is so good. Dean, thank you for sharing your insights with us, brother. And thanks for the protection you provide and for the way that you push and, and, and challenge all of us through what you’re doing, man, we wish you all the best.
DS (30:44):
Thank you so much, Rory. Appreciate it.
Ep 499: Non Competes Are No More – What You Need To Know | Matthew Miller Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
So non-competes are going away. What do you need to know to stay compliant as an employer? So there is a new ruling by the FTC, right? The Federal Trade Commission on non-competes. Here’s what you need to know, is that the new non-compete rule is going into effect on September 4th, 2024, right? So as I record this, we are heading into middle of May, 2024. So in a short four months, this is happening. So there’s a cushion of window to get yourself prepared. What does it mean? Right? So this new comprehensive ban is federal, which means it is nationwide, not state by state, and it is banning all new, non-competes with all workers, right? So employees including senior executives. So this includes 10 90 nines consultants, employees, including senior executives. The final rule states that it is unfair to have a non-compete as it’s preventing a method of competition, and therefore they are banning it, right?
AJV (01:15):
So that is happening September 4th for existing non-compete. So anything that is established and in place, I would say prior to today, which is May 14th, right? So as I record this, anything that is before today would be existing. Like if you know about this, it is wise and I would advise you, not legally, but as a, a friend friendly advisor to go ahead and put these things into place because they’re coming, right? So what I’m talking about is pre-signed employee documents that have non-compete sent for those. This has a different, a little bit of a ruling for senior executives, and then it’s so it’s different for senior executives than it is for I would just call ’em non-senior executives. So what is the defining tool term of a senior executive? Typically it is someone who is making more than $150,000 a year, who is also in some sort of policy or decision making capacity, right?
AJV (02:21):
So don’t hold me to that for the, to the dime, but that’s what is technically considered a senior executive role. They have decision or policymaking power making more than $150,000, give or take a thousand or $2, right? So for those, for those individuals, for senior executives existing non-competes can remain in place, right? So existing can, but here, moving forward, again, I’m saying May 14th, like as you know about this, don’t be trying to like, just like hire a bunch of people if that’s not in your best interest. But this, this ban on September 4th also includes new senior executive positions, and they will, that will not hold to them. So it will hold, if you have a non-compete for existing ones, it will not for future ones after September 4th. So that’s the first thing. So if you are a non senior executive, right?
AJV (03:19):
So all work, all other workers different than senior executives it is not, nothing is enforceable after the effective date. It’s just gone, right? So existing ones for senior executives will hold intact, new ones will not, and for all other workers, it’s gone, right? So all other 10 99 or W2 employees the non-compete will not be enforceable after September 4th, okay? That’s, that’s, that’s the general thing that you need to know about this. Now there are some things that you should also know that are not a part of like this, you know, technically this federal ruling which are non-solicitation are staying intact, right? So as non-competes go away, which there are pros and cons to this, right? I used to be in the consulting world and this would be very advantageous for me in that role to not have a non-compete. But there are some nuances to that thing of proprietary information confidential information trade secrets, right?
AJV (04:22):
So there are some things that are still going to stay intact for a, you know, consultant work for hire 10 99, where if I, I’m currently being hired by, you know, X company with certain trade secrets, confidential information, proprietary whatever I’m not able to go and compete with a direct competitor with those things during my timeframe of work. But as soon as my timeframe of work is over the very next day, no non-compete will be eligible to me, right? So that is very much in my favor, although there is still some protection for the company, for the business owner who is hiring someone to come in. And this is where you just really need to make sure that as a, an employer as a business owner, this, this, you get this four month window that you really need to meet with your attorney.
AJV (05:12):
This is the time that you need to do contract reviews service agreement reviews for you and vendors. If you, if you hire consultants or 10 99 make sure you’re talking to your employment attorney about your current contracts because as non-competes go away, that doesn’t mean that non-solicitation is going away, right? So I think it is a fair to go, hey, like, you know, there are free market free trade here, right? If you choose to leave here, you can go do your own thing. You, yes, fine, but you cannot take our trade secrets and use them. You cannot take our confidential information. And this is where you really need to get into the nitty gritty
AJV (05:57):
Cross your t’s, dot, your i’s and your agreements to make sure that you actually have provisions, you have clauses that that does protect your proprietary information, your systems, processes, methodologies, frameworks, your ip, right? Those need to be in your employment agreements. Now, I am not an attorney. This is not legal advice. This is my opinion as a business owner that just has non-competes are going away. Doesn’t mean that you can’t still be protecting yourself and your business as you want to be free, open, and transparent with your team. Of course you do. At the same time protecting, you know, trade secrets and proprietary information as well as keeping your non solicitations intact, right? So just because an employee at free will decides to leave and go start their own thing, even if it’s in competition with you, they cannot recruit other employees.
AJV (06:50):
They cannot recruit away your clients and they cannot take your information and use it as their own, right? So there are some things here that are very much in favor of the individual, the employee, which is fine, right? But that’s where you as the business owner need to step in and go, great. And now I need to double down in these other areas with confidential information and my IP and non-solicitation and everything else to make sure that you are fairly protected, right? Not being overbearing or this is no time to panic. Most non-competes. We’re holding up in a court a lot anyways mo there are many states that have banned this years ago, like California. So yes, there’s a lot of talk and a lot of flurry about this, which is part of why we’re making this many podcasts right now about it.
AJV (07:44):
And at the same time, very few non-compete lawsuits we’re holding up in court anyways. So this is just kind of like making it a federal stance overarching of what really was hard to uphold anyways. But it’s a great opportunity and a necessary time to update all of your agreements as well as review and ensure that you do have other clauses protecting your information, your ip, as well as doubling down on non-solicitation as the non-compete will be no longer allowed. It will be illegal to have that. So you do need to ensure that all agreements are updated. Those are removed by September 4th because at that point people can sue, people can turn you in. The federal government even has a website and a form where you can go and submit people who still have this in their agreements. Don’t be one of those people.
AJV (08:39):
And go ahead and take care of this now. So quick high level update. If you need more information, talk to your attorney, right?
Ep 498: Important Things to Consider Legally When Starting a Business and Building a Brand with Matthew Miller
AJV (00:02):
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the influential personal brand, AJ Vaden here. So, so, so excited to get to introduce you guys to one of my closest friends, Matt Miller. And although I could literally spend the next 60 minutes just shooting the breeze with Matt, that is not the purpose of today’s conversation. So y’all, before I introduce you guys to Matt, I want to tell you what the premise of this podcast is all about and why you need to stick around. And then I’ll do a quick formal introduction. There are a lot of things changing in the legal landscape, and here’s what I know to be true. Most of us have no idea what they are,
AJV (01:01):
And so I have invited on a very, very knowledgeable wise individual to help us understand what it is that we need to know when it comes to protecting our business, protecting our personal brand, but then also just some things we need to know in the ever constant changing landscapes of what it means to do business today in the United States. So that is what today is about, which means if you’re in business, it pertains to you. So stick around. So now let me formally introduce you to Matt, formally Matthew, but I call him Matt Miller, who is a nationally recognized attorney and a legal advisor to businesses with a niche in healthcare companies as he lives in Nashville, Tennessee. Everyone has to do business in healthcare. But my love is that he has a focus on merger, mergers, acquisitions, private equity transactions, and general corporate law.
AJV (02:00):
I’ve been harassing him for months on how do you, how do you become my, my general counsel? I think eventually he will fold and say, fine, fine here. Here’s how we do it. But he is literally, when we say nationally recognized, he was named as one of the Bloomberg laws, 40 under 40, and being recognized as one of the nation’s most accomplished legal minds. He has been recognized in the best lawyers in America. He has overseen transactions ranging from a hundred million to over a billion dollars. That’s with a be. And that is why I have him come o come on the show today because I need someone who actually knows what they’re talking about to help us understand what is going on in the legal landscape today. So, Matt, welcome to the show.
MM (02:44):
Thank you, aj. This is amazing to be here. Are you guys a billion dollars yet? I think you’re getting close.
AJV (02:48):
MM (04:11):
Well, that’s, you know, like we said, broad questions are the name of the name, name of the game today, I guess. I mean, I, I think it’s amazing that, you know, a lot of people are getting their legal information off of Google today.
MM (04:52):
So what we do as lawyers is not just, you know, have the information in our heads and, and, and, you know, provide that to clients, but we try to organize and apply that information in a way that benefits the client. So I think with all that’s going on out there with, with the changes, and like you just pointed out, is it is an election year. There is is going to be potentially a change in the executive branch. There could be changes at the judiciary. There were certainly a lot in the last few years. There are changes happening at the regulatory level on the FTC side. There are changes happening at the antitrust level. There are changes happening in the small business domain. There are so many things happening. How do you get your mind straight around what’s important?
MM (05:41):
You know, what, what, what do I need to pay attention to? What is just you know, not applicable to me? And, and there’s a lot. So I totally see how it can be overwhelming at times for the small business owner. And, and that’s what I really would like to do, is help make that a little bit more accessible, make it a little more organized, make it a little more or understandable so that small business owners can go out and feel protected and, and have confidence in what they’re doing is compliant. So, I mean, I guess one of the, one of the areas I think, or I guess what I could say at the outset is, one thing that’d be good to like take off the table is that if you are a small business owner that is operating, you don’t need to really have your finger on the pulses of every legal, legal change.
MM (06:21):
I think you do need to be aware of a couple things. And those with, with, by and large, don’t change, right? So the typical rules around formation of your corporation, the tax rules around recognizing revenue and income those things, you know disclosures to your shareholders, if you have shareholders, how you treat employees, you know, discrimination, hiring and firing rules, all that doesn’t change by and large. But the things that do change, you hear about, right? And I, I think we were talking either before we started, or you just mentioned it, that we’ve all heard about the recent changes to the non-compete laws that have been proposed. And you, you’re right. I mean, the FTC, which is one of the agencies that oversees antitrust and anti-competition laws held a special session where they voted three to two to actually make illegal non-competition agreements for most workers.
MM (07:18):
Okay? Hmm. So this applies to both W2 employees and to consultants. And that’s a pretty revolutionary thing. And formerly you could apply a non-compete to an employee in most states. It just had to be narrowly tailored in terms of the scope and in terms of, you know, the geographic scope and then the duration of the non-compete. But what the FTC has said is that starting, and I, I, I apologize, I don’t remember the effective date of this, but it, you know, it’s not effective yet, but starting here in a few months, the proposal is that every non-compete would be defacto illegal in the United States. Now, there are a couple of exceptions to that. There’s, there’s the standing exception for if you sell your business, you’re not allowed to turn around and compete against the buyer. So non-competes in connection with the sell of the business will remain in effect, and non-competes for certain high level executives will be allowed, it seems again, with narrow prescriptions around duration and scope.
MM (08:19):
So that is one key area that has changed a lot, and it’s interesting to see that that happens right on the cusp of an election year. So you’re right to be mindful of those things. But I wouldn’t say that you need to be juggling all of this as a small business owner. You can talk to your tax accountant, talk to a CPA or talk to a lawyer who, you know or even if you have to Google it, and they’ll probably give you enough information at least, oh, ask an intelligent question
AJV (08:47):
Yeah. So on this topic of non-competes, like, just in case someone is listening, going like, okay, I hear this term tossed around a lot, but what does that actually mean? Can you like, help explain, like, what is a non-compete?
MM (08:59):
Right. Well, a non-compete is actually a it is a contractual agreement. It’s a restrictive covenant. Okay? So it’s a promise that you make as an employee or, you know, going forward a consultant that says that you will not participate in a business that is potentially competitive, or is comp actually competitive with the person or the company on the other end of that agreement? Right? So if you are an executive at a company and, and you’re privy to a lot of internal information, a lot of confidential information, then you go and leave that company and you want to start another business that your company will want to put certain restrictions around you to make sure that you’re not going to start a business that could compete and, and take away customers and take away take, take away business, take away employees to, to this new venture.
MM (09:56):
Mm-Hmm,
MM (10:48):
It goes beyond logos. You know, I think, you know, you talk a lot about reputation. It, it really is your, a reputation in the marketplace, or in other words, your goodwill. That’s the legal term for it. One way to really lock up goodwill is a non-compete. A non-compete means you can’t take that goodwill from one business and take it over to another one. It is restrictive. It is, it is in some cases could be deemed punitive. And so the law has always tried to reduce those and tried to make those reasonable and supported by consideration. But now it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, could be the law of the land. And now states have been doing this for many years. California has always made non-competes defacto illegal, and you can actually get in trouble if you try to enforce one in, in certain states. But the landscape is changed, is, is changing. And I think it’s important for brand owners to understand that it, this is actually a potentially good thing for them because it means that their, their goodwill is going to be protected and respected and not subject to unreasonable restraints.
AJV (11:58):
Yeah. You know, it’s interesting because this whole concept of a non-compete or a consultant Mm-Hmm.
AJV (12:54):
It’s like, right. There’s a lot of different things there that probably was not okay when I was in that world just even six years ago. And today it’s going, no, like I could go do whatever I want with all of your competitors, but then also I wanna talk about it as the, as the owner, as the CEO, as the founder. If I hire a consultant, the last thing in the world that I wanna do is give them keys to the kingdom of everything we have built, and then have them also go call up John Smith, you know, my top competitor and go do it for them too. So I see how it’s advantageous in one, you know,
MM (13:37):
Out? No, no. You, you are exactly right. And it’s a very astute question, and I’m trying to get too in the weeds on this, but, you know, consultants, you can restrict their performance, right? Because one of the tests to see if someone’s an employee versus a consultant or not, is whether or not the company or the employer is exercising too much control over the service provider, right? If you exercise too much control, then they actually convert from a consultant or an independent contractor into an employee. And one of the ways that you exert too much control is, is having something that’s an expressed non-compete against a consultant. So they have or, you know, so you, you, you will see, you will see things like conflicts of interest policies where they will say that if you are working for us on this project, you cannot go out and work again, you know, work for a competitor.
MM (14:30):
While you know, you know, you know, while you have this information with, with us, that is, that is a non-compete that would be potentially struck down under, under the analysis the FTC is now putting out. So conflict of interest type policies you know, you have to really word those correctly to have them only apply, like while the service provider is providing services. And you really can’t have a post-term period of a non-compete. And so that is potentially challenging for the business owner and potentially liberating or freeing for the consultant. Mm-Hmm,
MM (15:43):
There’s lots of different ways that you can address this new liberality that consultants have under these non-compete under the loosening of the non-compete laws. But but yeah, I mean, previously consultants were the most subject to these kind of ancillary non-competes that were, were enforceable. Now they’re seeing a, a great lifting of those restrictions in their ability to go provide services after the consulting agreement is ended. So during, during the period of, of service, you know, a non-compete or some sort of conflict of interest policy that’s reasonably tailored, that’s probably okay. Mm-Hmm,
AJV (16:41):
So that’s interesting. So it’s kind of like with anything, it was, there’s this natural ebb and flow, right? You’re gonna have some release of some of these restrictions, but it’s very likely, very possible and probably in the, you know, business owner’s best interest to then tighten up some areas of contract or service agreements and other areas like, you know, confidential information and trade secrets, right?
MM (17:07):
And, and that’s, those are usually the information that, those are usually the terms that the business owners know least about. Yeah. And there’s not great forms that really cover they’re sort of broad based, you know, templates that are out there, but they don’t really address your unique business and your individual business and your situation, and they may not be tailored to your laws. Particularly trade secrets are operate under a wholly different set of laws than just typical confidential information operates. So those are kind of separate concepts. You know, I think something else to keep in mind is that non-solicit will still be enforced. So there are certain things that the law will allow you to continue to do that have been historically the way we’ve done business for a long time. And things like non-disparagement clauses, other restrictive covenants that prevent someone from leaving a company and then saying bad things about that company later down the road.
MM (17:58):
Those will all be those will all still continue as will just general releases when you, whenever an employee, employee leaves a company. And, and if, if, you know, if there’s a, if you get a release from them, those will be upheld and enforced so long as they’re supported by consideration. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (18:35):
Yeah. So it’s so interesting because, you know, on the one hand, you know, our former business was heavy on, you know, 10 99 and, and we literally had to like, you know, check every t dot every i for, you know, all the compliance things. And I wonder just like, how much of this is just to deter, right? Hiring 10 90 nines and kind of forcing everyone towards the more W2 environment Mm-Hmm.
MM (19:04):
Tax. Sure. Well, and, and there’s another thing to keep in mind too, is that a lot of companies will have arbitration clauses with their consultants, and you have to word that arbitration clause correctly. I’ve seen this a lot lately where an arbitration clause that does not have a carve out or protecting your confidential information means that you’ll have to go to arbitration in order to protect your ip. Right? Now that is difficult because you’re going into court where there’s not a judge that can give you an order that can allow you to do an injunction. You’re really in front of a binding judge. But that, but they’re not a court of, it’s not a court of law. It’s not under the laws of our United States and our federalist system. It’s more of like a contractual agreement between the parties to go to a commercial resolution Mm-Hmm.
AJV (20:15):
And then you also mentioned the non-solicitation. So that will stand, so can’t solicit employees, can’t solicit clients. All of those things will stand, even though the non-compete will eventually fade away.
MM (20:30):
That’s right. Because, you know, that’s a restriction on on, on the, you know, not a restriction on someone’s ability to, to be employed and to go work where they want to work is different than the ability for someone to come and, and take employees from someone else. And now you, you can always generally advertise and, and invite people to come work for your company, and you just can’t do a targeted solicitation if there’s a non-solicit in your contract. And, and that will continue to be the case. But yeah, this is, you know, it, it, there’s a, there are also some changes happening that are relevant to the business owner in, in something, some things around corporate formation and reporting beneficial ownership. And I think, I think, you know, aside from the non-compete, there, there are some changes in the law regarding corporate information.
MM (21:24):
And, and that’s called the Corporate Transparency Act. You may have heard of it. This is a law that requires it, it was really put out for to prevent money laundering. And so people would companies were starting shell companies and no one really knew who owned these entities. And in order to deter fraud and, and in order to like cut back on Monday laundering and things like that, they have started requiring businesses to report their ownership. Now, it’s interesting because one of the carve outs or exceptions from the reporting obligation are large businesses or businesses with lots of employees. Those typically do not have to report their beneficial ownership, but small businesses do. And so this is one of those laws which is meant to target one group of, of individuals or, or, or companies or founders, but it ends up you know, having an effect on a d on a different class that they really intended.
MM (22:24):
A lot of people are still grappling with the requirements of the CTA. There are portals to register and, and to make reporting your information more efficient. Most people are not even aware of it, and there’s already a couple suits making their way up to the Supreme Court, hopefully about the legality of requiring people to disclose their ownership in, in these corporations. So that’s another development that if you’re not aware of it speak to your lawyer or talk to your even accountant would probably have some information on that. And then the the so,
AJV (23:01):
So on that note, really quick before you move on, so the Corporate Transparency Act is basically, so when you say small business, is this like under 5 million, under 10 million? Like, are, is it a revenue requirement? Is it employee requirement? What is it?
MM (23:16):
Yeah, I, so I think there is an employee requirement. If you have more than 20 employees then, then, you know, I think you, you fit into the large business. And I think that there’s, I, I can’t remember right now off the top of my head what the revenue requirement is. But we actually have a policy at our firm that any advice related to the CTA has to be run through a special team because it’s so new and it’s just so unclear what, what the process is. I mean, this happened January of this year, and now we’re just, just past April tax reporting season, and now people are starting to report for the first time. And
AJV (23:54):
How are people supposed to know about this?
MM (23:57):
AJV (24:30):
Yeah. So there’s a couple of things. So I just think this is so fascinating. I only knew about the Corporate Transparency Act because you told me and I consider myself pretty savvy when it comes to tax law and corporate law. And I mean, there’s been two or three things that have come up here lately that I’m like, well, what, where did I miss the memo on that? And I am generally someone, I subscribe to a lot of newsletters, I attend lots of webinars. I’m in different organizations to keep me up on that, and I’m still just like missing stuff left and right. And I’m just curious, for the average business owner who is head down in their business, who’s not checking in with an attorney on a regular basis and really only talks to their accountant during tax season, like, what are the repercussions for not doing this or not knowing about it? Like, are there gonna be penalties? Are there fines like,
MM (25:27):
Well, we don’t even know. That’s the point.
MM (26:22):
And if you keep that in mind, a lot of things that you think are the law, they could change because either they don’t align the incentives correct correctly, or they’re, they don’t promote efficiency. Hmm. You know, so that, that’s one of the things that’s, that’s cha challenging about the law, is that even when something is the law, like in the case of the non-compete that we discussed, that can change in a year or, or, you know, in, who knows, it may, it may come back and it may, it may be different in different states, but, but it, it looks like at least for now, that those are the two big developments this year are, is the change of the non-compete, which, which would be a federal law, meaning it applies to all states, and that a state could not go below that floor.
MM (27:07):
And, and the, the Corporate Transparency Act, which requires small businesses to report their beneficial ownership. I think it, if, if you could put that on the awareness radar of most of your audience and most of your listeners, I think then they can start asking the questions, well, what do I need to do? But in terms of the penalties for non-compliance, in terms of like, what happens if you don’t do it? You know, my advice would be do it follow the law, right? While it’s the law. But the truth is we don’t know because it’s so new. So even lawyers are grappling with these things.
AJV (27:41):
So fascinating. And part of why I wanted you to come on, because I think there’s just so much that, you know, unless you do have, like, you know, legal counsel on staff or accountant on staff, and most, I would say personal brands don’t, right? That this is a really hard thing to keep up with. So is there a place that if you don’t have an attorney that it’s like, oh, well, this is how I get federal updates or legal, like, does that exist? Like, how do you
MM (28:10):
Find this stuff out? You, you know, you know, unfortunately, it, I don’t, to my knowledge, there is no place other than having a lawyer to explain these things to you. There’s no place you can go that will give you legal advice. I mean, it’s, it there, the way that our legal system is structured and the way that our attorney-client engagements work, it’s very outdated. It’s very antiquated, and it, it, it, it, it’s not that it discourages the free full of information because you can get information and you can get people to help you. Like you can go to a conference, for example, Mm-Hmm.
MM (28:59):
You know, you know, about these changing trends, about these legal issues to the general public. Mm-Hmm.
MM (29:55):
I, I think the law firm model is, is really evolving from a, a fee for service institution to a, to a flat fee kind of project based or relationship based model where clients are able to get the information that they need based on their, their unique situation and, and not so much based on the billable hour as it has been in the past. And, and that, that is one big problem out there is that the affordability of good legal counsel, it’s hard, is not really available. Yeah. We don’t, and now, now there are legal clinics that are out there, right? There are, you know, there, there are services that will provide advice on a relatively budget basis but a lot of, a lot of founders, a lot of entrepreneurs that are actually making revenue and growing and growing businesses won’t qualify for a lot of that support Mm-Hmm.
MM (30:56):
AJV (31:57):
Yeah. Because at the end of the day, well, first of all, it seems like there’s a gap in the marketplace that you should go and fill. So I’m just gonna give some encouragement. There seems like a, well, I, I have,
MM (32:07):
I have some updates I can share on that if you, if you want.
AJV (32:09):
Yeah. Yeah. But then also I think it is kind of one of those things of, you know, really it’s like, it’s, it’s the beauty of content creation, right? It’s like the whole premise of, you know, give away the what for free charge for the how. Right? It’s like, just because I know about the Corporate Transparency act doesn’t mean I’m gonna go and DIY the whole thing. It’s like, tell somebody for free, tell me about it, and then tell me how you could help me do it. Right? It’s, you know, welcome, you know, to year 2024 attorneys. So,
MM (32:41):
Well, I mean, there are actually, there are actually in, in, in the, in the, for the average business, there are really five journeys that they go on and, and the lifecycle, right? And it’s, it’s starts with, with the, with the founding or the formation of the, of the business. And then it goes all the way through to the exit of the business. And as the business grows and evolves and goes through these different journeys, I like to call them their needs change. And so it’s not just about having advice at, at the stage that you’re at, it’s what are, what advice are you gonna need as you continue to grow and evolve? Because it, it does change every time.
AJV (33:19):
Yeah. So it’s a great transition that I think would be really good to talk about is since you have such specialty in mergers and acquisitions I would love to just hear from you, like, what are the things that people need to know or consider? Like if somebody is listening today going, Hey, maybe I’m in the beginning phases. Maybe I’m in growth phase, maybe I am, you know, ready to exit, whatever they are. But what are some things that you see that make a business worth buying? Right. Because I think there’s a difference in I’m trying to sell my business versus someone who’s trying to buy my business. Right? Right. And I think we just had this conversation a couple of weeks ago with a friend of mine of going, trying to sell your business means that you are trying to find someone versus someone who’s trying to buy it. So make it a business worth being bought. Right? Right. So, how do you make your business worth being bought? So since you’ve been through this, what are some of those things? Like what makes a business purchase worthy?
MM (34:22):
Yeah, so I mean, I mean, I, I guess the first thing is what you do in the early stages really matters at the end. Mm. And it’s not just, okay, now we’re ready to sell our business, let’s go to market. It’s, it really when someone comes to look at your business, they’re gonna do diligence on your business, and they’re gonna go all the way back to the moment that you formed your company till the present date. So things that you do in the beginning matter later. And that’s, that’s the first point. The second point is that, you know, the, the way you organize your business model matters a lot too. If, if you are going to be a services business, that is kind of one direction, if you’re going to be an ip business, that, that relies more on proprietary information and systems, that is another direction, right?
MM (35:06):
If you’re, if you’re gonna have a brand that does a little bit all the above, you know, that’s, that’s another business. And, and those businesses are valued differently and, and, and at the later stages of their, of their life than they are than the others. So not every process is the same, but, but what we look at when we’re trying to acquire a business is we wanna make sure that the risk is minimized as much as possible for the buyer. And that if anything was done that was not correct or not accurate you know, or not in compliance with law, that that risk remains on the seller. So you, you, it’s not like you can just sell your business and then you don’t have to worry about it anymore. I mean, the buyer will make sure that, that you are responsible and ultimately held accountable for that, and it could come out of the sales proceeds.
MM (35:56):
So it’s really in your interest you know, when the business is small and, and these things cost a few hundreds of dollars to deal with them now versus when they cost few hundreds of thousands of dollars later. And we see business owners have to put up large escrows large amounts of indemnification to offset certain risks and purchase price, price adjustments all the time because of things that were not caught early enough in the, in the process. So it, it’s really like, do yourself a favor. Save a ton of money later if, if you’re planning to ever exit by getting those things right today. You know, and I think as, I think really if you look at the early stage founder, one of the most important things that they can do is choose the right business partner. And I think that is something that often gets overlooked or, or not really fully appreciated, is that, you know, are you in business with the right person?
MM (36:53):
And does that person have the same vision as you? The same? Are the, are the skill sets complimentary? Are, are they gonna be able to take the business the long term? Do they have the same sort of goals as you, and, and, you know, it may be that they do initially and that changes over time, and that’s okay. I think it’s okay as long as you have the right documents in place. And that’s the third thing, is you wanna have, you know, the, the right business model, the right team, and the right documentation. And that documentation is really where the rubber meets the road, because say there is a change in the partnership, say there is a, a different direction that the founders want to go, and one founder wants to leave and the other founder wants to stay. And, you know, how do you negotiate that split? Because that is a very common that’s a very common scenario. Happens all the time. It’s nothing, it’s not like it’s a bad thing. It’s just you need to plan for that in some ways. Or at least you need to have mechanisms that allow that to naturally evolve without it destroying the business or harming the business. So that’s what we focus on a lot in the initial stages of the business.
AJV (37:59):
So when you talk about documentation, you mean like an operating agreement?
MM (38:03):
Correct. Yeah, the operating agreement. If you’re an LLC, if you are a corporation it would be something like a certificate of incorporation or a charter. Typically, we would organize businesses that want to raise capital. So if you’re a software business or a technology business, or you’re any kind of business that has a really high level of research and design r and d attached to it, you’ll probably, so if it’s capital intensive, you, you may need to raise money. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (39:07):
Why do they like ’em more?
MM (39:09):
Well mostly because they’re corporate in Delaware a lot of the time, and the Delaware corporate code is very investor friendly. Mm. Also for tax purposes, c corporations don’t have an automatic pass through. Mm-Hmm.
MM (40:15):
And you wanna protect the investors. So investors get a little, a little bit more protection in a, in a C corporation, but you can certainly invest in an LLC as well, like LLC operating agreements. Certainly can have investor provisions and they can issue units, common units and preferred units just like a corporation. They can even have you know, many of the same investor rights, hard is harder. And to, to make the same level of anti-dilution protections in an LLC as you get in C corp. And I’ve actually seen that a lot lately, or a couple times lately, where investors have been asking for anti-dilution protection, but it’s an LLC that they’re trying to invest into. And the way the partnership system works, because it is a pass through, it causes all sorts of issues from a tax perspective when you try to adjust for the varying levels of, of the company’s valuation amongst members in an LLC.
MM (41:11):
Interesting. So that’s one issue. And now it, now a lot of people have been asking about s corporations, and I’m not a tax attorney. But you’ll see people form S corporations or you’ll see ’em form LLCs and it’s Fast Corp, excellent LC and then right. And then file, then check the box, file a, it was called an 88 32 form election, which checks the box, and then they’ll file a 25 53, which is an s selection to essentially qualify for better tax treatment on their self-employment. And, and that’s fine if you are doing a consulting business or if you are, you know, just, you know what, what you don’t wanna do is start an operating company file an S selection and then go need to raise capital. Mm-Hmm. Because what you can’t be, if you’re an S corporation, is you can’t be a, you can’t be a business that has multiple classes of stock.
MM (42:07):
That’s one of the impermissible things in an S corp. And the moment you take investor money from investors, they’re going to want usually a preference or some sort of interest rate, and that creates a different class or different economic treatment on that stock. And that can invalidate your s selection. So if, if you’re forming an S corporation solely for the purposes of being a consultant and, and getting some tax efficiency on your, on your on your self-employment that, that’s one thing if you’re forming an S corporation because you want to be a corporation, but want to pass the treatment of an LLC but wanna raise preferred stock, that’s not okay. You’re gonna blow your s selection. So, oh, man, that’s one thing you can do correctly. And I’ve actually seen a business get all the way down to the end 10 years later thinking they’re an S corp and turns out that they had actually blown their s selection a long time ago, and now that’s a big tax bill that the company, the sellers have to come up with at closing in order to make the buyer comfortable enough to buy the business back.
AJV (43:11):
And not only that, it’s a very, make sure you form it correctly in the beginning. So it’s like really, like, you know, that old saying, start with the beg you know, start with the end in mind is
MM (43:20):
Like Yeah, yeah. Begin with the end in mind. Sure.
AJV (43:22):
This is such a great real life tangible business example of, I think a lot of people just rush to get their entity started, right? Mm-Hmm.
MM (44:03):
My, my favorite one is that people will say, I just want to do the simplest thing. I’ll do a 50 50 J, I’ll do a 50 50 LLC. So an LLC with each member has a even share. And, and most people think that’s the most simple way of going forward. It’s actually the hardest way to structure any entity formation because it raises all sorts of issues around voting. And the impasse you, when you, if you don’t have an agreement among the 50 50 members, then you can have a real problem. Not a, not a, not, it’s a, it’s avoidable. It’s fixable. Yeah. But you, it’s, it’s one example where most people think they’re doing the easy thing, but in reality, it’s actually the hardest thing you could possibly do. So it’d be much better to do, just do 50 51 49, please
MM (44:54):
Ah, but people often will say, no, 50 50, we’re just trying to be fair and reasonable, not realizing that they’re causing themselves a whole lot of information of, of, of, of a headache. Because now they have to go out and get a buy, sell clause into their LC agreement. And if they don’t have that, then they find themselves at an impasse where they have to really negotiate amongst themselves how they’re gonna wind down the business or, or, or come over or make a certain decision that might be a, a different change of direction for the company. And, you know, the company needs to have a decision maker. It needs to have someone at the helm and 50 50 LLCs are not always the best for that. So
AJV (45:32):
That’s good. All right. Last question. I know ’cause we’re running out of time, but since you do have a lot of this, there’s been a lot of talk and my circles at least around the, the valuation of companies has like, it’s like an all at, at an all time market low. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know. ’cause I’m not in the business of buying companies and I’m definitely not trying to sell mine, but can you give us any updates on how are companies being evaluated today? I heard the other day it’s like, you know, what was getting 10, you know, 10 x multiple five years ago is like getting three today. What’s true, what’s not true? And what do we need to know when it comes to getting, you know, a valuation on your company today?
MM (46:15):
Yeah, so I mean, the thing about valuations, good businesses are selling at great multiples. Good
AJV (46:22):
To know.
MM (46:23):
Okay. So that, that has not changed. But, you know, a lot of valuation metrics are based on the appetite of the buyer and what they are looking to do with the business that they’re acquiring. In the healthcare space a lot of companies, private equity companies will go and acquire a, a healthcare practice, a a medical practice, and they’ll pay the initial the, the initial practice will, will get a high multiple, and then as they go and add other practices to that platform they, they will pay lower and lower multiples in, in order to arbitrage or or average out the average multiple paid. And then with hopes of growing the platform over time and then selling that platform to, you know, a higher bidder. By the way, healthcare private equity is also an area where there’s been a lot of change lately and a lot of attraction from the federal regulators.
MM (47:22):
So that’s also another area, but not so relevant maybe to your, to your audience. But you know, that it, it, you know, multiples are a function of the economy. They’re a function of, you know, interest rates. They’re a function of a lot of different socioeconomic and political forces. But ultimately good businesses will sell at the max multiple. You know, and, and, and that’s something that just won’t ever change. If a buyer wants the business bad enough, and if it’s accretive enough to their organization, their revenue you know, their, their own reasons for wanting to acquire the business, you know, they will pay it. Mm-Hmm.
MM (48:28):
You know, and that really is market timing, right?
MM (49:25):
And that’s really where brands come into play, right? Because ultimately a brand, the way that the law looks at a brand is, it’s a trademark, right? Mm-Hmm.
MM (50:15):
Mm-Hmm,
AJV (50:56):
Yeah, and I love that. ’cause It, it’s, it’s keep it simple. It’s like if you have a great business, then likely you would be naturally attracting a great buyer. And I love that. Matt, thank you so much for coming on the show today. So much wisdom, so much information and I love most of all that there’s nothing that you said that should cause anyone to get in a flurry or a panic, but nonetheless, we all need good resources. And this was a great resource for our community today. So thank you so much. Thanks for being on the show. And for all of you guys listening, stay tuned for the recap episode, which will be coming up next. And we will see you next time on the influential personal brand.