Ep 581: Choose Your Hard | Jamal Miller Recap
[00:00:00] [00:00:05] Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand [00:00:10] podcast. This is the place where we help mission-driven messengers, just like you [00:00:15] learn how to build and monetize your personal brand. My name is Rory Vaden [00:00:20] and I’m the co-founder of Brand Builders Group, a hall of Fame speaker, and New York Times [00:00:25] bestselling author.
[00:00:25] And this show is to help experts learn how to become more [00:00:30] wealthy and well-known. I know you’re gonna love it. Thanks for being here. Let’s get started. [00:00:35] We all have a hard. We all have hard things in our life, and some of [00:00:40] us get simple things, but the point is, is no matter what our choices are, we have the [00:00:45] ability to choose.
[00:00:46] That was one of the great gifts that God gave to human beings. [00:00:50] He gave us the power and authority to choose. Now, sometimes, [00:00:55] uh, our choices lead to hard things. Sometimes they lead to easier things [00:01:00] and good things, but often the hard choices now are what lead to the [00:01:05] simpler, easier, better things later. But the point being is [00:01:10] that all of our choices can be hard.
[00:01:12] And hard isn’t a bad thing. [00:01:15] Uh, think about it like this. You get to choose your hard, [00:01:20] but think about the feeling that you have after you choose the [00:01:25] hard thing. Great example. Over the weekend, I have two choices. [00:01:30] Do I want to lay on the couch and binge the [00:01:35] house of David, which is awesome, or do I want to [00:01:40] go on a intense nature hike with my kids?
[00:01:44] Right? [00:01:45] Either one of those are not necessarily bad things. It’s how am I going to [00:01:50] feel at the end of those things? And often when we choose the more [00:01:55] challenging or the harder road, the harder path, we feel a greater sense of [00:02:00] satisfaction at its end. Not saying that I don’t love a good ending to an [00:02:05] episode of the House of David, but I’ll also tell you that the natural endorphins.[00:02:10]
[00:02:10] And being in nature and enjoying time with my kids, although it was seemingly the [00:02:15] harder choice in the moment to get my hiking shoes on, put my jacket on, [00:02:20] rally my two young kids get out in nature and and hustle. Seemingly that’s [00:02:25] hard, but the feeling that I get after completing the hard is. So much better [00:02:30] than completing the easy, right?
[00:02:32] Anytime that I do something exceptionally hard, [00:02:35] physically, mentally, emotionally, the, the depth of the [00:02:40] satisfaction is always greater than when I made the seemingly [00:02:45] easier, simpler choice in the beginning. Now we all have a hard to choose, [00:02:50] right? It’s hard to lack money. It’s hard to have too [00:02:55] much money, right?
[00:02:55] It’s hard to be overweight. It’s hard to be too thin, right? It’s [00:03:00] hard to be single. It can be hard to be married. It’s hard having kids. It’s [00:03:05] hard not having kids if you don’t have them, right? It’s hard to stay fit. [00:03:10] It’s hard if you’re not fit right? No matter what we do, there is a hard and we get to [00:03:15] choose it.
[00:03:16] I’m just encouraging and challenging that the [00:03:20] satisfaction and the sense of accomplishment is greater when we choose to do the hard [00:03:25] things. Not for the sake of doing hard things, but typically the hard [00:03:30] things is where we see growth. I. It’s where we get to experience a [00:03:35] change in our bodies and our minds and our souls and our spirits, right?
[00:03:39] Having a hard [00:03:40] conversation lends itself to stronger relationships. Not having the hard [00:03:45] conversation deteriorates existing relationships. It might [00:03:50] feel easier to just avoid it and to bury it deep down, but. That harbors [00:03:55] resentment and bitterness and it creates a divide in relationships. Yeah. It’s [00:04:00] harder to have hard conversations that are emotional and you’re gonna have hurt feelings, and they’re [00:04:05] gonna have hurt feelings, but by having hard conversations, you can restore what’s [00:04:10] broken.
[00:04:10] That is harder, but it is more satisfying to do it. I feel [00:04:15] the same way after. Choosing to eat healthy, which is hard. [00:04:20] In a world where everything is fast and convenient and packaged, it is hard [00:04:25] to go, no, I’m going to make fresh food and take the time. Not only [00:04:30] is it hard, it’s expensive, right? But it takes more time.
[00:04:32] It’s harder to do it, but the way that I [00:04:35] feel after a healthy meal versus a grab and go right [00:04:40] fast food meal is. Astronomically different, not even in [00:04:45] comparison, right? It is choosing the hard to go, it’s gonna take more time, it’s [00:04:50] gonna be a little bit more expensive. Uh, this is a commitment I’m making that is hard.[00:04:55]
[00:04:55] Choosing to eat on the go in your car with no rest and a bunch of fast processed food [00:05:00] that’s also hard on your body, and that’ll catch up at some point. The point to [00:05:05] all of this is there’s always choices to make, and it’s hard either way. [00:05:10] Right? Uh, that, that is the challenge of the, this side of heaven, the world that we live in [00:05:15] today.
[00:05:15] Like things are hard, but they’re also good, right? Good comes from [00:05:20] doing the hard thing, like it’s hard to plant and harvest. There is [00:05:25] good crop, good fruit that comes from hard work. And that’s not just an [00:05:30] agricultural farming analogy, that’s a life analogy. There is good fruit that [00:05:35] comes from hard work.
[00:05:36] So as you’re heading into your day, I’m just [00:05:40] encouraging you to choose your hard ’cause. It can be hard either way. You get to choose. Are [00:05:45] you gonna choose the good hard? Are you gonna choose the hard? That just continues to be hard [00:05:50] over the course of time? Choose your hard. You get to [00:05:55] [00:06:00] choose.
Ep 580: Don’t Chase Money—Chase Purpose: How Jamal Miller Built a 7-Figure Media Company from Rock Bottom
AJ Vaden (00:01.058)
Hey everybody, welcome to the influential personal brand, AJ Vadin here, and I’m super excited to introduce you guys to Jamal Miller. Jamal and I happen to be in a mastermind together, and we met on an elevator with his then, at the time, very pregnant wife in Colorado Springs. before I formally introduced him, I just wanted you guys to know, he’s one of those people that emanates joy.
He lights up the room, his energy is contagious, and even though some of you may be meeting him for the first time, I promise you, I ensure you, after this interview today, you’re gonna wanna follow him. I also wanna let you guys know who this episode is for. As you guys know, I always kinda tee this up so you know, like, hey, is this for me or not? Because if it’s for you, I’m telling you, it’s for you and you wanna stick around.
to the very, very end. There’s no skipping minutes. Don’t get off early. This is one of those episodes. So how do you know if this is for you? If you feel stuck or have ever felt stuck or stagnant or even uncertain about where you’re going, maybe you’re in a season of transition, maybe you were doing something and now you’re trying to do something new or you were known for something and you’re trying to be known for something else or
or maybe you’re in a season of successful transition and success isn’t really quite what you thought it would be. Or maybe you work with your spouse. Maybe you left corporate America to go all in on this entrepreneurial vision with your spouse and you’re going, I don’t think this is working. I think we might be in trouble here. If you fit in any of those categories, we’re gonna talk about all of those and then some. And I’ll tell you this real quick.
Jamal in the last 30 days, he and his wife just got done with a $3 million dollar launch. And so if you’re just curious how to pull that off, then this is an episode that you want to stick around for. So, okay, I know you’re done wanting to listen to me, so let me give you a quick formal bio of Jamal Miller, and then we’re gonna jump into this very awesome interview. All right, here we go.
AJ Vaden (02:14.754)
Jamal Miller is the founder of the multi-million dollar Miller Media Group. He is a pastor at heart, so don’t be surprised if you get some pastoring today. He is also a purpose-driven entrepreneur. And as Rory and I also work together, I also love that him and his beautiful bride share this business together. He’s gonna take us behind the scenes on his incredible transformation from
relying on food stamps just seven years ago to building one of America’s fastest growing media companies. And like I said, just came off last 30 days with a $3 million lunch, a launch, and also just 90 days ago had his fourth baby. So he’s got lots going on, but you’re going to hear about the heart and the mindset shift around strategic decisions that helped turn his side hustle into a scalable, impactful brand. And that
my friends is why he is on the show today. So Jamal, welcome.
Jamal Miller (03:14.428)
my gosh, AJ, that was such a cool intro. I am super excited to be here. Much love to you and Rory for all that you’re doing. This podcast is game changing and so I’m super honored to be here.
AJ Vaden (03:24.782)
Oh my gosh, well I’m just so excited for this interview and selfishly, I just wanna know all of this stuff. And so if I have a big desire to hear it, I know that a lot of our listeners do too. So here’s where I wanna start, because I literally have like 36 questions lined up on my sheet and I know we’re not gonna get to 36 questions today. But I really want our audience to know you a little bit. And so I’d love to just help everyone.
get to know you, like what’s your background, like how did you get to the point of food stamps, how did you all of a sudden get to this multi-million dollar business in seven years, like how did this all happen?
Jamal Miller (04:02.6)
Yeah, you I would say my story definitely is a story of…
Where you start is not where you finish And so where you will end up and I think for many people like you said when you first started You know you may be in a transition you may be trying to pivot you may be trying to get out of your nine-to-five and come to entrepreneurship Or maybe you are currently in a brand or you’re branding yourself as something that you’re like I don’t want to do this for a little long haul How do I see how do I pivot and keep going will I make it will I make it through it? Will I be successful again? You know I think it was miles more that says the most the biggest challenge to success
is having to overcome your last success, right? I think that’s the big thing that we’re all constantly looking at the last good thing we did, cannot do it again. And so that’s been our story.
That’s been our journey. Where we started or where I would begin, you know, I definitely would say I am an accidental entrepreneur. This was not a part of the plan. This is not what I had in store. I’m sure for many of you watching or listening, more than likely entrepreneurship was not something you saw yourself doing. And I would say we are accidental entrepreneurs.
It was about 12, 13 years ago. I was in Bible college, headed towards full time ministry, got my degree in theology. And I believe with all of me that the life that I was called to live ever since being a 16 year old that got just met by the love of God, the power of God met me in my bedroom. I did not grow up in a Christian home, but I felt I met God so early. And then in high school, I was a part of a Bible study that I helped create with a friend of mine.
Jamal Miller (05:38.688)
and for within two years, we were able to see 300 of our peers come to know Christ in those two years. And for me, it was like, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I want to help people meet the real Jesus. And I thought that was going to be in a church, right? I think most people think if you got a good preaching voice and you look good and you know how to stand in front of people, become a pastor, right? It was like, I fit the mold, right? And I was like, okay, I’m going be a pastor. guess that’s what it’s called. I guess that’s the career calling on my
And so I went to Bible college. Where do I go to get trained to be a pastor? I went to Bible college got my degree in theology and I thought this was it my pinnacle my You know height of success will be pastoring planning a church and pastoring thousands of people and I accepted at that point AJ I said hey as long as I’m in the middle of God’s will
and I’m making $40,000 for the rest of my life. As long as I’m doing what God is calling me to do, I am OK. Like I accepted a life of mediocrity in terms of finance and income in order to fulfill the call of God. But AJ, I’m grateful that God had other plans for me. so because, we ended up once I graduated Bible College, I.
moved to Chicago, Illinois. I was in Dallas at the time, moved to Chicago as a single man. At the time, you know, I was part of a church plant there in Chicago. And I remember within three months of being, you know, at this church, I was the first staff member. I was the youth pastor. That’s kind of where most guys start when they’re trying to get their, go in ministry. I was a youth pastor and I remember, you know, one day just coming home and my apartment was super quiet. And I was like, God,
this road is gonna be real lonely without my wife. You know, where is she? All right, I thought I would meet her in college, didn’t meet her there. I’ve been here for six months. Good Lord, I need you to show up because I am tired of being single. I’m tired of being alone. I’ve done everything I’ve known to do. Lord, where’s my wife? And AJ, the Lord said this to me. said, Jamal, you’re so focused on getting married. You have no idea what it takes to stay married.
AJ Vaden (07:46.158)
Mmmmm
Jamal Miller (07:47.022)
And I grew up in a home, my parents are still married, but they would not be an example of a happy, thriving marriage that I would want to say, hey, that’s exactly what I want when I grow up. And the Lord was right. And I said, well, God teach me how to be a successfully married man.
And for two years, I read marriage books. I went to marriage conferences. I adopted marriage mentors as a single man. I began to live like a married man and it changed everything for me. And eventually I ended up meeting Natasha on Facebook and I saw her post one day on Facebook and I had no idea who she was. This is the time whenever you actually knew everyone and you’re on your Facebook feed. And I said, man, how do I not know who this girl is? And so I ended up sending her a DM.
I had a lot of courage that day. And so yes, AJ, I slid in the DM. All right. And so.
in the DMs and she actually responded back. And so we started communicating back and forth. Mind you, complete stranger. I don’t even know at this point how we were on each other’s Facebook friends, no clue. And I ended up learning that she was in California and we just started chatting. It took about six months until one day my pastor comes to me and he’s like, hey, what’s going on with your love life? I’m like, man, what love life? I ain’t got no love life.
He’s like, so is there any potentials or anything? I said, man, no, there’s not. And he was like, well, what’s interesting is my wife, his wife, know, my pastor’s wife had a dream that I was gonna meet my wife in an unconventional way, right? And so he’s like, so is there, are you sure there’s no one that you were meeting or you’ve met? And I’m like, and soon as he said that, I’m like, well.
Jamal Miller (09:33.246)
There’s this girl that I met on Facebook. was like, nothing’s happened. Like we just been messaging back and forth. I’m like, but I mean, you know, she’s a really nice girl. And so he’s like, come over. He’s like, come over to the house. And I’m like, okay. So I go over to the house that night and I’m over at his house and he’s like, okay, so tell us what about this girl. And I’m like, well, I mean, I don’t know much. She lives in California. Da da da da da. And he’s like, well, show us a picture of her. And I’m like, okay. So I show him a picture on Facebook. He’s like, Jamal.
She’s gorgeous. What are you waiting for? Like what’s going on? And I’m like, okay, so here’s the deal. I was like, this girl is a complete stranger. She lives all the way in California. He’s like, what’s the real problem? I’m like, okay, let’s talk about it. The reality is I am five six. How am I supposed to find out about how tall this girl is and she’s on the internet? I said, what if she’s taller than me? This is a real moment.
AJ Vaden (10:05.834)
you
AJ Vaden (10:28.02)
my gosh
Jamal Miller (10:29.318)
And he’s like, are you serious? So he like calls his wife and he’s like, hey, come here. We found Jamal’s wife. And so like, and so she goes through every photo of her on Facebook to gauge her height. And she’s like, yeah, Jamal, she’s not taller than you. If anything, she’s right at your height. Right. And so she and he’s like, message her tonight.
AJ Vaden (10:35.534)
you
Jamal Miller (10:48.092)
And I’m like, okay, so I get home and I like draw up the best message I can. Hey, Natasha, it’s Jamal again. I know we haven’t chatted in a while, but I just wanted to tell you the time that we have chatted, it’s been really amazing. And I just got out came from my pastor’s house and we just had a conversation about you. And I got his permission to ask if we could get to know each other better. And I would love to know if you’re interested in that. And AJ that.
AJ Vaden (11:10.063)
my gosh, that’s the best story! I love this!
Jamal Miller (11:13.692)
And the rest is history, you know, so she meshes back and it all just, you know, there’s a lot more to the story, but where our business comes into play, you’d be wondering, okay, how did this work towards business? So once we did get married, you know, we put our story on YouTube because so many of our friends and family had no clue how we met. So it wasn’t even about branding ourselves or reaching an audience. Y’all, we were just literally just like, what’s the best way to create a video so we can send it to friends and family so they know the story.
Rory & AJ Vaden (11:33.215)
I’m out.
Rory & AJ Vaden (11:42.222)
Mm.
Jamal Miller (11:42.546)
So the night of our engagement, we filmed the story at my house and we called the Facebook love story.
put it on YouTube, send it to our friends and family. We go on our honeymoon. We come back from our honeymoon and the video is over 40,000 views. It was crazy. And we are seeing all these comments and people are just like engaging with the story. I can’t believe it happened for you guys. my God, this is so incredible. But there was one comment that said, Hey, is this real? Are y’all really married? And I told Natasha, I’m like, hey, like people are really hungry for relationship knowledge.
And we need to be a fresh inspiration to these people. This was not a business idea. It was just simply a passion play. And from there, we started our blog, Married and Young, about three months into marriage.
AJ Vaden (12:30.61)
Wow. You know what, out of everything you said, other than for everyone who’s listening, there’s still hope for you on Facebook, right? So that’s why I’m keeping it away. But what hits me the most out of everything you said is something that I feel like entrepreneurs forget, and it’s that the power hangs in the story. And I think at some point we get so caught up into the information.
Jamal Miller (12:38.41)
Hahaha!
Jamal Miller (12:51.4)
Yes.
Jamal Miller (12:58.526)
Yep.
AJ Vaden (12:58.966)
or the strategy or the insights or tips, tactics, you know, all of that, that we forget that no, like what people hang on, what they become involved in is the story.
Jamal Miller (13:14.761)
Yes, know 100 % AJ and you’re spot on because we ended up taking that story and turning it into our first seven figure brand, The One University and and how we ended up on food stamps was trying to build this business, you know.
time we, you know, when we first started Married and Young, it was just a blog, you know, and then a friend of mine saw that we had started the blog and we was doing really well, but I had no background in business, never sat in one marketing class, nothing at all for me. It was full-time industry, becoming a pastor. That was my tunnel vision.
So a friend of mine comes and he says, Hey Jamal, I saw you started his blog. How’s it going? I said, man, it’s going great. We’re getting about 40,000 page views a month. He’s like 40,000 visitors a month. I’m like, yeah, it’s pretty crazy. Like we were just doing everything right. And he’s like, are you paying for advertising or ads? I’m like, what is that? No, we’re just posting our content on Facebook and people are, they’re going to the website. He’s like, Jamal, you can be rich. And I was like, how did you get rich from blogging? Straight, I just, once again, super green.
So he says, Hey man, I’m gonna sit you down. I’ve gone from now being a minister to now I’m a personal brand online brand consultant. Never heard of anything like it before in my life. So he sits me down and he walks me through how to build an online business. And I will tell you in that moment, some, a light bulb went off that I was like, Oh my goodness, this may be a way to change the world outside of the local church. And it was like, I just immediately felt the Holy spirit just
Rory & AJ Vaden (14:42.199)
and
Jamal Miller (14:47.572)
that wind of peace to proceed. we, you know, so I said, well, man, where do I start? He’s like, you gotta, you gotta make a product. And I’m like, okay, make a product. What do I make? He’s like, write a book. So like, would not tell anybody right now. The first thing to do is write a book, right? But that’s what he literally said, write a book. And I was like, okay, I wrote my first book in 90 days, knocked it out, right? And knocked out the book. I thought we were about to be rich.
I’m like, okay, we’ve got 40,000 people coming to our website a month. I’m like, okay, I can expect 39,000 of these people, okay, are in love with us.
There’s probably a thousand of them that just don’t like us. There’s a thousand of them out of the 40. This is my math, right? Entrepreneur math. I’m like, there’s probably about a good thousand of them that are like, yeah, we don’t really want to deal with this guy. So I’m like, okay, let’s go back to the 39,000 that love us. Okay. 39,000 times 20. Okay. I told the times I said, listen, babe, we about to be rich, girl. We got to launch this book. All our problems about to go away.
AJ Vaden (15:40.142)
All
AJ Vaden (15:49.998)
You know what, I wish that was true math. I wish that was real math, Jamal.
Jamal Miller (15:55.572)
So we launched the book and I, the day before we launched it, I bought Natasha a brand new car to celebrate. Like this is so scary. I said, listen, I am no longer Jamal Miller. Okay. I am Dr. Jamal Miller. I need y’all to go ahead and change the name in the books because I got a book out. So we launched the book and the book literally made a thousand dollars. Wake up call. And my God, you talk about disappointment.
AJ Vaden (16:02.921)
no!
AJ Vaden (16:21.089)
yeah.
Jamal Miller (16:24.42)
But in the middle of disappointment, I saw a glimmer of light. I said, OK, this did not make the amount of money I thought it was going to make. But I looked at Natasha and I said, but Bay, look at what we just did. We literally just had a life experience that we put into a book. And we just made money. Yeah, it didn’t make the amount of money we want to make. I’m like, but if this is true and I can just figure out how to sell to more people.
we will never be broke a day in our life. And that was it for me. And I just said, I just gotta get better. The reality is, is I just suck at this. You know, like I’m just not good. Like.
AJ Vaden (17:03.95)
But at least you knew that. That self-awareness is always the first step, right? And I think that’s so, I think that’s, you know what I love about this and what I think, I want everyone who’s listening to hear this, is that you had an aha moment of two things that I think a lot of people in this space who are trying to become an expert or who are an expert and they’re trying to become more well-known. They have two things that they have not admitted to themselves.
Number one, I’m not good at this and I need help. Number two, I have to learn how to sell.
Those are two things that are required to be successful at anything in life. So I want to pause here and I want to talk about, so what did you do? Like, how did you go from, okay, I see the light, I know I’m not good, I know I need to figure out how to sell this stuff. How did you go from that to where you are today?
Jamal Miller (17:40.916)
Boom. Boom.
Jamal Miller (17:48.094)
period.
Jamal Miller (17:58.28)
Yep. That’s up. Yep.
Jamal Miller (18:06.494)
Well, first off, I quit, you know, I think, okay, I’m like, okay, I need to get a real job. This is being honest, right? I, know, the Bible talks about hope deferred makes the heart sick, you know, and when you put your hope into something and you believe in something and it doesn’t go the way you thought you have to, which is also another scripture, guard your heart for out of it flows a wellspring of life. Like you’ve got to guard your heart. And that disappointment set into my heart and
AJ Vaden (18:17.07)
Mmm.
Jamal Miller (18:34.1)
And it made my heart sick. And I was like, I can’t do this anymore. I need to get a real job. So I ended up quitting the online business, stopping the blog. And I went and got a real job. got my first. At the time I went to my pastor and I said, hey, can you increase me in my salary? And he’s like, hey, at the time we just can’t do it. So I ended up applying at another church, got a full time salary at another church, move my family. Well, it just me and Natasha. Move me and Natasha from Chicago to another city. And I get there.
And I realized, my goodness, this was, am, and you may think, how are you doing this Jamal in ministry? But the reality, here’s what I did. I chased money over purpose. And I think many of us do this all the time. And I’m not talking about security. All right. I think security is different than you got to, you got to secure yourself. So whatever it is, make the money you need to make. The reality was we were secure.
AJ Vaden (19:16.046)
Mmm.
Jamal Miller (19:30.64)
in Chicago, we just weren’t overflowing. We weren’t living in abundance. It wasn’t more than enough. And I’m like, I need more than enough. I need a salary that pays me what I’m worth and all those things in my church can’t. So let me go find a place that can. And so I sought satisfaction in money and not in purpose. And what I did was move to this new city, take this church on, and I was completely unhappy. Making good money, secure, but unhappy.
AJ Vaden (19:39.862)
I’m out of
Jamal Miller (20:00.892)
And it was the thing and here’s the thought and I think the question is, is what happens when we get the thing that we’ve always desired and it’s not what we actually want. And this is the stuff that I think you have to understand about how God has fashioned us is that our hearts are things that, and this is why I would say be careful following your heart. You need to lead your heart because a lot of times we follow our heart, but our heart is not fully
Connected to the heart of God because there are some flesh still in that heart There are some things in that heart some desires some selfishness You know some things in there that you cannot get out an only person that can deal with that is the Holy Spirit is God and I’m so grateful that God used this moment to draw those things out of my heart and he did use it for my good because once I got there I said this is the worst place ever I don’t want this anymore and I thought I wanted it, but I don’t and I said, okay God, how do I get out of here?
And I wish I could tell y’all the moment that we left that church that everything got better. No, it got worse. We left the church. We moved back to Chicago. I thought I had a job lined up. The job that was lined up when we got back to Chicago fell through. And this is when I looked at Natasha and I said, hey, babe, you are six months pregnant. I am driving Uber to make ends meet. We need help. And that’s whenever we had to go apply for food stamps. And I remember the first time us buying groceries with food stamps, Natasha’s like, babe,
We don’t look like we’re on food stamps. said, we may not look like we’re on food stamps, but baby, we own food stamps. All right, well, let’s get this chicken. Let’s get this steak and let’s get up out of here and go eat, you know? And it was a, it was a very humbling season. and when in that, in that moment, what I would say was, yeah, it was like, I’ve stopped the whole playing around with purpose and Jamal it’s time to bet on you again. So that’s when we picked up the online business again. And I said, okay, what do we know how to do that we can do quick?
And the thing that we came to mind was hosting an online conference. And so we hosted an online conference. And in that moment, when we did online conference, it made about thirteen thousand dollars. Right. And it was just enough to kind of like give us a little cushion, you know, into our next thing. But what ended up happening in that whole spin of time between the food stamps, picking the online business back up because before it was Plan B. Now it has to become Plan A. We pick it back up. We start trying to nurture it again.
Jamal Miller (22:27.444)
And here’s what ended up happening. Money became the control in our home. And the Bible talks about this. The Bible says that you can only serve two gods. You cannot serve both God and mammon. And mammon is the god of money. And I will tell you in our home, when we had money in the bank account, me and Natasha were happy. When there was no money in the bank account, we’re fighting, we’re arguing, we’re mad, we’re anxious, we’re, you know, money was the temperature.
the thermostat, I’m sorry, of how we felt about ourselves and the season of our life. And one day we’re at church. This is when things broke. We’re at church and the pastor begins to speak about the spirit of mammon. as you know, how you’re in church and you’re just hearing a message and you’re like, God. And he begins to talk about the spirit of mammon. And I believe there are some of you in this room right now. And I’m very careful. I know a lot of pastors, a lot of churches
AJ Vaden (23:13.502)
yeah.
Jamal Miller (23:22.088)
They can use money to manipulate and things like that. But in that moment, I could not shake it. I’m like, yeah, this ain’t a manipulative moment. Like, this is me. He is speaking to me because Mammon is running our life right now. And I said, Lord, how do I get you back in the driver’s seat of our finances? And for us, the first thing that came to my mind was just to sow a crazy seed. Just Jamal, just sow a seed and just make this like get put it on the altar.
and just give God your best. Right. And at the time, this is me just following Holy Spirit. I called Natasha and I’m like, babe, we need to sow a seed and I want to give something crazy, something radical. And at the time we had never given a thousand dollars. It was just just the number that came to my mind, my heart. I’m like, hey, I want to give a thousand. She’s like, babe, are you sure? And she said, I said, babe, I think we need to do it. I want to trust God and we get the money together. And this is what we prayed. I said, God,
I’m not sowing this thousand dollars for a in the mail. I’m not sowing this thousand dollars for a promotion at work. I’m not sowing this for you to be a genie and magically make all our money problems go away. I’m sowing this thousand dollars so that you can give me and Natasha the clarity that we need for the future and purpose that you have for us in this time. Clear my heart up.
from chasing money and help me align myself with chasing purpose again. So we sow that thousand dollar seed on that prayer. And it was probably maybe a month later that we were on a webinar. And on the webinar, are, because at the time we were all over the place in our business doing all whatever we could do to make money. We’re on this webinar and one of the people just says, and I go into a rant, you know, just talking and I’m like, yeah guys.
I’m so tired of y’all, you know, trying to keep figuring out how to find the one. You need to learn how to become the one. And when we said this thing, become the one, the chat just goes crazy. And I look at it I’m like, well, they’re like, we need to learn more about that. How do we become the one? How do we become the one? And I said, Natasha, I’m like, babe, there’s something on this become the one thing. And that was our breakthrough. And we ended up getting an idea for a membership.
AJ Vaden (25:42.348)
Okay.
Jamal Miller (25:46.942)
called The One University from that webinar. And we put our last bit of money to launching a membership to help singles become the one. And what I’ll tell you is our life has not been the same since launching The One University.
AJ Vaden (25:56.418)
Bye.
AJ Vaden (26:02.188)
You know, I think there’s something really important about this whole journey that you’ve gone through in this chasing purpose over money. And if you focus on purpose, if you focus on your divine calling, then money will come as a byproduct, right? But if you focus on the money, then it’s just work, work, work, work, work. also it’s never going to fulfill you, right? There’s that element of never enough-ness.
Jamal Miller (26:20.852)
You’re right.
AJ Vaden (26:31.158)
And so what I would love to hear from, and I think you said once, like don’t chase money, right? Chase purpose. How do you do that? Tactically speaking, like for the person who’s listening, who’s like, that’s great Jamal, I’m so glad you had all these breakthroughs and it’s all worked out. And cause I think what I hear so often is I think there’s a, an era of comparison. and I hear so many people in the brain builders group communities, like, well, it seems like memberships are the thing to do.
Jamal Miller (26:41.192)
Yeah.
Jamal Miller (26:45.844)
I know.
AJ Vaden (27:00.236)
Or it seems like one-on-one coaching is the thing to do. Or what I hear a lot of people say is, well, I don’t want to be trading time for money. I always ask, why not? And they’re like, well, I want to make money while asleep. And I’m like, who does that? Introduce me to these people. All they do is sleep and make money. I would like to meet them. So I would be curious to hear your thoughts, because you’ve been on both sides, right?
Jamal Miller (27:22.888)
Please, please.
Jamal Miller (27:27.922)
Yes.
AJ Vaden (27:29.102)
How do you reconcile those things to go, no, no, no, I’m just, I’m gonna do this thing that I feel called to do and also figure out a path of how do you turn this passion into something that can fulfill your needs and help you thrive?
Jamal Miller (27:49.3)
Absolutely. Such a great question. think it comes back down to understanding what purpose is. And I think when I say chase purpose, right, you may think I’m saying chase purpose, but I’m actually not. And let me explain in the Bible, the Bible says in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That’s what he did. But you must ask yourself, why did he do it? Well, if you keep reading, it goes on to say the earth was without void, which means that the earth was completely black, completely dark.
AJ Vaden (27:53.934)
Mm.
Jamal Miller (28:18.696)
God saw a problem, right? And when he said the earth was out void, he’s like, that’s a problem. I don’t like this place that’s black, that’s dark. This place needs life. This place needs me to come in and create something. And that’s when he took seven days to create the world that we are now living in today. God saw a problem.
And out of that problem, he found his purpose, which was to create the heavens and the earth in the world that we have today. And I think if you are going to chase purpose, the idea here is to not just chase purpose in itself, it’s to actually find a problem. And when you find a problem, my friend, you have found your purpose. Now, there are things I have a framework called the circle of purpose, you that I created to help people understand how do I
turn my purpose into a legitimate, viable, profitable business? Well, inside of purpose, number one is a problem, right? But then once you identify the problem, you must ask yourself a few questions. Number two, all right?
are there people who actually are struggling with this problem, right? Are there people who need this problem? Are there people who also have a connection to this being a problem that they’re facing? And who are those people? What are they? What’s their age? What’s their demographic? What’s their background? What’s their experience? And we’ve all said it, personal branding 101, the best person to serve is who you were three to four years ago. Like that’s easy, right? But then the next question you must ask yourself is, do I have proficiency? Do I have the skills, the abilities?
And I would even go as far as to that, because I didn’t have none of that, y’all. I didn’t have the skills. I didn’t have the abilities. My proficiency was a story. So when you look at the problem that we saw was, how you make, Jamal, what’s your circular purpose for this first brand? Well, the problem that we saw, number one, was singles struggling to get married. That was it. We recognized that there were singles that were struggling to get married. And that was the problem. Who were the people? Well, they were 30 to 40-year-old singles.
Jamal Miller (30:17.278)
that were either on their second marriage or they went through a traumatic relationship, a traumatic dating relationship that scarred them about marriage and they were having a hard time having successful relationships. All right, proficiency. Well, the next thing that we also saw was that they were having a hard time meeting people at their churches. Well, guess what? Our story was we didn’t meet at our church, we met online. So how do we help people now meet people in a digital way, right? That becomes…
That was our proficiency, our story of here’s how we did it. And now we took all of that and we packaged it up into a product that we could help people to get this problem solved in their life. And my friend, that framework, what I just gave you is a circle of purpose because what we just did was we took something that started off as a problem that we saw and we turned it into a viable, passion-driven, purpose-centered business.
AJ Vaden (31:11.129)
And I have rather successful one at that. And I think that’s a testament to it’s like when you, and I love what you said and that, know, ironically that’s so interconnected to what we call the brain positioning statement at Brain Builders Group. It’s like, what problem do you solve? What’s the call list of that problem? What’s your unique way of solving that problem? And ultimately, who do you solve it for and how do you make money solving it? Right? But it’s all problem centered, but
Jamal Miller (31:13.204)
Yep.
Jamal Miller (31:25.492)
Mm hmm. Yep.
AJ Vaden (31:37.42)
The goodness in all of that is like, if what you do really works, people talk about it. It spreads, right? It grows because it works. And that’s where the money comes. It’s like you solve a problem and you do it so well that it changes someone’s life. And when you do that, they go tell everyone they know.
Jamal Miller (31:43.39)
That’s it. It’s bright. Yes. Yes, it works. Yes.
Jamal Miller (31:54.612)
I’m on. Absolutely.
Jamal Miller (32:00.648)
Yep. And I think the piece that we have to be careful with is thinking that whatever we’re doing right now is what we’ll do forever. I think a lot of people think, if I start doing this, then I got to do this forever. What if I change my mind? What if I don’t lose passion here? Guys, and I am the testimony. We did that business, the one university for five years. It went from, you know, a brand new, the one university membership, right? And we learned how to do grow our membership. We grew up to four thousand via.
AJ Vaden (32:07.63)
Mmm, that’s good.
Jamal Miller (32:29.896)
product launches, which we’re talking about that. All right. So we got it to about 1.2 million. All right. And we are five years in with this business and there’s a whole lot of stuff that happens. Success ruined me and my wife. You know, we had to really remarry each other. Once we hit seven figures, you know, I lost my identity. She lost hers. Remember beginning of the story. I thought I was going to be a pastor. So now five years later, we’re seven figure business owners. And I’m like, what the heck is life? You know, what’s going on? And we had our marriage took a major hit.
AJ Vaden (32:30.477)
Amazing.
Jamal Miller (32:58.6)
But within that time frame, once we remarried each other, and it’s a real story, we really had to rededicate, like we are committed to the future of one another. And once we did that, we had to ask ourselves, do we want to serve singles forever? Is this, you know, we’re growing in marriage. We’re now five years, you know, at that point, we’re primarily married seven, eight years. I’m saying, babe, I don’t want to this forever. And she’s like, I don’t want to do this forever either. And I’m like, OK, well, we got to figure out what’s next. And I wish I could tell you that it was easy.
to figure out what was next. It was really hard, but we did it and we are in our next. And it took many years of us just kind of testing, experimenting with different things in order to figure out the next thing. And the beautiful part is at the end of the day, everything we’ve tested and experimented with, there was still a common thread of helping to transform people from the inside out. It was just us deciding on how we wanted to do it. And I wanna give you permission, whoever’s watching and listening.
to go experiment, test things out, try things out. Don’t feel like you’ve got to nail it the first time. We did nail it the first time, but my friend, we did not nail it the second, third, fourth time, okay? Like, I’m grateful we nailed it first, because that did give us some good cushion to experiment and fail. But if whatever you’re doing and you don’t like it, that’s okay. Try something else, do something else. But just remember your why. Make sure you, before you go experiment,
that you know what your why is. For us, no matter what I do, I want to transform people. I got to be in the middle of somehow, some way helping people to become a better version of themselves. I don’t care if it’s going to through helping somebody to learn how to be a speaker or launching a course or launching whatever we’re helping people do. I got to make sure that somehow I’m helping them become a better version of themselves that they can look like Jesus at the end of this. That was my common thread. So my encouragement would be find your why and just make sure that you center around that why with whatever you’re testing and experimenting with.
And so yeah, AJ, for us, we did the singles business for about five years. We grew the heck out of it, know, 4,000 members, 200,000 plus email lists, multiple launches a year. But then we lost passion for it. did. And so right now we’re in the process of actually partnering with someone else to hand that off to them. So we’re in that process now. But we, you know, took some soul searching, some journeying, and we try like two different businesses within like a three year run.
Jamal Miller (35:19.744)
And where we’ve landed today is on, we’ve built a new program called Call Coach Institute. And it is helping to certify life coaches who are infused what we call a spirit led coaching model where we’re helping life coaches, disciple people in their coaching sessions as life coaches. And we just completed a $3 million launch. It’s been incredible, fun ride. But once again, like I said, it wasn’t easy to get here.
AJ Vaden (35:47.608)
You know, I’d love to go back to two things that you said, because I think there’s so many interesting components of this. And although on the surface they could seem all seemingly disconnected, you you pointed out it’s like, but they’re not, because it’s all centered around personal transformation from the inside out. It was from singledness to coupledness. It was from where you were to who you were created to be. But there’s this transformation component. And if you look below the surface,
Jamal Miller (36:15.4)
Yes.
AJ Vaden (36:17.55)
So I want to come back to that but the first thing you said that I think we kind of skimmed over and I want to want to double back on this is success really really hurt you and so what did that look like and I think it would be good to also talk about like for everyone who’s listening who is successful who has been successful but yet They’re not happy and they’re not loving life and life isn’t going so well right now
Jamal Miller (36:43.444)
Yeah.
AJ Vaden (36:46.562)
Like what are some of the things that you noticed where money had kind of taken over or success had taken over and how did y’all catch that? What did you do to rectify that? Because I think there’s a lot of people that I know personally in my business life and my personal life that materialistically speaking, they got it all. They’ve sold businesses, they have the house, the cars, the trips, the travel, the things, and they are not happy.
Jamal Miller (37:07.572)
Got it all.
Jamal Miller (37:17.192)
Yeah. Yep, we experience both sides, right? I think it’s hard to be broke and it’s hard to be rich. You choose your heart. If you choose the heart of being rich, just know that here’s the reality. Money only solves money problems. And I think that’s what you are getting at, right? Money only solves money problems. And so once you do have money and that problem is solved,
AJ Vaden (37:17.389)
at all.
AJ Vaden (37:23.148)
Hmm. Hmph. That’s right.
Jamal Miller (37:40.46)
Now you have to realize that there are a lot of other problems in your life, right? Your problem with yourself, problem with friends, problem with relationships, things that money can’t buy. And that’s what we ran into. And it was a wake-up call. When I say success ruined us, it’s because it revealed that that’s all that we were going after. It revealed that that was all that. And it also revealed that we had a definition of success that wasn’t sustainable.
Right? And I think that’s the other part. If you’re going to.
be successful, you’ve got to understand that you don’t own success. Success is rented, and I think many of you heard this quote, success is rented and rent is due every single day. So what does that mean for me? What that means is that every point of success, I’ve got to reevaluate. What does success for me mean now? Right? And I think that was the thing that we just were failing to do. Some of the fundamental things we were failing to do at every new level of success, which was come back and reevaluate. All right, what do we want out of our life?
now and for me and Natasha, we got to a place where our marriage just became a second thought. It became, we were actually using our marriage for success versus actually like.
being married, like, because we were in the marriage business. So we were literally using our story, using each other, using it. So we were drawing from the marriage versus feeding the marriage. And we kept drawing from it, drawing from it, drawing from it. And you’ve got to realize your marriage is like a third person. You you’ve got your wife, you’ve got yourself, and you’ve got your marriage. And you’ve got to treat that.
AJ Vaden (38:57.218)
man.
AJ Vaden (39:06.828)
Mmm.
Jamal Miller (39:17.672)
thing with dignity and respect. And for us, we stopped doing that. We were not treating our marriage like a person. We were treating it like it was just, will always be there. It will always be whatever it is. And that’s when you end up looking at each other and realizing, I don’t know you. I don’t even know if I like you right now. And I don’t know if we are what we thought we were going to be at this point in our juncture. And most people at that point just decide to change and remarry and get a divorce. But what I told Natasha, I said, I said, no, we, I,
AJ Vaden (39:18.466)
good.
Jamal Miller (39:46.622)
That’s not for us. Like we need to buckle down and we need to recommit because when I said in my vows to you, I said yes to your past, your present and your future. And that’s when we had to remarry one another. So yeah, was a, was, I think I kind of gave a good bit there, but when I say success ruined us, what I mean by it is that it revealed who we really were and we had to make a decision. I don’t like this person that I’m being and it’s time to make a change.
AJ Vaden (40:13.198)
You
No, I think that’s really good. And I love that concept of you have to reevaluate and redefine success at every new level of success. And I don’t think people do that. I think they do it here, they do it there, but it’s like, once you’ve reached this, got to reevaluate, reset it, redefine it. I think that’s really good advice for all of us to make sure that keeping the main thing the main thing, and the main thing ain’t the money, right? It’s not the success.
Jamal Miller (40:23.474)
at every level. Yes. Now.
I did just keep calling it.
Jamal Miller (40:42.992)
No. No.
Rory & AJ Vaden (40:45.206)
I love that. Now you have transitioned. You guys have been so good at so many things that you guys have done. Before we wrap up and go offline, I have like a real quick list of questions that I would really love for our audience to hear from you. So here’s the first thing that I would love for everyone to hear from you is what’s your number one piece of advice or at least top one or two that you would give to the entrepreneur who feels stuck at their current level?
Jamal Miller (41:00.798)
to a fire.
Rory & AJ Vaden (41:14.272)
and who also wants to go faster, right? Because everyone wants to go faster, but they don’t know what to do.
Jamal Miller (41:21.268)
So I think most entrepreneurs that feel stuck, the first thing they think is, what am I doing wrong? Or what should I be doing next? And I will tell you that’s the wrong way to think. It’s who should I be talking to? All right, don’t go to what, go to who.
Rory & AJ Vaden (41:32.142)
you
Jamal Miller (41:34.578)
because if you’re asking yourself what you should be doing, you’re asking yourself what, what, you don’t know. So stop wasting time trying to figure out what to do and go do whatever you got to do to find the right who to talk to. Because I can tell you my journey of success at every level. I can point back to a person that catapulted me to my next level. I can point back to a coach. I can point back to a mentor. I can point back to a specialist that was able to look right at my season, right at my problem and tell me exactly
me to do to get to the next level. And I’m telling you that to me has been my cheat code, my cheat code. And I also would say, be careful expecting one person to solve all your problems. is not, nobody is Jesus. Nobody can solve all your problems. So whenever you do link up to a coach, just know you need to already know what problem you need them to solve so that you can move on whenever they solve that problem and not hang on to them or think they’re going to be there forever for you or be the person forever, or they’re going to help all the parts of your business. What I found is that each coach come in my life came
Rory & AJ Vaden (42:05.398)
Mmm, that’s so good.
Jamal Miller (42:34.442)
in my life had a very unique specialty. And it was primarily the thing that was best for them, right? Whatever I saw that they were doing really well was the thing that I said, I want that. Why do you go to a coach that isn’t doing something well and expecting to help you with that, right? Don’t waste your time, waste your money. So I will tell you, if you want to get to the next level, it’s not about what to do. It’s about who should I be talking to?
Rory & AJ Vaden (42:50.239)
That’s good.
Rory & AJ Vaden (42:57.064)
That’s so good. I mean that is the power of, hey you don’t have to make the same mistakes. Go learn from the people who’ve made them who can help you expedite the process. Now you said something in there that I want you to double down on because you said, hey your job is to know the problem you have so you can go get the help you need. What if you don’t know the problem?
Jamal Miller (43:20.104)
That’s a good question. know, that’s a good one. You kind of got me stumped there because I would say, don’t know at any point in my business that I didn’t at least know, or if you don’t know the problem, I would probably say, well, what do you want?
Right? At least coming in and that’s another big one that a lot of entrepreneurs, don’t know what they want. it, is it, even if whatever you want is maybe the wrong thing, you know, at least coming to a coach or coming to someone and saying, Hey, here’s what I want. Right? You know, like for me in this season of my business, you know, I want, um,
Rory & AJ Vaden (43:53.325)
and
Jamal Miller (43:58.312)
It’s not autonomy. I kind of want to have something that is just not requiring 15, 20 people to run it, right? Like I have a business right now that has 15 employees that require that is required to run it. And I love it because I love having a team, but I also want to have something that just I can do with maybe one person and it just, I can be, I can still be that, I don’t know, on the ground entrepreneur that’s just like in the weeds and still I can get messy with it. And not all my team are looking at me like, why is Jamal doing that? Why is he doing this? Why are you doing that?
Rory & AJ Vaden (44:04.622)
Mm-hmm.
Rory & AJ Vaden (44:27.022)
You
Jamal Miller (44:28.166)
And that’s just, and that’s what I want. So I have an entrepreneur coach that’s in the same season where he’s pivoted from a $20 million business to a $2 million business with two team members. And I’m working with him to help me figure out how to do both. Well, how do I have a 20, know, 15, $20 million thing that I can be the founder CEO. And there’s a whole suite of leaders that runs it. And it keeps me sharp because once you become a high level leader like that, like you’re
Your operations is just different. And I’ll be honest, I don’t want to do that 100 % of the time. really, doesn’t give me that much life, but I do have this other idea that I would love to build into a one to $2 million thing. And I need to know how to manage and do both well. And so I want to find someone that is doing that. And so that, or has done it. And so that’s kind of where I’m at. That’s my desire. So at least if you don’t know what the problem is, at least be clear about what you want.
Rory & AJ Vaden (45:18.574)
That’s good. I love that. And it’s like, if you don’t know what the problem is, you at least have to know what you want. And sometimes that takes some serious time and reflection because people can’t help you if you can’t tell them what you need help with. Right? That’s the gist of it. Now, I love that you said something else too about growth and scale. I would love to also know it’s like, in your opinion, like how do you stay aligned with purpose while scaling?
Jamal Miller (45:27.683)
self-discovery.
Jamal Miller (45:47.282)
You know, we are going through that right now. And I just got done, I’m not sure if you’ve ever read the book by Cameron Harrell, Vivid Vision.
It’s a great book and we just, you know, put this into practice. Just every single brand that we build, we I take the time to go do a 15, 20 page vivid vision around it. And what that does is just forces me to think three to five years down the road of like, what is the thing? How is this brand tying back to the overall vision that the Lord has given us? And for me, the conviction that I have is that I know that we’ve been called to pastor the Internet. And I think that’s just comes right back down
to your why. And so as you grow in scale, I have to have clarity on what is the through line. As long as we’re pointing back, what is our North Star? It can’t be money because you’re going to always. But what is something that you will never, ever run out of being able to accomplish and do? And for us, when the Bible gave us the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations, that I take very serious. And that’s my why.
How do we make disciples of all nations? Because that is the thing that will forever be the problem that we are facing. More and more people looking like him. You may have a different one. Like within that big idea or that why, there are so many things that can break out of it that I can solve. And so that keeps me aligned. And so, but at the same time, I’m also still, I’m obsessed with my own limitations.
And I think you have to know yourself, right? I am obsessed with what are my limits and I’m obsessed with my own potential, you know? And so I think those are the things that kind of drive me as well. Like, can I do this? Can I go this far? Can I, you know, at what point will I not like it? You know, and those are the things, right? And so as long as it’s not impacting my marriage or my relationship with God, I go after it.
Rory & AJ Vaden (47:46.158)
Yeah, but I think that’s back to it’s like 15 to 20 pages. Ain’t no, you know, paragraph, y’all. Like if you think you’ve written yourself a couple of lines of what my vision is, that’s a whole different, that’s a whole nother level of do you really know? Right? Have you really dug deep? Is there real clarity versus, you know, there’s so many vision statement exercises. Oh, got my sentence. We’re good. Got it. But that’s, I love that of like, I mean, I’m just sitting here going like, where do I have 15 or even 10 or even five pages?
Jamal Miller (47:57.576)
Yeah. Do you really?
Rory & AJ Vaden (48:16.046)
of a detailed vision capturing what my purpose is and what the centered why is to keep me aligned. Because I think when you get that deep, it’s like that’s something to go back to again and again. I love that. Okay, last question because I promise I won’t keep you much longer. I told you I had like 36 questions over here. So here’s my last question.
Jamal Miller (48:23.646)
Amen.
Jamal Miller (48:33.714)
No, this is good. I’m having fun.
mean, just going back to the vision piece, without vision, people perish. Right?
Rory & AJ Vaden (48:43.374)
Well, yeah, and I love that. And I think it is one of those things that people don’t spend near enough time. Or if they do, they did it one time, right? One time. it’s like, no, I mean, you got to do that all the time, all the time. Somebody asked me because I’m my fourth year in the row. And I will admit it took me 36 years as a believing Christian.
Jamal Miller (48:53.426)
One time.
Rory & AJ Vaden (49:12.504)
to read the Bible in its entirety. What an embarrassing statement. But I’m on the fourth year in a row where I’m reading the Bible word for word, page to page, cover to cover, and somebody asked me, like, why do you keep reading the same thing again and again, like every year? And it’s like, because I have to read it every day to stay connected to it, right? Every day, it’s like.
Jamal Miller (49:14.654)
Wow, I love that. It’s okay, you did it. Come on.
Jamal Miller (49:35.092)
Every time. Come on. Every time you see something.
Rory & AJ Vaden (49:40.27)
you why do I say I love you to my husband every day? Right? And it’s like, why do I eat every day? Right? It’s like, I got to stay connected to my source. Right? And it’s like, same thing with your vision statement, like, or your goals or whatever. It’s like, when’s the last time you pulled that thing up and read it? Actually stayed connected to it. Like it’s a thing. It’s a living, breathing document. Okay. Next question. Actually, I’m going ask you three questions rapid fire, and you can answer them as quickly as you want. So,
Jamal Miller (49:53.844)
every day.
Jamal Miller (50:04.532)
Let’s go.
Rory & AJ Vaden (50:08.27)
investment you’ve ever made in your personal growth? What would you say it is?
Jamal Miller (50:15.146)
it was, was a mastermind. yeah, a $30,000 mastermind where the coach said, Hey, I’m gonna hold your hand to a million dollars. And I was on that call every single week until we got to a million dollars. And we did, and we haven’t made less than a million dollars since that mastermind. Now, not all masterminds are credit equal. So be careful. Don’t just go and run to any mastermind. Like here’s my, here’s my money. Jamal Miller said he made a million dollars after his. but I would say that was the best investment I ever made. when I fully betted on myself on an amount of money that absolutely seemed ludicrous at the time.
Rory & AJ Vaden (50:44.302)
I love that. One book that every purpose-driven entrepreneur should read.
Jamal Miller (50:51.412)
Man oh man oh man oh every purpose driven entrepreneur should read. Can I give two? I’ll give one that’s a spiritual and one that’s a business book. The spiritual book is Drawing Near to God by John Bevere. Best book on truly understanding intimacy and that God just wants you. You can bring him the money, bring him souls, bring him businesses, bring him all the
Rory & AJ Vaden (51:02.243)
Do it.
Jamal Miller (51:20.638)
things that you are going to do on this earth because you are a world changer. But I’m telling you, the thing that makes him most proud is you with nothing else. So drawing near taught me that. In terms of business, I’m looking through my deck right here. I would say the book that probably had the biggest impact on my business that every entrepreneur should read, my
Rory & AJ Vaden (51:28.533)
Mmm, I love that.
Jamal Miller (51:45.81)
Gosh, it is so hard to choose, but I am going to go with, my goodness, I know what it is. The Road Less Traveled. Do you know I’m talking about? I actually read it like once a month, but the name is, it’s like The Road Less Traveled, The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham. Keith Cunningham, yeah, he is the business coach for Tony Robbins and The Road Less Stupid. That book teaches you how to think.
Rory & AJ Vaden (51:56.802)
No.
Rory & AJ Vaden (52:06.294)
Yes.
Jamal Miller (52:13.81)
And if there’s anything that you need to learn how to do as an entrepreneur is to learn how to think. And so literally I have a thinking chair. I wish I could pull my camera over here. I bought my thinking chair because of that book. That’s what he said. He said, Hey, you need to get a chair that becomes your thinking chair. And every Sunday I do something that this is my framework, right? I believe prayer is getting the heart of God, but my think time is to get the mind of God. So when I get in my think chair, I say, God, we act like we’re in a boardroom.
Rory & AJ Vaden (52:19.662)
Yeah.
Rory & AJ Vaden (52:38.46)
and
Jamal Miller (52:42.332)
You are the CEO of my business. What are you thinking right now? How are you thinking about this? How are you thinking about that? And it’s not prayer. It’s me engaging God as the intelligent God that he is, that knows my future, knows the future of this world, help me align. Now I don’t get it right every single time because I’m human, but I do my very best to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit, to get that think time, to get the mind of God into my mind so I can run my company accordingly. And so you need to have prayer time where it’s worship.
confessing, venting, crying, whatever you got to do to get the heart of God. But then you got your think time where you engage God in his mind. The role as stupid is what helped me to get that revelation.
Rory & AJ Vaden (53:20.664)
Mm.
Rory & AJ Vaden (53:25.972)
I love that. I spent four days at the four-day MBA with Keith Cunningham, and what I love about him is that he don’t sugarcoat it. Right? It’s a straightforward, clear path. And I love John Bevere and all the things. Those are great books. All right, last question. What does influential mean to you?
Jamal Miller (53:33.576)
No.
Jamal Miller (53:49.126)
Influential to me, I’m getting a picture before I got a word. Influential to me means ripple effect, ripple, right? Like it’s a ripple. And when I say a ripple, when you throw a rock in a water, it creates ripples. And I believe influence creates ripples. To where when you do one thing, and if you’re influential, it should create ripples. There should be impact that goes beyond you, from your books.
to your content that you create, to your social media, to the people you help, to the employees you hire, everything you do as an influencer, there should be ripples. It goes beyond you.
Rory & AJ Vaden (54:28.998)
Mmm, that’s a good word Jamal. That is so good. Y’all, this is the tip of the iceberg of what I would like to cover with Jamal, but that would be like a full half-day interview. And we ain’t got time for that today, unfortunately. We’re gonna have to come back and do part two and part three at some point. But y’all, I would just so encourage you to, after this episode, go follow Jamal and…
Jamal Miller (54:36.25)
No.
Yeah
Rory & AJ Vaden (54:54.61)
his beautiful wife, but I mean, there’s a couple of things that I’m gonna just, I’m gonna spread one. Go to jamalmiller.com, right? You can connect with him on all the socials from there, but that would be one place just to connect and also with Natasha. Where should people go to connect with Natasha?
Jamal Miller (55:11.432)
Yeah, so her Instagram is the best place. You can also, if you’re a woman who wants to kind of learn more about the brand that we’re building right now, you can go to calledwomen.com and we have a plethora of resources there. If you are a woman that, you know, wants to follow her, follow what she’s up to, go to her Instagram at Natasha Miller. yeah, those are, you know, and then as well, we have a YouTube channel called at called women where she has a bunch of podcasts and content that you can check out.
Rory & AJ Vaden (55:37.166)
We’ll have have Natasha on next. She’s in baby mode right now when she gets out, when she’s back in the land of the living. But then also, y’all, really awesome free resource. Jamal and Natasha have been so generous to give. So if y’all want to grab the seven-figure launch template, this is free. I want you to write this down. Go to profitnpurpose.com forward slash LLV.
Jamal Miller (55:39.004)
Yeah, that’ll be fun.
Rory & AJ Vaden (56:04.782)
Profitinpurpose.com forward slash LLV and just use the code brand, B-R-A-N-D at checkout. You get those for free. I will put those in the show notes. This has been a fantastic interview with so many insights and before we bounce, I just wanted to share with you, Jamal, these are the three things that I wrote down that I’m gonna go back and share with our company. gonna, I literally am gonna write these down and put them on sticky notes.
and put them in my office so if they meant something to me then maybe these will resonate with you guys who are listening. Number one, money only solves money problems. That’s so good, right? If you don’t have these like and highlighted excerpts you need to write these down Jamal. But that was the first one that really stuck out to me. The second one is that when you find a problem you can solve. You have found your purpose. Right?
Jamal Miller (56:58.58)
Come on, that’s simple.
Rory & AJ Vaden (57:00.3)
It’s so, so good. So, so good. And then the third one that I’m going to write down and actually start putting into practice is the re-evaluating success at every new level of success. And it’s like that didn’t happen one time. That happens all the time. And those are three things that I’m going to walk away of going, hey, like I’m going to put these into practice after this interview. This is going to make a difference in my life, my family, and my business. And so Jamal, thank you for your time today. Absolutely phenomenal.
Love this. I cannot wait to share it with our audience.
Jamal Miller (57:29.652)
I love it. Come on with thank you AJ. Thank you to you Roy for continuing to plow to helping entrepreneurs build their personal brands. I do believe that personal brand is the best investment you can make in today’s society. I believe you build your personal brand. We didn’t get into this, but I would say the biggest mistake that we made in building our business brands was not building our personal brands alongside them. And so please, as you guys are investing or in considering investing,
Rory & AJ Vaden (57:54.392)
Mmm.
Jamal Miller (57:58.44)
do the work you gotta do or whatever you gotta do to build your personal brand, your name. And there’s no one better in the industry that’s helping people do that than Rory and AJ. So jump in there, get the help you need so you can build your name into a cash money machine because that’s what happens when you build a good name. And so they’re the best at it. So thank you guys for doing the work that you’re doing. I love you guys. I’m so grateful for just the relationship that we have.
Rory & AJ Vaden (58:14.03)
You
Rory & AJ Vaden (58:21.494)
love that and thank you and listen to Jamal. Do what he says, do what he says, right? Build that personal brand, y’all. I love you guys. Thank you for sticking around all the way to the end of this awesome episode. Be sure to follow Jamal and we will catch you next time on the influential personal brand. See you later.
Ep 578: How to Monetize Niche Events and Publications with Remington Ramsey
Rory (00:06):
Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand Podcast. This is the place where we help mission-driven messengers, just like you learn how to build and monetize your personal brand. My name is Rory Vaden and I’m the co-founder of Brand Builders Group, a hall of fame speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. And this show is to help experts learn how to become more wealthy and well known. I know you’re gonna love it. Thanks for being here. Let’s get started. Today
Rory (00:34):
We’re gonna have a really unique conversation about how to build community, and we’re gonna be talking to Remington Ramsey, who is the creative force behind Real Producers Magazine, which started as this sort of regional, uh, media production and has become sort of a nationwide phenomenon. And he is reaching very specific into the real estate industry, despite not having been, uh, been a realtor himself. And yet he has created this entire business. He is fostering this community and he’s doing it through a magazine. And so there are, over the years, there have been people who have done this really, really well. And it’s a very unique model that has some specific intricacies that I, I want to talk about and I want to hear the story because I think this could apply to all of you. Even if you never start a magazine or desire to.
Rory (01:32):
The, the concepts and the tactics around serving a community and how your personal brand grows as the community grows is super, super relevant. So in addition to that, he is the author of a book called Agent Allies. And Ton was referred to me by one of my dear friends, the late John Ruland. Uh, and that was how we got to know each other. And it was one of the last relationships that John introduced me to, uh, right before he died. And so Remington and I kind of took that and said, Hey, we should get to know each other a little bit if John thought this was good. Mm-hmm
Remington (02:24):
Man. Uh, two things, Rory. One, thank you. Uh, so three things. Uh, two, I need to work on my intros ’cause that’s just super powerful. Well done
Rory (02:48):
I am proud of you. I’m proud of you. The, the, the, the Take the Stairs movement lives on and lives strong
Remington (03:23):
Well, you, you brought up our, uh, our, our buddy John Ruland, uh, rest in Peace, one of a kind dude. And, um, and Cutco, that’s where we met selling knives. And most people know that, uh, from selling knives to your parents and your grandparents, and then you quit. Mm-hmm
Rory (04:39):
To be clear, when you say closing gift, you’re talking about the gift that the agent gives to their client, like in their new home, congratulations for buying a home. Here’s a set of knives, you know? Yeah. Hopefully you Thanks for doing business with me, that kind of thing.
Remington (04:53):
Exactly. They would engrave their name, uh, you know, Rory Vaden re max Cell phone, here’s your Knife. And the, the point of the whole thing was to brand and with a gift that they would use every single day so that they would remember their realtor. So it’s phenomenal real, uh, Cutco prides themselves as being the largest closing gift company in North America because there’s no one else who’s doing this. A second, second place is like gift bags and, and bottles of wine. So I loved it and I was doing really well and I felt like I was, uh, selling a bunch of knives and breaking records, but at the end of the year, I didn’t have a ton of money to show up for it. And it was because I was spending all of my money back into the business trying to figure out who the realtors were that could afford it, and then spending more money on marketing to gain those relationships. Got it. So that’s where it all started. That’s how I got into real estate. Um,
Rory (05:43):
So you were trying to figure out who the top realtors were going? If I could build a relationship with them and then they sell a whole bunch of homes, then I sell a bunch of knives, like in the wake.
Remington (05:53):
Yeah. Well, I mean, not only that, like if you look at Indy, there’s 10,000 realtors in Indianapolis. 1.8 million people, 10,000 of ’em have their real estate license, but half of ’em won’t sell a home this year. Uh, and it’s true across the nation, like that’s kind of real estate’s the largest trade organization in the world, but two outta three that train to be a realtor this year will not be here this next year. So like, essentially it’s a, it is a very high turnover rate. So as a vendor, that’s really frustrating because you spend all your time like taking these guys out to lunch ’cause they love free lunch. ’cause a lot of them can’t afford lunch. So I’d be out there on these free lunches spending my money and they’re not getting any knives ’cause they can’t afford ’em ’cause they’re not doing any closing. So that was an aha moment for me. And that’s really what birthed the idea of real producers.
Rory (06:38):
Mm-hmm
Remington (07:00):
Well, the magazine came second. What came first was the events. So I was essentially going to all of these sales meetings and, uh, lunch and learns, bringing bagels and, uh, donuts and various bread products. ’cause that’s apparently what the realtors want. Mm-hmm
Remington (07:45):
And before you know it, they’re all in their CE and I’m just staring at all these vendors for hours because there’s no realtors at my booth. So frustrated and thinking there’s gotta be a better way. I created my first event, I called it Turkey time. I gave away eight turkeys and a carving set, and I sold more knives in that one event than I had the previous two weeks. I was like, oh, okay. I need to host my own events. And so that’s when I, you talked about the book, like I basically go into the journey of how like I created my own events that took out all the stuff that wasn’t working and sorted out the realtors that hadn’t actually become professionally. What I mean by that is they’re not good at it yet. And so they waste the vendor’s time and frustrate the industry because they might not even be here this time next year. And so the vendors are after the top realtors who have shown that they can do this year in and year out, and they take care of their vendor partners. So that’s what birthed the idea is like, I’m gonna do my own events and then we’re gonna create a magazine to be the face of it.
Rory (08:51):
Okay. So just to, to to double tap on the events for a second mm-hmm
Remington (09:15):
Yeah. Instead of attending other people’s events where they don’t really have the same priorities of value that I would, that I would, I need to create my own events. JJ Pap Ison talks about this Build your cathedral concept and instead of going to everyone else’s, you build, uh, something that, uh, creates them wanting to come to you. And this doesn’t just have to be, you know, a salesman selling knives. You could do this with anything if you have the right value. But yeah, I created an event where we brought them to me and then any realtor who was already using me for my services also brought a friend. So now you can duplicate it, which I know is a principle you talk about.
Rory (09:54):
Mm-hmm
Remington (09:59):
It
Rory (09:59):
Free
Remington (09:59):
To come to
Rory (10:00):
No,
Remington (10:00):
It was free for the realtors and that was the other light bulb. This is kind of what led to us with the concept of the magazine because I got the party paid for by the vendors because they knew I would bring the value and get the right realtors in the room. So when the magazine came about, I, I basically sat down with 50 real estate professionals. Like I said, it was, I know it’s 2015 and print advertising is dead, like everyone says. Yeah.
Rory (10:22):
That’s what I want to get to is like, why, why in the world would you go into Print magazine? And yet here you are crushing it with this business because
Remington (10:30):
It would, it is never not gonna be cool to be on the cover of a magazine. Now here’s what’s, here’s what’s interesting. It’s 2025 as we’re recording this and print’s actually back. There’s a lot of, like Gary Vaynerchuk’s talking about how print mediums are back, niche products are back magazines are actually a big deal. I think what happened was social media and internet blew up and got so crowded that these niche products are cutting through the noise and people want to feel it again. They want to feel the paper books, they wanna feel the magazine. So right now, in this moment, magazines are a big deal. But in 10 years, again, when people are saying print is dead and magazines are dead, we’re still gonna thrive because it’s not about what, it’s not about print, it’s about what we’re printing. And we were printing things you could only find in that magazine. It was basically Facebook and print. It’d be like me putting Rory’s face on the cover of a magazine and only sending it to his family and his friends because you would open it because it’s Rory. And so that’s what’s happening with these communities, these real estate communities. The top realtors wanna see where they rank and their friends rank and they wanna see their name and face and print as much as possible.
Rory (11:36):
Ah, so there’s a ranking element is that there’s a ranking element to the magazine. Can you explain that?
Remington (11:42):
A hundred percent. So in Indianapolis, I’ll just give you an example. ’cause that was the first one. We only go to the top 500 realtors based on their volume. And they cannot buy it. They have to earn it. So in order to get the magazine, you have to be a top 500 realtor, be on a team of a top 500 realtor, and then it is a free magazine. So every single phone call that a realtor gets, it’s somebody selling them something. Realtors are constantly bomb being bombarded with sales calls, but we’re the ones that call in and say, Hey, we’re doing this all for free. The vendors are paying for this. So the vendors then get access to this group by having an ad in the magazine and access to the events and then shout outs on social media. So it’s a three-prong approach at being in the right room to have an opportunity to earn their business.
Rory (12:28):
Say that again. Okay. So the vendors, the vendors pay for it because they get ads in the magazine. Mm-hmm
Remington (12:37):
Through online,
Rory (12:38):
Through the events and on social. We
Remington (12:41):
You got it. Yep. So really that’s what we, we look at, we look at what creates an environment where someone would go with you. Like if, if you’re, um, if you’re a top realtor and you’ve had your relationship with your mortgage lender for years, but the person you recruit on your team is brand new and they’re still making the relationship. So even the ones at the top, these vendors are making sure that they’re staying in front of, in the right room. I, I say this all the time, it’s better to be in the room than it is to be good at your job to get the initial business. And what I mean by that is, if you just stay in front of someone constantly, when it is time for them to make a change, the first person they think of is you. And it’s not because you’re amazing and you get things done on time because there’s 10 other people that do that too, is because you’re standing in front of them at the time they need you. And so that’s, that’s kind of the, the reason why it works. And so if you’re a vendor and you’re participating with us and real producers, your goal is to stay in front of the ones you’re already working with and then duplicate ’em and get more like them.
Rory (13:42):
Yeah. So goth, I want to go back and underscore that. So you’re saying effectively that being top of mind is not necessarily about being the best at what you do, it’s about being the one who’s in front of them at the time of need.
Remington (14:05):
I, I firmly believe that. Now, I’m not saying that that is how you sustain a business, because in order to get repeat business, you gotta be good at the thing. But in order to get the business, the number one thing that matters is top of mind awareness.
Rory (14:23):
Uh, okay. So and you’re saying that, that the vendor, that that’s your value prop to the vendors because the vendors are in front of all of these top agents every, how often do you produce the magazine?
Remington (14:37):
Yeah, it’s a monthly magazine.
Rory (14:39):
Okay. So that’s a lot to produce. How, how many articles, or like how many pages are in this thing every month?
Remington (14:45):
It depends on the size. So we’re in 130 markets now. I’ll, I’ll flash forward to the end of the story. That was 10 years ago, uh, proved the concept in nd partnered with a national company called Into, uh, publishing at the time. Now it’s called the in two companies. And they’re my, uh, essentially printing this niche magazine in 130 different markets nationwide. So if you fly into any major market or even a minor market, there’s a real producers there. The, the concept is it goes to the top, roughly five to 10% of the realtors in that city. When I first started, people didn’t get that. They, they had only been, you know, told that they need to have as many eyeballs as possible. And I said, is that really what you want though? Because I’ll tell you right now, there’s certain eyeballs. I don’t want seeing my stuff. I don’t want the phone calls of people who can’t afford my stuff or waste my time. And so this is really a, an approach to get in front of the right eyeballs and, uh, if you’re gonna advertise and be a partner with us and real producers, you understand that it’s not a pay-per-click model.
Rory (15:51):
Yeah, yeah. And not an impression model. I mean, that, that’s what’s interesting is what, what’s really like, one of the things that’s so unique about what you’re doing, which is part of why I wanted to talk to you about this is so much of advertising is literally driven by cost per, you know, impre CPM cost per whatever, thousand impressions. And it’s literally just like the spray and pray model mm-hmm
Remington (16:27):
Yeah. Well, and it’s not, and this is specifically for the people that I’m talking to in this industry, though. I’m not saying this is the only way to do marketing if you’re a part of, so I own a sports bar. It’s not, that’s not the me This magazine is not the best medium for them. You know, cost per impression is great for the sports bar because, you know, we can only make $10 a burger and get you in as many times as we can. And we, we rely on volume. So we’ll do the products where it goes to every household and, you know, clicks on Facebook and everything like that. But when it comes to our vendors, you know, our core four industries, our lenders titles, uh, title companies, builders and home inspectors, because they are at the center of a real estate deal and have the most to gain, uh, money wise from a single real estate deal, those salespeople would do so much better with their marketing dollars to get in front of the right eyeballs instead of all the eyeballs. Mm-hmm
Rory (17:28):
Well, yeah. And I would say, you know, you’re talking about real estate here, but just like rounding it out for everyone listening, most of the people listening here are in a mode where they’re like, if you’re an expert of any kind, by definition, it’s like you’re, you’re dealing with a higher level, a more narrow niche, like a smaller group where you’re a more targeted audience that you’re going after. And it, the strategy you’re talking about is interesting because it sort of rails against digitally, everybody goes, you know, how do I just get millions and millions of people? Um, same with print, but like mm-hmm
Rory (18:18):
So, so I see the value add for i the vendors. Okay. So, so thinking about the event. Yeah. So I see the value add for the vendors because you’re curating a list of the top agents. It’s exclusive, which is also unique and cool that you have to be a top agent by production to even get the magazine. Which is funny because the woman who sold our house in Nashville is a top agent. And we walked into her, her office at the closing, your magazine was sitting right, right on her. Like, that’s awesome. Front desk at the reception. I was like, oh my gosh. Like, that’s great. That’s real. I know, I know this magazine. Um, and, and she, she is, uh, shout out to Lacey Newman. Like she, she’s a boss, like she’s in Compass, uh, here in Nashville and like luxury agent and all that stuff.
Rory (19:09):
So she’s got your magazine. And I go like, whoa, you’re, you’re reaching, you’re reaching the right person if she’s got that, um, out in her desk area, right. Like the reception. So I see the value add as a vendor to go by curating this list. You’re in front of them. What’s the value add to the agents? I mean, I know it’s free and I know you’re saying I’m not trying to sell ’em something, which is good, like a lot of people are selling ’em, but there’s a lot of, there’s also a lot of people giving away a lot of free garbage, uh mm-hmm
Remington (20:09):
Yeah. And I think community is the right word there, because originally we’re like, okay, are we a magazine or are we an events company? And I think over the last 10 years there’s been like trying to swing one direction or the other. But to be honest, the number one word you come back to is that community. It’s a culture and, uh, movement almost. Because if the events didn’t even exist, would the magazine still matter? And the answer is absolutely yes. See, it’s kind of like, we’ve alluded to Star Wars in the past. This is, we’re gonna geek out for a second here. So Star Wars made it, I think the figure is three times more on the products and memorabilia than they did the box office dollars of the movies. Um, so infinitely more on all the swag, but they never would’ve sold all the dolls and t-shirts had they not had the movies be so cool and successful. And so the magazine is at the center of what we do, like being on the cover of magazines, seeing your friends, seeing where you rank, seeing the stories, that’s always gonna be at the center. But all the other stuff that we do that really reflects that is little bits and pieces that add up to a ton of value that are within this community. So your original, uh, get getting back, you asked like three questions in there.
Rory (21:25):
Well, that’s, it’s, it’s really going. What are the, how do you be,
Remington (21:29):
Why does the realtor care?
Rory (21:30):
Yeah. Like and how do you make, that’s the question yourself, Val, valuable. How do you make the magazine valuable? How do you make the events valuable? The the ranking. The ranking is super interesting. Yeah. So, you know, so
Remington (21:42):
I’ll, I sat down Rory with 50 people, 50 people that I trusted in the real estate industry here in Indy ahead of time. And I said, I asked them all the questions, this is what I’m thinking and I’m thinking about starting this magazine, what should I put in it? What should I not put in it? What do I care about? And I, I did all those appointments before I did a single sales appointment to create the magazine. And the, the biggest takeaways I got is that exclusivity is a big deal. If you look at why Facebook take took off instead of MySpace. ’cause MySpace was cool. I had MySpace. Did you have MySpace?
Rory (22:15):
Oh yeah. Mm-hmm
Remington (22:16):
Yeah. So Zaa, MySpace, alt Friendster, all these sayings. Facebook is the one that took off. And I think, you know what most people believe is the biggest reason is because of the exclusivity factor when it started. And so if you look at the magazine, it’s a badge of honor to even receive this magazine for starters. Now, as a realtor, the reason they care about it is because, uh, another platform where they can share their story, where someone else is saying they’re good at the thing, instead of them saying, I’m good at this thing, is third party validation for their business. So the first thing they get, you saw that magazine sitting on Lacey, is it Lacey? Lacey? Yeah. You saw it is sitting on her desk. Did she pay for that? No, it was a third party that said, this person is very good at selling real estate so much.
Remington (23:02):
So we put her on a cover. Whereas most of the other magazines that people were quote unquote, you know, saying were our competition, it was pay to play models. So Rory, hey grit, congrats on selling a ton of homes. We’re going to put you on the cover of this magazine for $2,000 and you can get a couple copies to send to your friends and family. That’s a model that works. And it was around for years before we started Real producer. I’ve, some of my agents have been on those and, and are still on those and that, that works and that’s cool and fine and everything, but if it, it kind of, it would devalue if we ever took the dollars of someone to get on the cover, you’re buying the exposure versus earning it. And so the realtors, just to
Rory (23:42):
Be clear, is is there a different person on each cover? Like, does yours work like that? Or is it one real?
Remington (23:47):
Oh yeah, it’s nomination base. So the way it works is anyone in real estate can nominate them. We personally vet them, make sure that they’re, uh, doing at least the numbers and they’re reputable. And then we feature them based on nominations. So they cannot pay to be on the cover. You can’t pay to receive the magazine. It’s all based on merit. And so the community understands that and they know that. So when they’re picking up the magazine, they’re not thinking, well, you know why she’s on the cover? ’cause Keller Williams has an ad on the back cover. Well, no, we don’t take the dollars of any brokerage, so you can’t pay to be on the cover. It’s truly based on merit. And I think that’s one of the central things we decided 10 years ago that has kept us, um, in their, in their thoughts as they think about their own promotional materials. Alright,
Rory (24:32):
So but then is, is one agent on the cover nationwide every month? No. Or are there different agents in every market, or how granular is the cover?
Remington (24:41):
It’s granular. As granular as the market is. If you fly into Indy and you don’t know anyone in Indy, you’re not gonna know who’s on the cover. Only the people in Indy care about who’s on the cover because it’s a magazine based for the Indianapolis Realtors, the top 500 realtors in Indy get it, the top 500 in Nashville, get theirs now. That’s how it started. And if, if you look at our 130 markets, it’s a different realtor on the cover of every single one of them. But this event we’re doing here in September, that’s why this event is such a big deal. And I’ll, I’ll sing your praises a little bit, give you some flowers. You’re speaking at this event. It’s the inaugural first event, RP Elevate. Come see, uh, Rory Speak live. And the reason it’s such a big deal is it’s the first time ever we’re joining all those markets and we realize that the networking, ’cause another one of your questions, you, you basically asked without asking, why do realtors care about this?
Remington (25:33):
Why do they care about a magazine that’s all about them? Well, first of all, I mean, healthy Ego is a real thing in real estate. I think we all know that. So we want to see our name and face and print. But I had a realtor at one of my master classes, say during right after Covid, he said the Indianapolis market was super hard hot. And for the first time ever there was, uh, multiple offers on, on listings. And they had to decide, who am I gonna go with? And this realtor’s name is Alan. He said The reason why I beat other agents on all of these deals was not because I had the, the higher price or even the better offer. It was simply because I have done enough networking with these realtors. They trusted me to get the job done, and they trust me to do it right. And so I won all these deals that everyone else lost. And I think that kind of encompassed our thoughts here. It’s not just realtors showing up to events to get their free prizes and free lunch and go home. They really want to know these other agents so they can improve the industry together. And I think that we’re at the center of that conversation. Yeah,
Rory (26:40):
It’s interesting. I’m, I’m actually speaking at an investor’s conference, uh, here in a couple months and they were telling me the same thing, especially like when you’re, when you’re like, um, putting deals together that they will win, they will buy properties and they’ll get those properties for a lower price because the seller believes that even though you’re offering less money, they’re more convinced that you’ll get the deal to go through and that it’ll get done Right. It’ll get done fast and that like it will actually happen. Yep. That’s a fascinating part of a personal brand is to go, you don’t even have to have the best offer. They just trust that you’re gonna get it done and get it done. Right. And you win business because of that, even if you don’t have the, like the most money.
Remington (27:26):
Yeah. And especially if you’re a likable person in the process, people want to go with someone that they know, like, and trust. I think we undervalue that likability factor. We know and trust is a big deal. And but that likability factor is so big when it comes to sales because if you’re gonna be in the trenches with this person, you better enjoy it. Otherwise they might go with the other deal even though it’s not as good of a package. So I totally believe in that. So,
Rory (27:51):
So then just to be clear, if you have like a hundred plus markets mm-hmm
Remington (28:13):
So the rankings, we reset every year. You know, we’re not trying to send the magazine to different realtors every single month based on their last month’s pro Sure. Uh, production. So this, this month for real producers, everyone’s in a tizzy. ’cause we’re redoing the list in January for this calendar year. And it’s really exciting ’cause we send out the badges, we get these little digital badges that says I’m a top 500 realtor. Um, and so this is a, a fun month for us, but yeah, it’s, but for the entire calendar year, based on last year’s production. So to give you an idea, you have to sell about 9 million number. 500 is right around 9 million in Indie.
Rory (28:49):
Mm-hmm
Remington (28:51):
All the way up to 150 million
Rory (28:54):
Uhhuh for like the number one spot. Mm-hmm
Remington (28:57):
Rory (29:13):
He definitely made it cover the 80 listings.
Remington (29:15):
Yeah.
Rory (29:16):
Wow. Yeah. Uh, that’s awesome. So then, um, okay, well, okay, so the ranking comes out once a year. What about the rest of the year? Like what else? Because like, that makes sense to me to go, like, I, I would be like, where did I rank? Where did my friends rank? Where did my team rank? But that only is once a year. The other 11 months, you gotta put something in there to make them pay attention other than the cover.
Remington (29:38):
Well, the content is all about the realtors. So we have rising stars, we have leaders, we have personal pieces, uh, and we also do stories on our vendors too. And that’s, I the vendors love us and the realtors actually appreciate that too because they’re getting to know these vendors on a deeper level versus just the guy that does my carpet cleaning. Um, so, uh, philanthropy, I mean, there’s so, there’s so much content. Here’s the, here’s the key, the biggest rule with real producers is that we try to have as little content that can be Googled as possible. Less than 10% of the magazine content can you actually Google to find the answers, which means that the majority of content is unique specifically to that issue and the story cannot be found elsewhere. So the cover story, the Rising Star, the leaders, people having an impact within the philanthropy. Like they’re very unique stories within the real estate community. And we do some fun stuff too, like staff, like we do have standings, quarterly standings, monthly standings that that does update. Um, and they, they eat that up as well. Um, but all the content is specific for the realtors of that city.
Rory (30:47):
Mm-hmm
Remington (30:54):
That’s why I’m not doing it all, you know, well, issues. Yeah. That’s why we have franchise owners. Yeah.
Rory (30:59):
So, uh, and then, okay, so then, uh, in terms of monetizing this mm-hmm
Remington (31:27):
Yeah. We make money off of the events. We actually, uh, for the longest time, just to be abundantly clear to the realtor, we didn’t have any ways to make money off of the realtors. We really wanted to establish that you can’t buy your way into the content. Once we established that nationwide, we started creating ways because they, they were asking us, we want extra copies of this. We want just our stories, we want booklets. So at that point we decided, okay, this is an opportunity. And we, we do little promos, little mini magazines of just their story where they can buy a hundred of them and leave behind at open houses and, and things like that. Um, obviously digital marketing has taken a shape differently so that if that’s gonna be part of the geofencing and Google words, like that’s a part of the package as a vendor.
Remington (32:14):
So there’s lots of other ways. And then obviously RP Elevate coming up is, uh, a national event. That’ll be the first time we’ve done that. But if you look at us, uh, real Producers for 10 years, my dream was to have a seat at the table with trusted real estate brands. When they, when you think of big brands that people look to for whatever, now, you know, Zillow is a very polarizing brand, but everyone knows Zillow. I think we’re finally at that point where, especially within the top realtor community, real Producers is a logo and a brand that everyone knows and trusts. And this last year with NAR really struggling with those lawsuits, they need a trusted voice within real estate. And a lot of ’em are looking towards real producers for that. So there’s a lot of opportunity in the future past, uh, vendors paying for an ad.
Rory (33:05):
Yeah. Yeah. That’s, that’s really, really cool. Um, do you guys do awards too? Do you do like Oh, yeah, yeah.
Remington (33:12):
Awards banquets are huge, man. We, we raise a lot of money for, um, for charities. Uh, most recently, the last three years, we focused all of our national efforts, uh, to fight human trafficking. And we’ve got five different organizations through what we call N two Gives, which is our parent company. N two Gives. And, um, in the last I think five years, we’ve raised $29 million, um, to fight human trafficking. Uh, I think 4 million of which came from just the real producers markets. So, um, yeah, the, the awards bank was, are a lot of fun, man. We get all dolled up, we, we donate to a good cause and then they get glass trophies that say they’re good at selling homes. Everyone loves it.
Rory (33:57):
Uhhuh
Remington (35:20):
Yeah, Remington ramsey.com would be a great place to start. That’s kind of the hub. Um, we converted my Instagram couple years ago to just being a talking head about marketing. So if you, if any of this was fascinating, you had mentioned different niche products that could be created with the same concept. Um, I talk about all that, so just find me on Instagram, Remington Ramsey. But the book Agent Allies is literally just my story, like a deeper look at how as a vendor you can use real estate agents to build your business a lot faster. Like, if you think about any vendor or service provider, like if you were to start a moving company tomorrow, Rory, instead of doing a billboard or a commercial or advertising the masses, my argument is you should advertise to the realtor. ’cause they’re the ones that know who’s at the center of the move and you’re gonna get a hundred people with advertising to one instead of just one. So the book is really an effort to bring vendors and real realtors together to improve the industry and, uh, get better at sales just in general. So it’s, it’s been a lot of fun. Number one new release in, in real estate over the last couple weeks.
Rory (36:23):
That’s really cool. That’s really cool. Um, well, I, I, I’m noodling and sitting here to go, how would we do this at Brand Builders Group? How would we apply it, you know, to another group? I think there’s a lot of disparate communities out there, even one that real estate that’s so established and has, has nar and like a lot of things. And yet there’s still these pockets of going, you can, you can serve a small group of these people mm-hmm
Remington (37:03):
Thanks for having me on, Rory, I, I told you before the show, but I’m a huge fan. I love your work, your, your books and, uh, strong man of faith, like leading the way, leading the charge on all those reels. Uh, uh, just keep it up, man. Thanks brother.
Ep 577: The #1 Thing That’s Holding You Back from What You Want | Jason Stacy Episode Recap
AJ (00:06):
Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is the place where we help mission-driven messengers, just like you learn how to build and monetize your personal brand. My name is Rory Vaden, and I’m the co-founder of Brand Builders Group, a hall of fame speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. And this show is to help experts learn how to become more wealthy and well-known. I know you’re gonna love it. Thanks for being here. Let’s get started.
AJ(00:34):
You wanna know what the number one thing is that’s holding you back from what you want most? Well, I know what it is, uh, because it’s no different for you than it is for me or anyone else in the world. And the number one thing for all of us that is holding us back from success, and that could be success in business or finance or health or, uh, relationships, uh, we’ll just call it success in general, however you wanna define success. If you, if you don’t have what you consider successful or if you’re not where you thought you would be or if you’re not doing what you wanna be doing. For most of us, it’s just one thing. There’s just this one thing that’s in the way and not one thing is fear. Not one thing for all of us is an emotion. It’s fear, right?
AJ (01:28):
It’s, it’s telling yourself this won’t work and, uh, I’m not capable. Um, it’s, well, I can’t do this because what if it doesn’t work out and I wasted all this time or money or effort or resources, or, um, you know what, what if I do this and, and I do fail? Like, what are people gonna think about me? Or, uh, it’s, you know, what if I, I try to do it and I lose all this money, or I lose all my friends, or I lose my business, or I lose my marriage, or what they, it could be a hundred different things and I could go through and list out all the reasons why, but ultimately, they could all be summed up into one four letter word fear. If we don’t have what we want most often, it’s because we didn’t take the chance on ourselves.
AJ (02:15):
We didn’t take that leap of faith. We didn’t believe in ourselves enough to do the thing. We didn’t believe that we’d have the, the courage or the endurance, or the persistence or persistence or the resources, um, or we just didn’t even believe in our own ability to go out and learn and do the thing. There is a fear element to all of us that is holding us back from where we are to where we wanna be and from what we have versus what we want most. And it’s like, relationally speaking, it’s perhaps it’s like you’re too afraid to be fully known, and so you don’t have the marriage, um, that you want because well, you, you won’t be real and honest because you think to yourself, well, if I was really honest about who I, I really am, but they really love me. Like, if they knew who I really was, deep down, if they knew these crazy thoughts I really had, but they actually still love me.
AJ03:10):
And I, I bet that for many of us, we don’t have the health and the, you know, longevity plan that we really want because there’s some fear of, uh, missing out of like, man, if I really decided to give up alcohol and get healthy, like, would I even be any fun
AJ (03:56):
It’s like there’s all these things and it’s like, man, it’s like I really wanna, I really wanna try to write this book, but what if it sucks? Like, what if no one buys it? What if I do all this? And it’s, it’s not for anything, right? Fear, fear is the thing that is holding almost all of us back from whatever it is that we want. And I think there’s a couple of things I just wanna mention about this. I just finished reading a book called Living Fearless. And, um, Jamie Winship is the author, living Fearless is the book. And one of the things that he says in the book, and it’s probably not my only takeaway, but it’s my biggest takeaway, I know it’s not my only takeaway, but what I loved, and he said, this was towards the very end of the book, he said, you can only become fearless when you walk through fear filled situations.
Ep 576: Managing Your Emotions, Energy and Environment for Long Term Success with Jason Stacy
AJV (00:01):
Hey everybody. Welcome to the influential Personal Brand podcast, AJ Vaden here. And I am, uh, going to be having an amazing conversation with a new friend of mine, Jason Stacy. And, um, before I formally introduce him, as I always do, I wanna kind of let you guys know what this episode is all about and why you should stick around. Sometimes I have hyper-specific episodes that are really for those of you who are trying to write a book or launch a book, others who are building their speaking career, or, you know, you’re trying to build a coaching community. This is not one of those episodes. This is one of those episodes that is about how to succeed at life
AJV (00:56):
So I wanted to let you guys know upfront that, uh, occasionally we have these universal kind of conversations. It just applies to everything. Um, but I think this is a really great and important topic about managing your energy, emotions, and environment, and how being the master of those things helps you succeed at life. So that is why you need to stick around. Now, before we get into this amazing conversation about all these things, uh, let me introduce you to Jason. Stacy. We are gonna talk about his journey from homelessness to high performance coaching. Uh, and I think all I really, really, it’s gonna be, it’s God conversation about his testaments, uh, to resilience, adaptability, and unshakeable foundations, and how we can all build those from learning about these things. Now, over the last 20 years, he has worked with elite athletes, business leaders, and high stakes professionals, helping them not just reach the top, but more importantly, sustain their success once they get there. And his philosophy centers on mastering energy, emotions, and environment, because true success isn’t just about achieving greatness, it’s about sustaining an growing it wrong term. Jason, welcome to the show.
Jason Stacy (02:11):
Well, good morning everybody.
AJV (02:16):
Well, you know, I think it’s one of these, and why I thought you were gonna be so great for this show, um, is I think a lot of people talk about how to get success. How do we reach the top? How do we do all these things? But very few people actually talk about what do you do when you get there and how do you keep it, and how do, how do you sustain it? It’s one thing to do all the work to achieve these things, but is it really what it’s all cracked up to be when you get there? And what do you, what do you do to maintain and sustain when you get there? Um, so I thought this was gonna be an, an amazing just topic for our particular audience. Uh, but before we get into that, uh, I have a burning question,
Jason Stacy (03:17):
Wow. So to start off with a small question, I see
AJV (04:00):
Oh, wow.
Jason Stacy (04:02):
So weird.
AJV (04:11):
So what, you went home from a babysitting gig
Jason Stacy (04:13):
And how Yeah, that’s where I was staying. I was for a few weeks. I was like there for a while, like for a few weeks, like with these people. And these people were messed up too, as it was a, it was a terrible environment. It was, it was. Yeah. I can’t even believe some of the things, if I would ex explain to you or tell you some stories, like you wouldn’t believe it. It was just blowing my mind. But anyway, so yeah, I like, look, I ended up being, you know, homeless and I was by myself for a few years there for most of that part, finding ways to survive, to just all kinds of different things. And, you know, I was, I did try to go back to school. I officially, I finished eighth grade was the last grade that I finished, you know, like, you know, as far as school, school goes.
Jason Stacy (04:45):
But wow, I was trying to go back to school. I was having people, I was like doing things for, to help pretend like my parents to sign things and just doing stuff like this. But anyway, how I ended up getting back off the streets was in this neighborhood, which was a pretty crappy neighborhood really. It was, um, a, uh, martial arts school, like a, it was in between like an adult bookstore and like a old tavern, you know, it was like a, in a pawn shop. It was just a, it was a crappy little place, right. Um, you know, the area itself. And I used to walk by this martial arts because I was, I was born in Japan actually, and I, as a young child, I started martial arts from when I was a little kid. And I was just always a big part of my, like, identity in my life, you know, before all this, you know, sort of mess happened. And, um, I, uh, I mean, I would go in there sometimes and just watch and sit and watch and, you know, eventually the owners, but there was like a lot of like police officers and military guys kind of training there. And, um, they, uh, uh, eventually let me train there, even though I had no parent to like sign things, this and that. And
Jason Stacy (05:41):
I would say that’s probably, uh, geez,
AJV (05:51):
Wow.
Jason Stacy (05:52):
So I haven’t talked about that much in a while. So,
AJV (05:56):
You know, um, my, my good friend Ben Klarik always says that tears are truth tellers.
Jason Stacy (06:02):
Jason Stacy (06:39):
It was a big part of that, obviously, you know. And then obviously the actual training, you’ll learn how to manage your emotions, about managing your mind, about being more aware of yourself, about your surroundings. And it was very, for me, just, I just got obsessed with that. And I got really like, hyper, you know, focused on being curious, asking lots of questions, wanting to understand how and why people work and the way they work. And I, I learned a lot about coaching, a lot about humans, a lot about people. You know, I was pretty young at that time. I was probably 19 or 20 years old, and I was like teaching guys twice my age, you know, about, about certain things. And, you know, I just, uh, the, my coaches and senses, they, you know, probably from my other experiences, you know, I had like a good sort of sense of, of these things.
Jason Stacy (07:17):
They just sort of naturally kind of went with that. And now, you know, from there I had some, we had some students who were like physiotherapists and massage therapist, and I would talk to them at night. I had a roommate. She was, you know, her and I, uh, got a place together as a roommate and she was a therapist, you a massage therapist and physio. And I’m talking about all these things about how the body works. And that’s, and she’s like, how do you know all this stuff? She’s like, you know, more than like, my teachers do, but you just don’t know the words of it. Like, you don’t know how to describe it. So it kind of like got me interested, like, Hey, you know, maybe I’ll go learn how to do this as a, as a career or a job. ’cause you know, I was still kind of floating around.
Jason Stacy (07:49):
So I put myself through like massage school and then sports therapies. And then I became a personal trainer, then a strength coach, and then athletic trainer, you know, the guys that kind of run on the field and do all that, you know, emergency care stuff in sport. And I did sort of just built up my own education from there, you know, and the one thing I, I noticed though, as I was doing that, a lot of the physical stuff just came natural for me. Like my kinesiology, all this stuff, I graduated honors, all this, I, it was, it just sort of came natural maybe from all the martial art training and understand human body and all that and the mechanics. Um, but one thing I noticed when I started working more, whether it was in gyms or clinics or, or on the field, is that there was a lot of very knowledgeable people, right.
Jason Stacy (08:27):
A lot around me. Most of ’em had much more experience. They had all their degrees and I had none of these things, you know, I just worked my way through it, sort of very non-traditional ways of getting educated. A lot of it was self-educated, which is I guess a bigger thing now, but back then not as much. So I had to really dig deep and figure out, find a way to learn these things and be in the right environment around the right people to, you know, be able to have access to this information. But one of the things that I did notice that people just didn’t quite get was the people part. Hmm. The building trust, the communicating, the connecting with people to get them to, you know, one of the biggest things that I really push and talk about with my coaches and other trainers and whatnot is, is, and even my clients, it, it’s, it’s that difference between people doing things because they have to versus because they want to.
Jason Stacy (09:12):
Hmm. So like a commitment over compliance type of thing, right? Mm-hmm
Jason Stacy (09:47):
But a lot of it was just like, I was just curious. I asked lots of questions, not in a disrespectful way, but to understand like, Hey, why are we doing this or that and this way, or what, why don’t we try this instead of that? And really just understanding these things. But the biggest part was, you know, everyone I worked with knew that I’d always give a hundred percent no matter what I was doing, where I was at, I was always a hundred percent engaged. And I never pretended I knew something I didn’t know. I didn’t have to be the one with all. So lemme
AJV (10:13):
Ask, I ask you a question about that really quickly because this whole concept of are you doing it because you have to versus you want to, I love that you said that, you know, is this a compliance thing or is this a commitment thing? Uh, I think it’s really important to something you just said is, you know, no matter what I did, I always gave it a hundred percent, right? Yes. Um, and I don’t think a lot of people do that.
Jason Stacy (10:37):
I agree.
AJV (10:39):
I tell you this, hear your take on, I’d love to just hear you. ’cause I think a lot of people are listening of going like, am I really good giving what I, whatever I’m doing 110% and is my team, or, you know, are people like missing their potential? And how do we get ourselves to give that level of commitment? How do we get our teams to do that?
Jason Stacy (10:58):
Yes. Well, I, I mean, I can answer, there’s a lot of, uh, answers to that question. I mean, one of the first things I would say is, you know what, if you’re asking that question more times than not, not always, but most of the time you already know the answer. You know what I mean? Like, if you’re asking, I go, am I really doing the what I could do? I mean, again, this is the same thing I see over and over again as everyone likes to lie to themselves. Mm. Kind of pretend, you know, we don’t have to just have that look in the mirror and go, Hey, you know, and, and I would say, um, how, how we go about doing that. Obviously, my, my first step is always looking at yourself. You know, yes, you’re right, your team, all these different things. But, you know, one of the biggest things about are you really, you know, doing it because you have to or because you want to.
Jason Stacy (11:35):
I mean, there’s so many variables there. There’s something you said that made me think of something. I, I forgot what you were saying, but, um, you know, for me, the biggest starting point is looking at yourself. You know, if you’re asking yourself that question, obviously, you know, there’s something missing, right? Mm-hmm
Jason Stacy (12:22):
Because sometimes we kinda like bring ourselves down and we end up not getting anything. We kinda get stuck. So I think there’s this, this, this process of you kinda need to have some vulnerability to be open for these things. Have that balance of being so, you know, being honest with yourself and being direct with yourself while still having some sort of self-compassion, knowing that you are, you know, doing what you need to do. And then that kinda leads into being a bit more mature, a bit of maturity of understanding. Maybe that comes with the experience of doing that, because it does take, it does take work to get there, you know what I mean? And, and I mean, I suppose there’s a lot of different layers here. You know, it’s kind of a big thing to
Jason Stacy (12:56):
But I, I, I think the biggest part for me, I always to try to help coaches understand and, and, you know, people I work with, understand is it’s, it, it’s really about you. I can’t tell you, you know, this is how it is or not how it is. You have to know, you have to find a way to stop lying to yourself and stop sort of like pretending to hide behind some facade of like, oh, you have a system that you follow, or here’s my 10 steps to this, or here’s, you know, we all get busy doing that. We all like, you know, we’re like trying to sell ourselves constantly, you know? So I think we have to always kinda have one foot in, one foot out, you know? And then that kinda also leads to the people around you, you know, are they feeding you? Are they a little yes. Men kind of thing? Are they feeding you, you know, bs are they being honest with you? Are they, you know, are they doing the best that they can? There’s a lot of layers here. So I’m not sure what part that you wanted me to break down, but, you know,
AJV (13:42):
Think, I think the biggest part that I think a lot of people really struggle with, and I am, you know, thinking a lot about, you know, the old saying is like, they’re just not quite reaching their potential. Sure. And I guess my, my real question is, you know, and we forget the teams for a second, and if we looked at, you know, all of us in the mirror and says like, yeah, I know I’m not giving it a hundred percent. I know I’m not doing my best. Why, from your experience, why do you think that is? And what, what would be some like tactical, tangible steps of going, Hey, this, this is what I have to do to be better. Right? And I think, I think there’s a lot of that just out there. And I don’t think this is new, right? I think everyone wants the easy road to success, right? It’s like, we all want it right now. We don’t wanna do the hard work to be fit, to be, you know, have healthy financials or healthy relationships or to be successful. It’s like, like, what’s the quickest way I can get there? And true success doesn’t happen like that. Yeah. But that’s, that’s the truth. No one really likes to talk about
Jason Stacy (14:51):
Sure. Look, I I would say, you know, when you first started speaking, uh, somebody go back earlier, I think one of the biggest problems we have is there’s too many distractions as well. So it’s very easy to kind of think, you’re know, being busy doing all this and that, being very distracted. So you have to learn how to focus. So I would go to take a little step back. The, the how do you, how do you do what you need to do and be committed to it is that you have to learn now. And I, I don’t remember why I learned this, but I know it’s from someone else. I’m stealing this for sure. I just can’t remember where it was a long time ago, but I’ve been using it for decades now, is that, you know, the definition of focus, right? Focus is making the most important thing, the most important thing.
Jason Stacy (15:26):
Mm. And what is the most important thing is whatever I’m doing right now, like, you and I are having this conversation, and I just look at it as like, you and I, you and aj, Jason and AJ we’re just chatting, catching up, getting to know each other a little bit better. You know, I’m not worried or thinking about what I have to do after this. What just happened before I got on the call? What, you know, what my kids are doing, what arenas doing what this, none of that matters. Like right now I’m here like nothing else matters, period. And I’ve trained and conditioned myself to make sure that like, this is where I am, and if I ever catch myself slipping, I pull myself right back in, straight away. Right? So I think that’s a big part of being able to like, develop that skill.
Jason Stacy (15:59):
Now, what keeps people from d doing this? I think, you know, like you said, looking in the mirror and saying these things and you, you know, that you’re not really what’s, what’s stopping people? Mm-hmm
Jason Stacy (16:44):
Like go out there and put yourself out there and it fail. Obviously we don’t want that. You know what I mean? We don’t want to see like, we’re trying our best and it doesn’t work. ’cause then it hurts our identity. So people lock in too much of, you know, their identity with what they’re, you know, they’re doing, whether it’s success or failure. There’s, nowadays it’s even harder because everything on social media and online is about, everyone’s so successful, it’s so easy. And here’s your, I did these three steps and now I have everything and all this kind of, you know, this facade of, of how things work. So I really think there’s this fear, and, and the, and the issue is, and this is something with arena, you know, the, the tennis squad I’ve been working for years now is, and a lot of them actually is, is the, the thing that gets them past.
Jason Stacy (17:20):
And that next level is them realizing that it is fear that’s stopping them, right? There’s this threat, this fear, right? Versus, you know, that kind of threat versus challenge kind of concept, right? So most people are in this, in this threat state where their, their fear of whether it’s fear of failure, whether being seen a certain way, whether of, you know, it is a bit scary to do something new. You know, there’s a lot of layers of fear. The, the, the main part is you have to learn how to deal with fear, right? You have to face fear. You can’t wait for it to go away. You can’t, um, you know, get busy doing other things to think it’s gonna get, you know, kind of work your way around it. There is something that all of us know, all of us know that’s holding us back, right?
Jason Stacy (17:59):
Everyone knows may, maybe it’s hard for them to see it right now, but deep down inside, if they really be honest with themselves, they know what’s holding them back. What are they worried about? What are they scared about? And if they’re having trouble doing that, find people around them to help them realize what those things are. And then they need to face those things. They need to turn around, open their eyes and go through it. The only way to get through fear and to get to that next level is to go through it. There’s no going around it. There’s no waiting, there’s no, you know, buying a bunch of little mini courses or doing this little thing or doing a little of that. You know what I mean? Like, that doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. Just like you said, you’re talking about getting fit and healthy and diets.
Jason Stacy (18:33):
I mean, how many seven step programs to making a million dollars or your bestselling book, or your diet or your work app, there’s thousands of them. And if they all worked, and then why are there thousands of them? Why do we keep buying more and more every year? Well, because they don’t work. And I mean, they might work, but they don’t work because people are missing first this element we’re talking about, like, are they really being honest with themselves, that commitment to doing and committing to doing these things? The other is those three elements that you mentioned about, what I really focus on is managing your energy, your environment, and your emotions. Like for me, those are the things that, that’s the glue that holds all that together. That’s the fundamental stuff that people don’t work on, right? Mm-hmm
Jason Stacy (19:12):
Like commitment over compliance, you know, that vulnerability, maturity that, you know, understanding, you know, how you work that self-awareness, those three elements, without those you can buy and do every course you want. You could do all the steps and you might get some success, but you’re never gonna sustain it. You’re gonna be a one hit wonder, right? And that one hit isn’t gonna hit what it should have. And it could have because you’re just copy and pasting, you know, you’re just typing into something, see what chat GPT told you, and you’re just gonna follow the steps and hey, ta-da. It’s all magic. And again, some people might get a little bit further on, but they’re just gonna go right back to where they were. They’re not gonna keep growing. They’re not gonna keep going through this because it’s just, it’s not real. It’s not coming from inside from them.
Jason Stacy (19:51):
You know? It’s that, that analogy of like, you know, before you ever drive a stick, a manual, right? You, you know, you have the knowledge of what you’re supposed to do, right? You know, pushing the clutch, you know, the gears and all that stuff. But it doesn’t matter how much you memorize it, you know, it, you can recite it, you can explain it a hundred different ways to like 10 different languages. As soon as you get behind the car, the first time you’re jerk and stalling, you know, and you’re, you’re killing the engine and you’re, you know, ’cause that’s a different level of understanding. That’s experience and understanding. And so that’s the part that gets missing. And, and though I honestly believe over my own personal experience, my professional experience and all the different people I’ve helped become, you know, world champions in sport who’ve, you know, started businesses and became successful, all them, the main focus wasn’t here’s the details system that you need to follow.
Jason Stacy (20:33):
Like we find some that fits you, right. Find a system that fits you and your environment and where you are right now, right. And your resources and things that connect with you. That’s great. Find that. But that system’s only gonna go so far if you don’t know how to manage your emotions. Mm-hmm. Because that’s part of that commitment over compliance part, isn’t it? Right. That resistance, that fear that whatever the hesitation that you have or maybe that like, you know, oblivious thing that you think everything’s perfect and you’re amazing and you’re not really Right.
AJV (21:21):
Yes. I have a question about that. So, because I think this is a really big topic in a lot of different, uh, circles right now. Sure. What would you say are the best things that you’ve seen work to help people manage their energy?
Jason Stacy (21:36):
Sure. I think, I think the first thing, I mean, the first thing is obvious, always acknowledging it. Like it’s actually a key thing. You know, more than your, your systems and your time. I, I would say I always start with the physical things, right? Because the thing about doing something that’s more tangible and physical that is in your control, no matter what your mood is, right? No matter how you’re feeling right now. So I’ll give you an example. Like, let’s say it’s a very simple example, how I breathe mm-hmm
Jason Stacy (22:15):
I, I can explain how that works later if you want. But, you know, having like longer exhales, it becomes more parasympathetic. You’re more in that rest, relax, you know, digest, you know, you’re more sort of aware of where you are. You’re more aware of your body or your surroundings. So we can spend five minutes just breathing nice and slow. Now how are you gonna feel at after we, if we do this breathing for real, you know, if you just switch off everything, no noise, no distraction, and you just breathe real slowly, how you gonna feel? Are you gonna feel fired up? Like you’re ready to go? Like, fight Dante on the world? You jumping up and down screaming, of course not right? You gonna be like, just calm and relaxed. Ah, and that was just from changing how you breathe. If I get you breathing really, really fast right now, just even just on your own, just breathing really fast and all crazy, are you gonna feel all relaxed and calm?
Jason Stacy (22:57):
Of course you will. Yep. Yeah. Right. If I have you take a deep exhale everything and hold your breath as long as you can, and keep it, keep holding as long as you, as long as you can, you’re gonna be calm and relaxed, you’re gonna be stressing out. So just by some physical thing, simple as breathing, it’s gonna change how you’re feeling. This makes sense. Mm-hmm
Jason Stacy (23:33):
Afterward, right. My state, my energy, my focus, my intention is all gonna be in a different place based on how I just, what I did with my body. And, and the reason I like to talk more about that is that is again, like how I feel doesn’t matter, right? I need to get something done. Mm-hmm
AJV (24:18):
Good. Yeah.
Jason Stacy (24:19):
So it just takes a little bit of discipline to do what you need to do regardless how you’re feeling. So I would say the managing energy part is just being aware. There’s a lot of things. I mean that I, I, I know I harped on that for a while, but, you know, the breathing’s a big part. So at the end of the day, I do a thing called legs up breathing. So with all my athletes, all my people, at the end of the day or end of a match or after end of like a, maybe you have an intense session of like some new thing with your business and you guys have just been going for hours and you’re just, you know about to your, your head’s about to explode and you’re exhausted. Just go lay down, throw your legs up on the couch, you know, or up on a wall and just breathe and just, just try to let your head and relax your neck, relax, get it sink into the floor and focus on having really slow long exhales.
Jason Stacy (24:57):
Just sit there and anything goes in your head, just let it come, come and go. Don’t try to think about anything. Don’t not think about anything. Just let it happen. Whatever happens, and just sit there for four or five minutes, two minutes if that’s all you have, right? And that just resets a lot of things in your body. Gives you a moment because it works and kind of recharge one with your legs up. It takes a lot of stress off your heart, off your system. You getting on that blood flow back. You know, two, that breathing, that, that slower exhale for example, is, that’s one example. Is it you become more parasympathetic. So you know, that sort of more relaxed and calm sort of state versus fight, fight fear, which is probably what you’ve just been doing for the last two hours. You know? So you’re kinda resetting your nervous system kind of going, okay, let’s just reset for a moment. And if you do those little mini breaks throughout the day, those things add up. So if you have those little, whether you can pull your legs up or not, but even just take that time out to breathe, to slow yourself down, to get off your phone, to switch off your head. Even if it’s two minutes, you know, I’ll, I’ll tell you a quick story. Um, if I’m going too fast, lemme know. ’cause I get very excited about this stuff.
AJV (25:58):
I think this is great. I think, you know, I think with the, the biggest kind of takeaway that I’m pulling from this, and then I want you to share, uh, the quick story. But it’s like, so much of this requires you to pay attention to yourself.
Jason Stacy (26:09):
A hundred percent. Thank you. Oh my God, that is so amazing. Exactly. All of everything that we have to do, and everything I talk about it starts with you or looking at yourself in the mirror, you know, like that, that self-awareness and there’s ways of developing your body tells you a lot of things before you realize it. There’s even studies now that have shown that our brain is reacting to something before it actually happens, right? Before it actually happens. Almost like we’re in this like weird live TV delay thing where our brain is just, just a moment before something happens, it’s a responding to it. So you know what, the more aware you can become of what your body’s telling you the be and, and, and, and of your environment, which we haven’t even broken down that at all. But like, the environment’s a huge part, you know, of being able to know how to manage your energy.
Jason Stacy (26:49):
So managing energy, I think is start with the physical, tangible things. You know, you understand that how you move your body and how you breathe is going to either use energy or restore energy, right? It’s gonna recharge you or it’s gonna drain you. It’s gonna put you in a state of alertness and hyper, you know, readiness or it’s gonna be calm and more relaxed. Like all these different, I mean, go on and on and on. And so again, you have control of that. And so the quick story I have is, I, I remember I had this space for a couple years. I was teaching a couple different schools and universities. I was coaching on the side, I was doing mentoring, I was teaching juujitsu, I was doing all these different things. And um, plus I had all my kids and they’re all very busy. I’m always very, very engaged with those guys.
Jason Stacy (27:24):
And, um, you know, I would, I had this little thing, and I have this issue with sleeping. I sleep a couple hours a night, you know, like sometimes even when I go to sleep, my body doesn’t like switch off. I have some things I have to work on with that. ’cause it’s, it’s not great, but been that way for a very long time. And I would do something instead of having like this monophasic bit of sleep. So like one big block of sleep and every, you know, we all do, like the nighttime we have our seven to nine hours is I wasn’t getting any sleep. So throughout the day I’d have these little mini breaks. Hmm. So let’s add like four different places to go to that, you know, for work, for teaching, coaching, et cetera. And before I got there, I’d say I’d drive to the plates, I’d sit in my car for, I’d turn everything off.
Jason Stacy (28:00):
So it’s just quiet. And I’d sit there for however much every time I have two minutes, five minutes, 10 minutes, and I would just chill, just breathe. And I try not to think about anything. And if I do, I just let it kind of float in and outta my head. And then I, and I, I had this visualization in my head, like, okay, whether I had an alarm on in case I fell, fell asleep. I, i soon as I had to get outta the car, I opened the door. As soon as I closed the door, it was like a light switch in my mind. I go, boom, boom, and I’m ready. As soon as I walk in the door, I’m just so on fire, so focused. I’m just, I’m a hundred percent just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then I get to my car afterward and I sit there, I’m like, oh my God.
Jason Stacy (28:29):
I’m just, I’m just done. I’m exhausted. And I, I’ll spend two minutes there before I drive, and then I drive to the next place and I do the exact same thing before I get outta my car. I reset, I breathe, I chill, I have a, a nap. If I had 10 minutes, 15 minutes, whatever. And then as soon as I walk in the door truck, close my car door, it’s like a light switch, a click, everything turns off and I go, Hmm. Because again, nothing else matters except for what I’m doing right now. If you like, you and aj, you’re spending your time to, you know, let me come and talk and share and all this stuff. Like how could I not be 100000% here for you right now? Like, how disrespectful is that to myself and to you and to everyone else. Like, it has to be that way. And so for me to have the energy, I had to find a way to fit in those little gaps to like kind of reset, recharge so that way I was a hundred percent engaged with whatever I needed to do. You know,
AJV (29:12):
Sorry for you really quick. Something just dawned on me. Sure. Um, because there is such a systemic problem, I think, in life. Sure. ’cause it doesn’t matter if it’s at home or at work
Jason Stacy (29:27):
Yes. Yeah, yeah.
AJV (29:28):
Right. It’s like we’re so busy that you can’t just do one thing. Sure. And I’m just curious like how much of that is what’s draining our imagery? Because it’s like if you, if you really had the ability to only be like, Hey, what’s the most important thing? It’s the thing I’m doing right now, and it gets all my focus. Sure. And it seems like your entire body, your entire being can go in one direction. But if you’re trying to do this, like, I was just thinking of like some of my days where it’s like, I have the kids in the back, right? I’m doing business calls on the phone, I’m driving, like I’m, I’m doing a hundred things at the same time. And then it’s like, I’m like, huh, I’m so tired
Jason Stacy (30:06):
AJV (30:07):
So much of that is because it’s like I’m not doing any one thing at the same time. And I’m just curious, like how much of that is a, a real stressor for your energetic being?
Jason Stacy (30:20):
I think all the above. I, I, I think, you know, look, the reality is, especially when we have families and businesses and, you know, obligations and all these different things, I think the, the first part is just to understand like, there’s obviously gonna be times where that’s how it is. You know, you gotta call, you have to take, and you just pick the kids up from school and there’s this sport thing and there’s this and that. And like, you know, sometimes it, it’s gonna happen. So I think that’s a big part of just being able to manage your energy is understanding like, look, that’s how it’s gonna be that way sometimes. And, and this, there’s gonna be these moments where it is gonna be a bit more chaotic. There’s gonna be things that’ll come up that weren’t in your control. The timing was off. And so instead of, you know, having that be like a burden, you know, and it’s a weight, you know, you can save some of that energy and that resource by not stressing that you’re stressing, right?
Jason Stacy (31:01):
Mm-hmm. Not stressing about the fact that you’re doing this thing. Because that often I think is the worst part is, is the, the thought that we know that we’re doing something or that we know that it’s too much or that, you know, we overthink this a little bit. So I think that’s a big step of managing your energy in that sense, is just accepting the fact, look, sometimes it’s gonna be this way. Yeah. Now the next thing though is going okay, it doesn’t mean you just allow it to happen and don’t have control over that and don’t, you know, create the environment where you can have your moments at least, right? Where that is your time to, to be able to switch off again, it takes practice. You have to learn how to do that, right? And, and, and so, you know, if you go and say multitasking, we have to do all the a hundred different things, that’s great.
Jason Stacy (31:38):
But I’m sure you’ve heard this before, it’s like, well, are you looking to just get something done, like half as it get it out, tick a box like everybody else, right? Or are you trying to be the best at what you do? Are you trying to get really good at what it is you’re trying to learn? Or what you’re trying to get to? Are you wanting to really be seen as like, you know, and even the thing is, this goes back to lying to yourself. If I’m just half-assing on a bunch of different things, right? And I kind of glued it together really quick, right? When it comes down to the, the big moments, right? Of, of knowing and believing in yourself. Like you already know you’re full of. Excuse my language. Like you already know, right? Because you know, you’ve can, you know, you’ve kind of half-assed in this.
Jason Stacy (32:16):
You kind of put that together, you know, you didn’t give it your best, right? Mm-hmm
Ep 575: 3 Traits of Successful People | Shawn Lemon Episode Recap
RV (00:06):
Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is the place where we help mission-driven messengers, just like you learn how to build and monetize your personal brand. My name is Rory Vaden and I’m the co-founder of Brand Builders Group, a hall of fame speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. And this show is to help experts learn how to become more wealthy and well known. I know you’re gonna love it. Thanks for being here. Let’s get started.
RV (00:34):
Three things that make successful people successful that I don’t know that we hear enough about, or that we maybe we take for granted, or we’re not sure that they, they are really there. And so, as I was listening to Carrie’s story and also thinking back on my own life, and then thinking about so many of our successful clients and where also where we’re going, these, these three things really jumped out to me to go, you know, if you wanna be a successful person, these are three things that I think you really need to commit to, and you need to ask yourself on the front end, am I willing to commit to these things? Because if you’re not, no matter how skilled you are, no matter how talented you are, no how much, no matter how much head knowledge you have, I think these are the things that are, are more invisible, they’re more hidden, that really hold people back from success.
RV (01:28):
And so the first one is to crush it where you are at. And this is one we definitely don’t hear enough about when it comes to success. Everybody talks about like, Hey, start the side hustle. Hey, do the next thing. Hey, you, you know, figure out what your vision is. And all of those things are good. But I think too many times we overlook the importance of being successful. Not just successful, but being very successful at the thing that is right in front of us. Meaning the best way to set yourself up for success in the next thing is to be successful doing the thing that you’re doing right now. Lemme say that again. The best way to set yourself up for being successful at the next thing is to be successful at doing the thing that you’re doing right now. And I think that many of us embrace this lie.
RV (02:31):
We live in this fantasy land that once I’m doing the thing I want to do, then I will suddenly make the sacrifices it takes to be successful. Once it’s my business, then I would, then I would pay the price, then I would put in the work. Or once, once we get past, you know, once I get this certification or that certification or, or once I got a new boss, or once I got promoted, or once I made this much money, or, or once I had kids, or once I didn’t have kids, you know, like once they were grown and outta the house, like we so often convince ourselves that we will really turn it on. We’ll really pay the price. We’ll really put in the work. Like we’ll really show up and do what it takes to be successful when the external circumstances change. And that is a lie.
RV (03:24):
I mean, if you can’t turn it on now, if you can’t pay the price, if you can’t make a sacrifice, if you can’t endure some short-term pain to be successful at the thing you’re doing now, why do you suddenly think you would be willing to in a different situation? And I guess there’s times where maybe that is true, right? Where you go, man, I hate my job. I hate my boss. I’m not giving this company one lick of more effort. You know, I’m gonna work just hard enough not to get fired. And maybe that is true, that if it was your own thing, maybe, maybe you would. But I think we overestimate how easy that is. The reality is that, like Vince Lombardi said, winning is a habit.
RV (04:05):
Being a winner is something in your character, right? People who are winners win at everything. Like they win at all the things they pursue, not just winning on the scoreboard, or not just beating other people, but, but creating excellence, doing excellent work, showing up powerfully, serving people, making a difference, making an impact, right? Making contributions to the teams they are a part of. That’s not something you do once in a while. That is not something you do when the conditions are perfect. That is a character trait that you have to decide and commit to embracing that I am a winner because I’m always a winner and I’m gonna succeed because I, I, that’s what I do. I succeed. We’re gonna be excellent. ’cause That’s what we do around here. We, we make excellent things. And yeah, it’s hard at times. Yeah, it’s inconvenient. Yeah, it’s painful.
RV (04:59):
But that is the price of admission to being excellent. That is the price of admission for being great. That’s the price of admission for doing anything that matters. And so if you wanna be successful at your next thing, don’t wait to start developing the success habits until you’re doing those things. Start developing them now. And in my life, you know, there, there’s been a couple times where my life direction has abruptly changed very, and, and, and, and a couple times very unexpectedly. And I think the reason why we were able to pivot so quickly to the next thing was because we had done everything in our power to make the current thing succeed. And it’s sort of like, you know, it’s like jumping from the top of one mountain to the top of another mountain versus having like to be on the, if you’re on the, if you’re, if you’re halfway up a mountain or you’re on the bottom of a mountain, you have to like, go down that mountain and then go up the bottom of the next mountain.
RV (05:58):
But if you’re on the top of a mountain, you just jump from the top of one mountain to the top of the next, to the top of the next, you know, maybe not from top to top, but you know, near the top. And then you climb back up to the top. And this is what successful people do, right? They’re successful in everything. So don’t convince yourself, don’t lie to yourself that, oh, I would really be successful, you know, if I had a different this or that or whatever. Maybe that’s true. But, but the reality is that most of success comes down to you making that decision to be successful regardless of your circumstances. So do that now. Crush it where you are at. And that is concept right out of take the stairs, you know, from years and years ago. Hasn’t changed. Second thing, second thing that I don’t think people talk enough about when it comes to being successful, specifically at generating revenue, right?
RV (06:52):
So when specifically at, you know, building your personal brand or selling your course, or selling your keynote, or getting a promotion or, you know, let’s, let’s just say sales in general, generating revenue. I think what we don’t hear enough about is that when somebody succeeds at something, a lot of times, like most of the time it’s because they have banked up all of this trust first, right? So when, and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll use this. I think this is a great example. You know, we, we were fortunate to, to be a, a very significant part of Ed Mylet book launch in 2022. And we made a major contribution. We did a lot, we worked very closely with Ed, and we brought the best that we had to offer in terms of strategy and relationships, and you know, we did what we did. But, you know, and we helped Ed pre-sell 117,000 copies of his book.
RV (07:52):
You know, and just recently, we, we, we helped Lewis Howes and Amy Porterfield both, and, and they both became New York Times bestsellers. All in all, we’ve now helped 13 different clients become New York Times, wall Street Journal, USA to that bestsellers. But with Ed, you know, he pre-sold 117,000 copies of his book. Did we have a lot to do with it? Sure, we had a lot, we had something to do with it, right? We, we helped Ed, we helped Ed. The reality is we get far more credit than we deserve. The reality is, ed had banked up so much trust with his audience, so much reputation, right? Did some of our stuff help? I, I hope so. I like to think so. Ed is very gracious in saying that it did. But the reality is that we taught Ed the same thing. We teach all of our clients, right?
RV (08:40):
It wasn’t like we gave him some secret that we didn’t give anybody else the difference in his results, right? The difference in what Ed, ed Mylet experience was not because we did a better job with him, or because we taught him something, we don’t teach everybody else. It’s it’s case in point that what happened was it was his trust that was banked with his audience before he asked them to buy. Trust must always take place before there’s a transaction. Trust must take place before there’s a transaction. When Ed did his book launch, he had years and years of trust banked up. Now we showed up, we were lucky enough to get introduced to him. We were one part of a team of people that were all working together to support him. And we might have helped him maybe, you know, optimize efficiently the, the, the quote unquote extraction of that trust in the form of book sales.
RV (09:29):
But he was the one that banked the trust. And so when we get extraordinary results with clients, you know, I don’t think we could take, like, we cannot take all the credit for it by any means. Even when they follow our formulas, even when they use our exec stuff. And similarly, when clients don’t succeed, it’s not because of us. It’s because of them, right? We know our formulas work. They’ve worked for us. They’re working for lots of other clients, the biggest personal brands in the world, all the way down to intermediate and novice people who are just starting out getting extraordinary results. We know what we do works. The difference is you, the difference is how much are you willing? How hard are you willing to work? And how much trust have you banked with your audience? Trust must take place before there’s a transaction.
RV (10:16):
And too many people want to come out and just sell right away. Too many people wanna come out and just like, oh, I’m gonna launch something and go, I just wanna sell to a bunch of random strangers on the internet. Well, it’s not bad to do that. It’s not necessarily wrong to do that. But I think the reason that people struggle to succeed right away is because they think, oh, there’s some technique that I need to develop. There is, there’s some strategy. And if it didn’t work, it’s ’cause Oh, I got bad advice from, you know, this person or that person, or brand builders group, or this course didn’t teach me. And the reality is, is because you didn’t have enough trust banked up with your audience, you have to build trust before people are willing to buy. You have to build trust with people.
RV (10:58):
You have to add value, you have to give first. You have to help them. You have to pour into them. And so if your launch failed, it doesn’t mean you failed. It doesn’t mean you got horrible advice. It doesn’t mean that the thing that you’re doing is bad. It doesn’t mean that people won’t ever buy it. It probably means more often, it means that you’re just too early, meaning you are trying to extract revenue before you have deposited trust. So I don’t think we hear enough about that. And I think, you know, I think people like us, you know, wanna take credit because we do. We, we wanna, we wanna have a part of people’s success. We work really, really hard for it. And you know, sometimes you’re hard on yourself when you don’t succeed, or you’re hard on the people around you. And the fact of the matter is, a lot of success has to do with trust.
RV (11:48):
And trust comes from adding value to people in your life that they see you, they learn from you, they know you. You’re giving to them, you’re teaching them. And that’s why our entire content marketing strategy, right? Everything we teach, which, you know, can get very sophisticated, but it all boils down to like our entire content marketing strategy is this simple, teach everything you know, for free, but in small bite-sized chunks and all random miscellaneous order. That’s how we do our whole, our whole content strategy for podcasting, for YouTube, for social media, right? Like, I mean, we’re teaching everything we know for free, but in small bite-sized chunks, in all random order, because we, there’s two things we believe. First of all, we believe that people don’t pay for information. People pay for application. People don’t pay for information. They pay for organization, and they pay for application.
RV (12:41):
So even if you teach everything, you know, what they’re gonna hire you to do is they’re not gonna hire you for the knowledge. They’re gonna help, they’re gonna hire you to help them apply the knowledge to their own life and their own business and their own situation. But the second reason why we do that is because we’re automating trust. What are we doing here on this podcast? We’re automating trust. That’s what we’re trying to do. What are we doing on my blog? We’re, you know, rory vaden blog.com. I, I mean, I feel like I’ve given away a master’s degree in free content on my blog, like for free. Like if you actually sat and went and read all the hundreds of articles, it’s like equivalent to a master’s degree, like probably better in some ways in terms of the ability to help you generate more income for your life immediately.
RV (13:27):
And it’s all there for free because we’re automating trust. We want, we want to add value to people before we need something, right? We we’re, you know, we don’t particularly need anything. Now, what we do hope you do at some point is you, is you go to free brand call.com/podcast and you say, you know what? I like these guys. I like what they’re about. I like their style. I like their guests, I like their information, I like their knowledge, and I think they could help me take my small business to the next level. I think they could help me grow my reach, grow my revenue, increase my sales build my personal brand, build my audience, build my impact, and I wanna talk to them, right? So that’s why we do the podcast for free. That’s why we work so hard at it. We’re automating trust.
RV (14:10):
That’s what we’re trying to do. You can do the same thing. That’s what we’re doing on social automating trust, teach everything you know, for free, but in one small bite-sized chunk, in an all random miscellaneous order, all right? That accounts for a lot of your success, like more than you realize. So if your last launch failed, give yourself a break, right? Like, if your revenue’s not climbing as fast as you want it, welcome to the club, right? If your audience isn’t taking off and you’re not getting the kind of reach that you want, welcome to the club, right? That doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong, it means you’re just early on the journey. That’s it. And that leads me to the third thing. The third thing that I don’t think we hear enough about when it comes to success. I mean, you do hear about this some, but I don’t think that we index it enough.
RV (15:03):
I don’t think we appropriately weight this enough. And that is simply that you have to make a decision to stick with it, most of succeeding in the personal brand space. Okay? So if you wanna become a, a bestselling author, a world renowned speaker, if you wanna become a world renowned coach, a high paid consultant, if you wanna just make it in this space, in this business, a huge part. Like most of it, probably 80% of it, it’s just sticking around
RV (15:55):
And so they give up, or you know, sometimes they have to, right? Something changes and they, they run out of, you know, money or somebody gets hurt in their life, they gotta take care of ’em, or you know, whatever, whatever. Like, there’s life situation, but they, but they ultimately, they just, they, they quit. They, they, because either they choose to or they have to, they stop pursuing the dream. And I think 80% of achieving a dream is just not giving up on it. Like 80% of you achieving your wildest dream is just not giving up on it. It’s just pursuing it is sticking with it. And, and the reason why I think this matters, especially for small business owners, especially for entrepreneurs, and especially for personal brands, but I think this, I would round this out and say that this applies to all small business owners, right?
RV (16:39):
Because this is, here’s what it means to be an entrepreneur. Like, ultimately people think what are, what’s the criteria that it takes to be a successful entrepreneur? We think, oh, we gotta have a great product, or we gotta be good at sales, or we gotta have the gift of gab. We gotta be good with people, or we gotta have, you know, good time management, or we have to have, you know, good systems or good at marketing, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. None of that. I mean, all of those things help. None of them are the predominant criteria for a success. Successful entrepreneur. You wanna know what the number one most predominant criteria for a successful entrepreneur is? I’ll tell you, I’m a hundred percent convicted that this is the number one most important criteria for being a successful entrepreneur.
RV (17:23):
You have to be willing to get kicked in the face over and over and over every day and keep coming back for more. That’s it. Like, you have to get punched, you have to get kicked, you have to get hit, you have to get beat down and be willing to come back for more. If you wanna be a successful entrepreneur, that’s the job. That’s the job. It’s not secret strategies, it’s not mentorship, it’s not this personal development book, that coaching program, the perfect product, customer experience sales. It is that it is going, what is your appetite? What is, what is your threshold for getting kicked in the face, for getting beat down, for having problem after problem, rejection after rejection, setback after setback in your personal life, your professional life, people quitting on you, losing clients, thought you had the gig and you didn’t. Getting zing with a, a tax bill from the government.
RV (18:19):
You weren’t expecting the product breaking down that you thought was perfect. The marketing thing busted. Having people run off with your money. Like it’s, it’s, and then it’s, it’s managing all that, right? While in your personal life, you have chaos going on. This is the story of our life, like in the last few weeks, right? We’ve had unexpected surgeries. We have kids throwing up in the middle of the night, someone drove into our fence, right? On accident, we, we knocked over our fence. We’ve had people bump into the car. We have had gas leaks in our house where we had to tear open the walls. We have so many things, kids writing on the walls with markers like the, the kids’ teachers getting sick, and now the kids are home. Like, all of that is normal. That’s the job, right? So you go, can you manage all of that simultaneously while getting kicked in the face simultaneously, while trying to like, make an impact in the world? That is what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur. What is your threshold for getting beat up? What is your threshold for, for getting hit? How hard can you get hit and keep coming back for more? How many times can you be told no? How many times can someone let you down? How many times can you be taken advantage of? How, how many times do you have to fail, but, and, but you’re willing to iterate and keep coming back? That is what it takes.
RV (19:50):
That’s what it takes. So if you’re going, if you’re having a hard day, if you’re having a hard day, don’t, I, I feel for you, right? I don’t mean to be too hard on you. I know it’s freaking hard. It’s hard. And if you have kids, you have young kids, it’s freaking hard. And if you have a team and you’re managing people and you’re dealing with the gossip and the relationships and their personal life and their, you know, traveling and this and what, and they let somebody down and they didn’t show up, right? I, it’s hard. And I know you don’t have the, you don’t have as much money to hire the vendors and you hire and then you hire a vendor and they let you down, or they don’t do a good job, or they ghost on you. We had a vendor ghost on us recently. $6,000. We paid them. They disappeared. $6,000 gone disappeared. I know it’s hard.
RV (20:48):
That’s the job. Like, that’s the price of admission for success in this business, in this game of entrepreneurship, of being a small business owner, of being a world changer. Do you think things were easy for Martin Luther King Jr? Do you think things were easy for Mother Teresa? Like, do you think things are easy for the people who change the world? Like, if you wanna change the world, that’s the job. You wanna own your own business. That’s the job you wanna make. Unlimited income, that’s the job you want freedom. That’s the job. You wanna be well known. That’s the job. You wanna make more money than anyone in your family has ever made. That is the job. What is your appetite for getting kicked in the face?
RV (21:34):
I’m not saying I like it, I’m just saying that’s the job. So if today’s a hard day, welcome to the club. You’re on the right track, right? These are the things we don’t hear enough about, but they are the truth. In order for you to succeed at launching your next thing, you need to crush it. Where you’re crush it with the thing you’re doing now, crush it where you’re at. In order to succeed and make money and generate sales, you have to bank trust first. Trust must take place before a transaction. And if you’re gonna succeed as an entrepreneur, as a small business owner, as a personal brand, or as anything else, you just gotta increase your threshold for getting kicked in the face and keep coming back for more, because that’s what it takes. But if you’re here listening now, if you’re still listening by this point, if you found your way here to us and you found your way to this episode, and you’ve found your way to this moment, and you’re still here, here’s what I believe.
RV (22:50):
I believe you have what it takes. I believe you have what it takes. I believe that there’s a calling on your life to do something so big in the world that that calling will outweigh the, the, the pain that you have to go through. That, that long-term calling that purpose for your life is to make such a positive impact for other people, that you will be willing to endure the pain. So you’re on the right track. It’s okay to have hard days. Just realize that’s the job. Keep going and keep coming back for more. We’ll catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand podcast.
Ep 574: Creating more Digital Organization with Shawn Lemon
RV (00:06):
Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is the place where we help mission-driven messengers, just like you learn how to build and monetize your personal brand. My name is Rory Vaden and I’m the co-founder of Brand Builders Group, a hall of fame speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. And this show is to help experts learn how to become more wealthy and well-known. I know you’re gonna love it. Thanks for being here. Let’s get started. Well, earlier this morning, I spent about three hours trying to get AJ’s computer updated with patches and the most recent versions, and backing up file storage and just getting things operating. And it was a fresh reminder and ironic timing because our guest today is Shawn Lemon. Shawn is a friend of the family because he’s part of my good friend Michael Hyatt’s family. He’s married to one of Michael’s daughters, and that’s how I got to meet Shawn.
RV (01:07):
But Shawn has built an incredible business with a very specific expertise. He is the founder of the digital organizer, and so for the last 17 years, he’s been helping individuals get better at using technology. So the heart of it all is trying to keep up with how technology changes, but I would describe it as basically getting rid of your digital clutter, your digital dis if you have digital clutter, if you have digital disorganization, if you have digital chaos, if things are, if you can’t find files, they’re not named properly, you don’t know who has the most recent version, you lose the passwords. You don’t have naming conventions and syntax. All of these kinds of things that are little micro cuts of slowing you down and making your organization bleed from an efficiency perspective. Those are the kinds of things that Shawn.
New Speaker (02:01):
is an expert at talking about. And we’re gonna talk about some of them today. So, Shawn, welcome to the show, man. Good to have you.
SL (02:07):
Good to be here. Thank you so much.
RV (02:10):
This stuff frustrates me. There is nothing that makes me more angry. I don’t get angry at politics. I don’t get angry when people say mean things. I don’t get angry when someone cuts me off in traffic. I get angry when I lose time ’cause I cannot find something on my computer. I get the stupid spinny ball of death. I have to spend 30 minutes looking for something. Or something is not working, something is broken. That’s when I get furious when things are not working. So can you help us with that?
SL (02:50):
Absolutely. I would love to
RV (03:11):
So I was gonna ask you why does this happen? Yeah. But I think I know why it happens. Yeah. It happens because we’re all moving too fast. We’re too fast to stop and think about how to name things, where to store ’em, having a file structure, you know, and it’s just like, I just don’t have time for it. I never have time for it. And so it just gets w worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. And then one day it just like explodes. Yeah. so the so how do we prevent that? Like you, you mentioned before there’s four main areas that you support people with. Yeah. Can you walk us through what those four areas are? Yeah.
SL (03:52):
So everyone has three components of their digital world. We’re only four. We’ll focus on the third one first, and then we’ll hit the fourth. And that’s communicating. I mean, we’re using our technology to communicate to create and store files. So managing assets and keeping track of tasks and projects. And all three of those things are intrinsically connected. We get an email that has a file that needs to go into file storage, but instead of putting it in file storage, you’re trying to organize your email, or we get an email that’s part of a larger project and we need that critical piece of information or that deadline. And so we leave it in our inbox instead of grabbing it and putting into project management. So we’ve got tons of overlap between them. So really we’ve chosen to focus on those three things. And then the fourth one, which gets everyone irate, which is passwords and not being able to get into an account. Oh my gosh. Or you’ve hired someone else to do something. No,
RV (04:50):
You annoyed the passwords, dude. Like 70 bazillion passwords. Yeah. They want me to update it. Don’t use the same one. It’s like, dude. Yeah. And then you use, like, we use OnePass, which is mm-hmm
SL (05:22):
Yep. And then passwords to, to bring it all together, because the fact is, it’s just extremely important. You can get away with using fluffy 1, 2, 3 and variations of that until you can’t. And then, like one of our clients, he had, he brought home $500,000 a year in profit from a partnership for his marketing company. The whole thing imploded because his developer was using some simple password. The account got hacked, they got into all of their client stuff and then and started buying ads with their company’s, their clients’ company, credit cards. Whoa. I mean, it is just insanity you know, to try and operate remotely with other people if you’re not using a good password manager. So that’s the piece that really kind of pulls it all together.
RV (06:08):
Okay. So where do we start with managing all this chaos? And, and I’ll speak for my audience here and say, we don’t have time to deal with this. We don’t really want to talk about this. So how can we do this efficiently?
SL (06:22):
Well, to do it the most efficiently, you can hire someone to help you
RV (06:27):
That’s not, that’s that. I, I, that’s a good option. Many of us would like to do that. So consider, consider, consider yourself interviewing for the job
SL (06:36):
Yeah. Okay. So really there’s a few different ways to approach this. You can go with a course, you know, the school of YouTube, you can find somebody who’s got a course. You know, I’ve got materials on this that you can buy. There’s a lot of different ways to go about it. The fact is, you know, it’s single digits of people who actually finish courses. And then you could also hire somebody to do this for you. They’re promising that they’re gonna go in, you just tell ’em what your stuff is and how you want it organized. Then they’ll go in and do it, but they’re really creating their system and not one for you. And so, almost always, those people will have to keep going back to the organizer over and over again. Or you could choose a hybrid approach where you’re working with someone to co-create.
SL (07:18):
So basically, and that’s what we do, is we’ve got our resource library, you know, basically the course and the framework that we take our people through. And then we do it together. And so, you know, we want a very systematic approach incorporating, you know, how we’re communicating how we’re storing files and task management all in our, our master plan so that we have clear demarcation lines between each one of ’em. And that’s really designing from the front end. What tools do I want to use and what part of those tools should I not be using? And I think that’s a really big part of the process, is understanding what you shouldn’t be using in some of these apps. So
RV (08:00):
Where do you start? Do you start with storage? You start with passwords? Do you start with project management system? Do you start with communicating and email inbox? Like
SL (08:09):
Where
RV (08:10):
Do you, what’s the starting point?
SL (08:12):
Most of the time, the starting point is email. Okay. Because the majority of people are drowning in email. And, and while some people recognize how much anxiety and stress it causes them, some people don’t because it’s ubiquitous. Everyone’s dealing with email overload and marketers hammering their inbox and, you know, and trying to just stay organized with that. So if we can actually start with email and calm down the noise and be really strategic about how we approach emails so that we’re not having an open all day and reacting and be more strategic, that gives us so much more time and mental energy to start strategically tackling how we’re approaching project management or how we’re even planning the work we do, and how are we going to do our folder structures and things like that. So that’s a great starting point. So
RV (09:08):
Let’s start there. So let’s dive in mm-hmm
SL (09:22):
Yep. Yep.
RV (09:23):
I, I, I like that a lot. So what are the principles that we need to know or follow mm-hmm
SL (09:32):
Yeah. So the first thing is you should do so much less organization and email than you think you need to. Huh? if, if I had my way, you’re not organizing any email. Email should be a communication platform. We send a message, we receive a message. Now we may send someone a file or receive a file, but it does not belong in email. We take that file, download it, and put it into our folder structure so that we can find it. When we’re looking for a file as a part of a project, we should never have to go to our email to find that it should be where we’re working on that project. And that’s where we need to store things. So it’s not necessarily we’re keeping all presentations together. It’s, are we doing a presentation for a pitch for this company and we’ve got all of their logos, the research that we’ve done for that, et cetera.
SL (10:25):
Well, the file for that presentation goes together. So stop organizing in email. We, you can use some automation tools. I like Sandbox and Sandbox allows me to create a couple of folders. I only use two smart folders later for newsletters that I truly read. And if I find that I’ve, I’ve, I’ve been deleting a few newsletters, it’s time to unsubscribe. And then I got another folder for financial and shipping. And why I like using this tool is when I get an email from Amazon, I drop it into financial and, and Sandbox will make sure that anything sent from that specific address gets to my receipts folder or my financial folder. So everything skips my inbox, and I have a focused inbox that just has communication from people by ruthlessly, unsubscribing, getting rid of these newsletters, coupons, and lists that you’re on. We’ll really help. And then we can start filter out other things that we need that really shouldn’t hit the inbox that we do want to keep. And then we start triaging. So that’s really the starting point. And then you can go deeper into how do you approach processing the emails from real people?
RV (11:38):
Love that. I, I, I will tell you, you know, I’ve, I’ve hired so many assistants over the years Yeah. And every new one comes with a new way to want to organize the inbox. Yep. And I have always pushed back on it because I’m like mm-hmm
SL (12:13):
To, to We wanna do it manually. We do it manually if possible. We want to do it mainly if we get pushback from that. Sandbox has a feature called the Black Hole. And anything that you put in that folder from that sender, they’re automatically gonna be put in black hole marked as red and it purges itself after seven days automatically. Mm-Hmm. So if you don’t want to go through the trouble of unsubscribing, stick ’em in the black hole, that’ll take care of it for you. And I, my preference would be to manually unsubscribe, because you don’t know how many lists that that company has added you to. It might be 20 different lists. If you, you know, sign up for under buy something from Under Armour, you’re gonna be on 10 different, 10 different brands lists that could be 50 subscriptions just from one simple signup. So if we go in and unsubscribe it, then we know we’re not gonna get it into a future. And if I want to get rid of Sandbox later I can get rid of it and my inbox isn’t gonna be overflowed.
RV (13:10):
Yeah. There’s also something, there’s a mental purging that happens there where you go, I’m, it does, I’m deliberately choosing, I don’t want this to come into my world anymore. I think that’s powerful. Mm-Hmm
SL (13:42):
So we want to get rid of things that are older than 30 days. So if you got 20,000 emails in your inbox, what are they doing there? Like, they shouldn’t be there anymore to They’re
RV (13:52):
Storage. That’s what they’re doing. Like, I, I could answer that question. Yeah. They’re, we’re storing things there that are like old emails of like, I might need this one day. Right.
SL (14:00):
Right. And that’s fine. You can keep it, it just doesn’t belong in the inbox anymore. Like Gmail, when you hit archive, it just takes it outta the inbox, but it’s still searchable and you’re not gonna browse through 20,000 emails. So why leave it in the inbox? Let’s clear it out. So and if you sign up for this file organization guide that I’m gonna tell you about at the end, I’m gonna send you a couple of videos on how to actually do the purging, unsubscribing, and setting up sandbox. So all of this stuff that I’m talking about, I’m gonna send you videos of how to actually do this practically. So you don’t have to memorize this process from the podcast, but we want to get rid of those everything older than 30 days. We need to purge the newsletters. And 30 days is a good starting point.
SL (14:44):
And then you keep up with it from there. And then after that, let’s archive the things that are taken care of. Let’s delete what we never need to see again. And now what we’re left with are things that we need to deal with. And it’s time to take a look at how do we do these tasks? Like what are we getting and when should we be doing them? Because we’ve got stuff that needs to be dealt with right away. We have things that need to be dealt with. Just we maybe a group them together ’cause we have a number of bills to pay, for example. Well, maybe we can snooze all of those for Thursday morning when we have time set aside to do that. Yes. And then we’ve got items that are part of a larger project that shouldn’t really belong and, and email anymore. Let’s get, let’s copy the information, let’s put it into Asana where we’re keeping track of those tasks so that I can archive the email and move on and have the information that I need when that task comes up for a due date in my project management system.
RV (15:43):
Okay. So I love this because that’s, that’s the other reason why items are in the inbox, is I’m using it as my to-do list. Yep. Right. So I’m going, crap, I need that email. ’cause That’s, that’s my reminder to do. Mm-Hmm. The thing, and you’re saying if you’re doing that, you should maybe not do that. You should take that out of there and put that onto your task management or project management management system mm-hmm
SL (16:26):
Yeah. How do you, and when do you do one versus the other? Right. Right.
RV (16:28):
Yeah.
SL (16:29):
Yeah. So if, if it’s a communication thing and that you just, you need information to come back at a certain point, something along those lines. I like to snooze emails. I don’t wanna put it all in Asana to check Asana to then go back an email. So I will snooze an email to pop back up at the time that I have set aside to actually do that thing. And if I snooze it multiple times, then that’s a trigger for me of, okay, am I actually going to do this? Do I need to knuckle down or do I just need to say, Hey, this isn’t getting done, I’m sorry. Or just, you know, delete it and move on and let go of the thing. So if it has to do with communication and it’s not really part of a larger project, I don’t want you to have to store that somewhere else just to come back to email, snooze it for the time that either later in the day or or for next week or even next month. Or if you, you know, said, Hey, I need to hear back by Thursday, you know, at three and it’s Thursday at at noon and you haven’t gotten, you know, you wanna give them some time. Maybe it comes back Thursday at noon in your inbox to let you know, Hey, the deadline’s coming. You might wanna ping them one more time.
RV (17:43):
Okay. So now I’m moving files. We’re getting rid of spam stuff. Mm-Hmm
SL (18:05):
Out of the inbox. It’s still, still still searchable in email. ’cause That’s really where you’re gonna wanna look. You need to leave them there. We’re not gonna turn emails into files.
RV (18:14):
Is okay. So then are we kind of done with the inbox? Like does that kind of go pretty much now, now everything that makes sense to me. So now everything is sort of where it belongs.
SL (18:29):
Yeah.
RV (18:30):
My new problem is now I have, what was a hundred emails. I now have 76 tasks to complete in my, in my project management tool. And is, would you consider calendar calendaring as part of project management? Or how do those overlap?
SL (18:47):
Yeah, so a lot of people want to say incorporate their project management into their calendar. So if they create a task there, then it shows up on their calendar. Or they’ll use their calendar for task management to, to show them what items they’re supposed to be doing. I like to chunk it and say, this is the time for this type of work on Thursday mornings. And so then I open up Asana and I’m looking at either that project that I know I’m supposed to be working on, or I’m looking at my, my tasks for the day to start knocking out things that are really all, all scheduled for that day. So I’ve got the time set aside for it. So my calendar tells me where I’m supposed to be working, and then I’m primarily working in Asana to process that stuff. And maybe I’m doing some documenting. Maybe I am gonna send a quick email or something along those lines. But that’s the place where that’s really directing the work for that period of time.
RV (19:45):
Okay. So you’re using, you’re using your project management tool in your case, Asana mm-hmm
RV (19:51):
As your to-do list and the like to direct your work every day.
SL (19:55):
Yeah. Yeah. And I clear out my inbox and get to inbox zero by snoozing because it’s just not practical for us to deal with every single message as they come in. And we can’t answer every email in a day, every single day. So snoozing has to happen for when we actually have the information. It’s
RV (20:16):
Just funny ’cause when you’re saying workload is snoozing mm-hmm
SL (20:51):
Right? Because if you are caught in a, in a dopamine loop of email of you’re sitting there, you’re solving problems, you’re answering things, then you find yourself kind of chained to email and that’s what makes you actually feel productive. And then it makes, and because the email is a to-do list and there’s constantly things coming in, then you stay in that spot. And it’s hard to let it go and truly focus on the important thing that needs to get done that you’ve been procrastinating on if we’ve got this big list. But if you go in and clear those things out, because it’s really not, not necessary to do this item right now, and I have more important things to do, and you snooze it, it’s not in your view anymore and it’s a heck of a lot easier to go move on and do the things that are actually important to you.
SL (21:45):
And yeah. And if you snooze things multiple times and you don’t get it done, you pr procrastinate multiple times and it’s not done, then that’s your red flag. Should you even be doing it in the first place. This is in my drudgery zone. I need to delegate this because I just don’t want to do it. Or I need to stop doing this task. So
RV (22:02):
Talk to me about project management. This is good. This is good. Good. Shawn I’m follow, I’m following you so far when I get into the project management mm-hmm
RV (22:14):
How do you think about an approach that list? ’cause Now you just, you have a list. Is, is there, is there anything big there that changes in our thinking about how we tackle the projects or how we organize them or label them or name them or code them or like mm-hmm
SL (22:35):
Yeah. So I would say the biggest mistake that most people make when doing project management is they do big list dumps and they get this new app and they take all of the things that they think that they need to do and consolidate a bunch of lists and just create this massive task dump. And it feels really good and you get a massive sense of satisfaction for it and can, can start some momentum, but then it’s just this big dumping ground of a lot of possibilities and things that really aren’t strategically placed there. So I like to kind of flip this around and say, I actually wanna do my list dump in a document and I’ll call this the back burner list. And that’s actually what ours is called. It’s a Google doc called Back Burner. And so it’s very easy to search and pull up and that’s all of the things that I would like to do and that need to get done and everything in between.
SL (23:33):
And then we strategically look at that list quarterly. And sometimes when we finish something early, then we go back to the, to the the back burner list and we decide what is the most important thing that needs to get done. And we turn those into projects and build out our system and our schedule around what we really, truly intentionally need to get done. And that creates so much more focus in your project management tools so that you’re not exposed to a lot of other things. And and that alone can really help create a lot more focus and make project management less overwhelming.
RV (24:15):
Okay. So you’re, if you’re using your project management tool, you’re, it’s like you’re only using your project management tool to, to have tasks that are related to big projects, not just random one-off tasks.
SL (24:26):
So you use it. And well, also recurring things too, like your taxes, you got quarterly taxes due multiples at the beginning of the year, you know, different deadlines for that. That happens recurring. So we gotta, we’ll factor that into, there’s recurring stuff and then there are also projects.
RV (24:43):
Okay. And then what about, so you’ve got recurring things and projects on there mm-hmm
SL (25:09):
Yeah. So it really depends. I kind of a approach those individually on where it’s at. So if I got the RSVP in my inbox, so if they emailed me an an R rsvp, it’s quick enough
RV (25:21):
To just do it.
SL (25:23):
It’s quicker to do it. Or we’ll say, well add a complication, I gotta check my wife’s schedule first and we need to discuss if we even can go in the first place and who’s gonna watch our child and, you know, all of those other things. So I can’t RSVP right now. Well, what do I do? I, I tell my phone, remind me at six 30 to talk to Madeline about the birthday party. And then I snooze that email for tomorrow morning so we can have the discussion tonight, come to a conclusion, and then tomorrow when I open up my email, then I can go ahead and RSVP for that. So I’m gonna snooze that for tomorrow and it’s gonna pop back in at you know, at 9:00 AM.
RV (26:01):
Gotcha. anything else in the project management space? I mean, is it basically like blocking time to get stuff done? A
SL (26:09):
Lot of it’s blocking time, but another huge mistake people make are they create tasks out of projects. So they think, oh, you know, put the Christmas lights up is a project or it’s a task, you know, and that’s just one thing. Well, like if you just moved into a new house, putting the Christmas lights up is not a single task. You gotta figure out a lot of stuff. Do you have everything? There’s a, a number of pieces involved in that. So, so often we really need to break down a task and think, what are all of the steps that I need to take in order to complete this task? And you might find you’ve actually got a project on your hands. There’s a lot going on in this. And so by creating a task that’s impossible to get done in one sitting, it really sets you up for failure because you’re like, God, I didn’t, I didn’t even make any progress on my to-do list because you couldn’t check that item off. We need to break things up into bite-sized chunks with due dates attached to them so that when we actually make progress on it, we can check it off and get that sense of accomplishment and see I am moving in the right direction. And that can really help to create a lot more momentum instead of feeling like you’re never making progress.
RV (27:34):
So I, I like that. What’s the difference between a task and a project?
SL (27:41):
A project is a whole lot of tasks.
RV (27:44):
Yeah. And, and just, just like, basically if it’s more than five or something, then it’s really a project.
SL (27:50):
Yeah. And you can use a milestone or, or really, so Asana is broken up into, I like Asana ’cause it’s on Rails versus Clickup. It’s, you know, it’s totally loosey goosey. It’s choose your own adventure and you create it. So if you really know what you want, that’s a great platform. So Asana’s broken up in teams and then teams have projects, then projects have milestones and then tasks or sections, milestones, tasks, and then subtasks. So if your project is huge, that’s why project management is really different than task management. You’ve got a lot more layers to it to be able to manage all of it. So if I’ve got a task that has five things to that go along with it, then I might just create five subtasks. So create the tasks and then add the subtask of that’s gonna consist of these five actions. But if they’re all being done on different days, I’d rather them not be subtasks. I’d rather them actually be tasks. Just visually it’s different. And I wish I could show
RV (28:59):
You, but you’re saying projects, so teams, projects, sections, milestones, tasks and subtasks.
SL (29:04):
Yep.
RV (29:05):
Gotcha. Mm-hmm
SL (29:09):
Yep.
RV (29:12):
In a, in bird’s eye, bird’s eye view of a week
SL (29:16):
Mm-Hmm
RV (29:17):
How much time should I be spending in meetings versus communicating versus doing work versus like, you know, and then, you know, marginal time to like place wherever. ’cause ’cause I’ve, I’ve realized it’s just like it takes time to answer an inbox. It takes time. Mm-Hmm
SL (30:15):
RV (30:16):
Any thoughts high level on that? Or like for a of a, of a week, how much, is there like a limit or rule to how many meetings you should be in? Or do you not really do it that way? You just kind of let your inbox drive to your project management, which drives to your tasks?
SL (30:31):
It’s more intentional, but there’s no rules. So each person has to approach this from a, a little bit differently because we all have different roles and sometimes those roles fluctuate and we are having more what Michael Hyatt would describe front stage work, meaning actually like this would be front stage work. We’re both having a conversation for the public. This is, this is part of what we do of delivering our stuff. And, and then we’ve got backstage work, which would be downloading the file, renaming it, doing all of those things. So there are times where we are doing more front stage work or our role requires that of us and then more backstage. And then we also have off stage work, which would be free time, time with family re recharge and things like that. So kind of thinking of it from the high level of do I have enough backstage work to support me for, to do my front stage?
SL (31:39):
‘Cause We can’t just only do meetings and never have any processing time. So it’s just recognizing what your needs are. And this is what’s really nice about having an ideal week where you take a look at your calendar and say, ideally I wanna spend Monday catching up, planning, doing administrative work, and really setting me up for the week. And if I need to, I can slip some meetings in, in the second half of Monday, but the be, but the first half of Monday is sacred and I’m not letting anyone in on that. So that’s all backstage work. Whereas Tuesday and Thursday and then the second half of Friday, I just need a lot of time for meetings. Right now my job is podcasts, sales calls, and occasionally some really technical work. So I need to make sure that there’s plenty of time for that. But then I still have other administrative stuff.
SL (32:35):
So that’s where in the middle of the week, Wednesday is primarily deep work, really trying to make a lot of progress on projects and I’m trying to protect that from meetings. And then Friday morning, kind of same thing, get focused before wrapping up at the end of the day. And maybe I’ve got some meetings on the second half so you can see I’m chunking and having kind of overarching ideas of when I’m doing things. And then that can flex as needed. But I have kind of a starting point of plenty of time for front stage, plenty of time for backstage, and I will flex those as needed.
RV (33:15):
Mm-Hmm
SL (33:37):
Yeah. Okay. So when we’re in business, there are certain things that you really do not want to cheap out on. And that’s gonna be business file storage. Mm-Hmm. So when we’re working in Google accounts you know, you can bootstrap with Google Drive in, in a Gmail account, but as soon as possible you’ve got to get set up with Google Workspace. Or if you’re a big Dropbox user, you need to get on Dropbox business When you start collaborating with other people, because these business subscriptions give us a different type of folder. We’ll take Google Drive for example, in Google Drive, we have my drive and that’s how everything started where I can create a folder and Rory, I can invite you to my folder so that we can collaborate anything that you put in my folder, you still own. So if you decide you’re done with this account, maybe you were freelancing for me and you were doing this same thing and you created a Gmail specifically for that freelancing gig, you delivered your stuff to me and you decide this isn’t for me anymore, and you delete that Google account, it deletes all of the files you created for me and put in my folder from my folder because you don’t own it.
RV (34:53):
You lost me.
SL (34:54):
Okay. You lost
RV (34:55):
Me. You’re, you’re basically, you’re saying if you’re using personal accounts to do business, then who, if you hire like a
SL (35:02):
Vendor, whoever created the folder or whoever created the file owns it. Not wheres it at, but who created it? Owns the file.
RV (35:13):
Gotcha.
SL (35:14):
So you hire someone from the Philippines to start creating documents for you, managing different things, creating some spreadsheets, keeping track of all of this stuff, and then they don’t work for you anymore and you’re not using the right folder and they delete their account. Everything they created for you goes, bye bye.
RV (35:31):
Yeah. That’s happened to me. It happened with about 165 blog videos that I recorded that we turned into blog posts. Okay. And they just literally vanished out of Dropbox on, and everyone’s like, where did they go? Yeah. How come we don’t have them? It was this exact thing. There was a overseas VA that was handling stuff and apparently they, you know, cleaned out their Dropbox to save money on their account or whatever. And I mean, is that what you’re talking about? Where basically Exactly.
SL (36:05):
They,
RV (36:05):
They, they had, they had, they had, that’s
SL (36:07):
Exactly it. And how much money, how much time, like all of those resources. And this is because we didn’t upgrade to business and or we didn’t use the right type of folder. If you use Dropbox for business and you created a team folder and invited that VA to the team folder, anything that they put in your folder you own. And on Google it’s called shared drive. So we have to be on the level that as of today is $14 a month, or T 12 or 1440 depending on if you’re paying yearly. And
RV (36:40):
When you say own it,
SL (36:41):
You’re saying able to get access, full
RV (36:43):
Access to it. They can’t delete it because it’s your business folder.
SL (36:47):
Well, what happens is, but it’s not
RV (36:48):
Like IP ownership or is it both? Yeah.
SL (36:51):
Or it’s, it’s file ownership, not ip. Okay. So it’s just purely technical. Right. So the
RV (36:58):
First, right. But it’s like what good is IP ownership? If you hire a graphic designer to hire file and you own the ip, but then they delete the file because Exactly. You don’t have the file. It’s like, oh, I own IP on something that doesn’t exist. Yeah.
SL (37:08):
Yeah. So if you use the right folder, they put the file in your folder, ownership transfers to you mm-hmm
RV (37:31):
Yeah. And so you’re saying that’s called Dropbox Business. If you use Dropbox or Google
SL (37:37):
Shared drives in Google workspace, shared drives instead of my drive. So a lot of people confuse those ’cause they think, oh, I shared that folder with someone else. It’s a shared folder, but it’s not a technical shared drive. And then, you know, and then we can choose what level of permissions this VA has, can they add but they can’t delete. So we get to set those permissions,
RV (37:59):
Uhhuh,
SL (38:18):
So you’d have to download all of that stuff and then put it into your drive so that you actually maintain ownership. So when working with somebody, you wanna create the folder. And this is where you’ve said you’ve hired multiple VAs over the years and they all had their own systems. That’s why it’s important for us to create our own system. I’ve got somebody in another country dealing with, or you know, handling all of my social media, creating stuff for me, all of the rest. But I said, when you work with me, you’re not gonna create a folder. I’m going to create a folder for you and I’m gonna send you a video of how I want you to use it. This is where you’re gonna put posts in that you’ve created for my approval. You let me know. And then I put it in a folder called approved posts, approved reels. Or I comment on it to say, you need to change this. You missed the point, change the graphic, whatever it is that gets done. And then I can move it into approved. So I’m creating the system and they can use whatever Gmail account they want. And I maintain all control.
RV (39:21):
Mm-Hmm
SL (39:35):
It is,
RV (39:36):
They don’t make that ridiculously clear. At least
SL (39:39):
It’s no. And the thing is,
RV (39:40):
They haven’t made it idiot proof enough for me to figure out the difference between like a shared folder and a shared drive. Like that’s a big deal. That’s a really big deal.
SL (39:48):
This is the frog in the pot, you know, all of this technology is, is we’re building the plane while we’re flying it. So Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, all of these services started as consumer products and then these problems appeared and then they created business level subscriptions and started solving the problems. But are they marketing? This is what you need to do and here’s the technical answer and all this stuff. No, they’re just pitching the solution, trying to get the next subscription, not choosing to educate the
RV (40:21):
People on how this works when they’re, you wanna pay $99 a month to be able to share your folders. I’m like, I already can share my folders. I don’t think I wanna pay $99 a month. Right.
SL (40:30):
Right.
RV (40:31):
And then all your files disappear one day and you go, what happened to my files? Those were my file. Mm-Hmm. Like yeah. Anything real quick on passwords?
SL (40:43):
Yeah. So use a password manager. I love one password. You gotta set it up fully. Yeah.
RV (40:50):
It’s not set up fully.
SL (40:52):
You gotta set it up fully. You know, when you set it up on your iPhone, you install the app, you gotta inst you gotta go into the password section and, and turn that on. You want to turn off Safari so those aren’t competing, then you need to turn the extension on. In Safari you have three distinct things that you need to make sure that you get done on every iPhone that’s logging into that account or or iPad. You know, the Mac, you gotta set up the extension on all of your browsers so that it really works. And then in Safari you gotta tell it turn off Safari Auto Save. So those two aren’t competing. Chrome just does it automatically, but for some reason they don’t with Safari. So it’s those sorts of considerations we really need to put in place is when you do the password management, you gotta go all the way and then it’s phenomenal. And nobody has to bug me for two step verification text messages ever because I integrate that two step login into the login itself in one password. So if I’m sharing the password with you, you also have the two step verification code that’s automatically generating in that login. So that completely solves the problem.
RV (42:02):
So you’re saying you can share the two step validate validation code
SL (42:07):
Part mm-hmm
RV (42:13):
Hmm. That’s pretty cool if you have other people logging into certain accounts.
SL (42:17):
Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. ’cause You want your social media accounts super locked down. I think Shalene Johnson had her Instagram account hacked. They started posting hardcore porn on her account. She lost a third of her audience, cost her quarter million dollars, all in all to get everything under control, do all of this stuff, and then had to rebuild her following again, because of a stupid account password being hacked. We cannot afford to not use strong passwords on our social media accounts. Especially if you have an influential personal brand, you need a strong password and you need two step verification set up.
RV (42:56):
Uhhuh. Yeah. I got a call this week from a client who had their Instagram hacked. It’s the second, second time this year. We’ve had a client that was like, my Instagram account is gone, like, just disappear. Oh my. Because someone hacked the password. Yeah. what they really do is they hack into your email and then they email the password and then they get it and then they reset your password and they lock you out. And then they hold you ransom for your, your your, yeah. It’s terrible.
SL (43:24):
There’s like 30, I think it’s 34% of ex-employees have the login accounts for their previous employers, even after they’ve left the company because they’re sharing this spreadsheet with variations of fluffy 1, 2, 3 for all of their accounts. And then sharing that in amongst the company and someone leaves, they just know what that password is.
RV (43:49):
Yeah. Yeah. So to go all the way, you’re saying you need to download the app on your phone, you need to install the extensions on the browsers, and then you need to go into your phone settings and disable safari and turn on the, somewhere in the security settings of the phone.
SL (44:11):
Yeah. And you, you should also import the lists. So Chrome’s probably been saved in login. Safari’s been saved in logins. You can export that list and import it into one password. It is very easy to do. They have guides to do the whole thing and they’ve made it very simple and then clean up the logins and, and go through it from there. So it’s not really tough to to get things up and going. You just wanna approach it as a project set time aside to do it and make it happen.
RV (44:39):
Mm-Hmm
SL (44:54):
It’s truly the, the ROI is massive, but it’s just, it’s those tiny little minutes and the frustrations and the things that we don’t think about. This creates capacity for you. It’s not generating revenue, but it creates more capacity you know, more creativity, all of the different things and in a better working environment. Just, it’s like if we were to make our digital workplaces physical, you would never tolerate that. You know? And that’s what people are, are struggling in and dealing with day in and day out. They’re working in a super messy house. It’s hard to get things done. It’s not very fun. And and so if we can make that super easy, approach it as a project, yeah. It’s gonna take you some time to do maybe some money to get some help to, to get it done. But when you do, I mean, it’s just so nice having this dealt with.
RV (45:45):
Hmm. Brother, where should people go to learn more about you and what you’re up to? Yeah.
SL (45:51):
The best thing to do is go to the digital organizer.com/ipb. This is the infin influential personal brand podcast ipb. So go to the digital organizer.com/ipb and you can download my file organization guide. So if you want to get your files organized, you want to consolidate things from a bunch of different areas, I’ve got a step-by-step process to take you through it with videos, examples of the whole thing. When you do that, you get added to my newsletter and I’m gonna send you a few emails of getting your email organized and other things like that. So there’s a whole path for you to go down and I’m gonna give you so many resources you know, just on the front end. And then if you wanna stick along for the newsletter we’d love to see you there and you can reach out. If you wanna talk to me, you know, you can have a discovery call with me.
RV (46:39):
Really Cool. We’ll put that link in the show notes. Of course. So you can hit those. Check out, Shaw. n go find him on social and leave him a comment if you’re listening so that he knows you’re there and say hello and thanks. So generous Shawn. Really, really helpful. And my friend, we just, we continue to wish you all the best and I’m sure we’ll, we’ll talk to you again soon.
SL (47:01):
Same to you. Thanks so much.
Ep 573: What Makes a Great Offer | Zach Hesterberg Episode Recap
AJV (00:00):
What makes a great offer. If you’re thinking about scaling your high ticket offers, then this is something that you need to think about is what makes people buy, and more importantly, what makes people buy from you. So let’s talk about the elements of what makes a great offer. When you’re thinking about offer structure and the compelling reasons IE the benefits or the payoffs of why people would transact with you. There’s a few things that you need to be thinking about before you begin this endeavor. First and foremost, right? Through all of the, the systems, methodology, methodologies we teach at Brain Builders Group, you need to know what problem do you solve? Who do you solve that problem for? What is the, the root cause of that problem? What is your unique way of solving that problem? IE what we call your message. What is the uniqueness that you provide that only you can provide because it’s you?
AJV (01:05):
And then it, we get to the payoffs, right? That is what we call a brand positioning statement at Brand Boulder’s Group. This particular little section is really about what makes a great offer IEA compelling reason why someone would give you their money in exchange for products or services. And in our language in our brand positioning statement, we call those payoffs, right? What are the results? What’s the destination that people are going to experience as a result of working with you? First, you need to know what’s their pain. That’s what we call their problem, right? Once you know that, then categorically speaking, we can talk about how do we solve the problem and what do they get as a result of solving that problem. Those are benefits. IE that’s the offer. Now, if we wanna talk about this, categorically speaking, at a very, very, very high level, there are four primary quote unquote offers that all people want, and the benefits or the payoffs can come in a variety of thousand different shades, right?
AJV (02:14):
If we think about this in one of the analogies we use, like, there’s only three primary colors in the color wheel. However, from those three primary colors, there are thousands of shades of those colors, right? You can have red, or you can have rose or magenta or fuchsia, right? There’s all, or violet, all these different shades by combining the colors. What we’re talking right now is at a very high level, what are probably four of the biggest reasons that people would buy from you, right? And here they are. They want better health, they want better relationships, they want more money, or they want more time. So, categorically speaking, when you think about what makes a great offer, you have to know the human desires and most realms are gonna fit into, and this is in, you know, industrialized countries here, okay? But those are, those are the four main categories.
AJV (03:13):
I want better health, better relationships, more time, more money. So if we know that those are the high levels, then you can literally, categorically stick all the payoffs and benefits in those, right? If people are going well, I just, you know, I just, I want my I don’t wanna exchange time for money, right? Like, I hear that all the time. I wanna figure out how do I make money while I sleep, right? Ultimately, you’re saying I want more money, but more, you’re really saying, I want more time. All right? I don’t wanna exchange time for money, right? When people are going, I just, you know, I wish I had better communication. What are you really saying? I want better relationships. Also, probably I want more time ’cause I’m spending too much time trying to fix relationships or explain myself because my communication isn’t very good.
AJV (03:59):
If you’re a leadership coach, right? People don’t want leadership. What do they want, right? They, they want a trusted person that they can follow. They want better communication. They want better training, better results, more accountability, right? These are all the things, right? Those all fall underneath these high level four things. It’s, well, better relationships, better health, more time, more money, right? And the best offers, right? I the best benefits, right? The best things we can do for people are have a combination of offering several of those things, right? And so it’s not just one of them, but it’s how do they connect, right? By having more time, well, you have better health and better relationships probably by having better health. Will you have more time and better relationships and more money? Probably right now, more money doesn’t mean better relationships or better health or more time, right?
AJV (05:03):
That one doesn’t necessarily work that way. It can, right? More money can give you more time, but more money can also give you less time, right? But a lot of these we wanna share is how do these high level categorical human desires relate to what we can, what we can offer people, right? Are people looking for more notoriety, more credibility more influence? They all fit underneath one of these high level four categories of what makes a great offer. What you have to figure out is what are the shades of those human desires? And what does your audience want that you can deliver on? ’cause If we know, if it’s relationships, health, time, and money, then underneath that we just have to go, what’s the particular nuance, the shade of that color that my audience wants, that I can provide to them? Them. A quick example in the, in the world of brand builders group, right?
AJV (06:01):
The problem that we solve for people is obscurity. Now why are they obscure? It’s because they’re distracted. They’re trying to do too many things all at the same time, right? We believe that focus is power, and that diluted focus gets diluted results. So why are people obscure? It’s because they’re doing too many things and they haven’t become known for any one good thing. The message that we have is simple. Teach people what you know, right? Give it all away for free, right? Tell ’em everything you know, but then charge for the how, but it simply teach what you know, the uniqueness and how we do that is through the lens of service and our payoffs, our trust, influence, impact, notoriety, money, time, right? Legacy. Those are the payoffs. And much of those, again, fit up underneath that. So, although none of our payoffs are necessarily just more money or just more time, it’s like they’re all nuanced underneath that influence has to do with relationships, right?
AJV (07:09):
Impact has to do with time and relationships. Notoriety has to do with time, money and relationships. They’re all nuanced underneath there. And so if you’re having a struggle of going, like, what’s the offer I’m really trying to make? Then by taking it up 10,000 feet and looking at these in a, you know, four, four main categories that’ll help you go through a a underneath the health category. What are the payoffs I provide underneath the relationships category? What are the payoffs I provide underneath time? What do I provide underneath money? What do I provide? That doesn’t mean you have to do all four. It’s pick and choose based on who you serve, what audience you serve, what problem you solve, and the unique way in that you solve it, right? But I think what what happens to a lot of us is we get caught up in all the details of what the offer is actually about, and such as it includes this many course hours, this many calls a month, this many, this, that, many that, and we get this long laundry list of all the stuff it includes and we forget that’s, that, that is the vehicle of how we get there.
AJV (08:19):
But people don’t buy the vehicle, they buy the destination, right? If I’m going to take an exotic trip to Bali, right? I’m not signing up for the 23 hour plane ride and three layovers, and that’s not what I’m signing up for, right? That’s what I have to do to get there. But I am signing up for Bali, right? I’m signing up for palm trees and clear waters and relaxation and peace and sun and beauty and nature. That’s the destination, right? Those are the benefits, those are the payoffs. But I’m gonna have to go through some,
AJV (08:55):
You know, potentially middle seat, long flights, long layovers too many baggage fees. That’s, that’s the vehicle to get there. Don’t focus on the vehicle. Focus on the destination. That’s the benefit, that’s the payoff, and that is what makes a great offer.
Ep 572: Using Paid Virtual Events to Scale Your High Ticket Offer with Zach Hesterberg
AJV (00:34):
Everybody. Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand Podcast. AJ Vaden here. Super excited to have this conversation today, one, because I know Zach and I believe this is going to be of immense value to everyone. But two, I’m also super excited ’cause I shared this with him before I hit record. I’m so selfishly invested in learning this information that this to me is like, I’m just over here with like, like a, you know, a girl on the first day of school with her pen and notebook ready to take notes. And so should you as I always do here’s who this podcast is for, and this is why you should stick around. If you would like to know how to test and offer before you invest time, money, energy and resources into it, this is the episode for you, right? If you wanna know how to sell high ticket offers could be coaching, consulting masterminds, communities without taking one-on-one sales calls or big, or building a huge sales team.
AJV (01:34):
This is the episode for you. If you wanna know if you should be hosting paid events versus free events, this is the episode for you. And if you wanna know what the biggest mistakes are with hosting live events today, then this is an episode you do not want to miss. So let’s get right into it. Let me introduce you to the one, to the only. Zach Hesterberg. He is the founder of paid events, helping high ticket coaches, consultants, and course creators scale through paid virtual events with nearly a decade in marketing, Zach has helped generate six and seven figure paydays while selling over 15,000 event tickets. Y’all, that’s awesome. Unlike traditional funnels that rely on unreliable sales teams, his paid event method attracts high net worth premium clients, increases conversions, and creates predictable revenue without burnout. Who doesn’t want that? Zach, welcome to the show,
KH (02:33):
Aj. I am so excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me, by the way. Fantastic intro. You are a fantastic podcaster,
AJV (02:40):
Well, you know, if all else fails, I could always go into MCing, you know,
KH (02:45):
That’s, that’s fair. That’s fair. I’ve always said, I’ve always said, if I had a, if I had a secondary life, I’d always wanna be like a radio DJ or an mc. So I’m, I’m right there with you.
AJV (02:53):
That’s never too late. Never too late. Yeah. All right, well, just to help our audience get to know you a little bit I’d love to just start with, how’d you get into this?
KH (03:04):
Yeah, so paid events specifically that came probably 2020 I was doing, so I already had a marketing agency. Been doing that since 2015. Started in college, just kinda working with some local businesses. And 2020 came around and I was working with a couple clients more so just optimizing their sales process. I was, people were coming into us for help with Facebook ads mm-hmm
KH (03:50):
It was called the Wedding Photography Summit. And he reached out, he said, Hey, I know that you do a lot of stuff with sales processes. I’m selling $7 tickets for this upcoming summit having a hard time scaling up ads. And I also have some like order bumps and, and one click upsells that have a really low take rate on, could you help me out with that? I said, yeah, no problem. So for the next eight weeks, help them scale up ad spend. Got the, the cost per ticket sold like the, the CPA down pretty low got the order bumps swapped out, and it started working really well. We sold over 8,000 tickets. That was my first ever virtual event. Wow. And a week before the event, well, actually it was the week of the event, it was our last call of our consulting engagement. I said, so Jai, what are you gonna pitch during your event? And he said, I wasn’t planning on pitching anything. What do you mean? Like, I was just, I’m hosting a, a paid event. Like I don’t, I don’t wanna pitch anything like these people have paid to be here. I said, brother, do you hate money
AJV (04:44):
I was like, you’ve got 8,000
KH (04:46):
Of your best customers coming to you to learn how to build up their business. You have a coaching program for 2K, you should at least offer that. Like, because an event is only a catalyst to get someone transformation after the event’s over. Like, there’s so many people that will go to a live event, whether it’s in person or virtual. They get all hyped up, they’re excited, and two days, five days, few weeks after the event’s over. Yeah. Nothing. Yeah. You’ve not taken action on anything. And typically that’s because there was not a real transformation that occurred during the event. You got excited, you got into a great emotional state, but there was no action that was taken to hold you accountable to seeing that transformation through after the event was over. So that’s what I pretty much told him. And he was like, all right, well, cool. I’ll give a quick pitch. And he made another quarter million dollars in the last second. And yeah, that’s, that’s how I got started with it. And so I’ve, I’ve taken on quite a
AJV (05:37):
Bit more. Well, that’s a good entry into the business, Zach. Yeah,
KH (06:34):
KH (07:23):
Most theologians would say there were probably 11 to 12,000 people in that crowd that day. And if you do the math and you say, well, if he was working eight hours a day and he had one hour appointments with people, eight, eight, yeah. Eight appointments per day nonstop back to back to back a hundred percent show rate. And you know, not taking any breaks, it would take him about five years and three months to have met with that many people. But he just did it in one afternoon. And it’s not, it’s not that like, it, it, it’s actually not impersonal to do that. It’s actually almost better because he, he’s doing a disservice if he has to have people meeting with him one-on-one. People want to hear from him. They don’t have to have a one-on-one with him. And so anyway, I was like, man, yeah, he used events to be able to start his ministry and even his disciples.
KH (08:16):
‘Cause Some people would say, well, you know, he had a disciple. So that’s his sales team. No, no, no. Most of his disciples were also doing sermons. It’s a far more efficient way to spread a message. And of course, you’re not gonna have a hundred percent conversion, but you could still have somewhere between a 10 to a 20% conversion pretty consistently when you’re speaking to a group of people at the same time, it’s kind of pitching in a one to many fashion. So that’s my, my inspiration behind some of this. I love that. But yeah I mean, happy to dive more into it. Like obviously there’s sales strategies that you have to deploy and you have to make sure that you’re pre handling objections and, and pre-framing people for the right reasons. But yeah, you could absolutely scale. Like I, we’ve seen the, the virtual events that we’ve hosted, we’ve seen them successfully sell anything from as low as a thousand dollars offers as high as $30,000 offers directly from virtual events where people are paying seven bucks for $9 for like really cheap. So it’s a loss leader model. You don’t, you don’t make money on the front end, typically you’ll lose money after the cost of acquisition, but you make all of your money in that backend sale.
AJV (09:17):
So this is so fascinating. So I would curious to hear from you, like, why do you think that these sales call funnels, like the call booking funnels, why do you think they’re becoming a little less effective as time goes on? Yeah.
KH (09:32):
I think it’s twofold what maybe threefold. In general, the, the reason I said twofold is because people are more sophisticated than ever before, and they’re also more skeptical than ever before. So sophistication is like they
KH (10:18):
People have made some investments that really weren’t the best fit for them, or maybe they didn’t get taken well or taken well care of. And so yeah, the, the skepticism and the, the sophistication, it’s like, it’s just really hard to sell to. And in the past you can, when those were both lower, you can easily have a quick 62nd ad that someone watches on Instagram, they watch it, they’re like, oh yeah, this is interesting. Then they click it, they opt in, they watch a quick 20 minute VSL or maybe a 90 minute webinar. They’re like, cool, yeah, I’m sold. I wanna book a call. They book a quick, a quick hour long sales call and they’re gonna buy no problem. But it’s just not happening at the rate that people would like to see at this point. And so, I, I, I always say that lead generation is easy. It’s really easy to get a lead or someone interested in working with you, but the conversion part is much harder. And that’s because most people skip the in-between step, which is the lead nurture. And so I’m finding that, and this is just my kind of hypothesis a virtual event or in-person event doesn’t really matter, is one of the most efficient ways to nurture a prospect and truly gain that know, like, and trust factor that they truly need before they’re ready to invest with you at a higher rate.
AJV (11:29):
So I have a question for you. You mentioned like seven to $9. Why so cheap? Like why not $20? Why not $50? Yeah,
KH (11:38):
Great question. Great question. I haven’t seen a whole lot of data on the 20 to $50 range. I’ve tested all out a, a good few on like the 97 to 2 97 offers, and people still use those. And so I’m, I’m not gonna sit here and say like, one is better than the other. The only reason we’ve done seven to $9, and, and actually here in about three weeks, we’ll be hosting our own event. We’re actually gonna we have the hypothesis that we think a dollar will still work, so we’re gonna do a dollar ticket because I think there’s just something powerful in the 16 digits being exchanged of, of the credit card number. But yeah, the seven to $9 came up from, honestly, that first client, Ja, he was already selling it for seven. And then the very next week I had a client, her name was Christian Boss, and she said, Hey I I, I’m curious about hosting this upcoming three day virtual event.
KH (12:26):
I was gonna make it free. What are your thoughts? I’m like, I have another client we just sold 8,000 tickets for, for $7. Like, do you wanna do that? And she did it. And a month later she had 3,500 tickets sold at a $7 price range, and she made a quarter million dollars from that as well. And I was like, huh, yeah, maybe there’s something to it. And so my hypothesis, like I’ve, I’ve tested out once again, other price ranges, but my hypothesis is that the lower the price range or the, the, the lower the, the price for the ticket, the easier it is to make that quick impulse purchase. And we’re not in it for profit on the front end. We’re in it for buy-in. And there’s a significant difference from a free event versus a paid event of any sort on the show rate as well as the backend conversion rate, because these people
AJV (13:07):
Are sure you better have some skin in the game, right? Yeah. Something.
KH (13:09):
Yeah. So, yeah, I, I don’t know, the seven to nine I, I’m open to being proven wrong. Like, our motto is, we don’t care to be right. We just wanna make money. So that’s why we’re gonna try the dollar tickets. And then we’ve tried some $27 and $47 events, but they just, the sales page conversion rate quite literally just has not been as desirable as we’d prefer. And at the end of the day, we want that cost of acquisition as low as possible.
AJV (13:32):
So that leads me to another question then. So clearly you’re not doing it for profit. Are you trying to do it for break even? Or are you fully prepared to take a loss? Oh,
KH (13:40):
Yeah, yeah. Fully prepared to take a loss. So I’ve
KH (14:22):
Yeah. Yeah. Literally on the spot. So it’s, they’re like, okay, well we can, we can float that cash. So yeah, you can absolutely try to break even. You can add in some order bumps, some one click up sales. But most of the clients that we work with, they’re busy. Like, they’re usually multiple seven figures, oftentimes in the eight figure range. They don’t want to have to come up with new products to sell just for a funnel. Like they’re, like, at the end of the day, they, they only care about the backend profit. So as long as you have the cash to float, great do that. But if you’re really cash strapped, you could of course add in some extra one click up sales and you could try to increase the average order value.
AJV (14:57):
So then it’s Okay. So walking through this process, for anyone who’s listening to who, okay, if I had a little money to put some, you know, money into some ads, had this low ticket offering, what are you seeing is the most successful formula for the event itself? Is it a full day? You mentioned three days. Yeah. Is it a half day? Yeah.
KH (15:15):
Great question. So it does depend on your market a little bit. For example, myself, if
KH (16:08):
The reason why is, is honestly just because if you can deliver a really powerful shift on perspective in their mindset on, on day one, they’re sitting in that for another 24 hours before they get to hear from you again. And then they’re now eagerly waiting for day two, because as long as you kind of create some nice open loops that don’t totally get closed on day one, now they’re super excited for day two and you’re taking up their brain space and their mental bandwidth over the next 24 hours, and that’s only a two day event. If you wanna do a three day event, great. Now you’re, you’re kind of taking up mental bandwidth for about 72 hours of time, and they’re getting to spend in their mind, they’re getting to spend multiple days with you, but really it’s might only be an hour or two per day. So really it’s not much different than a quick little two hour session or a three hour session. But if you could break that up into multiple days, there’s a, in my opinion, a pretty strong correlation on the, just, just the experience that the customer’s having.
AJV (17:02):
So That’s so interesting. So you find that it’s better to have shorter sessions over multiple days than having all together on like a half day full day. Yep.
KH (17:11):
Yeah. By it. I guess my, my rationale behind this, and once again, I like, I could be wrong on this, but my rationale is that the bite size information is easier to digest for sure, as compared to making someone absolutely just drink through the fire hose.
AJV (17:26):
Yeah. And then their brain is so full they can’t think. Yeah.
KH (17:29):
Because if, if their brain is twofold, they can’t think, and they feel like they’ve just drank from the fire hose for four hours straight, the last thing they want to do is now go buy a multiple thousand dollar offer that you’re pitching them because they feel like they just got so much information they need to take action on that before they invest in your offer, because that would almost be poor stewardship of the information they just got. So give them bite-sized, digestible information and still, like, I would say more so radically change the way they look at whatever the area of life is that you’re helping them, whether it’s business or marketing or health or finance, whatever, like help them out with some mindset shifts. Don’t teach too, too much of the how’s. And it’s not manipulative. It’s just like if you teach too much of the how’s, they will then feel like they have to go implement all of that.
KH (18:13):
Yeah. And we all know, going back to what I just said earlier, if they are so focused on the how, and they’re focused on implementing all of that now, they’re not going to actually buy. And if they don’t buy now, they’re, they’re not actually gonna get that transformation and the accountability mm-hmm
AJV (18:44):
Fascinating. And so next question I’d have is for the person listening you know, I think this is a really, you know, a big deal because first of all, you gotta have, you know, if you’re listening, you gotta have some money, right? To put into paid traffic. So is that if they don’t have any money. Yep. So this model still work, what’s just trying Absolutely. Trying to drive it organically. Have you seen that work?
KH (19:05):
Absolutely. Yeah. There’s, we have kind of four core ways that we’ll drive traffic to any event, whether you have a big budget or not. Obviously yes, ads are probably the most scalable. However, you can also leverage your email list or SMS list if you have those. If not, no big deal. I’m sure you have a few emails you could still send send invites to. But then you can also leverage your organic traffic, obviously go post on some social media. Go let your, your word of mouth network know. And then lastly, any JVs or affiliates mm-hmm
KH (19:52):
And so they, they’re financially incentivized for a different reason. We have seen a fun little hack I guess you could call it on the thank you page. There’s some, there’s some extra real estate you could use after someone buys a ticket on the thank you page. Instead of just saying, cool, here’s a receipt. See you there. Check your emails for more information. You could put a video on that thank you page, and you can now actually leverage that as a way to get some new traffic immediately. We’ve seen this done in two ways. Number one, we’ve seen it done where that that video is actually inviting them there. You could have a form directly below that to sign up to be an affiliate. Yeah. And you could get an affiliate code and immediately you could actually start making money. You could maybe give them a hundred percent of ticket sales a hundred percent of the proceeds of the ticket sales that they generate before the event starts.
KH (20:39):
They can potentially even have a little bit of an ROI before they even get to your event. That’s kind of fun. But the other way is just simply leveraging the power of relationships and reminding them of, Hey, look, congratulations on taking this investment, getting your ticket. I just wanna be really clear, we’ve all been to events where nothing changes after the event’s over. Mm-Hmm
AJV (21:40):
Yeah. I love that. I, I love that. Thank you Paige. ’cause That could work, not just for this event, but for anything, anything you have
KH (22:29):
Okay. just wanna make sure that we’re super on the same page. You’re talking about the in event experience, or are you talking about leading up to the event?
AJV (22:38):
My, like the in event experience? Yeah.
KH (22:40):
Okay. In event experience. I think your first question was what’s some of the biggest wins or like, things that they’re doing well,
AJV (22:46):
Yeah. But what should we be doing? Yes. Okay. And then what could people stay away from? Yeah. Like biggest mistakes.
KH (22:51):
Yeah. I think it’s gonna be, what I tell you to do is also the opposite of it is the mistakes.
AJV (23:35):
What’s this leading up to? When’s it coming? Yeah. Yep.
KH (23:38):
And then the second type of
AJV (23:38):
Person that’s me. I’m always like that at the events. I’m like, when’s it coming? What is it? Hurry up.
KH (23:43):
Yep. Yeah, I’m, I’m right there with you. And then the second type of person, they’re there genuinely thinking that their life is about to be entirely changed over the next two hours. Whether it’s one hour per day or whatever. And you can address both of these people in the same statement. You open up and say something along the lines of, Hey guys, I’m so, so excited that you’re all here today, guys, as promised, we are going to teach A, B, and C over the next few days. Whether it’s today or over the next two days or three days, whatever. It’s gonna be extremely powerful. There’s gonna be a lot of shifts in thought that you might have never had before. There’s gonna be a lot of just kind of knowledge bombs that are getting dropped. Like make sure you’re ready to take notes.
KH (24:20):
But I wanna make sure that we’re all on the same page with something. We’ve all been to events and we got some you know, value and it was exciting and then you left and nothing else happened. And so to make sure that I’m not just leaving you hanging there, just, just to call what it is, I’m going to give you an offer at the end of this event. Not gonna sit here and try to say, I’m going to like, it’s not gonna be a bait and switch. I’m actually gonna give legitimate value. You guys paid to be here, unlike a webinar you have paid to be here. Mm-Hmm
KH (24:55):
You’re gonna be off to the races. You do not need to work with us. Fantastic. I’m so excited you’re here. The others of you, you know that you’d much rather have someone holding your hand or some sort of support after this event is over. ’cause You’re genuinely serious about seeing a transformation in this area of your life. Guys, I’m not just gonna leave you hanging. I will absolutely give you an offer if you’d like to continue working with us. I can tell you more about that on the last day. No big deal though right now. I just wanna let you know there will be an offer. So hope that doesn’t offend you all. Feel free if you I’ll even give you a heads up before I give the offer on the last day, if you guys would like to get out of the room, if that would offend you, you guys can go, go ahead and leave.
KH (25:30):
I I don’t wanna pitch anyone that, that doesn’t wanna hear our offer. Yeah. Is that cool with everyone? And you could actually have everyone say, yep, sounds good. They’ve, everyone’s, everyone’s guard just totally dropped. So that’s one big thing that you could do. And then now they’re not, they’re not like surprised when you give them the pitch. I think a lot of people will try so hard to give this incredible amount of value on the front end during their event, and then they try to switch into the pitch and people are like, oh, wait, I wasn’t expecting that. Or like, there’s just kinda an awkward gap. Oh yeah. But if you open up like
AJV (26:02):
That, it, it went on. I love you to, oh no, you’re just selling me. Yeah, yeah. Like that.
KH (26:06):
Yeah. But if you open up like that on the, whenever it comes time to do the pitch, it’s like also, I, I learned this specific from Russell Brunson in one of his 10 x 10 x growth con presentations. He gave an ask and he said, is it cool if I take the next 15 minutes or so to tell you tell you guys about a special offer I created for you all today? And so he actually had kind of a, a question saying, would you be willing to let me give the offer mm-hmm
KH (26:48):
And you actually wait for everyone to say yes. Like, drop in the comments Yes. Or whatnot. Cool. Now they’re literally giving you permission Yeah. To give an offer and pitch them. So that’s gonna be helpful. And then lastly, I would say there’s, I mean, I could continue talking on this, but I don’t wanna ramble. Lastly, I would say keep engagement high. There’s a lot of people that will focus so hard on just rambling as I’m doing right now. And they
KH (27:34):
You could even share like have people share wins or a ahas after a certain session before you jump into the next session. And that way people are now jumping in and they’re actually reminding everyone else in the room of what they just learned. And so like when you do that, people are actually much more engaged. They’re not just gonna be jumping up on Facebook on a, on a different tab of their computer and start scrolling because they see that they are engaged. They are a part of this event. They’re not just watching someone teach.
AJV (28:00):
Yeah. That’s good. Now in terms of the offer, you said that you’ve seen as low as $2,000 mm-hmm
KH (28:13):
Yeah, probably like low end $5,000 higher end 15 k is probably the sweet spot. Reason being, there’s a few ways that you could pitch on the how to actually get the conversion. So you could pitch direct to checkout. My personal favorite. You could technically pitch to, you know jumping on a sales call. I don’t like that because once again, that now puts man hours at the bottleneck of how many people you could serve. And then there’s a third option that I’ve seen work pretty well which is you could pitch a deposit and say, Hey, this is exactly how much it’s, you don’t owe that right now. You actually owe X amount instead. I’ll give a direct example. The client that I mentioned, they’re, they they spend about 30 K right now per day. They have a $6,000 offer and their offer, they could go straight to checkout on this with no problem.
KH (29:04):
But theirs is very specific to a type of individual and some financial criteria. It’s, it’s kind of a a credit based offer and that you have to have a certain amount of credit in order to be able to leverage what they help you with in the backend. And so they, to make sure that they’re not taking on the wrong clients, they’ll say, Hey, look, our offer is six K to you today. Normally it’s 10. Which is true if you go book a sales call with their team, it’s normally 10 K and they say it’s, it’s six K this week. However, you don’t owe that today. It’s on day two. They say, you don’t owe that today. You’d actually only owe $500 and it’s a totally refundable deposit by putting $500 down today. We’re gonna do a bonus q and a day tomorrow, answer all of your questions on whether or not this is truly the right fit for you or not, because not everyone is perfect for this strategy.
KH (29:50):
And they’ll tell you, like on the pitch, like, who, here’s who it’s fear, here’s, here’s who it’s for, here’s who it’s not for mm-hmm
AJV (30:48):
Yeah. So now this is so fascinating and, and so helpful. What, what, what do you think makes a good offer? Like if you’ve been doing this for a while? I listen to it. I’m fascinated with offers. I sign up for all kinds of funnels. ’cause I just wanna see how they work. ’em, I love listening and some are really great and compelling and others are like, I can’t believe anyone is buying this right now. Mm-Hmm
KH (31:14):
Okay, so I, I wanna make sure, I would imagine you’re asking the general question, but just to make sure I’m not misunderstanding. Are you asking about backend high ticket offers or the front end offers?
AJV (31:25):
Yes. It’s for a high ticket offer. Yeah.
KH (31:26):
Great. Okay. In general, it’s gotta be like, I would say categorized under a few different key transformations. So
KH (32:23):
People buy the masterminds because they want the networking. There’s also dating coaches or Sure. People like that. So there’s that. And then also if you could sell, like, anything that’s investment related, that’s you know, it’s going to be an appreciating asset or there is a certain value to it that, yeah, I mean, I’m, it’s like a, a a, just a super high quality or super high service, like a high quality service or high quality product. If you think I’ll, I’ll, I’ll give the best example. The best offers incorporate multiple of these all at the same time. So Rolex, for example technically high ticket offer, you don’t really think of it though. It’s not really a coaching space, but Rolex is a perfect example of a high ticket offer. They’re charging 10 to, I dunno, 50,000, probably more than that for certain watches and what they’re selling.
KH (33:13):
Number one, it’s a high quality product. You know, that if you buy a Rolex, it’s not breaking a month later, it’s going to be around for decades and decades and decades. Also, high quality service, if you go on in, they’re gonna walk you back. Whenever you’re picking up your, your Rolex from your ad, they’re gonna walk you back into a private room. They’re gonna do a special unboxing thing, they’re gonna give you some drinks while you’re there. Like it’s a really nice prestigious service. Additionally, it’s an asset. You’re buying a watch maybe for 10 K that you can walk out if you really needed to. You could walk out and probably resell it to someone else for 15 to 20 K depending on which one that you’re buying. Additionally they’re selling ego
KH (33:59):
So like that’s a perfect example of a fantastic high ticket offer because they’re selling so many different benefits all at the same time. Correct. A bad offer would be something that is just hard to grasp. Like, I had a client not too long ago, incredible, incredible leadership consultant. He helps people with, you know, seeing leadership breakthroughs within their organization. And when I say that leadership breakthroughs, it’s like, why would I buy that? Like that’s, I don’t know, it sounds good, but I’m not ready to just go pay $20,000 for a leadership coach. I think I’m a fine leader. How do I know if I’m a bad leader? Like, you have to, you have to solve for specific pain points such as like, Hey, I’m going to help you get out of your day-to-day operations, or I’m going to help you hire a COO to, or Yeah, that would be even more specific.
KH (34:47):
I’m, I’ll help you hire a COO to get you out the day-to-day operations or a CEO if you get outta the day-to-day operations. Or I’m going to help you turn your team of task doers into business builders. Mm-Hmm. And they’re actually gonna start focusing on revenue driven activities. Or I’ll help you deploy systems that SOPs so that everyone can leave the office at 5:00 PM rather than working until nine or 10:00 PM every day. So like, you have to get way more specific there. So you can’t just say, I’m a leadership coach. You actually have to say, I help with X, Y, and z Kind of an esoteric high level conversation. But does that make sense? A few of those examples I’m giving.
AJV (35:23):
Yeah. I think that’s great. And I think for a lot of people, this comes back to do you know the benefits Yeah. Of your offer. Yeah. Right. This comes back to the fundamentals of what we do at Brand Builders Group with finding your brand DNA. It’s like, what problem do you solve? Mm-Hmm. Right? What’s the cause of that problem? What’s the unique way in which you solve it? That’s your message. Mm-Hmm
KH (36:08):
Yeah. It’s, it’s helpful. I, I love the way that you kind of reframed all of that, so it’s really helpful to understand Yeah. The pain points that you’re solving. ’cause I, I’m sure most of the people listening to this have already heard this before, but there’s only two core human motivators in life running away from pain or running towards pleasure. And so if you can understand your audiences, both of those, what specific pain points and symptoms are coming up in their life or in their business that they’re trying to solve for, and what specific desires are they trying to achieve? Mm-Hmm
KH (36:50):
You actually have to be able to point flaws or like kind of poke holes at Yeah. If you know them well enough, let’s say you’re a health coach and you help people, I dunno, lose the last 10 pounds of, of their little bit of belly fat, if you know that most of them are trying a certain solution and they’re not getting a result, you should also talk about that as well. So it’s like, Hey, I know you have the belly fat, you’re struggling to lose it. I know you want to have six packs, but here’s what you’ve keep. Like here’s what you continue trying to do, which is X, Y, and Z. Here’s why that’s not working. And now, and now you’re setting yourself up for why your specific solution is working well or why it can be the, the solve, like the, the true solution to their problem.
AJV (37:32):
Yeah. I think that’s so good. And that kind of comes back to one thing, and then I know that we’re almost outta time, and I have one really big question that I wanna hit before we do this, but before I get to that, it kind of comes back to a question that I meant to ask earlier. And I was just looking at my notes. It’s like, do you find that for these, you know, very low dollar paid events, that it is better to have a super niche specific targeted topic? Kind of like what we were just talking about? Yeah. Or do you think it’s better to Yeah. Okay.
KH (38:03):
Going broad is not the way to go get as specific as possible. And that’s where people actually make a, a lot of mistakes is that they’ll try to make their event or any of their marketing in general, in general, so broad to be all encompassing, but when you try to talk to everyone, you talk to no one. Yeah. So make it really specific to solve a very specific problem.
AJV (38:20):
Yes. Our favorites not our favorite. One of my, well, it’s my, maybe it’s my favorite, but one of our sayings at Brand Builders Group is so cheesy, but you’ll never forget it. It’s the more specific, the more terrific
AJV (39:04):
But if you’re one of those individuals who’s like, I don’t, I, it’s not that I don’t wanna build a team, I don’t have a team, right? I have to figure out something. I am the sales team. I think these are, these are the great options and why I wanted Zach to come on the show today. But he also has this awesome playbook called the paid events playbook. And you can go to paid events.com/playbook. And in that it’s gonna cover high level overview of how to plan for your event, how to fill your event, and how to convert attendees at your event. Zach, is there anything I’m missing with that?
KH (39:39):
Not really. I, I mean, you, you covered the high level overview for sure. Yeah. It’s, it’s more in depth than most people would think. And obviously if you have any further questions, you could either go jump on chat GBT and go find information, or if you want direct help, sure you can reach out. But that is a really good overview of yeah, how to plan for your event, make sure it’s actually gonna sell and attract the right people, how to host it, keep people engaged, and then how to make sure, you know, it’s, it’s not really helpful to have a hundred people there if no one buys in the end. So how to make sure you are getting those backend conversions.
AJV (40:08):
Yeah. So again, it’s go to paid events.com/playbook. Yep. Get it, read it, use it. All right. Now before our time runs out I have one last question that I think is universally applicable. And I mentioned this in the very beginning during my intro that we said we were gonna talk about how to test an offer Yes. Before you invest into or invest too much time, money, or resources in it to make sure that it’s an offer that will work. So Zach, how do we do that?
KH (40:40):
KH (41:24):
You could use it totally free. Everybody jump on there and you can make an account and it’s a, it’s an AI essentially presentation builder. And you can give a quick one sentence prompt and say, prompt and say, give me a presentation that, or like, give me a PDF that teaches X, Y, and Z. And so let’s say that you’re a health coach and you’re like, give me one that’s like, lose five pounds before your wedding. And then another one that’s like, how to gain five pounds of muscle in the next six months for bodybuilders or whatever. It’s all like, maybe you have a few different ideas, jump on there, create a PDF for all of them, and then we put together a quick Facebook lead form and Facebook lead forms. You can instantly have a download be given to the person, like without even having to set it up with your CRM.
KH (42:10):
And so we had a, we, we had the lead form for each PDF, we tested out a few different PDFs. And on the PDF, or I’m sorry, on the, on the lead form, we were asking name, number, email no, I’m sorry, not even number, just name an email company name. And then we wanted to know not just what was gonna get the lowest cost per lead, but what’s gonna be the highest quality lead. And so we had some custom qualifying questions in there, one of which I said, which of these describes you best? And that question changed depending on the lead magnet they were opting in for mm-hmm
KH (42:53):
And it was like, I’ve never hosted an event trying to create my first one. Second one was I’ve hosted them, struggled to convert. And third one is like, we crush events, we’re just looking at scale. And then I also asked, where’s your company revenue at? And I think that was it. And so I was asking the revenue question for all of our PDFs, and then I was asking a different kind of intention or sophistication level question for the other PDFs. And so what I did, I set it up for about a hundred dollars a day, and within 24 hours I had very crystal clear data.
KH (43:49):
So that way I was minimizing all variables except for the actual lead magnet. And then I was, I, I was like, well, I don’t care about the cost per lead. I wanna make sure these people are actually qualified
KH (44:25):
And they specifically had a, a, a unique experience with real estate investing. We’re like, okay, cool. That helps us out with the pain points and the desires. And anyway, you can do this. Literally go set it up for $300, go come up with two to three PDFs and I mean, you don’t have to spend much more time than two or three minutes on the PDF I beef mine up a little bit. But yeah, do that. Then go set up a lead form, ask some sort of questions for how qualified they are. I’d say like, a financial qualification is probably helpful. And secondly, what’s their sophistication level around what you’re helping them with? And now you’re gonna have way more intel of like, clearly our lowest cost per lead is coming from this type of offer, and here’s the majority of the leads. Here’s their core desire, core pain point, and we actually know they’re qualified. Great. Let’s actually start putting some bandwidth into creating a more robust offer around that.
AJV (45:15):
That’s awesome. Love that Gamma app.
KH (45:19):
Yes.
AJV (45:19):
Love it with Facebook forms, what AI saves the day.
KH (45:24):
It really does.
AJV (45:25):
Right. love it. So, so good. Zach, if people just wanna connect with you or follow you on social media, where should they find you?
KH (45:33):
Yeah Instagram’s good. Just my first and last name, Zach Hesterberg or YouTube. We’re starting to treat quite a bit more seriously. And YouTube a lot of it’s going to be biblical based content talking about events and selling high ticket. So if you want long form, go to YouTube. Short form, go to Instagram
AJV (45:49):
And we’ll put both of those handles in the show notes. Zach. So good. So many good insights. And I think also just a, a good reminder of like, Hey, just because everyone around you is doing it this way, doesn’t mean there can’t be another way. And I think this is a good reminder for all of us who’s like, you don’t have a sales team. You are the sales team, but there’s other ways to still reach the masses and help scale your business without having to scale your team. So this was such a worthwhile conversation. And everyone who’s listening, don’t forget to stick around for my recap episode, which will be coming up next. And Zach, thank you for being here, everyone else. We’ll see you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 571: Who to Hire to Build an 8-Figure Business | Jen Kem Episode Recap
RV (00:06):
Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is the place where we help mission-driven messengers, just like you learn how to build and monetize your personal brand. My name is Rory Vaden and I’m the co-founder of Brand Builders Group, a hall of fame speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. And this show is to help experts learn how to become more wealthy and well known. I know you’re gonna love it. Thanks for being here. Let’s get started. There’s an African proverb that says, if you wanna go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go with a team. And if you are an entrepreneur or you’re a small business owner and you’re trying to grow your business, you are definitely going to need a team. And in this video I’m gonna share with you exactly who should you hire first. As one of the most common questions that we hear from people is they say, I don’t know when to hire and who to hire first.
RV (01:08):
And what I’m gonna share with you may surprise you because I’m gonna say that the first people you should hire are gonna be people that support you in your personal life more than your professional life. So you’re gonna need people to work inside of your company too, but you’re likely gonna need to start at home first. Now here’s the high level concept. A high level concept is that you need to hire people who will take things off of your plate. So if you’ve ever felt like I’m doing so many jobs, or I’m doing four people’s full-time jobs, you probably are. That is what it means to be an entrepreneur, especially a solopreneur. And so, as fast as possible, you need to get those jobs off of your plate. But the simplest and most direct positions to hire for are the ones that I think we hear the least about, and that is hiring people in your personal life.
RV (02:02):
So who would you hire in your personal life? The very first hire that I would make is a house cleaner. These are easy to find. There’s a lot of people who offer this service. If you are still cleaning your house, then that means that’s time that you’re spending there instead of spending it on your business. And that’s the big idea here, is anything that’s taking your time, we have to get off of your plate. We have to outsource it, we have to delegate it to somebody else. So I’m looking for the most tangible and tactical and practical things to get off my plate first. So I would start with the house cleaner. It’s also something that you don’t have to be a millionaire to hire a house cleaner. And you can use platforms like care.com, which is one of our favorites. We use care.com to hire, uh, house cleaners, pet care, elderly care, and childcare.
RV (02:51):
Um, you can even get people to cook for you, right? So you go, what, how much time am I spending on mowing the yard? I need to get someone to do the landscaping. How much time am I spending doing handy work around the house? You can, you can use, uh, Thumbtack or, you know, there used to be tackle. I don’t think they’re around anymore. But there’s, there’s all sorts of, uh, platforms and apps you can use to hire these people locally. Not only do you free up your time, you get them a job and you’re providing income opportunities for the people around you. So anything that is taking time around the house, I would start with first. ’cause that’s gonna give you your peace of mind back. And many times those are some of the most tactical universal skills that are the easiest to hire for next inside of your business.
RV (03:38):
The very first thing that I would, the very first position that I would hire is an assistant. You need an assistant to do basic things for you. Like, um, schedule flights, you know, these are people who can do expense reports, they can filter your email, they can schedule appointments on your calendar and deal with the back and forth with that. They can take the, all the things that come into your inbox that don’t really need your attention, and they can start processing those. In my case, my assistants have access to my inbox. I’ve always done that. And you go, well, what about privacy? And I go, well, if it’s anything that’s super private, then, you know, set up a private email inbox for that or a text message. But, uh, your business email
RV (04:34):
Like, that’s an important part of the job, but it’s, it’s not rocket science to solve that problem. But you need an assistant, you need someone to filter out spam and, and just everything. And also a personal assistant. So this could be the same person, or it might be someone else, someone to do your grocery shopping for you, someone to run to the dry cleaner, someone to do go buy Christmas presents, somebody to wrap the presents, somebody to meet, meet the maintenance man, take the car to get an oil change. All of these things that suck up your time, that is time that you could be spending either on your business or with your family or doing hobbies. Those are the easiest things to hire. After you get your assistant, then typically the next person that you hire in a, in inside of your business, I think is someone who can do marketing for you.
RV (05:22):
So marketing is another tactical skillset that you, that takes time and it’s things that people can learn, right? It’s a very straight down the, the path. There’s things you need to learn how to do. Now as you get lar bigger and your brand grows, or your company grows, you may need multiple marketing people. Specifically, there’s three skill sets you need. You need someone who can write something, copywriter. You need someone who can graphically design something, and then you need a video editor, somebody who can edit videos. Those are really, really common roles. Um, but in the beginning, you might just have a marketing assistant if you’re posting on social media or they’re helping make updates to your web pages, or they might even just be a project manager who’s managing your vendors. When you’re first starting out in your business, chances are you can’t afford a bunch of a bunch of employees.
RV (06:11):
So what you do is you hire contractors, you hire vendors, but you try to have one person who is on your team who can project manage multiple vendors until you can scale up and afford to bring people on your team, which is expensive. And then they want raises, and you want to give ’em raises and they need benefits and like they have to provide for their families. But you, you grow together, but you don’t have to wait to be able to afford employees to start delegating and hiring things off of your, your plate. You can do that right away with all of these apps. You can do it with, uh, hiring contractors, but you kind of do need somebody at home. It’ll start as an assistant. Then maybe there is an, a marketing assistant. Um, another early role that you’re gonna hire in your company is gonna be an accountant, a bookkeeper, right?
RV (06:57):
You’re gonna need someone to deal with quick QuickBooks or whatever software tool you’re using to keep track of your expenses. A lot of times you can, you can find, uh, retired accountants to do that. You can find people who know QuickBooks. You can find people with, you know, basic level education, maybe not even a college diploma, but who have experience in accounts payable and accounts receivable. It’s a great side job. And you’ll notice that all of the jobs, all of the roles that you’re hiring early on are tactical, not strategic. Strategic roles tend to be more expensive. They tend to require more experience and they’re more artistic. The easier roles to hire are the ones where it’s like, it’s a task and here’s a task and here’s an instruction manual for how to do it. And you can just like put anyone in that, in that seat.
RV (07:46):
As you grow, then you need to bring on more strategic people because there’s complexity that will be added to your organization, um, after you hire a bookkeeper and you get that in place, the next thing that I would be looking to hire is what we would call delivery. Somebody who can actually do client work for you so that you don’t have to do the work, right? In any type of business, even if I’m a, you know, if I’m a high school kid, starting a a, a, a mowing, a yard mowing business, there is delivering the service and then there is selling the service. And you have to separate those two tasks. You’ll make more money if you’re selling the service than if you’re delivering the service, right? So you go, I can make more money selling people $10, a $10 service to cut their yards, and then I can find people to mow the yard for $5 and then I’m gonna keep the five.
RV (08:40):
That’s how you really become an entrepreneur, and that’s how it starts. So in order for you to be able to sell more, you gotta open up your capacity, which means you need more people who can deliver. So you gotta get other people trained to do a good job. And that becomes a really hard part. The, the more people driven your business is, right. And so services like ours at Brand Builders Group, we do personal brand strategy. So the people that we hire are personal brand strategists. They have to learn our curriculum, our methodology, our philosophy. They have to hold our values and we spend a a lot of time training them. And, and we also look for people who come in with some experience so that they can work with clients at a lower rate of pay than somebody would have to work with me or my wife and our CEO my business partner aj.
RV (09:26):
Um, so you need to get delivery off of your plate, and that is where the business starts to become scalable because you can sell more and more and more as long as you can deliver that service and you have other people who can deliver it after that. The next thing that we typically start to outsource is sales. Because when you start the business, you are usually the top sales person, but sales is a tactical skillset and it is something that can be delegated and it can be farmed out. And this is something that we did in our past life, was train salespeople. We have inside of brand builders group curriculums for both how to sell and for how to recruit, train, hire, manage, and motivate salespeople. Um, the other thing that’s great about hiring salespeople, and sometimes salespeople you actually can hire earlier, is salespeople often can and want to be paid on commission.
RV (10:18):
If they’re good, they’d rather be paid for their results and they’d rather be paid a percentage of the business they bring in than a flat stable, um, stream of pay, like in a salary or an hourly rate. Well, when you’re starting a company, salespeople can really be great because you don’t have a lot of consistent revenue. You can’t take the risk of hiring employees. But if you find a salesperson who’s willing to work on commission, you can hire as many straight commission salespeople as you can keep up with because it’s on them to go out and sell and you wanna support them and help them. But commission-based salespeople can be one of the very first, uh, positions that you hire in the company. After that, it starts to get more strategic. Uh, in brand Builders group, we have a curriculum called Eight Figure Entrepreneur, and we talk about how do you grow your business from a six figure business to seven figures, multi seven figures, and ultimately eight figures.
RV (11:13):
That is something that my wife and I have done six times. Six times. We have started multi seven figure businesses and twice we have built eight figure companies completely from scratch, from zero, uh, with, you know, no, no venture backed money. We don’t use bank debt. We’ve built it from revenue, from customers in graduating the teams up. Now, when you get to that level, we talk about the eight departments of every business. Every single company, whether a small solopreneur or a Fortune 100 company has eight major functions. Marketing, sales, delivery, customer service, HR, operations, and IT administration and finance it. Every business has those functions. The reason you’re overwhelmed as an entrepreneur, as a solopreneur is ’cause you have to do all eight of those things. Marketing has to generate the lead, sales has to sell, the lead delivery has to fulfill on that, uh, promise and deliver to the customer.
RV (12:17):
Customer service has to deal with any customer service questions or cancellations. HR has to hire all of the people to do of those things, operations. And it has to create the tools and the systems to support all of those people doing those roles. Administration deals with the, the strategic, uh, parts of the business as well as the legal parts, um, and, you know, taxes and legal structure and filings and all that. And then, uh, finance deals with counting the money of all of those things. Those eight functions exist in every business. And as you start to scale, you’ll start with these early positions, and then over time, you’re gonna need someone to head up each of those departments. And then from there, the sky is the limit.