Ep 456: Building Your Referral Based Business with Barb Betts
AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody and welcome to the Influential Personal Brand Podcast. So excited today to have a good friend, Barb Betts on the show. And before we get started, and before I introduce her like I always do, I wanna let you know why you should stick around for this episode and also if you should stick around if it’s for you. But today is one of those episodes where it doesn’t matter who you are, where you are in your personal brain journey, what your business is, if you’re a beginner, if you’re advanced, it does not matter. This is an episode for you. This is universal. It is applicable to every single human because we’re gonna be talking about the power of relationships. And if you do relationships well, how you can use those to grow your business through. My favorite thing in the world, referrals. And it doesn’t matter.
AJV (00:50):
I don’t care what business you’re in most business today, regardless of what you hear out there online is not because somebody found you on a Google search. It’s not because they heard you on a podcast or on Instagram. Most business still today, yes, in 2024 is still done by referral. It’s because someone said, I know who you should meet. I know who you should go to. And that is because you have a great reputation. ’cause You have a great business. And also mostly because you told people about what you do. And please tell your friends, right? Those are referrals. That is the power of it. But referrals only happen when you have great relationships. And so if you wanna grow your business without having to spend paid traffic, money, or advertising, and you wanna have some good freeway of growing your business, then today, right now, this is the episode that you want to listen to.
AJV (01:41):
So now let me introduce you
AJV (02:27):
She is the CEO of re collective. It’s a boutique brokerage in Southern California, although I am trying to recruit her to Nashville, Tennessee. So we’ll see how well that goes
BB (03:08):
Oh my gosh, aj, thank you so much. I, I can’t tell you how much that introduction means to me. And I agree a thousand percent with every single thing you said. I love it when I’m actually talking to someone who gets it, and I don’t have to convince them to understand why they should listen to this message. So I’m so excited to have this conversation today.
AJV (03:27):
Yeah. You know, I think one of the things that I notice all the time even internally at Brand Builders Group, but also through a long time of doing sales training in my former life, is like everyone knows that getting referrals is a powerful part of your business. But yet there’s this hesitation, there’s this reluctance sometimes for people to do the hard work of asking for referral. And somehow we convince ourselves that meeting strangers on the street or on the internet is somehow easier or better than actually getting referrals from clients, friends, family, or whoever. And so I’d really love to talk to you about, like, as we kind of get started, is a a little bit about the mindset around, even if we know that getting and asking for referrals is one of the fastest ways to grow our business, why don’t people do it? Like, what’s the hangup here?
BB (04:19):
Yeah. Well, I love that. And it is, it is a thousand percent true. And I, you know, I’m in the middle of writing my first book, which I’m very excited about. And as I’m talking to these publishers, I’m telling them like, you know, every single business book out there, every single business book I’ve read, no matter what strategy hack, no matter what system they’re teaching somewhere in the book, it is bound to say at the end of a chapter. But you know what, it’s actually all about relationships. But no one actually tells you how to do it, right? Like, they all know that’s the foundation of every successful business, but very few know how to focus it and make it a priority and and really leverage those relationships. So to your question, what I would say is the issue is that people look at, well, if I’m going to leverage a relationship or ask for a referral from a friend or family member, I’m crossing that line.
BB (05:15):
I’m being salesy. I don’t wanna be pushy. And what I always say is, you will never be a pushy salesman if you’re making it about them. Number one, pushy salespeople make that about themselves. And the reason you are not comfortable asking for that referral, the reason you are not comfortable asking your friends and family is because you haven’t been given permission to do so by yourself. You haven’t built that relationship to a point where you have absolute permission to ask that referral. That’s really what it comes down to. Once you have that permission, once you’ve built up enough in that trust department with that person, you will have no problem calling up AJ and saying, Hey friend, I need your help. Can you do me a favor? And then it just becomes this natural byproduct. ’cause You know, you’ve built that relationship, a real relationship to the level where you get comfortable asking,
AJV (06:13):
Okay, so I love this. So I think this is really important ’cause I think a lot of people talk about building relationships in business, but no one really says, well, what do you mean by that? Like, what is a real relationship? And how do you know when you’ve crossed that threshold of now I have permission to go and ask for help, ask for referrals? Is it like a timeframe? Is it like, is there like some like checklist we can do here?
BB (06:40):
Oh my gosh, that’s so great. So first it starts with the foundation of what I describe as real relationships equal referrals, right? You’ve gotta have real relationships. What does real mean? Well, real is relatable. You engage, you are authentic and you listen. That’s how you build a real relationship. You’re relatable, you engage, you’re authentic, and you listen. And when you do that with enough people over time, you start developing those real relationships. I want you to think about any relationship you have right now, whether it be a friend, whether it be a family member, whether it be your best clients. You probably can go through that framework and go, wow, I’ve done all these things. I am authentic with them. I do engage with them, I do listen. And then it comes down to when you, when you talk about when are you ready to ask for that referral?
BB (07:31):
I like to te teach a simple framework that talks about how you have to make deposits before you make withdrawals. So I talked about that trust account. Right now, there’s no scientific formula, there’s no check the box, but it’s a feeling that you just know. It’s that feeling when you open up your phone and you’re not afraid to text AJ and check in on her and ask her for something or ask her for help, where you’re not afraid to pick up the phone and make that call to that person. And how you do that is you focus on making deposits. And once you’ve made enough deposits, it’s just like a good old bank account friend. You can’t go to the ATM if there’s no balance there to withdraw any money. And so that’s, it’s the same way with relationships. If you have not built up a balance in that, that relationship account, you can’t take any withdrawals.
BB (08:14):
You don’t have permission to ask. And it’s, it’s the, it’s the self-awareness we all need. I do it too, in my career that I came from, before I developed my keynote speaking career and my all my passions to do this, I would open up my phone to text a client and I would look and the last time I text them was a year ago. Hmm. So even if I wanted to ask that client to help me out with something I didn’t have permission to, and I knew it, versus my best clients who I engage with all the time, who I am there for them all the time, I have no problem. Again, calling up AJ and saying, Hey friend, I need your help. Can you help me with something? So really comes down to real relationships and building up that trust account.
AJV (08:58):
Okay. So this is a great topic ’cause I hear this all the time. It’s like, well how many people can you honestly do that with? You know? And it’s like, I even think about myself. It’s like, yeah, it’s like most of the people that I would probably go to to ask for referrals, I’m like, eh, it might have, it might be a minute since I’ve actually last engaged. You know? And so I think a lot of that is like, what are some tips of going like, Hey, here’s how you set up. Like these are the relationships you invest this amount of time in. Not, and again, not to get referrals, but it’s like, hey, these are vested relationships that I’m in gonna be intentional about. And what, how often should we be engaging and what does that look like? And, and then honestly just some ideas around efficiencies of going, when there’s so many things vying for our attention, how do we kind of put some blinders on and go, this is what I’m gonna do with this group of people.
BB (09:48):
I love everything you said. And it does come down to having a system, which is why I built the RELATE framework. And the relate framework starts with the relationship foundation, the relational mindset. It goes into establishing trust, leveraging your network, authentically engaging, taking thoughtful action, and then executing effective systems. That framework is the system. Now, we clearly in this short time in a podcast do not have time to go through the system, but I wanna focus on that LI wanna focus on how you leverage your network. Mm-Hmm.
BB (10:36):
So these are not just a bunch of information you’ve compiled over time inside that network, you have a bunch of people. And you’re absolutely right aj. We cannot focus on all the people the same way. We can’t stay in contact with all the people in the same way. And I have lots of strategies where you can stay in consistent contact for those, if you will lower level people in your database. ’cause What I teach is a ranking system. I teach you to rank your database, rank your relationships, just like we rank restaurants on Yelp and open table and do reviews. And it’s a simple five star system. Hmm. So once you develop that five star system and once you rank those relationships, then I teach a frequency formula for staying in contact with them. Because let’s face it, if I am one of your best clients, you should be in touch with me frequently.
BB (11:26):
If I’m one of your best relationships, you should be in touch with me frequently. And so when I teach the five star system, I teach also a simple frequency formula of five star people. Those are your advocates. Those are your walking talking billboards. You are in touch with them at least once a month. And please understand, these are not five minute phone calls. These are not long drawn out messages. These are simply aj Hey, thinking about you today, how are you and Rory doing? I saw you went on a Disney cruise. How was it? Looks like it was a blast send. That is a connection. Point four star people. These are your raving fans. These are the people that really love you, but they’re just not quite those, you know, referring type people that are constantly sharing you everywhere. Those people you’re in touch with every 60 days, three stars.
BB (12:17):
These are the people that you’re connected to. Those people you’re in touch with every 90 days. Two stars and one star is, two stars are your acquaintances. Every 120 days. And then one star. You can’t have a mailing list. You can have a bunch of information you’ve collected over time from potential clients and customers, but you don’t really know who they are. Mm-Hmm. Those people. That’s your mailing list. That’s your drip campaign or whatever other kind of marketing campaigns. So if you follow that and those advocates, those people that are most likely to refer you if they’re hearing from you 12 times a year in an authentic way where you’re looking to connect and deepen the relationship and you’re making it all about them, I promise you, when it comes time and you need something, you’re gonna be comfortable asking.
AJV (13:03):
Yeah. I love that. And I, you know, it’s interesting because I read somewhere that you, you had mentioned it’s like most people aren’t comfortable asking for referrals ’cause they’re not comfortable with themselves.
BB (13:16):
Yep.
AJV (13:17):
So, well, and I do think that’s true and a lot of, like, as I think through some of the people that I’m like, if you just asked for referrals, your business would be so much, you know, better in terms of how you feel about how things are going. It wouldn’t be so stressful. So what do you mean by that? It’s like when you think about if you’ve got a reluctance to ask someone for help, right? And in this instance for a referral, then there’s probably a disconnect with yourself. Like, can you walk us through that a little bit?
BB (13:41):
Yeah. It’s the r it’s the relational foundation and the, and the foundation of that is that you cannot have an authentic relationship with anyone else before you have an authentic relationship with yourself. And the reason I say that is because you have to know who you are. You have to know the value you bring to the table. You have to be confident in what you are delivering is something that people need. When people say, I don’t wanna ask my friends and family for a referral, I always turn it around on them in this way, let’s say you are an insurance agent and you don’t tell your friends and family that you need them to connect you to people who need honest advice, good, good plans, not gonna rip them off all the things. And then their friend goes and gets insurance from someone else and gets mistreated, isn’t well taken care of.
BB (14:36):
God forbid the accident happens and they don’t have the coverage they need that’s on you because you weren’t confident enough to ask the friend or family member to en you know, engage with you to deliver that referral so that you could take care of that person. So it all comes down to the confidence within ourselves and, and how we show up. And honestly, aj, most people are taught to show up as a salesperson. Hmm. They’re not taught to show up as who they are, which is why I love the work Brand Builders group does because it teaches people to understand who they are, to understand that they are their marketing department. It is your personal brand is the marketing of the future. And so you can’t have that be a strong marketing department if you don’t love who you are. Hmm. So it all starts with building that authentic relationship with yourself before you can start developing with others. It’s why the first chapter in the book is all about, we gotta shore up our house first, which is us before we can put any kind of system to work.
AJV (15:36):
Yeah. You know, that’s so true. And I can think of so many instances in my life where people have asked me for referrals, and it comes from a genuine place of I know I’m gonna do a fantastic job for them. Like, if, if you refer them to me, I will take care of them. Right. And it gives me a lot of confidence because, you know, the truth is, is people are asking for stuff all the time. Mm-Hmm.
BB (16:45):
I could not agree with you more. It all starts with us. It all starts with what we’re doing, how we’re doing it. Loving yourself, knowing that you are really good at what you do, and that you’re gonna take really good care of people because that’s who you are. And then the rest just kind of falls into place from there. But we gotta fix who we are first. I went through a very, how I kind of stumbled honestly across this is I went through a very authentic journey with my hair. Go follow me on social media. You’ll see all about it. And the next thing I heard from everybody was, Barb, you’re so much more confident now all my friends, you’re so much more confident now. And I’m like, I didn’t just put this hair on my head and become confident overnight that person was in me, that I had to learn to love that person. I had to let my own walls down. And you know what? I am more confident calling people now. I am more confident walking into appointments. I am more confident on this podcast as a result. But it’s because I fixed my relationship with myself first. That frankly, I didn’t even know I had a problem with
AJV (17:47):
No, I love that. And I think that is for mo for the, for the most cases. And I bet for the majority of people, the reason you don’t ask for referrals is probably one of two reasons. One, you don’t, you’re not completely convicted and what you’re doing or how you’re doing it, right. Because if you were truly convicted then you would be like, I can’t not. Yeah. I can’t not. Yeah. And there’s so many examples. But you gotta do that deep work. And sometimes until you do the deep work, you’re like, oh wait, what I do is awesome. Yeah. What I do is amazing. And I think a lot of people don’t give themselves enough opportunity to go, no, I do a great job. I do a better job than most. And that means something.
BB (18:30):
Yeah. I, you know, it’s interesting you say that because when I think back to my sales career, there’s so many times early in my career where I’m like, I should be helping more people. I’m really good at what I do. Why am I not helping more people? And I realize it’s ’cause I’m not asking for business. You know, people aren’t lying awake at night deciding and wondering how I’m doing in my business. You think they are, but they’re not. And most people want to help you. That’s why I love in my dialogues, I teach, can you do me a favor? I don’t know anyone who would call me that. I have a real relationship with always that foundation where if they say, Hey Barb, can you do me a favor? Then I’m not gonna be like, absolutely. What do you need? How can I help
AJV (19:13):
Ask? That’s so true. So I think that is like, that’s probably half of the people and then I think the other half of the people genuinely just don’t know how to ask. Yeah. Can we talk about that for second? We absolutely can talk about that. Let’s say you’re that person who goes, I know I deliver a bombshell product or service. I feel great about it. But I don’t really know how to ask. So I don’t, it’s like I want to, but what do I do? What do I say?
BB (19:40):
Well, let’s start with one foundational principle that we haven’t talked about yet. When you are asking someone for business, you are not selling to them. You are selling through them.
AJV (19:51):
Mm. That’s good. Like
BB (19:52):
One thing I wanna talk about, because that’s another reason people are like, well Myer, whoever it is, I don’t want to sell to them. I don’t wanna be a salesperson. You’re not, you know where I came from? I came from the real estate world. I have plenty of friends, family, and clients who are never going to sell their home because they love the home they live in. I’m not calling them to get them to sell their home. I’m selling through them to leverage their network. So when you’re reaching out to that person, it’s, Hey friend, hey aj, whoever it is, and you use those magic words. Can you do me a favor? When you say, can you do me a favor? You instantly have their attention. You instantly have their wanting to help. Then you say something to the effect of, can you do me a favor?
BB (20:36):
You know, and tell them something about what’s going on in your world. Like tell them why you need their help. Tell them you have a great new product you need to roll out. Tell them that the industry is in need of this. And then say something to the effect of when you come across. Because then you’re not making it like, I need that referral right now because Right. How have you ever been in front of a financial advisor that are famous for this, where you sit in front of them and they have a piece of paper and at the end of the appointment they slide it over and say, can you give me three names and phone numbers of people that could use my services?
BB (21:14):
Let’s not do that. But when you say, can you do me a favor? When you come across, insert what you want, you have to be specific about what you want. You can’t just say someone who needs insurance. You’ve got to be specific about what you want. When you come across someone who has a business and doesn’t understand how powerful their personal brand might be, who wants to leverage who they are, who wants to find out all the goodness about them, then I would love you. And then here’s the magic words. Don’t use the word referral. I have seen this time and time again where you say, I need a referral. And no one even knows what it means. How to do it. Like, do they have to be qualified? Do they have to be ready to go? Do they have to be ready to buy?
BB (21:57):
No. I just want you to introduce or connect me to them. Don’t say both words
AJV (22:48):
BB (23:00):
I always like to be clear, a referral is when I teach and train, I use the referral. Every other word. A referral is what you want for sure. Internally, it’s
AJV (23:09):
Not what you ask for is
BB (23:10):
What you ask for. And can you use the word referral? Absolutely. There’s something now if you’re talking to another business owner, they’re gonna know exactly what to do. But when you’re talking to this everyday person in the street, they’re like, how do I do it? When do I do it? And the other thing is, some industries are very locked tight in their rules and regulations. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (23:41):
So do you think it’s best to get quality referrals? Do you think it’s best to do it like on a phone call in person? Do you think it’s okay to do it in a text, an email? Like what are some of the mediums that’s most successful?
BB (23:56):
Love that. It goes back to my philosophy of any way that someone can respond to you. Hmm.
AJV (24:01):
That’s good. Meaning.
BB (24:02):
So I call, so when I’m teaching people how to do their activities and how to do their, you know, connection, strategy and their frequency formula, I always say outgoing connections. You’ve got to use your telephone for what it’s meant to be. Outgoing messages. Like you initiate the phone call, you initiate the text message. But here’s the other great part. We have so many other ways in today’s day and age. We have Facebook messaging, we have Instagram messaging, we have video chats, BombBomb, like there’s a million different ways you can do it as long as they have a way to respond to you. So for instance, I’m a big personal note gal. I believe in handwritten notes. I believe in the power of them. It’s another strategy I teach where I teach take thoughtful action. But they can’t, I don’t ask for a referral in a note.
BB (24:46):
Mm-Hmm.
AJV (25:14):
I think that’s so good. And I think that’s true. It’s like if you call someone and you catch ’em completely off guard and they’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I’m not ready for this. But I think again, all of that is just having a plan and a system which just takes some thought and some intentionality. Well,
BB (25:28):
It’s having a real relationship. ’cause You know them. So I always use the example of my best friend in the world as a kindergarten teacher. So if I’m doing my lead generation calls, if I’m doing my connection plan at Tuesday at 10:00 AM and I call her, she’s gonna answer the phone ’cause I’m her best friend and she’s gonna be like, are you okay? Because she would know that, why would I call and bug her Tuesday at 10:00 AM Mm-Hmm.
AJV (25:52):
That’s good. I think a lot of that she’s get, again, back to when you know someone, you know their communication habits and preferences and you know what works. Yeah. But I think that comes back to that real relationship of referrals aren’t technically from strangers, they’re from people, you know. So then here that leads to another question then. So if you don’t know someone exceptionally well that they’re a client or they’re a friend or a family member, like how do you go about generating, you know, potential referrals from those people? It’s like, do you have to be BFF with these people? Like do you have to be clients with them? So what’s kind of the dividing line there?
BB (26:32):
The dividing line is that that’s why you apply the connection strategy. When you apply the connection strategy. When you are being in consistent contact with them. You don’t ask them at that nine the first time you message them. You don’t ask them for a referral. You’re just simply trying to make their day. I have a mindset of your outgoing connection plan when you are doing your, if you will, see, to me, lead generation is not just asking for business. You’re gonna ask for business when the time comes and the time’s. Right? Mm-Hmm.
BB (27:10):
So you’re gonna respond back and be like, oh my god, Barb, it was so great. The kids had such a great time. And then you might say something like, Hey, how are you? Like, I always teach people, sometimes we are not taking the opportunity to ask when they’ve given us permission to mm-hmm.
BB (27:49):
Thanks for checking in. Hope you guys are doing well. Great. You log that. I’m a big tracker of activity. I’m a big believer of you cannot measure what you do not track, which is what I teach in the effective systems category. You’ve gotta track what you do. And so you’re gonna track that as a connection. Great. You made a connection to aj. Then 90 days later, if you use a good CRM like I teach you to 90 days later it’s gonna pop back up and tell you guess what time to connect with AJ again. You’re gonna connect with AJ again and before you know it, you’re gonna start showing up in their life so that you get that permission to ask for the business. But layered in throughout that entire process and throughout your entire database is a concept of you’ve got to be marketing to them.
BB (28:31):
There is still good old fashioned marketing. You’ve gotta have valuable marketing in front of them that positions you as the best in your industry. Because I believe that people do not do business with you till they know you like you and trust you. Everyone knows that. But what people don’t understand is there’s a gap between like and trust. Just because someone knows you and likes you, they don’t necessarily trust you as a professional till you give them a reason to. So layering And it’s like, it’s like a layering plan. It’s like a farmer. They don’t just, you know, water and get, you know, crops. They have to fertile this. They have to create the soil, they have to aerate it, they have to lay the seeds, they Right. It’s a layering effect. Yeah. So this system, relationship marketing does not work overnight. It, that’s number one does not work overnight. But what I can promise you is you start doing this now and you do this enough over time, you will get to the point where you have to do nothing else. Which is when you know you’ve really made it. It’s when your business feels good, you love doing it. You love who you’re doing it with. And so you can get to that point with, with, if you will, I wouldn’t say strangers, but people that don’t know you as well as you might know your other people. Yeah.
AJV (29:41):
And I love that. And I think one of the things that I kinda wanna circle back to, ’cause so much of what you’re talking about is as the person who is trying to generate business, you really have to know exactly who you wanna be introduced to. Yes. You have to know who you wanna be referred to. Like everything you just said, it’s like you can get to the point where you love what you do all day, every day. And you love who you do it with. Well, you know what, you get to create that. Yeah. Like if you’re getting referrals from people that you’re like, man, I just want 10 more people like you or 20 more people like you. It’s like they likely know them. Yeah. So it’s like, but we gotta know exactly who it is that we’re looking for. And I don’t think most of us spend, spend near enough time going, these are the demographics and psychographics of my ideal client. This is who it’s easy for me to serve, it’s natural for me to serve. It doesn’t even feel like work. But then I think the other part is, I think often many of us have so much scarcity mindset that we take any lead, any referral off the street. Yeah. And then we’re miserable. Yeah. And we have built a business full of people that we’re like, man, I I I don’t love this. Yes.
BB (30:44):
Well, I always say when those people come up in your database and you like want to avoid them like the plague, they’re not a relationship. You need to move them down in your database. But you are so correct. You have to know exactly who you are talking to and exactly what you want and what you said about I just want 10 more of you. I use that all the time. I always say, you know what, good people, no good people. Mm-Hmm.
BB (31:26):
Can you duplicate yourself? Who else do you know that’s just like you? And I promise you that works. ’cause They do know good people just like them. And then they also know that the other people that they’re not gonna refer you to because they’re not nice humans. Right. And so I think knowing who you are, and that’s why I love the work that Brand Builders group does, is that it really does help you niche down to who that ideal client avatar is. And it doesn’t mean that you don’t serve people on the peripheral. It doesn’t mean that they, if they fit a little bit outside of the demographic that they’re not still gonna be great clients. But it does help you get laser focused in who you’re looking for and asking for. For sure.
AJV (32:05):
Well, and for the person who’s being asked, when you’re clear, it makes it so much easier for me to go, I know exactly someone that you need to meet. I know exactly who you need to talk to. I just, like, as you were talking, I was thinking about two recent experiences that I had in different, you know, business, you know, kind of association groups. And both of them happened probably within a few weeks of each other. And this one woman was doing like a general ask in like a, a group setting for referrals. And her business was hyp hypnotic weight loss. And she was talking about how it’s like, this could work with anyone who has had problems of, you know, historical problems, of trying all these different fad diets and they just don’t work. And she was like, so anyone that you know who was looking to lose weight, I would love, I would love to hear from you.
AJV (32:58):
And I thought to myself, I know like a thousand people who’d like to lose weight, but it’s like, I don’t know anyone that would probably be like hypnosis. I wanna try that
AJV (33:47):
She has most likely put herself second for far too long. She is working and she is pulled in many directions. She has gone up and down with her weight for her entire life. This is someone who has struggled with it since childhood. She went on and on and on. And literally as she was talking, I was like, I know two people you have to meet. Like I have two people that I need them to meet you. And it was like Ashley was talking, it was like, I almost got emotional of going like, if you could genuinely help this person, I know it would be life changing for so many people in our lives. And the first one I was going, I mean maybe, but I don’t know. And this, and it was like, they were very similar conversations and they were both kind of non-traditional methods. But the second one, she was so clear on her and she, the way she described the person, it was like she was describing this person I know in my life. And I was like, how do I get them in touch with you? Like, what do I do?
BB (34:45):
She painted the picture in your brain. She painted the picture of someone that you know, and that you are absolutely crap. You have to be specific. You cannot be general. Because generality is going to get you nowhere because I’m not gonna be able to think of that person. I hate the word anyone.
AJV (35:11):
Maybe, maybe. I don’t even
BB (35:13):
Know if he has a business. Right? Like yeah. It, it definitely being specific. And then again, this is all about planting the seed. This is all about, you know, the person may not know someone right now, but you’ve now planted that who in their brain so that when they do come across that person, they’re gonna be like aj. The number one thing that, again, the valuable marketing, developing the trust, everything else that I teach gets you to, is top of mind awareness. Yeah. You wanna be the first person they think of in the category you serve. If you can get to that point with enough people, you, I promise you will have more business than you know what to do with and when you can figure out, and this is a whole nother conversation for another day, but when you can figure out who those referring type people are, like barbettes, when you get enough of me in the world who’s a natural born referer and connector
AJV (36:00):
Promoter. Promoter, yeah. You need promoters. Listen,
BB (36:04):
I just have to know who you want and I will connect you with more people than you probably not can handle. ’cause We all want more business, but you’re gonna have a very successful, thriving business. And it gets down to my number one outcome I love to create for people. I always say that salespeople, people in sales, whether you’re an entrepreneur, a business owner, or just on a sales team, most people love what they do. They love serving the client they love providing the value and transforming someone’s life. I don’t know any salesperson that doesn’t love the product or the service they sell. Mm. Most salespeople hate how they have to do it. Mm. They hate the generating of the leads the way they think they have to do it. And when you start learning to love building relationships and having all of this communication and conversations and everything that I’ve talked about and you love what you do, then you have a business that you wake up to every day and you are ready to serve, you’re ready to go. You live a better life. It’s just a better way to do business. It’s a better way to live your life.
AJV (37:07):
I love that. You know, and one of the things that you said certainly earlier that you just made me think of is knowing how to ask of the medium. Like as you were just talking, it’s like I was literally putting myself in the shoes of how often I get asked for stuff. Like, Hey, do you know anyone who you know builds websites can do blah, blah, blah? You know, all the time. Right. And I, one, I’m a promoter as well. I love to refer good talent because I know it’s really hard to find really great talent. And you know, it’s like made me think about this story I just shared about like these two, you know, totally similar but polar opposite examples and the first one. So they were just like, yep, you just give me names, emails, and phone numbers. And I was like, probably not doing that.
AJV (37:51):
But the second one when she was like, Hey, and I, I literally approached her and said, I do know someone how, how do I connect you? And she goes, actually, it’s never good to just connect someone that you think needs to lose weight. And I was like, that’s great idea. Don’t, I should not do that. So what, what do you do here? And she goes, I have a great strategy. Just tell me who they are. I will connect them on Facebook. I will tell them how much you were talking about them today and say, I was so impressed with the way that AJ talked about you. I looked you up on Facebook and wanted to connect. I’m like, I am. It’s brilliant. And it made me think about when you really know what you do, love what you do, you’re convicted in what you do and you know who you’re meant to serve. It’s like you also know how to approach the person. And it took so much pressure off of me. All I had to do is give the name and say Yep, that’s the person on Facebook that that’s them. Yeah. And she said, I got it from here. I’ll let you know. Yeah. And I’m like, could not be easier in the world. And that’s, I think a part of it. You’ve gotta make it easy for me to give you a referral.
BB (38:52):
Yeah. It’s, it’s so, you’re so true. That’s why I love the introductions and I teach in my world, I teach people just, you know, introduce us in a group text message and I’ll take it from there. Right. It very simple. I’ll take it from there. Just open up your phone and say, Hey aj, hey Barb, you guys need to know each other. This is who AJ is, this is who Barb is. I’ll let you two take it from here and let me do my work from there. It’s my job to then take it from there. It’s not send ’em to a website, have ’em fill out a form, have ’em take a questionnaire and then blah, blah blah, blah, blah. No, it’s as simple as find the mechanism to make the introduction. And if it is something as simple, ’cause you know, weight loss I would agree is something very personal.
AJV (39:30):
BB (39:30):
It’s kind of like me texting AJ going, aj you know what? You really could lose some weight and I’ve got the person for you. I know that sounds awful
AJV (39:40):
But I love that. It’s like, you know, it’s like it made it so easy and simple and I’m like, well that’s all I have to do. I probably could think of some more people. Right. And it’s like a lot of that is the easier it is that you make it, the easier it is for me to just go ahead and take action. Yeah. Right. And so I know that we’re almost outta time here, but there’s like two other quick things that I wanna talk about because I do think this plays a huge role and a lot of like how we just functioned today. And you mentioned it earlier when you said like, you know, Facebook and, you know, different social media. So how, how does social media play a role in the building, maintaining of relationships, but referrals? Like how does that all work together? What do you see?
BB (40:21):
Social media is the biggest gift given to anyone in sales in modern times. You’re just not using it effectively. Hmm.
AJV (40:27):
Love that.
BB (40:27):
First thing I recommend is you go through your list of relationships and you make sure you are connected to and following and friending every single person in your ecosystem. And then you start paying attention and then you start having conversations. I I, when I teach social media, I in the authentically engaged section of Relate, I always tell people there’s two ways to do social media. One is of course posting and posting reels and things like that. And that’s great to find people you don’t, stories is where you wanna live. For the people that you do know. Stories is the most effective way that I know that you can broadcast to your entire list of relationships in one conversation and stories, if they’re done correctly, start conversations. And I can’t tell you how many conversations, outgoing connections, dms I have done through stories. It is powerful because it’s the best way to stay in touch on, stay in touch with someone in their life.
BB (41:26):
‘Cause They’re sharing it and someone can stay in touch with you in your life and know what you’re doing on a daily basis. I always say the simple strategy of document your day, what do you do from morning to night? Four or five stories. It will start conversations you never could have imagined. So social media is a gift. It’s a gift if it’s used effectively. And it has to be a system. It has to be something you do consistently. Nothing that I have said is going to work if you do it one time. People are like, well, I did the referral thing, I did the introduction thing, I asked and I got nothing. I’m like, oh great. You did it one time. Yeah. I called them once a year. I haven’t called them in 13 months and they still haven’t given me a referral. I don’t understand why doesn’t work like that.
AJV (42:10):
Well, and I love that too. It’s like, and I think there’s so much of this is such a mentality shift, right? It’s a mentality shift of do you believe that your product or service actually helps other people? And if you do, then it is a requirement of you to tell people about it. Right? It it like, and it’s like, I I think that’s a mentality shift. I think what you just said is a mentality shift of like, social media is a gift. I cannot tell you how many people I hear on a daily basis. Like, social media’s the devil, it’s the devil
BB (42:45):
Because how you’re using it, it’s,
AJV (42:46):
Yeah. And I love that. It’s like if you treat it like a business tool, then it will help your business. Right? And it’s like, if you’re only following a bunch of like horrible newsfeed, well then it probably does feel like the devil, right? It’s, but it’s like all about how you use it. And I love that this approach of like, it’s a gift. It’s a way to maintain relationships, stay in touch with people, start conversations. So I, I would love to hear from you like what are some effective things to be posting in this relationship maintenance kind of realm?
BB (43:19):
Yeah. Well, I always say back to what you were saying, people are telling you everything you need to know online. The question is, are you listening? Mm. Are you going to social media to listen and engage? Are you going just to social media to promote yourself?
AJV (43:33):
Love it. There’s
BB (43:34):
A huge difference there. So what can you post? Well, you need to make sure, and, and you’re gonna love this because this is all goes down to your personal brand. Social media needs to be 90% about you as a human who happens to do blank. Mm-Hmm.
BB (44:23):
Yeah. And then when you get into the evening and the morning time, it’s a little bit more of your personal life. And when you start showing off what you’re doing in a thoughtful way, that’s when people start to get obsessed with what you do. And they learn very clearly what you do. And then if you a adopt a real strategy, and there’s plenty of really great social media experts out there and gurus that teach this, but if you adopt a real strategy where you’re actually creating content for your ideal client, now you’ve got this whole mechanism to generate other leads. ’cause I am not saying that relationship based marketing is the only way to do business and that you should drop everything else that you’re doing. I’m saying that you should get to the point where you don’t have to do mm-Hmm.
AJV (45:01):
BB (45:02):
But everything in business works if you do it consistently. You just have to do it consistently. So if you do a real strategy to start attracting some other business, some if you will, cold, not really cold, but people you don’t know, strangers, to your point now you’ve got this really healthy balance of focusing on relationships and driving some attention to. ’cause If I promise you, if you jump into the reals world and you know who your ideal client is and you position it correctly, I’m seeing some significant growth in businesses using reels and social media and combining it with talking to the people that you already know.
AJV (45:38):
I love that. And I think, again, everyone who’s listening, it’s like if you, if you’re one of those people that’s like, oh, I hate social media, it’s like shift your mindset around though this is a business tool. So treat it like one. All right, last question and the, the last couple of minutes we have here, and I think this is I think this will be applicable to a lot of people, and I, and I hope that this is helpful, but one of the things that I hear a lot is, well, my business is new, so I don’t have any clients to ask for referrals from. So what do I do then? So what is your advice to the person who’s in a new endeavor? They maybe don’t have any clients yet, and they’re going, yeah, I’d love to have a referral based business. But they’re, I don’t have any of that tangible proof yet. I don’t have any longstanding clients. What’s your advice to them?
BB (46:30):
You absolutely do have a database. ’cause You have a list of relationships. I don’t want you in any way, shape or form to think anything I said is just for past clients. It’s for your list of relationships. It’s for the people who already know you and like you. So that’s the first thing you’re gonna do. You’re gonna create a database of people that know you and like you, I always tell new business owners, the best way to do this is think about your getting married or think about your daughters having a baby or whatever it may be, or your holiday card list. Like who would you send an important thing in your life to? That is your database. That is,
AJV (47:05):
That’s good. I love that holiday list tip. It’s like they’re on your Christmas card list and you’re on, they’re on your database. They,
BB (47:12):
You, you have, I hope you’re not sending Christmas cards to random strangers. That would be weird. So you have a list of relationships, start there. That’s a
AJV (47:20):
Great place to start.
BB (47:21):
And what I want you to do is simply rank those relationships by level of relationship even though that you have not done business with them. Just who do you know the best in your life Down to who’s like, eh, that’s my husband’s colleague at work, their family. Mm-Hmm.
BB (48:08):
Mm. But I promise you, the foundation of people that already know you and like you and love you as a human or loved you in your past life are gonna be the first people to trust you if you give them a reason to. But you have to start giving them a reason to. And you also need to call those people, those five star people and just be honest with them. Be honest with them. Hey, I need your help. You know, I’ve started this new business. This is who my ideal client is. When you come across someone, can you introduce, start asking the question. You’ll be amazed if they loved you for who you are. They’re gonna love you for what you do now. And some businesses that might take more time, don’t get me wrong. Some businesses you just became, you know got your series seven and you’re gonna be a financial advisor. Well, yeah, before I refer you, someone with a million dollar portfolio, that might take a little bit more time. Yeah. But if you start laying the foundation now, you will reap the reward in the end. But you’ve gotta start with that list of people that already know you and like you. And then remember what I talked about? The gap. That gap you’ve gotta close into trust.
AJV (49:09):
Yeah. This is so good. This is so helpful. And if you’ve been a hermit for the last three years, it’s time to come out of your shell.
BB (49:21):
Be a secret salesperson.
AJV (49:27):
I love this. Barb, if people wanna connect with you where should they go? And I know that you have this awesome lead magnet. We’ll talk about it in a second. And if you guys are like a lead magnet, it’s like, yeah, if you guys want to get some really awesome free stuff, you can sign up for that. It’s a free lead magnet. But before we talk about that, if people just wanna like, follow you, get to know you, like, where should they go?
BB (49:49):
Instagram’s my jam. I love Instagram. I’m on Instagram every day in the story. So just my name at Barb Betts, also Facebook, of course, LinkedIn. I’m on all the platforms underneath my name. I love new conversations. I love talking to new people. So as they say, I know this is, I gotta figure aj, we, we together need to figure out another way to say, slide into my dms. Like I cannot stand that, but I totally appear in my dms, surprise me in my dms. Oh, wow.
AJV (50:20):
Yes. That’s awesome.
BB (50:22):
But yeah,
AJV (50:24):
Well, I would second like, follow on Instagram. What’s your Instagram handle
BB (50:27):
At Barb Betts?
AJV (50:29):
At Barb Betts. And we’ll put that in the show notes. I follow you on Insta, so I, I would highly recommend it. And then as I mentioned, there’s also this awesome free resource that Barb has made available. And if you go to barb betts.com/authenticity you can sign up for this free, awesome resource. So, Barb, tell us what it is.
BB (50:51):
Yeah. So it starts with back to that first pillar of the foundation, of the framework, the relational mindset. And it starts with, you can’t have an authentic relationship with anyone else. So you have ’em with yourself. So it’s my authenticity blueprint that will get you on your way to building that authentic relationship with yourself and goes through my framework on how to do that. So you can start showing up as the real you and start impressing and infecting everyone with all your goodness so that they’re compelled to work with you.
AJV (51:16):
Love that. So go to bar beds.com/authenticity. This has been a fantastic conversation. All of you should have a little bit of a new renewed enthusiasm for getting out there and getting referrals. And a stick around for the recap episode. We’ll talk more about it there. And we will catch you next time on the influential Personal brand. We’ll see you later.
Ep 455: The Secret to Self-Worth | Erwin McManus Episode Recap
RV (00:07):
Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview. As always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free, and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions, and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to, to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brandbuildersgroup.com slash podcall brand buildersgroup.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:52):
What a powerful conversation with the legendary Erwin McManus. I mean, this guy is one. He is, I think one of the wisest teachers that we’ve got in on the planet today. And just so honored to get to become his friend, you know, have him become a client, get to interview him here for you. And, and you can just, you can just see that there is a just a level of spiritual wisdom, like spiritual intelligence and, and emotional intelligence from knowing how the world operates and knowing how people operate and how, how we’re wired and what are the things that we do to self-sabotage, and what are the things that we can, we can do to increase the likelihood of our success. And so I wanna, I want to recap and, and extend a couple of the things that I learned from Irwin in that specific interview that are sticking with me.
RV (01:47):
And, and also, you know, when I think of the mindset shifts that need to take place, of course, we, you know, the interview was promoting his, his, his book mind Shift. And when I think of some of the key mindset shifts that need to take place for someone to build a great personal brand, be a great entrepreneur, and, and really maximize and achieve their God-given potential I wanna I wanna share three of those with you today that, that were kind of inspired by Erwin. So first one is, I loved when he was talking about don’t be a prisoner of praise. I really align with that. I think so many of us are playing for the applause of others. And in reality, I think the applause you should be playing for, first of all, for me, it should be your Heavenly Father, right? It should be this idea that when we get to heaven, he, he says, you know, job well done, right?
RV (02:48):
Like, you loved me, you loved others, and that’s it. Now, separate from that, I, I think it’s playing really for yourself and not meaning that you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re self-centered in the sense of like, you only care about winning yourself. But I think what, what matters is that you need to be proud of yourself. You need to be proud of yourself. It really shouldn’t make that much difference to you. I don’t think about how other people think of you. And I think some people go their whole lives trying to make like their, their alcoholic parent proud of them. And it’s like, it’s never gonna happen. And it has nothing to do with you. It has to do with them. And why are you spending so much energy and time seeking the approval of somebody else who caress about the approval of someone else? You know what?
RV (03:42):
You don’t need to be successful in life. You don’t need the approval of other people. What you need to be is proud of yourself and confident enough to step forward and do the thing that you feel called to do. Like in some places, there are certain requirements. In some places, there are certain prerequisites, you know, for, for steps that you can take seeking having other people’s approval often is not one of them. And specifically, you know, it’s like an ex-boyfriend or, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a bully in high school, or it’s, it’s like these people who we allow to control our lives by allowing their influence that they once had on us to hold us today stagnant and still stuck in a place of mediocrity when we should be pursuing and expanding and achieving our potential. So I want you to focus on being proud of yourself.
RV (04:39):
And part of being proud of yourself is, is why in my first book, take the Stares, right? We say all the time, like, put your self-esteem in your work habits, not in your results. Like, being proud of yourself is not going, oh, you know, I have a million followers, or I made a million dollars. It’s, it’s being proud of the work that you’re putting in. It’s acknowledging yourself for the things that you’re doing that nobody else sees. And that’s why you have to be your number one cheerleader. You’ve gotta be the person who goes, even if the results aren’t there yet, I’m doing the work, right? I mean, I remember when, when I was speaking 304 times for free at the, you know, in these Perkins restaurants and in these like, you know, trashy comedy clubs on a Tuesday night. Nobody was there giving me applause, but I knew that, I said, you know, if I’m doing this one day, I’m gonna be speaking on stages in front of arenas of people, and it’s, I’m paying the price now to earn that, right?
RV (05:39):
Right. Like when I was, you know, creating my first book proposal and I was writing out the manuscript no, nobody was leaving Amazon reviews saying, oh, this life, this book is life changing. Nobody was there cheering me on, right? Like, well, some, some people were right. I’ve been fortunate to have, you know, my wife, my, my family in very supportive environment. So I I, I have had people cheering me on, but the, the person that matters most is you. You gotta be the person cheering yourself on. When I was in college and people were slamming the doors in my face like I was going, well, that’s okay. I know that if I talk to enough people, somebody’s gonna buy, I’m gonna get paid for every door that is slammed in my face. If I just keep going, you gotta be the person cheering you on.
RV (06:21):
And that’s how you need to think about it. When I say put your self-esteem in your work habits, right? Like, one of the things that I did when I was in college was you know, my, my first summer when I was going door to door, I made like $17,000. And I figured out, you know, that I knocked on whatever it was like th like, there was like 3000 doors, you know, that I had knocked on. And there were like 3000 doors that had slammed the door on me, and we used to keep track of them, right? And so what I, what what I found out is like, oh, I made $17,000 and I, I knocked on 3000 doors, or that told me no, what most people do is they think of going, oh, you know, I had however many hundred, a few hundred customers, and those are the people who paid me.
RV (07:03):
But the game that I played, and I actually wrote a song about this so I’ll, I’ll I sing for you, is I figured out that I actually made $4 every time someone slammed the door on me. ’cause I made $17,000 total in the summer. I knocked on 3000 doors of people who told me no. So that is $4. So rather than thinking, oh, I make money when I make a sale in my, my second summer, I played this game, and whenever somebody would slam the door on me, I would sing the song. I would say, I make $4 because you holler at me, baby every time, every time I you holler, I make four more dollar for me rv. I make lots of money because you yell at me. Thank you for slamming the door on me. Woo-Hoo. Like, that was the silly song that I was singing, and I would actually sing it out loud between doors, right?
RV (07:58):
So if, if somebody had been following me, and every time I knocked on a door they handed me that every time someone slammed the door on my face, if someone handed me $4, I’d be like, that’s amazing. I’m gonna go knock on another door and see if they’ll slam the door on me too. And then here’s $4, here’s $4. That is how it was, right? That is how it is. You’re getting paid for every rejection you’re getting paid for every setback you’re getting paid for. Every time you fail, you’re getting paid for every time. It doesn’t work out. The problem is, there’s nobody standing there handing you the four bucks. You gotta be the one, right? You gotta be the person handing yourself $4. You gotta be the one cheering yourself on. You have to be your the number one cheerleader of your own life.
RV (08:41):
You gotta be reminding yourself, I’m getting paid for all of the work that I’m putting in right now that nobody else sees. If you can’t cheer yourself on, then you’re never gonna make it, because no one’s gonna be there to applaud you. No one’s gonna be there to cheer for you when you’re failing. The only person that’s gonna be there is you and God is. So you better learn how to cheer yourself on. You better figure out a way to play a game or have a mindset shift, or use affirmations or have a mental, you know, paradigm that says, I just made four bucks. I just made 20 bucks. Every time someone slams the door on me, every time someone tells me no, every time I don’t get booked for this, I don’t get invited to that. I’m getting paid. Like, and, and you have to be that person going, I don’t care if I’m not winning right now. I’m putting in the work.
RV (09:31):
I’m doing what it takes. And even if the results never come, I’m so proud of myself. I’m so proud of myself for working when nobody’s watching. I’m so proud of myself for hustling when there is no applause, I’m so proud of myself, right? And then, you know, one day I get inducted into the professional speaking hall of fame when I’m 37 and everyone’s clapping going, oh, you know how cute this guy is so young. And it’s like, dude, I’ve been getting, I’ve been getting rejected and slammed for 20 years, so I might be young in age time, but I’m old in stage time. I’m old in rejection, I’m old in setback. I’ve experienced massive failure and I just cheered myself on through it. And that’s what I would hope for you, right? Because at the end of the day, you won’t care about being in the Hall of fame or having millions of dollars, millions of followers, or been invited to this, that, or whatever.
RV (10:24):
What you’ll be, what you have for the rest of your life is you, you will always be there with you. And so how you think of yourself is what matters, what other people think of you that doesn’t matter. But how you think of yourself matters. You need to be your, your your number one cheerleader. You need, you need to be the person that whose praise that you’re seeking. I want you to work so hard that you become proud of yourself. So that’s a mind mental mindset, mindset shift that needs to happen. Number two, you know, I loved when Irwin said this. He said, at first, you always feel like a fake, right? Whenever you start something new, you feel like a fake. Here’s what you need to know. Here’s what you need to understand. If you’re, if you’re new to something, you’re not a fake, you’re just a beginner, you’re not a fake, you’re just a beginner, right?
RV (11:17):
The first time you pick up a camera to do a photo shoot or edit a video, and you’re like, man, I don’t know what to do. Like, you’re not a fake, you’re just a beginner. Or maybe you’re the person on the other side of the camera and you’re recording your first reel and you’re like, oh my gosh. Like, I don’t, I don’t look anything like Alex Hormoze or Tony Robbins or you know, Oprah. And I’m like, I feel like such a fake, you’re not a fake, you’re not a fake, you’re just a beginner. That’s it. And you can’t, you can’t look at a master and compare what they’re doing with you as a beginner, but just because you’re not yet a master doesn’t mean you’re a fake. They were that way too. I promise you, I promise. Every, every New York Times bestselling author once felt like a fake, every Hall of fame speaker once felt like a fake, every eight figure entrepreneur once felt like a fake ev.
RV (12:02):
Every actor once felt like a fake. Every celebrity once felt like a fake, especially the bigger the goals you’re pursuing, the more you feel like a fake, because the more impossible it feels, and the fewer people around you there are that have ever done that, right? Like you, you might feel like a fake. You’re not a fake, you’re not a fake, you’re just a beginner. You’re just learning. You’re just starting. Give yourself grace again. Be proud of yourself for trying and keep going and, and, and, and, and celebrate your own wins. Be your own cheerleader. Be proud of yourself. You’re not a fake, you’re just a beginner. And then the third thing, you know, Irwin brought this up, which, which I always love when people that are super successful and are like living legends when they talk about this, you know, Irwin said, take the posture of an amateur, take the posture of an amateur.
RV (13:01):
You know, the way, the way that I process that is to go, you have to be willing to always be a beginner. Be willing to always be a beginner. Probably my most famous quote from my first take the Stairs book is, success is never owned. Success is rented, and the rent is due every day. Part of why I said that success is never owned, it’s rented, and the rent is due every day is because it’s true. It’s like, even if you’re a master, you can still be a beginner, right? Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, like you, you hear the stories of how hard they practice. You know, you, you, you of about the amount of energy and time they are Steph Curry shooting free throws and shooting three pointers. Like, yeah, he is a master, and he’s still doing it every single day. He’s paying the rent every single day.
RV (13:50):
You, you, and you, excuse me. You see that behavior modeled by the most successful people in the world in all walks of life. The ones who continue to climb. They allow themselves to always be a beginner, be willing to be a beginner. Most people don’t wanna be a beginner because it makes ’em feel like a fake. That’s why it’s so important to realize you’re not a fake. You’re, you’re just a beginner. And it’s okay to be a beginner, right? When I, when I try to play the piano or the guitar, I feel stupid. I’m like, I don’t know what to do. I’m not, I I don’t get this right? Like, if I’m cooking in the kitchen, I feel stupid. I’m not stupid. I’m just a beginner. I just haven’t done it much. I’ve lent my time and my attention and my energy to other things.
RV (14:38):
And one of my all time famous, not famous quotes, one of my all time favorite quotes, and I believe it was Mark Twain who said this, this is who I attribute to it, is Mark Twain said, every man is my superior in some way. Every man is my superior in some way. That’s so true. And that gives you grace for yourself. And it also puts things in perspective when you meet other people and you go, wow, I really admire, you know, this person, they’re so funny, or they’re such a great leader, they’re a great speaker, or a great mom, or a great dad, or they’re a great cook. Or, or, you know, they’re in super in shape. And it’s like, doesn’t mean that person’s better than you, it just means that they’re, they, they are your, they are your superior in some way, but there’s other ways that they’re not right?
RV (15:26):
Like their marriage might be a mess, or their finances might be a mess, or they might be struggling with self-confidence, or they’re not as spiritually centered as you are, or they just, you know, they have different skill sets there. There’s not like a ranking system where we go one human is better than another in, in all things, but in, in some ways, they are right. Every man is my superior in some way. And you know what that also means? That likely means that you are superior to every other man in some way, right? There’s something that you do. There’s something that you, there’s at least one thing in your life that you know more about or you do a better job of than everybody else, a a around you. And so it creates this unequal, it creates this equal playing field by realizing that we all have unequal talents.
RV (16:12):
We have, we have non proportionately distributed talents. That’s called uniqueness. That’s called God’s divine design for your life. That’s called your, your, your blessing, that you were born to do something that only you can do. So lean into those things and realize, yeah, you, you might become a master, you might become an expert. There are some things where it’s like, I am a master. That there, there are just some things. And that’s why, you know, we try to, we try to teach the things that we’re really good at. And if you wanna build your personal brand, like, gosh, you’re gonna be hard pressed to find anyone better in the world that can teach it to you than us. Like we’re really good at this. Anybody who wants to become a speaker or an author, or a coach, or who wants to speak or write or teach as a way of generating leads for their business, I mean, we spend our whole life doing this, but if you want me to like, change your oil or cook you a meal, or like give you parenting tips, like I’m not the guy, I’m, I’m not the master in that every man is your superior.
RV (17:14):
Every woman, each is, is your superior in some way. So that should both help you put an appropriate level of, of praise on other people and an appropriate level of grace on yourself. And, and have a balance of both confidence and humility to know that each, each man is my superior in, in some way. But if you do those things right, a lot of this comes down to, to going, you gotta be proud of yourself. You gotta find a way to celebrate yourself. You gotta be the person who believes in you. You gotta be the person who cheers you on. You gotta be the person who says when, even when no one else is watching, when no one else is clapping, when no one else is paying attention. You go here by myself in this moment when I’m alone, I’m learning the things and I’m doing the work, and I’m surrounding myself with the people who are gonna help me do the things that I want do that I feel called to do one day.
RV (18:11):
And so if, and if building a personal brand is that thing for you, request a call with us. Will you please talk to our team? This is, this is something that we, we know something about and we’ve got a track record and we’re working with some of the most amazing people in the world, like Erwin McManus, and you know, just go to free brandand call.com/podcast, request a call, talk to someone on our team, and between now and then be cheering yourself on. Find a way to be proud of you. We’ll catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand Podcast.
Ep 454: Mindset Shifts that Lead to Massive Success with Erwin McManus
RV (00:02):
Such an honor today to be able to introduce you to someone who I think is one of the most brilliant people on the planet. I think one of the most gifted communicators, one of the most intelligent people at creating distinctions that truly can transform your life and your business. And his name is Erwin McManus. And Erwin is the national bestselling author of this new book the book is called Mindshift. And Erwin has written several books. He sold actually over, well, well over a million copies worldwide. His books have been translated into over a dozen languages. He speaks all over the planet. He has spoken in 70 countries. I know that he speaks sometimes in stadiums, and he works with organizations like the NFL and the Pentagon. And he also has been a private coach to professional athletes, celebrities, world leaders, like billion dollar companies. And he just, I think, has a gift for helping people unlock their personal genius. And it’s been an honor to get to know him and work with him a little bit over the last year or so. And anyways, Erwin, welcome to the show.
EM (01:15):
Hey, thanks for having me, man. I, I, I, I’m impressed by the way you introduced me, but it’s, it’s not, it’s not quite that big, but it’s great.
RV (01:24):
No, I mean, in, in all seriousness, it, one of the things that I love about you, Irwin, is like several of the most influential people that I, that are clients of ours and friends of ours. Mm-Hmm.
EM (02:27):
Yeah. I mean, the premise of the book is written on an empty page with one sentence on it that says, the intention of this book is to destroy internal limitations. And Rory, one of the things that my life journey has helped me see is that no matter where a person is in their life stage, or what arena or domain they work in, they have the same internal struggles. I spent 10 years working with the urban poor, with with drug cartels, with street gangs, with wow people trapped in the world of drugs and prostitution. And I was super idealist, you know, in my twenties. And I thought if I could just remove all the external obstacles that are gonna thrive and break out of poverty and, and the lives are gonna change, and I began to discover to a, a really a, a very painful level that the real limitations for people who are trapped in poverty were the internal narratives, the, the mental structures that, that really ingrained poverty mindsets.
EM (03:28):
And I thought, okay, when I moved to LA start working with artists, creative celebrities, you know, the most talented and attractive people in the world, I’d have to develop new tools, exact same thing, the same internal mental structures, limited them, and really held them back and actually stole from them the joy of their success. And then the last, you know, decade or two, working with people in the hundred, millions, billions, people who have started companies from scratch and, you know, and have had immense success, people, the top of their fields, same exact mental structures. And so one of the things I really quickly began to discover is that you cannot get successful enough to fix your inner world. You actually have to do the work of developing mental structures for success. And one of the things that really highlight in Mindshift is most people try to prepare themselves to bear the weight of failure, but they rarely prepare themselves to bear the weight of success. And that success actually weighs heavier than failure.
RV (04:27):
So I wanted to ask you about that. ’cause You, I, that is one of the things you say directly in the book, you say, success weighs more than failure. It’s one of the questions I had prepared,
EM (05:14):
Yeah. Well just a little added caveat to that is the fear of failure weighs more than failure.
RV (05:22):
Oh, that’s good.
EM (05:24):
And, and so a lot of times what people think they’re being suffocated under as failure, but they’re not. It’s the fear of failure. Failure actually is not nearly as heavy as the fear of failure. When you fail, you realize, oh, I got this
EM (06:17):
You actually move through what I would call a transitional loneliness. When people would ask me, in fact, I got asked this question a few weeks ago. Somebody said, so, is it lonely at the top? Is it true that it’s lonely at the top? And I said, first of all, I take it as a great compliment that you think I’m at the top
EM (07:08):
Because in that transition, you lose the friends you had, but you don’t have the friends yet you’re going to have, and there is a, there’s a, a massive weight of aloneness, which is a part of the weight of success. And then what happens is when you become successful, you, I, I was gonna say people assume, but no, we end up assuming that our success validates all of our internal structures, while we may actually have some incredibly dangerous internal structures for failure, and they become self-destructive. And that’s why you see so many people at the pinnacle, their success crumble, their marriages and their children are AMAs. They’re depressed and even suicidal. And even people with billions end up taking their lives because the weight of success was something they were not prepared for.
RV (07:59):
Yeah. I mean, that, and that blows, that always blows my mind. There’s so, there’s so many implosions that happen in, again, all these different arenas, doesn’t matter of sports, whatever. So what are some of these internal limitations, right? Like, what, what are some of the most common ones? And you know, I very much empathize with what you’re talking about here personally, of going, you know, I was raised by a single mom. My dad left me when I was young, never knew him. And I think a lot of my ambition for most of my life was just trying to prove to myself that I was worthy of not being left. Yeah. And, you know, in some ways I’m very grateful for that. ’cause I think it drove me really hard, which I’m grateful for what it has led to. But I very much empathize with what you’re saying, that no level of success ever actually fills that hole.
EM (08:51):
Yeah, absolutely. Because sometimes we don’t know if we’re running from something or running to something. Mm-Hmm.
EM (09:59):
It’s just that when those are the driving forces of your life, they leave you empty because they never satisfy. And, and someone asks me, what do you do when you’ve lost like your a hundred million dollar company? And, and so how do you regain your purpose? And, and I told him, I said, one, your purpose should have never been in your a hundred billion dollar company. Mm-Hmm. Your purpose should always be focused on who you’re becoming, not what you’re accomplishing. And if your intention is about who you’re becoming as a human being, no one can touch that. And success and failure are irrelevant to your intention. They’re just outcomes.
RV (10:35):
Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I think that, I love that idea that it’s more of, it’s a great, a great outcome, but a terrible intention. And when you, when you think about these shifts, you know? Mm-Hmm.
EM (10:55):
I know. It’s a really hard thing to say that, that I, I shouldn’t have picked that word. I can’t even pronounce
RV (10:59):
It. Hallucinogen. It’s harder to spell than it is to say That’s true. I tried to spell it like 10 times. I was like, preparing, and I’m like, halluc, I, I don’t know. I can’t get it. But,
EM (11:08):
Well, you know, span Spanish is my first language. So hallucinogen is still a hard word.
RV (11:12):
There,
EM (11:26):
Why? So real quick, like, here’s some real quick summaries on my shift. ’cause Really my shift is 13 chapters of Red Bull. You can open up anywhere and you pop it open, you, you, you know, consume it quickly and it’ll explode in your brain. And one of the chapters that maybe the shortest chapter in the book is you are your own ceiling. It may be the shortest chapter, but it might also be the most important chapter. It’s about the mental shift from who is holding you back. And when we think that what’s holding us back is other people, the man, our past trauma, our parents, our, the abandonment we’re feeling you know, whatever it may be. Whenever you externalize blame for where you are in your life, you become powerless to change your life the moment you embrace. I am my own ceiling.
EM (12:13):
You know, I, I may not have wanted these things to happen, but I am powerful enough to respond to them. I’m in charge of my response. I’m in charge of how they shape me, and the person that I create myself to become. And then the moment you embrace that, it shifts everything you can. And you can listen to a person’s language when they’re always blaming someone else. They’re powerless to change their life. When they take responsibility for their life, they now are empowered to change. And then you mentioned the chapter Talent is the hallucinogen. Some people have the curse of talent. I did not have the curse of talent. I was not born with the curse of talent. But I know people who had the curse of talent. And my brother, I think, had the curse of talent in sixth grade. I think he was the fastest kid in the United States.
EM (12:59):
He was a, a superior athlete from day one. He was the high school quarterback, broke every conference record, had a full scholarship to play football. He’s also a brilliant, like a savant. He’s a genius. He and every arena, my brother was just naturally good at everything. So what happens when you have talent is people build external structures so they can actually access that talent. They don’t care about you. They care about the talent that’s inside of you. And so then you think you have the internal structure for success, but you don’t, you have external structures that actually protect that talent. So it can be accessed by those who want it. That’s why pro athletes, five years after they’re finished in the NFL, are divorced, drug addicted dead or bankrupt, because they were the most talented person in their schools from elementary to junior high to high school.
EM (13:55):
No one was as talented as them. So organizations built structures around them, access that talent all the way through college, all the way through the pros, the moment the structures are gone, wow, their lives collapsed. See, when you don’t have the curse of talent, you know, wow, I gotta find a different way to succeed.
EM (14:45):
And what I try to do in Mindshift is help a person realize, look, you may have talent, but talent is like a mirage. It makes you believe you will succeed without hard work. And so then when you fail, you move into a pattern of blaming rather than actually reframing. And when you understand that talent is just a hallucinogen, I’m so glad you have talent. I’m so glad you’re super intelligent, or that you have, you’re, you’re incredibly attractive, whatever it may be. But you need to realize you cannot build a sustainable future on talent. It has to be on the internal disciplines of, of mental structures.
RV (15:23):
Wow. Yeah. That’s powerful. That’s a, that’s a completely different, I mean, it’s a mind shift, a way of, of thinking of, of talent, you know, even as a, as a liability. You know, applying that specifically to the, to the people listening to this show that, you know, a lot of everyone who listens to this show is what we call mission-driven messenger. Right? Like, they have some calling to go, I wanna make the world a better place. And you, you are, you in many ways are, are what we aspire to become. You speak on the biggest stages with the most wealthy people in the audiences, the, you know, like the most in influential people. You mentor these folks. You’ve got books that are selling. What do you think are some of the mindset limitations, either that you’ve had to overcome or that you think other speakers and authors type, you know, coaches, consultants, that they have to overcome on their journey when they’re just starting out and they’re looking at, like, all the people on social media and all the bestselling authors and all the amazing speakers. Mm-Hmm.
EM (16:35):
If you’re early on in the process, the two chapters you need to jump into right away are, you don’t need the applause. And no one knows what they’re doing. Those two chapters, I think are the most important chapters early on. And then I’ll talk about some other ones. But one, you don’t need the applause is really important. ’cause If you’re at the beginning of the journey, you, you need to make sure that your driving force is your own internal sense of accomplishment, rather than playing the game for the audience. Hmm. If you need people to celebrate you, if you need people to affirm you, if you need people to tell you you’re going to be awesome, you’re not going to succeed. And if I can put it in the book writing category, I can always tell when someone’s not gonna finish a book. Really? Yeah. It’s one thing.
RV (17:19):
Tell me
EM (17:21):
They write a page and they share it with everyone.
EM (17:26):
They write a chapter and they share it with everyone. Because you end up having the same endorphins of success when you share one page and people say, oh, I love the page. It was amazing. You such a great writer. Then you do when you finish the whole book, because now you’re living for the applause. You’re living for the affirmation of other people rather than this deep need to get this message out to the world. And so, one of the things I say right away is, do not become the prisoner of praise of applause, celebration. The other chapter, and there’s so much more we could talk about there, but I’m moving fast, is no one knows what they’re doing. You, you ever, ever,
RV (18:05):
Hold on a a second. I just before you, I can’t just let you go to this next one,
EM (18:17):
Oh, do not be the prisoner of praise. Yeah,
RV (18:20):
Man, that’s powerful. Irwin, like, because it’s like, praise is with everyone seeking. We’re seeking the likes, we’re seeking the shares, the comments, how many followers. And it’s like, we’re actually seeking the thing that makes us a prisoner. The, which means we, we perpetually are chasing after putting ourself in like a more strict jail cell, a tighter stronghold on our life that gets worse and worse and worse the more we achieve it. Because it’s like, we just become more and more, it’s like a high you get, you’re just chasing after it more and more and more.
EM (18:54):
By the way, that’s why incredibly famous people are so depressed. Oh. Because now, you know, when you were not famous, you were a prisoner of 10 people’s praise. But now you are famous and you’re the prisoner of millions of people’s praise.
RV (19:11):
Wow. I mean, that’s, that’s just, that’s powerful. I, I don’t, that’s just a, it’s a total mind shift to, to realize that maybe the very thing that you’re chasing could be the thing that you, is gonna make you a prisoner. You know? And for me, you know, I’m a hardcore bible thump of Jesus freak. Right. And so I’m always, I’m always internalizing things going. That could be God protecting you. Like the reason why he’s not giving you the fame is because he’s knowing like he might be protecting my, our hearts to go. You’re not ready to handle that. Like you said, that’s the weight, that’s part of probably the weight of success too. Anyways, so that’s really good. So yeah, the other one I love this is no one knows what they’re doing. And I totally, I’m a hundred with you on this. So like, tell, tell ’em about no one knows what they’re doing.
EM (19:58):
Well, whenever we start something new, we all feel like a fake
RV (21:10):
Oh man.
EM (21:11):
And I, and I, and I go, oh, poor guy. He’s afraid to tell me that he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Because as agree. And that’s why a lot of times we steal because we don’t know. We can create. And, and early on we have to go. Of course. I don’t know what I’m doing. You know, I, I’m learning. And when I started working in film, you can you imagine what it was like to be behind a camera as a director, going, I hope these actors don’t look at me
EM (21:57):
There’s so many things that I’ve done in my life that when I started, I felt like a complete fake. I had this massive imposter syndrome until I realized no one knows what they’re doing. And so they do it, and it’s only when they do it. And that’s when I went nuts. Lemme tell you, I, I hired Navy Seals. I filmed under the ocean. I, I rented a helicopter. We took off the, the the door and filmed from the air on a scene. And I would just literally coach myself to do the most difficult things in the world. ’cause I thought the only way I’m gonna learn how to do it is by doing it. And it, it was so exciting to realize early on in my life, the best posture is being an amateur. Hmm.
EM (22:40):
Whenever you’re a novice, you’re just so fresh and it’s all so new, and you’re wide-eyed, and you’re curious and you’re teachable. And here I am now at 65, lemme tell you, I am a beginner. We were even saying that before we started the podcast. See, I, I just tell myself, Hey, you’re starting over again. You’re a beginner. You’re a novice. Start from, from scratch goes. You don’t know what you’re doing, but it’s okay. But no one knows what they’re doing when they start. And you only learn what you’re doing as you do it, as you step into it and as you fail. And that is the greatest freedom in the world when you’re starting. It’s, it’s just wonderful. You don’t know what you’re doing. Own it. It’s gonna be the only time in your life you’re gonna be this free from all the hardship of experience.
RV (23:22):
EM (23:52):
You know, where it’s most clear, Rory and more, most terrifying.
RV (23:56):
Tell me
EM (23:58):
We have one life. We get to live on this planet. Mm-Hmm.
RV (24:51):
Yeah. Yeah. And y’all, this is, this is the handbook for this right. Mind shift. It doesn’t take a genius to think like one is the, is the subtitle. And that’s what I feel like Erwin’s given us this handbook for exactly how to get pa to, how to get past these limiting beliefs, how to defeat them, and how to install as an operating system, like a proper set of, of, of thinking that creates a paradigm that gives you purpose, that gives you clarity, that gives you confidence, that gives you the insight of, of knowing that you’re free to create. You’re free, you’re free to live, you’re free to love, you’re free to do these things. I do have one last question for you, Irwin. Before I give before the last question. Where do you want people to go to hook up, like sync up with you and learn more about what you’re doing?
EM (25:40):
Sure. the easiest place to go is erwin mcmanus.com. And there you can find out about what we do online with the arena, which is our online mastermind and find out about the books and all these other things we offer. Erwin mcmanus.com is the best place.
RV (25:53):
Love it. Okay. So we’ll link up to, we’ll link up to that. Obviously you can buy Mindshift, you know. Mm-Hmm.
EM (26:41):
Yeah. You know, I ironic, Rory, the first book I ever wrote is a book called An Unstoppable Force. I wrote it like 25 years ago. And in that book I argued that humans are intrinsically creative. That every human being is, is an artist, and that every human being has genius within them. So this actually isn’t a new conversation for me. Interesting. This has been my life long conversation. And I, and I fought it. I mean, I got fought really hard even within the, the world of faith. I had people telling me, Irwin, you’re telling everyone that every human being is creative. You’re putting undue pressure on people. I had one theologian telling me people, humans are like worker bees or worker ants, they just need a task and they’ll be happy. Mm-Hmm. You need to stop telling people that they’re creative. I was in New York at an event and I had someone in a Q and A get upset going, you’re trying to create anarchy if everyone believes they’re a creative who’s going to do the work?
EM (27:40):
And and I said, you know what? Ironically, that’s the same mindset that the slave owners had. If you set the slaves free, what’s gonna happen? And, and I said, really, we need to believe first of all, that every human being has intrinsic God-given creativity inside of them. That there is genius inside of every person. In fact, every study in the world lets us know that humans are extraordinarily adaptive at birth. And Rory, you probably don’t think of yourself as a linguistic genius. Like, you know, because I think you probably only speak English. And yet, mostly, mostly,
RV (28:20):
Yep.
EM (28:20):
Mostly. But when you were two, you learned the most complicated language probably in the world because you had to, you didn’t even know English was hard. And if they had moved you to Japan, you would’ve spoken Japanese or to the Philippines. You would’ve spoken tagalo when you were two to five. You were a linguistic savant. You were mentally capable of adapting to any language in the world. And you could have learned multiple languages if they had moved you to multiple environments. But we convinced ourselves that we’re, we’re actually not that, you know, I’m not good at languages. No. You learned all the languages your brain believed you needed. Oh, I’m not good at math. No. You learned all the math your brain believed you needed. And the reality is that when you go, oh, I’m not a genius. Well that’s ’cause you convinced your brain. You didn’t need to be a genius to live the life you’re choosing. And what I’m trying to help people is to reawaken the full capacity within them. And I think that most people live a suboptimal life because they do not believe they have the capacity for more. And I wanna destroy that mental framework and help people see there’s a lot more in them.
RV (29:36):
Yeah. That is it. I mean, they live a suboptimal life because they don’t believe that they, they have the capacity for more. Yeah. So much of that is our internal thinking. So much of that is controllable mind shifts we’re creating. Go get the book, everybody. Irwin, thank you for your wisdom and for your insight and your distinctions. And I think you, you just are such a magnificent source of inspiration and creativity. And I just think profound wisdom and you’re one of my favorite communicators on the planet. And I just, what an honor to have you and to have this conversation, man. We will be cheering for you. Always, always, always. So thanks for being here.
EM (30:19):
Thank you so much. And Rory, thank you so much for believing in my shift for all the work you and your team did for helping us break barriers in in the launch. That wouldn’t have been possible without you. So we’re really grateful for you.
RV (30:31):
It’s our pleasure, man
Ep 453: When to Slow Down So You Can Speed Up | Elizabeth Stephens Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
Hey, everybody, AJ Vaden here. I am continuing the conversation that I got to have with the one and only amazing, wonderful, Elizabeth Stephens, who is our VP of Member Experience at Brand Builders Group. And I invited her on to our podcast to have an hour long discussion on customer journeys. And I wanna follow up that conversation here to talk a little bit more in depth about what is a customer journey. And even if you’re not working with us as a client at Brand Builders Group, but you’re, you know, absorbing our content, which is what you’re doing if you’re listening to this, if you’re listening to our podcast, social media email list, you’ve gotten one of our free resources, or you’re just a friend of the company, I think there’s some things that you can really take away that mean a lot as you’re thinking about your brand building journey and how does that fit in alignment with something that has some structure and some process to it.
AJV (01:03):
And so that’s what I wanna talk about today. And at Brand Builders Group we exist to empower Mission-driven messengers to get their message out into the world. Like that’s why we exist. Like little known fact. We did not have a business plan for this company. We did not intend to start this company. We did not have dreams of starting this company. This, this company was created out of a, what I would say, a God orchestrated divine intervention in our lives. And he used people around us. He used Lewis Howes he used our former business partners. He used a lawsuit. He used all different types of things to call us to this work. This was not work that we set out to do. This is work that we were called to do. And when I say that this is a, a missional job and a missional company, I mean it from the depths of my soul that we exist to give a voice to people who have a desire for their voice to be heard. Because we believe deeply, deeply that someone, you who is, who’s listening right now, you have the power to change one person’s life with your message. And that person has the power to do the same for someone else. And that by sharing your message and by giving hope, inspiration a plan a technique, a process, whatever it is, like you can, you can create pivotal change that can truly be the tip of the spear of changing the world. I don’t say that halfheartedly, I don’t say that as marketing language. I believe
Speaker 2 (02:58):
That to the depths of my soul. And when I say that we have spent 20 years doing this work to figure out how to do it more efficiently, how to do it more productively, how to do it, more passion and heart led, I mean it. And our entire team at Brand Builders Group has spent the last five years of figuring out the order and the sequencing and the cadence and how to streamline this and building the right processes and tools and systems to allow somebody else to do it better, faster, and more impactful than we did. That’s why we exist. That’s why these customer journeys are a really big part of our work at Brand Builders Group. And it doesn’t matter if you work with us as a client or not, I believe that these have the ability to help you, to help impact you, and to help you move forward with your desires with your missional work.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
And so, high level, what is a customer journey? A customer journey is a roadmap. And I know there’s lots of different definitions of customer journey out there. So I’m just telling you ours, it’s a, a roadmap. A roadmap of how you’re going to encounter everything that you encounter at Brand Builders Group, right? So that’s content, that’s community, that’s our team. There are different intersection points that happen in this roadmap, this journey that we believe have critical benchmarks. And the way that we built this journey is that it’s built in 90 day increments. And we believe that our curriculum can be the majority of it can be consumed and completed in 90 day sprints. And so that’s how we built it. Now, our, you know, normal track is a three year journey. And I share that not to frighten you
Speaker 2 (05:10):
It just takes time. And that’s not a lot of time in the overarching scheme of your life or your business, your work. It’s not it’s really a short amount of time. But if you just relate this to architecture and construction for a second, I think this will give you some basis points, right? Like when, when architects and contractors, commercial contractors, industrial contractors are going to build a high rise most of them, depending on the size of the company, are digging and laying the foundation for years before they ever start building up years, not a year, years. That’s with an s. And I think I was, and don’t
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Hold me to this, but when the Burge Khalifa that that was being built in Dubai, I believe that they were building that foundational infrastructure for five, maybe seven years, and maybe 10 years. I could be way off, but I know it was like multiple, multiple years before they ever started doing anything else. Because big things require a solid foundation and a very clear infrastructure, right? That it requires a plan, it requires a team, it requires communication, it requires time, and some things just shouldn’t be rushed. But if you spend the upfront time to build that foundation and to build that infrastructure, it allows you to grow and scale infinitely once it’s built. And so the way that we built these journeys is like, hey, the first three years, it’s not that you won’t have revenue, and it’s not that you’re not gonna get your message out, that starts happening immediately.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
We believe that as soon as you are doing that, you know, what we call your foundational work, finding your brand, DNA, it’s like you, the clearer you get, the bigger your impact automatically happens in conversations and content and creation in your team, in your beliefs, in your passion. Those things start to happen immediately. So dollars are coming in. That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying though, is that to complete that foundation, to complete that infrastructure with all the things in place that would, that would allow you to have something that goes beyond you, it takes a minute. And for us, we, we have built in a way that’s about three years to get it all complete. And it’s not that we wanna see you leave after three years. We wanna continue to work with you. But we also, we wanna be realistic of going like building your personal brand.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
It’s, it’s more than even building a business. This is a part of building a legacy. It’s a part of building your ministry. It’s a part of living into your mission, your calling. And that is not to be rushed. It’s not to be rushed. But we also know that looking at something in th in a three year scheme, it could be overwhelming. It’s overwhelming to me. So we broke it down into these 90 day sprints that allows you to have a micro focus on a certain topic, a certain curriculum, 90 days at a time. And at the end of each of those 90 days, there are benchmarks. So, you know, at the end of these 90 days, at each topic, at each curriculum, if I have set, if I have hit these set benchmarks, then it’s like pass, go and monopoly, right? Continue to the next square. If not, go back. You don’t keep moving forward if the initial work has not been completed, right? And so the way that we see this for all of you who are listening who don’t know all of our curriculum pieces, which is fine, and it doesn’t matter what journey you’re on, we have four very distinct customer
Speaker 4 (08:54):
Journeys at Brand Builders Group. We believe that we are most and best well positioned to serve the person who wants to become a highly paid professional speaker. We know that world. We are these people. We, we know we can help you. Number two is that we are best and most well positioned to help people who want to be published authors. Doesn’t matter if it’s self-published, hybrid published, or traditional published. We know that world. We know that space. We have a passion for it. We have a desire to help you in that we can help. The third is we believe that we are the best and most well-positioned people to help you generate new leads for your business, your existing business before anything else, we’re salespeople. That’s our biggest, strongest background. We find sales as an honorable profession. It is one that we admire, we respect and is necessary to all business.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
And if the idea of sales makes you cringe when, then that’s where you need to lean in because you’re thinking about it wrong. Sales is a necessary function of mission, ministry, work, money, all things must master the art of sales and lead generation. Nobody wants to be the world’s best kept secret, and you don’t either. You’ve gotta master that. And last but not least we think we are the best and most well positioned person to help you as you’re building your personal brand. Figure out your new revenue stream right now. I will say that’s the smallest amount of people that we work with, because we believe we need to capitalize on what you have currently, which is for most of you, your existing business. We don’t need to start something new just because you want to. Just because you can’t, doesn’t mean you should.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
But sometimes it’s the right necessary place. And we, we know how to do that. We’ve started a lot of businesses, we enjoy doing that. But we also know how much time at work it takes. So we are discerning with helping you decide those. But I think the thing that we have found amongst all of those is that there are, there are critical elements, no matter what your unique journey is of how our curriculum comes into play, right? And so, no matter what journey you’re on, no matter where you are in your business, no matter where you are in your journey, when you come to Brand Builders Group, our foundation, right? What we do, everything based off of is what we call finding your brand DNA, which is determining these four things. What problem do you solve for the world that only you can solve in the way that you can? How do you solve that problem in your own unique way? Who do you solve that problem for your audience? And how do you make money solving that problem? So what is the problem that you solve for the world? What is your unique way in solving that problem? Who do you solve it for? And how do you make money solving that problem? Now, there’s other components
Speaker 5 (11:53):
To it, but that, that’s, that’s the foundation right? Now at the end of that there’s some things that we need to figure out. Like what’s your message? What’s your uniqueness? What are the payoffs? What what business are you trying to be in? But those are the nitty gritty details. But if you don’t know the answer to those four questions, you cannot, should not move forward. But once you do know the answer to those questions, that would take you into what we would call next, your content creation. So now, if you know what problem, your message, who you solve it for and how you wanna make money, now you start creating what we call your body of work, right? And that’s what you have to say about it. That’s what you have to say to the world. It’s what are your stories? What are the points?
Speaker 5 (12:36):
What are the lessons? What are the frameworks? This is building your original thought leadership, and that happens after that foundational work of what problem, what message, who’s the who and how do you make money? Then it’s content creation, right? So it’s what you have to say about it. The next step is what we call world-class presentation craft. But in normal terms, it’s just how you wanna say it. So the first thing is those four things. What problem, what message, who and how you make money. Part two is your content creation is your body of work. It’s your original thought leadership. So it’s what you have to say. Part three is how you want to say it. It’s the art of the spoken word. I just wanna kind of pause right there, because all of those are pretty much the beginnings of the entire first year, right?
Speaker 5 (13:30):
If each one of those takes 90 days you’re at month nine, right? And yet we have not talked about anything, website anything, brand identity. We haven’t talked about funnels, webinars, checkout processes, CRMs, all of that. Why? Because those first nine months are the things that last the test of time. Those are the things that go beyond a funnel or a website or social media. These are the things that are integral to who you are, who you were built to be, why you’re here, and why you have this calling on your life. And to get all of that in nine months is extremely fast, honestly. But that is that core foundational work that it pretty much doesn’t matter what journey you’re in, we know that that is the work that has to happen before you keep moving forward. Because if you start building and growing on a weak foundation, you’re gonna start finding inconsistencies. And when there’s inconsistencies, there’s wasted time, energy, resources, and money. And we’re not trying to waste anyone’s time. It’s a finite, precious commodity that there’s just not a lot of. And so we take it super seriously. So as you’re just walking through this, as someone who is a, a consumer of this content, I would encourage you to just kind of pause for a second and go,
Speaker 6 (14:51):
Am I rushing things? Or better yet, where am I rushing things? Where do I need to slow down and just let the process be the process? What can I do as other things continue to happen? Where can I carve out time that that needs to happen? And maybe you don’t get to do this full-time. It’s not 40 hour week endeavor for you right now. Maybe it’s a two hour week endeavor. That’s okay. There is a path and a pace for everyone. You just have to find yours. My, my message though, my, my plea to you though is don’t rush the foundation. Don’t rush the infrastructure. ’cause That is what is going to allow you to grow faster and scale better once you set it in place. And as we mentioned on the full call, if you’re going, whoa, whoa, whoa, like something clicks, something dinged I would just encourage you to continue listening to these podcast episodes tons of free resources there.
Speaker 6 (15:51):
You can also go to our website, www brand builders group.com, and click on the button at the top that says, free resources. We got you free resources for days. We can keep you very busy with free resources. But as you go through those, or you’re going, man, I, I, I just, I want a little more than that, then I would encourage you to go to free brand call.com and schedule a free call with our team. That’s the first touch point with all of us. We are not a fit to work with everyone, and not everyone is a fit to work with us in that type of way. This call helps you sample what we do. It helps you get to know our team, and it helps our team to get to know you, to decide if we’re a good partnership. And if not, we wanna support you. So we’re gonna keep sending you free resources,
Ep 452: Building Your Personal Brand Journey with Elizabeth Stephens
AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody and welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. Super excited today to have on a fellow BBGA very good close personal friend. But also Elizabeth Stevens is the VP of our member experience here, brand Builders Group. And so there’s so many fun things about this exciting interview. And before I formally introduced her, I just wanted to share why I wanted to have Elizabeth onto the show today. And I think there’s a couple of different things that are really important as we look forward to wherever you are in your journey or wherever you are in your year. But as you just look, look forward to the next 12 months, there should be some things that you are always asking yourself, such as, what should I be working on? And what order should I be working on these things? Where should I be investing my money, my time, my energy, my resources?
AJV (01:01):
And am I doing these things in a way that actually is going to benefit me in the end? So it doesn’t matter what year of what month of the year it is, it doesn’t matter where you’re at in your journey. There’s always things that you should be asking yourselves as you’re looking ahead to those next 12 months. And so I thought having Elizabeth on the show today would be so helpful to talk about how we can do the right things, but in the wrong order, and then we’re confused. And then we, we stale. We kind of, kind of become stale and stagnant. So that’s gonna be the conversation today and a lot of fun things in between. And so as we get into this, I just want you to know that as you’re listening this is one of those conversations that is applicable universally.
AJV (01:47):
Doesn’t matter how beginner you are, how advanced you are, doesn’t matter what you’re working on, why you’re working on it, this is one of those conversations that has a very holistic approach. So if you’re tuning in, this is, this is a conversation for you today. So stick around and don’t leave because it’s going to be well worth it to the very last second. Now, let me introduce you to the one and only Elizabeth Stevens. Elizabeth is a personal brand strategist and an expert at that. She’s also the vice President of Member Experience here at Brand Builders Group. Woo woo. I would say that she has also worked with brands extremely closely on a personal level like a personal brand level, as well as a large corporate level like Charles Schwab in Southwest Airlines. She’s worked with New York Times bestselling authors, eight, nine-figure entrepreneurs top ranked podcast hosts. She has done all these things. Not to mention, she is the founder of a nonprofit. She is helped people craft Ted Talks. She has three amazing kids. So she does all these other things in the midst of being a mom, like all these different things. Plus, she’s a speaker and an all around amazing human being. So, without further ado, Elizabeth, welcome to the show.
ES (03:05):
Oh, thank you so much. I get exhausted hearing that, especially the part about the three kids and all that stuff as we during the time of this podcast. It’s right before the Christmas season. And as any parent knows, it is complete insanity on all fronts. So I can Thank
AJV (03:23):
You,
ES (04:33):
Hmm. That’s such a great question. And it’s one I think we ask ourselves a lot and finally got to this point where we really realized it’s all about giving them those parameters, right? It’s really understanding, and you said this earlier, you referenced it at the beginning about a, a lot of people decide what they want to do. They make a decision. I want to be this thing. I want to create this piece of work. I want to excel in this area. But the question we often don’t ask ourselves is, when do we do that thing, right? How do we create a timeline that aligns with the, what the big overarching goal that we want? And so we come into these ideas and these businesses saying, and these personal brands saying, this is what I wanna be, this is what I wanna do. But we don’t ask ourselves. The most important question is, when do I do the things that are going to make this happen? And I think that is one of the biggest mistakes personal brands, entrepreneurs, businesses make, is we have a good idea of the what, the passion, the purpose, and deep inside of us, but we have not created a timeline to where that works for us and for the people we serve very effectively.
AJV (05:50):
Hmm. So I know, and for all of you who are listening who don’t know, but Elizabeth also holds a really special place in all of the client’s journey that we work with at Brand Builders Group because she does annual planning calls with every single one of the clients, our members at Brand Builders Group. And so she gets to have these unique conversations of let’s reflect on the last 12 months as we plan the next 12 months. And so I imagine a lot of that feedback, those insights are coming from these calls. And so that kind of leads me to another question that you kind of mentioned. It’s, you know, we know that there’s a timing and a sequence to things. And so what is that timing and sequence of things?
ES (06:32):
Yeah. Yeah. You know, one of the things that we developed and really I think wrapped our minds around very intentionally and specifically even in the past year specifically, are our customer journeys, right? Really identifying the goals that people had. That what, like, this is what I’m running after. And then saying, how do we reverse engineer that goal into a timeline with parameters of knowing when to do the right thing at the right time? And you, you referenced this earlier too, is that so many people do the right thing, but at the wrong time, right? We’re either pushing things too fast when we’re not ready, or we’re maybe moving a little slow when, when we could really aim our sights on something different. And so developing these customer journeys for our members has been, has been really enlightening and eye-opening, and it has allowed them to achieve success so much faster, right? It’s moving towards the what at the right time. And so our customer journeys that we have developed are super specific, right? It’s based on that overarching goal. And like I said, it’s a reverse engineering, right? If this is what you’re running at, what do you need to do in the next 12 months? What do you need to do in the next 24 months, 36 months to reach this objective?
AJV (07:53):
Hmm. So before we talk about what these customer journeys are, I would just like for you to share in your perspective, ’cause you’re so close to the member community. So like Elizabeth, you’re touching hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people every single year who are out there building their personal brands. I would love to know, it’s like as we like, kinda like delve into this customer journey, and as people are reflecting on their 12 months and they’re entering into the next 12 months, what, what would you say are the biggest pain points of like, if we have these journeys and people are supposed to be following
ES (08:53):
Well, something just super practically speaking is that a lot of our clients and members are feeling still very diluted, right? We have a saying at brand builders group, diluted focus yields, diluted results. It is the biggest pain point by far that our members experience in their brand and business, right? They are wearing too many hats. They’re focused on too many different ideas. They have spread themselves very thin. They’re unable to get traction. And even, and I would say that the people that I talk with that are still struggling, like they are, they’re given the right information. They have an accountability partner, they are still getting really diluted, right? They’re chasing a lot of ideas. They are definitely living in the, the present, but with lots of distraction where we wanna really temper yes, be where you are. ’cause There are ramifications of moving too fast or turning around, but, but living in the present and being distracted by everything, literally enveloping them I see is the biggest detriment to their long-term success.
ES (09:56):
There is still a little bit of diluted focus, right? And, and it’s, it’s shiny objects. It’s running after, oh, I just got this call to potentially run after this big opportunity. And it’s really tempering that back and asking, is this aligned with my overarching goal with that long-term plan that I have created for myself? If it’s not, and it doesn’t follow into my customer journey or trajectory, I need to know when to say no. Right? There are things to say no to and to say yes to. So I think the biggest thing I’m seeing is still that chasing the shiny object that all entrepreneurs struggle with so, so consistently. But that I think is the biggest thing I’m seeing on a consistent basis in my calls.
AJV (10:39):
No, I think that’s so insightful. And it’s interesting because we were on a call yesterday with one of our clients who’s had extreme success this year with her new book Forever Strong. Her name is Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. And I asked her, I said, Hey, if you’ve had an incredible breakthrough year, what would you say is like the number one thing that other people could do to have a breakthrough year next year? And she said, easy become undestructible.
ES (11:09):
Hmm. So
AJV (11:10):
Good. And she was like, that’s the number one thing. She goes, every, like, I encounter this with my clients, with my friends, with business partners. She goes, people are so distracted, right? And she goes, I don’t see shiny objects. I don’t, I don’t see squirrels. She goes, I am undestructible. And I asked her and I said awesome. How do you do that? Right? Mm-Hmm.
ES (11:56):
Mm.
AJV (11:57):
And I’m like, that’s so good. And she’s, I’ll give you a quick example. And she goes, I am speaking at a healthcare conference this upcoming week. And she goes, personally, I don’t wanna do it. She goes, I don’t wanna be away from home. I don’t wanna travel to this particular location. I, these are not necessarily my target audience for additional revenue. It’s not the speaking engagement fee that I wish I was getting. And she goes, so a lot of people are going, why are you doing it? And she goes, because I’m undestructible and this is a part of my message, getting into the right hands that can to change the world. Hmm. She goes, I filter all of my decisions through what message do I feel called to share in this world. And anything that interferes with that gets a hard no, but anything that fits in that gets a quick yes. Yeah. Even if I don’t feel like doing it.
ES (12:44):
Yeah. Yeah.
AJV (12:45):
That’s, that was really good. Of like, people who are seeing breakthroughs realize it happens because they have removed shiny objects they have removed. And that was the other thing she said that I thought was so good. She goes, I don’t care what anyone else is doing.
ES (13:00):
Mm mm
AJV (13:01):
I don’t, I only care about what I’m doing. Mm. I don’t care what other people are doing. I know there’s other things I could be doing, but what I’m doing is working so I don’t care. And she was like, I’ve learned to not care what the industry says and what other people in my space say, I’m just focused on what I can do, what’s working for me. And I filter all my decisions through the message.
ES (13:24):
Hmm. You know, that’s so good. I, I love hearing stories like that from our clients that understand the, the one thing that they need to focus on. ’cause That truly is, I mean, it’s what we preach. It’s what we teach. It’s, it is what we know works. Right. And it, and it’s needing to be constantly reminded of that. You know, the human brain needs to hear something seven times for it to stick. This is no different. Like, we need to be reminding people that are running at a passion, a purpose, and a calling that they need to stay true to the path. And something else that I have realized in these calls with our members is that it is really hard work. Like it takes a lot from deep within you to stay the course. And I’ve thought about this a lot and, and it comes back to this missional mindset. And I’ve seen this very subtle nuance between people that are successful with the mindset and people that aren’t. And it’s the people that aren’t necessarily as successful as they want to be in their journey to building a personal brand or a business, really treat it like a job or an idea. Mm-Hmm. And a job and an idea you work for and you work at, right. That’s the mentality. But when you are truly viewing it as a mission or a vocation, you make it work.
AJV (14:41):
Mm.
ES (14:42):
And I think that is a big difference, right? You are so called deeply to something that you believe in that purpose, you were just speaking to that you have to make it work. Like it is work and you make it happen. While the, this i this mindset of this is my job, this is the next step for me, it’s an idea I have. You just work at it. Right. You chip away at it and there’s a, there’s a difference there. And it makes a big difference long term in success.
AJV (15:13):
Mm. That’s so good. And I love that. ’cause You know, like one of the questions that I had kind of outlined earlier, which is why do some things feel like work and others don’t? And I think it’s all through the filtering of like, is this missional right? Mm-Hmm. And I love that like, concept of like, is what you’re doing missional or is it just the next step? Is it just another idea of, versus like, is this in your core, what you were put on this earth to do, and are you doing it right? And it’s like one of those things that’s like, you kind of have to get to the level of I can’t not do it. Like, I can’t not put this off anymore. It’s like, it’s just like coming out of me no matter what. And it, it made me think about, you know, so often when, when people come to Brain Builders Group even as, even as podcast listeners for everyone listening, it’s like, there is like this deep down like knowing or calling.
AJV (16:07):
It’s like, man, I, I just feel like I’m, I’m supposed to do something else. Hmm. I, I feel like I I’m called to share something or, or do something more. Or I just feel like there’s something in me that’s not being utilized. Mm-Hmm. Right? It’s like we hear that all the time, which is usually how people come across our path. It’s like, man, I just, I know I’m supposed to be doing something more, something else. And I think a lot of it stems from finding that missional thing of going, like, there is that inkling that calling somewhere within you. But let’s don’t be mistaken. It is work. It is work. It’s not gonna just magically happen because you, you followed your calling. It’s like, no, it’s work a lot. I love that. I think that’s so good. So, all right, so talking about the work, tell us what are these customer journeys that we’ve identified and how do they work?
ES (17:02):
Hmm. Yeah. I, so I’ll talk a little bit about customer journeys, but something really interesting leading up to this idea of, of why did we develop customer journeys? Why were they so important? And I just learned this recently, so it’s really relevant to the conversation today. And there have been studies that have shown that retention, which is what we developed customer journeys for, right? This idea of, we know the journey is a journey, right? It, it’s not a magic pill that you take, or you launched something once and you’re skyrocketed to success. Like anything that’s missional you’re working for Mm-Hmm. Right? You are, you are making it work on this trajectory, but retention actually dips when your culture is really strong, right? And so we have this strong culture at Brain Builders group of all of these members that are, are in it for the same reasons.
ES (17:50):
They’re scrappy. They’re, you know, they’re pulling theirselves up by their bootstraps with this purpose and this mission. So our culture’s strong. And I read this study that says, retention dips the stronger your culture gets if you don’t acclimate people to the mission. And I thought that was so interesting because that is really one of the main reasons we developed these customer journeys was saying, our culture’s really strong. We know people need to stick with us, with brand builders group with what we have created for people for the long haul. Like we believe in it that much. It’s not a get rich quick, it’s not come with us for a couple months and you’re set. We know it’s the long game. We believe in that so much. So when our culture’s that strong, we have to figure out some way to really align and acclimate people to what that looks like for them.
ES (18:37):
Like how are they implicated in that journey? Which is why we developed the customer journeys and we really built them based around what our customers were coming to us for. It’s really pretty simple. Like, not always easy, but very simple of what are the most of our, our clients, our members coming to us to build, right? What is that consistent through line? And so we developed really core four customer journeys. There’s one around authors because Brain Builders Group, we just get a lot of people that wanna put their message into the world in a written word. Like they just, they have this desire to write a book. Sometimes it’s their first, sometimes it’s their second or third. But they really wanna have the alignment. The next is speakers, right? We really work well with people that want to get their message into the world through voice, through the spoken word.
ES (19:27):
So those are kind of two of our really granular customer journeys of people really wanting to reach that elevated status of getting a book into as many hands as possible and getting on big stages to spread their, their word and their mission. And the other two are lead generation, right? And so this, what, what is that? It’s for mostly all of our professional services people, people that are in insurance, real estate. There’s a replicable model with lots of potential buyers, right? It’s how do you separate yourself in the market, right? We don’t build BA businesses based around what you do. We base a a brand around who you are. And that’s the differentiator. And I would say a lot of our clients fall into lead generation. ’cause Everyone needs leads no matter what you’re doing. If you own your business, if you’re working underneath a company at a high level, and then we have new revenue streams, right? This is for the person that comes into Brand Builders group saying, I have an idea and I wanna build it out for the first time. I’m gonna create a new business model, a new revenue stream that I wanna put into the world. So those are the four typical customer journeys we see our clients really align with and fall seamlessly into.
AJV (20:43):
No, I, you know, I think that’s one of the things that you said that’s so insightful is like categorically speaking, like this is roughly like the four main areas of what people come to us for. And as I sit and reflect over the last five years, you know, and, you know, as a part of like this joint venture and creating these, like, one of the things that I was really curious about, like to see in my own brain is well, why, like, why is it those types of people that gravitate towards brand builders group rather through social media or the podcast or as paying clients? And we have this saying at Brand Builders Group, which is, you are always most well positioned to serve the person you once were. I’m gonna pause, let that sink in for all of you listening, that you are always most well positioned to serve the person you once were or currently are.
AJV (21:41):
And as like it was, I don’t think it was coincidence. I don’t think it’s irony that the majority of the people that have found their way to us are actually who we are as people at Brand Builders Group, right? It’s like, we are speakers, we are authors, we are people who at the, at the core, every single person in our company if they know it or not, they are salespeople. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (22:34):
We have to learn the discipline of saying no more often than not. But I think it’s like, it’s one of those things that it’s like, I bet if all of you who are listening just paused and said, if I take a really good hard look at the people that I’m serving in my current business, whether it was on purpose or on accident, I bet you would find some really common themes of characteristics of who you once were and who you are. Mm. And if you put a little bit more intentionality into actually going after those people, because you know them inherently because you are them I bet your work would be more enjoyable, more missional a little easier, probably even a little simpler. Mm-Hmm.
ES (23:41):
Yeah, for sure. And I think anyone thinking through creating customer journeys for their own brand and business need to take that into account. You never wanna teach someone to do something you’ve never done yourself. I mean that is I think a recipe for disaster long term. Like, you know, we always wanna be learning at, always learning, but always exceeding who we’re teaching, right? In that area. And I think you brought up such a good point that we are naturally attracting these members because we have done what they want to do so exceptionally well.
AJV (24:16):
Now that we’ve talked about the journey, so there’s an author journey, a speaker journey a journey for generating new leads, lead generation, and then a journey for that person who wants to create a brand new revenue stream which is like starting a brand new business. But we really haven’t talked about what is a journey? Like what is this journey like, tell me where am I going? So tell us like what is a customer journey, at least through the lens of Brand builders group. Yes.
ES (24:45):
So in any type of membership and Brand Builders group is a very robust membership. So if you are a brand or a business that has something like this where you have members paying you for information application, you want them to leverage your membership, like you have spent time, effort, and energy creating courses, creating trainings, creating touchpoints in real life time workshops, there’s so many facets of your membership and what leads to retention utilization, right? We want people taking us up on what we have to offer. And I think what we realized was we have so many great things to offer that people were going, what do we do? Where do we start? Should we take this course or not? It’s all so good. And people were spreading themselves thin, even with our incredible content, you know, it was just so good. They wanted to consume it all.
ES (25:36):
And we had to really scale back and say a customer journey really increases, increases utilization in the specific areas of which these members want to grow, right? And so when you identify goals, say you say, I wanna be a paid keynote speaker and get my first paid gig in the next six months, nine months a year, great. That’s a great goal to have. Let’s reverse engineer it. If that is your long-term primary focus to be a paid keynote speaker, then you’re gonna be on the speaker journey. Like that’s a no-brainer. That is your long-term focus. So what does that mean? That means we are gonna create year by year, quarter by quarter exactly what you should be consuming, engaging with people. You should be meeting workshops you need to be attending and exactly what you need to be doing at those workshops to reach that goal.
ES (26:28):
Right? It’s this reverse engineering, but it’s super hyper-specific because we don’t want you in the first three months to go take a podcast course. It’s there, it’s fun, it kind of looks shiny. But do you need that to reach your overarching goal right now? Probably not. It’s going back to doing the right thing at the right time. And so we have created a three year journey for our clients to really look at a, this three years in full of what are the milestones I need to be reaching and attending and using in order to get to where I want to go. So it’s just a real big reverse engineering of a goal.
AJV (27:11):
Yeah, I know. I love that. And I think I think it would be helpful for people to go, ’cause I know that some people are going three years. What? Oh, God’s green Nerf, I’m not gonna be doing for three years. What? So I do think it’s worth talking about that, but also I think it’s worth talking about. It’s like, I think that people often, you know, they underestimate what can be done over the course of say, 10 years, but they severely overestimate what can be done in the course of one year. And I could even say people underestimate what can happen in a year, but they overestimate what can be accomplished in three months. Mm-Hmm.
ES (28:10):
Yep. So I, when I explain and when I show the entire customer journey for each, you know, area of focus and I showed three years, I always, ’cause I know anyone looking at that goes and it’s mostly, I want that to happen faster. Like, why can’t this happen faster?
ES (28:58):
And, and it’s again, learning from people who have been there and done that, right? Rory has, and you have built these personal brands and it has taken decades. Decades, right? To break through what we call she hands wall to get on the other side where people are approaching you and, and grabbing from you and wanting to hire you and pay you the highest fees that they can. And we have really shortened that learning curve. I mean, if you look at 10 years or 15 down to three, it’s incredible. But we also tell people, and I’m really quick to do this. Look, you can go as fast as you can or as slow as you have to, which is something that Brand Builders Group teaches our clients. If you want to move faster and you have the capacity and you have a team behind you and you’ve got all of these things that are really aligning, you can potentially do this faster than three years.
ES (29:45):
However, if you’ve got a full-time job and all these different areas of focus, and this is just something on the side that you’re building long-term, you can take five years, you can take eight, really, like we are here to temper that for you. But the most important part in all of that timeline is staying hyper-focused in those 90 day sprints. A lot can be done in a quarter, like we think about quarters really naturally in the business world. And thinking through how can we take our big overarching goal and create subset goals within quarters that makes it digestible and makes it doable. And not only both of those things, it makes it done well. Mm. Which at the end of the day is what we really want for people because well equals longevity.
AJV (30:30):
Mm. I think that is so good. And I think that thing too that you just said, it’s like it also ensures that you do it well. Right? It’s like if you’re not going to do it, well, why are we doing it? Because this is missional work that is like, that’s what we’re here for. And you know, one of the things that I was just thinking to myself as you were talking is it’s like it took us the better part of 20 years to figure out how other people could do it in three we, we might be slower than others, but it took a long time to go. Why is it taking so long? Like, there’s gotta be a better way. There’s got to be a simpler way to learn these things and to figure out these things. And in addition to 20 years of doing it and trying to figure out the path at Brand Builders Group, it has been five years of fine tuning and streamlining to not only go, how do we do it in a more succinct fashion, but how do we ensure that the order is correct? Right. And I think that’s what you said. It’s like, you know, you can go faster, you can do multiple things, but why? Right. Because that’s not gonna ensure that you do it. Well, that’s back to shiny object syndrome. And I do think there is a, a, a giant lesson in patience in all of this, of going, sometimes it’s just not meant to be hurried.
ES (32:01):
Yep.
AJV (32:01):
It’s just not meant to be rushed. Mm-Hmm.
ES (33:12):
End. Yeah.
AJV (33:13):
Yeah. I love that. Okay. So next question I have for you is, I think it, and this would just be like in your opinion, right? In your opinion, what, what do you think people need to know that are listening for them to go, okay, I may not be working with Brand Builders Group as a client, but I listen to the podcast, I’m absorbing free information. So as a non-client, how, how do I know what journey I’m on? Mm-Hmm. Like how would you say that anyone who is listening and ’cause I think a lot of people even in our own community have selected the wrong journey. So it happens even in a, a client relationship, but how do people determine, Hmm, what is the journey that I should be on to pursue this missional work that I feel called to?
ES (34:02):
Hmm. That’s a really good question. And I would echo the fact that yes, a lot of people really gravitate towards one particular journey. And I’ll share which one that is and why that reason is in my own opinion is a lot of people gravitate towards new revenue stream. And I think we look at those clients a majority. I mean, when you look at our number of clients that have said and declared a journey, it’s like declaring a major in college, right? When they’ve declared their journey, I think it’s about 50 50 if not, you know, 60 40. A lot of our clients are picking new revenue stream. And it’s so interesting to me because you, we talked about this earlier, a new revenue stream is like building a brand new business. And I don’t know if any of the listeners out there have ever built a business.
ES (34:48):
It is exceptionally hard. When you look at a three year journey and you’re building a brand new business, it’s gonna take longer than that. I can almost guarantee you there are so many things to think about. It’s a slower, you know, revenue stream that’s coming in. You have to have certain things in place to make that work in an efficient and effective way. But a lot of people think, well, I’m building a personal brand and so that means I’m starting a new revenue stream. And that is usually, typically not the case. And so what we often ask people to do is to step back and we an exercise we walk our members through called the Golden Grid. Even before that, like a revenue streams assessment. Like that’s kind of the first iteration of saying, what are all the things that you’re doing right now that are making money?
ES (35:36):
Could be making $10 a month, could be making a hundred thousand dollars a month. I don’t care. I want you to list them all out, right? And then I want you to tell me how much time you’re spending on all of these things. And then I want you to tell me how stressful they are on a scale of one to five. And then I want you to tell me how much future potential these things have on a scale of one to five. It seems so simple and it is, but looking at that document and saying, oh man, there are things on here that I’m doing that have no future potential and bring me excessive amounts of stress. It really helps you identify opportunities and things that you need to get rid of. And so once you’re starting to look at that, you might think to yourself, huh, like, I’m speaking a lot for free and I really love it and I’ve got like a really great opportunity to grow that piece of my business.
ES (36:23):
You know, I can create courses or I can, you know, start a podcast. I like to think of it as majoring in minoring, like I’m majoring in keynote speaking because it brings me a lot of joy. I don’t have to spend a ton of time on it. It could potentially bring me a lot of money in. And it’s not a high stress for me. Like the I’m already doing it. Like I should, I should continue to roll in that direction. Doesn’t mean I can’t create a course, doesn’t mean I can’t start a podcast. Those are just things that are not taking all of my time, effort, and energy. I don’t need to create something new. And same for lead generation. Like most people should focus on lead gen. They already are driving people to something naturally. I think 90% of our clients either are driving them to something that already exists, something they’ve built, or to their business that currently already exists. Why are we not pumping wind into our biggest billowing sail? Why is it always our natural inclination to hoist another sail up and hope that wind goes in that direction?
AJV (37:21):
So true. So true. Right?
ES (37:23):
Right. And so it’s just thinking through, like taking a big assessment of what we’re already doing, but knowing that things are already working for us. Like there is typically something already in the mix and how can we double down on that and build something then start something totally new from scratch. So I think it’s just this mindset thing and really identifying and taking inventory of, of and level setting of where we are.
AJV (37:48):
No, I think that’s really insightful. And you said something that I kind of wanna like come back to, which is people naturally associate building a personal brand with starting some sort of new revenue stream. And that’s not what a personal brand is. And I think people are associating a personal brand with a business model
ES (38:09):
That’s so good,
AJV (38:10):
Right? Mm-Hmm.
AJV (38:59):
But it’s like we all have a reputation, right? If you just sit, she’s sitting there and ask yourself, what do people think of when they think of me? That’s your reputation. And that in is in the essence is also your public personal brand. The art of personal branding is putting intention behind it of going, I can influence this by what I talk about, my research, where I spend my time, what I, I post about what I do, where I put my money, how I organize my calendar. It’s like I actually can influence how others view me and what they associate with by where I choose to spend my time, energy, money and resources. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (39:58):
I’m gonna launch X, Y, and Z. And it’s like, why? Why are you doing that? You don’t have to do that. You don’t actually need to do that. In fact, you should not do that. Instead, it’s like, we need to put fuel and ammunition behind what you already have. Right? Right. How do we help more people learn about what you’re doing? Now if you don’t have anything, well then of course that makes sense. But I think that is a great distinction that you made. It’s like people get caught up with, oh, I’m building my brand so I have to start something new. And that’s just not true.
ES (40:33):
It is not true. And I would say the other thing is that people in that same vein will often say, gosh, I need to put my personal brand on hold ’cause I really need to pay attention to my business. And that blows my mind all the time. I’m like, what do you mean? Like your personal brand is literally your business. Like you are driving people to your business. Because we know at the end of the day, people don’t do business with products, services, marketing companies. People do business with people, right? And so when people always say, gosh, I need to take time to really focus on my business. I’m like, what do you mean? Like, you are doing that right now and you’re doing it more successfully than most everyone around you by building a personal brand that builds trust. And so that, that is a big, like external facet of what you’re talking about. Now.
AJV (41:24):
Oh my gosh, you just reminded me of and I’ve heard this quote a hundred times, but Rory and I just did a weekend long goal planning session for the next 12 months of our life, and it got us thinking of like, how many people actually take two days of every year and plan what the next year’s gonna look like? And he reminded me of this quote that we heard when we were engaged and our, you know, marital counselors that we had leading up to our wedding said, I just want you to remember this and never forget it, is that most people spend more time planning their wedding than they do their marriage
AJV (42:19):
And that stuck with us so clearly. And so ever since then, we’ve done these two days just me and him for a weekend of going, what do we want our family to look like? And what do we want our business to look like? And what do you know? What does my my faith walk look like? And mm-Hmm,
AJV (42:50):
It’s with you for a lifetime. And it’s like, do we ever spend time potentially everyone listening on the wrong things? You know, like, do we I do. I know, I do. Sure. And I think it’s one of those things of going, it’s not an either or, it’s an and, but by working on yourself, you’re always working on your business. And by working on your dreams and your goals and finding something that fills your cup it impacts everyone around you. Positively. Generational change comes from I have found my purpose. I am living into my work. Right? My work has become my ministry, and it’s then it doesn’t feel like work anymore. Hmm. And so if you’re gonna working on my business, maybe the question should be, is that what I really should be working on? Right.
ES (43:38):
So good. Really good. I love that.
AJV (43:40):
All right, Elizabeth. If people are asking themselves a question of, okay, okay, well if I do have this personal brand
ES (44:17):
A great question. If you go to free brand call.com, you can put in a request for what we call a brand strategy call. These are complimentary, they’re about an hour long. And our strategist will really help identify these opportunities for you. They’ll learn a little bit about your goals and what you’re looking to do with a personal brand. They’ll answer some questions around that, and they will do it all through the lens of the customer journeys we talked about. So your customer journey conversation can start on one of these complimentary free brand calls with our team. So it’s free brand call.com.
AJV (44:54):
I love that. And if Elizabeth, if people wanna connect with you your awesome self, where should they go to connect with you?
ES (45:02):
Yes. Well, you can connect with me on LinkedIn, Elizabeth Stevens with a pH. I always have to differentiate that I’m married into a name, which is so easy, but I have to, I have to tell people how it’s spelled. Or you can follow me on Instagram. It’s at EAS 2 8 8 3. You’re gonna see a lot of my, my work life and my home life and all of the fun things that happen there. But I would love for you to follow me both places.
AJV (45:27):
Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining in as today. And for those of you who dunno, Elizabeth actually was a part of our team prior to starting Build Brand Builders group. She’s been a part of the founding team and an integral part of every single move, pivot, shake up, shake down that we’ve had since we launched this. And we’re so honored that you are the face of our community. We love you. We’re so grateful for you. Thank you for being on today. And for everyone else, stay tuned for the recap episode, which will be coming up next. We’ll see you next time
Ep 451: 5 Keys to Using Customer Experience as a Differentiator | Will Guidara Episode Recap
RV (00:03):
Well, I have done hundreds of podcast interviews over the years, and without a doubt, this is one of my all time favorite podcast interviews. Maybe, maybe my number one all time favorite was this interview I did with Will Guidara on his book and the concept of Unreasonable Hospitality. I love it so much. I agree with it. I believe in it. I underscore it. I, I I, I would add exclamation points to everything he said and say, this is what we want to be. This is what I want to be a student of. This is not only how I want people to think of Brand Builders Group when they do business with us and they talk about us. This is what I want people to think about us as people. And so we’re gonna talk about, I’m gonna share with you here in my, my own little recap of five keys to using customer experience as a differentiator and as a competitive advantage.
RV (01:05):
So this is important, right? Because if you, if you go back, go listen to this interview. If, I mean, if there’s one that you go back and listen to, go back and listen to this interview with Will, it is so good. But if you, if you go, okay, what do we do at Brand Builders Group? Part of what we do is we help people find their uniqueness so that they can exploit it in the service of others, right? That’s a huge part of what we do. That’s based on a quote that I learned from a gentleman named Larry Wingett. Well, finding your uniqueness, one of the benefits of that, one of the byproducts of it is that you separate yourself from all the other people who do something similar to what you do. And here, this, this story Will’s story and his content and his expertise is so relevant because he’s talking about what we typically teach in terms of how to differentiate yourself from the market is basically through your content and through your delivery and through your own stories.
RV (02:06):
But what he’s talking about is separating yourself from everyone through customer experience, meaning by changing the way that your customers interact with you, and more specifically the way that you interact with them, you can make them feel a certain way. And by doing that, that is going to separate you from everybody else that they could refer or do business with, or, you know, come back and, and be a repeat customer of. And so here’s five keys to doing this, and these mostly come directly from Will. So the first thing that he said that really hit me as I went back and reviewed this interview was again, if you, if you haven’t listened to it, go listen to it. But he was the co-owner of 11 Madison Park. So this is this very high end restaurant in New York, but he wanted to be the best restaurant in the world. And what he said was,
RV (02:58):
I decided that we weren’t going to compete by trying to be the best product in the world, meaning we weren’t gonna try to have the best food in the world necessarily. They knew they needed to have world-class food, but he picked a different area of the business customer experience. And he said, I wanted to compete on experience. The way that Will said it was, he didn’t wanna be unreasonable in the product, but he wanted to be unreasonable in how they treated people. And he defined it as unreasonable hospitality is targeting and zeroing in on the human desire for people to feel seen, cared for, and welcome. What a brilliant observation and what an intelligent insight to go. You can compete not only on, on what you do, but how you do it. That’s what customer experience is all about. It’s not just what you do.
RV (04:01):
It’s one thing to be innovative in what you do, which is its own separate conversation and also worth aspiring to. But there’s this whole other conversation, which I think is so often ignored, which is how you do it, how you do what you do, not just the expertise in, in the case of personal brands. This isn’t just about you becoming well known. And it’s not just about you producing insights that are better or more powerful or more poignant, or more sharp or more clear or more actionable than the other people who are in your space. It’s about your customers being made to feel a certain way as they encounter you, as they interact with you, as they exchange commerce with you, as they engage with your, your content or your events, or your products or your services. How do you make your customers feel? And that, to me is amazing to go.
RV (04:58):
I mean, there’s
RV (05:55):
So this is the tactical component of how to do this is go through you, your team and audit, and we’re gonna have our team do this at Brand Builders Group like this for us. This is where we’re at. This is perfect for where we’re at is going, how do we get to the next level, right? So part of it is being brilliant at the basics, mastering the fundamentals. Those have to be in place. Once you have those things, you go, okay, how do we go next level? This is, it is go, we need to audit. We need to, meaning, we need to think about, we need to document, we need to transcribe every touchpoint our customers have with us. And this isn’t that. You could do this in your marketing as well, but what I took from this interview from Will specifically is it’s actually once they become a customer, too often personal brands are overly consumed and worried about just getting new customers, attracting new customers, growing their reach, they’re following, signing up new people, and then they work so hard to bring this person in.
RV (06:51):
They make the sale, and then it’s like they basically forget about ’em. And it, they just kinda like, you know, the, it’s just fumes when it comes to delivering to their customers. And so they’re always having to constantly chase new customers and new business because they do such a crappy job of taking care of their past customers and their existing customers. And instead of over-delivering with their existing customers and letting their customers become their sales force to bring them new customers, they’re just focused on new business, then they, they make the sale and they kind of like deliver C minus work with their existing customers. And so they have to do the hard work of finding new customers versus letting their past customers become their sales force. Well, so how do you do that? You have to audit every touchpoint that you have with your past customers.
RV (07:39):
And the way that Will said it was, he said, you want to isolate them and then elevate them. Meaning, okay, let’s look at the list of every single interaction, communication touchpoint we have with a customer, and let’s figure out some of the ones that are, you know, routinely mundane and add creativity to them. So this is really a two-part process, right? It’s audit the steps, and then it is figure out how do we, how do you add creativity to certain ones? And you maybe can’t do all of them, but maybe you can do one or two or three. But to go, where can we take the routine, boring, monotonous experience that customers are used to having in their onboarding or in receiving their, you know, their invoice or in their welcome or, or maybe in their cancellation, or maybe it, it’s in their, their their you know, the first email they get or whatever, whatever it is, and going, how can we add creativity to this moment to make this moment magical? Creativity is what makes the moment magical. And thoughtfulness is what makes this magical. So that is
RV (08:55):
The second key to using customer experience as a differentiate differentiator, is to audit each touchpoint you have with your customers and add creativity where you can. Number three is to be audacious in your ambition, but patient in your pursuit. I loved that quote right from Will Gera in our interview together. And by the way, if you can’t tell, like, I’m so convicted on this, we are, we are sending this interview out to our entire, all of our employees at Brand Builders Group, right? We have dozens employees. This will be a mandatory listen for employees. They will be required to carve time out of their daily work schedule to listen to this interview as a condition of their employment here, because this is a place where we can do a better job. And what Will says is to be add audacious in your ambition, which is to basically, you know, set a high bar, but be patient in your pursuit.
RV (09:56):
And I think that is a key, a key here is to go, okay, I wanna have high goals and I wanna reach for, you know, something that feels maybe impossible or something that’s gonna stretch us, something that’s gonna push us, push us to our limits, and yet I’m gonna allow myself the grace of getting there slowly. I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna focus more on consistency than intensity. That’s one of my mantras from Take the Stairs, that consistency is greater than intensity. And so he’s just applying that same principle to the idea of customer experience to go, okay, one day we wanna be 11 Madison Park, right? Like, one day we wanna be Nordstrom, one day we wanna be, you know, whoever pick your, pick your, your brand that has incredible customer experience right? Now, we might not be able to get there, but let’s choose one touch point with our customers where we can really, really exceed their expectations, where we can surprise them, where we can knock their socks off, right?
RV (10:55):
Where we can really blow it outta the water by simply over-delivering in a very unexpected way on something that is normally trivial and mundane. So be audacious in your ambition, but be patient in your pursuit. Be slow and, and forgiving if it takes time to achieve this, right? You don’t do this overnight. It takes years and, and, and to transform your culture, right? Whether it’s your own personal mentality of service and hospitality, or if it’s, especially if you have a small team or a big team or a huge company, right? It’s gonna take time to transform the culture. And, and, and so you can’t do this overnight. You have to be patient in your pursuit. So I love that. The fourth thing is another principle that I believe in and share a value here with Will. Now, the way that Will said it is one size fits one, one size fits one rather than one size fits all.
RV (11:58):
So this is a key. This is, this is the next key. This is the fourth key to using customer experience as a differentiator. One size fits one. What does he mean by that? He means do something for your customer that is unique to them. Go out of your way to do something for them that is so hyper customized that they know it was only for them. It had to be just for them. It, it’s not something that you can standardize. Although you could maybe standardize the practice. It’s, it’s got to be something specific to them. And I’ll give you an example of this is a place where our team did a great job of this one of our early clients, that Brand Builders group was a gentleman named Kiir Weer, and Kiir was a client of ours for a couple years.
RV (12:47):
And we love Kiir and we, we, we loved working with him. And, and his story was, you know, he has this amazing story a heartbreaking in some ways that, you know, he had a boating accident, he was driving and he went to prison after one of his friends died in a boating accident when, when he was driving. And so when he got out of prison, he couldn’t get a job and he couldn’t get into any you know, like graduate schools. And so then you know, it goes on and years later, he becomes very, very successful and very wealthy. And he got into the graduate school of his dreams, and then he happened to graduate while he was a brand builders group client. And that was a big dream for him that he had sent many years in advance.
RV (13:33):
And our team noticed that. And we sent him a sweatshirt from that university, right? And it was just a special moment for him. He was super grateful because what, because why? He felt seen, he felt heard, he felt cared about. He felt like more than a customer, because he is that he, he he is that to us. He, he’s someone that we, he was one of our very first customers, right? Brand builder. He was one of the very first people who ever took a chance on brand builders group. And so he meant means a lot to us, meant a lot to us. And so we took a, a moment and some budget and some time to pay attention, notice this opportunity, and then to invest those dollars, a few dollars to do something for one of our original clients to make them feel special. That was transformational. We can’t operationalize that for everybody. Not all of our clients are, you know, have that story. Not all of them are graduating, you know, from, from the college of their dreams or the University of their dreams while they’re an active client of ours. So we can’t just operationalize that. And, and that’s the point, right? That’s the point that Will is making, is that one size fits one. The way that that we say it around here is the more specific,
RV (14:50):
The more terrific. If you wanna fe make somebody feel cared about, the more specific, the more terrific. It’s gotta be specific to their circumstance, specific to their timing, specific to, to their unique tastes and preferences. It’s not wrong to send everyone a gift on Christmas. But what’s more powerful is, like in this example of Keir or in the Dirty Water dog
RV (15:46):
John de Julius is another past interview that we had here on this show. And, and he has a, his, his concept here is called Secret Service, and he’s been someone that’s been transformational in our career. Go, that’s another interview you should go back and listen to on this same topic, but the more specific, the more terrific Do something unique to that person is gonna be more powerful than doing the same thing for everybody at the same time. Really, really powerful. But the last thing, okay, so the fifth key to using customer experience as a differentiator is my favorite thing that Will said in the entire interview. And this was about creating an unreasonable hospitality culture. And he said this about his team. He said, our goal wasn’t just to inspire our people to be better at their job. Our goal was to inspire our people to be better human beings.
RV (16:50):
Our goal wasn’t just to inspire our people to be better at their job. Our goal was to inspire our people to be better human beings. Meaning to be better at seeing others, caring for others, making others feel welcome. That’s what hospitality is about. That requires you to be a better human. It requires you to be less self-centered and more service centered, less focused on you, and more, more focused on them. In order to have this moment of unreasonable hospitality, and, and in order to create this magical moment, you first have to be outside of yourself enough to be paying attention and listening. Not not just hearing what they’re saying, but listening for an opportunity to go there it is. Here is a, in this little moment, this, this little opportunity that has shown up that I can go a little bit out my way to make this person feel so special.
RV (17:47):
That’s what Unreasonable Hospitality is all about. And you can do that with a small budget. You can do that with a small team. You can do it with a, with a big budget and a big team. You, you know, will, I asked him that question and he said, well, you know, just the level of hospitality should probably match in some way the size of the bill. Right? And otherwise it’s not gonna be totally sustainable, but go over the top to do it. It’s not the price of the gift that matters, it’s the level of thoughtfulness. It’s the level of customization. It’s the hyper-specific nature of what you’re doing. That’s what makes people feel special. And this is how you do amazing customer experience. This is how you do amazing employee experience. And as a, as a husband and a family man, I can tell you guys, listen up.
RV (18:40):
This is, this is what, this is something I think a AJ does. An amazing job of this for me and for our boys, is she does things like that to make us feel special all the time. Men, we probably need to work a little harder at doing that for our kids and for our spouses, right? And, and for our, you know, the people who are important to us in our life is recognize these moments, these opportunities to do something magical for somebody else. It’s, it’s really, really transformational for them. So that’s what Unreasonable Hospitality is all about. Those are five keys to using customer experience as a different, a differentiator. Be excellent at making people feel seen, cared for, and welcome. Audit the touch points, and then add cre, add creativity. Be audacious in your ambition, but pa patient in your pursuit. Remember the more specific, the more terrific and inspire your people, not just to be better at their job, but to be better at being human beings. I loved it. I’m so inspired. Get the book on Reasonable hospitality. Go listen to the interview, share this recap. Share the interview with somebody who you know, who will appreciate it, and show some love to Will Guera online. If you get a chance, let him know that you heard him right here on the Influential Personal Brand Podcast. We’ll catch you next time.
Ep 450: Unreasonable Hospitality with Will Guidara
RV (00:01):
Well, I’m honored to introduce you to someone who I love to hate because I am so jealous of this man and so inspired by him. Will Guera is the author of a book called Unreasonable Hospitality, which is an incredible book, and it’s doing something that we all aspire to do, which is to sell thousands and thousands of units every single week without knowing how
RV (01:02):
But before he was an author, will was the co-owner of 11 Madison Park. And if you are a foodie, you know exactly what I’m talking about. So this is a restaurant one of was actually named in 2017, number one on the list of the world’s 50 best restaurants. It earned three Michelin stars while it was under, his leadership had four stars from the New York Times. And that was why Will was, you know, handling and managing the hospitality there. The co-owner of that restaurant. So not an easy place to get a reservation at, from what I understand. I had to research it. I’m not even hoity-toity enough to have been invited to this restaurant
RV (01:57):
It’s so much legit, like so many legit people I know talk about this conference. So it’s an, it’s an annual hospitality symposium. It brings together, you know, just amazing people from all different kind of walks of life who are interested in hospitality to sort of share ideas and, and, and best practices. But will also is a graduate of the Hospitality School at Cornell University. He has co-authored four cookbooks, was named one of Crane’s Business 40 under 40. He’s the recipient of the Wall Street Journal magazine’s Innovator Award. And turns out, even though I don’t like him, it turns out he’s hard to not, like he’s an amazing guy. We’ve gotten to know each other a little bit. And my team, here’s the other thing, true story. My team was talking about this book before I ever met Will, and that’s how I know an author is really making dent a dent in the world. So, bro, welcome to the show, man. It’s so great to have you
WG (02:55):
Well, I, I just wanna say that while you may love to hate me, I just love to love you, my friend
RV (04:28):
Well, thanks brother. And I, and I feel that’s like, I mean, that’s kind of the, in many ways the message of your book, you know, unreasonable Hospitality is like you create these bonds so quickly with people. So just explain, start at the beginning. Explain what’s the premise of Unreasonable Hospitality? What is it? How did you come up with it? And like, before we get to how to apply it, just define it for me.
WG (04:56):
Yeah. So how it kind of came to pass was I was at that restaurant 11 medicine park, and in 2006 I got there and the restaurant was, was fine. It was a mediocre restaurant served delicious food, but it was not all that significant in its technique or its ingredients and all that. The service was very friendly, but not all that precise. But the dining room, man, anyone listening to this who has never seen a picture of the dining room at the Madison Park, you should look it up. It’s truly one of the most beautiful in the world. And so I was brought in as a part of a team that was charged with elevating the restaurant experience to live up to the room itself. And we initially did that, at least we started out doing that by focusing on excellence, right? I think anyone who’s ever sold anything, whether it’s a product or an experience, when you want to make it better, you focus relentlessly on the product itself, on how to make it as good as it can possibly be focused on training and sourcing and techniques and education and discipline and all that stuff.
WG (06:06):
Got fancier plates and silverware and glassware and, you know and it started working pretty quickly. I mean, listen, like anytime you’re trying to do anything of consequence, you need to be pretty audacious and your ambition, but patient in your pursuit. And we were, we were pushing hard over a number of years, but in the grand scheme of life, it wasn’t that long before we went from two stars in the New York Times to three Stars and then to four stars and zero Michelin stars to three Michelin stars. And both of those rating systems, those represent the most stars you can get. But there was this one list that we really wanted to be on, and just my nature, I’m a competitive person. I wanted to be at the top of which was the 50 best we set out to create one of the best restaurants in New York and then in America.
WG (06:55):
And once we had done that, I wanted to create one of the best restaurants, not only one of the best restaurant in the world. The thing about that list though, and even as you hear me say it, perhaps it sounds as ridiculous as it is, I mean, how can one restaurant be the best restaurant in the world, right? It’s too subjective, there’s too many restaurants. But that list acknowledges when you, when you reach that top spot, is you’ve become the restaurant that’s having the greatest impact on the re on the world of restaurants at any given time. And so in order to do that, I needed to figure out what our impact was gonna be. You know, I looked at the people that had topped the list before me. They were chefs, chefs who were unreasonable in pursuit of the food that were serving, relentless in pursuit of innovating the kind of techniques that would evolve the craft of cooking forward into the next generation.
WG (07:54):
But I’m not a chef. I’m a dining room guy. I’m the guy that likes to be out there throwing the party, welcoming people, making them feel at home. And I decided that if we were gonna become their number one, number one, it was not going to come by being unreasonable in pursuit of the product we were serving. It was going to come by making the choice to be unreasonable in pursuit of people and relentless in pursuit of the one thing that will never change, which is well, our human desire to feel seen, to feel cared for, to feel a sense of belonging, to feel welcome. And so that first year when we were put on that list, we came in last place, we were number 50. And that night on a cocktail napkin, I wrote, we will be number one one of the world.
WG (08:39):
And then I also wrote those two words, unreasonable hospitality. And that became my mission statement going forward. I mean, simply put, what does it mean? Listen, I believe if you’re trying to be extraordinary in your field, excellence is required. But at the end of the day, excellence is table stakes When you get to the top tier unreasonable hospitality means that you are making the choice to be just as focused, just as creative, just as relentless, just as intentional in pursuit of how you make people feel, as you very likely already are in pursuit of the thing you’re selling. That you don’t reserve your best efforts only for the thing, but for all the feelings and emotions that surround that thing.
RV (09:30):
So is it, and so at its essence, is it that, is it, if somebody feels special and somebody feels seen, then mission accomplished?
WG (09:46):
I mean,
RV (11:13):
Yes, it’s ironic. I mean, you, you even see like the explosion of social media over the years, and it’s like, what is that? More than people just wanting to be seen, recognized, valued, appreciated for who they are, what they know, what they could do in the world. So yeah, I wanted, I wanna know how to apply it, right? And so I, I told you a lot, most of the people listening are small business owners, but in this one we’re gonna be, I’m gonna be super selfish and I want you to consult Brand Builders group because
RV (12:00):
I mean, really we’ve been on the survival journey. Like startup is like mm-hmm. You move from survival, and then we try to streamline and then we, you know, excellent. But like, where we really want to get to is making people feel special, right? Every person, the, the, the podcast listener, the person who reads a book, the person who subscribes to the blog, all the way down to the people who become customers and affiliates, and then ultimately team members. But if you’re a small business, and my guess is most of the people listening to this are even smaller than us, and you don’t have unlimited budgets and things like that. How do you do this tactically? And, and what I’m really curious about is how to operationalize it, right? Like the founder of the company can make people feel special a lot of times through their words, or they just have this passion, but like, how do you create a culture of it? How do you, how do you systematize it to where every person who walks in the dining room has this amazing experience that they all, they all feel that way? How do we create that in our small businesses?
WG (13:09):
So the first thing I did when I got home from those first awards and I had that cocktail nap napkin with the big ambitious goal and the strategy through which we were gonna achieve it, I sat down with my team at our daily premium meeting. If anyone out there has worked in a restaurant, you may know what premium is. That’s the 30 minute meeting. Most restaurants have together in a circle right before we unlock the doors and welcome people in for dinner. Most restaurants do that meeting, although many of them waste it by talking about something that’s so like, clearly could have been accomplished via an email, a new menu item, or a new glass of wine or whatever. I think that 30 minute meeting, a daily huddle within any organization is one of the most transformational things any company can do. And it’s an opportunity not to talk about the what, but about the why and the how.
WG (14:02):
It’s an opportunity for a leader to share moments of inspiration, invite the team to do so in return. It’s an opportunity not just to talk to your team about what they need to learn to be better at their jobs, but about all the things they can think about or learn from or be inspired by to be better human beings. I think that meeting is when the people you work with cease being a collection of individuals and come together as a trusting team. And only when everyone on the team like, you know, falls into that beautiful pocket, can you unleash their most fully realized collective creativity and capacity. And so I go deep into that because any single business out there that serves other people, if you don’t have some version of a daily huddle, I think you’re leaving so much opportunity on the table. Think of it like a daily locker room speech, like Al Pacino and any given Sunday, there’s a beautiful opportunity to fire pet, make sure.
RV (15:04):
Fight for that. You gotta fight for that in
WG (15:07):
WG (16:01):
And so what we did is we closed the restaurant for lunch one day, brought every single person on the team in. By the way, I think brainstorming as a group is always a beautiful opportunity to balance the gap between information and authority if you engage every single person on the team. And we did an exercise that I now call interrogating the guest experience, where for four hours this team broken up into a bunch of groups, tried to identify every little touch point everything from picking up the phone to call and make the reservation, to walking through the door to going to the bar to have a drink. If your table wasn’t ready to getting up and using the restroom in the middle of the dinner, you get the gist, every little touch point. And then once we’d isolated every single one of ’em, then we got to do the fun part.
WG (16:53):
We got to figure out how to make every single one of them, or at least as many of them as humanly possible, a little more awesome. What I came to realize is the smallest enhancements, the least likely touch points in the guest journey can have the greatest possible impact. Because if you focus on creativity into a part of the experience that no one else has ever paused for long enough to consider the impact can be significant. I’ll give you an example, A story I tell in the book. The check was close to the end of the list, right? That is a touchpoint when you’re serving someone the moment you drop the bill on their table. And yet it’s one that very few people have ever invested any creativity into, right? A because it’s transactional, and we generally tend to believe that if something feels transactional, it can’t feel hospitable.
WG (17:45):
But b, because it’s just a hard moment to get right at a restaurant when you ask for the check. If it takes us too long to get it to you, people get really impatient when they’re ready to leave. We can undo all the goodwill that we’ve built. We can’t drop the check on your table before you’ve asked for it, otherwise you feel like we’re trying to rush you out. That’s also the moment at a fine dining restaurant where you realize how much that meal cost, which makes it a lot harder to appreciate how much you loved it moments earlier. Uhhuh
RV (18:12):
You open it and you go, okay, brace for impact. Oh God, brace for impact.
WG (18:17):
I mean to the point where no one’s really ever done anything creative with the check. I mean, you know, I actually read in John Lin’s book, another one of our buddies from that, from that day Giftology. Yeah. He talked about Cornell University did a study where they studied a bunch of restaurants that gave a mint with the check versus a bunch of restaurants that didn’t. Yeah. And the restaurants that gave out mints got on average 18% more in tips than those that didn’t. This beautiful display, that generosity begets generosity in an asymmetrical way. But anyway, we identified that touchpoint. So then as a group, we figured out how to make it more awesome. And this is what we came up with when I knew you were done. You didn’t ask for the check yet, but you were done. I went over to your table with a bottle of cognac and a glass for each purse, and I poured a splash of cognac into each glass.
WG (19:08):
Then I put the bottle on the table and said, Hey, this is what their compliments help yourself to as much as you’d like. And then I put the check down and said, and your check is right here. Whenever you’re ready for it, what do we do? Well, no one ever had to ask for the check again. No one could ever feel like we were trying to rush them out. We’d just given them an entire bottle of free booze. At the moment when they realized how much the meal cost, we’d matched that moment with a gesture of crazy generosity, which maintained the value proposition we were trying to offer. And at the end of a very long meal where we had been serving people immaculately, we gave them the gift of being able to serve one another, which is the very essence of hospitality. I’ve met so many people over the years who, in spite of the fact that we were serving some of the best food in the world, don’t remember a single thing they ate that night, but they remember the cognac and the way it made them feel. So the first answer to that question, and I have a few different answers, is look at the entire experience, interrogate it and find a couple of those really unlikely touchpoints and make them profoundly best in class. Because if you focus on something that no one else has, it gives you an unfair competitive advantage. By definition, you win because you’re doing something somewhere where no one else has done anything before.
WG (20:36):
Does that make sense? Uhhuh
RV (20:37):
WG (21:12):
Well, yeah. And what you’re gonna find is you probably do a bunch of stuff really badly. You probably don’t do anything in a bunch of areas. Yeah. And you’re probably really proud of the way you do some things. I did this exercise with an automotive with an auto sales group. It’s like a group out in California that has a ton of dealerships. And when you’re interrogating all the touch points after about an hour, you think you’re done, I urge you to keep going for another two hours because it’s when you finish picking the low hanging fruit and you have to climb a little bit higher up in the tree, that’s when you find the real stuff that gives you the real opportunities with them. It was like a bunch of like big, you know, manly car dealers. About 45 minutes in, they were bored with the exercise and I kept on pushing ’em and they were annoyed with me.
WG (21:57):
But by the end, well, we realized that the first time you get a flat tire three months after you buy the car, maybe that’s a step, that’s a touch point in the journey. The first time you opened your glove compartment, maybe a week after you buy the car. That’s a touch point in the customer journey. Once you isolate those things, now you can elevate them. Like everyone talks about extending and experiences as far into the future as they possibly can. And so, and if a week later you reach into the gove compartment for the first time and you see a beautiful little note and just a nice, thoughtful, not overly expensive gift waiting there for you, the way that you’ll feel about the people that sold you, that car jumps so dramatically because their thoughtfulness and their care becomes so much more evident.
WG (22:50):
So, okay, that’s one. I think another practical which this came, I’m going to go chronologically way out of order, but for the cadence of the conversation is a similar exercise, but instead of interrogating the touch points in the customer journey, I call this one pattern recognition of recurring moments. So, okay if you and your team sit down and you say, okay, I don’t wanna think about the touchpoints, the things that happen as a part of the guest journey for everyone we serve, instead, I want to spend the next couple weeks identifying the five things that just happen often. So in a restaurant that could mean that oftentimes people are on their way to the airport right after their meal. It could mean that man, you know, like twice a week a party of four shows up as a party of three because one of the people’s spouses got sick and is at home in bed with, with the flu.
WG (24:01):
Or it could mean man, like once every week, someone is getting engaged here. Okay, now you’ve identified recurring moments. These are things that just happen often. Every single business has recurring moments. If you identify them in advance, then along with your team, you can determine how you’re gonna react to those moments and even develop the stuff you might need to make those reactions more awesome. In my world we had a graphic designer design and we had these beautiful boxes, made 11 Madison Park airplane food for every single person that was gonna the airport after their meal. We had this amazing thing packaged, prepared and ready to deploy easily for our team. So every time someone mentioned that, we hit them with this beautiful gesture of hospitality. We had an amazing chicken soup recipe ready on the dessert screen of our micross terminal. So when a server was entering desserts for a table that showed up one person short, ’cause they were homesick in bed, chicken soup ready to go.
WG (25:07):
So that person, even though they missed the meal, could still quote, eat at 11 Madison Park, or, man, my favorite one, I tell this story all the time because I just think it embodies the idea so well, is that a lot of people get engaged at a restaurant. Yeah. And if you go to a decent restaurant, you propose to your person and they say, yes, there, they better pour you a free glass to champagne like we did. But that’s just reasonable. Once he’d identified that as a recurring moment, we could figure out how to make it unreasonable. Tiffany and co had their offices across the park. I started knocking on doors until I found the chief marketing officer convinced her to give me 1000 of those baby blue boxes each with the two champagne flutes in them, put ’em in a closet in the back that we emptied out and called the Hospitality Toolkit closet, which is where we put all the stuff we needed for these gestures.
WG (26:02):
Next time someone got engaged, we poured in free champagne just like we always would have. But what they wouldn’t notice was that their champagne glasses looked a little different from everyone else’s. And when they were done with their champagne, we brought the glasses back, washed them, dry them, put them back in the box, and gave them to them on their way out the door. Again, I’ve met so many people who got engaged at our restaurant and years later don’t remember a single thing they ate, but they’ll never forget how we made them feel with those glasses. Maya Angelou has a quote. She says, people will forget what you say, they’ll forget what you do, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel. That is the essence of hospitality. And so the second piece of advice is to get together with your team people all the way at the bottom of the hierarchy, very much on the frontline, as well as all the way at the top of the hierarchy, not quite as close to the frontline. And come up with five, just five recurring moments and with creativity and intention and a little bit of investment. Figure out how to make your reactions to those moments fricking bonkers. Awesome. And watch what happens.
RV (27:13):
I mean, that’s so good. You used this term earlier, and I wanna come back to this. You said we’d match that moment with crazy generosity, which is like what you just described, right? I mean, leaving a bottle of cognac on the table for every single person, that’s a lot of dough. You added up now and you know, certainly Tiffany’s champagne glasses. Now if they donate ’em that sure, that sure helps. But like how crazy is the crazy generosity and how do you, how do you justify it and not be scared that like, I’m gonna go bankrupt, just like doing all this stuff.
WG (28:01):
Well, so it’s a good question. I mean, listen, the chicken soup, the impact of that was just as significant as anything else. And that cost us maybe a buck 50. I
RV (28:12):
Know that’s brilliant. Mm-Hmm,
WG (28:14):
The bottle of cognac actually didn’t cost us that much because at that point in the meal, people had had so much wine, they weren’t having more than the sip or two of cognac.
RV (28:21):
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. They’re not gonna sit and chuck a whole bottle. They’re probably drunk already by the time he gets there.
WG (28:27):
I mean, like with most of these things, and yes, the Tiffany glasses were free, but I’d say a couple things. I mean, the story that I’m most known for because it was such a turning point, is the hotdog story, which I, I’ll, I’ll tell in a moment ’cause I think it helps answer the third way to deal with this all. And that’s one of the most impactful gestures and it cost two bucks. We’ve done a bunch of gestures of unreasonable hospitality for people that have been totally free. It’s not the cost of the gesture that counts, but the thoughtfulness. And obviously you need to look at your average check whatever your average bill size is, and tailor the moments of systemized hospitality accordingly. We are a very expensive restaurant. We could afford to put down a bottle of cognac. You look at five guys what do you think of when I, when I say five guys? Well
RV (29:22):
The burger, but I’ve never been there, but just the
WG (29:25):
You’ve never been to a five guys. I’ve
RV (29:26):
Never been to a five guys, but should
WG (29:28):
I go? Okay. So anyone listening who’s ever been to a five guys? I would say half of you just probably thought peanuts because five guys. Okay. You think about the customer journey interrogation is the only fast food place I’ve ever imagined that has the wherewithal to recognize that the time wait spent waiting for your burger to be cooked is a touchpoint in the guest journey. They’re the only ones that have ever done anything for you during that wait. And what do they do? They put out a big, big box of peanuts and it’s still in the shells. And you just help yourself to some and eat them while you wait. That doesn’t cost them anything. At the end of the day, it’s so inexpensive that because they gave you something during a part of the experience where no one else has ever given you anything, it gives them an unfair competitive advantage.
WG (30:15):
I’ll give you another example. I went to speak at the Sundance Film Festival this year, and like many travelers over the past year, I’ve been consistently plagued with flight delays. I ended up getting to my hotel the night before my talk at like two in the morning after delay, after delay and got outta the car in front of the hotel ready to go through the whole normal rigmarole, which feels like it’s gotten even more insane recently. Driver’s license, credit card, phone number, email. And this guy named Oscar was in there overnight manager. He said, Mr. Guera, welcome. You must be exhausted. Here’s your room key. Go get some sleep. We’ll check you in in the morning. Found the hotel GM the next day, said, Oscar deserves a raise. That was amazing. He goes, yes, Oscar is amazing. That had nothing to do with him.
WG (31:08):
We had a meeting a couple months ago. There had been so many delays. We just decided to try to figure out how to systemize a bit of hospitality. And anytime anyone checks in after 1230, we would just give ’em their room key to tell ’em they could check in in the morning cost zero. It just required a bit of thoughtfulness. They did some simple pattern recognition and decided to try to figure out how to be more warm, hospitable, gracious, and welcoming to people who are checking in really late at night. That’s a recurring moment. They identified it and then they figured out how to treat it more responsibly and more hospitably.
RV (31:46):
Yeah, I think, I think so much of this, it’s like the, the enemy of hospitality is almost just like speed and rhythm and convenience of just being in the motions and not, not stopping long enough to go, how can I, what could I, what could I do for this person in this, in this moment to make them feel special? ’cause We’re so busy just like cranking the machine, running the process, getting the people, getting the people through. So I love that. I love it so much. So yeah. So tell us, tell us the hotdog story. ’cause I wanna make sure that we, I wanna make sure that we hear the hotdog story before we let you go. So
WG (32:29):
My big breakthrough in all of this, and again, we’re, we’re chronologically all outta whack here ’cause I discovered some of these exercises later. But I was in the dining room helping out the servers on a busier than normal lunch service. So they were getting just crushed. And I went out there and was just busing tables. I think sometimes the best thing a leader can do to support their team is the most menial task. And so I love busing tables and I was clearing ta appetizers from a table of four foodies people who were on vacation to New York just to eat at great restaurants. And while I was at their table, I ever heard them talking about the restaurants that’d eaten at all the fanciest restaurants in New York. They had a blast and this was their last meal. They were gonna the airport to head home right after their lunch.
WG (33:19):
But in the midst of their conversation, a woman at the table jumped in and said, yeah, but you know what? We never had, we never had a hot dog from one of those street carts. And man, it was like one of those light bulb moments in a cartoon where, you know, the character has had a good idea how we ding like light bulb. Yeah, exactly. So, ran back into the kitchen, dropped off the plates, ran outside, got a hot dog, ran back inside, somehow convinced my fancy chef to serve it. And we cut the hot dog up into four perfect pieces, added a little s swish of ketchup, a little s swish of mustard and a canal of sauerkraut and relished to each plate. And before their final savory course, which at the time was a honey lavender glazed muscovy duck that had been dry age for two weeks, utilizing a technique that had taken us years to perfect.
WG (34:03):
I brought out what we in New York called a dirty water dog
WG (34:47):
What it, what like, what happened so that that could happen? Well, the first, it just required me being present, not being so focused on what I needed to do next that I couldn’t fully focus on the thing and the people I was with. Then if I wasn’t present, I wouldn’t have heard the line about the hotdog. Two, listen, if you wanna be the best, you better take what you do seriously. And also we need to all stop taking ourselves so seriously. Way too often in customer service, we try to build these like beautifully articulated brands and then we let those brands stand in the way of us giving the people around us the things that will bring them the most joy when a hotdog in a four star restaurant is sacrilegious until you look at how it made them feel. And third, hospitality is about making people feel seen.
WG (35:38):
And if that’s the case, the best way to do it is not to treat them like a commodity, but a unique individual. I could have given them a fancy bottle of champagne. It would not have had the same impact as the hotdog because it would not have been specific to them. And unreasonable hospitality, one size fits one. Okay, the hotdog was the true north in those three things. We now had a roadmap. This is where it gets good. Now I turn to my team and gave them the permission and the resources to start doing this stuff themselves. We gave ’em a little budget, brought a person onto the team called the Dreamweaver, who is just there to help them bring their ideas to life and encouraged them to go out into the dining room and be present with their guests, not to take themselves too seriously and find one size fits, one gestures to deliver to their customers.
WG (36:30):
And with that, we were on fire. I mean, we did the craziest stuff. We sent people who were there with kids who were seeing snow for the first time to Central Park with sleds in the back of an Uber to go sledding. We turned our private dining room into a beach complete with 500 pounds of sand for a couple who was in our restaurant because their beach honeymoon got canceled. We bought people teddy bears for their kids ’cause they forgot to do it. We set up train sets on tables, all this stuff. All of which made the guests happy, all of which was amazing for our bottom line because yes, we did spend money on this stuff, although not all the gestures cost that much money. In fact, the one that started at all cost 50 cents a person. But every dollar we spent on Unreasonable hospitality had the point of John Bruin’s mint reference on that check and asymmetrical return.
WG (37:26):
Because the moment you give the people you’re serving stories like that, they want to go out and tell them over and over and over again. And suddenly you look up one day and you have the legions of ambassadors out there preaching your dharma. And it also made us happy. ’cause For the first time, the people in our team were no longer just serving plates of food that someone else had created. We were imbuing the experience with our own creativity. We felt agency, we felt empowerment. We are no longer salespeople. We were product designers. And I have yet to meet an individual who won’t give more of themselves to help something succeed than once they feel they have a genuine hand in determining what that thing is. So that is the third way to systemize this into your culture is one, tie space. Give your team, well, yeah, no, but give your team the permission and the resources to color outside of the lines. Empower them to do the things that are right. Allocate whatever budget you can afford. It doesn’t need to be that dramatic. In fact, sometimes smaller budgets lead
WG (38:34):
To, to more creativity. But you can systemize this stuff through touchpoints. You can systemize it through determining in advance how you’re gonna react to recurring moments. But the most powerful and profound and transformative way is to look at your team, choose to trust them that become more trustworthy, give them more responsibility, they’ll become more responsible, and make it zone defense. Get everyone in the game and let everyone have fun starting to play.
RV (39:07):
Man. So good. I know why your book sells a lot and it’s the, it’s the answer that I hate. It’s a really good book.
WG (40:12):
Hey, lemme say one more thing. And by the way, I feel the same way about you. The amount of time you spend, I mean, you’re, I think it’s super important to identify the importance of your work and the nobility of it. The capacity you and your team have to impact others. You guys are literally working your butts off to help other people’s dreams come true. And if I’m on your team and there’s ever a day that just feeling grumpy or I woke up on the wrong side of the bed and I’m having a hard time bringing my most fully realized self to the table, that is what I’m tapping back into. There are a few things more powerful you can do with your time than unreasonably supporting other people’s dreams coming true. And I think that’s pretty powerful. But the one thing I wanna say, we talked about budgets and just for people who are still not convinced listening to this, who are like, yeah, I can’t afford to do this.
WG (41:13):
I wanna see two things. Well, if you can’t afford to do it, you’re probably the person that actually needs to start doing it because this does drive revenue and business and will put you in a position where you can afford to do more of it. So if that’s your first reaction, just check yourself a little bit because that’s not the attitude that’s gonna get you to the top. A like, there’s that old adage, it takes money to make money, I hate it, but you know what, there’s some truth in it. But the other thing is that most people already spend money on this stuff. And so as a starting point, just take the money you were already spending and spend it better. If you send out some nonsense Christmas gift to everyone in your list, and it includes some dumb water bottle with your company’s logo on it, or a hat or a shirt, take the same budget and just be more thoughtful, be more connective, be more human.
WG (42:08):
Be more unreasonable. Instead of spending three hours picking the right water bottle, spend an entire week picking a different gift, using the same budget for every single person on that list. Or if you don’t wanna go that far, pick out three gifts and then just categorize the people you’re sending the gifts to into three groups and give the proper gift to each group. You don’t need to jump into the deep end on this stuff, but I guarantee you, if you’re a little creative, you can find a way to wade into the shallow end and then see for yourself whether or not it works.
RV (42:45):
Yeah, I love it. Well, the book is called Unreasonable Hospitality. Clearly that’s what it’s about. It’s a, it’s a game changer. We’re, we’re in on this and this is something that we see as a, as a way to take ourselves up to the next level. Where do you want people to go? Will, if they want to connect up more with you and stay, stay tied into what you’re doing?
WG (43:10):
I’m on Instagram at w Guera. Most of our stuff [email protected], including our newsletter that you can sign up for there which is called Premium based on that meeting that I hold so near and dear. And then yeah, hopefully I’ll, I’ll see you at, at Rory’s place one day in the not too distant future.
RV (43:32):
I love it, bro. We wish you all the best.
WG (43:34):
Thanks brother.
Ep 449: Celebrate, Save or Cancel: When To Retain and When To Let Go | Shana Lynn Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
Do you have a membership or a community in which retention is a key driver in your business? If you do, this is a I would say a training, a conversation, a recording some tips, whatever you wanna call it. But this is some information, some education that I think will be vitally important to you. So I have a great friend who has a, a community and retention business, and I just had the opportunity to have her on the influential personal brand podcast. And the conversation veered intentionally or unintentionally, I’m not sure, to this conversation of cancellations and retention when it comes to communities and memberships. Now, this applies to any sort of customer, but this is a, a specific conversation for memberships and communities that you must listen to. So here are a couple of things that I think stood out about this idea of cancellations and reputation.
AJV (01:08):
So first and foremost, if someone requests to cancel their program with you, you have likely already lost them. And I know that there are lots of companies out there who require, who mandate a call to cancel. In fact, I was sharing this on the podcast. I am trying to not cancel, but downgrade a service that we subscribe to. I can’t do it. It’s, it’s actually not possible online. You have to email in which the email says, we’ll get back to you in four to five days. Or you have to call a, you know, one 800 number between the hours of nine and four. And it’s like, I, I don’t have time to do that. That’s why, that’s why I’m on this online thing and you’re gonna get back to me in four to five days. Like, that’s insanity. We think that’s helpful. We think that’s a retention effort.
AJV (02:00):
What that is, is that’s a customer satisfaction issue. Just because someone wants to cancel doesn’t mean they’re not willing to refer your business or come back at a later time. And I’m not saying that we should just let everyone cancel. That’s not what I’m saying. But what I am saying is that there’s an opportunity to go if someone is trying to cancel. There has likely been something or a series of some things that have, could have been fixed and prevented. And if it got all the way to, they wanna cancel, the save percentage is probably going to be low because the work should have already been done. The work the preventative measures or us catching it, that should have happened prior to this cancellation request. And at this point, they don’t really wanna have to talk to someone and explain themselves and do whatever else is what we think being helpful in an effort to save can also just be a really big fat annoyance.
AJV (02:59):
And what was a great relationship is now tarnished by a poor ending. So let’s talk about some things when it comes to cancellation. Number one, if you start with the beginning in mind, IE onboarding and what it’s like to be onboarded into your company or to your service or products, that changes everything. And people need to know what they’re buying. So step one this is, I think this is really good, is don’t assume people know what they bought. You have to tell them and then remind them. So don’t think that people know exactly what they bought. They don’t often, or they only know a piece of it. So we have to remind them of what they bought. That’s our job. That’s a part of our onboarding and our communication and our marketing. But that’s the first thing, is they have to know what I’m buying into.
AJV (03:50):
And they should know upfront, if and when this is no longer working for me, what do I do about that? Ideally, they’re reaching out to you in a proactive effort of how do I fix this? How do I change this? Not how do I cancel this? But we need to make that clear upfront, but not just upfront. It needs to be clear throughout the process. So a part of onboarding is helped to ensure that one, they know what they bought. The second piece of onboarding is knowing that you can help them. They need that reminder and that confidence of you’re in the right place that we can help. We have the expertise, the content, the information, the support to help you. The third thing is they need to know that they can do it. That other people have come before them and have done this and that they can do it too.
AJV (04:38):
And then last but not least, they need to know what is the next best step? Or what is the next right step for me in this process for me in this journey? Like, what do I need to do next? And I can think of so many tangible examples of this in so many different ways. So we subscribe to a bookkeeping service for Brain Builder’s group, and I’m constantly sending messages saying, can you just please tell me what is the next thing for me to do here? It’s like, I will send a notice or a letter that I got and they’re like, oh, well, you know, that needs to be, you know, updated in the, you know, portal. And I’m like, what portal?
AJV (05:27):
I need to know my best next step. I can think of other little things of like, and this is, I’m trying to make this applicable to any business, like doctor’s office, right? My six year old got bit by, apparently there’s a bug called a kissing bug that is attracted to your mouth. And he was playing in the leaves and got bit, and the stinger was lodge in his lip, the entire left side of his face, swed up, swelled up, up, swelled up. I’m gonna go with that one. And it was like his mouth was so swollen that he is like, he could hardly talk. And I’m like, on the phone with a doctor and they’re like, yeah, we just want you to wait. I’m like, no, I don’t. I don’t wanna wait. Like I need you to tell me what to do.
AJV (06:11):
And he was like, well, just give him some Benadryl. How often, like, this is serious. Like, I want to bring him in. I want that stinger out. And it’s like, finally I’m like, okay, I need you to give me a plan right now before I go to the ER because I’m that mom. And he was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Give him a Benadryl every five to six hours and put an ice pack on it until the swelling goes down. Thank you. I need to know the best next step. Our customers, our members, our community needs that too. Not just on day one, but on day 30, day 60, day 90. They need it continuously, right? So those things are important. And if we start the membership off correctly, then it’s a higher likelihood for success in the middle, which means we have a higher likelihood of retaining them at the end.
AJV (06:57):
And so those are things that are really important. Now, in the event that someone does say, Hey, I wanna cancel. How should we handle that? How should we treat that? And this is what blew my mind with this conversation with Shannon. And she goes, I want you to think about it in three different ways and and approach this and address it in three different ways. One, you have to make it easy to cancel. You have to make it accessible for your community, for your clients to cancel. But that doesn’t mean you have to give it up on a silver plate either. It’s people need to take responsibility if the program isn’t working for them as much as you need to take responsibility. So think about cancellations in three different ways. Number one it’s a celebration. Meaning you’re canceling because you got every single thing that you needed from this program and that you’re leaving on a victorious high note of, I might come back one day, but even if I don’t, I’ll be sending tons of other people your way.
AJV (07:53):
‘Cause This was a success, this was a victory, and congratulations. We wanna stay in touch. We wish you the best. So the first type of cancel is somebody who’s like, I got everything I needed for now. I might be back one day, but I have to cancel for now. That’s great celebratory, right? That doesn’t mean they won’t still send you business, refer you, recommend you. That’s a win. That’s a win. Two the person who’s going, I’m just not using the program. I’ve given up on myself. I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if it’s for me. That’s the person that we wanna talk about saving. All right? That’s the person who’s going. Like, it’s not that the program isn’t working, it’s not that you don’t like the program, it’s that you have lost confidence in yourself. You have not made it a priority.
AJV (08:39):
You have not scheduled a time, and perhaps you’ve gotten lost, confused, demotivated, or you’re just feeling insecure about what to do, how to do it, and if you can do it, those are the people that we want to encourage to get on a phone call. Those are the people that we wanna go, Hey, like, we can help. Let’s help you get reengaged. Let’s get on a phone call. And let’s get a plan together. Let me reinvigorate you, reinspire you and reinstill a solid plan that you can follow from this day moving forward. That category of people is who you wanna have phone calls with. And then there’s a third category of person who goes, this is not a fit anymore. I’m not using it. Don’t like it, don’t want it. I just don’t want this anymore. And it doesn’t have to be negative.
AJV (09:26):
It’s like, Hey, I have had a life event that is precluding me from participating at this time. I cannot do it. Or, you know, I I’m cha I’ve changed my mind. Like, I don’t want this anymore. And I think there’s a, a fine line between, hey, you made a commitment and you signed an agreement and I don’t wanna do this anymore. Versus I don’t wanna do this anymore because there’s been, you know, a co-occurring trigger or an event in my life that is causing some distance between my ability to do this. And we need to be able to discern that where people are owning their own commitments and accountability. But what we’re also going like, like it tarnishes the community to have people in it that don’t wanna be there, don’t like it, and aren’t happy. It also ruins our opportunity to ever be a place for them to come back to or to tell other people about it.
AJV (10:20):
And I do believe in personal accountability and personal commitment. And if I sign an agreement and give you my word, I’m gonna fulfill it. And at the same time, there is a time and a place where I’m going, this is not what I thought it was.
AJV (11:01):
But we also need to make it as easy to cancel as it was to sign up, right? So there’s these different categories of people who are requesting to cancel that you really need to think about in order to go, how do I utilize the resources on my team, right? How do we utilize the energy of our team? But to do the same thing for your community and for the person who is considering to leave or is ready to leave. And those are very different categories, but to go back to keeping the beginning in mind of if you start right, the likelihood of success is higher and the higher the successes are, the more likely you are to retain them. So is it a person who you are trying to celebrate save or do they need to cancel? And as you look at your retention strategy and your
AJV (11:52):
Cancellation process, consider these things when looking at your ability to create a culture of a community who wants to be there, a team who loves what they do and loves talking to your community, but also members of your community who will tell others about you even when they’re not there. And how they leave is a part of that. If they leave on a high note, that’s what they remember. If they leave on a low note, that’s what they remember. So make sure that when they leave, they leave on a high note.
Ep 448: Retain Your Customers With the Beginning In Mind with Shana Lynn
Hey everybody, and welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is AJ here, and I am so excited to introduce you guys to a new friend that I have. And, but before I introduce her, I want to remind everyone who this episode was curated for and why you should stick around. I think it’s always important for you to know as you’re listening what you’re getting into and who this was really designed for. So today we’re gonna be talking about community and retention. So in other words, this is for you. It doesn’t matter who you are. It does not matter if you have a coaching program or a speaking business or a membership, or you are a professional services provider that has, you know, a, a book of business. Doesn’t matter if you are a product company, you have clients, you have customers, and I bet you would like to keep ’em.
I bet you would like them to stick around and buy more and not leave and go to your competitors. So when you think about community, uh, yeah, there’s online communities, there’s offline communities, but we all have a community. It’s just are we treating them like a community? So today is one of those rare episodes that it does not matter what you do, what industry you’re in. I really believe this is for you, although we may talk about it more specifically in some areas over the course of the interview, but it’s for you. So stick around. Now, let’s introduce you to our awesome guest today. Uh, Shannon Lynn, I am so excited to have you on the show today. Uh, and just for those of you, uh, who don’t know, uh, you’ve got somebody who has over 10 years of retention and community expertise. She’s a podcast host, she is a speaker, she’s a consultant.
Uh, and I would also say she is someone who has built amazing communities with retention, not only for her and her own business, but for a lot of really well-known personal brands. And I’ll let her share those with you if she feels comfortable, um, or keep it secret. But this is someone who is not speaking from, oh, this is what you should do. No. It’s like, no, this is what we are doing and this is what is working. So, Shanna, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me, friend. I’m excited to be here. I am so excited to be here and to help our audience get to know you. I would just love for them to say like, get a, get a quick high level overview of like what have the last 10 years looked like for you as you’ve been in this business, and then this industry of figuring out keys to building a community that stays in retaining and retention. Like, I would just love to know one, how did you get into it and then what, what has it looked like over the last 10 years to get you to, to where you are today?
That’s such a great question. You know, it started actually when I was in college. I was a part of this honors program and you had to do a senior thesis for undergrad. And I had this amazing professor and she handed me this advertising age magazine that was talking about social media and online marketing back in 2007. I was like, oh, this is really fascinating. And so I actually did my thesis and wrote a paper on online marketing in virtual reality communities back in the day. It was second life. There was no metaverse or anything like that. And that ended up in the paper, which got me on stages around the country to speak about it. And then I ended up with a job at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville. And we took that medical center to be the very first medical center that has social media policy.
We launched online communities for their cancer center, life flight, all sorts of communities for them. And then it wasn’t long after that that I was supported by my wonderful chief marketing officer and um, you know, really just had peace from God himself to go out and adventure and start my own consultancy. And that was in 2012 when I became a full-time consultant and I started working with businesses, really traditional businesses to take what they were doing offline with their brand and bring it online and merge those two communities and create consistency. And so that led into managing a lot of online communities as we built them and then ultimately starting my own online community. And then this, uh, guy in the industry, a lot of people know Stu McLaren, who is a, um, membership expert, kind of tapped me on the shoulder and he said, Hey, we’d really like to have a strategic mind to come help us be our director of community and take our community to the next level.
So I worked with him for a few years and started teaching in-person workshops and got to train community teams and leaders for some of the best memberships in the space. And going back, you know, I look at all that and I’m like, wow, it’s this combination of, um, online marketing, which I believe a lot of what we do after the sale is actually just marketing as well and community building, but my own internal desire because as a kid I went through a lot of tragedy and I didn’t have a community. My mom didn’t have a community around us. We really didn’t have community when we needed it. And so I truly believe that when people have a place, a community where they are fully known, that they show up more fully in the world and it’s just, it’s something that we all have a core need for. And so it’s developed into really teaching business owners to create those spaces for people so that we get the best of people and people have that place where they can show up fully as themselves.
Oh, I love that so much, uh, so much. And I think that’s even grown in its, its need since, uh, the pandemic of people just naturally being isolated. And I don’t think people have really acclimated back to real relationships, real community. And I think that’s why one of it’s, it’s not the only reason, it’s one of the big reasons I really wanted to have you on the show. It’s let’s stop treating people like customers and start treating them like people and Exactly. Uh, like does and and realizing like you have community all around you. Do you see it? Right? Are you treating it like it?
Yeah, and I think the thing that I love about merging retention and community is that when we build really strong retention systems, because I know people hear community and they think really fluffy and they think Facebook group, which is not what we’re talking about by any means. But then I usually come in with systems and data and they’re like, whoa, wait a second. Like, I thought you were a community person, but having strong retention systems in your business, which are those systems that um, are everything after the sale, how do we help people actually get a result? How do we help people actually make progress and how do we keep them on that customer journey with us beyond the initial sale? All of those systems, they shouldn’t be automating things to alienate people. They should actually be creating space for human to human connection. And so when we’re all afraid of AI and everything that’s gonna happen, I actually embrace it. I think it’s wonderful because there’s lots of things that it can do to create space for us to do the unscalable activities that really make a difference.
Yeah. So let’s talk about those. Uh, I wanna talk about like what are the unscalable activities that sometimes don’t get the necessary time, love and attention that are needed that actually build community and retention? So what would you say are some of those things?
Yeah, so back in the day it was always handwritten notes. That’s what I wanted to do. I loved it. I wrote handwritten notes to everybody and I still do, you know, um, send a lot of them. If you’ve been in my world, you probably have received one of those
I can’t wait to support you in that. It can be that simple. But even when we can’t personalize everyone, we can still send a video message at a mass scale that feels more personal and more connected and opens up dialogue with those that are willing to enter into it. So that’s like a simple example of how to do that. Another example is, we’ve talked about your program before. So inside of your brand builders group, you have these mentors, these coaches that are supporting people at a much smaller scale. Now people love group programs and creating, creating them because they think, oh, I’m just gonna continue to scale it and my profit margins are just gonna continue to increase. But what they don’t realize is that as the program grows, it gets harder and harder to get people results. Mm-Hmm,
And so when you take, um, that scale and then you can leverage team members like coaches or mentors that can come in and create an intimate environment within a larger scale environment can create more customized really di guidance and direction, it’s not customizing the content, it’s just guiding them to the next best action step for them. That’s one way that you can really scale that kind of connection, scale, that kind of intimacy. And then one other way that I recommend a lot is with Zoom calls. Everybody’s familiar with doing Zoom calls now. And if you aren’t doing, you know, onboarding or welcome calls for new customers or um, new cohorts of people coming into your program, it’s something that I highly recommend. But Zoom actually has a feature called breakouts where we get to break them out into smaller groups so that they get to connect more with each other. ’cause it’s not always just about connecting more with us.
Hmm, that’s good. Especially when you have tons of people coming on of there is a limit to how much you can just do when it comes to one-on-one welcome and one-on-one onboarding without needing more human capital to constantly do that. Which again, it’s hard because like you need constantly, every new member actually does create, or every new customer creates the need for another, you know, employee. But doing them in, uh, breakouts, I have never thought about that. So like that’s really important because then it’s not so reliant on you and the company, but it’s now it’s building community within the community.
Yeah. And that’s what makes community really sticky, right? It’s the, there’s the connection to you, which is often what builds the trust that gets them in. Then there’s the connection to your team which expands. It’s you passing that torch of influence to your team members and then there’s the, the connection to each other. And that’s actually what keeps people around because as your community grows, their connection with you is gonna feel, it’s gonna feel not as powerful, but hold on. Okay, we can edit that out, that as your community grows, it’s gonna feel not as powerful, not as close that connection with you. And so it’s really important that they’re expanding their connection to others within the communities that they remain sticky.
I love that so much. And that should be a relief to everyone who is listening of going, it doesn’t have to be all you, right? It’s like you, you’re building a community that should build community and then it’s, it takes the pressure off, right? It’s like, ’cause I, I, I believe, at least for all of the businesses that I know, it’s like no one wants it to be just about them. It’s like they want it to go beyond just my face, my name. But the only way you can do that is if you have systems and processes and people, right? You have to have a community that can do that without you. Um, and I love that so much, that whole group onboarding concept. I literally just wrote it down, I was like, note for team note for BPG
Yeah, it, I think a lot of people immediately think about things like losing a customer cancellation process. Uhhuh, that’s where we wanna try and get ’em on a call and save ’em. And at that point you’ve already lost them. You know, if you’ve ever tried to do those cancellation calls, which you know, I’m not against offering them, but if you’ve ever tried to do them, your recovery rate probably isn’t that great
What that identifies for us are our drop off points. And for 90% of communities, it’s in that first month, that’s where you lose people. Yeah. So crazy, isn’t it? And it’s the easiest thing to really systemize is the onboarding. And so, um, we do recommend to have things like action plan calls, which are those group calls where you walk them through maybe three key steps that then they go into breakout groups to work on. We also recommend, you know, having those personalized video messages. There’s um, a community leader that I work with that has 14,000 members. She has scaled her team in order to do small groups of four, four members and one coach on an onboarding call. And they get, I think four offerings of those in their first 90 days of, of membership. So that those first 45 days are really important because people have bought into whatever you have sold them.
And then immediately they have buyer’s remorse. They’re distracted by whatever the latest Netflix series is. And so our job of selling actually doesn’t stop. It only increases because now we’re actually hitting their pocketbook. So all of the things that we had them buy into before, we need to be res solidifying for them. And now they also need to feel acclimated to this culture. Hopefully we have a strong culture in our community. So we have to really get into, there’s four pillars of community that I teach to build on. And the first one is cause. So we really have to solidify why are you here? And not just why is this community exists, but why is this important for you? And then building the culture, which are the beliefs, the behaviors and boundaries that help you fit within this community. And when people have those, they feel like I know how to show up and they’re more likely to engage.
So if we can really make sure that we’re focused on those first 45 days, that is the most important thing to focus on. And then our next goal is how do we identify people who are no longer engaging with us? How do we identify people who maybe bought our book and never took the next step to do our mini course or whatever that next step is? How do we identify people who maybe participated in the first couple calls but we haven’t seen ’em in 30 days? And then that is the other place where human connection can really be valuable because um, anything automated is just easy for them to ignore at that point.
I mean, my mind is reeling already with ideas of programs that I pay to be a part of our program of going, oh, I see how that was really helpful, or, I see how that was really annoying, even though I know what they’re trying to do. And I think one of those things that you said is if somebody is requesting a cancellation, trying to get them on a call, it’s like you’ve already lost them and the save ratio is gonna be relatively low. So I have two questions. One around onboarding and one around this cancellation process. So I’m gonna start with the cancellation first. ’cause I feel like people struggle with that and they’re like, Nope, I’m gonna make ’em good on calling me and I’m gonna turn ’em around. Um, so in the, I guess like instead of me asking, I’m just like, what would you see is successful when it comes to once someone to cancel, what is the best opportunity to go? How can we turn this around without forcing or mandating a call and any insights for anyone listening? Like, hey, well what do I do when someone says, Hey, I wanna cancel ’cause I don’t want ’em to cancel. What do I, yeah.
So a lot of this comes down to your cancellation process and um, for some of my clients, they use my recommended cancellation process, which can make it hard to track saves. And here’s why. Because we treat the cancellation page like a sales page and we have a cancel video. So when they request to cancel or when they are, you know, looking into canceling, they’re gonna be taken to a page that has a video on it. And that page is going to be really getting them to think introspectively about why they’re leaving. And we say a few things. One is like, hey, if you’ve made the progress that you’ve came to make and, and you’re leaving, you’re graduating, that’s amazing. We wanna celebrate you graduating and we can’t wait for you to share your story with us. Your testimony with us when you, you know, submit the form below, but hey, if you’re leaving because you have stopped participating, you’ve given up on yourself, I just wanna give you permission to come back.
Now you can click the button on this page and you can schedule a quick start call and we will get right back in it with you and find the best place for you to get started. You know, or if you’re leaving, ’cause this isn’t a fit for you, maybe you’re not interested in doing X, Y, Z anymore. So we kind of walk through like the different reasons that we know people typically leave, starting with the celebratory one, right? And then the, oh, I’ve given up on myself one, and then the, no, this just really isn’t a fit for me anymore. So we resell them essentially on the value by relating to where they might be in the journey. And then when they go to cancel now legally, because of all the way all the states and things like that are done, I’m not a lawyer.
This is not legal advice. However, I’ve done a lot of research on this
And so when they click that form that all they have to do is enter their email address, but we ask them some other questions as well to get some insight. And we also offer them a call, Hey, if you would like to share more about your experience or if you’d just like to get some additional support to see if maybe this could be a fit for you, then you can schedule a call with a team member. Very few people actually schedule them. And those that get on those calls are usually people who are they, they’re leaving because of self-doubt and they kind of come on the call with that kind of mindset and you are able to recover them. Yeah,
I think that’s really good because I think for anyone who would request a call, they’re going, man, it’s not that I really wanna cancel, it’s, I’m not using it. I feel like I’m not getting my money’s worth. I’m not sure what to do. I’m not confident that I can do.
Ep 447: 5 Keys to Being Financially Secure as an Entrepreneur | Rob Luna Episode Recap
RV (00:02):
Well, I always love a good chat around tax strategy and investing in financial stuff and just learning about money in general, because I don’t think there’s enough conversation and enough knowledge that is transferred around making money, saving money, keeping money, investing money, spending money wisely, and just in overall generating more, more money. And so I’m always looking forward to those opportunities. And I enjoyed that chat with Rob Luna. I wanted to share with you as part of that go, I just wanted to off the top of my head, grab five keys to being financially secure as an entrepreneur. So as I look back over like my career and mine and AJ’s journey as entrepreneurs to go, what are some things that have, have really led to our financial security, at least to the level that we have at now? And I just thought, man, let’s rattle these off ’cause these are good.
RV (01:01):
And, and, and I would’ve wanted to have known these or, or heard them over and over again as an entrepreneur. So here they are, five keys to being financially secure as an entrepreneur. Number one, get debt free to own your freedom. Get debt free to own your freedom. And this is one that I just, I will be forever grateful to Dave Ramsey because he has the program that teaches people how to get debt free. And we followed that thing to a t Now, I don’t know, it was coming up on 20 years ago when I went through financial piece, but those principles became a part of my financial psyche that I adapted and adopted that are ingrained still to me today that have, I think, set me up in a completely different financial capacity from several of my friends and colleagues and clients and, you know, even mentors and people I look up to.
RV (02:00):
And a huge part of it is just being debt free, because people try to make mathematical arguments for why maybe you shouldn’t be debt free, right? They try to make mathemat mathematical arguments for like, well, think of all the money you have tied up in your house, right? And going, if you took that money out of your house and instead had a, you know, debt on your house, you could be investing that money in other places and making more money. And sometimes, and in some markets, that’s sometimes true. But here’s what’s always true. When you don’t have debt, you are free. I mean, the Bible says this, right? The borrower is slave to the lender. And what’s, what is more powerful in your life than having millions of dollars is just being free to do whatever you want to do. And
RV (02:58):
That comes, that’s a mental thing. And it’s a spirit that’s a spiritual condition. And that has more to do with not owing people money than it does to do with how much you make. And one of the things that you’ll realize as you make more money, and hopefully you realize this, this is one of the things that AJ and I learned over the years, is that we don’t need more money. We need less stress. We don’t need more money. We need less, less complexity. Peace is the new profit. It’s not about going, oh, I have some number in my account. And then that number’s bigger and bigger and bigger. Like it’s just a number in an account. What really matters is your peace of mind. How do, how are you feeling? How secure are you? How stable are you? Versus how worried are you that if a change in the interest rates in the are, are gonna completely, you know, tank your business?
RV (03:55):
Or are you worried that if you don’t get a customer to pay in time, you’re not gonna have a chance to pay your vendor and you won’t make payroll. And like all of the stress that comes from leverage, which is like basically playing arbitrage with money, that is risky business. And it’s not that it can’t ever work, sometimes it does, but more often than not, it all nets out to be about the same as just doing it the simple way anyways. And regardless of it, it’s just when you come to a decision to go, I don’t need more money, I just need less stress, that is powerful. And that’s buying your own freedom. When you, when you’re debt free to go, once you’re debt free, you can buy whatever you want as long as you can pay cash for it. Like it, everything becomes simple.
RV (04:42):
But when you’ve got multiple investments and multiple, you, you know, loans from different people at different rates and some are variable and some are fixed, and like, it’s all of this stress to manage, even if you’re healthy, it’s like you have to keep an eye on all of these different things. It’s stressful. So get debt free and buy your own freedom. And I just go start small. Be willing to go start small and be willing to go slow. And over time, it adds up to be something that’ll be far more than you ever need and you won’t have the stress along the way. So that’s number one. Number two is invest in yourself First. Invest in yourself first. If there are, when, when you, when people think of investments, what they, they tend to think of like, ooh, buy real estate or invest in the market, or maybe do non-traditional investments, right?
RV (05:32):
Like, you know, artwork or crypto or you know, wine or like whatever. There’s all these different things. You, you, you know, currencies, there’s all these things you can invest your money into, but the number one thing you should invest your money into is yourself, your own mind, your own personal development. The, the, the greatest return on your money that you will ever get is strengthening your mind, your education, your knowledge, your, your mental capacity, and just you’re building your own confidence and your own strength and your ability to create wealth and create opportunity for yourself and those around you. And we just don’t hear about it. And people don’t think about investing in themself in enough of a literal way of like, if I could put money into the stock market that might grow at, you know, maybe 7%, maybe 8%, maybe 10% over years.
RV (06:25):
But if I put that money into myself, I go, I could grow my income exponentially over time, like in a, in a short order. If, if I learn how to do it and I learn and I’m, and I’m, I get in environments where I’m around other successful people. So invest in yourself first. Then the second thing I would invest in is invest in your business, right? Before I’d be looking at investing in the markets and all these things that you may or may not understand, and maybe you understand it better than I do. Like, you know, I consider myself reasonably smart, but there’s a whole lot of investment stuff that I don’t understand. I don’t understand all these fancy terms. And I have an MBA, like I have a, I have an MBA from a private university like I was a millionaire by the time I was 30 years old.
RV (07:08):
I have, I have, you know, been the, an entrepreneur now for a couple decades and there’s a whole bunch of this like speak this, this financial speak, I don’t understand. And all these, you know, you know, just weird terms. And I go, when I look around the people who have a lot of wealth and a lot of security, the big, the best investment is into yourself and then into your business. Because if you think about, like, you know, even trying to find, try to find a company that is gonna give you a 20% return, would, would be outrageous. It’d be so difficult. But if you can grow your profit margin as a business to 20% of profits a year, then that means every dollar you invest in that business is gonna give you back 20 cents. So if you can build your own business, that can, that can, can, can grow over time.
RV (07:54):
And maybe it’s, you know, it’s not a lot at first. You might, you know, break even, hopefully and make a little bit of money, 1%, 3%, 5%. But that business starts to grow. You inch it up and you’re gonna start, you build a business that clocks 15% a year, 20% a year, every single year for the rest of your life. Like you’ve built the greatest investment machine you have for yourself. Now, you don’t wanna have all your wealth tied up in your business ’cause then you don’t have diversity. ’cause If something happens and you get sick or you lose key employees or customers or vendors, or the market changes or regulation or competitor kills you, like, there’s, there’s risk right there. But, but a lot of that risk is a much more in your control than investing in some other asset that you have nothing to do with its performance.
RV (08:38):
So I always, you know, think, invest in yourself, invest in your business, then invest in your retirement. So that’s how I would think about investing. And I would go, okay, I wanna get debt free first. That’s simple. Then I wanna invest, but I wanna invest in myself and then I wanna invest in my own business, the things that I’m controlling. Like if I have, if I have a choice between place and money with some outside person or entity, or a real estate investment or some project or investing into the business that I run and operate and control every day, I’m gonna invest in that one, the one that I have control over, the one that I understand, the one that I can influence, the one that I can shape. And so we just don’t think of investing enough with just invest in yourself, invest in your own business.
RV (09:21):
So that’s investment number three. Okay, so talking about real investments. I’m gonna just say this and, and you know, maybe some of y’all will disagree. Have a boring investment strategy, have a boring investment strategy. You know, you heard Rob talk about buy, buy boring businesses. You know, Cody Sanchez is one of my favorite people to follow online. I’ve developed a little relationship with her recently and that she talks about buying boring businesses all the time. Like, your investment strategy should be boring. And I don’t, I think buying businesses is not boring. I think buying businesses is like scary and risky. And half the time that go, more than half the time that investment probably goes to zero. You know, just doing single, like, you know, investing in startups and stuff is that is not for the faint of heart. That is, that is, you know, typically very risky.
RV (10:12):
I’m talking about growth stock mutual funds like the, the, the s and p 500 in here in the us. These are, you know, the, the big large, stable enterprises that they’re not gonna make you millionaire overnight, but they’re gonna grow steady and consistently. And if something happens to those, if those all go under, that means the world is like, the world is in such dire straits. It doesn’t matter what your money is because you’re probably like you, you know, fighting for candles and, and water and stuff. Like these companies, the big companies, they’re, they’re, they’re, they’re, they’ve been around a long time. They’re stable. They’re not typically going anywhere. Y you know, they’re not going anywhere anytime soon or easily, right? And so it’s a boring investment strategy if you, if you don’t understand the investments, don’t make them. And, and if it feels like a lot of work to understand what it is, again, I would say don’t make it if it, if it, if it seems complicated or complex.
RV (11:12):
Like if you can’t explain what it is to someone else, don’t do it. And you know, if, if you’re doing it just because you saw someone on the internet telling you it was a good idea, man, be careful. I mean, just be careful. The, the people that I know that are the most happy, right? If peace is the new profit, that’s something I’ve been saying so much lately. Peace is the new profit. The people who are peaceful are not the people I know that make a a the most money. I know lots of people who make lots of money that aren’t peaceful, they’re constantly stressed because they’re constantly managing chaos. The people who I know are the most peaceful have simple plans, simple strategies, simple savings is they do simple things that they can understand and explain and, and that make sense to them. And they don’t do things because they wanna look smart or look sophisticated or to feel like they’re caught up at the crowd.
RV (12:12):
They, they do things that they actually understand. So have a boring investment strategy. Number four, choose abundance over scarcity. Choose abundance over scarcity. I think one of the most costly things that we have in the world today is a scarcity mentality. Simply stated. I think a scarcity mentality is, is often like an is is an an an either or thing. Either you can win or I can win. Abundance is going, we can both win, right? Abundance is going, there’s a, there’s a way to figure it out where everybody wins. Scarcity make feels like, well, if, if I help this person, that’s gonna take, if I help this person succeed, it’s gonna take something away from me. Abundance is thinking as I, if I help this person succeed, it’s gonna come back to me. And I think that too many people hold on too tightly to their money because they have scarcity.
RV (13:17):
They’re afraid that if they let that money go, it won’t come back to ’em. And so they don’t invest it, right? So what they do is they just hang on to it and, and they go, I don’t want anyone to steal it. I don’t wanna do anything with it. I just have to hold onto it. ’cause I’m not, I’m afraid if I let it go, it won’t ever come back. Well, one of the things that wealthy people do is, is they’re using their money. See, ironically, I think a lot of times people think that rich people have, are, are, are overly focused on money, or they’re like overly like, consumed with money and they go, oh, that’s why they have money, is because they just, all, they, they must love money. And that’s like their whole life. It’s their whole focus. That’s what people think.
RV (13:57):
That’s what I used to think, right? Coming up from, you know, a lower class family financially and, and not having much financial education until I self-educated. And in like my, you know, late teens and early twenties, what I have actually learned is that wealthy people, not all of ’em, right? Some wealthy people are not this way, but most of the wealthy people I know, they actually have the most healthy detachment from money because they know if they lose it, they’ll get it back. They’re not, they, they’re, they’re not hanging onto it for their, their own survival. They’re not so scared that going, oh, all of my security is in money. They’re going, no, I’m gonna invest in myself. I’m gonna invest in my business. I’m gonna invest in growth. I’m, I’m willing to take risks. I’m, I’m willing to. And, and I’m willing to invest in investments, whether it be real estate or it be the stock market or, you know, I I there’s not that many non-traditional investments that I am a fan of, at least unless you’re, unless you’re like a professional investor and investing’s all you do all the time and it’s all you think about and talk about.
RV (14:57):
But you, you have to be willing to think of money as a tool, right? The, the analogy I use is don’t think of your money as like a shield. Think of it as a tool. Like, like, don’t, don’t, don’t think of it as like, don’t depend on it, just for your safety. Think of it as like something you use to build something with. And that’s abundance is going. No, I, I, I I use money to, to make money. I mean, one of the things that we’ve done our whole life, we hire people to do everything. Like the number, probably the number one thing we spend money on even more than ourselves per se, is hiring other people around us to help us. We have lots of work that we need done. We need lots of help and going, part of why we do that is we don’t even make a lot of money, but we get more peace back because all the stuff there is to do, we hire, help people to help us do it.
RV (15:50):
And so even if we make no money, we go, well, at least we have help and we don’t have stress. And that’s the idea is, is is being willing to choose abundance over scarcity and, and be willing to invest. And, and by the way, that’s the risk of being an entrepreneur, right? Is you pay yourself last, right? The, the potential upside is one day you would make a lot of money, but it’s, it’s like we always pay ourselves last. Everyone else on our team gets paid whether there’s a good month or not. Like we have to pay them. That’s the commitment. And so that’s the risk. But you go, gosh, if we have, you know, there’s good months and bad months, and even if there’s bad months, I trust that like over time it’s gonna work out. That’s abundance, right? And it’s, it’s, it’s thinking long term.
RV (16:32):
And then number five this is another thing that I think this is related to abundance, and I don’t think enough people talk about this. And I think this is something that’s like maybe is kind of rare about me and aj. And I think this is something, I think part of what, how God blesses people with money. And part of how I think part of how other people bless people with their money and they wanna see people succeed is because of this. So number five is become great at helping other people make money, become great at helping other people make money. If you become great at helping other people make money, you will make a lot of money because people love being around people who help them make a lot of money. Like, and this is just something we do like, again, in the abundance mindset, our goal is to, is our goal is never to pay people the least amount possible.
RV (17:30):
Our goal is to pay people as much as we can. We wanna always pay at the top of the market. We don’t always have the money to do that, especially when we’re starting something new, right? So Brand Builder’s group is still only five years old. Like we’ve, we’re still, you know, we just coming outta startup mode. But like over time, we want to pay more money. We wanna pay our, our team the most we want. We wanna help make money for our clients. We wanna help our clients succeed. Why? Not because we need their money, but because we want to help them make money. We know if we help them make money, they’ll return it, they’ll help us make money. We, we really focus on trying to help our affiliates make more money to go, ah, how can we help our affiliates make more money?
RV (18:08):
If our affiliates make more money, they’re gonna wanna help us make more money. But I think if you focus on just going, how can I make more money for myself and all I care about is how do I make more money, then it’s like you’re taking money from other people. And so other people close off to you. But if you figure out how can I help the people around me make more money, then you’re opening a, you’re like opening the door, you’re opening a relationship, a connection between people to help you make more money. And you know, a lot of the people who are around who have been around us, they make more money because it’s a rising tide raises all ships, is we try to help them make more money. They’re working hard to take stuff off of our plate and make us free us up to be more productive and more efficient.
RV (18:55):
As we’re more productive and more efficient, we make more money and then we share that back with them. So this is, this is, again, is, is a difference and mentality. Most people are thinking just about themselves. How do I make more money? You know, who could I find that would just pay me the most? Versus going, what can I do to help the people around me make more money or help them have more time so that they can be more efficient, so that they can make more money trusting that it will flow back to them. And that’s what happens is I think money cascades down to the people who, who help. And, and that always happens. You know, and they say proximity is power. I would also say proximity is profit. I’m sure you’ve heard that before, right? Proximity is power. I, I think Tony Robbins said that.
RV (19:35):
I mean, I, that’s who I heard say it. I that lots of people have said it, but I, that’s who I think it was like the original source of it. I don’t know if it was him or not, but that proximity is power. But I would, I would adapt that to say proximity isn’t just power. Proximity is profit, right? And if you’re around, if you are literally in proximity to people who have the ability to create income and create revenue and build businesses, I promise you, if you help those people succeed, it will cascade back to you. We always want to reward the people who are helping us grow, right? And, and I’m saying that we like in a general sense and in a and in a literal sense of like me and aj, I mean, wouldn’t you right where you go, aren’t you going to reward the people who are most critical to like helping you grow?
RV (20:24):
Yes. If, if they’re really helping you and they really, you really have that mindset of like, it’s an effort, it’s a partnership, it’s a collaboration. We’re growing together. And so I’m constantly trying to find my, I’m constantly trying to find ways to add value to the people around me. I mean, just today, so I was on a call, I was on two different calls today with Ed Millet, some of you know, ed Millet you know, he’s, he’s one of our, our more well-known clients. And we’ve gotten know Ed a lot over the last few years ’cause we helped him with his book launch and we’ve done a number of things together. He’s one of our top affiliates. And I’m trying to figure out ways to make Ed more money, not just with us, but this other deal. And, and I brought Ed an opportunity that this is a, is an equity opportunity.
RV (21:06):
And I’m going, I mean, ed makes lots of money, right? But I’m going, how can I help him make more money knowing that if I can add value to Ed’s life, there’s a good chance that some of that value rolls back to me somehow. And I don’t always have to know how. I just have to trust that if, if I become great at helping other people make money, they’re gonna want to help me make money, they’re gonna want to reward me back. And, and, and that is true. I have found that to be true. And you, you align with people who are that way. And I know that’s true about me. If there’s, if there’s people around me who are helping me make money, I want to return and go as I make more money, I want to return it back to them. It’s a rising tide raises all ships.
RV (21:49):
And so proximity isn’t just power, proximity is profit. So pay attention to the people you’re around in your life to go, who, who has a capacity here to make a lot of money and how can I support them and, you know, be around them and partner with them and, and, you know, serve them and align with them and add value to their life. You’re likely going to win because of that. I mean, I have been the, the, the, the beneficiary of that, the recipient of that, and the benefactor of that also to other people. So there you have it. Five keys to being financially secure as an entrepreneur. First of all, get debt free to buy your own freedom. Number two, invest in yourself and your business first before you invest in other stuff. Number three, when it comes to inve outside investments, have a boring investment strategy.
RV (22:37):
Number four, choose abundance over scarcity. And number five, become great at helping other people make money. And you will make money with all of that. Just remember, peace is the new profit. You don’t need more money. You need less stress. You don’t need more money. You need as much as you need less complexity. I mean, we do want more money. You do, you, you should go for more money. You’re creating wealth for the people around you. But in reality, for most of us, we don’t need more money as much as we need less stress. And as we don’t need more money, as much as we need less complexity. So go out and create value in the world and watch the money flow back to you. Hopefully we’re helping you do that every time you listen to this show. So thanks for being here. Share this episode with someone who needs it. Keep coming back. If you haven’t yet, please go leave a rating for us on iTunes so that other people can see what our show is all about. We’re so grateful for you. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.