Ep 446: Wealth Building Strategies for Entrepreneurs with Rob Luna
RV (00:02):
One of the things that we love to do from time to time is grab clients from our community who have an expertise relative and relevant for our entire community. And that’s what I’m doing today with Rob Luna. So he is a B B G member. We’re, we’re very proud of him. He has his first book that just came out that we’ve been working with him on, it’s called Close Your Wealth Gap. The book is out now, it’s from Wiley, but Rob has two different MBAs, one from UTS D L a, and one from Singapore, which I love Singapore. He also has an advanced management program degree from the Wharton School, so the Wharton Advanced Management Program. And he sold his wealth management practice a few years ago. So he worked with lots of celebrities, sports stars and sold that and now runs the Rob Luna Wealth Academy. He’s the c e o of Real Talk Holdings. And he’s been on national tv, I think like every week for over a decade. So he’s usually on Fox. If you’ve ever seen making money with Charles Payne or Cavuto Coast to Coast or mornings with Maria, he is often there. And anyways, I said, Rob, we gotta have you on the show to talk about some tax strategies and some financial stuff for personal brands. So buddy, welcome to the podcast. Hey,
RL (01:24):
Thanks for having me, Rory. I appreciate it.
RV (01:26):
So I would love to start with tax strategy because we just helped our ninth B b G client grow their revenue more than a million dollars a year since becoming a client. Wow. That’s happened nine, nine times. And it all sounds great. And then what happens is they go, oh, whoa, like They, they get this rude awakening of like, taxes are a real thing. Yeah.
RV (01:54):
And they’ve never been pro, you know, like formally trained on it and have no idea. And then it’s like these huge, these these huge bills. And so, and a lot of, like, the cool thing about personal brands is you can draw pretty high income. It’s very scalable stuff. You’re speaking fees, consulting, you know, courses, memberships, you can, you can have these really big years, but you don’t have many expenses if you don’t have a lot of people and stuff. So I know that you’ve done a lot of tax planning for folks. What are some of the things that you think that personal brands specifically that don’t have huge staffs but might have large incomes, what are some of the things that they sh that we should be thinking about that maybe we’re not thinking about?
RL (02:34):
Yeah, well, I mean, I think the first thing, Rory, that you talked about that you need to be thinking about is tax planning and making sure that you’re understanding all that money is coming in, that tax consequence is gonna build up really quick. And working primarily with professional athletes over my career. A lot of them come to me a little bit too late, and the realization that there’s hundreds of thousands of dollars and sometimes millions of dollars in taxes that are due is really quite alarming. So I think the first thing is trying to sit down with somebody and doing projections at the beginning of the year. Hey, what do I think’s gonna come in? What do the quarterly projections look like? And make sure that you have an account that you’re setting that money aside so that it’s not a surprise at the end of the day.
RL (03:15):
The great thing about today where everyone’s complaining about interest rates going up, so the economy’s slowing down. The good thing about that though is that account you could put that money into and money market accounts earning like five, five and a half percent right now. So it’s not a horrible thing. So number one thing I would say is just make sure that you have your arms around what does revenue look like? What do your general expenses look like? And when you take revenue minus expenses, that’s usually your tax liability. Second thing, what I would say though is what people should start looking at is how do I put together a retirement plan?
RV (03:51):
Okay, so hold on, hold on the retirement thing, because I want to go there, I want to go there, but I wanna come back. I wanna come back to the, the money they’re, they’re setting aside. It’s interesting you mentioned the money market accounts. That’s what, that’s what we did, right? Yeah. So first thing is like all the cash in the money market accounts, that’s a really positive side of the, of the, of the interest rates going up. If you’re loaning money, it’s a good time. Like it’s a good time to be, you know, exactly.
RL (04:39):
Yeah, like, like it’s a progressive tax code. So the lower first part of your earnings is gonna be taxed at a lower rate. The last part of that’s gonna be at a higher rate. And that’s why I said what you should try to do is get an estimate of what do you think revenue’s gonna be, review that quarterly to get an idea of what is gonna be left. And so if it’s a hundred grand, obviously that’s gonna be a small liability. If it’s a million or $2 million, it’s gonna be larger. So that’s kind of the more factual thing. If I needed to give a number, I usually tell people back of the napkin, put about 25% away, most high net worth people are gonna kind of fall into that effective rate of what you’re actually paying of about 25%. You’re usually pretty safe there.
RV (05:18):
Mm-Hmm.
RL (05:32):
It’s, it’s crazy. You know, I, I did pre-ex exit planning for clients for 20 years, but because I had an unsolicited offer, I didn’t do it for myself. I wound up selling my business in California then after the fact move to Tennessee. So that’s another major thing. If you’re ever gonna sell that business or bring in o other owners into the business, be in a no state income tax state.
RV (05:53):
Yeah. Are you are you familiar with, I think it’s, it’s Act 22, the Puerto Rico? Like we, we
RL (05:59):
Always
RV (06:00):
We always know when one of our friends is about to sell their business in like four years ’cause they moved to Puerto Rico. And the are you familiar with it? Do you wanna explain to everybody what it is? Yeah, I,
RL (06:11):
I don’t know the exact of it, but essentially there’s almost zero tax if you move to Puerto Rico. It’s something ridiculous. Like 3%. Yeah.
RV (06:19):
Three or 4%.
RL (06:19):
I never had any clients or I personally wasn’t interested in spending that long in Puerto Rico, so I haven’t dove into it, but it is, if you’re somebody who wants to do that, extremely attractive alterna alternative.
RV (06:28):
Yeah. It’s a, it’s a real thing. Like we actually looked at it like, like we, we had young kids and we’re like, gosh, if we were gonna do this now, it’d be the time to go. But you have to live there for a few years and establish Nexus and like, you can’t fake it, but it’s, if you move there, I think it’s like 4% flat tax no matter what you make. And so people will do that then sell the company, pay the taxes, and then, you know, move back or whatever, which you’re not really supposed to do. That’s not the nature of it. But so, okay, so revenue minus expenses 25%. So I like that. Just a rough number. Yeah.
RL (07:01):
You, you
RV (07:01):
Wanna have something you don’t wanna get caught with, with nothing. So then I think retirement planning is a big bucket for entrepreneurs. And I think, you know, most entrepreneurs, especially if you came from the corporate world, you know, you kinda like have money set aside into a 4 0 1 K or something. You don’t really understand how it works and then you start your own business and they’re not really aware of what are the things they can set up for themselves. And a lot of those I think are under retirement planning, like the really aggressive tax saving strategy. So, so yeah. Dive into that.
RL (07:38):
Yeah, so look, I mean, I think you could still do a 4 0 1 k and I know you have a lot of clients who are, you know, have their individual brand, they might have 10 99 people that they’re using. So you could actually even set up a solo 4 0 1 K by yourself. You could do a profit sharing component to that. And so look, you know, a lot of people are surprised. They’re thinking, oh, there’s like a $22,000 limit on the 4 0 1 k I wanna put away more. Well, that’s where the profit sharing comes in. And so if you actually sit down with an administrator based off of how much revenue you’re putting in, you could add a lot more money to that. And so that’s something like you wanna, again, plan out at the beginning of the year, what does my year look like? Because if you start doing profit sharing, there’s some administrative costs.
RL (08:20):
If you think you’re gonna only be putting 15, 20 grand a so of 4 0 1 k, you can open up at Schwab, you can open up just about anywhere for virtually nothing. The great thing about having control of your own 4 0 1 k is you can invest in things like index funds that are super cheap. You don’t have to have this specific plan list that your group give, that your company gives to you. So you can invest just in about anything you want. And you’re gonna get a dollar for dollar deduction on anything that you put into that every year.
RV (08:50):
Yeah. We, we talked we don’t have a lot of financial people on, but we, we had someone that talked about like self-directed IRAs and things, and that was one of the cool, the cool benefits was like, you have a lot more control over what you’re investing in. Right. And then, and then this profit sharing plan that you’re talking about, like we, we had a defined benefits plan, like a cash balance plan. Is that an example of one of those? Is that what you’re talking about? Yeah,
RL (09:15):
You absolutely could have a defined benefit plan. The, the challenge with it is, you know, and the benefit of being a solopreneur, or maybe you have one or two key employees is you can’t discriminate with those. So when you’re just the only person, you could put a ton of money into them, but when you start building 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 employees, you have to incrementally share the wealth with them and it gets not as attractive. Right. That’s when people start to look at things like insurance policies and things like that for savings.
RV (09:40):
Mm-Hmm.
RL (09:55):
Or or a, for a Roth 4 0 1 K, there’s no income limits. So that’s one of the nice things where traditional, and you could put I think it’s 22,000 traditional I r A, you can only put 6,500 and you have to be under 228,000 as a couple where there’s no limits on a Roth 4 0 1 K. So that’s something, again, sit down, talk with your planner, whoever you work with, you could actually do a Roth 4 0 1 K, which is kind of nice if you don’t need that deduction because anything that grows in there, you put 22 K that grows to 300, 400 K in 20 years or more, that’s gonna be tax free, not just tax deferred.
RV (10:29):
Yeah. And that’s interesting. So if you’re doing, there’s limits to the Roth I r a, but you’re saying there’s not income limits to a Roth 4 0 1 K?
RL (10:37):
Exactly, exactly. That’s something you could do as an individual also,
RV (10:40):
But you gotta pay the taxes now, but then it grows forever. And that’s like,
RL (10:44):
Yeah, I, I mean think about it this way, okay, it’s after tax dollars, you’ve already paid taxes on this, but 25 K grows to, you know, 400,000, the taxes coming out of that would typically be a hundred grand. So if you think about $25,000 deduction, what do you get for that? You know, something about like five grand, six grand, so you’re foregoing a five grand deduction for a hundred thousand dollars deduction later on. You know, that’s the challenge with financial planning in general. It’s just like eating well,
RV (11:23):
Mm-Hmm.
RL (11:52):
Right.
RV (11:54):
Money. And then at some point it’s the conversation seems to switch to over to investing.
RL (11:59):
Yep.
RV (11:59):
To go, okay, I have my business. And this happens a lot with personal brands like speakers are a good example of this. We have a lot of speakers who they can make a really high income, you know, they’re knocking down 15, 20 grand of speech. They’re getting that, you know, 30, 50, a hundred times a year or 30 grand of speech, 30 times. I mean, they’re making seven figures in speeches, but well, covid happens, you know, they’re in trouble. It all goes straight to zero and you go, you’re probably can’t sell a speaking business. It’s not, it’s really a job. It’s, it’s a very, it’s a great job and a high paying job, but it’s not a business you could sell. And so we’ve talked to folks to say, well, if you have a high income source that really isn’t a business that you can sell, then what you wanna do is just draw the income off of that and put it into something that is a sellable asset. Which is really, I think where in investing kind of comes into the conversation.
RL (12:57):
Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s super important. And if we have time at the end, I’ll give you three more tax tips we can come back to that are really quick that no one talks about. But yeah, that’s the thing, Rory, I think what you just said is what people fail to realize. When you build a business, an entrepreneur, you’re looking to do one of two things, either number one, build a business that’s an asset that you can later on liquidate and reap the rewards of that asset that you build. As you mentioned though, even brands like Tony Robbins take, I mean, at the end of the day, will it be worth something because he is been able to scale that? Absolutely. Will it be the value that you can get ha if has his name not being attached to it? Absolutely not. And so for smaller influencers and things that people are still making a million, two, $3 million a year, they need to create their own backup contingency plan and exit strategy from day one.
RL (13:47):
So if they’re making a million bucks, they can’t be living off a million bucks because a lot of, you know, look, there’s a lot of influencers, especially today, people that are hot right now today that are very similar. I equated to the world I worked in to athletes. Yeah. You know, they’re making this very big money for a short period of time. They make the mistake to think that it’ll go on in perpetuity and they’re not taking some of that off the table every year, putting it into a portfolio that eventually grows to a size where the distributions are large enough to support their lifestyle. I call that work optional. That’s what they need to start thinking about from day one is how do I invest in assets that aren’t necessarily gonna knock the cover off the ball, but are gonna be able to pay me a consistent, steady rate of income that I can live off of in a short period of time?
RV (14:33):
Yeah. That, that is exa it is really a good parallel. It’s like, it’s the more realistic version of a, of an athlete is exactly,
RL (14:39):
You
RV (14:40):
Know, personal brands and you get these huge brand deals are speaking. So so what is that? I mean, is it basically real estate and stock market? I mean, is that pretty much what it comes down to? Are there other investments that you’re seeing like, hey, these are things that people can, should do?
RL (14:59):
Yeah, so it is, it’s a, it’s a great thing. Look, if you’re 5, 10, 15 years away, obviously you wanna have some things in growth types of assets. And so when I talk about just stocks are simple for people to understand, Amazon, it’s a great long-term stock, it’s done really well, but the only way you can make money on Amazon is to buy low and sell high. It’s not paying a dividend or any income stream. And so what I would say is, because especially for some of your audience that’s out there, they have enough cash flow to support their lifestyle now. And so what I would say is focus on those assets that are gonna pay a good income. The great thing today, one of the safest out assets out there, fixed income bonds, you could buy good high quality long duration bonds for 15, 20 years and lock in a six, six and a half, 7% return.
RL (15:47):
A lot of people say, well that’s not great. Tell you rule of thumb, most financial advisors will tell you the magic number you could pull off of your portfolio is about four to 5%. So if you can lock in six to 7%, those same rates, Rory two years ago, were one in 2%. So we’re talking about opportunity. Today’s the day you just said it, you wanna be a lender, not a borrower. So I would be b I would be a buyer of credit, meaning you’re lending out versus borrowing today. Buy some of those good high quality bonds, treasury bonds, good high quality corporate bonds. That’s one way to do it. That’s one asset. And then you also said stocks, you know, I talk about high quality dividend paying stocks. The nice thing about stocks is they pay dividend stocks, they pay you an income, but if you buy the right ones, I talk a lot about this in my Wealth academy, like Proctor and Gamble for example.
RL (16:38):
They’ve given you about a, it’s about a 4% dividend now. They give you that dividend every year, plus you get the growth of the stock. And for Proctor and Gamble, even though stock prices go up and down, their dividend for 65 years has increased year after year after year. So you’ve gotten a raise every single year by owning that. So by fixed income, by dividend paying stocks, I like real estate also, but you wanna make sure it’s high quality, not very leveraged real estate you know, a lot of people are buying very highly leveraged real estate and you have to refinance those in a market like today doesn’t work out. So if you could buy things without leverage that are cashflow. Makes sense. What I really like that a lot of financial advisors don’t talk about are boring businesses that you can buy that could be run by other people.
RL (17:26):
I have a couple clients that do do that to supplement their income landscaping businesses, pest control businesses. If you can buy a business today with a good team in place that a lot of entrepreneurs don’t retire and play golf, but you can run from the sidelines, that’ll be your highest R o i sometimes 18 to 22% after paying that staff to run. And it keeps you mentally engaged. So start thinking about what are those assets I can build up diversification’s the key. I say buy all of ’em, real estate stocks, fixed income, private businesses, things that are gonna have a steady, predictable stream of income when you stop earning the kind of money, you know, that you might be earning today.
RV (18:03):
Yeah, the I love that I’m buying boring businesses is is is a great, you know, thing and there’s a lot of ’em can be super consistent and just, you know, you’re not gonna, you’re not gonna make yacht money probably. But you, you, I I, I like the way that you’re talking about, the part that jumps out at me of everything you said that I’m surprised I’ve never really heard is you said the magic number you can pull off your portfolio is 4%. So that, you know, I want to, I want to come back to that and kind of like where you said the work optional idea. Yeah.
RV (18:35):
You know, the way that I’ve always thought about it was like if you could have, you know, figure out what you wanna live off of every year and then figure out how much you need to have invested and then what percentage you’re drawing off. So if you had, if, if you had, you know, $10 million invested, you’re saying that 4% is the number that you would go, that’s what you could pull off to where the 10 million never disappears. It’s just throwing off 4% in perpetuity. That’s how you think about it.
RL (19:04):
Yeah, that’s exactly it. I mean it’s kind in a lot of financial journals, it, the number used to be 5% and then when interest rates went lower, everyone said no, that’s more to four. I still think there’s a lot of things you could do to where five, especially today, like I said, you can get t-bills at five and a half. I think five’s the realistic number, but that’s the number that, it’s a reality check to a lot of people. For example, you sell a business for 4 million or 5 million bucks. Okay, the people that sell a business for 5 million, or let’s use a an easy number for everyone, 10 million, the people that sell a business for 10 million bucks. And that could be a business that was doing 2 million net profits a year. You sell it five times earnings, that’s 10 million bucks that you bring in. Well, I just said you’re doing 2 million in profits a year.
RL (19:44):
So this is a business owner that was used to making 2 million. They now sell the business for 10 million. Let’s say they pay 20% in taxes because that’s a long-term capital gain. They bring in 8 million. Rob, I got 8 million bucks. A lot of them never had 8 million bucks in their hand because they were paying taxes. All these things, what does this mean? Well, if we use 5% times 8 million, that’s 400,000. They’re like, wait, like I have a million dollar lifestyle, 400,000 isn’t gonna cut it from me. I just sold this business that was cash flowing, $2 million and now you’re telling me all I can bring in is 400,000. That’s why you need to do this planning before, like I always tell people as entrepreneurs and startups have the exit in mind from day one, you want to be working right to left, understand where you’re trying to go so that it’s not a surprise and you can plan for that. But yeah, 5% on every million is only 50 grand pre-tax. So you gotta figure whatever you save, whatever you sell your business at, you got about 5% number that, because remember, you want to keep up with inflation as we’ve seen over the last two to three years. You gotta be able to raise that about three to 3.5% every year. So that’s all equated into that 5% number.
RV (20:53):
So then what would you do to prepare there? So if you’re saying like, okay, if you have 8 billion bucks invested, 5% off, that’s 400,000. You would either, you would either keep working, right? So then you’d, you’d either have a, you’d either have a, a job there or else you would, is there something you would do on the front end to sort of to prepare for that? Yeah.
RL (21:15):
Yeah. So that’s why someone comes to me, you the young entrepreneur, we, and it’s like a 15, 20 year strategy. Well we’re, we’re putting into that 4 0 1 k that defined benefit plan from day one. So we’re building our portfolio with some of the income that’s coming in. And so traditional financial planning is that go to work save, and then you have this lump sum, but where you’re an entrepreneur solopreneur, you’re doing some of that. But the big point is when we look at 12, 15 years, you don’t have to save quite as much because you’re gonna get this lump sum injection into the portfolio that we’re gonna account for. So you do some saving along the way, but the number that really hits you there is that exit. But if you’re not saving for 15, 20 years, ah, only planning on that exit to come, that doesn’t work.
RL (21:59):
But there’s a combination where you’re like, a lot of times I tell people in, you don’t have to sell the business. Like I, I sold to a publicly traded company. You can do internal succession to where you have a great business, like I said, that’s making 2 million in that example, sell off to some junior partners. You can get outside funding for that, take some of that money off the table, but stay involved five, 10 hours a week and make the other million dollars. So it’s not an all or none strategy, it’s just understanding what are the options, what do they look like, and having extreme clarity and focus on what that is. So there’s no surprises at the end of the day.
RV (22:32):
Yeah. When you say, you know, sell off to junior partners and you can take outside money from that, you’re saying that basically they can take a bank loan to pay you out? Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Um-Huh So yeah,
RL (22:44):
There’s a lot of, a lot of ways to exit, which you should be thinking about from the beginning of your business. And so sometimes it’s internal succession, sometimes it’s just strategic. You’re just selling to a business. If you’re a landscaping business, you’re selling to another landscaping business, you might creating this huge company where you’re gonna go public, whatever it is, just understand that because the way you prepare your balance sheet, the way you put your staff, your technology in place, it’s all gonna be different. I have entrepreneurs where that know from day one exactly the one, two, or three technology companies that they want to sell with. So what they try to do is emulate a model that’s very similar to theirs in a different category. So when they consume that company, it’s the same c r m, it’s the same point of sale system, it’s very easy. And so they get a higher multiple because of that.
RV (23:29):
Mm-Hmm.
RL (23:59):
Yeah, that I, and that’s the thing I talk a little bit about in my book. So annuities, insurance, these are one of these like really hot topic issues and, and I’ll, I’ll tell you why. I think they’re one of the most oversold
RL (24:46):
It makes sense because what do annuity companies do? What do banks do? They give you, just like we talked about, money market, a certain rate of return. They have to then take that money and get a higher rate of return. That’s just profit pro being a profitable business. So if a new, if interest and they wanna invest in safe things like bonds. So if insurance companies three years ago were giving you something, they had to get more, well the 10 year bond was like 1%. Today it’s almost six. So the benefits that are available with the annuities today are much more attractive. So annuity is an insurance contract where you hand the insurance company a hundred thousand, a million dollars and they give you a guarantee of a growth, a guarantee of a immediate rate of return for the rest of your life. That guarantee is always gonna be higher and more attractive when interest rates are higher.
RL (25:36):
So I would say I’ve been telling people to steer clear of ’em for over a decade. Now, today though, I’m not these one of these guys where it’s, it’s always this or it’s always that. Today though, there are some that are a lot more attractive. So it makes sense if you’re someone who wants some guarantees, you don’t want a lot of fluctuation, you don’t have a pension fund and you wanna replace that with something, a high quality insurance company might be able to provide you something that’s attractive versus taking in the risk of doing it yourself.
RV (26:03):
Yeah. Yeah. That’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it is interesting. So on that note in terms of good times, bad times to do things, I want to hear something about, I wanna hear about debt. Yeah. You know, is there, there’s this, you know, when you’re building a personal brand, it’s like, it’s, it can be expensive. It’s like, I gotta build websites, I need graphics design, I need, you know, video editors, I need copywriters, you know, I need strategists, right? They’re hiring brand builders group that costs something. What’s your, that’s
RL (26:31):
Always a great investment, Rory brand builders group. So,
RV (26:34):
Hey, come on, come on. What, what is your you know, what, is there there good debt? Is there bad debt? Is it no debt? Is it sometimes debt? This kind of debt, that kind of debt? Like, just curious, I’m just curious to your debt philosophy.
RL (26:50):
Yeah, my debt philosophy is there’s good debt and there’s bad debt. I talk a little bit about those in my book. I think number one, I took debt, student loan debt, investing in myself with a plan of how am I gonna monetize that. My M B A, for example, I left within three months. I had one client that paid double
RL (27:34):
And if that’s just you and you’re spending money randomly, you’re never gonna get that back. So I believe investing in yourself, your brand, your business, and this isn’t traditional financial advice. I would, especially people under 40. I would say immediately start now, try building your business. Defer the 4 0 1 k, defer the real estate investments, the Airbnbs and everything everyone’s trying to sell you and invest in trying to make and build a business for yourself. That’ll be the best asset you do. So I would take debt there hands down. However, I wouldn’t take any credit card debt, you know, 25, 20 6% and that keeps going up. I always tell people when they’re ready to invest, if you first of all invest in yourself, have an emergency fund in case things go bad, but then start investing in credit card debt because we talk about eight, 10% rate of returns when you pay off 10,000 in credit card debt, that’s 25% rate of return that you’re giving yourself immediately.
RL (28:30):
So credit card debt is something that I wouldn’t have. Real estate debt. Makes sense. If it makes sense today at these rates on investment properties, it’s very tough. You’re paying eight, 9% on properties that are cash flowing, four or 5%. Not something that I would do. The idea is just understanding how interest rates work. ’cause A lot of, you know, the one thing I’m always talking to my academy members about a one thing in finance, if you can just focus on the correlation of interest rates, how they tie to investments, how they could tie to the economy. You’re gonna understand why I was telling people a year and a half ago, things are gonna get tough. Get your balance sheet right. Pay down debt. If you got lines of credit, pull that out right now, get everything fixed. Make sure you’re not taking floating rate mortgages because things are gonna slow down.
RL (29:16):
The Federal Reserve engineers recessions, booms by, you know, raising interest rates, lowering interest rates, and when you could see that well ahead of time because there’s a lag effect. They started raising rates year and a half, two years ago. We’re just now kind of seeing things slow down. Same thing. People are like, why is the stock market going up? Well, because they’re looking out a year and a half, two years when you feel the worst is the time to buy stocks when you feel the best is the time to sell stocks. But it’s not just stocks, it’s small businesses, it’s real estate in most assets.
RV (29:48):
Uhhuh. Interesting. That is fascinating stuff. So I want to ask you more about that, but before we do I just want, I just want to tell everyone so close, your wealth gap is out now, Rob Luna. You can get the book wherever, wherever books are sold, of course we’ll link up to Rob and his socials and website on, on the show notes and all that sort of stuff. The interest rate correlation thing is something I don’t, I don’t think I have fully understand. Yeah,
RL (30:17):
Right.
RV (30:17):
So can you just briefly walk us through super quick, like what the Yeah, because the levers, how the levers move.
RL (30:25):
Yeah, I’ll make it super simple, right? So let’s just think about student loans or credit cards. Let’s say a credit card for example. Well, so the Federal Reserve, you know, Jerome Powell is the chairman. This group basically dictates how high interest rates are so they can raise those or lower those. That’s the only tool they have. They have a dual mandate is full employment and inflation. So just think about that. The government, the Federal Reserve is basically trying to make sure that people are employed and that inflation doesn’t get out of control for obvious reasons, but they only have one tool and that is monetary policy, lowering and raising interest rates. And so when things get too hot, remember Covid, everybody was locked up, they couldn’t spend on anything. The supply chain was closed. Savings rates skyrocketed the highest we saw in 20 years, you couldn’t spend money on anything.
RL (31:19):
We had p p P loans go directly to consumers. So when the economy opened back up, limited supply, a lot of cash, that’s what’s created this inflation. And so what the Federal Reserve is saying, we can’t have inflation, that’ll kill the dollar, that’ll kill the economy. So let us raise interest rates is what they’ve been doing. They’re trying to engineer, not trying to engineer a recession, but nine out of 10 times when they do that, the history shows we go into recession eventually when they raise rates. Now think about that. When rates rise, what happens? It’s harder to buy homes because you had 3% 30 year mortgages before that same home. Now at seven and a half, 8% is 50 to 60% higher payment than you had before your credit card debt. We have a trillion dollars now in credit card debt in the us the highest ever.
RL (32:10):
Wow. So a lot of people have credit card debt. We’re a consumer driven economy, meaning people have to go out there and buy stuff for us to be successful, they have to buy your products, my products, services. And so what happens is people don’t have a lot of expendable income. If you had a thousand dollars in a spendable income and the price to pay, just the minimum interest on your credit card was $400 two years ago, maybe $400 on your student loan, you had 200 bucks left. Well now what’s happening is those interest payments for everybody who has credit card debt, student loan debt revolving mortgages, home equity lines of credit has gone higher. So the amount of cash they have to actually spend on things is lower. So their credit card payments have doubled without any increase in balances and everything else. So what they’ve done, the fed has taken that liquidity out of the system.
RL (32:59):
People can’t go out to eat, they can’t do all these things. The reverse happens when they lower interest rates. Now your balance is even staying the same. The payment you have to make is a lot less. You can now buy a lot more home. And so what they’re then doing is incentivizing people because there’s extra flow that they have. It’s just a perf you know, basically a cash flow analysis when rates go higher. Companies and people, same thing with companies. Most companies have floating rate debt. So their debt payments as a company were six, 7%. Now they’re 12, 13%. What does that mean? They can’t hire more people because they have an extra $200,000 in debt service. So when rates go up, the economy slows down. When rates go down, the economy speeds up. The stock market is a leading indicator, which means it’ll usually move a year in advance. So the stock market started going down the year before last. Now it’s basically starting to try to move back up to say, Hey, in about a year from now, we think things will be okay.
RV (33:53):
So rates go higher. That means cash that people have goes down. So their spending goes down. Yep. Rates go lower. They have more cash on hand, so they buy more stuff. So spending goes up.
RL (34:04):
Exactly.
RV (34:05):
Simple as that. Well there’s a lot here as you could tell, and we are out of time for Rob. We have gotten as much free financial advice as we could possibly fit into one podcast episode. Brother, thank you for being here. We’re, we’re so excited about you and the book Close Your Wealth Gap. Everyone check it out. And Rob, we wish you the best brother. Thanks
RL (34:26):
Man. I appreciate it, Rory.
Ep 445: What To Know If You Want To Be a Highly Paid Professional Speaker | Shawn Hanks Episode Recap
AJV (00:03):
You need three things to become a highly paid professional speaker. And we’re gonna talk about each of those three things right now. First and foremost, you need amazing content and an amazing speech. That’s the barrier to entry. It is no longer about just having great assets and a great sizzle and you know, we assume that because you’re well known or that you know it’s a hot topic, that you’re going to be good. Now it’s like we need proof that you have amazing content and that you’re an amazing speaker and some of the assets we’re gonna talk about that will help support that. But we live in a day and age that people can go online, on YouTube, on Instagram, on TikTok, just go to Google and find clips of you speaking. They better be good. And the content needs to beuh powerful and engaging and innovative and original.
AJV (00:56):
So let’s just stop with that. You have to have amazing content. It needs to be clear and it needs to be actionable. And you’ve gotta be great on stage just because you have great content. Making videos behind a camera like this doesn’t always mean you’re a great presenter on stage. That’s an art, that’s a craft, and it needs to be honed. So let’s just start with this, that you must have amazing content and you must be a great presenter on stage. Those are two things that are a given in order to become a highly paid professional speaker. Now, assuming that you have those two things, ’cause you’ve been working on your content for years, and that you have been honing this craft and you’ve been speaking, which you don’t become a great speaker the first time you speak FYI that is something that happens over the course of time.
AJV (01:41):
So speak as much as you can. Speak for free, speak for money, just speak, speak for speak. For groups of three, speak for groups of 3000. You need the practice. You need to figure out what what parts of your story do people remember? What makes them laugh, what makes them think? Where do you need pauses? Where do you need a little bit more humor? Where do you need a little bit more seriousness? Where do you need slides? That only comes with practice. And so the more you do it, the better you get always. Now, second to that the prerequisite is you got to have an amazing speech and you have to have amazing content. There are some other things that help you enhance your ability to become a highly paid professional speaker. First of all, you have to know, categorically speaking, what topics are evergreen topics that are naturally going to allow you to increase your fees over the course of time. And what I mean by evergreen topics is it does not matter what market we’re in, what economy we’re in, what company it is, what industry it is, that there are some categories that are always going to be requested when someone is looking for a speaker. Some of those,
Speaker 2 (02:58):
This is not all of them, but some of those categories that are evergreen that also allow for highly paid speak speeches would be leadership. There is always going to be a need in associations, education, government, corporations, for there to be a discussion around how do you become a better leader of people. Now, within that category of leadership, there’s communication, there’s management, there’s all other types of things, but just think about leadership is a category. Another one would be culture. No matter what culture is always gonna be a part of a conversation. Teamwork. How do we work with others as leaders, but also as employees? That’s top down, bottom up. But teamwork would be another one. So if you think about like large, widespread, categorically speaking, those are three categories. And like I said, they’re not the only ones, but those are three categories that are always going to be requested that allow for your fees to grow without you ever leaving that category.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
If you think of some of the most high pay professional speakers out there like the, the Mel Robbins of the world, it’s like there are components of what she is talking about where it is, you know, overcoming, you know, fear, right? But a little bit of that is overcoming fear to do something right, to be a leader, to make the sale, to ask for the thing. You’ve got people like Tony Robbins, right? And his is about empowerment. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a leader or a frontline employee, but there are some general conversation topics that are always going to allow for you to grow within that vertical and increase your fees. There are other evergreen categories of speeches that will always be needed and requested, but doesn’t allow for the same fee intensity for it to grow as exponential.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
And I’ll give you a quick example. Can you tell me 10 different social media speakers who have fees of $40,000 a keynote, maybe likely not. That is a, a topic that is considered, you know, important, but it’s probably more considered of like a 5,000, $10,000 speaker, not a $40,000 speaker on social media versus I could list you 30, $40,000 speakers right now in leadership. Tons of them. Now, it’s not saying that the content for social media isn’t important, it’s just that it doesn’t allow for that same fee exponential increase as some of these other categories. So social media that would be an example. But other evergreen categories that are important, that are always going to be important would be sales
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Customer experience what we used to refer to as customer service, branding, marketing. Now again these are high level categories and those are evergreen categories, but don’t allow for the same fee growth as maybe a leadership, a culture a teamwork type of topic. So the first thing you wanna look at is how does my content that I believe in that is unique and niche to me, fit within one of these categories that are gonna allow me to have fee increases over time? And whatever it is, it’s like, how do I weave in components of culture, leadership, and teamwork into what I’m doing so that I fit within that request as those are always going to be highly requested topics for events. Doesn’t matter what the event is. So how can what you do also weave in some of those elements so that you fit into those categories outside of that video is the silver bullet.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
You have to have amazing video, a demo video. So I’m gonna just talk about some of the key bullet points of what you need here. One you’ve got to have a five to seven minute speaker demo video. If you’ve got some, something really original, something unique, maybe 10 minutes, but five to seven is the sweet spot that event planners are looking for today. It needs to be short and punchy. You cannot have a one camera shoot, right? So you’re looking for a two or three camera shoot minimum to get the different angles. What angles do you need? You need closeups on your intimate stories. You need wide screen so you can see the power of the stage. You have to have audience shots. People need to see audience reactions in your footage. If you are telling a joke and no one is laughing and there’s no footage of the laughing, how are we supposed to know if it’s funny?
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Maybe we didn’t think it was funny until that the, we like, oh, okay, the audience loved that meeting. Planners need to know the audience loved that. How do they know that? You show the audience in your footage. Audio quality is key. You’ve got to be clear and concise. Same thing with video quality. You won’t, you don’t want shaky footage, blurry footage, those you can’t use that. You can’t use that. You need to have three to four different speeches in your demo video. It cannot be you on one stage in one outfit. So you need at least three to four different stages with you in at least three to four different outfits. So don’t wear the same outfit on every stage. And then you’ve got to answer the question, why are you the expert that I should spend money on to bring to our event?
Speaker 3 (08:31):
And that needs to be answered in the first 15 to 20 seconds. That’s that I need that credible validation that I know what I’m talking about and I’m worth the investment that I’m asking for. Then needs to immediately jump to stage footage. So that’s the video. A speaker press kit. Here’s some of the key things that you need in a speaker press kit. A great headshot, a high rise headshot that really shows you today, not 10 years ago, not five years ago today. Make sure it’s eye catching, original, really enhances who you are and make sure it’s high res your bio. This is your unique positioning. Again, you’ve got to say, why am I the expert? Why am I different? Why should you hire me? And that needs to be in your, your speaker bio. Then you need your keynote description. Think about it like this.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
What you’re trying to describe in this keynote description is what are people buying when they buy this program, when they pay you whatever, you know, $15,000, what they’re paying for is what you have written on that page in your video. It’s this is what you’re buying, right? And then it’s how are you going to deliver that? Some of that is just bullet point takeaways, right? It’s like, here’s what the program is about. Here’s what your audience is going to leave with. And that’s, they’re people are making a 15 to $50,000 decision on a five minute video and a one page description. Think about that. It needs to sell and it needs to be really well positioned. It needs to reach the heart and the core of who this is for, what it is for and how we’re going to achieve it. Right? That is your keynote description.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Then you need reviews or testimonials. If you can organize them by industry. So if you are being submitted to speak at an insurance association, make sure you have lots of insurance testimonials. If it’s a, a real estate right event, make sure you’ve got real estate testimonials. So try to customize and, and organize those by industry if you can. But what’s most important is we need to know these are real people. So what’s their headshot? What’s their name? What was their position and what did they say? AJ was the best speaker, not as impactful. AJ was the best speaker we have hired in the last 10 years. I have never had so many people request that we bring her back as I have had with this event. Right? That’s the type of thing that you’re looking for. So be really intentional about what you’re trying to get across with your reviews and testimonials. And the last thing I would say when it comes to becoming a highly paid professional speaker is at the end of the day, you have to be so good at what you do, your craft, that other speakers are willing to tell meeting planners and bureaus about you. So be so good at what you do, that other people tell others about what you do. And that is how you become a highly paid professional speaker.
Ep 444: What You Should Know About Working with Speaker Bureaus with Shawn Hanks
AJV (00:00):
Hey everybody, and welcome to the influential personal brand, AJ Vaden here. Have a long time friend who is on the show today, Shawn Hanks. I’m going to formally introduce him in just a sec, but I want you to know who this episode is for and why you should stick around and listen to it. Number one, this is for anyone who is on the path to desiring to become a highly paid professional speaker. That’s who this episode is really built for. If you want to speak occasionally, probably not the episode for you. This is built for the person who goes, I have a message to share, and I have a passion for sharing it on stages all over the world. I want this to be the primary part of my business, and I wanna be a highly paid professional speaker.
AJV (00:53):
If that’s you, this is an episode you cannot absolutely do not want to miss. Now, what are we gonna talk about? We’re gonna talk about what it takes to become a highly paid professional speaker, and most importantly, how do you get on all those stages that you so desire to be on? ’cause There’s lots of different ways to do it. And working with a bureau is one of those, which we’re gonna talk a lot about today. It’s not the only one, but it is one that definitely helps pave the path. But in order to do that, there’s some things you gotta do before you get on those stages. So, without further ado, let me introduce you to the CEO of Premier Speakers Bureau. Shawn has been in the Speakers Bureau world for almost 20 years, if not over 20 years. He was also the most recent past president of the International Association of Speakers Bureaus, which is just a real fancy word of saying he knows a lot about this industry.
SH (02:02):
Dallas Cowboys. Oh, Dallas, Tyler and I went to a game last week. We watched them beat the Rams. Hey, it’s, it’s fun. Cowboys are great until they’re not, and it just breaks my heart every year.
AJV (02:13):
Oh, I love that
SH (02:36):
That’s fun.
AJV (02:37):
We don’t have a deep passion for it. But my four year old got himself a pair of football gloves, like, you know, like I love
SH (02:47):
It.
AJV (02:48):
But
SH (02:48):
Yeah, probably receiver G gloves. Yeah,
AJV (02:50):
Receiver G gloves. There you go. That’s what they called. I don’t even know. But he sleeps in them.
SH (02:55):
Love it.
AJV (02:56):
He wears them to basketball practice. He wears them to school. He wears them everywhere his goes. I’m like, you’re gonna have the softest, most moisturized hand
SH (03:20):
Yeah, they’re two great teams. Eki.
AJV (03:29):
So funny. Alright, well now we gotta talk business. We gotta talk business. So Shawn, help everyone get to know just a little bit about you and premier speakers. Like for those who are listening, who are going what, what’s a bureau? What do those people do? What is a bureau? What is Premier? And how did you get into this industry and how have you stayed in it for so long? Yeah.
SH (03:53):
Well, thank you aj. It’s great. Always fun to see you and your energy comes through the screen. I love that. Bureau is, if you don’t know what a speaker’s bureau is, join the crowd. I didn’t know what a speaker’s bureau was in October of 2000, 23 years ago. Let’s not do the math. I didn’t know what a speaker’s bureau was. That’s an old dusty term. That essentially means we do speaker representation, right? We are the organizations that especially larger conferences, corporate groups come to a speakers bureau to say, Hey, I need to have four slots and these are the types of content I want to fill. This is what I do want. This is what I don’t want. Premier in particular, and you mentioned IASB, which is a great organization, international Association of Speakers Bureaus. I am plugged into that group.
SH (04:39):
So I, I probably know more about speakers bureaus than I should except for doing market competitor research. But we, it’s a small industry. There’s about 120 speakers bureaus. Most of those are very small. You know, one, two person shops that really started doing event management and then event production and then slid into the speakers bureau world. ’cause They really enjoyed being the liaison with the speakers. But, and they’re probably four to five that are significant in size and, you know, would, would own a significant part of the industry. PSB in particular, we, last year we worked with about 2000 events. We have nine agents on our team. They are siloed. So we have one agent who only handles healthcare, right? So when a healthcare client calls or a hospital he can speak with, you know, he, he understands their pain points, he understands their jargon.
SH (05:34):
So we, we have been intentional at Premier. We’ll celebrate 30 years next year. Congrat of building congrat. Thank you. Thank you. Building what we call sectors. So we have one agent that only handles education. We do a lot of work in the K through 12 arena. And if you call from a school district or any kind of education group, you’re always end up talking to Carl because he understands what your pain points are. He understands that in particular, you always pay net 30. Most groups don’t do that. All those little intricacies that, that you can really glean from working with the same types of clients over and over again. Expertise, ultimately. But our job most people assume our job is to just book speakers. And that is the end product. I always say our, we are in consultancy more than anything else.
SH (06:18):
And really risk mitigation. When, when a large corporation calls us or a large association and says, Hey, this is the type of speaker we’re looking for, or often it’s, here are the three types of speakers who want, we need a headliner. Who’s going to capture attention? We’re willing to spend X number of dollars, then we think this is going to be a hot topic. Let’s call it ai. I mean, that’s a hot topic for today. We need someone on the stage who can cover that content. And then we want someone who can do this and, and check these certain boxes. They, and they most often call us with very specific criteria of these are the things they don’t, most often don’t have a name. They’re not calling to say, we want AJ on this date. Right? they’re calling us and the consultancy is really what we’re selling.
SH (07:01):
We’re risk mitigation. They may book four speakers this year. We worked with, we booked 2000 events last year. So they understand we aren’t going to book a speaker for them and with them. Who isn’t going to be literally world class. I mean, just show up, crush it, be amazing, you on stage. So there’s no risk in, I’ll say that ideally there’s no risk in working with a bureau because we’re bringing them the cream of the crop. And we’ve done all of the hard work of selecting from the, the thousand speaker submissions that we’ve seen in the last year. We have found, gleaned the, the 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 that we know are going to be amazing. And that ultimately that’s what a speaker’s bureau is. We’re we are here to service our end clients when we say clients. And that’s the term of art in our industry.
SH (07:50):
We are talking specifically premier speakers bureau. We are talking about an event planner. Mm-Hmm.
SH (08:40):
They select from that list and probably come back to us. So we massage that ultimately, but at the end of the day, it turns into, is the speaker available on this date? Yes. We go to contract with the end client, go to contract with the speaker. We have nine of those agents. We have five people on our event logistics team. They grab the event, they do all of the event logistics in turn, I’m sorry, they do all the speakers event logistics, airfare, car service, all of the details to get the speaker from home to the event and back. And then we have a full accounting team. We collect all the funds, guarantee all the payment to the speaker. So the, there’s very little risk for the speaker. We do work on a commission structure, so they’re paying for those services. But, but ultimately solving the problem of what content do you need on the stage Event planner, that’s where it starts.
AJV (09:29):
Yeah. So I, I love that you said that ’cause I haven’t heard that. So clearly stated, it’s like we’re risk mitigation for our clients. Mm-Hmm.
SH (10:14):
Assuming the speaker is with the, the right bureau. And when I say right, every, every company ha ends up with a clientele that looks like them as a company, right? And whether that’s intentional or unintentional premier has been blessed with a lot of organic growth over the years. But much of that is the, the, the speakers that we select to represent, attract a certain type of clientele, right? So then we go find speakers who are attractive to that type of clientele that that grows. So our client base somewhat intentional, somewhat just by the nature of how business works, we over time end up with a certain type of clientele. And then we are looking for speakers to service the, those groups of, of clients. So it, there is a step there of, I have seen many times, and we’ve been guilty of it, we say, Hey, we, this, this speaker is very interesting.
SH (11:03):
We think it could be a good fit, but we end up misaligned ’cause we don’t have the right clientele to select them. But when there’s a great marriage there a speaker working with a bureau the opportunity there is Speaker X. If you get in front of 10 event planners, and I say in front of, if you’re email, if, if you have contact with 10 event planners and two or three of them book you, right? Let’s say you have 30% close rate, well, we can put you in front of a hundred event planners or a thousand, 10,000 is a big number. But so it at that, it’s just the, the scale of opportunity. Even if that close rate goes down, you still have massive opportunity. There are assumptions with alignment there, obviously, but when it works well, it really, it it’s a scale that most speakers are not able to build on their own or choose not to.
SH (11:56):
I mean, ultimately, I mentioned all of our staff with 24 people on our team, it, for a speaker to go hire someone, okay, I want you on the phone all day, every day talking about me to clients. I need someone to run a business. I need, you know, maybe ACOO so like manage all of this and I need someone, an account like it’s staffing up becomes a significant amount of overhead bureaus. We do sell services and provide services to speakers. But that it eliminates for most speakers the requirement of having a full back office.
AJV (12:27):
Yeah. That, you know, what I’ve always said is just being honest, we’ve always had a love hate relationship with bureaus. Yep. ’cause We are salespeople. It’s like we’ve always found ourselves. It’s like we’re great at pitching ourselves and getting ourselves on stages until you run into a slew of clients that are like, oh, we love you would love to book you. Let me contact my bureau.
SH (12:50):
AJV (12:51):
You need to contact the bureau. I’m talking to you right now. Yeah. And it’s like, but I think that’s one of the benefits for speakers is just understanding there is a whole world of clients who will not book you without going through their bureau because of that risk mitigation process.
SH (13:06):
Right?
AJV (13:07):
Right. It’s that they wanna know that you’ve gone through the ringer with the bureau too before they put you on their stage. And I would say that’s, I think that’s, it’s a huge benefit of just going, if you have a great relationship with the bureau, one access is a big deal. Like, you’re gonna get access to people who would never book you direct. They’re just not gonna do it. It’s not what they do. Right. But then two, it’s like if you don’t have relationships with bureaus, even if you’re not exclusive you’re gonna be competing with ’em. Right. Right. That’s true. And those have, that’s that established relationships where even if they like you, they know these other people really well. And so there’s pros and cons to all the things, but I think a lot of people who want to be highly paid professional speakers, they want to do it now
AJV (13:57):
And there’s a process of how do you raise your fees and how do you get to become that person who is booked on stages where people are calling you, or bureaus are calling you versus you calling them. So I’d love to hear from your perspective of, you know, booking 2000 events last year is insanity. Right? That’s so many. That’s so, I mean, that’s what, four a day for three and a half a day. It’s a time. But also being in the industry for so long, like what are people looking for? And so I wanna talk about this in three different ways. Sure. What are they looking for in terms of the content? Like what’s trending, what’s hot, what’s, and I think there’s just evergreen. Like people are always gonna want leadership. They’re always gonna want culture. There’s always, there’s always some of those things, right? But then there’s new topics like ai, right? Yeah. So I’d love to talk about content. The second is, what are the assets that a speaker needs in order to get booked, right? So we need demo video, but any footage isn’t good footage, right? So like, what type of
SH (15:01):
Footage?
AJV (15:02):
And then also like a speaker press kit or a website. Like what, what’s the formula of this is the set of assets you need if you’re really going after this. And then the last thing is, what does it take to work with a bureau? Sure. Because I think that’s important. So let’s start with content. Like, just thinking of, you know, some people have great ideas, but are people gonna pay 10, 20, 30, $40,000 for an hour? Right?
SH (15:29):
Yeah. And that’s a great question. You, you, you described it perfectly, aj. There are certain elements of content that will never grow old. Leadership is one of them. Teamwork your right culture and how we see that play out in the market is often a client will call and say, Hey, we need a speaker who I mentioned AI earlier, as we sit here in November of 2023, that’s a hot topic. It, it may not be two years from now, but it is today. And I’ll come back to that in a second. But often they’ll say, Hey, even if you’re an AI speaker, we want you to, to hit on ai. We want you to be the expert. Ideally, you’ve written a book on it. You, you’ve been on tv and they’ve put your name aj a expert in ai, right? But the reality is they also want you to hit on some of those evergreen topics.
SH (16:19):
So event planners will say like, oh, we want that AI speaker to be great. Can they also hit on leadership? And, and so there is kind of this combination of your content. But that isn’t, say you do want to be known for something. Now what that thing is, social media eight, 10 years ago was the thing. And I remember so many speakers saying, I have to overnight reinvent myself as a social media speaker. The problem with that is, the next day, you know, you have, let’s make up a number a thousand speakers who overnight became experts on social media. So there immediately becomes a glut in the market. But there was opportunity there. The problem is, if you’re chasing content in that way, it is really hard to read what’s in the future, right? Like to guess. Okay, where’s it gonna be in a year?
SH (17:08):
I’ve always encouraged speakers, yes, be smart, leadership, teamwork, culture. There’s some content that will never grow old. The thing that you’re gonna care about in three to five years. ’cause We’re talking about what you guys do at brand builders. Like, figure out what you were great at and like, you own it, but you gotta live it, right? So if you’re picking something because you want, you hope, it’ll just capture the market. My my argument is you’re going to hate that content in six months. ’cause You’re, you’re trying to fall in love with something that you don’t love, right?
SH (17:58):
And make that your own. Now be smart, obviously. It, it, DEI was a very hot conversation topic and keynote topic two years ago last year. But we’ve seen a number of DEI speakers, DEI speakers start to see their business slow. Because a a lot of companies will say, we had that content last year and they haven’t devalued it, but they can’t do that content every single year. So they, the, the rally the market, there’s less opportunity for that specific content. So you mentioned culture that is an, an evergreen topic, very clever gifted DEI speakers will, will pivot. And they don’t change their content significantly, but you rebrand it instead of DEI, it’s culture. And those are the same things, but how you brand it matters matters in the market over time. So that’s a long answer to what is the hot content out there.
SH (18:53):
You define three that will never go away. And you as a speaker have to lean into those and be able to answer the question, Hey, is there some leadership content in everything you do? Yes. You have to be able to honestly answer that with a yes. And then frame your content. You know, again, if it was DEI last year, you read the room and say, Hey, the opportunities are lessening for that content. Okay, I’m gonna reframe it as culture. The same with social media. You know, like I said, 10 years ago, overnight we had a thousand experts, but today we haven’t been asked about a social media speaker in probably five years. So you have to know that content has faded. And I will say there are, and you guys probably unpack this a bit with brand builders, there’s certain content that is viewed, no one sits down and defines this, I don’t think in a spreadsheet.
SH (19:45):
Leadership content, you can be a $40,000 leadership speaker. You will never find, well take that back. It would be very difficult to find a $40,000 social media speaker. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (20:57):
I think that’s so, so important. As you were talking, I was thinking about speakers like Eric Wall, right?
SH (21:05):
Amazing. Yeah.
AJV (21:06):
Yeah. He’s an artist and does his artistry, but it’s woven into a more articulate message with content. Mm-Hmm.
SH (21:25):
Yes, he’s amazing. He’s terrific gymnast
AJV (21:27):
Balance and productivity and making it all come together. But yeah, he does acrobats and it’s like, that’s entertainment, but the content is just as good,
SH (21:37):
Right? Yes. Versus if you ask the person when they walked out of that, you know, there’s a thousand people in a conference room in Vegas, Hey, what did Dan Thurman do? They would probably, they would tell you some cool stuff. He can do things that I could never do physically on a stage. But that’s only to capture your attention. It’s kind of the concede or the trick and the thing to teach you something. If you’re leaning on the thing to be the thing, then, then you’re a gymnast. That’s right. If you’re just using that to communicate an idea, Uhhuh
AJV (22:22):
That’s so that’s such the key part of it in that entertainment aspect. It’s like you’re only using it to catch their attention, to deliver the great message. Now, we talked about a co ’cause I thought that’s really fascinating. Something that you said, it’s like categorically speaking, there is a, you know, perceived price value on certain categories of confidence. Mm-Hmm.
SH (22:56):
You go.
AJV (22:56):
That’s true. That’s very true. And so I, I would love to talk about, did I miss any, ’cause we said leadership, we said kind of culture we said teamwork, I threw in sales, but I don’t know, I believe that’s evergreen. Like, everyone’s looking at how do we keep revenues top line high, bottom line high. Are there any other categories that you’re like, yeah, these are evergreen. People are always gonna be asking for these types of speakers?
SH (23:22):
Yeah, I, that’s a great question. I, those, those you just described, and sales is definitely one. And I, I, I would pause for a second to describe the, the types of the buyers that are coming to speakers bureaus most often. Are you, you touched on this earlier, are larger corporations associations. Yeah. There’s a, I think the last number was like 26,000 associations out there. Not, no, not all of them can afford a $40,000 speaker, but they are all required by charter to do a conference. So, right. They’re all doing a conference on some level. So those are the types of clients who are most often working with, with speakers bureaus. So we, we do our, our data points are within a certain type of buyer. There are certainly other buyers out there who, that we don’t, we don’t bump into. But th those that you hit on are, are, are those described really well?
SH (24:14):
And, and sales is corporations will do a sales training or they’ll, you know, they’ll bring in their sales leaders. Associations don’t lean heavily into sales because unless there are a specific type of association, big picture sales would be probably a, a, AB option for them. And there are a lot of options beneath that. But leadership, teamwork, culture, those things that especially in the association world, the only thing these people have in common, the 5,000 people in the Vegas Orlando Ballroom, is that they’re all in one industry together. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (25:11):
What about customer experience?
SH (25:15):
Yes. That is content that we, that we would book from time to time. That is not I wouldn’t say that would be a content where this is a home run every single time. And customer experience, customer service, those would almost be interchangeable. I do, I like customer experience is a better, it’s better terminology today. Customer service was definitely at five to 10 years ago or some amount of time ago, I would say. That does, if that is your only content, you are bumping up against a, a ceiling on some level. Now what that number is, is a guess, right? But you, you, you won’t find many customer experience $50,000 speakers, but you can find quite a few at 15, right? Or 12 five.
AJV (26:00):
So, fascinating. I love this conversation. Last question because I’m like, whatcha gonna think of, what about like marketing or branding? Mm-Hmm.
SH (26:08):
AJV (27:17):
No, I think it’s really good because it’s, again, back is like, I’m just kind of like listing these out, like these, these higher level evergreen topic categories, leadership, culture, teamwork and you can differentiate and position within those high level categories that really at the end of the day, it’s like you’re wanna your fees to grow. It’s like, it’s gonna have to reach things on that more general widespread nature of leadership. Sure. But then, yeah, you can have an amazing career in the sales, branding, marketing, customer experience space, but there’s, there’s gonna be a ceiling at some point. Unless you can figure out how do we weave that into one of these more overarching categories, something
SH (27:56):
Larger
AJV (27:57):
Or culture leadership. But I think that’s really important because sometimes just knowing that helps a lot of like how you position and if you don’t know those nuances of the industry, you’re stuck before you even get started. Because that’s right, it’s nuanced. And I think that’s really important. So I love that in terms of like content, just categorically speaking. And I think that’s really, really important. Now, let’s talk about assets, right? Mm-Hmm.
SH (29:02):
Yeah. Great. Great question. And the s starkest thing you’ll hear me say today, AJ, hopefully is when, when speakers say to me, man, every time I walk off stage, you know, like they tell me I’m the best speaker ever, or I crushed it. I always, hopefully I don’t always say it, but I do think, yeah, congratulations. Like that’s what a professional speaker should do. Like, if you’re a professional speaker, you should never say, yeah, I laid an egg today. I mean, it’s gonna happen, but killing it on stage is the barrier to entry to be a professional speaker. You said that, well, I’m being redundant, but that is, that is the expectation. If you’re being paid $15,000, that that’s a significant amount of money. But also if a company is putting their 500 employees in a room for sitting idle, idle by product productivity standards for an hour, the cost to the company is literally probably another 15.
SH (29:55):
And depending on the size, could be hundreds of thousands of dollars for that hour. So be amazing that we said that be amazing. Assets are the thing that the, I I, I try to frame it this way, instead of just thinking them as marketing, you get to answer questions that you will never get asked because they’re gonna make a decision about you without asking you certain questions. Mm-Hmm.
SH (30:45):
We’ve had three middle aged white guys in a row the last three years. Ah, we don’t wanna do a fourth thing. Like they really do have to nuance and start to compare and contrast. Well, this speaker is 10% funnier. I mean, that they make up, they have to measure things. And the first part of the job is to eliminate options, right? So they’re looking for things to go, okay, well this speaker says they’re the most amazing branding speaker ever, but their video looks like it was shot 10 years ago. Like that, of course. I mean, you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t buy a, you know, if, if your person you’re buying a car from drives a, a horrible car and knows nothing about cars, and you go, I probably don’t know what they’re talking about. So if, if you, if you have an expertise, obviously you gotta crush it in that expertise.
SH (31:27):
But headshot I’ll come back to video. ’cause I video’s the, the silver bullet in, in the speaking world. I’m convinced of that a professional headshot. And, and I always suggest to speakers or lean into, it’s easy if you come out of the corporate world or you’ve had success, you built a company and sold it, you’ve always been branded as a certain thing in that space, in the speaking space, what you’re selling is, I can get on your stage and communicate an idea maybe better than anyone else for 60 minutes or 50 minutes, whatever it is. So you have to change your mindset from I built this company, that’s who I am. It being very biographically focused. Think about the event planner who’s sitting in their cubicle considering four other speakers. They’re, they’re looking for something a little bit different in that biography.
SH (32:20):
It’s not just essentially a, your Wikipedia page, right? It, it really is like, how are you bringing your expertise to my room of 500 people who may or may not want to be there and moving the needle for our company? Still not sure about this. Oh, sorry, Siri just heard me. But the, the, so keynote description, so headshot, no brainer, 300 DPI, great high resolution, spend money on that. If you, if it’s a friend with an iPhone that’s not gonna cut it. I mean, you spend money on it. Selfies, brand build southeast, yeah. Selfie aj, you and call aj. She can help you out. I’m sure they can. Brand builders can assist with that. Oh, it’s so funny. The keynote descriptions are something to, to, to harken back to. We were talking about it earlier, own a certain piece of content. But a keynote description is ultimately your describing what your brand is, and one or two words, colon, you know, here, here’s a short description of how I’m gonna move the needle for your team.
SH (33:22):
And then a, a description of what they are buying. I mean, all they’re buying a product. We’re buying, we’re paying you money to, for 60 minutes to come communicate an idea. This keynote description describes how you are going to, what that thing is and how you’re going to do it. The title describes what it is. The keynote description describes how you’re going to do it. Don’t be afraid to have two or three versions of, it’s almost disingenuous to say, okay, sales colon, whatever that thing is, and this is for, you know, it companies and then the same thing. But for healthcare companies, that doesn’t scare off buyers. They want, if they’re a healthcare company and you, you have a keynote description describing your content in their space, that’s a good thing. They, that tells them, you know, enough about the healthcare industry that you have content, that you’ve taken your content and specifically built it for their audience.
SH (34:23):
Right? That’s a, so don’t be afraid to have two or three keynotes that look similar, but are targeted towards different types of organizations. So keynote descriptions are important. Reviews are are crucial because, and I I jokingly say this, often it, you know, if you, if you have a, I’m gonna use Magic Johnson. If you know Magic Johnson and he says, I AJ’s my buddy, she’s the best speaker I’ve ever met, you’re gonna love her. That’s awesome. At a dinner party. And that would impress me. I’m a huge basketball fan. Event planners in the moment that they are buying are not impressed by big names. Remember, risk mitigation, the most valuable thing from a review point of view in that buying moment is someone like me in my chair took, used you as a speaker and you crushed it and they wrote a review saying, Hey, I brought speaker X in.
SH (35:22):
They crushed it on stage. Yeah, they move an needle. These metrics, whatever that is, so big names are great. I would drop one or two on my website. Way more importantly are is event planner. Stacy from Prudential is very valuable when Steve at Allstate is considering you, right? Because these are lateral competitors and they’re saying, we tried it, it worked. So they’re gonna try it. Also video, we touched on it a little bit. I can’t tell you how often I’ll get a video because I’ve got so many friends and buddies that are in the speaking world. They’ll text me a video, Hey, here’s 60. You know, here’s a a clip. Man, this, this joke I told, or this story I told crushed, right? I watched the video. No, it doesn’t because they are remembering. And I, it breaks my heart. I I hate to say no, it doesn’t.
SH (36:13):
But they are remembering the audience reaction. You know, aj, you’ve been on a ton of stages. You, you have a joke or you have a story that you know always works, right? You remember it. But if, if you don’t have video of the audience reaction, so I, as a viewer sitting at my desk watching a video, if I can’t see the audience react, then you just get whatever you get from me and I’m probably distracted. So audience reaction is one element that speakers very well paid professional speakers forget to include that in their preview videos. Mm-Hmm.
SH (37:05):
What’s the best length of a video? Yeah, probably five to seven minutes. If you’ve got a couple of really killer clips that push it to 10, just know that most event planners are considering, you won’t watch 10 minutes, but they’ll skip through a video. But it needs to punch and it needs to, if you’ve got two or three stories that are your fastballs, include those in there. And I would say one little hack that I always suggest to speakers is, your video is never a finished product. If you know you’re gonna tell that story often on stages Mm-Hmm.
AJV (38:06):
Yeah. So I’ve got a question for you specific to this video thing, which is how much of the video should be you on stages? Because a lot of the videos I see today are more like sizzle commercials and they have mm-Hmm,
SH (38:38):
Right? That, that is a great question because it’s a moment in time question. A few years ago, a couple of speakers realized like, everyone’s videos look the same. And this is generalities, but pretty close. A few years ago it was pre covid, so we’ll call it five years ago, some speakers said everyone’s videos look the same. And they started to do some videos and I can mention names and we’ll talk about ’em offline. I loved it. They kind of reinvented the, the sizzle reel or the preview video world. And it became the videos that we’ve all seen now and been a part of probably helping make, which is you follow them to the stage and they’re standing and they look at the camera and say like, this is gonna be great. And you watch them walk on stage and crush it. That total overnight it elevated the, the, the expectation from the viewer side of the videos because it used to be, okay, I’m probably gonna do some talking head to introduce myself.
SH (39:32):
Here’s three clips of me on CNN and Fox News, like, you know, quick Clips. And then here’s three clips of me speaking. Now we kind of have almost movie production quality videos, right? I I think the market has adjusted to that, where a large number of speakers have that more kind of movie production. So it, it’s like the rubber band thing. I think it will stretch and pull back and event planners, they do, they’re a cynical bunch because we make them a cynical bunch because I always say hyperbole is the, the natural language of our industry. Like everything is the best ever. Every speaker’s the best ever. Like, so they, they could,
AJV (40:10):
Everyone’s an expert. Everyone,
SH (40:12):
Everyone’s an expert.
SH (41:04):
No. but I, I would say if I had $10,000 to invest in my video tomorrow and I was a speaker, I would lean heavily into production. And then do put you, you want to answer the question, why are you an expert? Why should I give you 60 minutes of my people’s time? You wanna answer that in the first few seconds. So if you’re on CNN and they have, they’re holding your book up and it says you’re an expert, definitely include that. But you wanna answer that question in 10, 15 seconds and then get to you on stage speaking and not to dig in to be boring with it. But a couple of basic items are you want more than one camera. You want one more than one scene. So if it’s you wearing the same dress or the same suit in all three clips, the question, you’re, they will, the event planner will never say, have you done this a lot?
SH (41:59):
Right? But you’re, you’re implying to them, I’ve only done it once ’cause all three clips look the same. So that’s why if you’re watching a great speaker’s reel, you’ll notice that they jump around and show themselves sometimes even during the same story. Here’s me on stage at this conference and here’s me on stage. Part of that is just communicating. I do this all the time and I’m amazing at this and here’s a couple of different versions of me doing it. It helps the flow of the video video. So you, you want multiple locations. You want multiple, you know, attire, changes to communicate. This is something I do regularly and I’m great at it.
AJV (42:39):
Hmm. Those are so good. And, you know, to, it’s easy to make long videos. It’s hard to make short ones. And so making sure that’s just a, a key part of that. And I love like just all the s assets that you talk about, like, I think people forget of like how important it is. Like I say this all the time, it’s like, I love your headshot. Who is that
SH (43:05):
It’s you in college,
AJV (43:07):
Well, I be able to recognize you when I go find you online. And I’m like, wait, is this the same person? I don’t know. Did I, did I type the name in wrong?
SH (43:50):
Yep. Great quality, professional speakers. The stuff that we, we’ve touched on multiple times. The two most frequent ways. I get that question a lot. I have a lot of friends who are speakers. Honestly, I have a lot of friends who are speakers that we don’t represent because we aren’t the best home for them. But the two best ways to connect with Premier Speakers Bureau or any speakers bureau at this point is referral from one of their key speakers. We have out of those 2000 events last year, we probably booked about 600, 650 speakers. So a lot of those speakers we booked a couple of times. Mm-Hmm,
SH (44:43):
That moves the needle for me because I know what their litmus test for great is. And so that’s a great way to open a door. The last two speakers that we have, premier has signed exclusively, and we could unpack that another time. Which means all of their business comes to Premier, have been started as referrals from other people that are trusted speakers of ours. So that, that’s a, it’s proven to be the case. The other way is to take business away from a speaker’s bureau. So we, we have that core client base that I told you that, that most often we know like they’re gonna come back to us ’cause we serve them really well. We take great care of them, we answer the phone the first time it rings. We are good at best when we talk to them and they say, Hey, actually, you know, thanks, I’ll talk to you in a month and we’ll do business together, but my CEO saw this person speak and told me to go book them, and I did that that, that happens once.
SH (45:39):
Okay? That’s how life works. And CEOs say, go book a speaker and then they know it’s risky, but the CEO told ’em to do it. When that happens three or four times, that alerts us to that speaker is a, is attractive to the types of clients that we work with, right? So that quite often we will start a conversation with them. And many times over the last 23 years, that has ended up in a very strategic long-term, mutually beneficial relationship. But it started with them proving themselves by the way they proved it was they took business away from us, meaning clients that we value said, yeah, that’s somebody that we’re interested in. Most often, those two things connect up. Yeah. And the speaker we trust says, this person’s great. And we go, yeah, we’ve, we’ve heard that from clients too. At that point, it’s, it’s almost a no-brainer, but that, I wish that the easy answer was press this button and this thing will happen.
SH (46:35):
All of those things are nuanced and they all come down to relationships. Being great on stage is a starting point. Event planners will, being in love with how you do your business, if you’re a great speaker and are pain to work with, you won’t, you won’t make it, you won’t make it. You have to approach your business as Aer with a servant heart. Like I am coming to, to offer something to the people in this room, starting with that poor event planner, Stacy, who’s probably a mom of two kids and has three other jobs and is rolling the dice on this event. And if something goes wrong, she takes all the blame. She’s your first customer, right? Make her life amazing. Take great care of her. You’re gonna be amazing on stage. But if you do that a hundred times, the universe will love you. The market will love you. There’s no easy answers, there’s no easy fixes. It is just hard work, aj you know this, you and Rory did this. It’s hard work. You build a thing over time, and if you do it the right way, you look back in 10, 20 years and say, I’m proud of the things that I built.
AJV (47:41):
Amen. Preach it. I love that. And like, the underlying message that I hope everyone heard is like a part of the path of working with bureaus is that you actually already have to be on stages, right? Yes. Their job is to get you on the first stage or the 10th stage. Their job is to discover you after you’ve already been doing this long enough and good enough that other people are willing to tell other people about you. Which means that it starts with you, it starts with you
SH (48:13):
Perfectly said,
AJV (48:14):
Perfectly said, and you’ve gotta be the one to get on stages. And I, and it’s like back to everything in life. It’s a trusted source, referring someone is how business is still done. Regardless of how many things have gone online and how business has evolved, that has never changed, which is the power of a trusted referral. Mm-Hmm. And this is no different here, Shawn. Perfect. Thank you so much. You’re the best. This is so you and this is gonna be just so rich for everyone who takes the time to listen to it. And for those of you who are listening, if you guys wanna connect with Shawn, it’s Shawn Hanks. You can find him on LinkedIn. But if you wanna learn more about Shawn and his role and everyone else at Premier Speakers, just go to premier speakers.com and again, premier speakers.com. I’ll put all that in the show notes and if you wanna catch the recap episode of this then stay tuned. And if not, we’ll catch you next time on the influential Personal brand. We’ll see you later.
SH (49:17):
Thank you.
Ep 443: Using Speed as a Competitive Advantage | Jay Baer Episode Recap
RV (00:02):
Growing up with very little money. I’ve spent a decent part of my professional career studying money and learning about money. And one of the principles that I’ve heard consistently from different places about how do you make money and who makes a lot of money, is this principle. There’s, there’s a principle about making money that says money loves speed. Money loves speed, money follows speed. And, and I have really found that to be true, right? I mean, people are paying, they’re willing to pay for results faster. That’s what people are, are, are willing to pay for. And you know, this interview with Jay Baer blew my mind as it always does. And I, you know, Jay’s one of my best buddies and mentor and a friend, and like we’ve, we’ve helped him through the years. He’s helped us a ton. And every time this guy writes a book, it’s a paradigm shifting book.
RV (01:06):
It’s one of the things I love about Jay Baer books. And, and you know, he’s written on some different subjects over the years, but it’s like every time it’s like a new big idea every single time. And this I think is brilliant, right? His whole premise is speed as a competitive advantage. Speed as a competitive advantage going, I am not, what if you focus just on being faster? And I think that this is one of the most powerful questions that you can ask for, to make more money and to get more referrals and to break through Sheehan’s Wall and become more well known. It’s to say, how can I help my customers succeed faster? How can I help my customers succeed faster? That is like the whole mission of Brand Builders group that we’re on right now, right? Like when we first started the company, it was sort of like survival mode, getting it off the ground.
RV (02:06):
Then it was sort of like, you know, scaling up our, our operations and infrastructure. Then it was streamlining and, and really clarifying and, and distilling down what it is that we do. And, and you know, we had a one year that was basically like creating all the curriculum. And now we’re, we’re entering this era where all we’re doing everything that we’re focused on is how do we help our clients succeed faster? And I didn’t really think of that as a competitive advantage ’cause we don’t really compete with people. Like, we don’t make strategic decisions based on like, what other people in the market are doing, but just as an advantage, right? Or just, just, just as a, you know, as a, as a differentiator, right? Speed as a differentiator, or speed as a reason for people to choose you. And that the, the, the stat that blew my mind was when Jay said, two
RV (02:58):
Thirds of people say that speed is as important as price, right? So this is from Jay’s book, the Time to Win, which is obviously what we were talking about. Get it, it’s a great little book. I mean, it’s super quick read. And two thirds of people say that speed is as important as price. Like we live in this era. You know, this is where, what he said, where people interpret speed as caring and responsiveness as respect. That’s so good. And that that is so true. Like that aj you know, there’s the, there’s the five love languages, whatever it is, like gifts of the heart and acts of service and all that. AJ’s love language is responsiveness.
RV (03:54):
What’s the delay? When’s it gonna be finished? What, you know, what’s the deadline? What do you need? Who’s the bottleneck? Da dah, dah, dah, dah. Like, what’s the, what’s the plan? And when she sends a message, it’s like she wants an answer immediately. And, you know, for, for A-C-E-O-I think she’s, she’s insanely responsive. Like most CEOs are not all that responsive. You know, they’re pulled in all these directions, but she just values it so much. And she interprets responsiveness as respect. If you’re, if you don’t respond to her quickly, it’s a sign of disrespect. And I, I’m, I’m starting to see this, right? This whole conversation with Jay opened up my eyes because I go, this is me. I care more about, as a consumer, I care more about speed than price. I go, yeah, I’m, I’m willing to pay more, to move faster.
RV (04:43):
And, and that’s part of what, you know, the era we’re in at Brand Builders Group is like, we’ve always, you know, we’ve been a, we are a strategy firm. Like at our core, we’re a strategy firm. We’re not an agency. But we, we are creating more tools and templates to help clients succeed faster and to always create better strategies, more customized strategies to help them access what they need so that they can get results faster and faster and faster to get things deployed. And here’s a, here’s another line that I love from Jay. When he said this, he said, it’s okay to be a little bit wrong if you’re a lot, a bit fast, it’s okay to be a little bit wrong if you’re a lot, a bit fast. And, and many times, you know, you think of like search engine optimization, like demand driven marketing.
RV (05:31):
When people are searching a term, it’s like they want something, they want it. Now, a huge part of whether or not you make that sale is like, who can get to that person first? Who can return their phone call first? And so I just, I thought this was really, really cool. One of the tactical things that I just wanted to come back and underscore and highlight to the, you know, for everybody is, is the idea of a fast pass, right? The idea of a fast pass is that people will pay to be able to skip the line to people will pay, people will pay, people will always pay to be able to go to the front of the queue, right? I mean, this is like the VIP line. This is any anything VIP or, or you know, Disney has the, the fast pass or all the amusement parks, right?
RV (06:20):
If, if you go to Universal Studios or whatever. And that’s one of the things that we have started offering, right? Is, is we have created opportunities for people to coach with me directly. And it’s, it’s a higher investment because I can help people get to results faster. Just ’cause I got the most experience doing this personally and the most experienced coaching other people to do it, right? So historically, I’ve, I’ve never been available like formally to do private coaching with our clients, right? I, I mean, I, and, and I coach everybody. I’m at, I’m at our events and I do two group coaching calls a month. So like, we have different tiers in our membership, right? And so there’s, depending on what tier you’re in you know, you get to come to our live events. Well, we do, I think we’re doing 32 live events next year.
RV (07:13):
And so four of ’em that are two days, I’m, I’m at and AJ’s at personally, those are, so in-person event not all of our events are in person. And then twice a month for all of our members, I lead group coaching where people can ask me questions and, you know, we do like rapid fire, but doing private one-on-one coaching is, is not something that historically that we have offered until recently. We, we have created something called Brand mastery, which is when people can work with me directly in a, in a very small group, right? It’s still a small, a small group, but they can work with me directly as their strategist. And there’s a higher level of investment. And that’s ’cause we go really fast, right? And we have an, we have an annual pass of that where people are able to spend up to 10 days with me a year and we can crank.
RV (08:01):
I mean, if I get 10 days in a room with someone, I can, we typically, like we can transform their personal brand quickly. So that’s an example of a fast pass. We’re also working on a for years we’ve been developing something that we’re just, just now rolling out called Instant Automation Toolkit. Instant Automation Toolkit is something that’s only available for brand builders members, right? So you have to be one of our strategy clients. ’cause You have to have the education, you have to understand how it all works together. You have to know what a brand positioning statement and, and the 15 Ps and the content diamond and webinar funnels. And like you, you know how all of these, the, the, the modular content method, like how it all fits together. But then we, we took all of our six core campaigns for our, our web, our, our high converting webinar funnels, selling high dollar offers, booking keynotes, doing book launches, building websites, the six most important core campaigns.
RV (08:57):
And we templatized all of them. And now we make it available to members. They can either buy ’em and own ’em out outright, or they can just rent them for like a much lower fee so that we can get them live quickly. That’s why instant automation toolkit is everything about going, okay, now you’ve learned the strategy. The next era of Brand Builders group is going, how can we help you execute faster and, and cheaper? Because if you have to go source and hire all these people, whether they’re employees or vendors, it’s slow, it’s painstaking, it’s expensive, and you’re likely to make mistakes that cost you money because you don’t really know how to coach them. Well, instant automation toolkit is going, what if we just give you ours? And so we’ve been developing this for years and it’s, it’s amazing. We’re, we’re just about to roll it out.
RV (09:43):
We just, we’ve already rolled out our copywriting templates. So half of it is copywriting templates. The other half is the actual technology where we build the, we build the funnels and build the websites for you using our, using our actual one. So we take our exact funnels and then we swap out our stuff, put your stuff in there. So the copywriting templates have been available and it’s like we’ve got people cranking out entire pipelines in a few hours or a few days. Like it’s, it’s amazing. And going, yeah, people will pay for that because there’s, there’s value to that. ’cause, ’cause Money loves speed. You know, the other thing is, is when you think about money in relation to time, time multiplies money, right? Compounding interest. If I, if I take money and I invest it today, you know, it, it money invested over time is it grows and grows and grows.
RV (10:34):
So the earlier I can, the earlier I can have access to money, the earlier I have access to cashflow, the longer amount of time I get to benefit from interest, right? From compounding interest. So it, there’s value to having money today versus having money in the future. This is another thing that we do. We, we started in Brand Builders group about a year and a half ago we rolled out a pay in full feature. And so what happens is, you know, we have our, our programs are annual memberships, and we’ve got, you know, now, now counting brand mastery, we’ve got three different levels of, of membership. Well, there’s a, there’s a discount for paying in full where we give, we give people two months free if they pay in full today, because even though it costs us money, right? We lose money on that.
RV (11:26):
And we still have all the costs of delivering those last two months of service. But there’s value to having all the cash in hand now because we can deploy, we can reinvest that cash into growing the business versus having to wait for it and not seeing it for 10 months. There’s also value in the certainty of collecting it, right? And so we, we share in that with our customers to go, Hey, if you’re willing to, if you’re willing to commit for 12 months and pay us now and go, we’re in this together, we’ll give you a discount. And so that’s the first time we’ve, we, we don’t, other than that we don’t discount, we never discount, we don’t change our prices. You know, people can buy a lower thing and get a lesser price, but we don’t sell the same thing to two people for lesser prices.
RV (12:07):
We, we just, we don’t discount. So, but, but we have offered this fast pass and it’s been massive. C clients love it. They also get to accelerate the deduction on their taxes, right? So like right now, as an example or, or when you get to the end of the year or the end of a fiscal year, you know, they, they can pay us for a year in full and they can accelerate that deduction on like this year’s taxes. So we see a lot of that happen at the, at the end of the people’s calendar year, the end of their fiscal year. So think about how can you incorporate a fast pass concept into your business model? Because this really, I think this really, really is true. My third big idea or takeaway from Jay in this interview was when he said, give your customers a clue of what to expect as it relates to time, absence of any guidance.
RV (13:01):
They’ll expect it instantly. And I thought, wow, that, that, that really is powerful. And so make a time promise the way he said it was, make a time, pro promise, but make one that you can overdeliver on. And I think that’s really key, right? It’s, it’s, it’s not, you know, if you don’t tell me when I’m gonna get it, my brain defaults to, oh, I want it tomorrow, right? Even if it’s like building a website, right? You go, okay, well I’m hiring you to build me a website. Like why can’t I have it tomorrow? Like, why can’t I have it next week? Like, what’s the big deal? Right? Part of the reason, and and I think that’s a natural default that people have because part of the reason why they’re hiring someone else is they don’t have the wherewithal to do it themselves. So they often aren’t knowledgeable about all of the details and the steps and the processes and the things that go into doing something, and that’s why they’re hiring someone in the first place.
RV (13:51):
So we tend to, we tend to underestimate how long it takes other people to do things. We tend to underestimate how long it takes other people to do things. And that’s because we don’t know how to do them. And so we’re not aware of all of the steps, and absent that, absent that awareness, we don’t have the ability to calculate the time or really appreciate even sometimes everything that they’re doing. So what happens is, if someone communicates though and they say, oh, no problem, we’ll have your, we’ll have your website done in two months. Well, I don’t love that, but it’s better than them not saying anything. And like, after the end of month one, I’m going, well, I was thinking this would take a week. Like, why is it taking four weeks? Like, what, what’s the deal here? And now I’m annoyed. Versus if you say, oh, it’s gonna take three months and you actually deliver it in eight to 10 weeks.
RV (14:44):
Now I’m ecstatic. ’cause I go, oh, you know, while I would love for it to be done tomorrow, you set the expectation for me that it wasn’t gonna be done for three months. And then you, and then you over-delivered and you beat that. So now I’m ecstatic. So this is a really important conceptual point to understand that it’s not really how long something takes that annoys people or makes them happy, it’s how long it takes in proportion to their expectation of how long they thought it would take, right? So if it takes six months, that’s neither long or short. It’s only relative. So this is very similar to how we teach we teach our members when they’re selling high dollar offers, there’s no such thing, there’s no such thing as expensive or inexpensive. There’s only such a thing as relative, right? So if somebody’s gonna pay me a hundred thousand dollars to spend two days with me, you go, well, that feels expensive.
RV (15:44):
And it’s not nothing. But I go, well, yeah, but if I can help someone land a half a million dollar book advance, if I can help someone become a New York Times bestseller, if I can help them get speaking engagements where they’re gonna, they’re gonna do, you know, half a million to a million dollars a year in speaking fees for the rest of their career. If I can help them save a hundred thousand dollars on their taxes every year for the rest of their life, if I can teach them, you know, how to build a sales team that will grow millions of dollars. Like, it’s, it’s not, it’s not much relative to that. So, so it’s always relative, right? Well, this is the same thing. Time is never really long or short. It’s always relative. And, and in this case, it’s the, for your customers, it’s relative to their expectation of how long it was gonna take, right?
RV (16:27):
So give them a time promise and, and make it one that you can overdeliver on. Because if you tell me it’s gonna take four months and it takes six months, now I’m upset. But if you tell me it’s gonna take eight months or 10 months or a year, and you’re done in six months, man, now, now I’m ecstatic. It still took six months, it took the same amount of time, right? Like, it, it, it takes whatever time it takes to do something. So of course, hopefully you can operate more efficiently. But, but I think what you wanna do is you wanna, what people don’t allow for the, and part of the reason why we underestimate how long everything takes is because what people never allow for, they never account for is they never account for unplanned expenses of time or money. They ne they never account for emergencies.
RV (17:15):
They never account for extraordinary items, unforeseen thing, unforeseen delays. I, I remember early in my career as an entrepreneur, I had a, a financial mentor, you know, and I, and and I, we were looking at financial statements and I was saying, well, gosh, you know, I feel like we’re being punished because there’s this one unusual item that, you know, we didn’t have in the budget. And I go, well, how is that our fault? Like, none of us saw it coming. It’s not like it was poor management of the company. And and his response to me was, he says, well, you have to create a budget that always has margin in it for things like that. Because while it’s unexpected, you can always expect the unexpected. You can always plan for the unplanned. You can always assume that something is gonna happen that you weren’t assuming was gonna happen.
RV (18:06):
And that is a radical mind shift as it relates to your personal finances, right? And not spending every dollar you have, but saving to go, I can’t spend every dollar because what happens when my, I get a flat tire or when the, you know, the water heater breaks or, or, you know, I have to take a sudden flight somewhere that I wasn’t planning on. You know, like you have to be able to, to do that. You wanna, you wanna have margin, margin, you wanna have margin in your planning margin, in your budgeting, budgeting of money and budgeting of time. And so understanding all of this and, and realizing that time is, I mean, in this case, according to Jay’s research, right, this is empirically validated. Now, two thirds of people say that speed is as important as price. And I’m in that two thirds, right?
RV (18:54):
I go, man, if one person you know is gonna charge me 10% more, but they can get it to me, you know, 30% faster, I’m in every time, every time. So minding people’s time, treating it as sacred you know, making a time promise overdelivering on it, giving them an opportunity for a fast pass to pay extra to, to, to move things faster. And, and just realizing that, that people interpret this is right from Jay speed as caring and responsiveness, as respect. That is from a man, Jay Bearer, his new book the Time to Win. Go by the book, y’all. It’s not even a full-size book. It’s a little tiny book. Like you could, you can read it in an hour. And it is life changing, paradigm altering, you know this idea of using speed as a competitive advantage. So thanks for tuning in.
RV (19:53):
Hopefully listening to this podcast is helping you accelerate on your journey. And I hope we get a chance to move you at some point from being you know, a, a free consumer of our content to working with us and watching how we can accelerate your dream, coming true faster and faster, faster, to help you drive more leads to your business, launch a new revenue stream, you know, write books, be a speaker, grow your audience, grow your impact. Whatever your dream is for building your personal brand, hopefully we get a chance to partner with you to make that dream come true faster. That’s a big part of our wish. Until next time, we will you know, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll sign off for now. Have a great one. We’ll catch you here. Next episode, influential Personal Brand podcast. Share this with someone who needs it. See you then.
Ep 442: The Time to Win with Jay Baer
RV (00:02):
Well, I am excited and honored to introduce you once again to one of my very best friends, one of my favorite mentors someone who I legitimately think is one of the smartest people on the planet. We’ve had him on the podcast before. His name is Jay Baer, Utruly one of my best friends in real life. And I’m so grateful for this man. And he has a new book out. And every time Jay writes a new book, it completely like changes the way I think about whatever the topic is. And we’re gonna talk about speed as a competitive advantage today. Uif you’re just meeting Jay, he is a New York Times bestselling author of seven books. He is a hall of fame speaker. He has worked with over 700 different brands. He speaks on some of the biggest stages in the world.
RV (00:48):
He’s worked for companies like Nike and Oracle and I b m and United Nations. And another thing we’ll probably talk about, which we’ve never talked about on this show before with Jay, but something fun happening is he has blown up on TikTok and Instagram, this personal brand. He is now the second, the world’s second largest influencer on tequila, which is something he does in his personal life. And it has become a huge explosive personal brand. So that’s kind of like a, a side project we’re gonna, we’re gonna talk about, but mostly we’re gonna be talking about his new book. It’s called The Time to Win. Without further ado, my brother, welcome back.
JB (01:33):
Thank you very much. Great to be with you, my friend. I gotta tell you, I’ve been a business strategist and author and speaker for like 30 years, and there’s been some degree of, of notoriety as a result of my behaviors and activities in that category. But now that I have a tequila education channel, I get recognized in hotels and airports, literally every week,
RV (02:22):
Yeah. So hold on a second there, buddy. So you cut out, I think I cut out. So just you were saying, I get recognized in airports every week.
JB (02:32):
Yeah. Every week for, for, and it’s always like, oh, you’re Tequila J Bear. I watch all of your videos. Like, nobody caress that I’ve written books. Nobody cares that I’ve ever given a presentation, but they are locked and loaded on the personal brand of tequila educators. So I think there’s a lesson there for, for you and your audience,
RV (02:51):
Man. Well, I do, I do. I I do want to hear about that because I, I, I, I’m curious, and it’s part of that is I have a side project, I’ve got like a personal side project going on right now. Yeah. That’s very similar.
JB (03:01):
I know. It’s exciting.
RV (03:02):
It has nothing to do with like our business, but it’s like, I have to do this. Yeah. But let’s talk about the time to win.
JB (03:10):
Yeah.
RV (03:11):
‘Cause this was something that I was like, it’s another one of those things where when you started talking about it, I was like, oh my gosh, how have I missed this? And you just blew it up. Like, oh, this is such a big idea, such a simple idea. So, so tell us, what’s the premise here? What’s going on? Yeah. And then the research that started it,
JB (03:28):
My, my observation coming outta the pandemic Rory, was that it changed the way we think about time and, and reshuffled how important it is in our lives. Time’s always been important, of course, but the pandemic made us remember a simple truth, an important truth, an often overlooked truth, which is that all of us only have and will ever only have 1,440 minutes a day. Doesn’t matter who you are, where you are, what you are, you get 1,440. You can’t make more. You can’t buy more. I’ll tell you this, I think now that I’ve been studying this for a while, I, I think time is the only resource that we actually share equally on this planet. The only one.
JB (04:13):
And a lot of the trends that we talk about now, things like the great resignation or people wanting to work from home don’t wanna come back from the office because they don’t wanna commute, or people spending more time with their kids or, or bleisure travel, which is the combination of business and leisure travel. That’s when you bring your kids to the conference and double dip the trip. Even baseball games are 25 minutes a night shorter now, right? Because they got a pitch clock. Like, all of these trends are the same trend, which is that we care about our time and how we spend it more than ever. So that was the, the premise. But as always, as you mentioned, when I, when I write a book, I first validate it with really deep research. ’cause I’m not gonna go on stages and pages and tell people to change their business unless I’ve got it proven other than just Jay says to do this. So it turns out that in the research we found that two thirds of people say that speed is now as important as price.
RV (05:09):
Wow. But
JB (05:10):
There’s not very many businesses that behave as if that were the case. And you should.
RV (05:16):
Yeah. I mean, that makes, I mean, you know, when you shared that with me, it was like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. As a consumer, I go, I, I just want it fast. Like, I don’t, you know, I think about the hotel thing. It’s like, I don’t wanna tell you my life story. I just want my key and get to the room. And like, I just wanna be like, it’s a long day of travel. It’s not that I wanna be rude, but it’s just like, I just want as fast as possible to get from the car into my hotel room to just chill out. Right? And then I go, but as a, as a business, how much are we really thinking about doing things shorter? We’re trying to go, maybe we make it better, better. Maybe we can charge more money, but not going, how do we do this faster?
JB (06:02):
That’s the mystery. That’s why this book, the Time to Win exists. What I tell people is you’ve gotta elevate speed and responsiveness on the priority list in your business because your customers already have.
RV (06:19):
Hmm. Like
JB (06:19):
Most businesses think they’re fast enough, but then when they look at the world through their own eyes as a consumer, they realize that they’re not fast enough. Partially because speed expectations never go backwards. Right? What was, what was fast five years ago is very slow today. And that will always continue. And I’ve been doing this a long time, as you know, I’ve never, in my whole life, under any circumstances whatsoever, heard a customer say, Hey, you know what? Next time it’d be cool if you guys just did that more slowly.
RV (07:03):
Yeah. And
JB (07:03):
I got, and the key, the key thing to this real quick, is that the reason why this book is so important now is that everything contained in this book is going to happen three years from now. We’re gonna have to delete this episode because it will be pointless. Everything we talk about will have been done by every business because your customers will simply require it of you. But this is your opportunity. This is why the book is called The Time to Win. This is your time to use responsiveness as a competitive advantage before other people in your category start to do it. You’ve got, in my estimation, a 24 to 30 month headstart where if you lean into speed, now you can eat your competitor’s lunch until they realize what’s going on and are forced to catch up.
RV (07:53):
Yeah. And I just on this, on this note of not priorit, prioritizing speed as a competitive, like not thinking of speed as a, as like a value to the customer. We had Amy Porterfield on, on this show a while back. You, she’s one of our clients and she’s sort of like the queen of courses, right? I know. You know, Amy and I, I asked her, I said, I said, you know, what’s the right price to charge for a course? And I said, I said, basically like, if, you know, if I have six modules or 10 modules, like how many modules do I have to have in there in order to charge $2,000? And she said, the price has nothing to do with how many modules are in there. She said, everyone thinks that having more modules makes it more expensive. She said, it’s the opposite. If you can deliver the result to the customer with less time and less modules, it’s more valuable to be able to get your customer from point A to point B. And I was just like, I literally have been thinking about this backwards in the pricing, you know, game. And then, and then you’re going, oh, you need to do this for every part of the business.
JB (09:08):
It, you go back to the 16 hundreds blaze, Pascal, a famous writer from, you know, those days said, I, I would’ve
JB (10:04):
And here’s when I can come give you an estimate. And here’s when I can come do the job. Second painter got back to me in two days. Third painter got back to me in 11 days. At which point I’d already painted the house
RV (10:50):
Dude, whoa. That this, not just in your business life. This is one of the central marriage issues between me and aj. Responsiveness is her love language. And her, one of her frustrations is she’s like, you take forever to respond to my work emails ’cause we work together. But she’s like, you are so slow to respond to like, project deadlines and that stuff. And it’s like, she, she treats it as like, I’m disrespecting her. And I’m like, I’m busy. And she’s like, I don’t care. It’s, it is disrespecting. Like that is absolutely true. Responsiveness is, is a form of respect. Well, so, so you have this, you, so the time to win, which is, that’s the, the url, right? The time to win.com is where you’ll go to get the book. And y’all, just fyi, this book, Amazon, this book is a small book. You can read the entire book in an hour, like the entire book in an hour. It’s also, which
JB (11:53):
Is obviously intentional because I sat down to write a book and I’ve written six full length books in the past. And I started to work on this. And I’m like, wait, I, I cannot ask people to spend five or six hours reading a book about speed and just like, just like did. I’m like, wait a second. This is the exact opposite of the advice in the book. So it’s like, alright. And look, the reality is, and I, I’m not ashamed to admit it, the reality is most people don’t read business books. They skimm them,
RV (12:22):
Right? Because
JB (12:23):
Most business books say a thing, then they say that thing six different ways. And I’m like, you know what? I’m just gonna cut out the middleman here. No, no fat only meet all the key pieces that you need to implement. It’s a six piece framework for, for winning with responsiveness. And that’s all that’s in the book. There’s, you know, and boom, in and out. And people love it.
RV (12:43):
Yeah. And so, and so speed, like, okay, so, so now when you go, let’s apply, apply speed to business
JB (12:50):
Mm-Hmm.
RV (12:50):
You know, like the example that I used that construct is deliver the result for the client in less time. And we, we are super focused about on this right now. Yeah. Of now, now we’re going, we’re embracing this, right? And going, how do we get our client the result faster? How do we teach them the information in less time? How do we give them tools to help them implement, you know, like cheaper, faster. So there’s that construct of like con condensing the time for them to have the experience. But then it’s almost like there’s another half of this, which is responsiveness. So yeah. Which side is it? Is it both of those things? Or is it more one side than the other? Like
JB (13:35):
It’s both. We actually tested that in the research. So we asked people, and I, and I will say, this is very comprehensive research. This isn’t, Jay did a SurveyMonkey. This is many, many, many, many, many tens of thousands of dollars university level research. And we found when we asked people, okay, where is responsiveness most important to you? Early stages when you’re just trying to get information. Late stages. If you need help in the middle where somebody’s actually delivering whatever it is they’re delivering out, always
RV (14:47):
Well,
JB (14:47):
How can that be? Well, remember if we interpret responsiveness as respect, at some point, every customer has to revalidate the buy. It could be a week later, it could be a month later, it could be a year later, it could be a decade later. But at some point in every customer and client relationship, they’ve gotta say, do I wanna sign on again? And so, yes, it’s important to be quick at the beginning of the relationship, but it’s also important to be quick throughout the totality of the relationship, because that’s going to ultimately impact whether or not they rebuy, which has of course, huge implications for your conversion rate, your churn rate, your lifetime customer value probably,
RV (15:28):
And
JB (15:28):
Everything else
RV (15:29):
That builds great
JB (15:30):
Business. All of it. Yeah.
RV (15:31):
All the things. So I wanna ask you about ai, ’cause I haven’t asked you about, about, about, mm-hmm. This, right? So the part that’s scary about this to me is to go absent ai, this is ha I think this is happening anyway, right? Absent, we’re just going like, I need an answer. I need it yesterday. I need it immediately. I want my food immediately. I want, you know, my show immediately. I want to be on the airplane immediately. I wanna be in my hotel room immediately. Like it’s, everything is speeding up. The part that freaks me out is you go, you add AI into this conversation. And now it’s like, dude, it’s just gotta be an exponential multiplier of this. Yep. Entitled, I need it immediately thing. Yeah,
JB (16:20):
Yeah, yeah. Probably. Yeah. And look, I, I’m not suggesting that this is a net societal positive that that’s not my job in the world. My job is to tell you how to beat your competition. And that’s contained in the book. Now, whether
RV (17:01):
Right? So
JB (17:02):
I think you were there one time when our, our mutual friend, Jason Dorsey was talking about Lemonade, which I use as an example. Now in the stage presentation of this material, lemonade is an insurance company. They primarily work in rental insurance, but others as well. They’re the number one rated rental insurance company in the country. Highest average revenue per employee as well. I mean, every success metric there at the top of the table. Here’s how it works. They were built for speed from the beginning. This guy, Paul has like a $979 Canada Goose, like Parka, super nice jacket, lives in Manhattan, goes to a bar in Manhattan. Someone steals the jacket. Oh man, my jacket got stolen. I gotta get a insurance claim. So he goes on the Lemonade app on his phone, presses, opens the app, presses file a claim, makes a 25 second video into his phone.
JB (17:56):
Hey, it’s Paul, I’ve had this Canada Goose jacket. It was $979 that got stolen at the bar. Submit after he hits, submit Lemonade, runs a bunch of fraud algorithms. Not only on the, on the video itself, but on Paul, his case history, the location, his age, a bunch of other stuff. They already have access to his bank account ’cause he did it. When he set it up, they decide to approve the claim. They wire $929 into his account because he is a $250 deductible. All of that happens, right? Assess the claim, approve the claim, wire him the cash. All of that happens in three seconds.
RV (18:36):
Holy smack.
JB (18:38):
Three seconds. So if you’re Allstate,
RV (18:42):
Yeah. Now
JB (18:43):
What? Now what?
RV (18:46):
I mean you don’t even, you’re trying to set an appointment to talk to the person and then the paperwork, and then you file the thing and take all the pictures and you fill out a police report. I mean
JB (18:57):
Yep. So now obviously, does Lemonade have a higher ratio of fraud than the alternative where like, you know, sitting down with somebody Of course. But one of the lessons in this book that I think is really applicable, it’s okay to be a little bit wrong if you’re a lot, a bit fast.
RV (19:17):
Ooh, that’s good. Yeah, it reminds me of like John De Julius says, you know, don’t punish 98% of your customers for what the 2% take advantage of.
JB (19:31):
Yeah. It’s an edge case.
RV (19:33):
Yeah. That’s so good about being a lot of, bit a, a lot, a bit fast. Well, so
JB (19:42):
Do you think, here’s something I wanna mention if I can. It’s a really important technique, especially for this audience that I wanna make sure we get to, is one of the key recommendations in this book. And it’s to offer a fast pass. So the idea of offering a fast pass is that in the research we found that one in four customers will pay as much as 50% more to not wait. You should give them that opportunity. Now, there are increasingly FastPasses all around us ’cause people are figuring out how powerful this technique is. TSA pre is a fast pass. You pay more. Wait list clear is a fast pass. Disney has one now, I think it’s called Genie Plus, we pay more. You don’t have to wait in line to go on Space Mountain or whatever,
RV (20:27):
Right?
JB (20:29):
You should do that in your business. Everybody should do it in their business. So when people come to me and say, will you review my new tequila? And I say, well sure, but we’ve got a 10 week waiting list. Or you can pay us this amount and you can be the next tequila we rate. All you’re doing is offering them a fast pass. Every sort of, every business in the world has a sequence, has an onboarding, has a customer list. You just charge them more to jump the line. Now, I was at an event and a guy came up to me and said, well Jay, what do I do about the person who was the next customer I was gonna help? And now they get bumped back one, aren’t they gonna be mad? Here’s how you do it. You say to the customer, who doesn’t wanna wait? Who wants to be the next, okay, it’s gonna cost you 20% more to be next. Then you talk to the person who was next and you say, I’m really sorry, something came up. We gotta bump you back. It’s gonna be an extra week. Now you’re second, but we’re gonna give you a 5% discount. ’cause We feel bad about it. You just kept 15% for doing nothing other than shuffling your customer sequence.
RV (21:31):
Mm-Hmm.
JB (21:33):
It’s free money.
RV (21:35):
Yeah. I mean, I’m that guy. I mean, I’m that guy. Like, it’s like I, I will pay. I do not wanna wait in long. You’re
JB (21:41):
Literally that guy. I
RV (21:42):
Will not, I will pay so much more to not wait in line. It’s the most frustrating thing that I experience is waiting. Like if my computer is loading, my internet is down, loading a webpage, you know, waiting in line at the grocery store, like waiting in line is probably the most frustrating thing in my life where I get angry. Like I am losing time. So, and I think probably that’s true. Like people who, the people who have, it’s
JB (22:11):
Not true for everybody. It’s not
RV (22:13):
True for everybody. It’s not true for everybody.
JB (22:14):
But for those who it is true for it’s manifestly true for like you,
RV (22:18):
And they will pay more money for it.
JB (22:20):
Absolutely.
RV (22:21):
They’ll pay more money. Won’t
JB (22:22):
Even bat an eye
RV (22:23):
Won’t even bad an eye. Yeah. No way. And it’s like, I don’t care if
JB (22:26):
You give ’em the choice,
RV (22:27):
The same experience as someone else, but I can just not have to, to have the weight. That’s so good, Jay. Like, that’s so simple. You know,
JB (22:34):
You’ll make so much money for, for free. Like, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a consultant, an author, a chiropractor, you’d run a preschool, you’ve got a landscape business, you’re doing plastic surgery, it does not matter.
RV (22:47):
Oh yeah, the country club,
JB (22:48):
What business you’re in club or getting into, it doesn’t matter.
RV (22:50):
Private, the private school, oh my gosh, like this is I’m trying to think about how we would apply this to brand builders group. We need to have a conversation about what, what can do, what we would, what we would do. So what else should I be asking you about this that I haven’t asked you about as it relates to speed as a competitive advantage?
JB (23:10):
The, I’ll tell you what the first piece that you’ve gotta do on this. Okay. lemme two, two quick things. One, I don’t want people to think that the takeaway here is Jay says, be as fast as possible all the time. That’s not true. And it’s also too simple. Yes, you should probably be faster than you are much of the time because your customers will reward you for it. If you give your customers time, they will give you money. If you cost your customers time, it will cost you money. So yes, you should probably be faster than you are much of the time. But there are scenarios when you can be too fast. When you are too fast, it decays trust. So if somebody came to you, Rory, and said, Hey I’ve got a book I’m writing, can you help me with a bestseller campaign? And you said, sure. Can you start in an hour? That would probably feel less trustworthy because if you’re that available,
RV (24:12):
Right?
JB (24:13):
Like, how could, could you be? Right? So what you want in your business is not necessarily to just be as fast as you can. What you want in every customer interaction is to adhere to the right now, the right now, the right now is the perfect amount of elapsed time. It’s not too fast and it’s not too slow. It’s the Goldilocks zone for speed. And you’ve gotta figure out what that is in your own business, right? There’s no standard for that. But for every business there is a, right now it’s the perfect amount of time. So the first assignment that you’ve gotta do as a business leader is to figure out what the right now is in your business.
RV (24:57):
Well, and the subtitle of your book, okay, so the book’s called The Time to Win. The subtitle is How to Exceed Customer’s Need for Speed. And the way that I go is part of what we know about the right now is it is at least a little bit faster than whatever their expectation is. That’s right. If, if we are, if we’re faster than their expectation than we’re winning, and then probably you know, the, then, then, then, then we’re ahead. So we probably need to look at what’s their expectation. But, but similar to how I remember like one the things
JB (25:32):
And how to set that expectation too. Like how to, how to actually manage that expectation. It’s one of the thing that, that a lot of businesses are terrible at this, they’re really bad at, at giving customers any sort of cue or clue as to what to expect. And one thing I’ve learned since I started down this, this research path is absent of any guidance, customers will expect everything to happen instantly.
RV (25:59):
Yeah. So
JB (25:59):
You’ve gotta tell them the thing that you want or need is going to take this long. And crucially, especially for younger consumers, here’s why it takes that long.
RV (26:14):
Uhhuh
JB (26:15):
You’ve gotta connect the dots for them. Because if you don’t, they will always think it should be faster. We learned this in the first day in business that you should always under promise and
RV (26:31):
Overdeliver,
JB (26:32):
Overdeliver. But you can’t do that if people don’t know what the promise is. So if you know it’s gonna take 10, 10 days, you always tell them it’s 12 days always. Because then you are slightly faster than they expect. And that’s the, right now
RV (26:53):
Uhhuh
JB (28:02):
Yeah. I mean, you think about the world we live in, technology and big enterprise companies have changed everybody’s perspective on what is quote unquote fast. Like if Uber and Lyft didn’t exist, we would have a totally different perspective on transportation. But it does exist. And that experience of being able to press a button and a car shows up naturally leaches into your expectations for other things that you need in your life. And, and that’s just the way it is, right? So yeah. Does the fact that Amazon can bring something next day put a lot of pressure on a mom and pop business who doesn’t have that kind of warehouse? Heck yeah, it does. Freaking does. But but then, but them’s the breaks, like what, you know, sorry, that genie’s not going back in the bottle, right? Mm-Hmm. You know, well
RV (28:53):
That’s why I think about the AI thing, right? You know, it’s like in and bb in brand builders group. We don’t have like a queue, right? People can come, but where our, where our delay is, is helping our customers implement faster, right? Getting their funnels built, getting their website built, getting, and, and, and that’s where it’s like AI is going to compress that even more. Like you’re saying is just AI applied to every, you know, rising customer expec expectation, growing, you know, speeding up technology, adding in ai like you’re saying three years from now, five years from now, this is, this game is over. Like it all, we’re all gonna have to be instant. Yeah. And
JB (29:29):
That’s why you’ve got this chance now, right? If you lean into it sooner. If you don’t wait for your customers to pull you kicking and screaming and you lead them, you’ve got two, three years where you can dominate your category. You’ve just gotta get started.
RV (29:44):
I think this is so brilliant. This is like, you, you, you were, you were so ahead of the curve on content marketing, right? And it’s like, if I would’ve done then what you were saying about that, I would’ve caught that wave. We’d miss that wave. But like nobody else is talking about this. I mean, it’s like we talk about speed, but no one is going speed as a competitive advantage until you said that. And the moment you said it, I was like, that is so freaking brilliant. So the time to win.com is where to go to get the book
JB (30:13):
Yeah. Or Amazon or anywhere else that you get books at the time to win.com. There’s also the full research paper that powers the book. It’s like 30 pages and you can have, don’t we don’t even ask for email address, you can just have it. I just want you to have it. Cool.
RV (30:26):
That’s awesome. So that we can go download the research there. So we’ll put a link to the time to wind.com. Okay. I don’t wanna let you go without talking about Tequila J ’cause this is such a phenomenon. You spent 30 years of your life becoming one of the most respected consultants. You know, you after that you’ve amassed, I don’t know, a whopping 10,000 or followers or something on Instagram or something. And then you start Tequila Jay, this side project, give us a sense of the magnitude that this total, like my personal passion, hobby, give, give me a sense of the magnitude of how long you spent on it and what, what your reach has come with your, it’s truly like your personal, personal brand.
JB (31:10):
Well, first I, I’ll acknowledge that none of this would’ve happened without you, you know, your premise that, that your ideal audience is the person that you used to be
RV (31:19):
Is
JB (31:20):
The north star for my work in the tequila space. Because when I started this project which is just 18 months ago, there were a number of people creating content for advanced tequila fans, right? So there’s nerds talking to nerds, and I like that content. ’cause I’ve been a tequila fan for a long time. I like the kind of deep dive nerdy content, but I realized that there’s just not that many people in that category. There’s a lot more people who are just getting into tequila or have a margarita here and now, or have a Paloma here, and now that’s the much larger addressable audience. And so I always try and keep in mind what it was like to be a person who didn’t know much at all about tequila. And I was that person. It was a while ago, but, but I was that person. And so the content that we create is very intentionally pegged to the novice and intermediate tequila
JB (32:13):
Fan. And that’s been the lift underneath the whole project, right? That’s why it’s so popular because we’re not talking over people’s heads. Mm-Hmm. And it’s been a really interesting journey. We did it on Instagram reels and TikTok mostly because I don’t have a lot of experience historically with short form content. I’ve always done long form content. And I was like, well, let’s just see what this is. Like, let’s learn how this algorithm works, et cetera. And, and it’s been great. You know, five videos a week is a big lift. It’s a heavy lift you know, to do it every single week. But, but we love it. And now we’re really monetizing it across a bunch of different dimensions, right? We’ve got brand sponsors and tequila sponsors and a, a merch store and our own tequilas and a a and events business and private tastings. So there’s a bunch of different revenue streams that all kind of funnel into are in the business. And I’m not ready to quit my day job as a speaker and consultant yet, but, but it’s it’s definitely a real business, right? And considering my only goal was to be able to buy tequila on a business card instead of a personal card. I have, I have very much past, past the goals.
RV (33:19):
Well, the other thing is what’s gnarly is like you have pretty major celebrities reaching out to you.
JB (33:24):
Yeah, yeah.
RV (33:25):
Like, I mean Yeah. And you just built this huge audience. What, so it’s a couple hundred thousand followers, right? On TikTok? Yeah.
JB (33:31):
Between, yeah, between Instagram and TikTok. It’s a couple hundred thousand. Last month I think we reached 400,000 accounts. Wow.
RV (33:39):
So it’s,
JB (33:39):
It’s pretty, it’s pretty good group. Yeah.
RV (33:41):
And then you’re getting, you’re getting all these celebrities who are launching their tequila lines going, will you please review my
JB (33:47):
Absolutely. Yeah. And my house is just full of tequila. Allison is so mad
RV (34:05):
Oh man. Yeah.
JB (34:06):
I mean, if I move this camera like six inches, you would be flabbergasted how much tequila I have in this office.
RV (34:12):
That’s awesome. So is there, is there any other lessons that you think for personal brands, like specifically? I mean, that’s super powerful. I didn’t, I didn’t, I never even realized to put that together that, you know, ’cause we you that that you, that’s what you were doing was specif specifically creating content for the person that you once were, you know?
JB (34:30):
Yeah. And I talk about that in a lot of podcasts and people ask me about tequila and I always give you credit as I should. And how powerful that that premise is. And it’s really, really effective. You know, look, we all have the curse of knowledge and the curse of expertise. And if you don’t constantly disvalue yourself of that notion, you are truncating your addressable audience. The other thing that we do in the tequila space that I think you’ll appreciate and your audience will appreciate is we are the only tequila educator that de anonymizes the audience. So there are a number of other people, four or five that do Instagram, TikTok stuff like me. There’s a handful of kind of YouTube tequila educators. There’s a couple of podcasts, et cetera. But we are the only ones who have a list. So I produce a list every quarter of my recommended tequila brands.
JB (35:19):
Mm-Hmm.
RV (36:25):
Mm-Hmm.
JB (36:33):
It’s,
RV (36:33):
It’s a game changer. It’s al it’s also amazing to me how it’s like, you have social media and you have lives and all this stuff, but like building the email list, it’s just like, it always just re still the, it’s still the holy grail. Like Yeah,
JB (36:46):
I mean, I I, I mean, it’s great to do lives and social media and everything else, but, but you know, if all of a sudden you know, meta decides that they’re not gonna do any alcohol content on the platform.
RV (36:59):
Yeah. You’re hosted
JB (37:01):
Business is over close up shop. Right. and that could ha I mean, that’s not a, that’s not that far fetched. Like that could definitely happen, right? So you know, you gotta un you know, you’ve gotta build reliable reach, not, not unreliable reach.
RV (37:17):
I love it. I love it. Well so j tequila.com is where people can go get that list if they’re, if they’re
JB (37:24):
Yeah. J tequila dot com is for the list. The merch store is tequila j bearer.com and yeah, we got, we got a lot of web properties. Now all of a sudden,
RV (37:33):
I mean, if you’re, and if you’re a tequila person, which I’m not, I don’t drink, but like, you just, like, you’ve gotta go see this, right? You gotta, and and even if you’re not a tequila person, I would go, go check this out because you’ll see, I’m
JB (37:45):
Still gonna send you a hat though ’cause the hats are pretty great.
RV (37:48):
Well, I’m a hat person, so I could do, I could just, I know you’re, I can wear hats to soccer practice for the kids. So it’s really awesome, dude. But, but anyways, this speed as a competitive advantage blows my mind and scares the crap. It scares the crap outta me. And go, and I go, you know, this idea of going, how do we build brand builders group from the ground up from here for speed is like really has, has rocked my world and it’s, it’s affected us, right? So you know, I’ve been talking to you about instant automation toolkit, like this has been in development luckily for the last couple years, and we’re, we’re, we’re finally hitting, we’re finally about ready to release because it’s just like, that is the whole thing. Instant automation. It’s like we have to help people get this stuff deployed faster. So powerful stuff. Y’all. The time, the time to win is the book like it, this thing is, it’s so, it it fits in the palm of your hand. You read it an hour, get the, get the good stuff. So check it out. And it’s
JB (38:49):
Like nine bucks too. The book’s like $9. So if you don’t like it, let know. I’ll send you $9 back.
RV (38:54):
JB (38:59):
More than $9. Yeah. Private.
RV (39:01):
We’ll figure private stash at the house. Like when you start emptying those out. Well,
JB (39:04):
Because, because I, because as you know you know, we live right by campus in Indiana University, so all of our neighbors are university students. And so I get sent a lot of tequila that I don’t want to keep because it’s not very good. So I’m just like, I’m, I’m like, I’m like
RV (39:16):
Dishing it out, walking
JB (39:17):
Through the neighborhood, like who wants a bottle of tequila and all. Yeah. The college students love me. That movie neighbors. Like I’m the Seth Rogan character in that movie. Yeah. It’s fantastic. Yeah.
RV (39:27):
I love it. Well brother, thanks for sharing your wisdom. We wish you the best and it’s a pleasure. You, you, you are, you are stud, my man. I’m so grateful for you and my life and for having you share your wisdom here.
JB (39:38):
You too. Say hi to AJ.
Ep 441: Is this the Golden Age of Publishing | Allison Trowbridge Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
All right, so I have a question for you. Are we in the golden age of publishing, like right now? Is this the golden age of publishing? And this is a question that came up in a recent conversation that I had with Ali Trowbridge of, if you think about it, we as authors or aspiring authors are in one of the most opportunistic times in history when it comes to getting your message out into the world. As few as 20 years ago, there was an absolute gate, right? There were gatekeepers that prevented authors from just publishing books and getting them out into the world. But with the emergence of self-publishing and hybrid publish publishing, almost anyone who really, really wants to can write and publish a book. And I said, almost. But if you can’t write your book, there are more mediums, more formats, more opportunities to get your message out into the world than ever before.
AJV (01:05):
You can be blogging. You can post blog like messages on medium. You can do LinkedIn. You can have, you know, micro posts happening on a social media. You could have your own YouTube channel. There’s free ways to do it, but then there’s ways that you can pay to get it out there with the self-publishing and hybrid publishing. That’s not to say traditional publishing is not an option. It is. But if you really think about it, this is the golden age of publishing. There are more opportunities, more ways to get your message into the hands of your audience than ever before you have more access to your readers or potential readers. We’ll just call ’em your audience than ever before. You can actually build relationships with the people who read your books. 20 years ago, that wasn’t a thing. You didn’t know who was reading your book, you didn’t know what they had to say about it per se.
AJV (01:58):
But now, on a, on a daily basis between podcast reviews and comments to blog comments to comments on social media, to Amazon reviews and Yelp reviews, it’s like you actually know what’s resonating. You know what people are thinking, and you can create a real relationship with your reader. That is amazing. And just the idea that there is not this, you know, ivory tower of publishing anymore that’s being broken down with the emergence of self-publishing and hybrid publishing. And so, as we think about this idea for the author and the aspiring author that we live in this opportunity ti this opportune time, this golden age of publishing, what does that mean for authors? And so here’s a couple of things that I wanted to share that I thought were really awesome takeaways from my conversation with my ally. Number one, you have to remember that if you’re an author, you are simultaneously an,
AJV (02:59):
A book is a product. And that means that it has to come with the same intention of what a business would do to sell a product and a service. As an author, you are creating a product, IEA business, which means that to do it well, right? There’s research and development, right? That’s your writing time. There’s the publishing time, right? That’s the production. But then you need a marketing plan. You need a sales plan, probably someone who is going to sell it and someone who is going to market it. There needs to be an operations component of like, how are we gonna get this distributed and fulfilled? How are we a finance person? Like, how are we gonna pay for all of this? How are we gonna collect money? How are we gonna pay money? Like, those are all entrepreneurial things that are required when you start a business, IE right?
AJV (03:53):
And publish a book. So as an author, you are simultaneously starting a small business with a product. That’s your book. That’s the first thing. Second thing is that, and knowing that, knowing that it’s not just you on your laptop and coffee shops writing words on pages, it’s so much more than that. You have to remember that writing a book is not a career move. It’s a calling. And it is not about the end result of having, you know, a giant business card or something that’s going to make you tons of money. It’s like, no, you have to go, I have to share this message.
AJV (04:34):
I have to get this out into the world. It is compelled from within me. It is a calling, it is a passion. This is not just something I’m doing to make money or to get a promotion or to raise my speaker fees. It’s like, no, I’m, I’m doing this because I have to. And that’s gonna make the rest of us a little bit more tolerable because there’s a lot of work. And writing the book is step one of a mini step process. Writing is just one small part of actually getting a book out into the world. And so you’ve got to love the process. You have to fall in love with all the parts of it. And mostly you can only love it if you know that it’s going to make a difference. It has the potential to make a difference. It can change a life, which means it could change the world. Those are things that you have to remember as you step into this. And if you’re not there yet, it’s just not time. And that’s okay. There is a time and a cadence for all things. But when you think about writing this book and launching this book, you need to think about also is do I have the time, energy, and resources to also build a business? Because a book is a business, right? Third thing, I think this is really important, and Allie talks a lot about this in
AJV (05:56):
Our, our podcast interview that’s called the ent the author entrepreneur podcast episode on the influential personal brand podcast. But how you get that book out into the world makes a difference. And she shares the three different ways you can publish a book today, self-publishing the hybrid publishing model, or a traditional publisher. And I love the way that she likened these to business. And she said, think about it like this. Self-Publishing is like bootstrapping. This is your self-funded startup. You’re bootstrapping and you’re scrappy. And it’s the entrepreneurial startup that’s self-funded. That’s how you need to think about self-publishing. Hybrid publishing is like going after an equity partner, right? You retain the ip, you have more creative rights, you make more money but you’re also paying for it, right? So like, somebody else is coming in to help with this, but you’re paying for it.
AJV (06:50):
So you’re putting together an equity partnership with this hybrid publisher, right? I love that example. And then a traditional publisher, publisher is like going after venture capital, which means you have to prove to them that you are a worthy investment because they’re taking a risk. They’re going one outta 10 of these, maybe one out of a hundred of these are actually going to make us any money. So you need to prove that not only is the content awesome, that’s a given. That’s the, you know, you know, that’s just required for entry, right? But they gotta know that you have the platform, the reach, the marketing, the sales, the operations, and the finance team behind it to pull this off. ’cause They’re looking at you going, is this a good investment? Which is why a book proposal is such a necessity. And I believe that a book proposal is helpful if it’s a self hybrid or a traditional publisher, because it, it’s the discipline of putting together your business plan for your book.
AJV (07:52):
And if you really want people to read your book, then you gotta have a sales marketing and distribution plan of how are people gonna hear about it and what’s gonna cause them to want to read it, right? What’s gonna make it a spread? Why would people recommend it? And that’s all marketing, positioning and sales. So I book proposals important in all three of those levels. But just thinking about self as the entrepreneurial, bootstrap, startup hybrid is you’re looking for an equity partner, and then a traditional publisher is a, a venture capital, right? I, I’ve loved those examples, and I think one of the things that came out of all of this conversation is that you just have to fall in love with the process of writing and the business part, right? This is something that you’re gonna have to learn. You figure it out, it’s trial and error.
AJV (08:40):
And that’s why it takes time. So give yourself some grace and patience in this. And as a part of loving the process, it’s a great reminder that those mountaintop moments are far and few between, right? Getting that book in your hand and that feeling when you’re like, it’s here, that’s somewhat fleeting a little bit, right? And if you’re gonna do all of this work and all of this preparation just for that moment to hold that book and go, it’s here that, that feeling’s gonna be pretty short, right? Because the next thing you’re gonna have to do is like the next step of the plan, and you gotta fall in love with the process. Not just those mountaintop moments of, oh, I wrote a book, or, oh, I hit this amount of revenue, or, oh, I did this thing, or, oh, I got this award. It’s like those are short, finite moments. And if you’re living for those moments, you’re missing the best parts of your life and the process and the journey. So you have to fall in love with the whole thing. If you wanna check out the entire conversation about this concept of the golden age of publishing and being an author, entrepreneur, head over to the influential Personal Brand podcast and check out my full interview with Allison Trowbridge. We’ll see you next time.
Ep 440: Be An Author Entrepreneur with Allison Trowbridge
AJV (00:03):
Hey everybody, and welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is AJ Vaden here, and I’m so excited to introduce everyone to a new friend of mine, Allison Trowbridge, who also goes by Allie. Ubut if you’re gonna look her up online, you’re probably gonna find her by Allison. Now, before I do a formal introduction of Allison, I wanna make sure you guys know who this episode is for and why you wanna stick around. First and foremost, if you have a dream, a passion, a goal, or you’re even on the road to being an author, this is an episode that is curated for that person who wants to write a book and get it out into the world. So that’s who this is for. It is for the established, the aspiring, or the one day, maybe that might be a thing I wanna do. This is who this is for
AJV (01:07):
You’re an author of any sort. This is an episode for you. Second, it’s for everyone who considers themselves an entrepreneur or a solopreneur, and they’re going, well, how does this personal brand thing and content and writing, like, how does this fit into my entrepreneurial journey? That is also something that we’re gonna talk about. And then third and definitely not last, we’re gonna talk about how authors are entrepreneurs. And I think that’s really important. Being an author is like starting a business, and so it needs to be treated like one. And we’re gonna talk about everything that it means to be an author and an entrepreneur in this world of marketing and personal branding. Now, let me introduce you to the one and the only Allison Trowbridge,
AT (01:59):
Aj, I’m so thrilled to be here with you. Oh my gosh. I just have to say, I have to say, AJ and Rory are officially hands down my new favorite people, favorite people in Nashville, probably favorite people in the world. I adore the two of you, and I’m obsessed with your content. I, I met AJ and Rory recently, and I started just going down the rabbit hole on everything you guys do online. And I have learned and gained so much from everything that you, you share so generously. So thank you for being you and everything you do for authors.
AJV (02:35):
You know what I love connections like this because Allie and I were connected by a mutual friend. And you know, it’s kind of one of those things too, when you get a random email, even though it’s from someone that
AT (03:02):
This one
AJV (03:02):
AT (03:32):
The biggest the biggest thing is I, I just learned before we started recording that their son, Liam actually asked after me at church on Sunday. And so that for me, I’m like, I’m in
AJV (03:45):
AT (04:52):
It was just Harry Potter mode,
AJV (04:55):
So there’s all these different things that really kind of led to like, why are you such a well positioned person to talk about this author entrepreneur concept? So let’s hear it from you. Like, tell us a little bit about your journey.
AT (05:10):
Oh my goodness. Well, aj I got started actually in the nonprofit world. So I spent my, I mean, I grew up with a deep love of books and I always had this dream of writing a book someday, but I got my start in my twenties working in nonprofits, working in anti-trafficking, anti-human trafficking. And when I was 22, I was graduating from college and I pulled in all-nighter with one of my best friends. And I said, there has never been a book, like there needs to be a book called 22 that speaks to all of these existential questions that we’re wrestling with right now. There needs to be, we need a mentor and it needs to exist, and I don’t see it anywhere. And so whatever I do career-wise, I’m going to write that book someday. And it was, gosh, it was seven or eight years later before I actually got a book deal on that idea, and it started to come to fruition.
AT (06:02):
But it’s so interesting because I’ve, I’ve heard you and Rory say a lot that you are, you are most equipped to serve the person that you once were. And so it was so interesting to be going through that season of life saying, I need guidance, I need direction. Someday I’m gonna come back and I’m gonna do that for someone else. So just one thing I wanna say. If you’re, whatever you’re in the midst of right now, maybe you’re like, I have no idea if I will ever write a book, but I’m like, I’m just in it and I’m wrestling with certain things right now. Pay attention to what that is. ’cause That may be directing you to where you’ll go back and help someone else someday. But that was really, that was really my origin story. So spent my twenties in human rights also as a partner in an impact investment fund.
AT (06:49):
So I was in the business world, and then I always knew in the back of my head that I was gonna write this book. It wasn’t a career move, it was just, it was almost a, a soul calling it that I felt like I had to, I had to follow through on this. And so went down the, the route of, I, I mean, first I built a, a really meaningful network of other authors and people doing similar things. And I just wanna call that out too because I think a, a lot of a lot of aspiring authors have the dream of publishing a book and they just get kind of stuck with it, and they kind of sit in a silo thinking about it. And I think becoming an author starts with becoming a good literary citizen and actually supporting other authors supporting the community of, of that was so strange.
AJV (08:36):
That was so weird. But I know the last thing you said was being a good author, so, okay, we’ll just pick up there. Okay. So it’s still recording. Okay, perfect.
AT (08:48):
Becoming an author really begins with becoming a good literary citizen. And so I, I really got my start in the book space by befriending and supporting other authors and championing them, making connections for them, supporting their book launches. And so I just wanted to call that out just to be thinking, if you have this dream of, of writing a book, how can you begin by supporting others who are further along in that dream knowing that someday down the road, that community will also rally around and support you. So fast forward am able to find an agent, put together a book proposal. I didn’t have any social platform. I wasn’t a well-known figure, but it was really based off of this, this concept that I knew there was a huge audience for and really identifying and communicating that effectively. Now, I made the ill advised ti life timing decision to publish that book while I was doing my MBA at the same time.
AT (09:58):
Which I, I would not advise. That was a very, very intense year of
AJV (10:39):
Well, I love, well, I love too that all of this is kind of organic and following your calling, and I love what you said that it’s like more than a career move, writing a book is a calling. Yes. And I often feel like being an entrepreneur, entrepreneur should be like that too.
AT (10:58):
A hundred percent. It’s not worth it otherwise. It’s too hard.
AJV (11:02):
It’s not. But often I think people use this as, Hey, I’m gonna do this thing so one day I can get this thing, which is freedom of time, freedom of money, it’s whatever. But then you realize, oh, snap. Like this is all consuming. And if there’s not like that deep calling, it’s when we feel burned out, exhausted, spent tired, whatever is the word you wanna use. But you know, those are, those are the same. Those are synonymous. It doesn’t matter. It’s like whatever you do in life, it should be a calling, not just a career move. So I love that you called that out.
AT (11:42):
Yeah. And something else that AJ did my wifi.
AJV (11:49):
Yeah, you’re breaking up. All right. You’re back.
AT (12:10):
I have, I have no idea what’s going on. I think I, I, it says I have full bars on my wifi and it’s Google fiber, so maybe I’ll switch to my iPhone wifi just to,
AJV (12:23):
I mean, we can, whatever you think. I mean, we can just keep rolling with it if it
AT (12:26):
Okay. I’m sorry about that. That’s okay.
AJV (12:30):
Okay.
AT (12:30):
It’s like a little trap door keeps dropping me out.
AJV (12:33):
AT (12:34):
Well, I heard the last thing you said. I, I can run with it.
AJV (12:37):
Okay.
AT (12:38):
You know, aj what that, what that makes me think of, I actually, so right now at Copper, and we’ll fast forward to this, but, but we’re hosting an accelerator for aspiring authors, and we had my friend Donald Miller on earlier this week talking about his writing practice and, and the process of writing. And he said something that, that really, that really kind of shook me, which was about, he, he carves out certain, a certain set of time every single day to focus on writing whatever book he’s writing. I was asking him how he produces so much, and he said, you know, he is like, you’ve gotta love the process. And it’s funny because if I were to tell you, if you were to ask what is 22, about 22, the book, my book about, I would say the, the moral of the story is that the journey is the destination.
AT (13:30):
It’s about learning how to lean into and love the journey of our lives instead of thinking we’re gonna arrive at some point. And I think that that is such an important piece of wisdom to apply to authors, also to apply to entrepreneurs. I think the, the big temptation is to think that we’re doing these things for some end result. I wanna be an entrepreneur because I want the big payout when I sell my company someday, or I wanna be an author because I want the credibility of hitting some bestseller list. And you are really going to, to hate the entire process if you don’t fall in love with the journey. Fall in love with the actual creation and the writing. Fall in love with learning how to reach your reader, your, your audience, and identifying what their pain points are if you’re an entrepreneur, learning how to enjoy the building. So it was something that was a, a really important callback for me this week of, of just this reminder to, to love the process of these things that we feel called to create.
AJV (14:34):
Yeah. You know, it’s so funny, as soon as you were talking, it made me think about this quote, how, and I think I saw it on Instagram, but you know, you look around at everything you have today and you realize that many times you have today what you once dreamed of and what you have today is what drives you nuts. And it’s kind of like, man, the thing that we wanna dream of is now the thing that is crazy. And it’s like so true. I think we all need to be taken back sometimes to falling in love with the process and not this desire for an end destination. Because if it’s all about that one day, you’re gonna look around and be like, wait, what was this all for again?
AT (15:14):
Totally. Totally.
AJV (15:15):
It’s Hannah Montana. It’s all about
AT (15:18):
Time. Totally.
AJV (15:18):
It’s all about time.
AT (15:20):
Yes. And, and the thing that’s that’s funny is that if you want to continue on that journey, you’re gonna begin again and go through the process all over again. I know authors who not only have hit the New York Times bestseller list, they’ve been selected by Oprah as part of her, the Oprah’s book club, and they still are like, it feels like the first time every time. And I don’t know what I’m doing and I’m still learning. And so I, I think it’s the falling in love with that process because those mountaintop experiences are gonna be short-lived, and few and far between. But if you love the journey of getting there, if you love the hiking up the mountain, then you’re gonna, you’re gonna really enjoy your life a lot more, I think. Oh
AJV (16:02):
Yeah. So tell us about ’cause I know we’ve had conversations about this, but I, what I love is your take on being an author is being an entrepreneur. Yes. Yes. And it needs to be treated like that. This is a business, it requires a business plan, it requires that, and most people who are writing books, unless you’re a full-time author, likely don’t know that going in
AT (16:26):
Yes. Well, I, I think a lot of the frustration around becoming an author starts starts with this point. So a lot of people will say to me, how do you write a book? How do you get published? Tell me how you get published. And they get frustrated because they think that there’s a silver bullet. Like, why isn’t everybody telling me how this actually works? And that’s like someone, an aspiring entrepreneur saying, how do you start a company? It’s, the answer is, there’s a lot to it. And it’s, it’s, you have to be able to give that full life commitment into the pro.
AJV (17:41):
Okay.
AT (17:42):
I’m, I’m gonna switch to my phone wifi. This is ridiculous. And I’m gonna call Google Fiber after this. I’m sorry. I dunno. Okay. It says it’s paired. Can you hear me Okay?
AJV (18:12):
Can. All right. So the last thing you said is it’s a commitment.
AT (18:18):
Let’s see. I, I think I’ll go back to the beginning of the author, entrepreneur thing. Okay. how did you tee up the question, the idea of just
AJV (18:29):
The fact that most people don’t know that being an author is like starting a business
AT (18:35):
AT (19:33):
The author really needs to be the entrepreneur. So if you think about the book writing as being the product development, after you develop the product, then you need all the other parts of the business. So you’re gonna need marketing, you’re gonna need sales, you’re gonna need partnerships, business development, operations, finance to make this all happen. And I also think about when it, when it comes to choosing your publishing path, should you self-publish? Should you go with a traditional publisher? Should you go the hybrid route? I really think about that just like taking an equity partner. So if you work with a traditional publisher for your book, that’s like being a startup that’s taking venture capital. It’s not for everyone. It’s for a small percentage. And that, that finance partner is gonna give you money upfront, which is fabulous, and they’re gonna take a lot of ownership, and they’re going to expect a huge result.
AT (20:30):
And they’re, they’re investing and making these risky betts hoping that one outta 10 books that they invest in are gonna pay for all of the ones that they lose money on. So it’s understanding those economics. And if a traditional publisher isn’t jumping at your book, it doesn’t mean it’s not a great book or a great idea, or that you’re an amazing author, just means they’re looking for that like venture return, then it means that they’re not seeing that based on the market, based on your reach. And that’s okay. So, so traditional publisher is like having a venture investor. Self-Publishing is like bootstrapping where you’re, you have a startup and you’re like, I am going to learn to do all of the pieces of the puzzle, and I’m gonna do it myself. I’m gonna own the whole thing myself. I’m gonna figure it out. Or I’m going to hire for the pieces where I don’t have natural strengths.
AT (21:20):
I’m gonna hire brand builders group to help me with the book launch part and to understand the, the branding and marketing piece. So I’m, I’m gonna, I’m gonna get support in different areas. And then you have the, the hybrid publishing down the middle, which I kind of think of like having an equity partner. You get to own your intellectual property, you get a lot more control over the process. You still get the high-end professional results, but it’s a higher cost of capital. You’re putting more in on the front end. So I think shifting our thinking as, as authors and creatives realizing that if you just wanna write, there’s plenty of spaces to just write. There’s ck there’s, there’s blogging, there’s newsletters, there’s LinkedIn, there’s you can journal, there’s a lot of spaces to write, but if you wanna be an author and publish a book, you’re actually selling a product to a customer. And because you’re selling a product, the book, you’re gonna have to think about it in the same way that ACEO thinks around selling the product in a business.
AJV (22:31):
Oh my gosh. Every single person in the world needs to hear that
AT (23:12):
Yes. No, it is.
AJV (23:14):
You know, it’s like,
AT (23:16):
Yes. And, and I spent as much time, so I was able to get that traditional publisher, Harper Collins chose to work with me, but my book proposal took about as long as it took to actually write the book, which is crazy. But it’s because I had to show them that this is a worthy investment. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (24:03):
I mean, that’s so important for everyone who is listening to realize of as you’re, you know, thinking and dreaming of one day, you know, I’m, I have all these books in my office, but it’s like holding up this book, and it’s like, that’s a product.
AT (24:18):
Yes.
AJV (24:18):
And businesses produce products, and in order to make the product get into the hands of other human beings, there needs to be a sales pitch, a marketing plan, a distribution plan. And those things take human resource, human capital, capital and dollars. They take dollars. Yes. Yes. And it’s treating it like a business. So I would love to know from you, in this world today, as you think about this author, entrepreneur, what do you see? Because I think this is a great opportunity for you to also share like, what is Copper books and what does Copper Books do? Because you have so much access to authors aspiring and current, but what are they doing well, and what do you know they should be doing
AT (25:11):
Yes. Well, my, my heart in this journey has always been for the author. I, I believe for one, that a book can change your life. Like, quite literally, can, can change your life. It can change the world. I, and, and it sounds like a cliche, but I really mean it. I I mentioned earlier that I began my career in anti-trafficking and human rights, that entire social movement, the reason why you as a listener know about that issue right now is because of books. There were a series of books published in the early mid two thousands on, on this issue, and it laid the groundwork for an entire social movement. So I get so passionate about the way that, that a book can move the needle, but then even more so, I think there is no more transformative or meaningful process for a human than to write their story and to write a book.
AT (26:05):
So, wherever you are, however many people you think may wanna read your book, I could not encourage you more to do it, because going through the process, it will transform you. It will be a before and after. It’s a meaning making journey. So I, I love the transformative process. I also think that this should be the golden age of publishing. It used to be that that publishing was an industry of gatekeepers, because it takes time and energy to determine what content can potentially sell. It takes a lot of time to read a book, right? And so the industry has operated off of gatekeepers and a small group of people being able to publish their work that has gotten blown open, blown, wide open over the last decade. It has never been easier to self-publish a book. It has never been easier to reach readers yourself to build an audience yourself.
AT (27:04):
20 years ago that wasn’t possible. Authors weren’t able to build their own audience. And so a lot of people get frustrated by the fact that they need to build a relationship with their reader. I think it’s the most liberating thing possible. You need to be more intentional. You need to, to really strategize it, you need to develop your personal brand and think about how you’re gonna outsource that trust so that people are coming to you to solve these problems that they have. And there’s consistency in all of that. But I think it is the most exciting time. If you have a dream of writing a book, now is the time to do it. Okay. So fast forward to, to Copper. So we built actually a tech platform. So, so you’re in the, in the iOS store, you can download the Copper Books app. We, we made it a place where authors and readers can connect and build community around books in a way that was centered around the author.
AT (28:00):
So with, we always say the author is the star of the show. If you are a, an author with a book, however you published it, self-publish, hybrid, traditional, you get verified. We link your book. There’s a all of this book data on the back end of it. And then readers can connect directly with the author of the books that they’re reading. We have a live events feature. If you’re a reader and you just love books, it’s a really great place for recommendations. You can track what you’re reading, create bookshelves, all of these things. So that’s the, the platform we created. And I actually did that with venture capital backing, which was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life to, I think the number is about 2% of, of all venture funding goes to, to female founders. So, I mean, you wanna talk about a steep mountain to climb that was, was not the most enjoyable the entire way.
AT (28:50):
I’ve gotten a lot of rejections, pitching, pitching this company, but was, was able to build raise the capital, hire engineers, build the platform. Here’s what we learned, seeing all of our community and our users. I realized that the people who were leaning in the most, who needed the support, who needed, who needed the tools and the resources and education, was actually the aspiring author. And so I built this platform thinking it was a two-sided marketplace for authors and readers. What I discovered is that the aspiring author is the most underserved group. And so I say all that in that we have shifted the entire focus of the company into how do we serve the aspiring author? How do we serve the person who is getting woken up in the middle of the night because they have this dream, this calling in them, this idea that they wanna put on into the world and they don’t know where or how to begin with it.
AJV (29:53):
Mm. I love that. I love that you said that too. They get woken up in the night with this at least once a week. I will wake up around four or 5:00 AM like looking for Rory, looking for my husband on the other side of the bed, and he’s missing. And then I’ll usually like go back to sleep. ’cause I know where he is,
AT (30:40):
My gosh. Yes. Yes. I would say I, all of the best parts of, of my last book 22 were like one-liners that I voice noted into Evernote in the middle of the night. Like, so much of my writing process is sitting up in bed being like, oh my gosh, I have to get that down and, and I’ll, I’ll voice note it into voice to text. So then I get up in the morning and it’s half gibberish, but I’m like, that’s a really great idea. Buried in there. I gotta put that in the book.
AJV (31:10):
But a lot of that comes back to enjoying the process. Yes. The process. And it’s a calling. Yes. It’s not a career move. It’s a calling that needs to be one of your signature lines, ally. It’s a calling, not a career move. Oh,
AT (31:25):
That’s good, aj. That’s good.
AJV (31:28):
It’s gotta be one of your signature lines. But I think all of this is so important because for the author, right, it doesn’t matter if it’s your first book or your 10th book, the same business planning is required for every single book. So tell us about this new awesome course that you are launching the author entrepreneur.
AT (31:49):
Yes, thank you. Well, so one of the things that, that we’ve experimented with this, one of the things we experimented with this year was helping to solve this pain point for aspiring authors. And we launched an accelerator this fall for aspiring authors nonfiction specifically who are working on their book ideas. And AJ it was one of the best, most fun, most life-giving things I have ever done. Everyone who went through it said that it’s, I mean, it’s totally rocked their world. It’s been the fav their favorite thing in their life right now. It’s, it’s been an incredible, incredible ride. And that was kind of my test ground to see is this a real felt need and can we, can we solve it? Is this you know, are these the questions that aspiring authors are really asking? And so, coming off of the success of the Accelerator, we’re, we’re, we’re wrapping it this week.
AT (32:47):
We’re gonna transition that content into an evergreen course where someone can go through it on their own time. So, so the accelerator was a live accelerator twice a week, every week. It’s a, a much bigger commitment. And a lot of what I heard from these aspiring authors was, oh my gosh, I want to do this, but it’s, you know, I don’t have capacity right now, or I, I’m gonna focus on the book next year, or Is there any way, are you gonna do it again? And and so instead of trying to do the accelerator all over again, I, I said, well, what if I can make this easier for that aspiring author and cheaper, honestly, to do it on their own time? So that is this course that we’re launching, we’re announcing it and opening up registration on December 12th. And because we love Brand Builders Group, we wanna give a discount to anyone who comes through Brand Builders Group. So just use the code bb g Yeah. For $200 off the course. We would love, love to have you in it. Oh,
AJV (33:49):
That’s awesome. And if you guys are listening and you wanna check this out, you go to copper books.com/course. I’ll put that in the show notes, and then use BBG as a discount codes copper books.com/course. Use BBG for the discount code. Now, what I, I know we’re almost out of time, but what I wanna talk to you about is kind of what you just said. It’s like, are these the questions that these aspiring authors are really answering, and what are the answers they need to know? So if you were to highlight one or two things that an aspiring author needs to know, what would they be?
AT (34:27):
One of them would be get to know your reader, who identify who your reader is. So thinking about your audience is one of the most important parts. If you wanna write just for you, that is beautiful, and I could not encourage you to do it more, but if you want to sell a book and actually create meaningful transformation in the lives of the person who decides to read your book, then you need to, you need to write with them in mind. Mm-Hmm,
AT (35:23):
What are they struggling with? Because that is going to be the big umbrella idea that’s gonna be the consistent line through the book that you write. It’s gonna be the, the shareable the way that, that people talk about your book and share it with others is to, to solve that pain point. And then it’s gonna help you start to, to speak on that content and attract that kind of reader, that kind of audience now long before your offering something to sell to them. So, so that would be one. And the second, which is related to that is I would really get clear on what your big idea is. So if you could distill your book down to one sentence, I think that the books that go the farthest in the market are ones that can be easily distilled down to one big idea.
AT (36:16):
Because I know when I buy a book, I’m usually buying into the big idea that I know that the book stands for and saying, I want more of that. So I agree. Let me give an example. 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Berkman. I’ve given that book to so many people, and it’s, it’s about how, it’s about the shortness of life, and yet how you can expand your days. I, I call it the anti anti productivity productive productivity book. And so it’s easy for me to share the concept of the book with other people and encourage them to buy it. And many times I’ll buy a book because I love the idea. Maybe I read part of it, but I’m buying into the concept. So I would encourage you to really get clear on who your reader is and start to build a relationship with them now and then. And then really, once you’ve identified their problem, identify the big idea of your book that’s gonna solve that problem for them. And that is gonna help you make decisions around the content that goes into your writing.
AJV (37:19):
Hmm. I love that. And I think I love that. It’s just clarity. All right. You gotta know what yes. What it is and who is for
AT (37:25):
Yes. And, and it’s an act of service. It’s an act of service.
AJV (37:30):
I love that. All right, one last question. Yes. what is your favorite book?
AT (37:36):
Oh my goodness. Oh, I have so many. I would say my favorite book is Vitor Frankl. Man’s Search for Meaning. Okay.
AJV (37:45):
I’m
AT (37:45):
Obsessed. I’m obsessed with this. I with meaning, with meaning making. Mm-Hmm. And, and I think it is, is the most beautiful. I think it’s one of the greatest books of the 20th century and the most beautiful journey in how you create and build a meaningful life. And everything I do in my work is around trying to help people build meaningful lives, whether it’s through reading incredible books or creating them.
AJV (38:12):
Oh, I love that. Well, I always love a good book recommendation. Ooh, A man search for Meeting. I just wrote it down. Put it on the list.
AT (38:19):
Amazing. And 4,000 Weeks, too. You’ll love that one. All right.
AJV (38:23):
I’ll put that down too for you.
AT (38:24):
AJV (38:25):
AT (38:56):
Yeah. And
AJV (38:57):
Those are not exclusive. Those are, those are, you know, together. And we have to treat it that way. And that was such a good reminder to all of us. It’s one thing to write a book, it’s another thing for someone else to read it. And so thank you so much. Ally. If people wanna connect with you online, where should they go?
AT (39:16):
You can find me on Instagram at Allie Bridge also at Copper dot books, on Instagram and LinkedIn. All the places, all the normal places. Would love to chat with you all. Would love to hear what your book idea is. And lastly, I just wanna say, if, if that dream won’t let you alone, it’s, it’s there for a reason and follow it.
AJV (39:40):
Hmm. Love it. So good. Everyone please check out Allie go to copper books.com. Visit her online, chat with her on Instagram. Do whatever you gotta do. But get connected and stay connected. And also catch the recap episode, which will be coming up next. We’ll see you next time on the Influential Personal Brand. See you later, y’all.
Ep 439: The Secrets of Building an Amazing Affiliate Lead Generation Machine | Matt McWilliams Episode Recap
RV (00:02):
One of the greatest secrets behind Brand Builders group’s success in the last few years has been affiliates. Um, we should hit eight figures this year. We’re right, we’re, we’re right on track to hit right around eight figures in our first and five years in businesses will be our fifth full year in business. And affiliates are a huge part of that. They represent over 60% of our revenue as a company comes from affiliates. It’s some, something around that number. And we simply would not, we would not exist at Brand Builders Group if it weren’t for all of our affiliates. And if you know much about the, the start of, of how our company started, we unexpected suddenly and unexpectedly exited and sold our last company and started Brand Builder’s Group. And we didn’t really have any plan whatsoever to do that. And yet we had a friend named Lewis who, uh, reached out to us, asked for some help, we started helping him.
RV (00:58):
And he was the one that said, this is what you were born to do. I’m gonna tell the whole world about you guys. And, uh, even though we had no audience and no platform, ’cause we had sold it, we, we previously had, but um, all of it was gone, uh, you know, very, very suddenly. And so we didn’t have that platform. And Lewis said, that’s all right. I have one and I’m gonna tell the world about you. And so right from the beginning, roots of our company, we, uh, you know, the, the arrangement was have us on your podcast and then we will pay you a referral fee for everyone that we meet from your show. And that is like the origin story of Brand Builders Group. And so affiliate marketing has been built into our DNA and we love it. We believe in it.
RV (01:47):
It is, I think, one of the most magical forces on the planet. It’s, it’s incredible. It is such a win-win. And if you’re not familiar with affiliate marketing, just to catch you up, what the, what, what It’s referral marketing. It’s referral marketing. It’s basically to say, Hey, if you’re a client of ours, um, if you refer us to another client, we’ll pay you for that referral. And part of our philosophy and our strategy at Brand Builders Group is something that we say to turn your customer force into your sales force, turn your customer force into your sales force. I mean, think about that. How many salespeople do you have? If you’re a small business, you probably don’t have many, and there’s a good chance you are the leading salesperson if you’re the owner, the founder, the the entrepreneur, right? If you’re the CEO even. But how many customers do you have? You know, probably lots, maybe, yeah, dozens, maybe hundreds, maybe thousands in some cases, tens of thousands. What if every single one of your customers was a salesperson? That is how you wanna do customer experience. That is how you want to create your product. That is how you want to, to create your offerings, is you want to do such a great job
RV (02:58):
And you wanna overdeliver for the people in front of you. And I think so much of the world is out there chasing thinking, oh, I need to have millions of new followers, and they’re trying to make mo money selling to strangers on the internet instead of the real secret of making money. The real secret of growing your revenue. And the real secret of building a business quickly is to serve the customers you have in front of your face in a better way, in a deeper way to overdeliver for the people who have already trusted you. And then if you do that, those people should want to and likely will tell their friends and family about you if you do an extraordinary job. And so, but, but, but too many small businesses are out there just chasing new customers all the time, that they’re overlooking the people right in front of them to go, how can I overdeliver for these people?
RV (03:48):
The way that we say it is, don’t forget, right? Don’t be so busy chasing the width of your reach that you forget about the depth of your impact and serving people in a deep way. Now, if you can pay your customers to do it, that becomes affiliate marketing, is to say, I’m gonna pay you for telling people you know about us, about our business. And we have built that into our business model. We have a very open 10%, uh, lifetime referral fee on all strategy services that are purchased from us that, uh, come from anyone that our clients ever refer us to. So many of our clients, this includes people like, you know, Lewis Howes and Ed, my lead, and, uh, people who have big platforms, they make more money from us than they pay to us. And that is just because they have very large platforms.
RV (04:45):
But even in our own community of, of like clients who are new, we actually call our affiliate program BBG for free, BBG for free. And the reason we call it BBG for free is we tell our clients, look, one of the fastest ways to make money from being associated with Brand Builders Group is just by referring friends and, and client, you know, friends and family and like other people who are mission-driven, messengers and aspiring speakers, authors, coaches, small business owners, professional service providers, you know, uh, direct salespeople. We, that’s a lot of our market, uh, or corporate executives who are wanting to like, rise in the ranks and build a personal brand. Well, since we pay a 10% lifetime referral fee on all of our strategy services that, uh, are purchased by anyone who our customers refer us to, that means if our customer, if our one customer refers us, 10 people who all bought at the same level that they bought, like at the same, you know, we have a couple different levels and tiers of our membership program and our, our various services.
RV (05:48):
But if you referred us 10 people who all signed up at the same level, you signed up then because you’d make 10% on each of those 10, that would add up to a hundred percent of what your service is, which means you would get your BBG for free. So we call that program BBG for free. And many of our clients get their BBG for free. They pay for their whole membership here, or they subsidize their own membership by the fact that, you know, they pay us whatever they’re paying us, but then we’re paying back to them on anyone they’ve referred us to. They can do that on day one before they have a website, before they have a book, before they have a funnel, before they have a sales team, before they’re doing live events, before they’re out there doing keynotes or have you even written a speech?
RV (06:29):
So our clients make money quickly. So this is, I think, the greatest secret that has been the secret to our success so quickly in growing our revenue. And it’s a win-win, right? Because if, if it starts with you though, it starts with you overdelivering for the clients that are in front of you, right? With us, it just so happened that Lewis Howes was our very first, you know, client or became our very first client, um, and it was going, how do we overdeliver for Lewis? How do we add so much value to him that he wants to tell us? And the idea is to overdeliver for the customers that are in front of you in such a big way that they want to tell you about their friends the same way they wanna tell their friends about a great movie they just saw, or a great restaurant they went to.
RV (07:20):
Even you wanna be so good, you wanna do such a good job that even if you didn’t pay them a referral fee, that they would refer you anyways, because that’s what friends do, right? Friends share good things with each other. If you see an amazing movie, you want to tell your friends about it. If you go to an amazing restaurant, you wanna tell your friends about it, partly because it makes you look cool because you found something really awesome. And you know that when they all love it, they’re gonna thank you. That’s how business should be done. Business should be done, especially small business. That’s how small business should be done. Small businesses can’t compete with the Fortune 1000 on advertising spend and employees and, you know, buying, you know, buying traffic and building these extravagant ad campaigns. But what we can compete on, and we can, we can win against the big companies, is by over-delivering through a customized experience for the people that we’re working with to where they become so, so, you know, uh, so loyal to us that they would refer people now when we pay them to do that, um, which is, you know, amazing.
RV (08:26):
Now in some industries, there’s actually, you can’t do it, right? Like I think in healthcare industry and then, you know, some financial, like financial services, there’s, there’s certain industries that there’s so much regulation because of what you’re selling. You, you can’t do it. But I mean, and, and most of the industries you can. And it’s, it’s amazing, right? Because it’s like everybody wins because you service your customer really well, which is where it starts. It doesn’t start by them giving you referrals. It starts by you over-delivering to the people who are right in front of you. That’s how the cycle starts. You overdeliver to them, then they refer a friend to go, I had such an amazing experience with Brand Builders Group, they blew my mind. They’re, they’re changing my life. They’re, they’re helping me make this dream come alive. And it’s, it’s fun and it’s exciting and it’s, it’s, you know, academic and it’s proven and it’s researched and the the people at the company are amazing and the people in the community are amazing and the people in the community are winning, right?
RV (09:21):
I mean, that’s, that’s one of the things that we’ve got going for us right now. Uh, last week we had our 24th client hit the Wall Street Journal, or USA today bestseller list, and we hit, hit the New York Times. We’ve had two of our clients hit the New York Times bestseller list this month. We’ve had eight clients hit the New York Times. In the last 12 months, we’ve had six clients have Ted Talks that have gone viral with over a million views. We have nine clients who’ve grown their annual revenue more than a million dollars a year. Now, are those results for everybody? No, they’re not. We have hundreds of clients, but it shows you the magnitude at which our clients are winning. And it’s because we’re not teaching gimmicks and tricks and hacks. We’re not cheating the system. We’re not trying to shortcut What we’re doing is we’re teaching people the proven methods of doing the hard work it takes to add value, to exceed expectations, to automate trust, because you’re over-delivering.
RV (10:16):
And that’s the secret. The secret is to do the work that other people aren’t willing to do, uh, to take the stairs. As I said so many years ago, in my first book, uh, that hit the New York Times, that broke through the, broke me through the wall, was this idea of do the things other people aren’t willing to do. So it starts with you making a commitment, making a resolution, making a decision, and taking an action to go, I’m gonna love on the people in front of me, and I’m gonna turn my customer force into my sales Salesforce. So that’s what it starts with, and that’s the psychology, uh, uh, of it. And then all you do is you put money behind it. And in our case, we do a simple 10% lifetime referral fee. And we’re transparent about it, we’re open about it, we tell people about it, right?
RV (11:00):
It’s disclosed in our website, like, this is how we do business. And so, um, when we recruit affiliates, part of what we’re doing, I think that’s working really well, which is what most people aren’t doing. When most people try to recruit affiliates, they try to recruit famous people, and they go out and they try to get like, you know, big celebrities with millions of followers. That’s not wrong to do, right? That’s not like bad. It’s just hard. It’s difficult, right? Like, how are you gonna get the rock to promote your stuff? I mean, like, what’s your strategy there? I mean, good, good luck, right? And you and everyone else, and you’re competing with companies who will literally pay the rock millions and millions of dollars to let you know his have his face associated. So you think he’s gonna post about your thing because you sent him a free sample.
RV (11:49):
Like, you know, it’s just, it’s just, it’s not impossible. It’s just not very possible. Um, so that’s what most people do when they’re chasing affiliates, is they’re chasing people with like large platforms. It’s the same idea that that small businesses are, are they’re chasing width. Everything they’re doing is, is reach. They’re trying to expand wide. That’s the whole mentality, right? Is I need more followers, more views, more impressions. Those things are not bad, but they’re not necessary to make more money. In fact, you can waste a lot of time chasing those things and overlooking the money that’s right in front of you, which is to go deeper with fewer people. Um, and so the way that we do that is even with affiliates, we’re not trying to find affiliates. We’re trying to find customers. And then once we find a customer, we’re trying to make a customer love us so much that the customer turns into an affiliate.
RV (12:43):
And who is more likely to refer us a celebrity that knows nothing about us or someone using our product, and which endorsement is truly more authentic and genuine. Someone who’s being paid to say something or someone who’s actually paying their own money, their hard earned blood, sweat and tears, cash to buy your product or service, and they’re spending money and they’re going, this is worth it. It’s worth more than what I’m paying. These people are amazing. They’re changing my life. And you go, that endorsement is, is worth more frankly. I mean, in, in some ways it’s worth more, it’s more authentic, it’s more legitimate, it’s more genuine for sure. And the thing you gotta realize is that most of us, most of you, you don’t need hundreds and thousands of new customers to have the greatest income year of your life. Most of us need a couple dozen customers, a couple dozen of our, our greatest customers.
RV (13:44):
Like our our best perfect customers would, would, you would have the year, the best year of your life income-wise. So you don’t need celebrities with millions of followers. You don’t need millions of followers to make millions of dollars. That’s the law of AJ Vaden. That’s what we, we call it the law of AJ Vaden, because she says that all the time. And AJ has now been the co-founder of six different multimillion dollar companies, two eight figure companies. She’s had four years where she’s personally produced over a million dollars in revenue and she’s never had more than 10,000 followers. How does she do that? How does she do it? Because her strategy is to land and expand. Her strategy is to go deep, not wide. Her strategy is to do relationships and reputation and knowing that reputation precedes revenue. And that if you overdeliver, then you will win.
RV (14:33):
Because most people don’t overdeliver. What most businesses do is the least amount of e effort to acquire a customer, and then they go looking for the next customer. That’s what they’re doing. They’re now, and, and if anything, where they spend most of their time is on marketing and sales. And once they land the customer, they forget about the customer and they just move on to try to find the next customer. That’s not the, that’s not the strategy. At least it’s not the strategy that works for us, right? I can’t say it’s, it’s not the right strategy, or it’s not the best strategy. But, but the secret to how we’ve grown these large businesses in just a few years with no venture. We’ve got no private equity. We’re not venture backed. We have no outside investors. We have no debt. We have no bank loans. How do we do that?
RV (15:16):
It’s by helping people
RV (16:09):
So first of all, make it easy for people to agree to be affiliates. So make it easy for them to say yes. How do you make it easy for someone to agree to be affiliate? First of all, over deliver for the thing they’re paying you for. Second of all, over deliver for things they’re not paying you for. Ask yourself, how can I, what other ways can I add value to this person’s life? What other way can I help them? Right? What people can I introduce them to? Do they need vendors? Do they need employees? Do they need team members? Do they need speaking opportunities? Do they need podcast opportunities? Like, uh, who, who are they looking for? How can I introduce them to people? How can I, how can I give them advice, encouragement, uh, how can I cheer them on and, and give them, like, you know, celebrate them.
RV (16:55):
Those are things you can do that cost nothing. And then, and then also it’s like, what, what services can I add to people’s lives that maybe are just things that you don’t even offer for sale, but you do it for people to help them? Like, so one of our brand builders group mantras. Build relationships before you need them. Build relationships before you need them. Build relationships before you need them. So find those people and over deliver. The other part is serve people who have the same audience as you, but who have a different offering than you, right? This is part of making it easy for them to say yes, serve audiences who have the same, or, or, you know, try to, try to pick, when you looking at affiliates, look for people who have the same audience as you, but a different offering from you, right?
RV (17:42):
Amy Porterfield is a great example of that, right? So she’s a client of ours who became a client first, then became an affiliate kind of at the same time. But, but really she was a client first. We were, we were, we were serving her first. We were adding value, um, first as friends, then officially informally as a client. Well, Amy has our audience, but Amy doesn’t sell one-on-one coaching Amy teaches, she, she, she has course, right? She has courses, but her flagship course is a course on helping people create courses, right? So her primary business model is teaching. Uh, so selling courses, you know, digital Course Academy is her primary thing, right? And she does that. She’s had thousands, tens of thousands of students go through this program, right? So she has a great course on helping people, uh, teach them how to launch courses.
RV (18:27):
So her business model is different from ours. Our business model is not courses. Our business model is membership one-on-one coaching. We’re nurturing our community all the time. We have live events, right? We have pay for hotels and people fly in and like, we pay for food and catering and coffee. Like we have a, we have a, a human like interactive in-person experience. And then we do one-on-one coaching over Zoom. That’s what our strategists do. And then we have a training, we have live trainings constantly. We have 10 live trainings a month that are virtual, um, that, you know, I lead two of them for our community. So it’s a very heavy, you know, human experience. And it’s not as, it’s not as much digital or, or automated. So it’s not that one is better than the other, not they’re, they’re both good, but they’re different, right?
RV (19:13):
So our people can benefit from her stuff, her people can benefit from our stuff, and we’re not, we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re both trying to serve the same audience, but we offer different things. So that’s a part of what you wanna think of. It makes it easy for people to say yes, you know? So you wanna find who has your audience, who has the same, who’s going after the same people as you, but they do something different, right? Like if I’m ACPA, right? And I’m doing, I, uh, let’s say I’m looking for small business owners. I wanna maybe form alliances with insurance agents who sell, like employee benefits and stuff, because we’re going after the same person, but we serve different, we, we, we have different offerings. We serve the same audience with different offerings. That’s part of how you make it easy for people to say yes.
RV (19:58):
The second key to to having affiliate program work is make it easy for them to market You. Make it easy for them to market you, right? Part of the reason why we do so well is we don’t ask our affiliates to do 50 email blasts and do these open cart, close cart launches, like the all between specific dates. That’s not bad to do. That’s not wrong to do. A lot of affiliates do that. That’s great if you can do that and you can get people to do it for us. All I have to be is a podcast guest, like any other podcast guest. And I just, I just, you know, and, and their, their mind is blown when they go, how does this work? And I say, just invite me on your podcast like any other guest. And they go, and that’s it. I said, that’s it.
RV (20:36):
And then we will build you a custom link. We build a custom landing page for each podcast we’re on, and we say, the only URL we’re gonna give it on your show is that link. And when we do that, everyone who comes through that page, we pay you a 10% lifetime referral fee on all strategy services that we sell to those people. Boom, there it is. And they go, you’re kidding. It’s that easy. It’s like, it’s that easy, right? Make it easy to say yes, then make it easy for them to market. And then if they say, well, are there emails I can send out? Sure can. I’ll write the emails for you. Here you go. You wanna post on social? I’ll give you assets. Here you go. You wanna know what ad you wanna read an ad for us on your own podcast and get affiliate fees?
RV (21:17):
Here’s a script for it. You don’t have to use it, but it makes it easy. Like you create all the assets, you create all the materials, you do all the work to make it easy for them to say yes, and then make it easy for them to market. And then the third thing is, make it easy for them to make money. Make it easy for them to make money. Make it easy for them to get paid. And you do that by having a great product, by having proven funnels, by having digital, you know, dashboards and metrics that you can tell them, you can estimate for them on the front end. Hey, if, if you send an email to this many people, this many people open it, this many people come to our free training, this many people watch this, many people buy, and this is how much money you’ll make.
RV (21:52):
Like if you don’t have those metrics dialed in, you’re not ready for an affiliate program yet. I don’t think like, I mean, you could do it more casually, but like not a large scale one. And we go, why do people refer us? Hopefully, because first of all, we’re awesome at doing what we say we’re gonna do. We’re over-delivering for them as clients. But second, we make it easy for them to say yes. We don’t compete with what they do. We do all the work of creating the assets for them. And then we send a massive passive mailbox money. We just go here, click this link, set up your bank account and we’ll wire you money every month. And boom, it’s on autopilot. And we’re sending out massive passive mailbox money to our affiliates. And that is my goal. My goal is not to go, how can I get something from them?
RV (22:32):
It’s not so much what can I, you know, what’s the least amount I can do to get them to refer me? I’m going, how can I constantly overdeliver for them in a way that they wanna say nice things about us, they wanna help us, and I’ll pay ’em on top of it. Massive passive mailbox money. So guess what happens? People are flooding to invite me on their podcast, right? They’re flooding us to invite ag on their podcast. They’re, they’re talking about us without us even being there and using their own affiliate link, because that’s how this works, right? And so start with your customers over deliver, build relationships before you need them. And that is how you build an incredible, amazing life-changing referral fee affiliate program. One of the most powerful dynamics in all of small business. Make it happen.
Ep 438: How to Get Affiliates to Promote Your Product with Matt McWilliams
RV (00:02):
Hey, at Brand Builders Group, you know that we say the more specific, the more terrific. And you hear people say The riches are in the niches. We say you’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. And one of the things that I love about Matt is I have now known Matt, I don’t know, probably for 10, maybe 15 years, but Matt McWilliams is, if you ask me, who’s the expert on affiliate marketing, he’s the name that I think of. He owns that space. He has worked with several of my friends as their affiliate launch manager. Some of our clients, you know, this is people like Tony and Dean Tony Bins and Dean Graziosi, shark Tanks, Kevin Harrington, who’s a client of ours, Ryan Leveque Lewis Howes, obviously Brian Tracy Michael Hyatt’s a close friend, Jeff Walker’s a friend. And Matt has r has run launches for all of those folks.
RV (00:55):
Stu McLaren, on and on and on. And so a lot of the people I know and respect, they have hired Matt to help him run affiliate launches. And we’ve never done an affiliate launch per se at B B G, but our whole business model is more of an evergreen affiliate model where we pay people a lifetime referral fee when they refer people to us. But we’ve never done an affiliate launch where we have lots of affiliates all at once. But I know the power of it, and I just don’t know that much about how to do it. So I thought, let’s get our friend Matt in here to like drop some value bombs and teach us the affiliate game. So brother, welcome to the podcast. All
MM (01:33):
Right. Thanks for having me, Rory. And I, I love that. What was it you said that the, that your biggest something is in the, your previous pain point. I can’t, how did you word that?
RV (01:40):
Yeah, that’s one of our, that’s like our flagship thing, is that you’re most powerfully positioned Yeah. To serve the person you once were. Mm-Hmm.
MM (01:47):
RV (02:19):
Yeah. Did you
MM (02:19):
Trademark it yet?
RV (02:20):
MM (02:23):
The, alright. Trademark Roy Vaden. How about that? There
RV (02:25):
You go.
MM (02:26):
Yeah.
RV (02:26):
So the people you work with are obviously well known, right? And when you hear that, you go, well, yeah, of course everyone’s gonna promote for Tony Robbins and Dean Azizi, but like, talk to us about why do you need affiliates like e even if you’re small, even if you’re new, and can you really get them? And, and, you know, I wanna kind of hear a little bit about the why and the when. Like
MM (02:51):
Yeah.
RV (02:51):
Why do you need them and then when is the right time to go get ’em?
MM (02:55):
Well, I mean, first of all that yeah, people do promote for Tony and, and we, you know, promote for Jeff and promote for Stu and, and we help them, you know, two x their, their affiliate program and you know, Michael Hyatt, we helped him almost four x year over year when we took over. And, and while those are certainly easier, I mean, 90% of our clients nobody’s ever heard of, you know, because they’re in the parenting niche. And there, you know, it’s funny, when we’re in like a certain niche, I I always tell people this, when you’re in like a certain niche and you have that celebrity in your niche, so like Jeff Walker in internet marketing product launches, Stu McLaren in Membership world. I say go to Target. I call this the target test. You wanna know how non-famous Stu McLaren is outside of his little niche, go to Target, ask a hundred people. If they’ve ever heard of Stu McLaren, you’ll be lucky if one of them ever has.
RV (03:44):
Hmm.
MM (03:45):
You know, I mean, in in your niche, you know, you are famous in building brands and you’re famous in, you know, productivity kind of in your past life, right? And you’re famous as a speaker, but again, you’d be the first human may go to Target and ask a hundred people out, you know, go to a target in, you know, Columbus, Ohio, and you’d be lucky if one person’s ever heard of Rory Vaden.
RV (04:03):
Well, even Tony Robbins, like at Target. Yeah.
MM (04:05):
You know,
RV (04:05):
Might
MM (04:06):
Be five. Might be
RV (04:06):
Five. Yeah. Maybe five or 10.
MM (04:08):
Yeah. And, and, and he’s, you know, this larger than life person or Dean Grazi who’s sort of, and so yeah, most of the people outside of their little niche in the world, and even sometimes in their little niche, you know, we’re working with the, you know, people that are, you know, they’re not a lot of times seven and eight figure businesses. They’re people you never heard of. And this is working for them. And in fact, it’s one of the best ways to get known because the reality is you know, I I I say this a lot of times, like it’s never been harder to get noticed and therefore it’s never been harder to stand out. You know, there’s a, a, a correlation between the two. If you go back a hundred years ago, you know, no, most people outside of presidents and, you know, like a few politicians weren’t known out of their, before the advent of radio weren’t known out of, outside of a 10, 15 mile radius.
MM (04:55):
You know, it was almost impossible. The the problem with that is because now it’s easy for everybody to get their 15 minutes. It’s easy for everybody to go viral. It’s easy for everybody to get 10 million views or even, you know, a hundred thousand views that it becomes almost impossible to stand out. You know, there’s more content uploaded since you and I have been talking on YouTube than either one of us can consume in our lifetimes. So think about that, how hard it is to stand out. And so affiliates are one of those ways when you’re breaking into a niche, this is how I did, I mentioned back in 2005, we tried everything else. Now, this is before the advent of social media and, you know, targeting and all those things. But we tried all the stuff you do back in 2005 to break into our niche, which, which was the insurance world.
MM (05:37):
And it wasn’t until we started an affiliate program that we began to get some traction because, you know, couple things. Number one, you pay after the sale is made. So you, you pay only per for performance. You know, you pay later
MM (06:28):
And we’re still trying to figure things out. We don’t have to worry about targeting, which can take months or even years to figure out your affiliates do it for you. And what happens with affiliates is sometimes they will market to their list and you will discover niches or pockets of niches that you wouldn’t have thought you could profitably target. But you realize, oh my gosh, we had 12 people buy this week that are moms of, you know, such and such, right? We moms of special needs children. We never thought our course would be good for moms of special needs children, but you know what, maybe we could target them. And so you start to learn things. Obviously, you know, one of the biggest benefits is just the fact that the, the leads are warm. You know, the prospects are warm. The reality is, very few people woke up today thinking, you know what I need to do?
MM (07:17):
I need to buy so-and-so’s product. Or they’re scrolling through Facebook because they wanna see their niece’s new. I wanna see my new, you know, baby I didn’t think nephew. Now why? I had to think of, was it a nephew or niece
RV (08:16):
Wanna, so just some of the reasons why it’s great. I talk about, I wanna talk about that part right there about landing on the page. So, so, you know, let’s assume that you get affiliates is most of what’s happening in the affiliate world, like your world is, is that still today, like you’re recruiting people to basically promote some type of free training, either a free lead magnet or a free webinar, or a free, you know, like if it’s a Jeff Walker, it’s like a free video, like a little video, mini video course. Is that pretty much what’s happening is you’re still just promoting, everyone’s promoting to something for free, someone’s adding value, and then they’re selling something at the end,
MM (08:55):
Not necessarily in your world, you know, kind of in the, you know, if I think of your clients, yes, that’s the norm. Probably 97% of the time. It’s going to be a free report, a free webinar, a free, you know, launch sequence type thing. You know, like you said, the three video series, something like that. Other options, you know, if it’s a software could be a free trial, you know, that’s obviously a good entry point. One of the things we’re seeing that’s working really well with some of our clients is a free training, you know, free webinar with a backend. Make sure you claim this free trial of this software. ’cause We’re gonna show you how to use it on the webinar. You know, and that works really well because it, you know, now gets them into like using the software and if we can get ’em to use the software they’re gonna stick around, you know, seven times outta 10. And so there’s all types of things there. But yeah, I mean, there’s direct to sale, there’s direct to call, there’s all types of things. But yeah, in brand building world, typically it’s gonna be to a, some sort of a free resource or Okay. Video series or webinar.
RV (09:58):
And then is most of what you’re doing, like, you know, like when I think of affiliates, I tend to think of more information products, like mm-hmm.
MM (10:28):
Yeah, I mean, again, it’s all over the place. Retail products, obviously the commissions are lower, but they’re, they’re more commoditized. And you’ve got a lot of, you know you know, brands that spend the majority of their time promoting things that are retail products. And yeah, you might only make 10% of a $57 purchase, you know, five 70, but multiply that by a thousand people. You know, you’re making close to $6,000 for Facebook post. You know, that’s not a bad way to make some money, right? It’s really all over the place. But again, in, in your world, typically it is gonna be to a, a higher priced, you know, course or, you know, coaching. And we have some clients that are killing it with, you know, $24,000 a year coaching offers where we pay the affiliate of flat $3,000. And, you know, well that’s not a very high percentage, but at the same time it’s $3,000. You know, typically the higher the touch, which is we consider touch, meaning my time. So when I coach somebody for an hour, it costs an hour of my time. That goes into the cost of goods. So obviously the higher the cost of goods, the lower the affiliate commission’s gonna be. So the higher the touch, the lower the commission is gonna be. And that’s accessible.
RV (11:43):
That’s how brand Builders group works, right? I mean, this is how we built brand builders group so fast. We pay a 10% lifetime referral fee to any of our clients who refer someone because we’re, we do one-on-one coaching and live events. I mean, it’s, it’s so people intensive. It’s non-scalable. It’s not digital. Exactly. It’s completely the, the, the low margin human experience trying to pay people well and recruit ’em because we, we try to, we try to know people one-on-one and it’s less about like the courses and stuff. And and so it’s a lower percentage, but we just pay it forever and it just goes on mm-hmm.
MM (12:25):
Yeah, exactly. And that’s just normal and that’s expected. So when I promote something as an affiliate, ’cause it’s, you know, there’s a lesson by the way. If you’re gonna start an affiliate program, spend a little bit of time promoting something as an affiliate first just so you have the understanding of how it works. And, and a lot of times, like for me, the reason I’m a much better affiliate manager than I was my first five years. And, you know, to be clear, my first five years I built a program from scratch to more than a million dollars a month and had won affiliate managers of the year twice. But I’m still, I was 10 times better by 2014 than I was in 2000, you know, 10 because I became an affiliate and I started seeing things and I started going, I don’t like the way, you know, that works.
MM (13:08):
Like, I hated it as an affiliate not getting a leaderboard every day. You know, it drove me nuts. Like, did, did the thing I did, did yesterday, did I move up the leaderboard? Did I move down? I wanna know. ’cause I’m competing against my friends and I wanna beat them and I wanna win a better prize. And so we invented the live leaderboard back in 2013. Now it’s, most programs have one, you know, it’s just become ubiquitous because, you know, somebody got tired of the way that the norm was and changed something. And so we see things as an affiliate that drive us crazy. And so we address those, or we quite frankly can copy things from other people. I mean, I give all credit in the world to Danny Ney because in 2014, I was promoting him and he said, Hey, I’d like to get on a call with you.
MM (13:50):
And he, we got on a one hour zoom call and mapped out my entire promotion of his launch on a spreadsheet. And then he sent me the spreadsheet and I went, oh, I get what he’s doing. That’s the principle of commitment and consistency, right? Outta Robert Seal D’S playbook. Right? He’s holding me accountable to what I said I was gonna do versus me just saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll do that, that, that. And then there’s no documentation. And so we stole that idea from Danny. We started doing the exact same thing. If you look at the way we do it, if you look at one of my calls and one of his calls, you could overlap them and they’d be exactly the same. And so be an affiliate first. And when you do that, you’ll start to, to see those things that,
RV (14:27):
Well, how do you do that? Like, how do you, how do you find affiliates or how do you find affiliate opportunities? I mean, obviously your friends, right? Like they go, Hey, I have a book coming out, or I have a course launch. I mean, I guess that would be one way, but like, how do you find affiliates?
MM (14:43):
Let’s talk about the first one. How do we find like things to promote ourselves opportunities?
RV (14:47):
Sure.
MM (14:47):
I say, look around at your desk, you know, your virtual desk might be your computer. What sites do you log into? What software are you using? What tools are you using in your business? You know, you said it best, like your biggest area of, you know, strength is where you used to be weak. The, the be the best place for you to serve your audience is from the place where you struggled 5, 7, 10 years ago. You know, for me it’s now 18
RV (15:33):
Basically just promote the tools you love. Like find like the tools,
MM (15:35):
Promote love. Mm-Hmm.
RV (15:37):
Yeah. Promote the thesis,
MM (15:37):
Promote the brands that you love. Promote the, again, and it can be as simple as, okay, if I have a friend who says, who comes to me and, you know, they’re relatively well-known and they’re launching a book in a year, and they say, who do I need to talk to about, you know, yeah. Obviously us for selling books through affiliates, but who else do I need to talk to? Who, who on earth am I gonna recommend other Roy Vayan? I mean, literally it’s not, I, there’s, I mean if’s no reason.
RV (16:01):
You’re smart, you’re not gonna for sure Uhhuh
MM (16:03):
And so the fact that you have a referral program, all that does honestly, in my opinion, is kind of make it more top of mind. Mm-Hmm.
RV (16:10):
MM (16:11):
And to your stand, you know, from your standpoint. Let’s flip to the other side. When you send me that PayPal deposit for, you know, a good chunk of money, I go, huh. You know, I wonder if there’s anybody else I could proactively think of, right? Instead of just waiting for people. Come, you know what, I’m gonna reach out to a few people. I’m gonna reach out to my friend Brian, who I know has a launch coming up in eight months. And just say, Hey, do you need anybody? If so, I’d love to introduce you to Rory, and it takes me 20 minutes and two of them say yes, and I make a bunch of money for 20 minutes of my time. Like, what else could I do with 20 minutes of my time to make that kind of money? Probably nothing. So that’s the finding, you know, like finding affiliate programs to promote side. Many of those can turn into two-way relationships. I was just talking with one of our coaching clients the other day, and I
RV (16:59):
Go,
MM (17:00):
There we are. Yeah. I was talking to my friend the other day and one of our clients and introducing her to some other clients and I said, you know, here’s why these clients would be good partners, because they have your audience and you have their audience. So the question we ask and we wanna find affiliates is who, who already has my audience? So if you get a software that’s for course creators and coaches and somebody over here that teaches how to create content for course, you know, course creators and coaches to match made in heaven, let, let’s get those two people working together. So the simple formula, let’s, let’s say take a book. Let’s just take a book for example. I call it the Amazon Rabbit Trail because Amazon makes this super easy for us. We pick one book that we think is similar to ours.
MM (17:48):
That’s exactly what we did, did for our book. It’s, you can do this for products or anything. I’m just using a book as an example. And you look that book up on Amazon and you see, when did it launch? I wanna find a book with a launch date of, in the past three years. So I look and it says it launched in January of 2018. I’m not gonna use that one. Let me think of another one. All right? I look at the other book up, it launched in February of 2022. I’m gonna go to Google and I’m gonna look up all the search results from about one month before and one month after that launch date. ’cause I want to find specifically people who promoted, who interviewed, who did whatever for that launch period. Not that wrote about the book nine months later and said how good it was.
MM (18:29):
That that’s not who I want. I want people who promoted this book launch. And I’m gonna look those people up and I’m gonna reach out to them and I’m gonna say, Hey, this, I’m gonna give you the gist of the email here. Hey, I saw that you promoted such and such book a year ago. I’ve got a similar book coming out in nine months, and you wanna do this plenty of time in advance. ’cause People’s promo calendars fill up. I’ve got an, I’ve got a similar book coming out in a few months. It’s different in that it covers this, this and this. You know, whatever the specifics are. Can I send you a copy? Would you be, or would you be interested in having me on your podcast? Or would you be interested in promoting it as an affiliate? And it’s a very brief email.
MM (19:09):
We don’t write a 10 sentence, 12 sentence email. ’cause What do you do, Rory? When you get a long email from somebody you don’t know asking you to do something? You delete it before you even read it. So it’s a very short email with a specific call to action. And that’s how we find affiliates. The same is true for products. You have a product, what are some similar products? You have a coaching service. What are some similar, you know, things like what would other people, what would they have bought that is similar to yours? And it doesn’t have to be if you offer a coaching service, you don’t even have to reach out to affiliates of coaching services because people who bought courses or books or whatever joined a mastermind about this topic might have also, or might also be interested in your coaching service. So you reach out to those people who are affiliates for those products and ask ’em if they would like to promote you mm-hmm.
RV (19:56):
MM (20:02):
That’s what we do. Yeah.
RV (20:03):
If I don’t wanna do that, I go, I get an affiliate manager and I say, Hey, go recruit me some affiliates. Yeah. And then we share in the, we share in the pay together, right? Yeah.
MM (20:11):
I mean, like right now, I mean, you and I have been on, you know, for 20 minutes or so. I mean our team’s, you know, we have multiple people on our team right now finding affiliates for our clients. You know, obviously we have a huge database of people that have been affiliates in the past, but we’re breaking into new niches all the time. Like I, we’ve got a client in the parenting niche right now. We’ve never done anything in the parenting niche. Now there’s a little bit of overlap with the entrepreneurial side. So we reached out to our entrepreneurial affiliates about this parenting offer and we got a few and done had success with it. But now we’re kind of in that phase where we need to go out and find people who’ve promoted other parenting courses. We got another one that’s in the health and fitness niche. Her summit is, she’s doing a virtual summit. It’s all about getting off sugar. I don’t have a list of people for that. So we’re doing what I just said. And yeah, it’s extremely time consuming. And yeah, to your point, you know, there’s two types of people in this world. People have more money than time, and people have more time than money. And people who have more time than money go do it yourself. Like it’s, you can execute on this. It just takes a lot of time.
RV (21:11):
Mm-Hmm.
MM (21:55):
Well, again, the easy way you just said it, you know, hire us,
MM (22:44):
You know, any of the myriad of CRM slash shopping carts slash funnel builders, et cetera, et cetera. You have a built-in affiliate tracking system in there. It’s pretty, it gets a few clicks and it can take you as little as 15 to 20 minutes to set this up. Like it’s really easy, thankfully, if you are not on a system that has a built-in affiliate program. And I would venture to say I’ll put it this way, we’ve worked with 70 clients over the last eight years. And I’ve only had one who didn’t have a built-in affiliate tracking system in their software. I had two that they had a built-in, one that I didn’t like. So we used a different one. So three out of roughly 65 to 70 clients did we have to use an external thing. So again, it’s very rare.
MM (23:32):
There’s 50 good ones out there. Typ, you know, I don’t even wanna name ’em ’cause it depends on what platform you’re on, but depending upon what, whether you’re on WordPress or this or that, there’s plugins, there’s softwares, and I’ve never had one Rory that, and I’m not super techie. People are like, oh, you gotta be super techie. Like, dude, I don’t know how to edit my own WordPress posts. I have to message a teammate to do the thing that I want him to do because I don’t know how to do it. I barely can function on Google, you know, sheets and, and you know, stuff like that. And I literally just learned the other day how plugins work on WordPress. All right, so it’s 2023 and I can make these things work. They’re super easy, thankfully. So
RV (24:15):
What I hear you saying there is that a lot of the built-in functionality that come with the off the shelf tools, so whether it’s like for, for us, we’re, we’re heavy Infusionsoft Keap users, right? So we’re, we’re big fans of Keap. But a lot of our clients use ActiveCampaign. They’ll use ClickFunnels. Yep. They’ll use Kajabi, they’ll use HubSpot.
MM (24:38):
Everyone you just named has that built in.
RV (24:40):
Okay. And, and then I’m not as familiar with SamCart, but you’re saying that SamCart has, has it built SamCart I think of more as like a e-commerce, like a store? Is that not the way kind
MM (24:51):
Of is? Yeah,
RV (24:52):
Kind of is. It’s more like shop like I think of it as more like a Shopify
MM (24:55):
Not exactly. It’s it’s shopping cart. It’s
RV (24:58):
A shopping cart.
MM (24:59):
Now keep in mind I haven’t been, I haven’t logged into SamCart in seven years, so it might have changed, but I know it has affiliate tracking. ’cause We, we have an affiliate program that we promote that uses the SamCart link. You know, so, so,
RV (25:10):
So you guys are kind of tech agnostic in that way. Like you can grab, you can, you can work within, you’re just, you’re used to seeing all the different systems. And I,
MM (25:18):
I say all the time I’m platform agnostic. Yep. Uhhuh, I don’t, I mean outside of, and I’m not gonna say who it is publicly. There’s one and it doesn’t matter. There’s one that we can’t stand because the tracking doesn’t work properly.
MM (25:57):
I mean, it’s a eight minute process. 20 if there’s some nuance to it, like, oh, we told this person we’d do something different or what I don’t, you know, I can’t even think of it. Occasionally if you get some, you know, like big, big payments, we will pay those in a different manner. But usually it’s a download upload, right? I mean it’s download to a CS v, upload the CS v, it pays them. Now this is one little thing, and I’m getting a little bit advanced this why you hire people like us. ’cause Then we do this, we then send emails to all of those affiliates. You go, but PayPal sends them an automated email to Pauly sends ’em an automated email that says, you know, you made, nobody reads the automated emails. Right? At least I don’t, and I don’t very many people do.
MM (26:38):
We send ’em a personalized email that says something like, Hey Tom, thank you so much for supporting Amy this month. Just wanted to let you know we’ve got a PayPal deposit on the way for $8,226. You know, that’s pretty awesome. You know, that that’s, you know, you made 14 sales and people loved the webinar and we’ve, here’s three people who responded already saying they love the, the course, you know, that you referred, and by the way Amy’s big summit’s coming up in four months. Would you like to support it? ’cause What’s a better time to ask somebody to support something that you’re doing than when you just told ’em you’re sending ’em a boatload of money. And so that little extra step that I have never seen anybody outside of us. And I’m not saying nobody’s doing it. I just have never seen it. I have never seen anybody else take that one little extra step on those payment things. And, and it works every time. I mean, I would say one third of those emails get a response like, absolutely sign me up. I’m in for whatever you got going on.
RV (27:41):
Yeah. And man, I just, you know, I just have to say like, one of my favorite things of, of like, of my whole life is sending out our check the checks every month to our affiliates. I mean, we give them massive passive mailbox money. Yeah.
MM (27:54):
I mean,
RV (27:55):
We have several affiliates that have earned six, like six figures from a podcast interview with me. Like it
MM (28:02):
That’s crazy. You
RV (28:03):
Know, tens of thousands of dollars from one podcast interview and they’re still getting paid. And it’s, it’s such a fun thing to do. There’s like a part of it. That’s the
MM (28:13):
Right attitude. That’s the right attitude to have, by the way. ’cause Some people are like, oh my gosh, you’re gonna keep paying the affiliates. No, I mean, you’re, you’re re not only are you rewarding them, not only is it the right thing to do, but they’re gonna return in kind because every time you send one of those checks, they’re thinking, like I said earlier, Hmm. I wonder what else I could do to refer business to Rory. That’s
RV (28:32):
Right. That’s what I want. I mean, I, I have found that one of the best ways to make friends is to send them checks every month.
MM (28:48):
Buy me love
RV (28:50):
Well man, this has been awesome. I in, in the spirit of affiliate links, I want to give out an affiliate link for you all to meet Matt and to learn more about what he’s up to. So I’m gonna give you the link here. So the, the, the link is brand builders group.com/affiliate guy. So that’s what Matt McWilliams, he goes by affiliate guy. So brand, so brand builders group.com/affiliate guy. If you do that, Matt is gonna give you this download. I’ll let him explain it a little bit. Yeah. But it is called How to Get Your First a hundred Affiliates Free Report. And that is exactly what, if you’re getting exposed to this for the first time and you’ve never done it, you need, and affiliates has changed Brand builders. I mean this has, we’re an eight figure business in five years. And like the secret is affiliates, like this is the thing that we do. We send out money every month now we do it in perpetuity. So it never goes away. And that helps, that helps. Part of it helps people continue to refer people to us. Yep. But anyways, anything you want to tell ’em about that. So brand builders group.com/affiliate guy, how to get your first a hundred affiliates free report?
MM (30:01):
Yeah, it’s just, it’s got 15 places, you know, defined affiliates. A few, one of which I covered today. A few of which you probably never even thought of. I mean, again, it depends on your niche. We’ll show you how to work with like nonprofits and how to, you know, how to work with your friends, how to work with even competitors. That’s probably my favorite one. Like, you just have to read it because the working with competitors one when I was in the, the music business, you know, music construction business, that completely changed our business. I took one affiliate program for about one and a quarter million, over 6 million. And about half of that growth was working with competitors in some pretty cool ways. So we covered that in the report. You got some templates in there for emails you can use to reach out and all kinds of goodies. So yeah, go grab it.
RV (30:42):
That’s really cool, man. Well Matt, so great to see you. Thank you for making time and so great to talk to you. Really appreciate this. We haven’t talked enough about this. This is a key, key part of growing the business. So all the best my friend. Thanks Rory.
Ep 437: How To Get Better Outputs Using ChatGPT | Kyle Stout Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
Do you want to be better at using AI to write copy? Well, I do. And if you happen to be in the category of me and millions of other people,
AJV (01:09):
It also sounds a little stiff or perhaps a little static or generic, or it feels like you could have read that anywhere else on the planet. It doesn’t cater to your avatar. And probably just generally speaking, it doesn’t sound like you it doesn’t sound like you. Well, we’re gonna talk about a few tips that you can start using right now to give chat g p t better prompts in order to get you better output. So here, here we go. You ready? I’m ready. Let’s do this. Number one, start by training chat, G p t. You can train chat, g p t and that means you have to teach chat, G p t how to write for you. It has to get to know you, your company, your products, and your avatar. So start with having it create your ideal avatar.
AJV (02:02):
So actually start by saying like, please create my ideal customer avatar based on blankety blank, blank, blank. Based on, you know, and this is just an example of mine. Hey, please create me a, an ideal customer avatar that is a female age, 35 to 45, who is successful in her career, lives in the United States, makes over six figures who is super ambitious and driven, but struggles with feeling not worthy, not enough, feeling invisible. You know, you kind of just go through the process, right? So first of all, you have to know who your avatar is. It cannot make it for you. But what you wanna do is you want to have it create your ideal profile by you telling it all of the demographics and psychographics, right? Where do they live? How old are they? What’s their industry? What’s their,
AJV (02:59):
Their socioeconomic status? And then the psychographics. How do they feel? What are their goals? What are they looking for? What are their fears? All the things. But by feeding it into that and having it create your profile, it will remember that as you start giving it new prompts, or you can just copy and paste those, that prompt or that output that it gives you and copy and paste and saying, Hey, please create me a landing page for X product that caters to, and then you can copy and paste and insert your ideal profile. But the thing is, is like, the more that you teach it, the more that it remembers. So the more that you do in there, it’s gonna remember that time after time again. So step one is train it on your ideal avatar. Step two is train it on your products, right?
AJV (03:46):
So the next thing you’d be is, please write me a product service or program description that is fill in the gaps. If I’m just using a brand builders group, it would say, I would say, Hey, please write. I wouldn’t say, Hey, but I would say, please write me a service description for a one-on-one personal brand coaching program that includes unlimited events to two day live experiences in Nashville, Tennessee. That includes 14 course curriculum access that in, you know, I would keep going on and on, and then it’s gonna write that. So I’m going to feed it my current descriptions. Now, if you don’t have a current, you know, product or service description, it can help you. But it’s gotta know your avatar and it’s gotta know who you are, what it’s for. It’s gotta know your company all the things that it’s gonna do.
AJV (04:39):
And so this is better suited for once you have your clear right service offering, your product offering, then have it go in there and have it build that this is a part of training it. It’s not that you’re u using chat g p T to create everything. You don’t have some of that work you gotta do yourself, right? That’s your job. And that’s why companies like Brand Builders Group exist, is we help with that part of the strategy, but it’s to help feed it into chat G P t to train it. So it’s now it’s learning who your avatar is, what your product is all about, or your service is all about. Then you wanna also teach it about your company, right? So for me it would be, you know, help create a company profile for brand builders Group who blank, right? So I’m going to help help it learn about brand builders group. So in my case, I would say like brand build create a pro a company profile for brand builders group who specializes in servicing the bur the personal brand strategy arena, who we cater to, coaches, consultants, speakers, authors, entrepreneurs, small businesses, small business owners, buy dah, dah, right? So I’m gonna feed all of the things that we already have established
AJV (05:57):
About our avatar, about our offering, about our company is an effort to train, chat, G p T. So that’s step one. That was a long step one, but that’s step one. Step two is keep everything in one chat thread so you can build off of each new prompt. That’s a quick and easy one. Number two, use prior prompts in your new prompts to get more specific. So you can just copy and paste, use the little clipboard icon right there in chat, g p t, copy and paste the avatar. And you say, Hey, write me a email that caters to this avatar for this service offering, right? And you could just copy and paste the whole thing in there. It’s long, right? So some of those prompts are gonna be long, but the more that you do that upfront, the less you have to do it later on.
AJV (06:45):
Okay? That would be the the third thing. Fourth thing, be specific with what you want, right? So if you’re going, Hey, write me a landing page an active voice use X copywriting formula. So for us, it’s like, Hey, please write me a landing page, an active voice using the 15 Ps of copywriting from brand builders group who caters to blank avatar. That is not a discount oriented service offering that blank, blank, blank, right? And so I’m talking about be specific. So I would include things like please use humor, be concise. This is for a first time buyer. On and on, right? I’m gonna give you some of those examples in a second, but be specific, right? The more you do this upfront, the less you have to do it later on, or it changes, right? Use things like, are you looking for active voice, which is what most of us are probably wanting, or is it passive voice?
AJV (07:51):
Is this for a first time buyer? Is it for a repeat customer? Is it a, a re-engagement campaign of some sort for people who showed interest but never purchased or they did purchase, but it was X amount of years ago. Is this a discount, seasonal discount type of thing? Do you include a discount or not? Is this seasonal or not? Right? Is this something that you do every summer or every winter, every Christmas, every back to school, whatever. Do you want it to include humor? Do you want it to be serious? Do you want it to be verbose? Do you want it to be concise? Do you want it to be in the voice of a certain person, right? So it, you can say, write it in the brand voice of AJ Vaden from Brand Builders Group, or write it in the voice of c e o of Brand Builders Group. You can be that specific. In that case, you would also need to train it on you as a personal brand. You can say things like, oh yeah, I mentioned this. Like, is there a certain copywriting
AJV (08:55):
Formula that you want it to use? Use things that say, I like it. Please use an email. Like, and you could use examples of other people or other companies. You can give it feedback, right? Rewrite this with more humor or less humor, or make it longer. Make it shorter. Make it more nuanced with different things based on who they are in your list. It’s like these are long-term clients that I’m catering to for this. You can do it for the sales pipeline, you can do it for nurture. All of those things. You have to be concise that this is a, the first email of a five email series, or this is the second email of five emails. All of those things are the things that we need to think about that most of us aren’t thinking about when it comes to using chat G p t.
AJV (09:50):
So there’s a lot in here, but here’s what I would say as your takeaway from this is number one, train chat, G p t. Help it get to know you, your business, your product, your avatar. Number two, get specific. No upfront, is this a funny email? Is this a short email? Is it serious? Is that with an offer or not an offer? Is it for a first time buyer or an existing customer? Is it for a past customer? That does no, has no longer has any engagements with you? All of those things are what you wanna think through, detailed out first, because those are a part of the prompt that you need to get or give to get the output that’s actually going to be usable. And just note too, it’s like, it’s not gonna write it perfectly, but it will take you from a copywriter to a copy editor, which most of us can edit in our voice. But we struggle with writing it from top to bottom. That’s where chat g p t can help you, save you thousands of dollars, save you tens if not hundreds of hours and help you get something that you can use right away. So how do you get better outputs with chat G P T? You learn how to tell it what you want upfront, and that’s what we did right now. So go test it out. Go use it and tell me what you think.