Author: Nicole Gale

Ep 411: Eternal Life Part 1 | Strategy for Defeating Death

RV (00:00:03):
What is your strategy against death? I mean that seriously. What is your strategy for dealing with defeating or overcoming death? What is your philosophy about death? What do you believe about what happens after death? Ironically, this is probably one of the most important, if perhaps not the single most important questions for you to answer during your life. And yet, many of us speaking, at least for myself, my friends, my family, many of the people that I know and interface with, many of us spend a shockingly little amount of time thinking about or answering or even having any crafted philosophy at all about what happens after we die. And to me, from a logical standpoint, you put all religion and spiritual spirituality and, and, you know, theism, aside from a purely logical standpoint, this seems like an important question, one that we should spend a little bit of time thinking about, because one thing that I know is that 100% of humans that have ever lived have also died.
RV (00:01:36):
death has a 100% success rate. There is nobody that death hasn’t gotten right, like nobody who is still on this planet, who once was born, who is still here now, hundreds or thousands of years after they’ve been born. Everybody is gone. They have all died or disappeared or died and disappeared. And so there’s a pretty high likelihood that you and me and everyone we know is going to die sooner or later. And I don’t mean to be morbid about that, but I do mean to present you and to present myself with the sobering reality that we’re gonna die. We’re not gonna be here we are at some point. Our bodies, in their current form, in this current place are going to cease to exist in the way that they exist now. And so my question is, what is your strategy for that? What, what exactly do you believe about the afterlife?
RV (00:02:42):
Do you believe in reincarnation? Maybe you do. If you do, though, why? Like, what evidence is there for reincarnation? What, what logical or academic or scientific support beyond just your own personal convictions, beyond your own feelings, beyond your own instincts, beyond your own emotions, what evidence is there to support that? That’s real. I’m not saying that you have to have evidence for that. All of us, of course, you, myself included, we are all welcome to have whatever beliefs that we choose. But for me, as an analytic, not somebody who’s a pastor, but as someone who is a critical thinker, someone who is logical, someone who is systematic and pragmatic and practical, I just am curious to know, is there any evidence for what you believe? And what is the evidence for what you believe? Maybe you believe in heaven. So what evidence is there for that?
RV (00:03:45):
And how do you get into heaven? And is heaven really real? And if there, if there is a heaven, how confident are you that you are going to get in , right? Like, and what is that based on? So a lot of people, you know, I’ve, I’ve had these conversations, right? Anecdotally here, I’m, I’m speaking. But you know, I’ve, I’ve been around for more than 40 years in my life and, and have had a lot of, again, I’m, I would consider myself a critical thinker somebody who explores difficult and tough topics. And so, as I’ve asked people, you know, like, how do you get to heaven? A lot of people will say something like, well, you just have to be a good person. Which, you know, that’s a big part of me that goes, yeah, I, I buy that, that, that makes sense to me.

Ep 410: Hugs Help: How to Support People Who Are Grieving with Randy Stocker

RV (00:02):
Hey, I am gonna introduce you to a new friend of mine. His name is Randy Stalker, and I am having Randy on the show because of a few reasons. So first of all, I met Randy at the National Speakers Association, which has been a big part of my life, all the way from back from the time when I was like 20 years old. We met at a recent meeting and I always, always love meeting fellow NS AERs. But specifically it’s because of Randy’s topic. Now his topic is not one that is so hyper specific to personal branding and, you know, the things that we often talk about. But, you know, occasionally on this show, I will share personal development content. I’ve talked about how and why I stopped drinking, and I’ve shared some spiritual episodes and things. I’ve also had a lot of my, my friends, ed, mylett, and Jamie Kern Lima, etc, talk just more about like entrepreneurial stories.
RV (00:55):
But Randy is someone who has an expertise on helping people to deal with grief and loss. And he is the survivor on of a a pretty massive tragedy. And we’re gonna hear the story of that. He lost some family members that he’s gonna, I’m gonna let him tell the story, but what he’s done is he has turned it into a personal brand and he’s turned it into a career and he’s turned it into a message and a mission to help people figure out how to overcome loss brief you know, survival and, and really just he’s helped start a number of bereavement groups and you know, he’s just a, a good listener and, and a support. And so that’s something that I always struggle with which we’ll talk about. But anyways, Randy, welcome to the show.
RS (01:52):
Thank you, Rory. I appreciate the opportunity. So,
RV (01:55):
So tell me the story your story. I’d love, I’d, I’d love to, I’d love to start there. I know it’s, it’s probably something you’ve shared many times and I’m sure it’s painful, but I I think it’s a pretty, a pretty key part of, of the jumping off point of all this.
RS (02:09):
Absolutely. So on July 22nd, 2003, my two daughters, Janelle, who’s age 19 and Amy age nine, went to visit their grandpa and Grandma Stalker in Gibson City, Illinois. They spent the time back to school shopping with grandma, called my wife Shar, and said how much fun they were having all the money grandma spent on them. And then they were driving back home when a guy driving a fully loaded semi-truck speeding and reading a book broadsided the car where Janelle and Amy were sitting killing all three immediately.
RV (02:50):
So you lost your two daughters and your, was it your mom and my
RS (02:54):
And my mother? Yes.
RV (02:56):
Wow. All in all in one moment. Just like that.
RS (02:59):
Yeah. Janelle had just finished her freshman year of college at Dur Dury University in Springfield, Missouri. She asked me if she could spend time with grandpa and grandma before she went back for her sophomore year, which I thought was wonderful. Her 19 year old girl to ask that. Unfortunately, Rory, I made our nine year old daughter Amy go with her. Huh? I thought it would be good quality time for the two. I knew grandpa and grandma would love seeing them both, and so I made Amy go, which I regret to this day. But I always asked myself the question, was it the right thing to do? And the answer always yes.
RV (03:37):
What makes you say that? Like, how do you, how do you, how have you come around to, to that viewpoint?
RS (03:49):
Well, it’s, it’s always good for kids to spend time with their grandparents. Number one, you don’t anticipate your daughters are gonna get killed by a semi-truck, or they’re making a, about a three hour trip to see grandpa and grandma. The girls needed to spend more time together cuz Janelle’s going back to college. So I just said, Amy, you need to go and it’ll be good for you,
RV (04:13):
Uhhuh, . So you don’t, you’ve been able to not experience guilt from that or like feel, you know, which you shouldn’t, but like, I, I can’t imagine it’s easy to break free of that. Anyways, there,
RS (04:26):
There’s guilt for 19 years for doing that, but I always ask the same question, was it the right thing to do? And the answer’s always, yes, it was the right thing to do. Mm-Hmm.
RV (04:34):
.
RS (04:35):
So just because we do the right thing doesn’t mean we have the right results. And this was a terrible instance of that. So,
RV (04:44):
Yeah. So I thank you for sharing that. You know, I got two kids, I got two boys now, and it’s a different, you know, it’s a different way of seeing the world as a parent and I so I struggle with what to say, right? And, and I struggle with what to do. We had less than three miles from our house here where we live in Nashville just recently was a school shooting at the Covenant School. And we knew 11 children at that school two of which are our next door neighbors. One of ’em, which was in Bible study. Thankfully none of the kids we knew were kids that were injured. I mean, minor injuries, but no, no, no, no gunshot wounds. And, and nobody, no one that we knew died that day. But that was a massive, massive tragedy right down the street.
RV (05:47):
You know, I was in, I was in high school in Colorado the year that Columbine shooting happened. And you know, there there’s, there’s some of these just extraordinary tragedies, nine 11 tsunamis. And, and then there are the, the kind of more personal and private ones of, you know, I, I had a friend lose her husband unexpectedly a few weeks ago, and like a pretty good friend you know, people who lose a child and you just go like, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to say. I, I don’t want to say nothing, but I don’t, I really don’t wanna say the wrong thing. And so sometimes I say nothing like, can you help? Like what? Like what, what, what do we, what, what do we, what’s,
RS (06:36):
Yeah, what’s the you’re, you’re like most people and just like I was before I lost my daughter’s Roy. It’s not untypical. So lot of people start out by saying the wrong thing because we think, cuz we’ve heard it before, things like, I know exactly how you feel. You don’t wanna say that cuz you never know exactly how I feel or how that person’s feeling. You never say, call me if you need anything because I don’t, if I didn’t call you to mow my yard or shovel my snow beforehand, I’m not gonna call you now. So what you do say is, I miss him or her, him or her too. I cannot understand your pain. Just know that I am here for you. Or if you’ve experienced loss yourself having experienced loss, my self, my heart truly, truly goes out for you and your family. Always and your family in there. Okay. The simple, simple thing to say is, I am so, so sorry for your loss
RV (07:45):
And you don’t, I
RS (07:45):
Never tried to assume that you know what they’re going through because you don’t.
RV (07:51):
And do you not get, I mean the, you know, I’ve lost my grandparents never, like someone in my immediate family I mean, I’m a biological father died, but I, I didn’t really know him af I only knew him until I was like six months old. And so, like, I never really knew him. And like I have to think that you, you know, you have funerals and you’ve got insurance companies and you’ve got, you know, just so many things are going off it. And it’s, it is helpful to hear those things. I’m so, so sorry. Even though you hear it over and over from everybody else and it, it’s still just, that’s the, that’s still helpful to hear.
RS (08:37):
Yeah. Even better than that, don’t give the per person permission to grieve when you’re sitting down with somebody just to, just to talk to them doing a one-to-one. You only need to give them permission to grieve or to get mad to get with you. Huh? It helps ’em a lot cuz they’re trying to hold it in cuz they don’t wanna burst out and start crying in front of their good friend. Number two, shut up and let them talk.
RV (09:07):
Hmm.
RS (09:08):
Sometimes we try to solve problems, we try to find solutions. Guys, you can fix a broken arm or a cut finger. You can’t fix grief. You can’t cure grief When you lose somebody that you loved for a long time. It, it’s always gonna be right here. So the only thing that can cure that is that person comes back from the dead and that’s not gonna happen. So a lot of times we try to fix something that’s unfixable.
RV (09:41):
I mean I think that’s a good reminder of like, and I don’t know if that’s more of like a male brain issue or just everybody, but like, there’s a part of me that just wants to do something. It’s almost like I feel like if I were, if I were a good friend and if I cared, I would do something and I don’t know what to do. And so I try to like do something and say stupid stuff. And you’re, what I hear you saying is like listening is doing something and listening, giving them permission to listen or, or listening and giving them permission to experience whatever they need to experience is doing something.
RS (10:22):
Yeah. A lot of people walk away from this situation cuz they’re so uncomfortable with themselves.
RV (10:28):
Yeah.
RS (10:29):
Okay. My advice is to just be there. If it’s a good friend or a family member, you don’t have to say anything. Just sit beside ’em and hold their hand or give ’em a hug. Just being there means so much. Some of the cliches we heard and still hear, I’m heals all wounds. What the heck does that mean? Hear it all the time. They are in a better place. So many people said that to me and I said, you know, I’m sure heaven’s a lot better place than this stupid earth we live on, but my daughters are doing pretty good with us in Quincy, Illinois. But we also heard God never gives you more than you can than you can handle. And God really tested me by taking my mom and my two daughters at once. It’s a true saying, but did I wanna hear it? Absolutely not .
RV (11:21):
Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. That’s, yeah. That, that’s that’s powerful. Yeah. You could, it it, you can see now, like in a moment talking about it now of going, even if it’s something that really helps,
RS (11:34):
Even
RV (11:34):
If it’s, even if it’s true, it’s not helpful. It’s
RS (11:37):
True and it’s hurtful.
RV (11:40):
Mm-Hmm.
RS (11:41):
, something I really talk about when I’m presenting out there is understanding what a griever’s really thinking. Sometimes I’m hurting, we really don’t want to get our friends involved because think it’s gonna ruin their day or ruin their life or something. So I share nine things that people need to understand what a griever wants to tell you, but probably won’t tell you for those reasons.
RV (12:05):
Mm-Hmm.
RS (12:06):
Number one, please be patient and understanding with me.
RV (12:13):
Hmm.
RS (12:13):
Patient being a key word. Number two, please let me grieve in my own way and in my own time. Don’t tell me how to grieve. Don’t tell me when to grieve. Don’t tell me when to start grieving and stop grieving.
RV (12:29):
Hold on. And I wanna, so I wanna go back to the patient one for a second. So when you say, please be patient and understanding with me, that means like, don’t pressure me to do stuff. Be okay if I’m unresponsive for a while. Like if I disappear for if I disappear for a little bit, I’m not at the parties, I’m not whatever. I mean, I if if it’s an employee, it’s, I may be not coming back at work or colleague. I mean, is that, are those all the things when you say like, be patient with me? Yeah.
RS (12:58):
Be patient means I am not the same person I was yesterday. Okay. I mean, once my daughters were killed and my mom were killed, I, I changed from the Randy stalker that was fun-loving and happy and liked to drink a beer with the guys. I go to a bible studying or something to this angry, frustrated person that couldn’t understand why his daughters weren’t there. And every time he saw other girls their age got mad, got angry, got frustrated. So a a person who’s grieving is not the same buddy I had yesterday. So be patient with them because they will get to the point, maybe they’ll be close to that same person, but maybe not.
RV (13:48):
Yeah.
RS (13:48):
How about the things,
RV (13:50):
I can’t imagine what that would be like to see kids your same, that were the age of your kids.
RS (13:57):
Yeah. Please forgive me if I say something stupid insensitive. Okay. When you’re grieving your mind’s not the same. You say a lot of dumb things and I upset so many people, they were trying to comfort me. Oh, they were having fun with their kids and I would get mad. So I was just a totally different person. So you just gotta understand that
RV (14:20):
Is that, that’s number three you’re talking about there?
RS (14:24):
It’s number four. Yeah.
RV (14:24):
Number four. Yeah. And when you say let, let me grieve in my own way, like, you know, I just wanna spend like a minute on each one of these. Oh, you bet. And, and y’all, and I don’t, I didn’t mention this, but Randy has a book called Hugs Help. Our story of tragic loss, survival and helping others as you can tell, it’s, you know, it’s very practical. I mean emotional but very practical and like these things that we’re, we’re running through right now. And, and so grieving in my own way, I feel like that comes back to what you said a little bit earlier of the things not to say as like, oh, you should grieve like this, or I understand what it feels like, or God won’t give you more than you can handle or any, anything that sort of leads lets on in a presumptuous way that like, I know what you’re going through or I know what is best for you. It’s actually way better to just sit and go, I have nothing for you. Like, I don’t know what to do. I can’t imagine how you’re feeling. I be
RS (15:26):
Honest. Yes. I
RV (15:27):
Have no recommendation. I don’t even know what to say. I just want you to know that I care and I’m here, basically. Yeah.
RS (15:33):
Be a supporter of somebody who’s grieving. Don’t be a comforter, be a supporter.
RV (15:38):
What’s the
RS (15:38):
Difference? Wherever you can help them get around. Help ’em with their kids, mow their yard, whatever it takes. Just help take some of the additional stresses away so they can concentrate on their grief and surviving their grief and getting through their grief.
RV (15:55):
Ah, so when you say that really
RS (15:56):
On, on the fringes, help ’em on the fringes to take some of the stress away.
RV (16:00):
Yeah. So when you say be a supporter, you’re saying like, take care of the practical things. Don’t try to like do the emotional things.
RS (16:07):
Yes.
RV (16:09):
Yeah. That’s interesting. I feel that way about like having a baby like that, having, having kids rocked my world and I’m just like, I was just not prepared emotionally for what being a dad would be like and how difficult the whole thing was. Yeah. And like what helped so much was people bringing dinner, which it was like, never in my life could, I imagine for one moment that like bringing someone bringing dinner would make such a huge difference as when we had our first kid and, and our second kid of just like, there’s so much going on. Just getting dinner together is a massive feat. So that’s interesting. That’s the connection I make there. When you you’re, that’s like what you’re talking about.
RS (16:49):
Yeah. Tie that into a funeral though. In the funeral you have their visitation, you have people bringing all kinds of casseroles and food and drinks to your house once a funeral’s over the house is empty. I mean, we had hundreds of people, thousands to come to the visitation, hundreds come to the house and all of a sudden it was just haw and I and nothing left. That’s when you really need to step up as a friend. Okay. When it gets really quiet and don’t, don’t ever think you are bothering them cuz they’re thinking, why hasn’t Rory called me? Why hasn’t AJ stopped by my house? Don’t they like me anymore? That’s where I need to step up and start helping people.
RV (17:32):
Yeah. That and then I think it’s, it’s, it’s just, it’s just so ironic because it’s sort of like miscommunication. Like the definition of miscommunication where you go somebody is maybe not calling or not stopping by because they’re so afraid they’re gonna say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing. And yet you’re saying all you, all you have to do is be there and don’t do anything else or just be there and help with the basics. Like, and it’s so, it’s so simple. It’s just, you know,
RS (18:02):
We try to do more than we’re, than we should be doing.
RV (18:04):
Yeah, totally. Totally. so you said please forgive me if I’m, I’m you know, if I say something silly or insensitive what else, what, what are some of the others? These are so help, this is so helpful, Randy.
RS (18:18):
Yeah. The, the fifth one is a lot of people are scared to bring up the name of the deceased. They, they think it’s going to make us start crying or get angry. Like we’ve, for like, I’d forgotten my mom and my two daughters were killed.
RV (18:33):
Totally.
RS (18:33):
Okay. That is, that’s a fear we shouldn’t have because people who are grieving want to hear the names of their loved ones. They want to hear stories, really
RV (18:44):
Pictures.
RS (18:45):
Oh, absolutely. I run a big Facebook site and to a t people want to hear stories about their loved one because we never want them to ever be forgotten. Ever. So proactively say, bring up a story or show a picture. If you
RV (19:03):
Really not
RS (19:04):
Comfortable, if you’re not comfortable doing that, say, Hey, I remembered a great story about your dad. It made me laugh this morning. Can I share it with you? So ask for permission.
RV (19:17):
Okay. Yeah. That is, I am exactly the opposite of that. I feel, I feel like, oh my gosh, I just, I don’t want to tiptoe into anything that’s gonna make them sad. It’s really sad. I worry less about making ’em angry. I worry about going, here we are having a beautiful day and now I’m gonna bring up something. You know, like AJ’s mom died when she was 15 and sometimes I’m just like, I can’t imagine how sad to grow up and to get married and to have kids and not have your mom there. And so it’s like I sometimes am afraid to even say something about my mom because I’m so, I just feel like it’s gonna make her feel bad. You know? Like, so that’s super helpful. I would not have guessed that at all.
RS (20:01):
Roy, ask her, ask her to tell you a story about her mom when she was 12. Okay. Proactively ask her. I mean, she would love to talk about her mom, but she’s not gonna bring it up cuz you don’t bring it up. Okay. I, 19 years later, I still love hearing stories about mom and Janelle. Naomi don’t hear ’em very often. Sometimes it brings a tear to my eye. Nothing wrong with that. Same with you. For all the people you’ve lost or anybody’s lost out there who actively share a story with them.
RV (20:32):
Yeah. That’s powerful.
RS (20:35):
Okay. Number eight, never stop calling me. Sometimes we think, well we’re, we’re not gonna call today because all their other friends are calling. Well, all the friends are saying, well, we’re not gonna call today because all their friends are, are calling a graver is waiting in hope. And that phone rings for somebody just to say, Hey, I’m thinking about you today. Okay. So never stop that calling and it’s just not on the date of death. You gotta kick in mind the secondary losses. I didn’t just lose my mom and my two daughters. I had lost college graduations. I had lost walking my daughters down the aisle. Uhhuh . I lost my mom being grandmother to the 18 other grandkids in the family. Okay. Grievers think about that. All the time. All the time.
RV (21:27):
Yeah. I heard, and I once heard I had a good, I had a good friend who lost her dad. And I remember her telling me that the entire first year that somebody’s gone, every single holiday, every single annual event, whether it’s Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Halloween, summer vacation, their birthday, like, it’s like they experienced the grief over and over again. Like the whole year of, she used to call it, it was the, she called it the year of firsts. And she was like, when somebody dies, it’s like the, it’s not just the day. It’s like there’s this whole year of first and every time, it’s like the first Christmas with Adam, the first vacation with Adam, em, the first time at home with without em the first, the first the the, the first time we go back to the golf course that we used to go to. Like, and that really hit me of like, wow, that, that means you’re at least for a year, it’s like pretty intense. Not just, oh this happened. There’s a funeral and like we all are all moving on now.
RS (22:39):
Yeah. One thing to keep in mind too, it’s not just the actual day. Grief builds up, it builds up inside of a body. Okay. Father’s Day, I hate the most cause I don’t have two of my daughters or Father’s Day. So three or four or five days before Father’s Day, I can feel the grief starting on my gut and working its toy up. And this gotta to explode. So the best time to call people is two or three or four days before those key events say, Hey, I’m thinking about you, I’m praying for you. I’m here to help. Okay.
RV (23:15):
Is that, let’s
RS (23:15):
Say get to the actual day, it’s, the buildup is worse than the actual day.
RV (23:21):
Ah,
RS (23:22):
Today is another day in their life, but the buildup anticipating thickness is gonna be a terrible day is a lot worse than the actual day.
RV (23:30):
Wow. Yeah. That’s insightful to just go like, yeah. I mean I guess I imagine you never have another Father’s Day where you don’t, you just never have another Father’s Day where you don’t think about it. And so you’re leading up, up to that moment. Can can I ask you about like the you know, spiritually, so I I’m a hardcore Bible thumping Jesus freak. We, we are, we, we, we
RS (23:53):
Hardcore Bible thumping Jesus freak. Okay. Jesus
RV (23:56):
Freak. Yeah. So, you know, we’re, we’re Christians. We believe in heaven. In fact, in fact, I am, I haven’t shared this publicly anywhere, but for the last several months I’ve actually been working on something that I’m, I I’m, it’s a, it’s called Getting into Heaven. And it’s, it’s seven, it’s seven questions that I think every intelligent skeptic should ask about Jesus. And I’m not really doing it. The, the, the reason I’m putting it together is for my sons, for Jasper and Liam. It’s gonna be dedicated to them. And I want them to know, I want them to know why daddy believes in the logical reasons of miracles, a resurrection and Jesus. So that’s a very personal and powerful thing for me and our family. Separate if whether or not somebody is a Christian or believes in heaven or is an atheist or whatever, when somebody loses somebody, especially when you don’t know what their faith is like, it’s one thing if I go, I know you’re a Christian, we go to church, we have the same beliefs.
RV (25:10):
I, you know, I can send them a Bible verse, I can send ’em something. If there’s somebody who I don’t know if they’re a Christian or I know they’re of a different religious faith and I don’t know much about that faith or like, you know, whatever, like a, you know, it’s not, we don’t have a shared spiritual belief system. Or, or I know they actively don’t have a faith. Like how much does the, you know, does it help this, like you, you already said they’re in a better place. Like, that’s not a good thing to say. That doesn’t really, even if it’s true, it doesn’t help. Is there anything else around the spiritual conversation, you know, like, I’m praying for you as a good example too, cuz I go like, that’s gotta be another thing that everybody says. And, and first of all it’s like, are they really, you know, like, you know, so, so what are some things around that?
RS (26:04):
Okay. That that’s, that’s a fair question. Yeah. We are we’re good Catholics. Okay. We live in Quincy, Illinois. When this happened part of my presentation about everybody grieves differently. Okay. My wife and I had been married 21 years. When the girls were killed, she would be in church every single day. She felt more comfortable in church, closer to God and closer to her church friends. I tried, I would go to mass every single Sunday. I would sit about halfway through mass and I’d start crying and I’d cry because why am I worshiping this God that took my daughters up to heaven? Yeah, I know they’re in heaven. I know I’m gonna see them again, but why would God take them away from me? One day I left mass, I went out to the cemetery. I was yelling and kicking and screaming and crying.
RS (26:57):
Somebody walked up behind me, Roy and put their hands on my shoulders and he said, son, what’s, you know, what’s the matter? I explained that I was so frustrated with God for not protecting my family. My prayer every night is take care of my family, take care of my wife, my kids, and grandkids, yours, his well. And this guy explained free will to me. And he basically said that God gives us all the free will to make our own decisions good, bad, right or wrong. And God didn’t take my daughters to heaven. God gave this truck driver free will, like he gives it to you. And me and the truck driver made some stupid, stupid, stupid mistakes. So after, instead of blaming God or taking Janelle naming mom to heaven, I started thanking God Rory for the 19 years I had with Janelle. And for the nine years I had with Amy.
RS (27:55):
And that changed my life. So instead of hating God, which I hate you worse hate, but that’s how I felt for a long time. I started thanking him cuz I didn’t really have to have them, he didn’t have to give ’em to me at all. I had 19 years with one and nine with the other. As far as your question, I think you need to stick with your faith. Okay. If you’re talking to somebody that has different faith, doesn’t matter. Use what you want to say. It’s gotta come from the heart. And if it doesn’t come from the heart, it’s not near as meaningful. Mm-Hmm. . Okay. Okay. I would, I would always say, well, you’re gonna see them again someday. Okay. If it’s not our God in heaven, it’s, it’s your God, wherever, but you’re gonna see them again someday.
RV (28:43):
Yeah. That feels like your
RV (28:44):
Question. It’s, that feels totally, and that feels like a hopeful thing for, that feels like a hopeful thing, just no matter what the scenario is. Like I’ll get to see him again someday. Like that’s a Absolutely. That’s, that’s a very hopeful yeah, that’s a, that’s, that’s a really hopeful thing. So I want to, so that’s super helpful. So can we talk about the truck driver for a minute? Because on the one hand you have to, I mean, like, there’s so much, I mean, your story just makes me cry, Randy, because it’s just, it’s just, it’s just so, it makes me so sad. And I know there’s people listening that are going through it right now, right? Like they’re going through it right now and
RS (29:27):
Presentations bring out a lot of, lot of tears. Roy,
RV (29:30):
I, I’ve, I can’t imagine tears
RS (29:32):
Are okay. It means you care, it means you love somebody.
RV (29:35):
I c I can’t hardly talk, talk to you right now. They’re, but you know, it’s like, first of all, you have to reconcile the loss of somebody, then you have to reconcile your life without that person. Then you have to reconcile with God. And then in your case, you have to reconcile with this other person. Maybe not reconcile with them directly or, but like, there’s a, that doesn’t just go away, right? Like there’s, there are, there’s feelings and emotions around that person.
RS (30:13):
Yeah.
RV (30:14):
Can you like, talk through that a little bit?
RS (30:16):
I, I can. He was a truck driver. His name is ran my, my same name unfortunately. After the death, the state of Illinois charged him with involuntary manslaughter. We went to court in Bloomington, Illinois. The judge asked a few questions and then the judge asked me to stand up and he said, I’m sorry Mr. Stocker, but I cannot charge this guy with anything. He didn’t mean to kill your family. This is before distracted driving was the terminology it is now. But I think you’re getting to the point, did I forgive that driver or not? And I get this question asked pretty much every presentation I do. And I say, I, I forgive the driver. I know he didn’t kill them on purpose, but I have not yet forgiven his stupidity. Okay. It was stupid, stupid thing he did to read a book while driving a truck. So I forgive the driver, but not his stupidity. What are your thoughts there?
RV (31:28):
W well, I guess I just took
RS (31:29):
Me a while to get to that. So,
RV (31:30):
Yeah, I mean my, how long did it take to, to get to that point?
RS (31:35):
After that trial, I actually actually asked to speak to the truck driver and his wife. And they put us in a small room at the courthouse and she said they were so sorry and gave me a big hug, but he didn’t even get out of his truck to see if my family was alive or not. Roy, he sat in his cabin and called somebody didn’t even check. So that, that part really hurt me, him not even looking to see if they were alive or needed help or anything. So it took a long time, but probably two or three years after they were killed, they started answering that way. I forgive the driver, but not a stupidity.
RV (32:20):
Yeah. I mean,
RV (32:22):
What the, whatever the, there’s, there’s always a scenario around how it happened. You know, why it happened. I, I’m a big, I’m a, I’m, I’m a big believer that forgiveness is really, you know, it, it sets, it sets you free as the one who was harmed more, more than it has anything to do with setting them free. But anyways, it’s just, I I I, I I can’t imagine. So buddy, I, I, I want to point people towards the book Hugs help our story of tragic loss, survival and helping others. And then, you know, tell me about the hugs part of it. You know, where does the, where does the, the title come from? Because we haven’t, we haven’t talked about it, but as soon as, as soon as I saw it, I was like, man, I really even just love the title of this because it, it feels, I guess this whole, this whole topic of just death.
RV (33:23):
You know, and I, I firmly believe in heaven. Like I am absolutely convicted in, you know, what are my beliefs? And, and I’ve re researched them at length over the course of my life, both from a spiritual and emotional perspective, but especially from a logical and rational and archeological perspective. And no matter, no matter what, it still feels so hopeless. It still feels so desperate. Like, you know if I lost my kids or my wife, like, it’s like I just, I have no control over this. And, you know, this is going to happen in some way to one of us, some someday. And I think there’s so much about what you talk about Randy, that’s just tactical and practical and you know, the, the hug especially of everything somehow is ma is, it feels magical to me as like the thing. So can you just tell us like, where, where, where’s the fir first of all, tell us where, where do you want people to go to get the book or to connect with you or like learn about, you know, having you speak and then, and then I wanna hear the story of the, the title.
RS (34:34):
Okay, good. The book’s on amazon.com, just write in Hugs, help Randy Stalker. If you want to, a lot of people like autograph copy, so they can go to my website hugs help.org, and they can order an autograph copy and I’ll send it right from here. Venmo is the only way I take payment for that, but if they have Venmo does it that way. I’ve, I presented about 35 times my first year since the book has released mm-hmm. , I’m looking for businesses or hospitals or emergency room people, churches, associations. I think my message goes to just about anybody
RV (35:18):
Indeed.
RS (35:19):
Cuz we all need to understand grief. We need to understand how to help those that are grieving. So I’m looking for the opportunity to talk to as many people as I can. As you can tell, I’m very open with my presentation. Sometimes I shed a tear while I’m speaking. They need to understand that about half the time it’s I tear up, but mm-hmm.
RV (35:40):
.
RS (35:43):
And then as far as the Hugs help, I, I wrote the book in eight months, during October. It was released May 23rd. Actually a year ago today it was released. Okay. It didn’t have a title. So I went to see my dad in Gibson City, Illinois. Had a nice couple days with him. He is a big brood of a guy, Uhhuh . And as I was leaving, he gave me a big hug and told me he loved me, which he didn’t do very often growing up. And as I was driving home back to Rochester, Minnesota, which is where we live, I named the book Hugs Help, cuz that hug helped me a lot. And if you think about a hug, a hug is really sharing pain between two people, different kinds of hugs. But if somebody hugs me and says, I’m so sorry for your loss, means a heck lot more than a, a postcard or a tech. Instead, I’m thinking of you.
RV (36:38):
Yeah.
RS (36:38):
That’s where it came from. I’m proud of the title. It’s getting a pretty good name out there. So
RV (36:44):
It is the, you know, the other, the other thing I love about hugs, I mean, it’s so helpful to know what, what, not to say, what to say and all this, you know, but I think, you know, one of the things that really sticks with me, I, from, from what you’ve said and talk about is just being there. Like, literally just being there. You don’t have to say anything. And in order to give a hug, you have to be there.
RS (37:13):
Yep.
RV (37:14):
Like, and that’s, I, that’s why I was like, man, this really is the perfect, the perfect title. It’s memorable, it’s clear, it’s what people want. It, it, it’s what the grieving person wants. And it’s also to me what the, what the people surrounding the situation want, which is a clear answer for how can I help, what can I do? And just knowing like it’s, you know, hugs is a great way to do it. You’re not, you’re just there. You’re not saying anything. You’re not fixing anything. You’re not coaching anybody on how they should feel.
RS (37:54):
Just there.
RV (37:55):
You’re just there and you’re just holding them. Yeah. And well, I’d
RS (37:59):
Like to share five takeaways with people. Do we have time for that? Sure. Okay. Number one, always remember that everybody grieves differently. My wife and I were night and day grieving. She didn’t cry for four months after our daughters were killed.
RV (38:14):
Wow.
RS (38:15):
Four months. And I was just a, just a ball baby every single day. So when you’re trying to help people understand that husband may grieve differently than the wife and the kids and everybody else, number two, you cannot grieve wrong. Don’t ever let anybody tell you how to grieve, when to grieve or when to stop grieving. If you feel like crying cry. If you feel like screaming scream, you cannot grieve wrong. Number three, always try to accept a griever for who they are. Now, I’m never gonna be the Randy stalker before July 22nd, 2003. He’s long gone. I’m a new person. Everybody that goes through tragedy is a new person, not a better person, not a worse person, just a different person. Number four, try to really hard to understand the grieving process. We share nine steps there with you. Just a lot of times people won’t say what’s on their mind. They can tell you how to help ’em, but they won’t. So if you understand what they’re going through, it will help them. And number five, what you just said, just be there for them. You can’t fix it. Nothing you can do to just be there. That’s what a graver needs And hugs do help Roy.
RV (39:41):
Yeah. Amen. Well, Randy, thank you for the courage and the boldness of sharing your story. I I’m convinced it’s gonna help a whole bunch, a whole bunch of people, and I’m, I’m very grateful to have met you and to have had this encounter and this opportunity to get this instruction from you. It gives me a lot more confidence in, you know, approaching this situation in a way of being able, being able to be helpful to, to people going through a hard time. And so again, you know, you guys can go to hu Hugs help dot org Right? Is the website. And you can, or you can grab the book Hugs, help on Amazon and walk you through this. Randy I really wish you the best man. I, I’m, I’m praying for your message to get out there to, to help a lot of people. I know there’s a lot of people who struggle with grief and struggle with how to support a griever. And there’s, you know, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of death and tragedy and heartbreak going on in the world. And so I think this is a really, really needed message. So we love you. We’re cheering for you. We’re grateful for you. Keep on going, my friend.
RS (40:53):
Take care, Rory. Thank you. Okay.

Ep 409: 3 Things To Know Before You Write A Book | Risha Grant Episode Recap

AJV (00:02):
So this is for the person who has always thought I have this great idea. It needs to be a book. Or maybe it’s for the person that gets told all the time, wow, you’re such a great speaker, or a great storyteller, or, wow, you have an amazing story. You need to write a book. So that is who this particular message is for today. And here’s what I have to say about that. There are three core philosophies that I have along with my company, brand Builders Group around the art and the science of writing, sell and selling books. Number one, a book should be the last thing you do not The first thing a book is when you have a truly vetted idea and you have enough content for it to actually be a book, not a chapter of a book, not a blog, not a podcast, but an actual 200 to 300 page book, which means you need to have points and stories and frameworks.
AJV (01:14):
And I idea for a book is not a book. A great story is a great story, not always a book. And I often wonder when people started writing these books, did they ever ask themselves, should this be a book, a chapter of a book, or a blog, or even just a conversation on a podcast? Because great ideas and great stories can be any one of those things. It does not have to be a truly vetted and fully published book for it to make a huge impact. And so I have read many books where at the end of it, I’m like, man, that would’ve been a great blog . That would’ve been a great chapter. But that was not a great book. And that is because an idea by itself is not enough. You have to have an idea that then is broken apart and separated with chapters.
AJV (02:12):
And each of those chapters has to have different stories and points and frameworks that all build together, right? In a through line of what’s an overarching theme of this body of work, which we call a book. And that doesn’t start in the beginning. That’s the end, right? That’s the conclusion, right? You don’t start writing a book with a hypothesis. You start writing a book when you have the conclusion, when you have all the information. And that takes time. It takes talking about it a lot writing about it a lot creating content about it a lot, speaking about it a lot. So if you have a great idea or you have a great story, the first thing you do is not write a book, sorry, to burst your bubble on that
AJV (02:58):
One. The first thing you do is you start talking about it. You start blogging about it. You start writing content about it. You start making videos about it. You start speaking for free or for money, but you start speaking about it. It just needs to be vetted. You need to know what people remember, what appeals to them what you love talking about. Like what stories should you use? And then once you’ve done that for an adequate amount of time, and I’m not gonna put a timeframe on there for an adequate amount of time where you now have an entirely vetted, like, this is the main theme. These are the points I wanna make, these are the stories that support those, and here’s what I wanna teach people, i e frameworks, then, then you’re ready to write the book.
AJV (03:46):
But it’s the last thing you do, not the first thing you do, right? So that’s number one. Is that writing a book is the last thing you do, not the first thing you do. And if you think you have a great idea, start with a blog , right? And then build from there. But don’t start with a book. So that’s number one. Number two, that is that writing a book is just a piece of the puzzle. It is not the whole puzzle. You have to write a great book with great content. That’s the prerequisite, right? That’s the given, right? The expectation is that, well, of course you have good content, that’s why you’re putting it in a book, right? That’s the pre prerequisite to enter into the publishing field. And again, I don’t care if it’s self hybrid or, you know, traditional at the point of writing a book is you think it’s gonna help somebody, right?
AJV (04:36):
You, you think that the message that you have will help impact someone to change their life or their business for the better. Otherwise why do it? Because it takes a ton of your time, energy, resources, and money. So if it’s not going to be something that you’re deeply passionate about talking about for a long time, then write a book, right? So back to this is that writing is just part one. And what most people don’t spend near enough time thinking about and planning and executing is the sales and marketing plan. And I did say those, those in order sales and marketing, right? If you think that you’re going to write a book and send it to your email list, even if you have a huge email list, it will likely not sell as many books as you think. If you have a huge social media following and you think that you can write a book and just use your audience, I think you will most likely be severely disappointed in how even that does not move many books. That’s marketing. And I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it, of course you should do that. Of course, you should market your email list. Of course you should be marketing it on social media and doing a podcast tour and doing all the
AJV (05:56):
Things. Yes, but that’s not the bulk of what actually moves books. What actually moves books is you the author selling. Now I say you the author because you are the best and most well positioned person to make the sale. Now, that does not mean you can’t have support and help doing all these things. Of course you can. But when you think about how do I move books to get them in the hands of people that I think it will actually make a difference in, you literally have to think of old school selling. And here’s what I mean, my old school. Pick up a phone and call somebody. Pick up your phone, text somebody, engage with them, go speak to their group, go meet them in their office. They need to see a, a tangible copy of what this book is, why it’s important. And you need to start with the people who know you like you and trust you the most.
AJV (06:56):
So those are the people who have hired you before. They have paid for your services before. They have worked with you before. They’re the ones who were telling you that you need to write the book. Well, if they think you need to write the book, well then they need to buy a copy of the book, right? But it’s like that is sales. You need to pick up the phone and call people and give them a reason to buy these books. And hopefully you have some people who will buy lots of books at the same time, right? So bulk sales and as well as the individual orders. But you have to be a salesperson to be compelling enough to go pull out your credit card, click on this link and give me at least 24 99 to buy this book that takes sales and supplemental marketing, right?
AJV (07:41):
It’s not one or the other. It is both. But please hear me when I say it takes a sales effort, a sales plan, which means you actually have to have people to call on, right? So back to, are you ready to write the book? Do you have enough content? The second question to ask yourself, am I ready to write the book? I e do I have enough people in my audience in my my client sphere, in my, you know, friends and family sphere that I could actually get this in enough hands of people and make it, you know, marketable enough that this would actually spread and make a difference, right? That matters. Now, if you’re writing a book just because it’s a legacy book and you’re like, man, I just wanna get what I believe on paper, and I don’t care if I ever sell a copy.
AJV (08:28):
I’m not gonna try to, I’m just gonna have some for friends and family to give away. That’s a different story. This, this piece, this message is not for you today, right? This is for the person who’s going, no. Like, I want this book to make a massive impact. I want this to be a part of my business. I want this message to spread. I want this to be in the hands of people I care deeply about that this is who this is for. So number one the book is the last thing, not the first thing. A second thing is get sales ready, be sales ready. And then the third thing, and this is not in order per se, but the third thing is you have to know how you want to actually publish the book. That’s it. That’s it. An important part of this formula that maybe wasn’t such a part of the formula 10 years ago and definitely wasn’t a part of it 20 years ago when we wrote our book take the Stairs in 2010 is when it launched.
AJV (09:21):
And so that’s what 13 years ago, like, there was not a lot of awesome self pop publisher options where it was credible. There was hardly any even less than self hybrid options. I mean, it was like, if you really wanted to get your book in the mainstream, it was a traditional publisher, right? And it took us two years of hardcore whole hardcore sales and cold calling and prospecting and follow up to get an agent to even look at this much less considerate, right? So two years of just going like, please , here’s why. While we were building our audience, building the platform in the background, no current day 2023, it’s a different story. It’s a different story. There are incredible hybrid publishers out there that are creating massive distribution channels and hybrid publishers that are helping their authors hit the bestseller list, right? That’s something that we do at brand builders groups for all of our clients and our community.
AJV (10:21):
It’s like, we’ll do your fulfillment for you, right? So it’s like that’s something that we do for our members at Brand Builders Group because we care deeply about getting your message into the hands of others. There are good self-publishers. Like there are books out there that are self-published like Miracle Morning, Hal l Rod, where it has sold it has sold millions of copies and he gets to keep every dollar of it, right? But that this is an important part of the journey. ’cause What, here’s what people think. They think I’m going to get an agent, which is pretty much necessary in order to work with a traditional publisher. I’m gonna get a big advance and whew, my job is done. Earn not true. That’s not how it works. Agents sell your book proposal to publishers. Publishers publish your book. They help edit it, they help formatting, they help with not help.
AJV (11:11):
They tell you what the cover’s going to be. But they do those com right components. They put it into a form of a book where you can flip pages and read it. They do not sell your book. Now, maybe if you’re Michelle Obama, they will help market your book for you. But if you are not Michelle Obama, they do not sell your book. They do not market your book. So the question is if publishers publish and editors edit, then who sells? And who does that? You do the author, that’s your job, right? So being an author today also means that you are a sales person. Going back to step two. But that is an important part of the journey of like the advance. What that really should be considered is like, this is an upfront amount of money that I’m gonna reinvest back into the book launch.
AJV (12:01):
Because if you get a big advance, that means that you’re not going to make any additional money until you earn that out. And royalties. So people are always like, well, I don’t have the money to traditional, or I don’t have the money to self-publish, which is why I need a traditional publisher. I don’t have the money to do a hybrid publishing deal because that takes my money upfront. Well, the truth is, is it takes your money both ways. It doesn’t matter. You’re just going to ex have an expenditure upfront that you then get to earn and keep all the money on the backend, or you’re not gonna have an expenditure upfront, but you’re going to make pennies on the dollar for the life of that book. It takes your money any way you look at it. It’s just, do you have the money to invest upfront?
AJV (12:50):
Yes or no? And that is really the only thing to decide because it does take your money. It doesn’t matter how you do it. It’s an investment of time, energy, and financial means to get a book in the hands of people that it will make a difference. And so deciding which route to go is really important. And if you think that, you know, oh, if I do it this way, I’m gonna get all this support. Think again. There are things that people do and there are silos, and then there are things that are up to you and there are some things that are gonna be on your plate regardless of which path you go. And sale, selling and marketing, the book is one of those things. So consider those things as you’re, you know, going through the options of like, how would I wanna do this?
AJV (13:33):
And it’s like, do I want to have more money for the long tail? Do I have enough confidence in myself to sell this at the back of the room or to sell this to clients or not? Right? And tho those things make a big difference. Do I have enough money upfront to be able to make that upfront investment, but then earn it back and I get to keep it versus no, I’ll take this money upfront, but that money costs me a lot in the long run. ’cause I won’t make another dollar until all of that is earned out. And then I’ll make very small royalties for the rest of the lifetime of that book. So, like I said, it’s gonna take your money either way. It’s just which way makes more sense for you. So those are the three things that you should know as you prepare on the adventure. ’cause That’s what it is. There’s peaks and valleys of writing a book. Check out our entire podcast interview with Isha Grant to hear more about all that it takes to write your first book. We’ll see you next time.

Ep 408: So, You Want To Write A Book. Now What with Risha Grant

AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody, this is AJ Vaden, one of your co-hosts on the influential Personal brand. And I’m so excited to get to interview my friend Risha Grant today, because she’s awesome and y’all are gonna love her. But two, I just love getting to talk to first time authors who have done the incredibly hard work to dream up the idea of a book, work with a traditional publisher, write it, get it sold, and then to get to talk to them right before it goes live is like one of the best things in the whole world. So you’re gonna get to hear a little bit about that journey. And before I formally introduce you, Teisha I just wanna remind everyone why you need to stick around for this particular episode because I know so many of the people in our audience and in the Brand Builders Group community have so many questions about what it takes to write a book.
AJV (00:57):
Should I try to get a traditional publisher? Should I self-publish? Should I do some sort of hybrid publisher? Like so many people talk about writing the book, and so few talk about selling the book. ’cause The truth is, if you actually want anyone to read it, they have to buy it. And then they have to be motivated and motivated enough to start the book. And that is what we’re gonna talk about today, is the journey from idea to writing, to publishing, to selling, and to actually having this make an impactful change in the readers of your book. And so, Isha is gonna walk us through what that journey look like, looks like for a first time author. And that is why you want to stick around. So if you have a dream of writing a book, you’re in the middle of writing the book, or you’re about to launch a book, this is an episode that you want to listen to.
AJV (01:53):
So stick around and let me formally introduce the one and the only Reha Grant. So here’s just a high level. I, I personally know Reha. So I get to just speak volumes about who she is as a human being. But she is an incredibly sought after keynote speaker. She speaks on anything from culture and leadership and personal accountability as well as diversity, equi diversity, equity and inclusion. Like I’ve got tongue tied today, . But she’s also an award-winning diversity consultant. She has been on some of the biggest stages in the world with people like Xerox, YouTube, Proctor and Gamble, Google. She’s been featured in Forbes, Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times, the Glamor. I can go on and on and on. But let me just tell you this, all of that is truly insignificant compared to actually getting to know her as a person. And that all that other stuff is awesome. But I actually get to know her firsthand and can tell you as a, a real life person knowing a real life person, she is authentic, she is real, and she is doing this because she believes in the power of this message to help make people better. And that is why I am so excited to introduce you to our audience. Isha, welcome to the show.
RG (03:14):
Thanks for having me. I am super excited to be here. So let’s, let’s get to it. Let’s, let’s really talk about it. ’cause You’re so, right. It is writing it is one thing. Selling it is a completely different animal.
AJV (03:28):
Yeah. So I, I wanna kind of know, because I know that there’s, there’s many journeys when it comes to writing a book. And I wanna know, like, first things first. What made you go, this has to be a book, right? So for the people who are listening, who are going, and I think I wanna write a book, maybe they should hear this before they make that formal decision. So let’s talk about that first.
RG (03:53):
Well, it’s because all of the stages that I’ve been on, right? I get a chance to talk to so many people, and I consider that, you know, a huge blessing. And they have so many questions, you know, within the speech, I’m out of there, in and out of there in an hour, 45 minutes I’m speaking. And people have all of these questions and they wanna know more. And you can only give them little tidbits within that speech. And they want, they want to continue to learn. And so I’ve thought, you know what? My journey has been insane. You know, for so many reasons. You know, I could be looked at as someone who wasn’t supposed to do all the things that I’m doing. And I thought, let me put it in the book. ’cause If I can inspire or impact anyone’s life in a way that lets them know, it doesn’t matter where you come from, it doesn’t matter what you’ve been through. If you want to be better, do better go out there and crush goals. You can do that. You can make that decision. And this is how I did it. So I decided to put it in a book. And so it’s actually my second book. The first book was self-published, this second book, traditional publisher, completely different ballgame.
AJV (05:01):
Yeah. And I should have practiced that first time author with a traditional publisher. Yes, . I’m probably conditioned because Rory refuses to admit he ever had a first book prior to that . He, his very, very first book was self-published. And he tries to pretend like that never happened. But
RG (05:20):
Yeah, I probably should too, but
AJV (05:24):
So, so let’s talk about that, like the route to working with a traditional publisher and what is, what does it take and why, why did they decide to work with you? And I would be so curious to hear your experience and your take on that. ’cause I have my own stories of what it took us to get a publisher interested. So walk us through. It’s like, if you really wanna write a book, which I love that. And, you know, I would say I’ve been more reminded over the last two years of the power that books have. Like, I think I forgot that a book has the power to change your life. ’cause I had stopped reading during Covid for some reading for some Unbe un unbeknownst reason to me. And it’s like, they do, like, books are powerful and they take so much time and passion and energy to get it out there. But then to actually, you know, work with a traditional publisher who they’re not working with just anybody. Yeah. They’re working on kind of the, the sure win. Like, Hey, I, I, I’m not, they’re not in the gambling business. They’re like, Nope, I think this is gonna sell a lot of books, . So how did that process go, and what should be people thinking about when it comes to which route to go?
RG (06:41):
I think, so for me, it was a long process that took a lot of patience. This second book has been six years in the making. But what happened is I went and spoke at a, at a conference that I did not wanna go and speak at, because it was one of those you pay for everything to come here, but the everybody in the audience, you know, is, is going to want to do business with you. And I was a little, you know, not, not that excited about it, . So I go and I happen to meet a woman who is pushing another book in the in the hallway. And she listened to me speak. And as soon as I came out of the room, she said, oh my gosh, you need a book? And I said, well, I have a book. You need a bigger book.
RG (07:24):
You need a traditional you need, we, we need to go to a real publisher, and I’m gonna help you find an Asian, and I’m gonna do all this stuff. And if you yourself are in business, you know anything about business, it’s very rare to find people who do what they say they will do. Hmm. And so I blew it off. I mean, you know, I was like, okay, whatever, . But, but I called her. I did, I at least followed up. And man, she did what she said she was gonna do. She found me an agent. She found me three, and I got to choose one. And that, that was really important, is finding somebody that aligned with me and with my vision and, and what I wanted to do with the book. I think they were great because they kept pushing me to think bigger and, and think about the audience.
RG (08:08):
One thing I will say about, about this whole process is they are focused on how many people are going to buy this book, right? You can have this idea, you think it’s great, which I did. I had a, I had a different idea that I thought was great. They were like, that’s great, but if we broaden this, you know, then we’re going to be able to sell it to more people. And so I found myself thinking about, well, you know, maybe it’s not for everybody. Maybe it’s for a certain, you know, certain smaller group of people that would really benefit from it. But they kept pushing me and kept pushing me. And so we got to this bigger book. My agent has been amazing. He was able to actually get my, my book in a bidding war with three, three different publishing companies.
RG (08:55):
And so we ended up going with Hay House because they just had an amazing offer. And I say this like it was nothing, but when I tell y’all it was , it was a, a whole, I mean, it took forever. It was a really long process. And let me just back up to the book proposal. If you have never done did a book proposal, it is pretty much like writing the book. I mean, it is, if you’ve ever did a business plan for your business, that is what it is for a book. So by the time you finish that thing, you know, every single thing that is going in the book, I mean, it is, it is exactly like a business plan. So that in and of itself was it was just tough. I mean, you had to think about every single chapter.
RG (09:37):
There’s, there’s a description for every chapter. There’s a sample chapter. There’s who are your competitors and why is your book different? Who’s gonna buy this book? What does your platform look like? Do you have enough people in social media to support this book? What does your email list look like? How are you gonna publicize it? Because they don’t really do any of that , all they do is publish the book. And so now that I am on this side we launch in one week, the book comes out. They, they they really just published the book. You know, I, I’ve had a . It’s true.
AJV (10:16):
And actually, I’ll pause right here just for a second because I think a lot of people forget that if you really want to go big, and I would say this, even if you are considering doing a hybrid or a self-published book, doing the book proposal is the business plan. And I love the way that you said that. It is the architectural blueprint of how am I going to position this book? How am I gonna market this book? How am I gonna sell this book? What audiences do I have access to? And regardless of what way you decide to publish, this can be as robust as necessary. But it’s really important for you to actually think about these things. Because getting the book published, quite honestly, is like, at the very beginning stages of the journey. Like, that’s a part of the process that that’s not the end goal that is end goal. And it forces you. So I like, just, just pause for a second and talk about like, how long did just writing the book proposal take? Like what was that process like? Oh my gosh.
RG (11:20):
So I started in August of 20. This would’ve been August of 2019, I believe. And so the book proposal itself I actually ended up going and getting help with that because it was so expansive. I mean, I had, my agent sent me all of these proposals to look at, and I was like, oh my gosh. You know, and, and even if you’ve tried to write a book, you know that the only way to write a book is to actually write a book. You have to sit down. You have to figure out what time works for you, when you’re gonna have the least amount of distraction when you can actually get this done. Well, I was speaking like 70 times a year.
AJV (12:12):
So let’s just talk about this just for a second. Like, I think the really unknown part of this for most people is the process of writing a book proposal. So can you just like, walk us through like, how long did that part take?
RG (12:29):
Months. It, it took months. Gosh, we probably allotted six months to write that proposal. Because it’s not, it’s not just a, here’s a couple of pages on what I think this book should be. There are, you have to do a chapter description for each chapter. You have to write a sample chapter. You have to then talk about marketing and how you plan to actually market this book, who your competitors are, and why your book is different from theirs. Then you have to do an overview even after you’ve done all of the, the chapter descriptions and the sample chapter. It is a living document that is really thick. You know it, so by the time you sit down and write the book, the great thing about it is, you know, all of the stuff you wanna talk about. We varied a little bit from that.
RG (13:16):
‘Cause We, we, when we presented it, we had 11 chapters and we ended up with nine because one of the things we noticed is that we didn’t have as much information for a couple of the chapters. They were gonna be a lot shorter than the other ones. So we were able to figure out a way to to just build those out, you know, by, by placing them into other chapters. So we were able to get it done. But it is a it’s just an incredibly long process, I think from, so from the time that you write the proposal, then they have to take it and sell it and see who’s interested in it. And so we had we had one, one group that we knew, one publishing company that we knew was interested in the book, but of course we wanted to get the best deal that we could get.
RG (13:58):
So it went to bid three, three publishing companies bid on it. And then once we got the deal, then we actually had to write the thing . So that, and they give you a year, one year. My first book took about 10. So it was, it was an everyday kind of commitment. Really frustrated a lot of those days just because some days you write a sentence, right? Other days you write a couple of pages or a few pages and, and you have this flow going. But you know, you have to put your cell phone up, you have to turn the TV off. I’m, I can write with smooth jazz music, so no lyrics. ’cause As soon as the lyrics come on, I’m singing out of my head. So it’s a lonely process. I will say that, you know, it’s a, it’s a lonely process. It’s you what’s in your head and getting that on paper.
AJV (14:48):
Yeah. And I just think that’s like so important. Like you said something there, which was, so I had to get this proposal and then they had to go sell it, right? And that’s just an important distinction of going, like, your book proposal is a sales tool. It’s a sales and marketing tool. And, you know, think about the amount of research that it takes to do that. And then you’ve gotta go to the sales process, then you’ve gotta go to write the book, and then it goes into editing and publishing. So we are in August of 2023. When did you start this process? Isha?
RG (15:22):
2019.
AJV (15:23):
, you talking four years
RG (15:25):
2019. Yes. It was a really, really long process. And four years is really, you know, it’s good considering mm-hmm. that the first book took about 10 years. .
AJV (15:40):
I mean, the third book will just take two. You know? Yes,
RG (15:43):
Yes. I’m gonna keep getting better. I’m gonna keep getting better. But it is a it’s been a real process. ’cause I mean, you think getting the book done is the big deal, and you’re like, yes, I’ve done this. That’s, I mean, you gotta do that, but it’s this other part of actually selling the book. And that is the, that’s where I am now. That’s where I’ve been since February. I mean, we’re talking, working seven days a week. I’m talking 10 plus hour days, more like 15 plus hour days for a lot of this time since February. I have gone back to every client I’ve worked with, if I’ve consulted for you, spoken for you met you, you’ve heard from me at this point about buying this book. And that was not something that it’s Yeah. Yeah. And that, and that is not something that I could hand off to somebody else.
RG (16:35):
You know, I tried to delegate where possible. But what I’ve realized is if I want to hit the bestseller list, if I want to actually, ’cause let me say this, there are a lot of books out there. Mm-Hmm. , 95% of them don’t get read. They don’t, they’re not purchased. Even if you get it in the store, you know, you can get in Barnes and Noble means nothing if nobody buys the book. And that’s not what I want. You know, I want to actually make sure that people are purchasing my book. And so I am out there selling, like every day my life consists of selling books. And so and it’s been like that gosh, for months now, because I’ve realized that nobody’s gonna do that part. You know, the publishers like, oh, that’s great. You know what else are you gonna do? , Uhhuh, . So that I’ve, I’ve hired my own outside PR firm. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve basically heard, if you’re not Oprah or Steven Spielberg, they’re not put, you know, company book publishers are not out there. Doing all the marketing and things that you see and the way that you’ve seen things done back in the day, maybe those things aren’t even happening. , no. Yeah. Your book tours. You want a book tour, you pay for it, schedule it.
AJV (17:49):
Yeah. Good luck. Let us know how it goes. . Yes,
RG (17:53):
Yes. They’re happy for everything you’re gonna do, but they wanna know what are you going to do? And that was what I think helped to sell the book. I mean, they were interested in the topic, but we had such a robust marketing plan in that thing that and, and I’ll be honest, my background is marketing and pr. So it was helpful that I was able to to really look at that and really see how we can push the book. And we have, we have done everything that, that we know to do. But it’s not a it’s not a, I wrote this and, you know, here it is, and now I’m gonna go sit down and watch all the great things happen. That is not it. . Wow.
AJV (18:35):
That’s a real bummer. .
RG (18:37):
Yeah. That is not it so far.
AJV (18:41):
I would, I would love to hear from you for everyone who’s listening, what would you say are the sales tactics and the sales strategies that you feel like are really working to move books?
RG (18:53):
You know, I don’t think people talk about this enough, but I think it’s relationship. It is, for me anyway. I’m not saying ’cause, you know, social media, that, that’s been helpful. Pr and the pr that’s really been helpful has been the pr where I’m writing op-ed pieces or I’m getting to write longer pieces for Fast Company or business Insider and those kinds of things. But it has been the relationships for me. I am I’m big on relationship building. I’ve, my, my entire career, I’ve been big on it because I know that when things go bad in business, and it will if things go bad in writing this book, and it will, you know, you need to be able to call on people and say, Hey, this is happening, and I’m not sure which way to go. Hmm. And so with the book I focused my sales campaign on my relationships.
RG (19:52):
Now I have been, I’ve owned my own business since I got outta college pretty much like a couple years out of college. So it’s been over 25 years. But those relationships, you know, I make sure that I am doing more. Like, what can I do for you, you know, as the client. It’s not just about what you can do for me, but how we can together make sure that we are able to help each other. Yeah. And so when it came to something like selling books, that’s what I’ve done. And, you know, whether it’s, whether it’s a speech or what, you know, whether it’s a a q and a or one-on-one consulting, I’m offering services that people usually pay a lot, a lot of money for. And it’s not like they’re not paying that for the books, but they’re getting a heck of a discount mm-hmm. To be able to purchase, you know, bulk orders of, of the books. And that, that’s been the process that has worked for me. The, the best. I we’re doing the social media stuff. We are, we’re doing the email newsletters and all of those things, but without a doubt, it has been me doing one-on-one direct selling, which is why it is such a incredibly long process.
AJV (21:02):
Wow. And I so, so appreciate you being transparent in that, because that was our experience too. It’s like we, you know, it’s like we had all these grandiose marketing plans and at the end of the day, 90% of our book sales came from us selling.
RG (21:18):
Yes. Yes. That is, that is it. There is no way around it. And if somebody finds out something else, let me know. ,
RG (21:28):
There is no, I think that’s just like a really important part. It’s like writing and getting your book out there is like, it’s like launching your own micro business.
RG (21:37):
Yes. And it’s like
AJV (21:40):
Business plan, content strategy, sales and marketing plan. It needs staff, it needs attention. And it’s like, you’re not ready to emotionally invest and then actually financially invest. Yeah. Then you’re not ready. Right. ’cause It’s gonna require all the above
RG (21:57):
Financial investment. Yes. ,
AJV (22:00):
It requires
RG (22:01):
That you not Yeah. I think you know, it’s a, it is a misnomer that you, you get a publisher and you don’t have to worry about money couldn’t be further from the truth. I mean, this is an investment. It’s a financial investment that is pretty substantial. Uhhuh , you know, if you’re gonna do it, what it came down to for me is I’ve wr I’ve written this book, I wanna make an impact. And so what does that look like? And I had to be able to commit those dollars. And I won’t act like I was just kind of like, oh, yeah, that’s fine. No, I was man, fussing at anybody who would listen, venting, fussing, you know, just like, oh my gosh, this is crazy. But it was, it came down to, do you wanna do this or do you not wanna do this? Because here’s the thing, you’ve gotta invest in yourself before anybody else will invest in you. Amen. And so, I’ve, I’ve known that my entire business, but it’s a pretty significant financial commitment to do go through this entire process.
AJV (23:03):
It is. And, and then also back to that kind of sales piece for just a second, and I think this is a, a testament to, although I I love you, it wasn’t top of mind for me to proactively be like, oh, Isha, let me have you on the show because my brain is busy. Yes. But it’s like you did a call to action on an Instagram post, and then it, I think somebody had tagged me and it’s, I think it was Amy LaValley. Yes. Yes. . And, and then, but, but it’s like, and I think that’s a reminder too. It’s like, just because people know what you’re doing doesn’t mean they’re gonna naturally just hop on the bandwagon. Yes. You still have to make that proactive outreach, because guess what? There’s a million other things happening in these people’s heads. It’s not their job to reach out to you and go, oh, let me do this for you. Oh, let me do this for you. Yeah. It’s our job as the author to go, Hey, I got a book coming out. You got an awesome podcast. I think I’d be great for it. Here’s why. And yes. That you gotta do that work too. And it’s like that back to that sales and PR mindset, which is why you’re on the show today, .
RG (24:02):
Yeah, it is. I mean, I’m doing the same thing. I probably have 5,000 contacts in my phone. I am one by one contacting these people. Some of these people I haven’t talked to since before the pandemic. And I’m saying, yes, it is me. I know we haven’t spoken in three years, but I’m shamelessly asking for your support. Just purchased one book. And so people are sending me screenshots back that they purchased the book I ran into. And anybody I’ve done business with, my, my makeup person that I use sometimes I run into her at the mall this weekend. She said, oh, you sent me a text. She was like, I gotta get it. I’m like, go ahead and get it now.
AJV (24:39):
Let me pull up the link for you right
RG (24:41):
Now. Yeah. You’re gonna go back to work in a second and you’re not gonna think about this. So it’s not like one time I have to send this and I mean one text message at a time. It is so time consuming. But I’ve gotta go back through those people and say, Hey, you know, I just wanna make sure you remember to purchase this book. It is an all day commitment. And so from the time I get up in the morning, I, I work out, you know, and then, then the rest of my day is, is pushing these books out. So, well,
AJV (25:07):
I know the amount of work that goes into this, and so I’m just so excited for you, I’m so proud of the work that you’re doing, because this is a book people need. And it’s like, I know this is like launching a business, having a baby. Like, it’s that level of intensity. And I’ve had done both. So I can say that . So it’s like, it’s intense. And you’re at the end of it. But here’s what I know is regardless of how many units process you’re winning Yes. Like what you’re doing, you are winning in this. And so I want people to know about this book. So tell us, what was this idea, this content that made you go, yeah, it’s worth four years of my life. It’s worth a hundred percent of all the money I’m gonna get from advance. It’s worth frustration and blood, sweat and tears, and feeling like I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s worth all these long days. Like what topic made you go, I don’t care. This has to get out into the world.
RG (26:09):
Radical acceptance. I work in the, the diversity, equity, and inclusion field, and I’ve been working in the field long before it was a hot topic. And what I’ve known is that there are so many people that feel excluded, ostracized, left out, and not just to a point of of isolating themselves, but to the point of taking their lives and not feeling like they matter. And you know, we have so many, so many things in this world that say, this is normal and this is who you have to be, you know? And if you’re not this person and you don’t fit into this perfect box, then you’re not worthy. Hmm. And people would come and talk to me about, they, they have so many stories. Maybe it was their race, maybe it was their sexual orientation, maybe it was their religion. Maybe it was just that they wanted to be a dancer and their parents wanted ’em to be a lawyer.
RG (27:04):
It doesn’t matter what it is. We’re not allowed to authentically show up as who we are. And it’s, and one thing that I never understood about it is we don’t have to agree on everything. You don’t have to like my lifestyle, but you do have to treat me with common courtesy, decency, and respect. And when I walk into work, it should at least be a place that mandates behavior that allows me to do my job in the way that that wins and is helping the company win and meet their goals and, and helping me to meet my goals. And so people are, environments are in environments where they’re, we’re in a complete suit of armor every day to just kind of deflect all of the BSS coming at them every day. And I thought, you know, what if we were just accepting of each other, and I’m not talking about, ’cause I know that can go a whole bunch of ways for a whole bunch of people, things that are just horrible things.
RG (27:57):
I’m not talking about those things. I’m talking about showing people that you see the humanity in them and allowing them to be who they are without your judgment. Hmm. That is, that is all I’m talking about. I know in the wellness world, radical acceptance is about taking, taking your pain and trying to avoid the pain that’s coming at you. The radical acceptance that I teach is about helping you not cause pain to yourself or to others. And so, it’s a thing that e even within myself, there are so many things about me that would be looked at as a negative. Like most people that I’ve come in contact with. And I, and it’s not missed on me that because I’m on this stage and because I’ve, I’ve been blessed to build this business that that everybody likes me. Well, if you didn’t know me in that realm, and you just knew, you know, you just knew Isha, here’s this, you know, I I, I always start every speech with, I’m a small town divorced ex preacher’s wife who comes from a loving but largely religious family.
RG (28:57):
Some describe me as this competitive relentless ex division one basketball player. But my friends as an extremely loyal but conditional extrovert. I also happen to be a bisexual black woman, a serial entrepreneur, and a Catholic middle school basketball coach who runs a diversity consulting and communications firm in one of the reddest states of the nation. When I say that, so many things within that Yeah. Are things that people frown upon. Mm. And they wouldn’t give me, you know, give me the chance to, to be me. And so I learned that if I would radically accept myself, you know, be willing to lose everything, to gain myself, then I could extend that love and acceptance toward other people, you know? And so it’s, it’s radical acceptance of yourself, of others and, and of the world. You know, are you willing to be wrong to get the company culture right.
RG (29:46):
Are you willing to lose judgment in the moment to win humanity in the end? And so that’s what took up all these years. That’s what made me say, you know what people need to know. They matter. You know, you may be, you may be the one person in someone’s day that smiles and treats them with kindness, one person that keeps them going. And we are so caught up in our own stuff that we don’t do that. So that’s why the book is called Be Better Than Your bss, because we all are carrying around and BSS stands for our biospheres, our Belief Systems, you know, the bias synapse in our brain that deals with unconscious bias. So I want people to know that people are people, you know, you can, you can mentally disagree with someone’s life, but still embrace the person that they are.
RG (30:39):
Mm-Hmm. the humanity in them. And I think that we are missing that. You know, I think that today it’s just, you know, we’re throwing people away for nothing. We’re making them work in environments where they can’t even breathe much less, do whatever it is you hire them to do. So it, it just means so much to me that that people know, I see you and I’m gonna, I’m gonna speak for you because that, you know, that could have easily been me. And, and is to some people, some people still, you know, they, they feel the way that they feel about me and they don’t have problem letting me know that, you know? So it’s about love, it’s about kindness. It’s about accepting people for who they are and, and letting people know that somebody out here, you know, sees you and cares.
AJV (31:27):
Wow. I would say that’s worth four years of your life. , . I would say that is a worth it. And just, I think sitting here listening, like one of the things that I heard you saying, it’s like when I, I, I like the title so much where it’s like, I love anytime where it’s like, you think you know what it means that you don’t. Right. And it’s like, you know, be better than your belief systems. Right. It’s like, evaluate why you believe what you believe, and where did that come from Exactly. And is that actually what you believe? Yes. Or is that just somehow infiltrate due to media, family, you know, all the things Yes. If there,
RG (32:05):
That’s exactly what the biosphere is. Yeah. It’s those five socializing agents that we all grow up in from our family and friends to peers and schools and religion and media. And we, we don’t really know what we think for ourselves because from the time we’re born, our family tell us what to think. And then as we go through life, you know, we, we don’t really take the time to research it for ourselves. And so are, we will really willing to unlearn all of the things that we’ve learned from the people that we love and the institutions that we trust.
AJV (32:34):
That’s so good. On that note, if there was one profile, if there was one person who is listening to the show today that you could identify and go, you, I wrote this book for you and you need to pick it up. Yeah. Can you tell us who that would be?
RG (32:51):
That would be the person that feels as though they don’t belong anywhere. They don’t fit anywhere. They’re the person who says, because I look like this or dress like this, or don’t fit into this box, you know, I’m not worthy. Mm-Hmm. It’s also for the company that says, you know what, we’re an imperfect company working with imperfect people, but together we can create the kind of company where people can thrive. It’s it’s for companies that, that understand that they may not have handled everything the best that they could in the past, but they can actually read this and work with their employees to build a better future.
AJV (33:33):
Yeah. I love that. Who wouldn’t want to pick up the book when you frame it that way? Right. Yeah. I think that’s a really, really important message. And, and I think one of the things that is important for everyone listening is going, if you aren’t willing to give up years of your life however many, because you believe in it that much, then it’s not the right topic. Yes. You shouldn’t, it shouldn’t be what you do because it’s, you’ve got to go, it’s worth it. Yes. It’s worth all of the money and the time and the investment because it needs to be said and it needs to be heard.
RG (34:10):
And that was what is going to carry you on those days where you’re like, why am I doing this? Am I crazy? This makes no sense. I’m spending money, I’m spending time. But when you know that the impact is greater and that the impact is, is going to change somebody’s life, that’s gonna carry you through those days for where you’re questioning your own sanity
AJV (34:31):
, and you’re gonna need that you’re gonna need that a lot. So Isha just three last things here and I’m watching the clock. ’cause I know that you’ve got stuff going on, and I wanna be courteous to everyone’s time, but I got three last quick things here. Okay. Now that you’re at the tail end of this process, right. I’m really tail end of step one of the process, right. Which is launch. Yes. what would you say, like, what’s the number one thing that you could go back a, you know, we’ll just say even all the way to 2019, like, if you could go back all the way to 2019 knowing this was how it’s gonna go down, what would be the one thing that you wish you knew then that you know now?
RG (35:14):
Oh, wow. That is a great question. I wish that I had followed my gut on, on some things that that I probably didn’t need to do that I was, that I was led to do. And I have the benefit of having been in business a long time, but, you know, when you’re embarking on something new and you have a lot of new people involved you wanna do all the things that they tell you that works. I would say always trust your gut. It, it is not gonna lead you astray. And not that because the things that I have learned and encountered, they’ve all been great. But just because there’s so much work and so much time, I wish I had just stayed in line with my gut and said, okay, that may, that may be great, but I’m still gonna go this direction because I know it works for me.
AJV (36:03):
I love that. Second question. What’s the number one thing you have learned through this process?
RG (36:13):
Patience, maybe . Gosh, I, I think it’s the same thing is, is following my gut. Like that is the thing that, and, you know, and just, just trusting, trusting and, and my faith, gosh, my faith has been has been tested. So I, I think it’s all of the things that you probably your grandparents tell you when you’re a kid that you don’t pay attention to until you become an adult. But yeah, probably just to con, to continue to believe in myself and know where I want to go with, with these projects.
AJV (36:53):
I love that. And third question what would be the one piece of advice that you would give to someone who is going, I’ve got a topic, I’ve got a message that’s worth it for me. Right. The time, sweat, tears, money. It’s worth it to me. Yeah. What should I do first? What should I do first? Isha, what’s your one piece of advice?
RG (37:17):
I would run the, run the idea by a lot of different people to see what the interest is. Because some, sometimes things that are important to you may not be important to a massive group of people that that you need to buy this book and read this book. I know that we talk a lot about, well that’s important to you, but it’s not gonna be important to, to other people. Everybody. Yeah. And so you have to you have to know that you have a topic that also is, I think a complete book. ’cause Sometimes you get into it, and I’ve done that before with other books. You get into it and realize, I have truly ran out of what I need, what I’m, what I wanna say, I’m done. Yeah. I’ve said it all, you know, but it’s not big enough for a book.
RG (38:00):
So you wanna make sure that there’s a beginning, a middle, and an end. And I think I think there are people out there who are willing to maybe look at your synopsis if you’ve put together a synopsis and, and tell you what they think. And I think you have to that’s where your gut comes in though, because sometimes those people are gonna be wrong, even though they they are people that you trust, admire, you know, believe in. You’ve seen them do it over and over. Sometimes, you know, people will look at something you have and say, it’s not gonna work, but in your gut, if you know it’s gonna work, you also need to need to run with it. So yeah, just, I, I believe in bouncing stuff off of people. I think that’s really, especially for something like a book, I mean, you want a lot of people to buy it, so make sure that it means something to other people besides yourself.
AJV (38:50):
It’s so good. You said something that made me think about this thing. So we read a lot in the Vaden household. It’s part of our jobs, but also part we love it. Like we love books we love reading. And we have this thing where if we read a book or listen to a book we’ll always ask you, how was it? And we have this saying in our house with my husband and I, and we’ll go I’ll always say, well, it should have been a blog. And he’s said, what do you mean? And I’m like, should have been a blog ? I read 240 pages. That should have been a one page blog. And that’s because the idea was great, but it could have been a blog.
RG (39:28):
Yes.
AJV (39:28):
And everything else just turned into stories and fluffy stuff because you had this amazing idea, but there wasn’t enough to make it a book. Right? It should have been a chapter of the book, not the book. And so we, now we now we have this saying is like, was it, you know, was it a book, a blog, or a podcast? Like what, what was it? ? You know,
RG (39:48):
Yes.
AJV (39:49):
It’s like we get so excited, but we forget now. This has to go for a lot of pages, a lot of words. Yes. Is there enough depth into it or should it be a chapter? Should it be a blog or a podcast?
RG (40:01):
? And I think that’s a great thing about a book, is you really get to get into the meat of stuff. You can’t do it all in a podcast. You can’t do it all in a blog. But you can do that in a book. You know, even when you read stuff, whether it’s newspaper or online, whatever it is you’re reading, you don’t get the full story. So you need to think about what the book do I have a full story that I can tell or weave together?
AJV (40:24):
So, so good. And Isha, if people want to read your book which is more than a blog, so please go read this book. It will be the whole book, . Where do you want them to go?
RG (40:37):
Go to Amazon. Be better than your bss. How Radical Acceptance empowers Authenticity and Creates a Workplace Culture of Inclusion.
AJV (40:46):
So y’all, you heard it here, go to Amazon, pick up the book better than your BS by Isha grant. And if you wanna just be extremely specific, just go to the show notes of this episode. I’ll have the exact Amazon link in there. Go buy a copy and help this woman hit the bestseller list. Isha, we are so excited for you. We love you so much, and everybody else, thank you. See you next time on the Influential Personal.

Ep 407: Telling Stories That Make a Difference | Damon West Episode Recap

AJV (00:02):
So I just had this amazing conversation with a newer friend of mine, his name is Damon West, and he’s got an incredible story from being a collegiate athlete to working at a very large investment bank, to getting hooked on meth, to being sentenced life in prison, to getting parole, to becoming a motivational speaker and a multi-time published author. And the stories just awesome. But while I was talking to him, it spurred this idea to make this video to share with all of you. And I think it was really good cause we were talking about how do you incorporate these crazy stories, these events, these, I can’t believe this happened to me, type of story into your message. And how do you take a very, you know, you focus story, in this case, a very me focus story and turn it into a message that is universally helpful to your audience, where I’m not just telling you my story to help you get to know me, but I’m telling you my story.
AJV (01:14):
Because within that story, there is a message that means something to you, the person who is listening, the end user, right? So at Brand Builders Group, we have a really simple formula that talks about this, which is tell a story, make a point. If you’re going to tell a story, what’s the point of that story? The story part is about you. The point, the message is about them. So what are you trying to convey during this message? And this was just a really great storytelling conversation, is really what it ended up being, is how do we tell our story in a way that actually helps other people? And so here’s a couple of things that I just wanted to share from this conversation cuz I thought they were worthwhile. So number one is just asking yourself, and I’m, I’m literally using words out of his mouth cuz I thought this conversation was so great, is what’s the SWAT team story in your life?
AJV (02:14):
Like, if you’re struggling on how to make a point and create a message, then ask yourself like, what are the SWAT team stories in my life? And what I mean by that is, you know, in Damon’s life, there was a SWAT team raid, and that’s how he got arrested. A SWAT team busted down the doors, rated a, I think meth house would be the appropriate term and arrested him, right? That’s a SWAT team story very literally for him. But all of us have those swat team stories in our life, those defining moments or events or decisions that said, my life was going this way and then this thing happened. That SWAT team moment
AJV (02:59):
And then my life went in another direction. Could be good, could not be good. But what are the SWAT team stories, the stories that make you stop in your tracks and go, wait, what that happened to you? Like this thing, this decision, this event, this moment? Like, wait, I, what? So what are the SWAT team stories in your life? And then what’s the message within that story, right? That, what’s the point of that story? Because that’s what takes a story that’s yours and makes it a story that other people need to hear. Because there is a message, there is a point, there is something within that story that is universally applicable to anyone who hears it. I’m going, I needed to hear that today. I needed to be reminded of that today. So that’s the first thing. Second thing is know what your signature stories are.
AJV (03:50):
When I was talking to Damon, we, we were both talking about how it doesn’t matter what audience you’re in front of, right? This is maybe an audience of one and maybe you’re just practicing in the mirror, right? Maybe you are the audience of one. Maybe it’s in a one-on-one coaching call. Maybe it’s on a podcast like this. Like right now, technically I’m talking to my camera, right? Although others will hear it. I’m talking to myself, right? The only thing I see right now is a little green dot on my computer. I’m talking to myself. However I have you in mind, right? So maybe it’s that maybe you’re making content videos or maybe you’re speaking on stages. Maybe you’re speaking on stages to hundreds of high schoolers or thousands of people in corporate America. The the point is, it does not matter who you’re talking to.
AJV (04:32):
It’s what are the signature stories that you tell no matter what, because this is a signature story of your message of your life. And it’s profound in many ways. And so we have lots of stories. Like I have a list of probably at this point, a hundred different stories that I could tell, but I have two or three that I tell no matter what. Those are my signature stories. And it’s like, I know that this was such a defining moment. This was such a swat team story in my life that it doesn’t matter what audience am I, I’m in front of, this is a story I’m telling. That’s what we’re calling your signature stories. It’s those one or two stories that are in every single message that show up in all the different types of conversations because they’re that powerful because they were powerful to you.
AJV (05:17):
And if they were powerful to you, if they changed you, they have the power to help change someone else too. So what are your signature stories? All right, so have your list. The next thing is knowing how to tailor your presentation without changing your message. And I thought this was really profound because in an era of everyone’s something that’s a little special to them, right? Most audiences wanna feel like this was catered to me. This was tailored for me. This was crafted or built or customized just for my audience. At the same time, that’s what we think we want. But what we really want is we want something that we know is going to be impactful to the audience that’s going to help them, help them make better decisions, help them think differently, help inspire them in some way. And sometimes having something brand new isn’t the best way to do that, right?
AJV (06:07):
Sometimes the good old tried and true is what people really need, although that’s not what they think they want. So knowing how to tailor your message or your presentation know how to tailor your presentation for the audience without ever actually changing the message. So here’s how you do that is you can tailor the opening. You can tailor the ending. You can work in industry lingo or statistics. You can make it about the event. You can weave in acronyms. You can tell a story about the audience. You can do something about the city that it’s in. Like I have go-to stories and jokes. If I’m ever speaking in Las Vegas there are just, this is like, I’m gonna tell this joke or I’m gonna tell this story if I’m in Las Vegas because it, I know it’s gonna be a home run no matter where I tell it.
AJV (06:56):
Or if I’m ever speaking at 8:00 AM I always have a story for an 8:00 AM if I’m ever speaking over lunch. I have little jokes that it’s always for lunch meetings. If it’s I’m, if I’m the closing speaker and I’m the last people, that last person there and people are constantly leaving to catch their flights because nobody thought about having a speaker right before everyone leaves. It’s like, I have stories and jokes just for those time that’s tailoring the presentation that makes it feel custom and unique. Although my message is never impacted. So how do you tailor your presentation for the industry, for the audience, for the company for the location, the locale, the theme of the event without ever actually changing the message itself. Cuz when people say, Hey, I I love that you customize this, what they’re really saying is, I love that it felt like you customized it just for us, but what they really want is the goods.
AJV (07:47):
And you only know it’s the goods because you’ve delivered it enough to know that point resonates. That story is what people remember. You need to be doing your message and your presentation so often that it’s like, I know a laugh is coming here. I know a silent moment is coming here. And not only happens cuz you’ve done it dozens, if not hundreds of times. And so people say they want something custom, but you don’t wanna try out brand new stuff and an audience like that, that’s for your small group of friends or for your mirror, right? That, that takes practice to know it’s like it’s gonna crush that’s gonna make a difference. That’s going to actually be what they asked for while also giving them what they want, which is making it feel custom and tailored. And you can do that without ever changing your message. So don’t change your message. Learn how to tailor the presentation, right? And then I have these other quick three things that I just thought were really good. Just little motivational bombs for you today. So number one I thought this was so good for all of us, is that there’s only two ways to think about the future. It’s with fear or with faith. And they both have more in
AJV (08:54):
Common than you think. They are both a hundred percent based on things in the future. One is negative and one is positive. Fear is thinking about all the bad things that might happen in the future. Faith is remembering that good things are coming your way. And as we’re doing all these things, we’re thinking about, you know, speaking on that stage or writing that book, or getting our message out into the world or, you know, starting this new venture or this relationship or having a baby. It’s like we can choose to be filled with fear, which is the negative, or we’re gonna choose to have a little faith because they’re both a choice. And it’s just which one, which path are you gonna take? Is it the path of fear or the path of faith? And that I needed that yesterday when I had this conversation.
AJV (09:36):
So thought maybe it would be good for you too. Number two is that you are always more capable to overcome more than you think. You are always capable to overcome more than you think. And I think that’s just a reminder to all of us. It’s like once we’ve overcome it, then we’re reminded of like, whoa, I did that. But before it happens, or even during, we’re like, I don’t know if I can do this. But the truth is you can, you can do it. You can overcome this. You can make these new decisions, you can create these new habits, you can do this. And you are way more capable of overcoming more than you ever thought was possible. You are capable. That was number two. And then number one, I asked a amen at the very end. I said, with all these life trials that you’ve been through that you have overcome without, you know ease with lots of difficulty what would you say is like the number one thing when it comes to keeping this positive mindset and choosing a faith future over a fear future?
AJV (10:41):
And he said, number one key to my mindset and to my emotional wellbeing and my overall growth is just consistency. It’s nothing big. It’s just showing up every day. It’s making a choice. I’m not going to, you know, do drugs again. I’m not gonna take that sip of alcohol. I’m not gonna eat that cookie if I want it. I’m not gonna spend that money here. I’m going to investigate here. I’m gonna wake up every day. I’m gonna get in the shower and I’m gonna try. I have to put in the work. And he said, it’s n nothing profound and it’s nothing big, he said. But it’s those daily decisions. Those defining moments that were made in the, the ease of the moment where I could have easily said, this is too hard. But it didn’t. I said, no, this is hard and I can do hard things. And it was a great reminder to me, and I hope it’s a great reminder to you that success isn’t easy. It takes work whatever that success is. It’s not supposed to be easy. Who said this was supposed to be easy? But the best things in life come from overcoming. I, I know that for most of us when we look back, it’s like we don’t remember the things that came easy, but we profoundly remember the things that
AJV (11:53):
Came hard then we overcame because it changed us, it challenged us and it grew us. Those are the things that we remember and those are the things that your audience is gonna remember too. So don’t be afraid to share those moments of your life, the hard stories because they do make a difference. They made a difference for you and they make a difference for people like me. So tell your story. Get out there and I’ll see you later.

Ep 406: Turning Your Story Into A Message with Damon West

AJV (00:02):
Hey, y’all, and welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is AJ Vaden to hear AJ Vaden here. And I am joined today with a newer friend, ab, but a friend who has lots of mutual friends with myself and Rory. So, so glad to be adding Damon West to our list of amazing guests on this podcast, but also a new friend in our, you know, circle. So before I start this interview, I want to remind everyone, as I always do, why you should stick around and who this podcast was uniquely designed for. So, number one, if you have a desire to write and publish books, speak on stages, and get your message out into the world, which should be most of you, which is why you listen to this podcast. This is an episode that you wanna listen to because we’re gonna talk about how Damon went from, you know football player, college football to prison, to author, speaker on stages, and a lot of things in between there.
AJV (01:05):
But ultimately, it’s like, it does not matter where you are today. If you have that desire on your heart, there is a way to make all of the things of your past a part of this story that leads you to where you wanna be. And so we’re gonna delve into that. We’re also gonna talk about just how do you do that? Like, how do you get outta prison and go, I’m gonna change my life. I’m gonna do something different. I’m gonna make different choices. And they’re big and they’re bold, and they’re not what I expected. And I know a lot of people in our community are entering into new phases of their life, and perhaps it’s not that dramatic, right? That transformative, but to some degree, we’re starting over. It’s a new time on our life, whether it’s we’ve sold a business, starting a new business, we’re leaving a company trying to go out on our own.
AJV (01:50):
We’re trying to take this side hustle. We’ve been doing it and making it our full-time thing. Or maybe you’re just stepping out on a limb for the first time going, man, I want to do this, but I am scared now. This is hard and new, and what am I doing? Like, what am I crazy? So it doesn’t matter where you fall within that spectrum, this is a podcast that is gonna be uniquely inspiring and informative to you. So I encourage you to stick around. So now I could give you a whole bunch of background bio. I mentioned a little bit of it, but as I formally introduced Damon here are just f to me. Here’s a couple of things that I think would be really powerful for you to know. Is one yes, he did go to prison. I think you should know, like, this is someone who, when they talk about setbacks, when they talk about, oh yeah, I made some bad choices. Like this led to some pretty severe consequences. And it was in prison for a few years, so it’s not like, you know, three days in a white collar, you know, prison upstate, right? It’s a different type. And I think that’s really important for us to get. It’s like, regardless of how bad you think your situation is, or, oh, I can’t change from now. Like, well, no, that’s not true. He is the author of now three books or four,
DW (03:06):
Well, four in a children’s book. So yeah, four four in a children’s book. Yeah. So
AJV (03:11):
The list is growing even as we speak. Yeah. But also he’s been on stages all across the country. He is a, well, you know, well sought after speaker. He is a multi-time author and also an entrepreneur. So everyone who is listens to this, you’ve got some degree of some of those things within you. And so I know, I know that you’re gonna love this interview. So Damon, welcome, welcome to the show,
DW (03:35):
Aj. Thanks a lot, so much. I mean, you covered so much in that introduction too, but look, it’s, it’s so exciting to be here. Like you said, we do have a lot of mutual friends, Amber Lee, ed Mullet, you know, ed Ed’s a very big mutual friend of mine, John Gordon, Catherine Gordon. So it’s great to finally meet you and, and be a part of your show because I’ve got a lot to say about what we’re gonna talk about today, about building your brand and, and how do you make it, how do you break away from the pack and chase your dreams in life? Because like you said, I had to do it. I mean, and like, and you hit the nail in the head. It’s not like I went to prison for a couple years. I got sentenced to life in prison in Dallas, Texas, and I spent seven years and three months of that life sentence in a maximum security level five prison in the state of Texas. The highest security level there is, or the worst of the worst go. And then I made parole, I made parole, and I’m on parole AJ until the year 2073. Hmm. So when you talk about making plans and having to follow the rules of your plan every single day, I got, I got a lot to say about that.
AJV (04:36):
Yeah. Well, I mean, and that’s a part of what I kind of wanna just start, start with. And I know people are gonna be like are you gonna give us more of that story? Because Yeah. In the world. And so here’s my first question for you. It’s like you have this amazing journey from successful college athlete to prison inmate to motivational speaker and ler. And that’s quite the remarkable journey in your short 47 years. So can you just share with the listeners who maybe are getting introduced to you for the first time, what are some of those pivotal moments or mindset shifts that allowed you to transform? Right. And I, and I would say too, it’s like maybe in some of the not so awesome ways, right? Because I know that there was an accident during your football days and yeah. That led to choices that were transformative to the more positive transformative. So what were these moments that happened in your life that led to such an influential personal brand today?
DW (05:36):
Yeah. I think that the way to start this off is by, you know, I tell people all the time that at no point in my life did, did God just reached out with his hand hand one day and put his hand on my head and said, Damon, you’re healed . But what God has done in my life has put people in my life Mm, always has. And when I was younger, these people were like my parents or my mother, my father, they were teachers, coaches, people in the community of Port Arthur, Texas that helped raise me. And, and I grew up in Texas and we know that Texas high school football is a big deal. And I was a star quarterback in Texas, played division one college football. And of course I got hurt in 1996 against Texas a and m. My career was prematurely ended, and I made a lot of wrong turns at this fork in the road in life, and it had to do with around substance abuse.
DW (06:18):
But I was a very functional addict. And I graduated college, went to work in the United States Congress, worked on Wall Street. I was a broker for UBS when I was introduced to meth for the first time. And I say that there’s been people put in my life because the choices that we make in life are gonna take us down different roads. And as you alluded to, some roads are good, some roads are bad, but there’s always gonna be messengers along the way on those roads to help guide you where you need to be. But the trick is, you have to be receptive to all those messengers. And sometimes when we’re not in the right space, we don’t, we’re not receptive. We can’t hear or see the messenger in front of us. And I made a lot of wrong turns, again, with that fork in the road.
DW (06:57):
When I tried meth for the first time in 2004, 18 months after their first hit of meth, I was living on the streets of Dallas and I became a criminal. I started breaking into people’s houses to fund my addiction. And and the Dallas SWAT team got me in 2008 and they, they arrested me in this traumatic SWAT team raid. And they took me to Dallas County Jail. And then a year later I was sentenced to life in prison. My mother and my father had this conversation with me. They, they right after I’m sentenced to life, they, they let my parents talk to me for five minutes, just kind of on the side of the courtroom. And my mom was reminded me about how they raised me, how, you know, the stuff they heard in the courtroom isn’t the man they raised. In fact, she tells me, when you go to prison, you, you won’t get in one of these gangs.
DW (07:39):
She said, you come back as the man we raised or don’t come back to us at all. So now I’ve got this giant ultimatum and I don’t know how I’m gonna do it, AJ cuz I’ve never been to prison before. I don’t know anything about prison. And I’m in this Dallas County jail complex for the next two months before the prison bus comes to get me. And I have this encounter with one of those people that I would call the messengers in life that’s an old black man named Mr. Jackson. Mr. Jackson shares with me what prison’s gonna be like. And he’s telling me about the violence I’m gonna endure the first couple months. But he tells me things like, you don’t have to win all your fights, you just have to fight all your fights. You know, and that’s true in life. No one counts your wins and losses, but everybody kind of watches the seat as he or she get back up.
DW (08:19):
And that’s what he’s telling me, get back up. But he, but he tells me this, he says, let me break it down from your different way. And that’s when he tells me, he said, I want you to imagine prison as a pot of wine, water. And he said, you have three choices of how you’re gonna respond to this pot of wine water. You can be like the carrot that turns soft, the egg that becomes hard in the boil water, or a coffee bean, which changes the pot of wine water into a pot of coffee. Hmm. And that a agent, when he told me the story about the coffee bean, I remember, I was like, I can understand that. And that’s the way people’s reactions are five to 95 years old when they hear about the coffee bean for the first time. Because you can wrap your brain around those three choices.
DW (08:55):
Mm-Hmm. So Mr. Jackson is one of those people that I met in life that guided me. He was a mentor. Cuz we all need mentors, aj, everybody needs coaches. We all have to have coaches in life. But as I went through prison, I ran into other people in there. There was my, my first cellmate Carlos, you know, Carlos was explaining to me about thinking how your thinking is everything. Your thoughts control your actions, and if you have the wrong thoughts, you can’t have the right actions. And, and so he helped me with the way I think. And a, as I got through the prison process and I started transforming myself in that prison to a pot of a pot of coffee. The parole board came and took notice and they allowed me to leave prison early on parole. Now, as I said, I’m on parole for the rest of my life, but since I got outta prison in 2015, I’ve ran into these other messengers in life because now I’m hyper aware of the roads that I’m on.
DW (09:41):
And I’m looking for those messenger every day. But I’m gonna tell you something, aj, the main thing I’m looking for every day is how do I serve other people? Because that’s like what I pray for every day, aj. I just, man, I just wanna know two things every day from God put in front of me what you need me to do today for you, and let me recognize it when I see it cuz I don’t wanna miss whatever that is. And that’s like the first key to everything else you’re gonna open in life is that the secret to life is serving other people. How do I serve others? Mm.
AJV (10:11):
That’s so good. And you know, it’s so interesting. I have a friend right now who’s really suffering from addiction. And we just had a conversation this past weekend about choices, right? There are defining choices. And then there’s daily choices, right? We have these daily decisions we have to make and we have these defining choices that we have to make. And those daily decisions turn into habits, right? Which could be good or bad. And these defining ones are the ones that can send us down one of these roads and that every, and I love what you said, like every road has, you know, messengers alongside the road. And it sounds like to me it’s like prison saved you.
DW (10:51):
It did. Yeah. It was, was getting a life sentence on top, not just prison, but being sentenced to life in prison. Aj my, my angels in life, my angels didn’t have wings. My angels had a assault rifle. They had shields, they had helmets. They, they came through the window, they busted outta my door. They were a SWAT team. Mm-Hmm. and the SWAT teams of life, they’re coming for us in different ways all the time. The SWAT teams are different forms. They, a SWAT team is a divorce, it’s a bankruptcy, it’s a lost job. It’s, it’s, it’s somebody dying. It’s a child that gets hurt. Mm-Hmm. , the SWAT teams of life are coming for us, but what do we do? And it, it’s that mindset shift of saying, I’m gonna find the opportunity in this adversity because I know this for a fact, aj, no matter what the situation of adversity that you’re in.
DW (11:36):
And, and there’s many different levels of adversity and there’s a lot of different ways to be in prison. Aj mm-hmm. , I mean physical prison, the what kinda I went into, that’s not the worst form prison. The worst form of prison is a prison in your mind. I mean, I meet more people out here in the free world that are locked up than I ever did when I served time in a real prison. Because I think more people are imprisoned by their thoughts and by their things than by steel bars and barbed wire and concrete. And the prison that I got sent to, it was like going in as a caterpillar and coming out as a butterfly. It was a cocoon. Hmm. There was a spiritual awakening that I had for seven years than three months. I grew more in seven years than three months AJ than I did the first 33 years that I was on earth.
DW (12:15):
But it took some serious adversity in my life to make me get off this comfort zone that I’ve been in in life, even when I was in, on drugs and, and, and in my addiction. There’s a comfort zone that people get into. Misery is a very comfortable place too. And your friend that’s going through that right now, you’re right. It’s the daily choice every day that you have to make to change these, to make these good habits. And whenever I was in prison and my back was against the wall and I just surrendered because that’s one of the keys to all this. You gotta surrender this idea of control over things you do not control. Once I surrendered that, I started, I was able to work on myself and, and look, yeah, you’re right. Prison did save my life. And one of the things I talk about with people all the time is that, especially people that wanna get up there and speak or write books, is that, and, and Ed, my ed, ed and I talked about this when I was on his podcast, the things that you think might be the, that the disqualifiers in your life, because the things that have gone wrong, the, the places you messed up, those actually may be the great qualifiers for you to help someone else.
DW (13:16):
You know, these are the things, yeah. These, the things you think disqualify you might be the great qualifiers. Your liabilities may be your biggest asset. But how do you turn that around? How do you make that into a message that people can digest and understand?
AJV (13:30):
I mean, I would say, I think for the most part, and you know, I’ll speak for just myself, but it’s like when I listen to speakers and read books, it’s like, I think most would agree that I don’t really wanna hear about all the successful things that you’ve done . Right? It’s like, at the end of the day, it’s like, I wanna know, it’s like that. I need to know these human elements of you that you’re, you’re broken like me and I can still do things just like you did versus, you know, I’ve have this private jet and fly over the world and made this amount of money and built this many businesses and I just, I’ve seen so many speakers speak over the years cuz part of it’s my job, but part of it is I love seeing speaker speak. It’s like, it’s, I love that. And I’ve always found myself drawn to the person where I’m like,
AJV (14:14):
What if that happened to me? Like what would I do? Like, would I let it grow me or would I let it destroy me? And it’s like, those are the stories that are, in my opinion, more transformative, more life giving than hearing from the person who got it right all the time. Did all the right things. Not that those are bad. It’s good to hear those stories too. But I think there’s something about that comeback story that for most people they’re like, okay, well if you did it, there’s hope for me. So here’s my question in that, because you are speaking on stages and you, you are so vulnerable with your stories and you don’t hold back, which I love and I appreciate. So here, here’s, here’s something for the audience, I think it’s like how do you incorporate those sorts of elements of your story into speaking engagements and books and even interviews like this where one, what did you have to overcome to be like, yeah, I’m, I’m just gonna be honest, right?
AJV (15:12):
I’m just going to tell you what happened. I’m gonna tell you the truth. So how do you do that one and how do you do it in a way that’s beneficial for me? Not just hearing your story, but also, you know, we always say it’s like you tell an eye focus story with a you focus message because I think you do that really well. But then also for those people who are going, yeah, that, that’s cool for you to do, but my story’s so dark, it’s never gonna see the light of day. Like what advice would you give to that person who has that story? And it really does need to be heard, but they’re afraid to share it.
DW (15:45):
Great question. And you tapped on a little bit of it just now and, and you, you talked about vulnerability. Vulnerability is a strength. Vulnerability gets a bad rap. I mean, people think of the word a lot of times people think vulnerable vulnerability means you’re weak. It’s some, it’s some form of weakness. Vulnerability’s a strength because when you’re vulnerable, you let those walls down, those guards down, you show how human you are. And like you said, that draws people in. Now someone says, Hey look, you know, that person’s been through something, I’ve been through something. Maybe there’s something they’re gonna say that’s gonna help me get through what I’m about to go through next. And here’s the deal. Everybody’s got a story out there. I i I believe that everybody’s got their personal stories of overcoming. And you said it earlier in the show, everybody, people need to hear those stories cuz we, you know, we’re all gonna relate to people in different ways.
DW (16:32):
And your story may be the one thing that helps somebody get through their worst day. So if you’re trying to figure out how to tell your story, I’ll just give you what happened to me when I got outta prison in 2015. I’m on parole for the rest of my life and, but I know I’m sitting on this really powerful story wrapped around this great message. And there’s the first part, the story that I can tell and the message within. I think if you’re gonna be out there speaking, have a message, have this, and this is your brand, this is what you build your brand around. What’s the message like? My call to action at the end of every presentation is be a coffee beat. Mm-Hmm. , you know, the same four words that Mr. Jackson told me when the prison bus was coming to pick me up in Dallas County jail to go serve a life sentence.
DW (17:13):
The last four words he ever said were be a coffee beat. But it was a statement, it was an order. Like, go do this. And that’s what you want to build a message inside your story. But I think that you have to work your way up to that. And, and if you’re trying to tell a story in front of an audience, it’s like reading a book. If a book doesn’t grab me in the first seven pages, I’m shocking it aj I’m not, I’m not re it’s, you got seven pages to get my attention. And I may go longer than a lot of other people. But it’s same thing with the presentation. I’m sure that you’re a lot of the same way, if you’re not gonna grab my attention early on, then it’s just, you know, it’s not something I’m, I’m gonna be really drawn to.
DW (17:48):
Mm-Hmm. in the beginning of my story, for example, I used something that, that in, in my background, a SWAT team rate, because not everybody has a SWAT team rate story. What’s your version of a SWAT team rate in your life? What was that SWAT team that came for you? What happened in your life that was the catalyst that sent you in a different direction, a, a a difficult path and gimme the adversity? Early on when I got outta prison, a little adversity story, I had this story I wanted to share. But, you know, I, I grew, I grew up in Port Arthur, Texas, and I, I parole out to my parents’ house. I lived with my parents for the first two years outta I’m out of prison, aj. I lived in my parents’ spare bedroom. I mean, literally, if I would’ve had like a Tinder profile, it would’ve sucked, right?
DW (18:30):
, I mean, I’m, I’m on parole for the rest of my life. I live in my parents’ spare bedroom. I make minimum wage. This guy, you know, which way are you swiping on him? . But, but I’m focused, I’m driven and, and I just walked out of a maximum security prison. Yeah. I’ve got a lot of perspective of what a bad day looks like. And you don’t have to go to PR prison to know that perspective. Everybody knows what a bad day looks like and it’s how do you apply? Like, hey, this isn’t one of those days. This may be a difficult day, but it’s not that day, you know? Yeah. So I got up every day and I had this dream of sharing the story in front of audiences, but man, no one will take me in at first. And I, and, and like I wanna start out with schools and church groups and rotary groups and stuff like that.
DW (19:10):
No one’s gonna let me in. I found a cop and a judge that would take me around and sponsor me to, to take me into schools. But I knew that if I wanted to have a presentation and I wanted to be able to tell a story, the message within it, that would be impactful. Because that’s what you have to do. You have to figure out how am I gonna serve this audience? How am I gonna serve the reader? It’s all about serving people. We talked about this earlier, servant leadership. How am I gonna serve this audience? I knew I had to practice and get good at my message. There’s no such thing as an overnight success, aj. You know that. I know that. But people are drawn to that when they see those, those Instagram account accounts with the private jets, the Lamborghini and all that.
DW (19:48):
I want that. I want that. Well, you know, it takes a long time to get to something, you know, a lot of hard work. Most of the days that I spent the first two years outta prison were not in front of audiences. They were in my parents’ spare bedroom cuz there was a mirror in that spare bedroom. It just happened to be there. When I moved in every single day I’d come home from work, I worked at a law firm, which is a really good job for a guy outta prison, . But I’d come home from work after I, I’d work out after I worked, I went to work, I’d work out. I had a schedule I routine, I was consistent with it. And then I would do a presentation every single night in front of that mirror for two years. I practiced my presentation, the same presentation I’m using today in front of a mirror.
DW (20:27):
The mirror was my audience, but I sharpened it up. I was poised, I was ready to go. And then in 2017 dabble Sweeney, the head coach at Clemson, brings me in to talk to his team. The first big college football coach in America that gives me my shot and my presentation was so on point, so direct on message and it, and it served Dabo s team so well that Dabo got on the phone. He started calling every coach in America for me. I mean, Nick Saban, Kirby smart Lincoln Riley, he’s calling ’em all up and he’s telling about this guy he gotta bring in. But Dabo introduced me to a guy named John Gordon. And then John Gordon calls me up out of the blue and he’s telling me, he is like, Hey man, I was just, I just got done talking to Clemson’s football team and Dabo was telling me about your story and, and, and the coffee bean message.
DW (21:15):
And, and that’s when John says, Hey Damon, write this book with me. We’ll call it the coffee bean. He said, the world needs your message. This is where I think that you, a lot of people give up before they get to this point, but growth follows belief. And you have to believe in yourself before other people will believe in you. And the belief in yourself is gonna become from the consistency, getting in your reps, putting in the work. And that’s the thing about life. You know, no one could put in your work for, you have to put in your own work in life. But when you get that belief in yourself and, and the reps behind it, then I think other people will believe in you because your message has to be developed. And when it gets in front of other people, cuz like you said, you don’t, you know, you hear these stories about people wanna talk about the goods they had done pour out about the stuff you overcame. That’s the, that’s where the secret sauce is.
AJV (22:06):
Yeah, I love that. And I love just that reinforcement of you have to be ready before the opportunity comes, right? Yeah. You’ve gotta be doing this way before you get your chance. But it also, it’s like I really like, I think one of the things that if, as you’re listening, you haven’t picked up on this before, it’s like there, you’ve gotta have a message deep within you that is bigger than any obstacle, bigger than any rejection. It’s like, I don’t care how many times I’m gonna get told no. Like I know I’m meant to do this. So if I have to practice it for myself in front of the mirror for the next two years, then so be it. But I know that this, this is the message that I have to go out and share. And I think that’s just a really good reminder for all of us is like, it takes time, it takes practice, it does not happen overnight.
AJV (22:54):
And not only does it not hope that it happen overnight, it’s like no, you’re doing tons of work behind the scenes no matter what you’re doing. And anyone who has started a business, started a family in a marriage, raising kids, you know, doesn’t matter what it is, how much work it takes that no one sees before anything actually works. And so one of the questions that, as you were talking about, cuz you mentioned talking to football teams, but you also talk to lots of corporate audiences. You talk to all types of audiences. And I was just like looking at your client list on your speaker press kit as I was prepping for this interview. And it’s like, man, you’ve got audiences that range from students to corporations to associations. And clearly your books have mass audience appeal. And one of the questions that I have for you with such like a powerful, unique story, right?
AJV (23:45):
Is what, what are the common themes or messages that you’re able to kind of universally share with audiences that regardless of their background, like these apply? And then how do you find those, right? Because I know, and I’m just thinking at, we just came off the hills of a two day event that we hosted for our community and brand builders group. And I think one of the things that people have a hard time doing is translating these like deeply personal messages that it’s like, I know if I’m in, if I’m in a room full of, you know, student athletes, I’m gonna crush it, but how do I make that work with a group of, you know, direct saleswomen from Arban or whatever, and it’s like, yeah. So how do you take these like big powerful stories and find these common themes as you mentioned, these messages of your stories that resonate across any audience?
DW (24:39):
Great question, John. So when John reaches out to me and he’s telling me, Hey, let’s write this book, we’ll call it the coffee meeting. We start becoming friends. John’s watching me grow as a speaker and he is about to really watch, watch Me grow as an author because John Gordon’s about to hitch me to his, to his rocket ship and put me out there in a different level, right? And he knows what’s coming. And he told me this, Roy, I mean he told me this aj he said, listen, he said, Damon, he said, you have been going out sharing your message and you have been sharing this. Be a coffee beam, man. That’s your brand. That’s your message. Be a coffee beam, you see it behind me, see it on my shirts, you see it everywhere. He said, stick with this. He said, and I’m gonna tell you this, a lot of speakers, a lot of authors, they’ll go and they don’t see a result fast enough.
DW (25:26):
And three years, four years down the line, they don’t see the results coming in yet. And then they changed their message, they changed their brand and they go a different direction because they weren’t seeing the results fast enough. He said, results take time to measure. I’ll never forget that. He said, stick with be a coffee bean. He said one day, if you do this, you’ll be known as the coffee bean guy. And that’s gonna be a pretty big thing to be known as. He said, I’m known as the energy bus guy. And that’s a very big thing to be known as. Stick with the coffee bean. Don’t ever change your brand or your message no matter what audience you get in front of. It’s always gotta be about being a coffee bean. When John told me that, that’s like one of these huge nuggets, and I know you and Rory talk about this a lot.
DW (26:09):
You gotta to build your brand, you gotta stay consistently on message. Now how does that translate? Because if I’m going to talk to a bunch of 18 to 22 year old college athletes, you know, there’s one message for them, right? And then there, if I’m going to talk to corporate America, if, if Walmart or AIG brings me into a corporate boardroom, what am I gonna say to them? Here’s what I would tell you. Do your research, tailor your message to fit your audience. Know what stories go with what groups, but never leave behind that core message. Every group I’ve spoken, and at this point aj, I’ve spoken to thousands, not a thousand, two, 3000 different audiences in that time. And I’ve never not told the story of the coffee bean, and I’ve never not told my backstory. Now, is my backstory the same in a corporate audience as it is in front of a college athletic?
DW (26:59):
No. Mm-hmm. , it’s, it’s, it’s gonna be different. I’m gonna have different stories. I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna have interviews with that corporation. I always, every corporation I speak to, I, I, I wanna have a call with, usually with the, the, the keeper, the culture or the c e o or somebody. Because culture is a top-down thing. The higher level I can get to the better because I wanna learn about their culture. I wanna learn about your core values, and if you can give me your core values, I can weave them into my presentation. So when I’m speaking to a corporate audience, at one point, when I’m talking about turning it around, I talk about the, the different ways it became a golf meet. Things like servant leadership, things like about controlling what you can control in life. Usually your core values will line up with my core values and I can weave them in right there and say, Hey, you know, like we talk about at this company, this is one of our values.
DW (27:46):
This is the same thing was what I’m saying right here. Now you’ve individualized it, you’ve personalized it for your group in front of ’em. They know that you put in the work to come and sit in front of them that day. You didn’t just come there to get a check, you came there to serve mm-hmm. because that’s what you’re ultimately there to do. You’re there to serve. And if you can figure out how to serve, that’s where the secret sauce is. Not just for them, but for you too. Because when we’re serving other people, that’s what we’re at the best version of ourselves too, because that’s what we’re all called to do is serve other people.
AJV (28:14):
I love that. What I wrote down, and I think this is such a good reminder for me to remind our whole community about this. So for everyone listening, it’s just the power of, you know what Damon just said, it’s like you have to know how to tailor your presentation, not change your message. Yeah. Right? It’s like, no, your message is your message and that’s what you wanna be known for. And I tell you what, Damon, you should have some like pretty big endorsements coming and you need to be hitting up like Starbucks and all the coffee shop .
DW (28:43):
I’m tried.
AJV (28:44):
If you’re the coffee bean man, you need to be like Starbucks. Where at all,
DW (28:48):
I’ve tried Starbucks. It’s hard to get through to it. If you know somebody from Starbucks and we get off air, tell me, because I, my gosh,
AJV (28:54):
God, gosh. Well, I’m a bulletproof coffee girl, so i’s been a mile, it’s been a minute since I’ve been to Starbucks, but I will tell you, it’s like, but it’s like, again, it’s like once you become known for that thing, it’s like in brand builders group language, it’s called what we call breaking through she hands wall. It’s like you wanna be a power washer, not a water hose, right? Yeah. It’s like you, you’ve gotta just know exactly what your message is. And when people think of you, they need to think of coffee bean story, right? It’s like, when I think of a coffee bean story, I think of Damon. When I think of Damon, I think about these coffee beans and it’s like, once that happens, then you have broken through Sheehan’s wall, right? And then that’s a great reminder for all of us is tailor the presentation.
AJV (29:32):
But don’t change your message. Don’t change your message. I love that. That’s such a good reminder. And I’m also, I’m watching the clock and we have like five or six minutes left, and I actually wanna ask you two more personal development questions kind of about these books that you’ve written. And you’ve invested a lot of time into this message in writing these books. And so there’s two last questions I have for you. So, all right. I know that a huge part of what you talk about, what you write about is resilience, perseverance, and mindset, right? There’s lots more. But those are three things that stood out to me. And so some tactical advice for anyone who is listening or just for me what are some key strategies or practices that individuals like me and everyone listening that, that can adopt to help increase these qualities of perseverance? Resilience mindset shifts to navigate setbacks in our personal or professional lives. So it’s like a, when you know, the, you know, s h i t hits the fan. I’m on a, I’m on a non cussing roll right now so I can spell it, can’t say it . But when it hits the fan, like how do we go, whoa, whoa, whoa, there’s good in this versus great question. Oh my gosh, the sky is falling.
DW (30:43):
No, great question because we all go through this and, and, and is look, John, our friend John Gordon. John says that fear and faith have more in common than the letter F to begin with. John says, fear and faith, both believe in futures that haven’t happened yet. Fear is this negative future. You can choose to believe in that you get the choice, that’s good. But faith is a positive future. You get the choice to believe in that too. And you can choose your path every day. And it’s always better to choose faith over fear. If you’re gonna pick a future that hadn’t happened, pick the positive one. And this is where I, I try to like land every day, is like, I’ve gotta focus on the positive every single day because there’s gonna be negativity around me. There’s gonna be things that happen in life that can pull you out of this, this good time that you’re in.
DW (31:29):
But you gotta focus on the positive. I learned two things about diversity in life inside that maximum security prison, aj, this is what I learned. I’ve learned that adversity’s never as bad as you think it’s gonna be. Hmm. And you are always capable of way more than you think you are. Mm-Hmm. . Because as human beings, we will allow overthinking to get in the way of overcoming. So don’t overthink just step back. Like we were talking about a separate subject a while ago before we hit record. And it was a very simple answer that you gave me to the very complex question that I had. Usually it’s something very simple to pull you out of where you are that day. Focus on the positive. You know, it’s all about your mindset. It’s like when you’re sitting in traffic, some days the traffic bothers you and other days the traffic doesn’t bother you.
DW (32:16):
Is it the traffic or is it you? It’s always gonna be you. And it’s always how you see three words that I love putting together. Position determines perspective. Mm-Hmm. position determines perspective. Where you are and where you’ve been determines the world that you see. Try to always have a positive perspective and use your perspective of what a bad day looks like. Because all of us know what a bad day looks like. You know, like I told you my bad day every day that my, when I wake up, my feet don’t hit the coal concrete floor, the prison cell. I’m having a pretty good day. and everybody’s got, yeah, everybody, but everybody’s got this to something measure. But you have to apply it. The night that I met Dabo Sweeney, it was at a coach’s award show in Houston, Texas, January of 2017. A buddy of mine in Houston, he called me up.
DW (33:03):
He said, man, these eight coaches are gonna be in this room. The best coach in America is gonna be named. I can sneak you in. I’m at the event right now. I drove an hour and a half because this event, he sneaks me in the back door and I’m there and I, I go open to meet all these coaches cuz I got this story I wanted to share with them. And every coach I met that night, AJ slammed the door in my face. They all told me no, there was one coach left one hour. It took me to get seven nos in one hour. I mean, I’ve been defeated that night and I’m in the corner of the Toyota Center. I’m getting ready to leave. I’m licking my wounds, feeling sorry for myself. The voice in my head is telling me, go home. You’re an imposter.
DW (33:36):
You don’t belong the imposter syndrome. And, and know we’re all gonna, you’re gonna go through this. When you’re out there speaking and writing a book, you’re gonna ask yourself sometimes, do I belong here? But let me tell you something, do not listen to yourself. Talk to yourself, because the voice in your head can be fear. Mm-Hmm. . And I told myself that night, there’s no way I’m leaving until that guy tells me, no, the last coach is gonna, this isn’t prison. I survived something way worse than this. I applied their perspective and I stalked Dabo Swinney around that room. And, and, and it was in, it ended up being the biggest yes I’ve ever gotten in life. But it’s because I believed in what I was doing. And if you have that belief, don’t let anybody tell you what you can or cannot do. And always, always ask your questions. Take your shots because the only question you know, the answer to AJ is the one you do not ask. Mm-Hmm. that answer is no. Every time. If you don’t ask your question, take your shots. Always take your shots in life.
AJV (34:28):
I love that. I love that so much. It’s sometimes we just need a little dose of inspiration to go, I got this, I can do this. I can do hard things. I took my kids on a hike yesterday to just commemorate Memorial Day and just like, just really just a, an hour and a half of just like, silence and helping my kids understand what Memorial Day is all about. And halfway through this hour and a half long ha now my kids are small, they’re almost four and just turned six. This is a long, this just feels like a marathon for them, right? It’s not that long. It’s two and a half miles, but it felt like a marathon for these small humans. And my husband ends up carrying my four year old, but my six-year-old, I’m like, Hey, if you can make it all the way back to the car, you get a sticker and a sticker is worth a quarter.
AJV (35:14):
And at the end of the week he gets to turn in his stickers for quarters for doing hard things. And he’s like, I get a sticker. And I’m like, yeah, I’m gonna give you a sticker buddy. It’s like 25 oh cents. It’s the whole quarter, right? And he gets motivated and he’s like, he’s hustling. And we get towards the end, he goes, mom, I just, I need to quit. I’m like, you need to quit. He goes, yeah, I need to quit, mama. My feet hurt. I need to quit. I’m like, nobody. And I pause like in the middle of all these people, they’re probably like, who is this crazy, like, you know, like cheerleader mom. And I’m like sitting there and I’m like, I need you to say this with me. I can do hard things. I’m like, yes, yes, I can do hard things. He’s like, no mom, I can’t say that. You’re so embarrassing. And I’m like screaming at the top of my lungs, I can do hard things. And and it was like, tell me,
DW (36:00):
Roy’s recording this while you’re doing it.
AJV (36:02):
Wish she was recording of it. I think she was quite a while back carrying my four-year-old. And here’s like the craziest part. It’s like, I don’t know if it helped him, but it helped me. It’s like, I hope it helped him, but it helped me. And it was like such a reminder that it’s like, no, I can do hard things. Like I hope Jasper, that you got something outta that. But at the end of the day, it’s like, after saying it like 10 times screaming in the middle of the state park, I’m like, no, I can do hard things. And I needed that reminder. And it’s like, sometimes it’s like, gosh, we just need to remind ourselves. Oh
DW (36:37):
My God, aj I love that. Cuz you’re hitting on something that, that, that is like the big force in my life that’s going on. Like every time I go out and I serve other people, this helps other people. I, I know it does and I hope it does, but I know one person it helps for sure. Mm-Hmm. , that’s how I stay sober. Mm-Hmm. , that’s, I work a program recovery, a 12 step program recovery. I’ll do it for the rest of my life because in my 12 step program recovery, I’ve gotta find ways to serve other people. Because if I don’t, I stay inside myself. And there’s nothing good that happens when you’re inside yourself. And, and, and it, like literally people ask me about, Hey, you’re on, I’m on the road 80% of the year, aj. I mean, I’m speaking all over the world now and 24 days of the month I’m gone. But it’s how I stay sober by serving other people by. And you don’t have to do it on that big scale like that. Yeah. But you could do it anywhere. You are, you could serve, you did that with your ch with your kid, but it helps you. Mm-Hmm. . And it helps me every time I go out and share my story, it helps me because it reminds me that, yeah, I can do hard things. I can overcome the, I can stay sober one more day. It’s so great. I love that.
AJV (37:46):
Yeah. That, like when you were saying that, it just reminded me of that yesterday. It’s like, I don’t actually know if it helped him and it was like I’m the one who needed it. Yeah. And it’s like, if we don’t remind ourselves, it’s like often we don’t, someone else isn’t supposed to be around, following us around, reminding us. That’s our job. And we gotta we gotta have these types of people like you, these messengers in our life to do that for us. Which is why I love what you said. Everyone needs a mentor. Everyone needs a coach. It’s true. We all do. Lots of us need lots of them. All right. Last quick question, and I know that we’re almost over time here, but so
DW (38:17):
Take your time. I don’t care. This is a fun conversation. Go on, go as long as you want. Let’s go.
AJV (38:21):
So in the Coffee Bean, the book, which everyone should go and check out, which I think is so great, and I’ll use this as my, you know public service announcements. If you want to check out more about Damon West and his speaking, his books, all the things he has going on and also grab a copy of this book, the Coffee Bean. He’s got other books too. He is got one for kids. Go to damon west.org. So that’s damon west.org. And then again, the book is called The Coffee Bean. It’s co-written with John Gordon. He’s got a version for kids, which I love all kids books, so I’ll be picking that up myself. Or follow him on Instagram, which is at Damon West seven. So it’s at Damon West seven on Instagram. Or just go to damon west.org and you can get all of his social themes there.
AJV (39:09):
But I’ll also, we’ll put this on the show notes for you. Okay. So last question. In a coffee bean, you talk about the importance of mindset and in my interpretation, how that can shape our influence, how it can shape our personal brand. So here’s my last question for that person who really does need to cultivate this, I can do hard things mindset. For the person who does have a lot of limiting beliefs, what would you say is the number one thing for that individual to cultivate a growth mindset? A I can do hard things. This overcoming of self-limiting beliefs. Like what would you say is the one thing that they can do to really well both build their personal brand, which for us is just their reputation, but also to just live a better life. Like, what is the thing that we can do to change our mindset, to build a better mindset?
DW (40:01):
Yeah. This is, this is something that, that I had to remind myself of, and I think every one of us do. And aside from the things you just said, because that’s very important. You just said something very important because your brand is your reputation. This is you. This is like, you know, everything about what you’re putting out. That’s your reputation. So guard that, but it’s consistency. Be consistent. Take the same action every single day. And, and you know whenever, whenever you’re consistent, you start building this confidence in yourself because like, you know, ed talks about this a lot. You keep promises that you make to yourself. Mm-Hmm. But be consistent. Show up every day. One of the hardest things about working out is just getting to the gym. And if you can get yourself to the place where you need to be every day to be consistent, that’s when it’s gonna happen.
DW (40:48):
But it’s gonna take time. And just understand that, that you have to put in the work. But consistency trumps everything else. Consistency can beat talent. By the way, talent is great to have, but talent doesn’t beat someone who is consistent and won’t go away. Someone who’s persistent. Someone that gets in front of the, a mirror in a spare bedroom where they live on parole and practices a presentation that one day is gonna be their business that, that they use to create other businesses with. Because the speaking business, I mean, you know, aj it’s something I never, I, I tell my wife almost daily that I cannot believe this is my life and I get to go out and impact a world like this. But it provides for a, a life for my family that’s created generational wealth. I mean, every generation’s changed underneath me now, but it started out in my parents’ fair bedroom, speaking in front of a mirror for two years to get my presentation right, to go speak one time in front of Dabo Sweeney. You know, that’s what it’s about. Being consistent.
AJV (41:47):
I love that. You know, I’m, I’m actually, I’m reading through the Old Testament right now. I’m in this like Bible and a year program and I’m reading through the Old Testament. And one of the things that has stuck out to me most about the Old Testament is how often people get their answers or their desires given to them is persistence. Like, I can’t, I, I’m gonna start counting like how many times a king said, yes, I’ll resolve this, just leave me alone. Or how many times it was just like pure persistence, pure dis consistent. I’m gonna show up every day at this, at this king’s doorstep. I’m gonna show up every day at this, at my master’s door, and I’m gonna ask and I’m gonna ask. And they’re like, oh my gosh, just I’ll give you whatever you want. Stop asking me. Yeah. And it’s such a great reminder that it’s like so much power comes in persistence.
DW (42:36):
And you’re in the Old Testament right now, like the book of Job man. If you want to read a story about a guy that was consistent and just showed up every day while the S H I T was hitting the fan read job, man. This dude, this dude endured way more than any anybody you can imagine. For years this went on, lost his entire fam. I mean, everything was taken, but he had faith and he had consistently, consistently, he believed every day that I have faith in this and it’s gonna work out. And that’s, you gotta have what they call the patience’s a joke. You know, I tell people all the time that that since we’re talking about the Old Testament, that that God doesn’t set bushes on fire anymore. H ha that’s a very Old Testament thing that God did to get people’s attention. But you know what God does today? God sets people on fire. Mm-Hmm. . And that’s when people are just burning this glowing light that shows that God is real. That there’s no other way to explain what’s going on in this person’s life. That story I’m listening to, that’s what God does. He sets people on fire. That’s how we know that God is real. And, and I get to be one of those people. And you get to be one of those people. But it takes that belief and that consistency every day.
AJV (43:44):
Reach it. Love this. Y’all check out Damon. Go to damon west.org, check him out, follow him, buy his books. Spread the spread. This good news Damon so, so awesome to have you on the show. Thank you so much for sharing your story and these words of wisdom. And for everyone else, stay tuned for the recap episode. That will be coming up later this week. We’ll see you next time. Thanks so much.
DW (44:10):
Thank you. Thank you.

Ep 405: The 5 Reasons Why Authors Miss Bestseller Lists | Patty Aubery Episode Recap

RV (00:02):
What a fascinating, uh, story and recount of the Chicken Soup for the Soul brand. I loved it. Uh, this is a recap, uh, a little bit of that, that interview I did with Patty Aubrey and just, uh, if you didn’t get a chance to hear it, it’s about how they built the Chicken Soup for the Soul brand and, you know, sold all those books and changed the whole world and changed the whole industry. And it’s just a little bit of a, a, you know, just fun to go behind the scenes and, and see how that all worked out. And so I thought for today’s episode, I would stay in the theme of book launching and book selling. And I’m gonna walk you through five of the reasons why I think, uh, the five of the most common reasons why authors miss bestseller lists. Um, obviously Chicken Soup for the Soul came out years ago, and so it was fun to see how they bundled things and packaged them together to, you know, sell so many books.
RV (00:59):
In recent years, this has been a huge part of what we do at Brand Builders Group. We, we’ve helped 14 different authors become New York Times or Wall Street Journal bestsellers at this point, um, including myself, of course, which we’ve done. And it is something that we just, we know a lot about. And we are working with all of the biggest publishers in the world, pretty much, and many of the biggest authors in the world. And, you know, so many of our clients at Brand Builders Group are authors at some point are aspiring authors. And so we, uh, you know, we don’t just do book launches, but that’s one of the things that we do really, really well. And we’ve had a, a really strong track record of success, especially here consistently in the last couple years. So, um, I wanna talk about the five biggest risks that, uh, we see for why authors don’t hit bestseller lists.
RV (01:51):
And number one is volume risk, volume risk. So by far, the number one reason why most authors don’t hit the major bestseller lists is simply because of sheer volume. You know, the way that these lists work, uh, you know, the two major ones, New York Times and Wall Street Journal, we do follow others. We follow U s A today, we follow Amazon, we follow, um, you know, the Washington Post, we follow Publishers Weekly. There, there’s, there’s several other lists, but the two main ones, New York Times and Wall Street Journal are, are the biggest and the most credible, and people just have no idea how much volume it takes. Now these lists, most of them are weekly. The New York Times does have a, a monthly bestseller list, um, that is a business bestseller list, which actually, there’s, there’s more than just business books that qualify for that list.
RV (02:42):
We see, uh, psychology books appear on there, and self-help books also appear on there. But the main, uh, list that most of our clients at Brand Builders Group, uh, are going for in that we’ve, we’ve hit is the New York Times Advice Weekly, how to List, which is arguably the toughest list there is. It’s, it’s a very, very competitive list. And then, um, in the Wall Street Journal, the Wall Street Journal has a, a nonfiction list that many of our clients hit. And it’s all formats, paperback, you know, uh, and, and a hardcover, but, and all different nonfiction, um, BSAC codes. And then there is the, the Wall Street Journal business list. And, um, all three of those are the kind of the main three lists that we track and that we’re helping clients hit. ’cause that’s mostly what we do, right? Is, is non-fiction, business, self-help, health psychology, et cetera.
RV (03:33):
And, um, so you have to, in order to hit these bestseller lists, I mean, there’s a lot of things that have to happen, right? Part of which I’ll talk about here in this, in this, this episode. But the first, the first thing is you have to have a volume of units. And, and you have to understand that not every sale counts, only sales at certain outlets count. They’re called reporting outlets or reporting retailers. And so that’s one of the things that we do. And we advise our clients on their strategy. One of the things that we talk about is making sure their sales count. Um, and that’s something that we often help authors with as in addition to helping them create the strategy for how to sell a lot of books. Um, we also have a lot of strategies around making sure the sales count.
RV (04:15):
Because if you sell books at the back of the room, like, let’s say you’re a speaker and you sell at the back of the room, those books don’t count. Um, for the bestseller list, they have to be sold through reporting retailers. And, um, that’s a whole puzzle in game in and of itself. But, um, the way that these bestseller list work is they’re weekly lists. And so they are the number of units sold through all, you know, reporting retailers within a certain period in a window. And usually that is one week. And, um, in this case, these three, they are in one week. And, you know, just, we have a data science team that tracks this specifically. And once someone becomes a client, we actually share a lot of this data with them. The actual specifics, I’ll give you some broad numbers here though, but you know, roughly to make a run at a New York Times, uh, bestseller, you roughly need to have around 15,000 units in a week.
RV (05:07):
Um, we have had clients that we’ve been able to hit with less, um, but we also know people who have missed with more than that. And so, again, part of it depends on how the sales happen and where the sales happen, which is just one of the things that we just try to speak into and, and that we do speak into. ’cause we’re really good at it, even though our main focus is just teaching authors how to ethically and honestly sell a lot of books. So you gotta get about like 15,000 units though just to hit, you know, the, to be a candidate, you know, to hit the New York Times. So that’s not easy. And then a Wall Street Journal nonfiction bestseller, you know, roughly speaking on most weeks and every week is different. And that’s something that we look at and track, um, is when’s the best time to publish, to hit bestseller list, et cetera, and who your publisher is.
RV (05:51):
There’s lots of things like that. Um, but there is around 10,000 units is usually what you’re gonna have to sell in a week to be a candidate for a Wall Street Journal nonfiction bestseller. And then for the Wall Street Journal business, um, that, that one fluctuates, you know, quite a bit. But we typically say 3000 units sold in a week. Um, and you know, that’s a lot of books to sell in a week. So, you know, you’ve gotta create a campaign and a strategy, but that’s the number one reason why authors don’t hit, is they just, they have volume risk. They don’t have enough volume pushing through and also in the right locations. Like they don’t, they don’t know who the proper reporting retailers are, and they don’t have a strategy there, and they don’t even know that. They don’t know that that matters. And so, um, I mean, I, I see sales, I see books every week.
RV (06:37):
I mean, I just looked up one yesterday, a book that sold 4,000 units in a week should have hit a bestseller list. And it didn’t, it missed, and clearly they didn’t have someone advising them on, you know, the, the full picture of how to run these launches. But so volume risk is number one. Um, and it’s heart, it’s heartbreaking when people get the volume and miss, and the reason they often miss is ’cause of number two, which is what I call technicality risk. Um, so the technicality risk is just being unaware that there are so many technicalities that go into hitting these bestseller lists. Part of how I learned this is that one of the most heartbreaking moments of my professional career, um, was when my, my second book Procrastinate On Purpose came out. Um, and I, uh, we, we sold several thousand units. We should have been, and we expected to be a number one Wall Street Journal bestseller, which we were with, uh, take The Stairs, my first book.
RV (07:35):
And I sort of fully expected to do that. And I, we sold the units and then the bestseller list come out. And not only did we not hit number one, we weren’t on the list at all. And that is part of what sent me down a journey of discovery because it was gut-wrenching and, and, and heartbreaking. Um, not because you need the title to feel important, but because you pour your heart and soul into something for years, you know, making a book and preparing and doing the launch. And, and, you know, we know a lot about launching books, um, and, uh, this was at our former company, but, uh, so we weren’t in the business of, of teaching people how to do this, but it was, you know, it was frustrating and discouraging and it felt political, right? I, I felt like I, I got hosed or somebody was against me or out to get me because I sold more books than the books on the list that week.
RV (08:26):
And yet we didn’t, we didn’t hit the list. And that’s because of something called technicality risk. There are many different technicalities that have to be accounted for. And one of ’em, as an example is something called your BIAC code, B I S A C. Um, and so BIAC code is something that most authors don’t even know about or don’t even think to look at. Now, BSAC Codes stands for book industry Standards and Communications. Um, and what it is, is it is like the way that, that the industry organizes and categorizes books, right? There’s so many books, thousands of books, you know, every probably every month or maybe even every week that are coming out. And so these books get organized by category. And the industry categorization method is called the BSAC Code. And the BSAC code is the official category that your book is in.
RV (09:15):
Well, for example, when it came to the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, what was so painful was that, um, my second book was not properly categorized, and it was categorized as a self-help book. And really it’s a business book. Well, why did that matter? It because self-help books never show up on the Wall Street Journal business bestseller list, regardless of how many units they sell. So I did all of this work, our team did all of this work. We pour our heart and soul into it. Our clients are rallying to support us. You know, we’re, we’re, we’re launching this book out into the world. We execute everything and we miss the list on a technicality.
RV (09:55):
It was heartbreaking, right? Um, and, you know, that book never took off. Like my first book, take The Stairs took off, and my first book continues to sell really, really well. Now, it, it, uh, procrastinating on Purpose. My second book, it sold fine. I’ve earned out my advance, I get royalty checks. Um, we sell, you know, a a hundred plus copies every week still, but it never took off, like take the stairs. And part of it I think was ’cause we just, we lost a lot of that momentum of the bestseller and all the buzz, and it was because of an avoidable technicality. And yet no one brought it up to me. No one ever mentioned my literary agent, my publisher, my editor, our, you, you know, our marketing team, like our PR team. No one brought it up. I don’t know that they knew to bring it up.
RV (10:40):
I didn’t know to bring it up. And so that’s a part of where I started exploring this. And then ultimately when we exited that business, it started Brand Builders Group. One of the services that we started providing was book launch, you know, consulting and coaching and teaching people how to not only sell the books, but how to make sure their book sales count for the list. And that you don’t lose out to technicality risk. That’s only one type of risk. There’s other types of technicalities, geographic, there’s publisher risk. Did you know that certain publishers are more likely to show up on the New York Times than other publishers? Um, there are all these things that we track that are just technicalities and you just don’t even know as an author, and no one even brings it up. And you’re so focused on just trying to sell books, which no one has a really good plan for, unless, unless you’re working with us. Then it’s, it’s just like, man, it, it, it’s, it’s, it’s really tricky. So you gotta watch out for technicality risk and you need to talk to somebody who knows what they’re doing and who understands and looks at these bestseller lists. And that’s, you know, part of what we built at Brand Builders Group is a data science team that does nothing but track data just to understand how the bestseller list work. Um, number three is kind of closely related, we call it over estim Overestimation risk.
RV (11:52):
Overestimation risk. And this is definitely one of the reasons why authors miss the bestseller list, which is that they overestimate the importance of PR and social media. Uh, now you might say like, how could you overestimate the importance of PR and social media? Well, PR and social media are good things. You, you need to do them, you should do them for your book launch. But for most authors, that’s what they think. That’s what they think is going to make them make or break hitting the list. And what we know in reality is that only 0.001%, that’s what our team estimates after running several of these launches of your social media falling will convert to become book buyers 0.001%, right? So if you’re Eric Thomas, et the hip hop preacher, we helped, um, Eric Thomas run his entire book, launch the Strategy from Beginning to end, um, and we hit the New York Times with et or he hit the New York Times, we got to be a part of it.
RV (12:51):
And you know, ets amazing. He’s a legend and he is got 5 million social media followers. Well, we estimate that around 5,000 of the book sales came from social media. Um, how do we know that? Because we track all the sales and where all the sales come from. So that’s, if you’re Eric Thomas, right? You might sell 5,000 units from that. So when we created bestseller launch plan, which is our formal curriculum at Brand Builders Group, where we teach people the five mechanisms for how to sell a lot of books, what we created that because we realized for ourselves that social media and PR doesn’t sell that many books. Even when you get on the major podcast, like the biggest podcasts in the world might move a few hundred copies, right? I mean, we’ve had, we’ve had clients and friends and I personally been on many of the biggest podcasts in the world.
RV (13:37):
You might move a couple hundred, 300, a huge, huge podcast would move like 500 units, even the Today Show or national television, right? We’ve had friends, uh, and clients get on the Today Show. We might see a thousand units from that one sale or from that one appearance, which is good. You still need to do it. That’s a thousand units, that’s a thousand lives you’re changing. But a thousand is nowhere near enough to hit any of the bestseller lists, let alone a New York Times, right? So you gotta have a whole other strategy going on here to to, to pull it off. I’ve been on national tv, um, multiple times and I’ve seen, I’ve seen my biggest national TV appearances might move a thousand units. I’ve had some national TV appearances where I can’t even tell, you know, any sort of a, you know, deline able difference in book sales from a national TV appearance, which is hard to get.
RV (14:27):
Um, so there’s this overestimation risk of PR and social media that’s not what move books. You need to figure out a better plan that’s gonna move them. And if you’re a B B G client, obviously we’re, you go through the bestseller launch plan curriculum, you have access to it. We teach you, we teach you the whole system. So watch out for that. Number four is inventory risk. Inventory risk. And this one is another devastating, heartbreaking, tragic thing that makes, gives me so much pain, which is that authors do all this work to create the sales. They have all the money, they have all the people out there buying the books, and the publishers haven’t printed enough inventory, or they have printed enough inventory, but it hasn’t been shipped in time to get to the retailers like Amazon and Barnes and Noble and Books Ilion and all the independent stores and whatever.
RV (15:16):
And so when your audience goes to buy the book, either it shows sold out and nobody can buy it. Or what’s even more frustrating is you can buy it. And so you’ll place an order and you’ll buy a book online and you will make the sale, they’ll collect your money, but because they don’t have the inventory, the retailers can’t ship the books out in time. And so the books get reported when they ship. And so even though the sale happened in a certain week, the reporting of that sale doesn’t happen till future subsequent weeks. And so you have an author’s launch where all, everything they poured into this, their, their reporting gets diluted across multiple weeks. And I’ve seen that happen multiple times. And it, and it typically happens with newer authors, younger authors, smaller publishing companies, and smaller print runs because they just, they don’t know how many books the the author’s gonna sell.
RV (16:14):
It’s their first time. They don’t, they can’t take a huge risk to print a whole bunch of copies. They don’t realize how important it is. And they underestimate how long it takes to print books and get ’em shipped, and then for the retailers to get ’em and checked into inventory and you could do everything else right? And then miss on this one, just again, sort of a horrible technicality of, of, of going, man, I, I created the sales. The sales are there, people spent the money. We, we, we had people buy that many units in a week, but they didn’t get reported because of the way that the inventory happens on the backend. And again, as an author, it’s like, how do you know this? Like, you don’t even know to know this. It, it’s taken me years to figure this out and to learn this stuff.
RV (16:56):
And, and obviously part of why we started Brand Builders Group and created the services that we have, one of which in, in this book Launch in Space. And that points to number five, which is the last one, which is Planning risk, planning risk. And this one is the one that’s controllable. And this is the, this is, you know, the biggest controllable issue that authors have, which is they wait way too long to plan for their launch. Most authors don’t plan for launching their book until their manuscript is done. And you might only have a few months before the book comes out. And that’s not enough time to fully plan and execute and orchestrate and pull off the, the, the logistical, uh, masterpiece that has to take place in order for a book to become a bestseller. I mean, most of these clients that we’re working with we’re, we’re, we’re helping them, we’re helping them years in advance because they’re b b G clients.
RV (17:52):
And so we’re helping them build their platform, build their speaking career, build their social media, build their podcasts, build their funnels, right? Build their sales team, build their events. We’re, we’re building all of this stuff up. And so they’re already in position that we can execute a launch quickly. But if you’re just rolling off the street as a new author and you don’t have a clue how to sell books, and you don’t have a team and you don’t have a huge audience and you can’t get on national tv, it’s like there’s no chance. I mean, the, the ship has sailed be before, you know, like that, that game is already over before it began. And it’s just ’cause you don’t know and you don’t realize that you have to plan. I mean, anything that takes excellence, takes planning. Like you have to plan way out in advance.
RV (18:32):
And so, you know, we tell even, uh, our ideal time is that we should be talking to an author about a year before their publication date of their book if they really wanna make a run at a bestseller. Now, there’s times where we have one regardless, right? Um, Tom and Lisa Bilyeu, uh, hired us 13 days before their book launch. And in 13 days we were able to grow their total sales over 30% in 13 days. And, um, Lisa hit the u ss a today bestseller list, kind of just barely. And so we played a really significant role in that, um, which was great, but you know, they also have a lot of things going for them that not every, you know, new person does that we could, you know, so we were able to move some things and make things happen quickly. Can’t always do that with, with up and comers.
RV (19:17):
So, um, you gotta start planning early and, you know, if you have a book or you wanna have a book coming out in, within the next year, I mean, request a call with us now, like, do not wait. I mean, and you can, you know, you can do that every week. If you go to free brand call.com/podcast. We mention this every week. You can request a free call with our team and you can start getting educated on this and learning about this. But don’t wait too long to plan otherwise, you’ll miss your window. So there’s a lot more going on here to becoming a bestselling author than just selling a lot of books. And those are the five biggest risks for why people miss the list. Hopefully, by knowing ’em, uh, you can help avoid, will help you avoid ’em. And if you’re not sure or exactly clear on exactly how to do that, then talk to us and let us be your partner in this process. Share this episode with an author that you know, or someone who’s an aspiring author or someone who has a book coming out. This is a must listen to must see episode. If someone is an author, this can be life-changing information. So I hope you’ll share that with somebody who is on that path. Thanks for being here. We’ll catch you next time. Bye-bye.

Ep 404: How Chicken Soup for the Soul Sold 500 Million Books with Patty Aubery

Speaker 1 (00:02):
The first time I met Jack Canfield, I was just a young whipper snapper in my early twenties at the National Speakers Association. Over the years, we’ve gotten to know each other a little bit. I’ve interviewed him a couple times. And now I’m so excited because I get to introduce you to Patty Aubery, and she is the president of the Canfield Training Group. So that’s her current role. But she also formerly was one of the people behind building the Chicken Soup for the Soul Series. And then they, that became a billion dollar brand. They sold that business. And so we’re gonna hear a little bit about that story and how they did it and what they’re up to today at Canfield Group. But Patty also is the author of a group of a book called Permission Granted. And she talks about really like how to find the, the bold courage to go out there and just claim and own your voice and share your message. So she was an easy and obvious fit to bring here to the show. And anyways, Patty, great to meet you.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Thanks. Thanks for having me. It’s nice to meet you too.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
So, and I love, you’re a part-time Nashvillian and a part-time Santa Barbaran, which are, those are, those are great places to be. So you’re, you’re, we’ll have to hook up in person when you’re here, but I’d love to start at the start. And this is probably not the start, but when I, when I think of, when you say Chicken Soup for the Soul, I mean, that is in such a category of its own. I mean, it’s, it’s just, it’s so far different. And, and not just one book, but the whole series. I would love to just hear how did it start and then what did it become? And just like, how did you even meet Jack and, and how did you guys get connected and y you know, just like, walk us through the story.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
So I, it was like 1989. I was living in Santa Barbara actually at the time, and I was working for a tech company that sold government software and I hated it. And I was always in trouble. I was not meant to live in a cubicle . So as my son reminds me often, so I moved back to, to la I was born and raised in the valley. And so I, I moved in with my parents and I started looking for a new job. And the interesting thing is, I didn’t know anything about self-help or publishing or anything like that. And I always said, I’m never gonna be a secretary. My secret, because my father wanted me to take typing in school. I’m like, no, my secretary will do that. He’s like, sorry, my daughter’s gonna learn to type. I was a typist in the Army.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
You don’t have a choice. Uhhuh . So I went to a Buck Fuller workshop and I set a goal. It’s like, I’m gonna make $25,000 by January 1st, 1990. And I think I was making 14,000 a year at the time. So I see this ad in the LA Times, it says Secretary wanted, and then in bold, 25,000 a year. I’m like, Ugh, don’t really wanna be a secretary. But 25 there. It’s, that’s kind of a lot of money. You know, I was 23 or 24, whatever it was. And so I answered the ad along with like 200 other people. Sure. And I went down and I interviewed with Jack and his ex-wife Georgia, and then this little condo in the Palisades, specific Palisades and like red furry carpet and, and suns burning like a nice, and I’m like, what is this place? And he was actually doing self-esteem in the classroom. He was training teachers on how to facilitate more self-esteem during their own teaching to the kids. And so I didn’t get the job. A couple months later, he called me and said, I, I’ve made a mistake. I really think we’re supposed to work together. And I said, well, it’s gonna cost you 30 ’cause you waited
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Wow. Interest inflation.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
And he said, okay, can you have lunch? I’m like, wow. He is smart and he is easy. This is a good thing. And so I ended up taking the job, went home, told my dad who flipped out, you’re gonna work for a hippie. I send you to business school. What’s wrong with, you know, he just flipped . And so, but it was great. I mean, I got there and Jack traveled so much of the time. He just basically said, all right, I’m gone for three weeks. I’m like, what am I supposed to do? So I just kind of took over, updated all the technology. It was all really archaic and stuff. He came back, I said, I wanna be vice president of operations. I just redid your whole office and saved you like $40,000 for the year. He was like, okay. So I was only the secretary for a few minutes.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
And then one day he came home, I think it was like right after I started in July. In September, he came to the office and said, you know, I go out and do all these talks and everybody keeps saying, do you have that story in a book? Mostly women? Do you have the story in a book? He’s like, no, but it’s on my Nightingale Conone tapes, or it’s on my career track tapes. Or, you know, and women would say, but I don’t listen to audio tapes because I’m in the car. I’m out of the car. I, you know, I, I read. So I think the universe is telling us to take all the best stories from all the best speakers and put ’em in a book. And I said, okay, thank God I was 24. I had no opinion. ’cause If it was today, I’d be like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (05:08):
So I started working on it with them. And we published our first book in 1993. As you know, we had a hard time finding a publisher, if you’ve heard, a lot of people have heard that story. And we ended up with a real small publisher at a Deerfield beach, which was the biggest blessing on the planet because he owned his own printing press. Ah. And so by, it took us about 14 months to hit a, a bestseller list. And we did every wacky crazy marketing thing you could do. John Kramer’s, 1001 things to market your book. I mean, we did every one of ’em, maybe except for a couple hundred. And at the very tail end of getting the but together, mark and Jack met at a breakfast club and Mark said, Hey, I should do that book with you. And Jack said, okay. And so that was a whole new Mark, Victor
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Hanson, everyone that Victor Hanson see that she’s talking about. Yep. So
Speaker 2 (05:58):
And so
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Who was also an n s Aer. And they, so they, they had known each other, I guess for a while.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
They kind of knew each other, but not well. But Mark, you know, mark is so gregarious and could sell anything to anybody, and Jack’s much more of an introvert. So it was a good team, and it was great for me because I got to learn the, the really anal side of Jack as a teacher. Every detail he explains. And I also got to have Mark’s brain of, you know, come on, kid. Bake it till you make it. If you believe it, you’ll see it. I mean, I’m like, okay, if this stuff doesn’t work, mark work, start a church. ’cause Mark was also a Bible scholar, . And so so we went on, we did that. And then Marcy Schoff wrote Chicken Soup for the Women’s Soul, and she was in a meditation retreat and called and said, Hey, I have an idea. She was in a silence retreat, so she couldn’t talk for nine days. So she said, we need to talk on Friday night at nine o’clock. I have something. She faxed it how long ago was faxed. So we do the call with her and she says, what about chicken Soup for the Women’s Soul? And I thought, that’s kind of dumb. I mean, women are buying the books anyway. And Jack’s like, no, hold on a second. This could be good. And I’m so grateful that she did that because it opened up and we did it, it went nuts. And then with
Speaker 1 (07:18):
The same publisher.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Same publisher, okay,
Speaker 1 (07:21):
So this is not, this is not like a major New York publishing deal where they’re paying you a book advance and push pushing your book everywhere. This is like a small publisher pr basically, basically like a vanity, like a hybrid publisher today. Maybe you printing your own books.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Well, they’re, they, they were a regular publisher, but they printed like recovery books like John Bradshaw, you know, healing the Inner Child, Melanie Beatty, recovery Books, addiction, things like that. So they were little, but he had had a couple bestsellers Okay. In the past. And so when he saw the number start climbing, he bought the highest end German printing press. Like he got prepared, he saw, and he would call me, he is like, keep those chickens rolling. I mean, he’d sing to me, you know, I’m like, oh God. Another book. You know, we marketed the first book forever before anything happened. So when Marcy said that, we did that book, and then we thought, well, what else could we do? And then the next book, my mom was diagnosed with cancer, and my sister had come to work for me and she said, why don’t we put a bunch of stories together for mom about people that have survived cancer? And I said, so all you authors out there listening, or anybody that’s thinking about having a big dream, the words that came outta my mouth, which are embarrassing, were, well, why would they let us do a book? We work here? And she said, Patty, you have been with Jack before it was even an idea who deserves it more. And so, and she was bossy. She was younger than me. And so she convinced me. So I went into the conference room with Mark and Jack and said,
Speaker 1 (08:58):
This is Marcy.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
No, my sister came to work. Oh, your
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Sister, okay.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Yeah. And, and she just gotten her degree in nursing. And so I said, while you’re studying for your state boards, help me read these stories, because there were stories coming in. And so I, I presented this thing, I wanna do this book, chicken Soup for The Surviving Soul. And I was so scared. And they said, okay. And I went, yeah, great. And so did that book, and then that led me into Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul. And I did, I did 14 books of my own out of the 250 that I managed over like an 18 year period.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Wow. You guys did 250 ver iterations of that brand.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
We did 200. Wow. And that it, it was such a blessing. And they
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Were all just different verticals like that. Basically chicken soup for the teacher’s soul and for the brothers soul and whatever.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Exactly. And, and the thing is, because we said in the back of the book, if you have a story, share it with us. And so people started writing stories and it sort of gave us, it was like foreshadowing. We knew what the market was looking for. We were getting a ton of pet lover stories. We were getting a lot of Christian stories. We were getting, you know, all kinds of different things. So at one point, I think my publishing schedule was five years out and Wow. I think the biggest year we did 18 books in one year. It’s, that’s insane.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
So did, were, were all the books selling well, or was it just the, like, a few of ’em that were really the main drivers?
Speaker 2 (10:34):
I think the one that sold the least was probably Chicken Soup for The Surviving Soul. ’cause It was a very small market and that probably sold 500,000. Teen Soul sold 12 million
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Oh man.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
You know, Christian Soul, I sold a million the first quarter out the door. So out of everything we did about, maybe we did like 230 or 240 tiles, but when we sold the company in 2008, we had done, I wanna say, and we did a deal with the Chinese. So there was, so we’re up to 500 million copies sold with all the books collectively
Speaker 1 (11:19):
500 million copies across 240 ti 250 titles. Wow. And so they, and then they bought and they bought all of them. That was the deal was they basically, they said, we’re buying. Like, what, what did they exactly, they bought, they bought the rights for all those books.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Well, we didn’t get in advance. He, we actually had to guarantee him that if we didn’t sell 20,000 copies of the first books, we’d pay him back. So, and then we worked out in advance, you know, so we could be off the road and writing books. We got a decent royalty, but we, we also owned all the rights. So we were able to do licensing. We did dog food, we did grading cards, we syndicated columns, calendars, journals. We did a lot of, we did a lot of work with pharmaceutical companies. We did co-branding with a lot of different brands that were launching new products. We
Speaker 1 (12:12):
That Did you sell all of that stuff? So basically, is that what became the business, was like all the books plus all the licensing deals of where you licensed the brand out?
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Yeah. So what what happened was we had all these co-authors. So if you think about it, I think I figured it out. I had 26,000 contributors.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Wow. And
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Over 500 co-authors. And so the co-authors all got a nice royalty, but we owned the trademarks and all the rights at the end of the day. And so in 2008, when we sold it, it was about as good as the entire time that we, like, we, we kind of doubled our money in one day and we sold it and we sold it to a couple guys out of Connecticut.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
And, and so that, and then after that, as of that time, then it was just like, it was gone. You guys sold it, they took over the rights, all the licensing, all the people and everything. And then basically you guys were starting over, so to speak, like it was all you were out.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yeah, it was weird.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Wow. Like
Speaker 2 (13:16):
How many employees? Chicken soup people. And one day you’re not Uhhuh.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
And what, how many people were there?
Speaker 2 (13:22):
W we had, so we had two companies. So Mark had a company, and then Jack and I had a company, and then we had a shell company that kind of held all the assets. So on Mark’s end, they were in charge of licensing and legal. And on my end it was marketing and production and specialty deals. So we kind of, and Mark’s Mark was married to a gal named Patty at the time. So it was basically the four of us kind of running it. And then I had about 15 employees. And Mark Mark’s company, they only had a couple employees that actually worked with chicken. My entire team was on, I mean, from permissions to editorial, to creating marketing plans, getting things ready, and things like that. So
Speaker 1 (14:12):
When you were launching these books, like what worked really well? Like you, you, I mean, you launched 250 books, 18 in one year. Did, did, did you think that, was it really about the launch and it was like, oh, if we, if we set it, if we do a big launch that sets the trajectory? Or was it more of just, we kind of do the same thing for everything. We put it out there and some of them catch flight and some of them don’t?
Speaker 2 (14:37):
No. We did a launch for everything. And we, we did things like Chicken Soup and NASCAR Lovers Soul, and we worked with head NASCAR headquarters. When we did the Pet Lover book, we worked with Marty Becker, who was on Good Morning America as their expert veterinarian. We did a deal with Petco, they got the books for the first two weeks before I went to bookstores. And that was 500,000 copies. We did Chicken Soup for the Traveler Soul and had a giant rig go from New York to LA with a giant chicken on the side with the backpack and stopped in all these small little places. So every single title had a very specific marketing plan
Speaker 1 (15:19):
And like a marketing partner
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Most of the time. Yeah. Some were just authors that were great authors and they already had platforms like Marcy Moff, Lisa Nichols different people. They had a, a decent following. So over time you start to look at, okay, your perfect author has a platform. They know how to speak, they know how to edit. And you know, once you get it going to a certain level, you have all these people out there promoting this massive brand. And so it just, and, and the publisher put a lot of money into placement. I mean, if any bookstore that you went into in those days, we had a whole wall. I mean, those are not cheap.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Oh, so the publisher was buying store placement? Oh yeah. Was it the same publisher the whole time? That’s that like local publisher?
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Wow. So they like went all in on you. They’re buying printing presses. They’re pushing it to the front of store. Mm-Hmm. . So you weren’t paying out of pocket for the store placement the publisher was.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Right.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Wow. Yeah. That’s expensive stuff.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
I know. And he has a very nice jet these days. .
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Yeah. It paid off for it paid off for him.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Yeah. He was, he was really, he, he is a big horse race guy and he loves to bet on things. And he, he just, he kind of bet the farm
Speaker 1 (16:35):
And picked the jockey, not the horse man. He, he got it. So that’s, that’s amazing. What a cool, I didn’t know that. I didn’t, I didn’t realize that. I didn’t know that you guys were doing, you know, paid promotion and all that kind of stuff. I mean, you, you know, a lot of people don’t realize you just buy that space like in the airport or whatever, like Right. But it’s expensive and, and competitive. It’s expensive.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
That’s why it’s really hard to get a book published with a New York publisher because they, they have a lot of, they have upfront costs, you know, and the thing with us that we were so lucky about was we thought, oh, we, we really wanted a bigger publisher. And we met with other publishers over the years, but nobody could pump out 500,000 books a week. But he could, because he owned the printing presses. He owned the editorial, he owned the art department, he owned the distribution. So it was a one side, it was like a little mini Amazon before Amazon.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Wow. And so how, when you, when you would launch, I mean, you, like you said, 500,000 for Petco. That’s insane. So you, I mean, that was down the road though. That was after you had established the brand, the books were selling and then people are going, Hey, we wanna do, we want to do, you know, chicken soup for the whatever, soul. And then, so we were these licensing deals and these kind of part promotional partners, were they basically just coming to you at some point once or were you always prospecting them?
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Yes. Always.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
How, how, how did you do that?
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Well, the first time we did anything at all for licensing, we did a book called Chicken Soup for the Golfer Soul. And so we went to the P G A show and my husband owns a golf company. And so one of the companies came and said, Hey, we want 300,000 books. We’re launching this new driver to go up against the Callaway Big Bertha driver. So I went to my publisher and he said, no, we can’t do it. There’s laws, you know, pricing laws and so forth. And so my husband said, well, why don’t you just create like a little tiny book and just wrap it around the head of the golf club and charge the three books and sell ’em how many units they want. And I was like, that’s like a lot for a little tiny booklet. He is like, yeah, but if you do that at the same time, the book’s coming out, it’ll spread the word that way.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
They’ll, he, he said, you guys are like the Callaway of golf, you know, as Chicken Soup. That was our first deal. And it was great ’cause it was upfront money. And so we, we thought, well, that worked for golf, who else could we do it with? And then we, we got a gal that was really in with brand managers and pharma and said, well, we we’re doing a book called Chicken Soup for the Unsinkable Soul. You know, is there a brand that could use us to help launch? And they said, well, we’re doing this new drug, Paxil for depression. If you could put together a few stories on people overcoming depression, we could launch that with it. So when you go to the doc, so we did, zoo would sell a million units to a pharmaceutical. They would then give ’em to the reps, the reps would take them out with the new drug.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
They would give ’em to the doctors, the doctors would prescribe. And then they would say, by the way, here’s a message from the chicken soup people. So we were sort of that warm and fuzzy side of the drug world, which really covered the overhead because when you’re, when you’re writing books, you don’t get a whole lot of money as a royalty. You know, we were only making a dollar or 25 a book or whatever it was. And when you’re splitting that with other authors and you have overhead, you’ve gotta figure out creative ways to pay your overhead. And so that was the beginning. And then we thought, well, what if we got a licensing agent? And so we started licensing greeting cards and cups and mugs. And, and then she came to us and she said, okay, chicken soup for the dog, love soul dog food. And I’m like, this is really pushing it. But it was the biggest licensing deal we did. It was crazy
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Really that, I mean, I used to believe that. I mean, pet lovers are, I mean, people, they’re crazy pets are, they’re, yeah. I mean, they’re family members. Like it’s a, it’s, they’re,
Speaker 2 (20:30):
They’re uhhuh
Speaker 1 (20:31):
. So you got a licensing agent. Does that mean you hired a, a full a person or like an employee that just focused on licensing? Or that’s more of like, you went and got someone like, like an actual agent who just agents deals? We
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Went to an agency. Yeah, we went to an agency in New York and got a licensing agent. And, but when we did specialty deals with farmers and stuff, I had two people in house. So that’s all they did were send out proposals all day long every day. And we would mock up stuff like, this is what we’re thinking, this is what it would look like. We did all, we did the research, we knew what they were doing. So we always went out with, Hey, we know you’re working on this. We think we have a way to help support you. So it wasn’t, Hey, we need you. It was more like they kind of really needed us. It was still a hard sell. We probably did a hundred of those over the years, but probably sent out thousands, you know, to get the hundred that we did.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
And you’re just basically going pick a company, you basically like pick a company or, or you pick a market and then you find a company that serves that market. And then you go, what are the goals of this company? And how could we pitch this or present the idea of a book specific to that market in a way that they could use it to help them achieve whatever their other goal was.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Exactly. Like, for example
Speaker 1 (21:50):
That’s so brilliant and simple, but so brilliant. ,
Speaker 2 (21:54):
It was Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. I’m telling you. It was a crazy like . But yeah, I mean it was, you know, we did a book for chiropractors with a big unit Parker Chiropractic and the president of that school was our author on that. And, and he came to us and said, you know, we can’t make claims as chiropractors, but if you tell stories, it’s different. So it was just life changing stories of people of not being able to walk, but going to their chiropractor and getting better. And the alternative things that they did. So that was kind of a specialty book. We did one with Isagenix, which is a multi-level company. And that was all that was like Chicken Soup for the Healthy Soul. And it was all stories of people losing weight and their lives changing because of it. So we weren’t, we weren’t making claims, we were just telling stories. And so it was, it was above board and legal
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Uhhuh . Well, and, and just the, you know, the, the, the magic of that, right? Is every, everyone does a book launch and they go, how, how do I get people to buy my book? In the simple, the simple switch that you flipped there was just going, how can we make our book a part of the things that other people have going on? Like just basically hitch to their wagon along to the ride and show ’em how, how it supports them. I mean, that’s, that’s really, really powerful and really, really cool. And so then you would basically just come up with the idea, identify some companies, and then just email ’em, phone call ’em, send ’em a proposal and say, Hey, this is, we, we got a book coming out. I dunno if you’ve heard of the brand. Here’s how many copies we sell. Here’s examples of who we’ve done this with. Here’s what we think we could do with you. It’s like, is there a way to partner up on this?
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Pretty much. I mean, it was a little bit harder, you know, mostly like boots on the ground. Who do we know? You know, we reached out to people that we knew. At the time it was February, Sue Mancini that was running Parker Chiropractic. Kathy Cooper was a friend, and I just made her, you know, made a call and sent her a mock up of what I thought it could look like. And, and so we always gave them everything we possibly could mocked up how it would work, what it would look like. The biggest thing was, you know, in the book business, you get returns when you do a specialty deal, it’s a one-time sale. So it was bulk buys of a hundred thousand or a million or whatever it was. So there was no risk, which made it a lot better.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Right. Well, and because they’re u they’re using it as a marketing tool. It’s, it’s not like, it’s not like selling to a bookstore who’s gonna try to resell the book. They’re packaging it. Like when you, when when you said the pharma one, you basically, you were saying that the, the reps would give them basically piles of them to each doctor so that every time the doctor prescribed the medicine, they also gave them a book.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Exactly. Or a sample of the book. But the sample would be like a 16 or a 32 page. And because that, that way you could have a, you know, you weren’t carrying cases of books. And it also was at the exact same time we were launching something in the bookstore.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Right. So,
Speaker 2 (25:02):
So, and, and there were some that were just specialty, that were just never, that never went to bookstores. But we always look for where is there money and distribution that we don’t have, and where can we show up outside of a bookstore? Because only 3% of the population ever went into a bookstore in those decades,
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Even back then, which was the peak, the peak bookstore time. Yeah. Yeah. So, so that’s a really powerful question. Where is there money and distribution that we don’t have? Basically where is there a huge network of people that you just kinda like are tying in, tying into and riding that sort of, riding that wave or working in that circle?
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Patty, that’s amazing. What, what a powerful story. So, so then so you sold the company and then you started the training company, then it was Canfield Training Group after that? Or were they kind of running like simultaneous?
Speaker 2 (26:00):
They were, we, we, we would do one big training a year. ’cause Jack loves to do really in, you know, deep workshops, more like, just a lot. It’s a lot of personal work. And so we did that every summer during chicken soup, but we weren’t on the road as much because we were so busy editing and compiling books. And before chicken, we had a company called Self-Esteem Seminars. And so that’s still today our original company and we have a D B A of, you know, the Canfield Group and Jet Camfield companies. So when we sold, we kind of sat around and felt really weird. I was really happy. I’m like, I am good to go. They don’t, I’m done. I’m, you know, they, it’s like they don’t care what I think I didn’t have. And that was the big thing for me. I didn’t wanna have to come onto another organization and be responsible for three years or whatever it was.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
So we didn’t do that. And and I said, well, you know, we, we published the Success principles in 2005, so this is two, 2008. I said, why don’t we circle back and start training people how to do what we did and using the success principles. And all of those principles were used throughout our time of setting goals and creating affirmations and, you know, writing down steps that you have to do and visualizing it and sharing your vision and all the stuff. And, and we had more clout by that time. So we did kind of a year long road trip to about 10 cities and did one day events. And we, we just, we just called it Train the Trainer if you wanna become a trainer of the success principals. And we had a huge teacher market, so they were kind of our ideal avatar because they already knew sort of how to speak.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
And then it morphed from that into an online certification when certifications really weren’t happening yet. And so we decided to do that so we could get to more people. So for less than the price of travel, you can get certified online. And so that was a two year process. We did that. And now we, you know, we, we mostly cater to authors, speakers, coaches and teach them interactive exercises that they can bring into the things that they do. How do you make your talk more engaging? We do a lot of author stuff. I just came off a two day author retreat. I do those about eight times a year. Mm-Hmm. , so
Speaker 1 (28:35):
18, which was an, which was an event, an event that you guys hosted that was specific for authors.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
We worked, we do it with Steve Harrison. Do you know who Steve and Bill Harrison are?
Speaker 1 (28:47):
That sounds familiar to me. They,
Speaker 2 (28:48):
They used to own a company called Radio Television Interview Report, r t I r. Okay. And we would place ads with them for all of the books to get radio shows and TV shows. And so they cater to authors a lot and helping them get their books done and published. So we do about eight a year. It’s me and Jack and Steve, and we did like two, this two we had, I wanna say 18 authors total. So it’s like a, it’s like a mastermind. Mm-Hmm. And we did, we do ’em via Zoom, and we just talk about, okay, here’s your book. This is what you should fix. This is a way that you could market it. Think about doing this. And
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Yeah, I mean the, I have to say, this is probably the, just the most creative marketing strategy book marketing strategy conversation that I’ve ever heard. Really. I mean I mean, it’s really powerful and, and simple. And, and so then and so then, and then that led you to write permission granted. So you had written 14 Chicken Soup books or been a part of 14 yourself, and then you released permission Granted. So you’re still at the, you’re still president of Canfield, you guys are still doing all that stuff, but then you released your own book here recently as well?
Speaker 2 (30:02):
I did. I released Permission, granted, I wanna say probably right before the Pandemic in 2019, it was a compilation. People like a and Janet Atwood and Marcy Shimoff and Lisa Nichols, and then other people, it’s only like 15 authors. And I just said, just gimme your best story of when you finally decided to give yourself permission to show up and just go for the dream. Like just say it out loud. And, because I feel like so many people, they, they wanna write a book or they wanna do something different, or they wanna put their job, or they wanna say, I don’t wanna be married anymore. Or they wanna ask for a raise. I mean, whatever it is, it’s, it’s, at least in my life, it was hard for me to speak up. And I’m a pretty bossy kind of gal. But I was a professional hider, so nobody knew that I was running the company.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
No. People would call me to speak Rory, and I would turn it down. Oh, we have 7,000 women in the stadium. Can you come and speak about your book? Oh, no, I’m too busy running Chicken Soup for the Soul and the President. And because I didn’t know how to do it, and I thought you had to memorize everything. And I didn’t know there was a formula. So once I figured out, wait, there’s some method to this madness, I, and by doing the online training, I kind of figured it out and I’m like, there’s a methodology here. There’s certain key ingredients that you need to use. And so I just thought, I’m, I’m gonna do it. And I kept waiting for Jack to say, Hey, you should, you know, come on stage more and you should. And he never did. And I literally told myself that he must think that I’m terrible or he would’ve asked me. And the real story was like, well, I didn’t know you wanted to do it. He’s like, I’m not a mind reader. So that sort of set me off on this journey of, of giving other women permission to really mm-hmm. show up and live their dream.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
I love it. Well, I mean, we’ll link up to permission granted in the, in the show notes and everything. Yeah, I mean, what a story Patty is, is where do you want people to go to, to, to learn about that about you or what you’re up to and what you’re working on right now?
Speaker 2 (32:12):
They can go to my website, it’s patty aubrey.com and that’s a U b e r y. Everyone spells it r e y, but it’s a U B E R Y. And I do women’s retreats. I do a lot of coaching for people that need to learn how to share their message more. And just some other fun things and a lot of stuff with Jack as well. So we run a lot of high-end luxury stuff, fun things around the world
Speaker 1 (32:39):
That’s really, really, really cool.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Can we do some in Nashville? So we’ll have to invite you next.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
I mean, yeah, let me know. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s in the neck of the woods. I at least gotta come over and say hi. Like I would love to know this. This is such a great story and I mean, this is amazing. 500 million people that you guys reached with just that and every, and that was all the way back in 2008. So everything that you guys have done since then is just really, really inspiring. I mean, if, if there’s somebody out there listening right now who, you know, has that dream and they go, wow, you know, and think back to where you were, where you couldn’t get the publishing deal and before you sold 500 million copies and 250 books and all that. But like at some point there must’ve been a moment where you guys were just starting out where you’re like, what are we even doing? Like what, how, how are we gonna, how are we gonna pull all this off? Like, what would you tell that person right now?
Speaker 2 (33:35):
I would say make a plan. Share your vision with everyone. I mean, the reality is, the publisher that finally said yes to us after 144 said no, was the only person we knew at Book Expo. And we said, Hey, could we just park our backpacks here while we go hand out manuscripts? Because our agent gave us the book back and said, sorry, I can’t sell it. And at the end of the weekend, we still got more nos. And then Peter , who was the president of Health Communications, our publishing company, he said, Hey, why don’t you let me read that book? And I didn’t know this at the time, I didn’t know this until we did a documentary years later. And and he was the one that published it. And what’s so interesting is that we often step over the people that are sitting right there on our front porch.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Mm-Hmm. Amen. And think we have to go someplace else. So tell everyone, you know what you do, share your message, get it down. Well go hang out with Rory, got brand builders. It’s amazing. I’ve checked it out and, and just don’t give up. I mean, it takes time. And I, I do believe that Chicken soup sort of put a spin on the book world that you can just go out and have these bestsellers. And the reality is, I tell all of my clients books are like babies. You don’t birth them and leave them in the alley to raise themselves. Mm-Hmm. You have to raise them and spin off products and think of trainings and how can you coach people and what, you know, your book is like the hub of a wheel and every spoke is an next opportunity to take that to a new level.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Yeah. Well, you guys certainly did that. And I think I can call, I’m gonna title this from Incense, burning Hippies to the Billion Dollar . Thank you so much, Patty, for sharing the story and just your wisdom and insight, like what a joy and treat, I learned so much. And I mean, we just continue to wish you and Jack and the whole team the best. So keep going. Thank you.

Ep 403: How to Set Your Fees | Mitch Matthews Episode Recap

AJV (00:02):
All right, guys. We are going to talk about how to set your fees. In other words, how to be well paid as a speaker, coach, consultant, author, who also does speaking, coaching, and consulting. But this is a conversation specifically designed for what we call the expert community. That person who is trading their content, right via coaching, consulting, speaking, writing, content, creating for money. And ultimately, this is to help you make more money so that your, your message gets more out into the world. At the end of the day, I believe that most of you who are listening to this are driven by mission and purpose, and you want to make money as a bri, as a byproduct of doing really good work. But at the same time, if you do really good work, then you should be paid like you do really good work.
AJV (00:56):
And for many of us there, a reason you’re not getting paid like you should is because you don’t have the confidence or the conviction to charge what you should. And that’s what this conversation is about today. So at Brand Builders Group we believe that there are four categories, sorry, five categories missed. One, there are five categories that really will help you decipher how do you set your fees? So we could talk about things philosophically or in theory, we could share best practices. That’s not what this is about today. What this is about today or what are the five categories that you need to evaluate yourself in to know how to set your fees. All right? And each one of these, I just want you to rank yourself on a scale of one to 10, one being not existent, 10 being crushing it out of this world, killing it.
AJV (01:53):
That’s what we’re talking about. So high level here are the five categories that we’re gonna go through. Credibility, content, delivery, right? Your presentation style, right? Stage presence, we could call it that. Marketing materials and reach, right? So I’ll say ’em again. Credibility, content, delivery, marketing materials, and reach high level. That’s what we’re going after here. So I’m also trying to keep this 10 minutes or less. So we gotta crush, we gotta roll. First one, credibility. Again, rate yourself on each of these on a scale of one to 10. One being I don’t have any in the market. 10 being I’m a household name, right? So this is what we’re talking about. A 10 is like a PhD or a global thought leader. These are people who have viral TED Talks, New York Times, bestselling books, people who are regularly on some of the biggest media and podcasts, your mainstream, right?
AJV (02:47):
That’s a 10. One being is you’ve got no specific expertise or track record in the public. Now, you may have a lot of hidden credibility. In other words, only a few people know about what you’ve done. But man, for those who know about it, they know it really well, and you’ve done an excellent job for them. But that’s a one, right? So this is credibility in the known marketplace. One to 10, one is going to be a lower fee. A 10 is going to mean a higher fee, right? And we’re gonna do this five times. So I want you to take an average at the very end, right? So as you jot down these numbers, so let’s just say you give yourself a five in credibility. I want you to take your average of each of these. And at the end of the, you know, episode, I want you to go, Hey, what’d you average, right?
AJV (03:37):
Did you average a five? Did you average a seven? Did you average a three? That’s what I want you to do. So that’s credibility. Content is the next one. Rate yourself on a scale of one to 10. 10 is someone who’s got award-winning ideas, original research. You are regularly referenced in the media or in the mainstream, but people come to you for this piece of content. You are known for this thing, right? You have a truly original thought leadership in this area, okay? That also means that you’ve got well-documented frameworks and IP that could be in the form of books, courses, speeches, TED talks, all the things. But it’s documented as yours, referenced as yours. That’s a 10 a one. As someone who has loosely constructed ideas, but no specific frameworks, f frameworks or organization. There’s no unique methodology or processes. And if you were just honest with yourself, these are somewhat largely repackaged ideas that already exist somewhere else.
AJV (04:44):
In other words, nothing original, truly yours yet, yet, okay? So give yourself a ranking of scale of one to 10, one being got none, 10 being I own this. Okay? That’s content. So you’ve got two. Now. Now, let’s go into number three, delivery. This is, again, I kind of said this earlier, stage presence, right? What is that? You know personality or charisma that comes across on camera, on stage in front of people one-on-one, right? 10 being you are a hall of fame type of speaker, right? You’ve got awards for your presentations, for your speaking. You’re constantly booked because people want to hear you speak. You have a captivating stage presence. People are constantly telling you, this is the best speech I’ve ever heard. This is the best presentation I’ve ever seen. People are laughing, they’re crying, right?
AJV (05:37):
But it’s like people are constantly commenting on the delivery of your presentation, of your content, right? One would be, you don’t get that one would be you don’t get invited back to speak, right? You don’t speak very much. You don’t get tons of views on your videos or comments on your videos. You struggle to keep people’s attention. You struggle to keep people engaged. You feel all over the place and others feel like you’re all over the place. Again, the these rankings are just for yourself. But I need you to be honest. Are you a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10? Where do you fall in delivery? Somewhat subjective there. Okay? Now, next one, marketing materials. Right? Again, a 10 would be something that you’ve had professionally designed, right? It looks more expensive than you even are, right? It is beautifully designed. You’ve got everything matching. You’ve got brand guidelines and they’re followed.
AJV (06:33):
That’s with websites, demo videos, slides, workbooks, resource guides your social media, right? It does not mean you’ve got to have the fanciest, most expensive stuff, but it looks good, right? It looks well presented. I just came off of seeing Taylor Swift in the ERAS tour. Now, she spent millions and millions and millions and dollars. I’m not saying that’s what it is, but man, it looks well thought out. It is well planned. It is important how things look and come together. You can tell that. So is that yours or are things mismatched together and you’re just scraping by? And that’s okay. You don’t have to be at a 10 here, right? But this is, this is just helping you go, man. It’s like, you know, people always say, don’t judge a book by their cover. Well, unfortunately, sometimes they do. They go, man, that looks so good.
AJV (07:21):
It must be as good as it looks. So gotta take some of that in. I’m not saying I agree with all of that. I’m just talking about where, where, where we are here in the world. And number one is that, I mean, you’re just, you’re first starting out and it’s version 1.0 of everything. You’ve got things in word docs and PowerPoints, and you’re using your own stuff on Canada. That doesn’t mean it looks bad, it just means things are kind of compiled together and mismatched, right? That will affect your fees and pricing. It just will. So let’s just call it what it is. Where do you fall on a scale of one to 10? Always knowing that we get to improve at every level, right? We get to do better then reach. So reach is how many people do you reach?
AJV (08:04):
How many people do you have access to? How many people follow you on social media? E email list, subscribe to your podcast, how many people you are in front of on a consistent basis, right? So a 10 would be you’re someone who reaches millions on the regular, right? This is in some sort of controlled medium as well, not just on social media, but you’ve got a large email list. You’ve got a huge amount of subscribers and downloads to your podcast. And you’ve got social media, right? So when you think about this, you probably have hundreds of thousands of people on an email list, hundreds of thousands of people on social media. You have access to reach through main media other top known, well-known podcasts TV shows, radio shows et cetera. But that would be a 10, right? A one would be you’ve
AJV (08:55):
Got no email list. You don’t even know how to make an email list. very minimal social media following. So it’s in the hundreds and no direct access to any group of people, i e platforms. So you’re not speaking on good sta big stages, but maybe you are speaking at some, you know, local community groups, B and i groups, chamber of commerce groups ever. We all have to start somewhere. Those aren’t bad things, right? None of this should make you feel bad. These are just going, man, this is, this is helpful for me to go, where do I start my pricing? Right? So give yourself a score, right? I would say for reach, you know, I don’t have a huge social media following, so it’s not all about that. But I have access to big platforms. I’m on a lot of stages.
AJV (09:39):
I only have like 9,500 people that follow me on Instagram, maybe 15,000 all in on social media. So this is not all about having a huge social media file. I don’t care to have that. But we have a fairly large email list, which I do care a lot about. I have access to lots of large audiences through other people’s podcasts and stages, but I would not rate myself anywhere near a 10. I would say I’m, in terms of reach, I’m somewhere like a six or a seven, right? And I do this for a living, right? But is, is being honest with myself to go through each of these. It will help, you know, one where you are today and in what of these categories can you quickly improve on. Like, I could improve on reach if I so desired, right? I’ve spent a ton of time and money and resources over the last year to upgrade my personal marketing materials.
AJV (10:26):
That was an area I was focusing on. My content, I feel like is world class, right? I do believe you should believe in yourself, and I believe in myself. Credibility. I have good credibility, right? Can always be more, we have original research, we’ve spent the money to get original data, like we’ve done that work, but it’s like where you score also lets, you know, where could you do more? Where could you get help? Where could you get coaching? Where, where do you need to put some attention is also really helpful. So here’s how I would base across, if you averaged ones across the board, I would just say a starting point would be, you are probably charging for, this is for a speaker fee or coaching fees. I’m just calling it for an hour, right? But if you’re charging, or sorry, if you’re averaging a one, you’re probably charging in the hundreds, not the thousands in the hundreds, right? And then just for the sake of time, just to kind of give you some averages here, if you average a five, right? So if you’re averaging fives across the board, you’re probably charging somewhere between thirty five hundred and fifty, five hundred, right? That’s a five. So at one would be you’re charging hundreds of dollars, right? And then the twos, threes and fours are those low thousands. And then as you average out of five, you’re probably charging somewhere between, and this, I’m looking at an hour here. This is kind of like for a speaker fee,
AJV (11:52):
Right? For $3,000, right? So if you were gonna do that for coaching, that might 3000 might be your first coaching package, right? Then again, trying to give you some baselines here. If you’re, try, if you’re averaging in the eights then you’re probably at a keynote fee. If you have eights across the board, you’re probably charging somewhere between 25,000 and $30,000 as a coach or a consultant. That means your package is probably somewhere between 25,000 and $30,000 if you’re averaging the eights. Now, if you were averaging tens across the board and you’re just like, you know, pit bull, pit bull is to worldwide himself, right? Like a speaker fee for you would be like a hundred thousand dollars of speech, right? You’re talking about like presidential rates here. You’re talking about Brene brown rates and Mel Robbins rates, Tony Robb rates who are more, right?
AJV (12:45):
Those are even more than this in some cases. But if you’re a coach or a consultant, right? Those are your packages, right? You could be upwards of the a hundred thousand dollars packages of your tens across the board. So this is how I want you to think about this. It helps, you know, one, what’s your baseline, where you are today in these categories, credibility, content delivery, marketing materials, and reach. And then I’m just giving you some averages. If you averages one across the board, then you’re in the hundreds. If you’re five, you’re in, you know, averaging five, somewhere between the three and 5,500 range. And then eights, you’re up there, you’re getting up there. It’s like that’s that 25 to 30 range. And if you’re, tens are across the board at six figures and up per speech or per package. So how to set your fees back to this, it’s like there are five categories that we believe are really important for you to consider to have some unbiased internal look at.
AJV (13:38):
What’s my content, right? How original is it? How forward thinking of it is it what’s my delivery style, right? How, how much have I invested into making sure that I know how to deliver it? Well, marketing materials, your reach. And there’s so many different things to be looking at here. And I hope this is kind of gives you a baseline. It’ll help you know where to start, where to improve. And also as those numbers, those averages increase. So do your fees. So how do you set your fees? You ask yourself, how credible am I? How good is my content? How good is my delivery? How good is my marketing material? And then how, how much reach do I have? And those are the five categories to help you set your fee. So go set your fees, go raise your fees, and go get well paid. We’ll see you next time.

Ep 402: How To Be Well Paid as a Coach with Mitch Matthews

AJV (00:00:02):
Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode on the influential personal brand, AJ Vaden, one of your hosts today. And y’all, you are in for a treat today. I got to start my day with one of the very first emails in my inbox. Was an email from Mitch. And here’s how I knew this was going to be a really great interview, is he felt prompted to go, I don’t know why. And you can totally pretend like I never sent this email , but here’s what I feel prompted to talk about on your show today. And here’s, I, I always know when somebody comes to the show with like, I feel this on my heart. Like rather what your beliefs are, if you’re listening to this show, you know, I’m big into my faith. I believe in God, I believe in Jesus. And like, so for me, I always call it a heavenly download of like, if God put this on my heart, this is what I’m gonna talk about today. And he hit me up with that, which I think maybe only one person ever has done that outside of you. So that’s how I knew that this was going to be a great episode way before our conversation even happened. And then I get on the Zoom and you are just a bright shining light of joy. And if you’re not watching this, you’re listening, you should just like pop on and just clip some of the zooms, cuz just
MM (00:01:15):
Come on over.
AJV (00:01:19):
Emos happiness and joy. So y’all we’re gonna have a really good time. Now you probably are wondering what was this person? But he talked, who a
MM (00:01:26):
Heck is it? Yeah, .
AJV (00:01:28):
So lemme introduce you guys to our guest on the influential Personal Brand podcast today. Please meet my friend Mitch Matthews. Now let me give you a very quick formal overview of who he is, what he’s done, but then also I wanna tell you why you wanna stick around. So Mitch Matthews is a successful entrepreneur. He’s a coach. He’s also a fellow podcaster, which, you know, I love. He’s also had lots of mutual friends on his podcast, including my awesome husband Roy, and some of our very good friends, Jamie Kern, Lima, and Louis Howell. So we’re already in really good companies. I love that. But here’s what I love most is that you guys know that we call our audience at Brain Builders Group mission-driven messengers. And what I love is that Mitch says he’s on a mission to encourage the encouragers, and he is out there to help coach, mentor, and inspire coaches, speakers, and content creators to be well paid. So now you know why I invited Mitch to be on the show today. So, Mitch, welcome.
MM (00:02:35):
Oh, thank you so much. It is such an honor, and I, I like you, I just couldn’t wait to get till this to this interview. So I’m, I’m really excited to be here.
AJV (00:02:43):
Well, I’m so excited because, you know, we serve this mission-driven messenger, the coach speaker, yeah. Content creative content creator, author, but also I love what you said, I wanna help them be well paid. Yeah. And I think that’s such an important part of this conversation because here’s what I know about many people in our audience is they, they feel like they’re on a message, like they’re on a mission, right? Yep. They have a message that, you know, it’s instilled in them and they’re like, man, I just gotta get this out into the world. But turning that mission into revenue sometimes takes longer than expect it’s time. Absolutely. There’s a disconnect sometimes. And so, first things first, I wanna tell our audience why they need to stick around is cuz one, we’re gonna talk about how do you get well paid, right? Doing what you love as a byproduct of doing good work and serving other people.
AJV (00:03:34):
But at the end of the day, it’s how do you become well paid for what you do because you do it so well. Right? also, y’all, I think this is really important. And again, re regardless of your personal beliefs whether you’re religious or you’re spiritual or none of those things, I would just encourage you to stick around and just listen to this part of it. Of, it doesn’t matter if you have a religious affiliation or what your spiritual standing is or if you’re totally undecided. This is going to give you some insight and some inclination on why. For some of us that feel really directly called, like for me, I’ll just use myself example, fond know Mitch, he’s gonna share his story. It’s like I got the privilege of experiencing God and miracles at a really young age. And so I’ve been really convicted not because of my parents, not because of people around me, because of my own personal experiences, but I also know not everyone has had those.
AJV (00:04:33):
But for when you get to encounter someone who has, I think there’s just a really important aspect and conversation that you can. So just take some takeaways of going, man, I’ve never heard it that way. I’ve never heard it described that way. I’ve never heard a conversation like before. So I would just encourage you to stick around for that. And then last but not least, we’re gonna talk about the coaching industry. And just what’s happening, what’s coming and what do you, what’s going on need to be prepared for. So those are all the reasons why you need to stick around. So, you know, we might be here for three hours. I
MM (00:05:06):
Was gonna say bar. I hope you packed a lunch. People. Let’s be do
AJV (00:05:09):
That. It’s gonna be great. It’s gonna be action packed. Lot of energy. Ok. So what all of that said to help our audience get to know you a little bit, Mitch, can you just like, you’ve been in the coaching industry, you’ve been coaching for two decades. Two
MM (00:05:21):
Decades. I started when I was 12. I started right outta elementary school. ,
AJV (00:05:26):
But also, I know because I’ve also been in this industry for 15 years, right? That 20 years ago, it wasn’t cool to be a coach, right? It
MM (00:05:35):
Wasn’t cool to be a coach. Nobody knew it wasn’t cool. Nobody knew it was to be a coach. My uncle said, what is a coach? And who’s gonna pay you to work with them? It’s crazy. You know, all the, everybody’s got that grumpy uncle, all of that, right? And like Twitter didn’t exist, Facebook didn’t exist, all those things, right? It was a different world. But absolutely my, the quick story was back then I was in the pharmaceutical industry, and when I first got into the industry, it was a great fit. It was a, a technical cell, it was a relationship cell, and I had a lot of success there. And then I got into training, which was awesome. And then I got promoted into a bad fit job, which I am grateful for looking back on it. I am so grateful because that woke me up because the pharmaceutical industry was good, but it was not where I was supposed to live my life.
MM (00:06:27):
And that last bad fit job was a wake up call to say, Hey, this ain’t it. And if I hadn’t had it, I probably would’ve lost two decades there doing something I was good at, but not what I was meant and designed to do. Hmm. And so that woke me up. I actually really had some dark nights of the soul. Like, what am I supposed to do? I thought I was on the right track, obviously not big time. And I came home one night, really kind of downtrodden, brokenhearted, all of those things. And my wife puts a magazine in front of me. It was a business week magazine, and it was a story of an entrepreneur. And I’m like, okay. And she’s like, no, no, no, not the main story. Look at this sidebar story. It’s a story about his coach. And kind of like you were just saying back then, I was like, what is that?
MM (00:07:14):
And she goes, I don’t know what it is, but that’s what you do. Right? Because that’s kind of what I did. That’s what I did with our friends. That’s what I did at church. Like, I would sit down with people, I’d be that safe place, I’d be that sounding board, I’d listen and I’d ask questions. She goes, you’re just not getting paid for it. But that’s what you do. Figure out how to do that. And so I found a really expensive training program that wound up having no business training at all. And I became a more confident coach, but I had no idea how to actually build a business, start a business, that kind of stuff. So I started it on the side, kind of figured it out on the side of this bad fit job. And you know, I’m wildly grateful to say that I thought it was gonna take five years, but once things really started to click, and honestly, even some of the things you were just talking about as far as I, I kind of prayed into it really leaned into it, those kinds of things. I thought I was gonna be five years, but I was able to quit that bad fit job in five months and completely replace my income and not look back. So now, like you said, I’m a coach, a speaker, I say I’m a con or I’m a coach, developer and a podcaster.
AJV (00:08:21):
Mm. I love that. And yeah, I mean, what I think it’s really good. It’s like, you know, everyone talks about like how to make your side hustle, your main hustle, right? Right. That side thing, your main thing. Right? And here’s, here’s one of the questions I have because I think a lot of people, a lot of people at least in our circle, have somewhat of a similar kinda story. It’s like, man, it’s like, how could you just get paid for doing this thing that I love to do? What the heck, heck, I’m good at doing. People come to me for if I could just do this, it’s like my full-time living, like life would be so good. And then they,
MM (00:08:55):
I have it all figured out, right? Like, yeah, the birds would land on my finger and sing to me. Yeah. .
AJV (00:09:01):
But then they start doing it and they’re like, oh, wait this is a lot of work. This is a thing. I’m not getting paid as much as I thought. So here’s my question for the audience.
MM (00:09:11):
Yes.
AJV (00:09:12):
How do you know if you will be a good coach?
MM (00:09:15):
Yeah, absolutely. So I love that conversation because it’s so, so important. And one of the things, you know, you’ve touched on it, and I, I gotta say I tip my hat to you and Rory, you guys are juggernauts in our industry. I, I like, I’m not blowing smoke. I, I just really mean it, you guys, the value you guys put out there I think you guys exemplify the very things that we’re talking about. So I just, I just want to say that as we’re moving into this for real I mean, I ha I remember having Rory on the show and it was years ago. And I’m like, good lord, this guy just like, just so full of energy, but also great content, all that stuff. So I’ve loved you guys for a long, long time. So kind. So all that to be said.
MM (00:10:00):
So I think if you’re interested in becoming a coach, interested in becoming a speaker, I always say it’s gotta start from a foundation of mission. That’s actually what we talk about too. Like, talk about that. You’ve gotta have a heart for actually seeing people thrive. It’s gotta start there because I, and I, you know, I’m lucky enough, we’ve, we’ve had a coaching training program for years. We’ve been able to help thousands of coaches. And I’m always pretty open about it that if you get into coaching, just because of the economic opportunity, which there’s a lot, like, I now look back on that safe pharmaceutical job, and I’ve made as much in a month as I used to make in a year or more, right? So there is money to be made here, but if you only get into it for that, or even if that’s your primary reason, you’re not gonna be able to sustain it.
MM (00:10:50):
Because there are gonna be seasons that are hard. There are gonna be seasons. I think by God’s good design, there are gonna be seasons where the money either isn’t gonna be there or it’s gonna be lighter than you thought. Those kinds of things. And that’s when you have to double down and say, well, I am doing this for all the right reasons, it’s gonna work out, right? Mm-Hmm. . So I think it starts there. Like, you have to have that heart for a bigger picture, a mission to say, Hey, I want to help the world to thrive. And it doesn’t have to be everybody. Like you can look around and go, there’s a lot of jack holes out there, there’s a lot of people that I don’t want to help. And that’s okay, right? Like, you don’t have to want to help everybody, but you gotta have that population, that group, that tribe where you’re like, I eat, sleep and drink for these people.
MM (00:11:33):
I tell this story like I, my heart hurts for the grays because that’s what I was becoming in the pharmaceutical industry. I was becoming a gray. And I was reminded of this just recently at a keynote at a, it’s a Fortune 100 company. They had me come in, you’ve had this experience where they had me come in for a conference at their headquarters. They had me sit in the lobby for just a few minutes while I was waiting for my person to come pick me up. And I’m watching people go in and out, in and out, and I’d say 70% of them were gray. Hmm. Like wildly talented, obviously sporty dressers, you know, making bank, but their eyes just weren’t alive. Right? And my heart hurts. I just wanna grab those people and say, what are you supposed to be doing? You know, like, so I always say, I never want that flame to go out.
MM (00:12:19):
I, I do believe that that flame is put there in me by God. Like I think that’s a part of my God-given gifts is to have that, that fire, that burns for that person to say, Hey, I was put here to help people figure out why they were put here, and I’m just supposed to stoke that flight. So that’s, that’s big a part. Being a part of what’s gotta be at the foundation. At the same time, a very close second has to be a commitment to learning the basic business skills and a commitment to bring excellence, right? You might have either a god-given gift or you might have a true passion to help people. But if you’re not also committed to learning some of the basic business skills that you need to learn and to deliver excellence where you can, doesn’t have to be everywhere.
MM (00:13:04):
And you don’t have to serve everyone, but you have to be committed to delivering some excellence. I mean, you guys, we were talking about this bit before we hit record. Like, you, you guys bring so much excellence, like everywhere you look, when you look at the vains, excellence, excellence, excellence, I know you don’t try to do it everywhere. You don’t have to be everywhere, but you bring excellence. And I think that’s one of the best things that we do. We have to commit to that. That also means we don’t have to commit to everything. And it also means you don’t have to be great at everything. We just have to be committed to bringing excellence. And where we can’t bring excellence, you know, to certain areas. It’s like I’m committed to learning how to bring excellence. Those are some of those core things. Now we can go a lot deeper, but those are some of those core things that I, if I see a natural gifting and a true passion for helping people with a willingness to learn the business basics and commit to bringing excellence, that person can be successful.
AJV (00:13:58):
Mm-Hmm. I think that’s really insightful. And I’m on a double down on two things really quick. Because I know that, you know, for us, for example, it’s like we eventually do things excellent , eventually. That’s right.
MM (00:14:16):
Oh, it gonna be messy to start with. Right. And
AJV (00:14:18):
I think that’s the key. It’s eventually, it’s eventually because hundred percent, the truth is we do it wrong a lot at first. Yeah. And you said something about, you know, committed to excellence, which means you gotta be committed to get through the sludge. Oh yeah. And not give up. And so I think
MM (00:14:38):
That’s a really big deal. That’s a really big deal. Especially me, Mitch Matthews. I am a recovering perfectionist, right? So that perfectionism takes out more people that should be coaches, coaches and speakers than just about anything. Because that perfectionism, it’s to your point, they’re like, well, I should have a kick website from day one , or I should have this, or I should have that. It’s like, no, you should have something. You know, you should be good. Right? Like, you should go after good. But we gotta focus on progress, not perfection. That’s why I say excellence, not perfection. Yeah. Perfection is something that’s always gonna be elusive. That’s great if we go after it. But we have to commit to excellence. And excellence involves learning, not perfection.
AJV (00:15:21):
Yeah. I think that, and that’s, that’s the key. It’s, it’s the learning part. Right? Right. It’s you know, I think’s so funny because I’ve been reading this book, the Circle Maker. So if anyone is ever is anyone who’s like, come on, you have never read it. It is one of the best books. I’m like, li like, it looks like a workbook. Like every single
MM (00:15:42):
Is amazing.
AJV (00:15:43):
It’s so good.
MM (00:15:44):
Get it on Audible too. Cuz Mark Patterson has such a great voice and he reads, it was like, I’m sitting here with Mark and he’s reading
AJV (00:15:50):
Book. Oh good. It’s so good. It’s so good. And one of the things that I read, and I was just reading on this and I shared this with you earlier, it’s like my favorite, my favorite quote right now is pray. Like it depends on God, but work, like it depends on you. Yeah. And, and then that was the second thing that I kind of wanted to talk about is like, learn the business basics. Yeah. Right. You have to learn basic business skills. And just because you want to be in business for yourself doesn’t mean that it’s going to be easy and nor doesn’t mean you should. Right. Right. Being in business for yourself is a lot of hard work. So, and your opinion Right. Helping people through this Yep. For a lot of years. Yep. What would you say are the non-negotiables? You must learn this. Yeah. In terms of business skills, if you’re gonna make it.
MM (00:16:35):
I love it. I love it. Oh my gosh, yes. So boy, I am so glad this is gonna be four hours, so let, let’s just get into it. Right? Like, that’s great. So a number of things like, I mean, I, I know you guys in your countless episodes have gone after important subjects, like getting clear on your ideal client and we could talk about those kinds of things is so powerful, so important. There’s really good ways to do it, really bad ways to do it, all of that. But I think for us, like, like you had mentioned, I have a heart for encouragers. And I really do want encouragers, especially those encouragers to who decide to be coaches, speakers, and content creators. I want them to be well paid. Because if they’re well paid, that means they can do it. They can be a blessing to their community, a blessing to their family, and have more impact, right?
MM (00:17:22):
So that’s great. So money comes up a lot now as I, as we’ve been talking about, faith is an important thing for you guys. It’s a wildly important thing for me. And so this is something that I wrestled with because I do feel like a lot of my core foundational gifting of encouragement, of listening, of being, you know, excited, all of those things, right? I believe that’s a gift from God. So when it came to coaching I bumped up against something that a lot of people experienced that, oh crap, how do I charge for something I’ve kind of done my whole life? Like I was called, I was called the pastor in my all men’s dorm in college, not because of my holy living , it was more because if anybody had an issue, made a big mistake had a setback, girlfriend broke up, whatever, they came to the pastor and I just talked with them.
MM (00:18:23):
Like, and it wasn’t always faith-based, sometimes that came up, but most of the time I was listening, I would give them feedback, I would encourage them, I would be a sounding board, all of that right? In, in my career, I got into training and, and really coaching became a core part of what I did as I was building up salespeople in the pharmaceutical industry. Mm-Hmm. , but I didn’t get paid for those things. Right. That was a natural part of who I was. It was an extension. But then now all of a sudden I’ve got a business, I’m a coach, I want to be a coach. How the crap do I do this? And how do I charge thousands of dollars for something I have spent my whole life giving away? Hmm. And one of the biggest things I know in our back and forth, you were like, Hey, what was one of your big breakthroughs?
MM (00:19:06):
Right? And I can tell, I can pinpoint different things that happened to me that before the event, the world was this way after the event, the world was this, this way, you know, before this relationship started, my world was this way, you know, after that relationship, boom, my world, you know, expanded all those things. But I think one of my biggest breakthroughs was when I realized that the money that we charge as coaches is more for our client than it is for us. Hmm. That’s good. Okay. And I tell my clients this, it’s so funny. I have a A C E O that I’m working with right now. Big Jesus guy loves Jesus, all that stuff. But he said, your, and he didn’t use this language, but he was like, you are mother fluke and expensive. And I’m like, I know, right? . but he said, he said, but you’re worth it.
MM (00:19:56):
And I said, well, thank you right Now, here’s the deal. He knew I was expensive because when we started to talk about the POS possibilities of working together, and we talked about my rates, he was like, holy crap, that’s expensive. And I said, I know, but that’s for you. And he goes, what do you mean? And I said, brother, if I send you this invoice and you decide it’s time to go, like if you pay this invoice, and I charge all upfront, that’s what I do for my coaching all upfront. And it’s again, for them, I say, this is the biggest indicator that you are all in. Mm-Hmm. , you will know without a shadow of a doubt. This is go time. Because I said, you know, I always do a complimentary call before I know some people say it’s a sales strategy for me, it’s a filtering strategy.
MM (00:20:48):
I wanna make sure they’re gonna be a good fit. It’s as much for me, it’s probably the complimentary call is more for me than it is for them. And I tell ’em that, but I always say, Hey, listen, if we make it through that comp call, I will know why this is or isn’t important enough for you. Like right now why this matters. Right? And I said to him, I said, listen, you know, you have been thinking about doing what we’re, what we talked about in the complimentary call for years. And you’ve read books, you’ve gone to a couple of retreats. Those are great, right? But when you make this investment, that is the ultimate sign to you, God and the universe, this is different. And I tell people all the time, I’m like, it might be the most expensive thing you’ve ever put pen to paper for other than your house or your car.
MM (00:21:37):
But when you do that, I want you to have a big goofy grin on your face. And they sometimes will, you know, it’s, we’re on Zoom now. They’re like, what are you talking about? I’m like, you can have the biggest goofiest grid on your face because you can know it is go time. Mm-Hmm. , now is the time you are committed. This is different. This represents a new season for you. Go for it. And I have literally, I kid you not aj I have had clients like their spouses have taken pictures of them while they’re at their computer, you know, processing the invoice going big of me, gr you were right. Like you’re right. You know, and their spouses sometimes are their significant others or, you know, coworkers will be like, this is nuts. I can’t believe it. But they’re like, I felt it.
MM (00:22:21):
And so there’s a lot of different aspects to deciding on your rates. There’s a lot of different aspects to deciding how to put packages together, all of those things. But at the core of it, you have to realize, yes, them paying you and paying you well, pays for a roof, pays for food on the table, all of that stuff. My, we have two boys, they like to eat. I like a roof. I like air conditioning. I’m a big fan. So I recognize that money does come for me. But for the most part, that investment is for them. And I, I have a friend that a very successful coach and even more expensive than me. And she goes, it’s amazing. Every time I raise my rates, I get to become a better coach because the people are more committed, they’re more all in all of that. And it’s like, yep. Isn’t that the craziest thing? So I know that’s one of those aspects, but when that switch flipped in my head, all of a sudden, a lot of things change to my business.
AJV (00:23:17):
You know? But I mean, here’s the thing that, you know, I just as you were talking that it correlates, it’s like the more money that your clients pay you, the more one bought in they’re in. But two, like that is a form of accountability, right? A hundred percent. If I spend $2,500 on a coaching program, it’s easy for me to, not that that’s not a lot of money. It is. Right. But it’s easier for me to go, I, I have got all this work stuff I gotta do versus if I really busy
MM (00:23:45):
20,
AJV (00:23:45):
But if I spent 25,000, I’m going here. No. I need to get my ROI outta that. I gotta That’s
MM (00:23:52):
Exactly right. I’m gonna So that up with a biscuit, right? They are not gonna miss a drop. That’s exactly right. And that’s, that’s what I love about this. And this also, we could speak to this a little bit, but this also speaks to the reason you want to have packages. Mm-Hmm. , especially as coaches, and you know this, but I see coaches that are not charging enough for an hour of their time. But the bigger challenge is, I always say like, you gotta sell in packages. And again, it’s a benefit to you as a coach, but it’s also more importantly for the client. Because if you sell in packages, which means 10 sessions or 20 sessions or 20 sessions and a, a day and a half retreat, you know, those kinds of things, it will allow you to have the time that’s needed to get what you do done.
MM (00:24:44):
I see coaches out there floundering, saying, well, I’ll coach you for a couple of sessions, or we’ll get started for a month. And like I said, people have less skin in the game and you can’t do your best work because, you know, I know for me, my podcast is called Dream Think Do, which I hope is catchy, but it’s also a description of how I work with people. And it, like in a three month period, we have spent about a month dreaming, getting clear on the vision of what they want to do. We do a month of thinking, which means planning and logistics, and actually drawing up, like how can we get that done? And then we have a month of doing, if it was a three month package, that’s how it would break down. And it, I need that time to get the full effect. And honestly, you know, somebody will come to me and say, well, can I, can I just buy a month of that? It’s like, no, I don’t want you to start this process without knowing how to finish it. Yeah. I would do you a disservice by only delivering a chunk of what we do. So wait until you can afford the whole thing. Because I don’t want you to get started and not finish.
AJV (00:25:46):
Okay. So super tactically speaking here just for a second, because I think there’s lot of really, really good nuggets for everyone who’s listen one well, the more you price, right, you’re going to price yourself out. Right. Which is really important as a coach because of supply and demand issues, right? Right, right, right. Yep. Less supply. Right. It means you gotta charge more, right? Right. And so I think there’s a lot of that. So as you’re talking about this, so it’s like, let’s say that somebody is listening until they, today they’re stepping into this going, all right, I’m gonna go all in. Right? I, yeah, I’ve been tip toing around this. I’ve been, it’s a side hustle. I’m going all in. How would you say, like, where would somebody start to go, this is what I’m gonna charge.
MM (00:26:30):
Yep. So , there’s a lot of different ways to do this, right? There’s some of it is to look at your ideal client and say, okay you know, get a sense of you know, what they’re gonna charge. So like a lot of my coaching clients are CEOs, entrepreneurs, founders. They’re probably making anywhere from 300 to a million a year, right? So if I come in at $2,500, they will not see that as, oh, that’s a bargain. They will see that as a problem. Mm-Hmm. that will actually make them concerned. Right? Whereas if you’re going to teach or if you’re gonna coach teachers as an example, which is possible, right? It, there’s a good chance I wish teachers made 300 to a million. They probably should. Cuz they have to deal with kids and parents, right? So I wish they did, but their disposable income’s probably gonna be lower.
MM (00:27:23):
So you’re gonna probably price a little bit lower because of that, right? But I always say commit to the price. You can say without your voice cracking , which is legit, right? And then also when you’re first getting started, commit to two and then double. And what I mean by that is, I’ll give you an example of how I had to do it, right? Because I’m a product of this very process because when I first got started, I thought, and this, this is, you know, back in covered wagon times like 20 years ago. Like, but like I thought, oh my gosh, if I could just make $2,000 as a coach from one client, that would be amazing. I’d be so rich, you know, all that stuff, right? So I didn’t know, but I could not get that out. Like, the last time I charged for an hour of my time was when I mowed lawns as an 11 year old, right?
MM (00:28:15):
Like, it was so weird to say, well, I charged $2,000 for this. So I knew I couldn’t say 2000. Like I, I, there are people now that go through our programs and they’re like, I charged $7,500 right out. And I love that, right? Because they’re like, that’s what you charge, or, you know, that’s what you said, or you gave this example package, why wouldn’t I use that? I can say that without my voice cracking. Go for it. I couldn’t, I just wasn’t that confident. I didn’t know, you know, all that stuff. Mm-Hmm. . But I made the commitment. I said, okay, my first two, I said, I’m gonna charge 90 or $970 for this coaching package, but I’m only gonna sell two at that level, and then I’m gonna sell $2,000 coaching packages. And so I, I had to work my way up. And again, I know there are some people with enough confidence and a lot of times if they get the right training for people like you and Rory and me, like they can do it a lot faster and go higher rates a lot sooner.
MM (00:29:09):
But the biggest thing is get started. So start at a level where your voice doesn’t crack and then commit to double it at least a few times. I know. That’s what I did. Basically. I, I did two at $970, I did two at $2,000 and then I kept doubling it until I got to $5,000 and then I held there for a while, which was great, right? Mm-Hmm. . But it’s that whole thing of, I know for some people they’re like, oh, I want to charge $7,500 right away, but I don’t feel like I have enough confidence so they don’t start Hmm. Like get started because a, you know, a moving vehicle is so much easier to steer and direct than a stalled out vehicle. Mm-Hmm. . So find ways to start. Now there are tactical, you know, tactics around putting packages together that make those packages more compelling.
MM (00:29:56):
You know, make it kind of, we always say we want your ideal client to see themselves in your packages. So that conversation shouldn’t feel like a sales call. It should feel like they’re looking in a mirror. Like, I want that, how did you know? I want that. That’s freaking amazing, right? So it’s like, there’s, there’s tactics to that as well. But I would just say, Hey, at least get started. And it seems like again, if you could go with a price where your voice doesn’t crack and then commit to double it a few times, that allows people to get started, get momentum and get to the price point they want by actually doing it as opposed to worrying about it.
AJV (00:30:33):
Yeah. I love that. And just so much of that does come down to confidence, belief in yourself, right? Yeah. Now you’ve mentioned these packages, which I think is a really important second part of what I wanna go into tactically. Yeah. cuz you talked about pricing upfront and packages. Yep. Right? Yep. So yep. Walk, walk the listeners through. What are you talking about when you say packages?
MM (00:30:53):
Yes. So I love it. So packages basically. So there’s a lot of smart people that have done research on this kind of thing, and people love choices, right? It, it’s interesting, poi choice actually gives us the illusion of control. Okay? So when we have a choice, when we walk into Starbucks and there’s 47 different ways to get a cup of coffee, there’s a deep part of our hearts that go, yes, I am in control. Give me a skinny flo, you know, Floy, mac, ccino nut, whatever, right? Like, and I have control over my domain. Yes. Right? Now when it comes to higher ticket stuff, as you know, basically the magic number, people still want choice. But when it comes to higher ticket investments, three is the magic number. If we go over three people, teeter then into overwhelm. That’s why Starbucks it, you know, you could buy a cup of coffee for eight bucks, no problem, but that’s not a high ticket.
MM (00:31:54):
So we can have 4,700 different ways to get pro wrap up, whatever, right? But with high ticket items, three is your magic number. Now what you want, I always say look to the car companies, right? Look at Toyota. They have a Corolla, they have a Camry, and then they have the Lexus. They’re, they’re there for a reason. They’ve done the research. They know there are gonna be some people who go, you know what, I’m just outta college. I need the Corolla. That just makes sense. It’s a nice car. Got good gas mileage shot. There’s gonna be some people who look at the Corolla and go, I could have the Corolla, but I want the Camry. I really, you know, I want a little bit more room. I want to pull up and have people say, that’s a nice car. I want something that’s reliable.
MM (00:32:38):
I want something I can have for a long time. And then there are gonna be some people who say, give me a little Lexus all the way. Like, I want the gold plated gear shift, right? Like all the stuff, there’s just gonna be some people that are always gonna pick that top tier. Mm-Hmm. . Now Toyota knows that part of the reason they have Lexus is some people will buy the Lexus. Toyota also knows that when the Lexus sits next to the Camry, it makes the Camry people feel better about their decision because they’ll look at the Lexus and go, man, that looks a lot like my Camry, but look at how much I’m saving. Look how smart I am, look how practical I am. Look at, you know, all those things. So that’s why we also wanna offer choice because it allows us to deliver different things that our clients need.
MM (00:33:27):
Now, we never wanna deliver something our client doesn’t need, but like you can have packages that offer different levels that allow you to deliver at different levels. So you might have an entry level, you might have a bootcamp, an intensive, a three month where you’re gonna work with people 10 sessions in three months, right? And that’s gonna get you get them started. And that’s kind of your Corolla, that’s the silver level, right? Then your gold, it might be the bootcamp plus an additional 10 sessions, but those are once a month. So now you can say, Hey, this package, that’s your gold option, that’s your Camry that gets them a full year of working with you. Like how freaking awesome is that? And then your platinum, your Lexus is, maybe it’s the full year of coaching, plus they come and spend a day and a half with you somewhere or you, you know make an arrangement with a spa.
MM (00:34:17):
Like one of my platinum packages for my CEOs and and high level people is I will do an a day and a half retreat at Big Sky Montana. I used to live in Montana, we know Montana, like, you know, like the back of our hands. I’ve got a place out there where I can go, I can book it out. And basically we spend a day together and then either have a half day of whitewater rafting hiking or skiing depending on time of year and depending on their interests. Now, some people see that and that package is crazy expensive, right? Some people see that and go, I want that. Some people see that and go, I can’t afford that, but I want the middle package. And maybe as we work together, I can afford the big package next year. Like I used to think having a more expensive option might offend people.
MM (00:35:02):
It might hurt people’s feelings and if it does, they’re not your ideal client, right? What I’ve found is most of the time those higher level packages inspire them to know that you see something bigger for them. Mm-Hmm. , you are holding them capable. And oftentimes it makes them go, even if I can’t afford it, I want it and I wanna work with a person that offers that. That’s so good. So generally, like what I see is it doesn’t those higher packages and, and let them be stuff you really want to do. Like I’ve got a coach that went through our program, used to be a professional athlete. Now he coaches basically people who were either professional athletes or, you know, did something amazing in their life change. So now they’re doing something else. So fitness is a big part of almost every one of his clients.
MM (00:35:49):
So he has an arrangement, arrangement with an Olympic training facility. So his big, you know, Lexus kind of platinum package is two days where he meets with a client, they hang out, they go work out, then they come back and dream some more, and then they go work out on this thing and then they dream some more and plan some more and then they go do this thing. So it’s like, think about dream about what would you love to do with your clients. It can be expensive, it can be amazing. And obviously they’re paying for your travel. So like, it can be whatever you want. I actually, one of my co coaching clients, a big thing happened for her in Paris. So twice a year she takes five to six of her clients to Paris. That’s a part of her big package is not only is it the trip, but it’s also like-minded people hanging out at the Eiffel Tower, that kind of stuff. So it really can be stuff that gets pretty exciting.
AJV (00:36:42):
Yeah, I know. I love that. And it, and that makes me think of two other quick questions. Yes. And I’m gonna pivot just a tiny bit. So I love it. I know that there are people listening to this going, yeah, that’s all’s awesome. Where do I find these people who wanna pay me $25,000? Right?
MM (00:36:59):
Right. Exactly. Where
AJV (00:37:00):
Do I find them? So I would say it’s like, where do you start? Like yeah. You know, for everyone who’s going, man, I’ve got a good coaching practice, but it’s like I do need to increase my prices. I de yeah, I do need to uplevel things because I’m giving away a lot for free that I’m not charging for. Yep. So in order to do that, like how do you find your ideal customer?
MM (00:37:21):
Right? I love that question. And it is so real, right? And it is so important. And I do think that, you know, one of the things that’s wild is especially when I work with people who are either in our program or thinking about entering our program they’ll ask me questions and I will, I will ask a follow-up question. And that is, are you getting paid for that coaching? Like, they’ll bring up a problem they’re having with a client and I’ll say, are you getting paid? No. I was like, well I have good news because once you start getting paid, those are free client problems. paying client problems, you don’t have those problems anymore. Mm-Hmm. , what’s beautiful about that too is, you know, I know for me when I first got started, if I had a couple of clients a month, right? Like it’s one of those things where I’m like, hey, this is, this is working, right?
MM (00:38:11):
Like, I had to find a place to start. But once those people started to pay, I realized like I don’t have to have 20 clients a month in order for this thing to work. If I’m pricing this right, I only need a few. That’s why I laugh sometimes at, you know, some of the coaching you, you probably laugh too, some of the promises, some of the coaching programs that you see in your Instagram feed where it’s like 30 clients by the end of the week for one-on-one coaching, and you’re like, why that h would somebody want 30 clients in a week? That’s nuts. Like, I wouldn’t want that. Like I’m like, do you, like I get why somebody would offer the moon, but like that just means you don’t know what you’re offering mm-hmm. and you probably can’t deliver on that. Right? So I always say like, as you start to get clear on your ideal client, they’re a lot more closer at hand.
MM (00:38:59):
But as you start to, as you start to give yourself permission to charge for those things, right? It doesn’t take a lot for it to start to get traction. And, and I will say this, one of the things I’ll, I’ll just throw out another strategy that almost everybody when I, when they start working with people, they, they’ve all had that cringe. Like, I knew I shouldn’t offered to do this coaching for free or I knew I shouldn’t have you know, offered to do two sessions with this person cuz it’s brutal. But almost everybody has had at least one client where they’re like, oh, that’s what it is. This feels great, right? Mm-Hmm. . And there’s a lot of different programs and again, we don’t have four hours. I wish we did, but there’s a lot of different ways where you can find clients.
MM (00:39:45):
But I always say one of the best ways to find more clients that are ideal are to start with your ideal clients. Mm-Hmm. . And so, and I always say make that easy. So one of the things that I do, I do this to the, to the day, right today, right? Is basically with my ideal clients, I let them know halfway through their program 80% of the way through the program and on their last call, I remind them that anytime they refer someone to me, and if that person signs up, they will get two free coaching sessions. So I have coaching clients that have you know, earned 20 extra sessions, but that also means they’ve brought me 10 high ticket clients because birds of a feather flock together. And it’s amazing how, again, like I don’t have a huge social media following.
MM (00:40:37):
I always say like, literally that is my prayer, Lord, help me help as many people as possible and be known by as few people as possible . Cause I’m an introvert. I am not doing this for fame. I am not interested in fame at all. No, I love that. So it’s like, help me, help me to reach the people I’m supposed to reach. But if I’m never a household name, thank you Lord, that’s good with me. I love it. Mm-Hmm. , but I always say, Hey, listen, start with where you started, right? Like, continue to grow. And what’s amazing about that is, you know, as you do that, it’s, it, my wife even was like, okay, so she named one of the clients, she goes, how many free sessions is she up to? And I said, well, she’s up to 2020 free sessions. And she’s like, oh my gosh, that’s a lot of free sessions. I said, but yeah, that’s about $200,000, you know, 150 to $200,000 worth of revenue. I think that’s a good investment for you . You know, and it’s like, but it’s, it’s great, right? And it’s a win-win. And she, this, you know, clients are happy to do it. And you know, again, it, it just truly does make for a win-win.
AJV (00:41:39):
I love that because it’s like, instead of paying referral fees or affiliate fees, it’s like no, get more sessions. Give
MM (00:41:46):
Them what they more what they want. And I always say, listen,
AJV (00:41:49):
I love that
MM (00:41:49):
You get these in your back pocket no time limit. Yeah. So you get these and you don’t have to use them in three months. These are, you got nine one one status you can call because those people, those are your advocates, right? Yeah. Those are the people who are yelling about you, but those
AJV (00:42:05):
Are the people you want to still do call. Exactly right. This is in addition to being awesome customers, they’re your lead source. Yep. Right? And it’s like, why would you give them money and send them on their way? It’s like Exactly.
MM (00:42:16):
Plus. And there’s data, you’ve seen this probably, but there’s data that shows that if somebody wants to do something like that, like refer and you give them money that actually causes dissonance. Mm-Hmm. . Whereas if it’s something like this a in-kind, like something that they actually want, it doesn’t feel transactional. Like I’ve even seen people say, well I’ll give them a gift certificate to such and such, or I’ll send ’em a hundred dollars Amazon card. Apparently the data you loo the satisfaction drops. I love the, the book drive and it is just, I mean he talks about how sometimes the very thing that we think is gonna motivate people is not what motivates people. Yeah. But in this case, I’ve just found that it really does. People feel really good about it.
AJV (00:43:02):
I love that. I think that’s awesome. And again, it’s, we’ve heard it a thousand times before, but we’ll hear it a thousand more times. It’s like, make your services so good that your customer force becomes your sales force. Right, right. That’s what we’re talking about here. Okay, so the other quick question I had, yeah. And then gonna pivot is I would love to hear your quick perspective on contract terms, right? Do you have contracts? Are they three months, six months, nine months, 12 months? What are your recommendations?
MM (00:43:31):
So I definitely have contract terms and I put the contract terms in my electronic invoicing. And basically those contract terms are reflective of the package. So it will be of basically, you know, saying, Hey, it’s for this amount of time. There’s other specifics and I’m not a lawyer, I don’t play one on tv. So, you know, we talk about some of those elements in our training. But one of the things that I speak to is, hey, if you are gonna cancel, if you need to cancel on a call, do it with at least 24 hours notice. And if you don’t, you will stand to forfeit that call. Mm-Hmm. , I believe things that are in your contract should be things, you know, they always say good fences make good neighbors. Right. If people are clear on the boundaries, everybody tends to play nicer in the sandbox.
MM (00:44:16):
What I find is when those things are outlined in your contract, that sends the signal, Hey, this person’s a pro. This is not just like having coffee with my friend at Starbucks. This person is a pro, this is, this is intentionality, this is, you know, they’re professional, all these things, right? But what I also love to do is I love to have those things in my contract that are there to protect me, but they also oppose as gifts if I choose to give them mm-hmm. . So as an example, one of my clients had to cancel two hours before our call last week because they had a sick kid. They said, Hey, even in the email, hey, they actually went to my assistant, Sam, Sam, tell Mitch I can’t make it. I know it’s in our contract. I’ve lost this call. It’s totally okay.
MM (00:45:01):
Please reschedule this, blah, blah, blah. Now that isn’t our contract. I absolutely could say, yep, you lost it. And I mean, I have every right to do so. And it also allows me, I don’t, I very rarely get jack holes as clients. We’ve got a pretty good filtering. But if somebody was being a jack hole, I absolutely could adhere the contract. Sure. But I always say, if the boundaries are there, then it’s also a gift if I choose to give it. And that’s what we did. Sam knew what I would do, my assistant knew what we would do. She’s like, I know what Mitch will say. Do not worry about it. We’ll get you rescheduled. You will not lose this call. Take care of your kids family first. That’s what we believe. And that’s, I mean, and talk about what that did for this client. This client was like, oh my gosh, this is awesome. Just, you know, even more connection, trust, and loyalty. So yeah,
AJV (00:45:48):
I think that’s just again, you know, back to so many former episodes that we’ve had for all of you out there who are coaches or consultant speakers, it’s like, contract terms make a difference. Yeah. And it’s, those have a variety of things to ’em, but just make sure that they’re clear and set forth. Okay. So I’m gonna pivot just a little bit cuz we have just like five minutes left and there’s, I know there’s two, two more topics that I wanna talk about, you know, kinda high level. And you know, one of the things that, you know, I have found to be true, and so I would love just to hear your thoughts on this, for everyone who’s listening, listening is no matter what kind of coach you are, everyone does life coaching, right? And so I think it’s always so funny when people say, I’m a life coach, and I’m like, is it all coaching, life coaching, ? I didn’t know that was a category. And so one of the things though I know from our audience is that we do have a pretty strong faith-based spiritual Yeah. Audience. And I also know that a lot of people struggle with how do I bring that part of my life into my business? Should I, yeah. How do I, or should I just keep it separate? And so Yep. What are your thoughts?
MM (00:46:58):
So I love it. Oh my gosh. This is, this is where we could really talk for four hours. So one thing that I found, because I I, you know, in 2002, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, none of that existed. Cancel culture. Like you could tick somebody off, they might tell a friend or the newspaper, nobody will know about it. So it’s a, it’s a different era. Like we have to recognize this is a different era. Mm-Hmm. at the same time, what I’ve realized is that if I’m not concerned about being right, if I’m only focused on helping, oftentimes that allows me to navigate these waters really well. So when I might put out a blog post or a social media post and I include a Bible verse, I’m not saying I’m right. Anybody who doesn’t believe this is wrong, I’ll just say, Hey, this really helped me today and this is why.
MM (00:47:54):
Right. I’m not trying to say, if you don’t believe this, you’re wrong. Or if you don’t believe this, we can’t be friends. It’s just, Hey, I’m just trying to help. And I will often like with, we have two podcasts dream, think do and encouraging the encouragers. And in both of them, I’ll give them a heads up saying, Hey, we’re gonna get into some spiritual stuff. And if that is not your brand of vodka, just jump to another episode. No harm, no foul. And I’ll also say, I know in both cases, both audiences, you don’t have to believe what I believe, but that you’re more than likely to be open to talk about spiritual stuff. So that’s what I do is I say, Hey, listen, if that’s your not your brand of vodka, go to another episode. If you stick around, I hope you’re at least open to talk about spiritual stuff. If you are, I’m, I’m guessing since you’re still listening to this episode, we’re good to go. So we’re going for it. And what I find is, again, if I’m not focused on having people see that I’m right, I just wanna be helpful mm-hmm. that helps me navigate a lot of waters.
AJV (00:48:58):
Yeah. That’s so good for, yeah. Not just faith and spiritual conversations, but political conversations. Right. Race conversations. Because we
MM (00:49:08):
Need to have those conversations. Right. We need to be having those. I’ve also realized that there are some conversations you shouldn’t try to have on social media,
AJV (00:49:16):
Like most of of them,
MM (00:49:17):
you shouldn’t. But, but at the same time, like we need to be having these conversations. And if we go in, not focused on being right, I always say it’s a bit of a churchy word, but if you, like, if I’m checking my heart to say, let me be righteous, not worried, be worried about being right. Mm-Hmm. , then I tend to hit people with love. I tend to hit people with grace. All those things. So that’s, but I, you know, there’s, there’s a part of my hurt that wants to get ’em, you know and be right and prove myself and all this stuff. It’s like, eh, that doesn’t tend to work. And it’s not fun. So, no,
AJV (00:49:50):
I, I love that because I think that this is a, a growing conversation of people are going, man, it’s like, I want that to be a part of the conversation. I feel like my clients are seeking it, but I don’t know what the boundaries are and I don’t know how to overstep it. And I think that’s a really great way. It’s like, hey, if you’re just focusing on helping of like, Hey, I don’t know if this will resonate with you, but this is something I go to, or this is something that I read, or it’s something that I saw or something I heard and it really helped me. Or I, I read this and I thought of you. It’s like always through, always through the lens of it. I just wanna help. I just wanna support and sharing it through your experience, not being preachy, but sharing it as like, Hey, regardless of where you’re at, I can only share what I’ve been through.
MM (00:50:32):
Yep. My experience
AJV (00:50:34):
Of helping and serving, that’s really, really good. And I,
MM (00:50:37):
I like nobody. God never forced anyone into heaven. He’s a gentleman, right? He loves people. And I think that’s the best way. Like that we can be a raging. Curiosity is love. Well bring excellence, charge for what we do. It’s a part of it, right? Mm-Hmm. , like all of this goes together. You know, so that we can be a blessing and be blessed. That is literally my prayer before every episode, before even this conversation. Lord, help me to be a blessing and help me to be blessed. Amen.
AJV (00:51:08):
Yeah. So good. And it’s like, I’ll drop another book out there. No. If y’all listening, have never read every good endeavor from 10 Keller. Yeah. I just love this book so much cuz it talks about how like we were created to create Yeah. We were created to work and somewhere along the lines work became a four letter word. And it’s not like work is good. Like somehow we turned it into bad. It’s like we were built for this. Yep. And built to receive abundance and goodness. And but man, you gotta work, right? We’re we do, we’re built for it. All right. Last question. I know we’re already one minute over, but I’m gonna go just like one minute more. I love
MM (00:51:44):
It. If you can do it, I can do it. Let’s do
AJV (00:51:46):
It. The coaching industry is booming. Yes. It’s love it. You know, if you just do a quick LinkedIn search, there will be more than 1.2 million people that pop up with a title of coach just in the United States. It’s estimated to do over 20 billion.
MM (00:52:04):
That’s with a b.
AJV (00:52:05):
With a B just this year. Yep. And it’s, it’s booming and it’s been exponentially growing since 2020. And I asked this often with absolutely no expectation of what your answer will be. More outta curiosity of what trends or insights do you see in the world of coaching, speaking, writer, a writing content, creating Yeah. That you think is worth this audience knowing.
MM (00:52:34):
I love it. So I think you’re exactly right. It’s interesting, you know, haven’t been in the industry for two decades. I’ve seen a lot of things come and go, seen some waves happen, see different things with the economy. It’s interesting because there’s a lot of people who are like we might have a recession coming. And it’s like, whoa, cool. Cuz people will need help navigating that. And what’s wild is, trust me, and you know, this, it, it’s amazing to me how many of my clients, their companies and their organizations are booming, but they feel bad about that. So they don’t talk about it. there are a lot of companies that are having their best years ever, but they don’t want to talk about it cause they don’t wanna make anybody else feel bad. So the media can definitely try to scare us and yes, there might be some challenging economic times coming, but there always is cuz that sells news and all of that, right?
MM (00:53:23):
So I always say, you know, we have to get ready for that. But I would say right now there is a wave of growth and awareness around coaching, which I find is exciting because there are a lot of coaches, but there are still billions of people. Now are all of those people hiring coaches? No, they’re not. But more I, more people are, and I would say one of the hardest things when I was first getting started was awareness of coaching at all. Mm-Hmm. , like, I had to spend a lot of time explaining what it is now. It’s much more known. What I would say is, so that’s causing a wave. But I also think one of the biggest waves to hit our industry is chat G P T. Right? Like being able to say, all right, how is AI gonna affect us? Mm-Hmm.
MM (00:54:05):
. And I think it’s causing another wave. And sometimes when two waves come, right? I’m not a surfer, but my son lives in Los Angeles, so I’m starting to understand. So surf culture a lot more. Two waves can look dangerous, but also two waves can be a really exciting time if you know how to ride them, right? Mm-Hmm. sometimes that allows you to ride more. And I think ai, when I first looked at it, I’m like, crap, that’s kind of scary. And I do think that some industries are going to be either massively changed or even eradicated. I think what AI’s gonna do in coaching is it’s gonna make, and already is making content creation easier. Mm-Hmm. , which for a lot of us, that’s the hardest part of this whole thing is creating content. AI is making it easier. You just can’t only use i ai.
MM (00:54:51):
So AI helps you to deal with one of the biggest challenges of any content creator. And that is the blank page. Yeah. There’s nothing worth stand, you know, sitting there looking at a blank page, but chat G B T or you know, AI allows you to get started, right? But you gotta put your voice in there, you gotta put your own spin on it. You can never take something right from AI and put it out there. You gotta still have your voice. I also think it will probably eradicate the need for the lowest tier coach, that coach that is just offering one off coaching. Because one of the biggest things, I’m a good coach, right? And I ask good questions, but I know a big reason of why I am so, so successful is accountability and relationship. I know a lot of my people at a computer could ask a really good question that gets them thinking, but when the rubber meets the road, the it, that’s not gonna be what moves the needle.
MM (00:55:47):
That’s right. I’ve had so many of my clients tell me, the only freaking, you know, reason why I got this thing done was I knew Mitch was gonna be asking me did I get it done? And they’re like, I’m so glad I did. But that was the whole reason Mitch was gonna ask me. Mitch was gonna ask me. Those people aren’t gonna be affected. Yeah. But they’re not gonna look for the ai AI coach, the person who’s just like barely looking for coach, not really interested in really investing in themselves at all. Sure. That person’s gonna use an AI-driven coaching system, which, you know, I know they’re coming all of that stuff. So it’s yet one more reason why it’s so important to really get your systems in place and differentiate yourself from just that person who’s just doing the one-off from time to time coaching when you have a true business. I actually believe that AI is gonna drive a deep, deep need for authentic connection. So I think coaching, I think the wave for coaching, I think it will be some weird waters as these two waves hit. But I think for those people who are ready and are riding on top, I actually think it’s gonna unleash some of our biggest opportunities and our biggest impact especially as we’re ready for them.
AJV (00:57:00):
Oh, I totally agree. In fact, one of my favorite ing quotes is there are no good writers, only good editors,
MM (00:57:10):

AJV (00:57:11):
And
MM (00:57:12):
Ai. It’s very true. Ai
AJV (00:57:13):
I love that, is allowing content creators to be editors. Yes. Right. If you’re struggling without writer’s block or Yep. Trying to get that, it’s like, that is a great way to use, you know, chat g p t it’s like, be a great editor, right? Yep. Put your That’s
MM (00:57:29):
Exactly right. And you gotta get your voice in there because I do think, I mean, it is amazing what it can do. Like the prompts that you can put in there, it’s like, woo, it could be get pretty close to your voice, but people will know. Like that’s gonna be one of the things that’s always gonna differentiate you is what is your voice. And some of you might be like, well, I don’t know what my voice is. I’m just getting started. The only way you find your voice is continually putting it out there and you’ll find it, but don’t let the AI do it for you. Find that, get started with ai, you know, use it, that’s great, but find your voice as you use it. Don’t let it replace you.
AJV (00:58:05):
Not to mention just on this topic, there’s gonna be a whole new opportunity for coaches to coach people on how to use ai.
MM (00:58:11):
That’s some of the highest paid coaches right now is people who are navigating AI and helping organizations. I mean, it’s
AJV (00:58:18):
Great. There’s always going to be the need for someone to educate another human being. Yep. Because at the end of the day, it’s like, this is, you know, one of the things that we preach at Brain Builders Group is that pre ai, pre-chat, chat, G P t, people do not pay for information. They pay for organization and application. Yep. Right. And those are the two things that are always going to be available to coaches to do so. Yep. All right. We are now officially eight minutes over. I will stop, look at us clock now. Geez.
MM (00:58:49):
Throw the clock right out window
AJV (00:58:51):
And before we go, yeah, this has been such an awesome conversation. But Mitch has put something really cool together for everyone who is listening. So we started off the out this call saying, you know, how do you know if you would be a good coach? Like, how do you know? And so if you really wanna know the answers to those questions actually check out Mitch matthews.com/vaden, our last name v a d e n, so mitch matthews.com/vaden and he’s put together a whole little set of things to help you know if you would be a good coach. And then also just poke around mitch matthews.com, get connected to his podcast, get connected to him on social media, do all the things. And Mitch, thank you so much. This has been so helpful. So many good nuggets, and also just really fun. So thanks for being on the show.
MM (00:59:46):
I love it. You are such an amazing host and the time has flown by, so thank you so much. It’s been an honor and an absolute blast. So thank you for doing what you guys do.
AJV (00:59:54):
We love it. We love having these conversations and we love having these conversations that help all of you guys who are listening. So don’t be a stranger and come back. We’ll see you next time on the influential personal brand.