Ep 396: Creating Superfans with Brittany Hodak
RV (00:02):
Well friend, you are in for a treat. I’m gonna introduce you to one of our best friends in real life. This is Brittany Hodak. Our kids go to school together and we actually hang out with them and we love them. She’s also a client of ours and I am now a super fan of hers. And she has written a book called Creating Superfans, which I’m gonna go ahead on record and say this is one of my all-time favorite books, period in business. And specifically in the area of customer experience. And you could call it customer service or marketing just in general, but I would say customer experience, which is really what her expertise is. In fact, she’s the former Chief Experience officer for experience.com. She was the c e o of a company and the co-founder of a company called the Super Fan Company. She’s worked with some of the biggest brands in the world. Walmart, Disney, Katie Perry, Dolly Parton. The other night I was flipping through tv. I was on watching like mainstream national television, and there’s some show about Britney Spears. And all of a sudden Britney Hodak pops on the screen and I’m like, wait, what though? What the, wait, that’s Brittany, what are you doing? Like, why is Britney in my tv? So buddy, it’s so great to have you. I cannot wait for you to share your expertise with our audience. Welcome.
BH (01:21):
Thank you so much my friend. It is always great to be here with you, and thank you for the very kind words about the book. It means a lot, and I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again and again. I could not have written this book without the support of you and AJ and the entire team at Brand Builders Group, so I’m glad I did. You proud.
RV (01:37):
Yeah, you, you totally, you, you you did me proud. And then like, one level above, you know, I endorsed the book without reading the whole thing. And then after it came out, I, I, I have read this book cover to cover, which, you know, I cannot say that about every single guest. You know, I try to like, be familiar, but like I have read it cover to cover. I absolutely love this so much that I, you know, I’m recommending you to our clients and like our keynote clients. So let’s talk about super fans. As personal brands, obviously we understand we gotta have super fans. We gotta have people loving us, sharing our content, buying our books, telling their friends. So I guess gimme the, gimme the definition of a super fan in your, in your world, and then we’ll talk about how to create ’em.
BH (02:24):
Yeah. So I define a super fan as either a customer or stakeholder who has such a great experience with you that they become an enthusiastic advocate. Mm-Hmm. So they not only wanna work with you again, but they tell their friends about you. Exactly like you just said. They make those introductions and those referrals. Essentially, a super fan is a customer who creates even more customers.
RV (02:46):
Yeah. I mean that, and that is the, you know, one of our BG mantras is the, the most powerful form of marketing in the world is a changed life. And it’s like no ad, no, no webpage, no copy. Like nothing does the job that like a customer going, you freaking rock. And all of my friends, you know, tell, they tell other friends, enthusiastic advocate is super duper clear. So let’s just jump into the super fan. I know you have the, you have a, you have a great methodology, you have a great framework. I think it’s totally applicable to what we do. Well actually, so before we do that talk, talk about the, the, the, the layer. Talk about the levels. Ta talk about the layers of I forget what you call them, but like the, the spectrum sort of, of like where customers are at.
BH (03:42):
Yeah, absolutely. So in the book, I talk about this idea of the ladder to super fandom. And you know, the more advocates you have, the fewer ads you have to buy, the easier everything gets mm-hmm.
BH (04:17):
Like, not enough people care that I exist. But in reality, and especially with personal brands, it is so prevalent. So in the book I talk about this idea of the ladder to super fandom, and the very first rung of that ladder is apathy. But people try to skip over that. They try to start with awareness of like, I want somebody to know who I am and that I exist. But the problem is, if you don’t have a compelling enough story, if you’re not able to connect what you do, what your purpose is with the need that they have, then they’re never gonna care. It’s gonna be like the, you know, the analogy I use in the book is that carnival ladder where it’s easy to get somebody on the first step and maybe even the second step, but then they just fall over because apathy is everywhere all around you.
BH (05:01):
There’s never been more competition for our attention. There’s never been more competition for somebody to care about the thing that you do. So throughout the book, I talk about this idea of transforming from a commodity provider to a category of one, going from a transactional relationship and mindset to an experiential one where it’s about more than just your products or your services and even more than your relationships. It’s all about that experience. So the idea of the laddered super fandom, and you know, we don’t have to go through all the rungs, is, is how you take someone through each level of, okay, I know how I’m gonna overpower that apathy. Now somebody is aware of my brand. How do I get them to take an action? Now I’ve gotten them to take an action. How do I get them to adopt this? How do I make it part of their, their plan their life, once I’ve got them to adopt it?
BH (05:52):
What do I do to create affinity? And, you know, most people stop at Affinity. I talk in my book about the idea of the difference between fans and followers, or the difference between fans and super fans. And most people are like, oh, I’m in someone’s consideration set now. They’ve tried me a few times, now they like me. They’re coming back. And that’s where they stop. But if you can create someone, if you can take someone from that like, you know, affinity level of, oh, I like you, to that advocacy level of I like you and I can’t wait to tell other people about you, that amplification is what really makes things exciting, both on the personal brand side and on any business side. Because once you have those customers creating more customers for you, once your followers are telling their friends and growing your audience, it becomes really viral and, and really effective.
RV (06:43):
Mm-Hmm.
RV (07:17):
And I completely overlook as a first opportunity to go, what if instead of trying to make more people aware of me, I took the people who already know of me who have apathy and go, what if I just took the people who know of me already and made them fall in love so much that they became advocates? And I, and I just go, no one in the world is ha no one in the personal brand world is thinking about this. Everyone is going more followers, more reach. I need more people to be aware of me versus going, what if the, the few people you had freaking loved you, they would do that work for you is basically what you’re saying.
BH (08:07):
That’s basically what I’m saying. And I think that you know, there’s a quote that I love. Albert Einstein said, not everything that could be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted. And I think he was probably talking about Instagram and TikTok when he said that
RV (09:22):
Yeah. And, and I think, you know, I if you just have ask yourself the sobering question, do I spend more of my time thinking about wishing for praying for more people to find me? Or do I spend more of my time thinking about wishing about praying about how do I serve the people who are already in front of me? I have to go embarrassingly. I go, oh my gosh, I am, I am missing the mark badly. In Adley. And I think your your, your book highlighted that in a way. So you, you, you just touched on kind of the premise of the book. The way that you become a super, you make someone a super fan is to connect your story to their story. And this is another part that hit me hard actually, because so super is an acronym and we walk through the, we walk through the steps and the s is story, right?
RV (10:16):
So we start, we start with our story. And I struggle with this because I go, why does my story matter? It feels like starting with my story feels vain, it feels arrogant, it feels self-centered. And I’m going, why don’t I just start with like, what’s in it for them? And you know, what, what do I provide? And I think your book really hit me hard in this area. So can you talk about what it means to create to, to, to, to share, start with your story, and specifically why starting there is not vain and arrogant and, you know, self-centered?
BH (10:59):
Absolutely. Well, when I say start with your story, I don’t mean lead with your story. I mean, everything has to originate from you because we are living in an experienced economy. It has never been easier for any competitor to come in and usurp anyone in any category, right? So if you are competing on commodity things, I’m the cheapest. I’m the fastest, I’m the closest to your home. I’ve been around the longest. It is very easy for someone to displace you. So when I say start with your story, what I mean is what is your superpower? What’s your origin story? What makes you better than everyone else? And you know, I’m always, I’m, I, I’m always shocked when I talk to people and I say, why are you the absolute best choice to serve your prospects and customers? And they stare at me blankly or they say something that every single one of their competitors would also say, Uhhuh, that there is absolutely no proof behind.
BH (11:53):
And what I always say back to them, because this is sort of the idea of apathy and action is, well, if you can’t tell me why you’re the best, how in the world is a prospect ever gonna be able to figure it out? If you can’t even articulate to me clearly why I should care, then how am I ever going to care? So that is what I mean when I say start with your story, not making it about you. Throughout the book, I, I try to say again and again, this is all about customer centricity. This is all about showing up to serve people, but it’s kind of like, you know, we’re recording this. I’m at the airport for anybody who is watching it, this beautiful background behind me is a B n A conference room. Like when you’re on the airplane and they say you’ve gotta put your mask on first before you assist the people with you, because you’ve gotta, like, you’ve gotta do you, you’ve gotta make sure you’re taking care of you. And it’s kind of the same thing when I say start with your story, is you can’t expect people to sign up to say, I am a super fan of this person, or I am a super fan of this offering. If you yourself haven’t done the work to say, why do I deserve a super fan? What am I doing that is better than what my competitors are doing so that I can help serve these customers and make their life better in some way?
RV (13:02):
Ah-Huh
RV (14:03):
I want a New York Times bestselling logo on my book. And it’s like, what actually gives me the credibility is not just that we’ve done that, that we’ve helped other people do it. It’s that I wanted it so badly and I felt so far away and I felt like it was impossible. And it, it’s like, it’s the story and I never tell that story. I talk about, oh, my credentials and our exper you know, like the, the pe the clients we’ve worked with, which I don’t think is bad, but I go, I think I’m underutilizing the human part of my story a bit to go, that’s what really care they care about. Cuz other people would say that too. Well, I’ve got, I’ve got a hundred clients and I’ve helped clients do this and that and, and blah blah blah, blah blah. But there’s this emotional human bond that happens from the origin story. And I’m going, I don’t even have the origin story on my website. We don’t even have the origin story on brand builders group. And I would never even think to put it there, cuz I would think of that as like not useful to the customer un until you told me it was
BH (15:15):
Well. And it, and it is so useful. And that’s, you know, we were connected through a mutual friend John Roland. Yeah. And John Roland didn’t say to me, oh, meet this friend of mine who was like, helped a bunch of other people like you. He said, you’ve gotta meet my friends, Rory and aj. And he told me about who you are as people and, and what your origin story is and why he thinks you’re the best in the world. And I know this is something that a lot of business owners struggle with as they’re scaling because they think, well, if I tell my story then clients are only gonna wanna work with me. They’re not gonna wanna work with anybody else. Sure. But, you know, and, and there there is like a murky middle where sometimes that is true. Everybody feels those growing pains of, you know, I had the people who are used to me and now I’ve gotta tell them that they’re, they’re not gonna get as much as my time cuz the business is growing and changing.
BH (16:04):
And that’s something that I think every entrepreneur has been through. However, I would argue that telling your origin story makes it that much more important because now people are going to understand, okay, this is the person helming this company. This is the person who is not just making the decision of everyone they hire, but training them, making sure there’s an alignment, and then they’re gonna be curious about every single employee’s origin story and what attracted them to come work for you, who you are as a leader, how that plays out into everything that you’re doing. So I think that most people mis or, or underutilized misuse or under util underused their own personal origin stories because of everything you said a few minutes ago. It can feel arrogant, it can feel self-serving, it can feel very, you know, youth centric. But in reality, we learn best when we hear stories.
BH (16:56):
Our brains are hardwired to react to stories much more so than facts. I mean, there’s every single research study that’s ever looked at it has said yes, people believe stories more than facts and figures. And we trust them more, we remember them better, and that’s why they’re so effective. And when we show up and we talk about the results, or we talk about, you know, the past work or the past clients, people don’t feel that emotionally. Like very few people ever like got teary eyed or thought me too, over a spreadsheet or like a list of stats and figures. But when you can tell a story, people are like, I felt that, I felt that in my gut when I was walking through the airport and wanted that, or I felt that in my gut when I was a kid. And I said, wow, this is my calling.
BH (17:39):
So it’s so important. And in my book I talk about some of the tools that people can use, some of the exercises to really step outside of yourself and look at your story through the eyes of your customer to say, what should I be talking about? How am I able to craft this narrative of who I am and where I’ve been in a way that makes it very clear to my target customers that I can help them because I used to be right where they are now. I used to be sitting right where they were sitting
RV (18:06):
And yeah. And that, and that’s the thing, it’s not, it’s not just telling your story, it’s telling your story in a way that it, it is useful for the customer because they put themselves in the story and they go, oh my gosh, you’ve been through what I’m going through. And and I, you know, and I, and I think that’s the game changer because it’s relatability and it’s credibility and it’s all about that. Which kind of leads to the u I guess in, in the, in the super framework. So to walk us through what u’s all about.
BH (18:37):
Yeah. So in the book I say that each of these are kind of like nesting dolls, all five letters of the super framework build on the one before. And the u is understand your customer story. So I said before, super fans are created where those two worlds collide your story and theirs. And another reason that it’s helpful to start with your own story is because when you do that, you can better understand your customer story. Because when you think about who you are, what your origin story is, it helps you better understand what that customer or prospect is struggling with, what transformation that they’re looking to undergo that maybe you’ve already gone through, what reservations they might have, what they might be even unaware that they’re feeling, because it’s so deep down. So really getting clarity on your story positions you in a way to understand your customer story in a way that’s much deeper than a lot of people wanna go. And, you know, in the book, I tell the story and I’m curious, Rory, do you remember the first time you saw a teacher outside of school?
RV (19:35):
Oh yeah. I mean I, yes I do. I vividly remember that.
BH (19:38):
Yeah. It, and it did it just freak you out? Like what was your experience?
RV (19:43):
Well for this particular was one of, one of my favorite teachers. And I, I saw her at Buka Depo, like downtown, like, like 40 minutes away from where I went to high school. And it, it was, it just freaked me out. Like it just, it was like, oh, this is a completely different person. And never had dawned on me that like, this person had a completely separate life with like, friends and out out anything outside of like, the classroom.
BH (20:08):
Yeah. Well, and it’s, it’s so funny. I remember I was in first grade, the first time I saw a teacher, Ms. Beatie at the grocery store, and I was like, oh my gosh. Like, they let her leave school. And it was that same thing, that realization of like, oh, this is an actual person that has all of those things. And when I talk about understanding your customer story, one of the sort of jokes I tell in the book is a lot of people never go deeper than we all went when we were kids. You looked at a teacher and saw someone who was there to like, you know, teach you math or science for, you know, a couple hours a day or whatever it is. But if you look at your customers and say, this is a fully developed person with like a very full life who has goals, who has dreams, who has a history, who has people who people who love them, not only does that give you more empathy in the way that you think about and get to know your customer, but it also gives you more understanding about how your authority can, can matter to them, can help them.
BH (21:02):
So what I, the reason that I, I make the second step in this framework, getting to really, truly understand your customer is because a lot of people don’t ever do that work or they do it like, just on the surface. So in the book I talk about, you know, really getting, getting clear on the types of questions that matter, the types of information that are gonna help you think more critically and teach your team to serve even deeper when it comes to showing up for your customers and your future customers, or your followers and your future followers.
RV (21:33):
Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I think you know, another great marketing strategy, you know, I, I said that before about it’s a transform life. The other, another great marketing strategy is to care, is to like care about your customers and the more you like, spend time thinking about them and, and acknowledging I think who they are in real life and understanding it. And, and yeah, you’re, it’s, it’s, it’s ironic that when you start with your story, it forces you to kind of ask that question because you go, how does this story apply to them? And then it puts you in the place of thinking about where are they now? Like where, where are they now? And how can I share how I have been there and, and, and create that connection. And so you really develop a lot of passion and love and affinity and, and appreciation just for who your prospect is.
RV (22:24):
And just like, there’s such an authentic connection that I feel like suddenly it shows up in your marketing, whether, whether it’s a podcast episode or whether it’s a video or it’s, it’s even an advertisement or a website as they go, they feel that, they feel that, like, you actually give a crap about me. You actually know something about what it’s like to be me. And I think, I think that’s super powerful. So what about the p Okay, so s so start with your story. Understand the customer story. The p this is, this is, this one’s clutch
BH (22:58):
Personalized. Mm. So p is personalized and you know, again, there’s all kinds of stats and, and, and figures. And McKenzie study just came out a, a couple weeks ago that said 71% of customers now expect personalization from everyone they give money to. So they don’t wanna be treated like just another customer, just another number, just another order. So in the book I talk about the need to balance the high tech with the high touch. Hmm. So what can you automate? What can you systematize, what can you get set up to help drive personal interactions at scale? While also, and this is the key part, freeing up more of your team’s time or your own time to find opportunities to do those high-touch things that can’t be automated. Because it’s all about the human attention, the human interaction being in tune to someone’s need to show up for them in a way that’s going to exceed their expectations.
RV (23:56):
Mm-Hmm.
BH (24:14):
People who like, are ready to fight me over that. Yes, that is a very polarizing opinion, but I’m like, you would never like Rory, we’re friends. I would never buy you a gift and write my name on the bottom of it to be like, just wanna make sure when you’re using this cooler out by your pool, you don’t forget it’s from me. Like, we would never do that in real life. And yet in business people are like, how many logos can I slap on this? What can I do? Which is fine. Like, I’m not anti swag. I just believe that it has a place and that place is, has an ad, not a gift.
RV (24:44):
Right? And it’s not, it doesn’t make anyone feel special when, I mean, the, the, the way, the another extreme example of it, I was like, imagine if I sent you a picture of me
BH (26:14):
Yeah. That’s, I a hundred percent agree with that. And it’s looking for ways, like, as you said, let’s see somebody who’s listening to this and you are you work in real estate a way to make a decision once and scale. It might be every time I sell someone a new home, I’m going to get them a welcome mat with a picture of their family, or I’m going to get them a garden flag with a picture of their family, or I’m going to take their listing photo and turn it into a puzzle for them. And knowing that you have a vendor who can do those things very easily and have someone on your team who knows, like, okay, before closing day, I’ve gotta go on every family’s Facebook page and like, pull a picture that I really love and get that made into a like, welcome to your new home at a b c Apple Street or, you know, 1 23 Apple Street, whatever to create that for them. So there still oftentimes is, is a human element involved, but you’re, what you’re doing is you are eliminating that process of, ugh, let me think about exactly what to do for this person and how I’m gonna make it. Because you already made the decision, you made one decision that you can repeat a thousand times instead of making a thousand individual decisions.
RV (27:23):
Yeah, yeah. Another thing is, I mean, anything with their family seems like low-hanging fruit there mm-hmm.
BH (28:30):
Absolutely. It’s the fact that they took the time to do it. And you know, we both know like when you get something that Jasper or Leah made for you, it’s not about, you know, how expensive that thing is. It’s, wow, I’m going to love this and keep it forever because my kids made it for me and they put love into it. So it’s that idea of showing someone that you spent time thinking about them, you spent time, you gave them the gift of your attention and your care and whatever it is that, that, that materialized into in the form of a gift.
RV (28:59):
Totally. Totally. So I know that, I know you’ve got multiple mini phases in this, and again, y’all, the, so the book’s called Creating Super Fans Brittany Hodak, of course is who we’re talking to here. The the e is another one that is simple, not easy but another like game changing thing that you go, man, if you adopt this into your culture, it works. Like this actually works. So what’s, walk us through the e
BH (29:28):
Yeah, all of these are simple, not easy. And that’s, and that’s why I wanted to put them in a framework that would be easy to remember. You know, the idea of, oh, being super, you know, it sounds like something you could almost easily dismiss, but if you do these things consistently, they absolutely will lead to huge growth. You will have more earned revenue, you will have more earned customers, you’ll have people who are coming back more quickly and spending more money with you. The e stands for exceed expectations. And this is probably my favorite pillar in the book just because I’m so passionate about something that I call intentional experience design, which is really looking at every single touchpoint through the eyes of your customers and saying, is this making their experience better, worse, or not having an impact on it? And many of our experiences as customers are what I call net neutrals.
BH (30:16):
They’re like, nothing burgers, we forget about them as soon as we encounter them. And then occasionally there are those net negatives that are annoying or, you know, cause us to, you know, grumble a little bit. And then very, very rarely there are those positive things. What I encourage people to do is to, you know, using the, the system that I lay on in the book to look at every interaction and teach everyone on your team that they are the chief experience officer. They are the ones who can turn those neutral interactions into positive ones by using intentionality, by using that customer centricity to say, how can I elevate this otherwise like, forgettable moment into something that’s going to be meaningful? How can I show someone that we care more by going a little bit above and beyond? And if you can do that, not only are you like quite literally making the world a better place because you’re improving people’s days, their, you know, their minutes, their, their interactions, but you’re also giving people those things that are friend j bear calls talk triggers.
BH (31:18):
You’re giving somebody something that they want to tell somebody about, whether that’s online or inline at the grocery store. You’re not gonna believe what this person on the phone just did, or you’re not gonna believe how, you know, this person did this thing that just helped me. And it’s, and it can be, it’s almost always the little things like, this doesn’t have to be big grand gestures. It’s, you know, a week ago I had a bunch of balloons at Publix, so it was my husband’s birthday party and the, the person who was working the door said, here, let me help you out to your car with those. And I said, no, no, no, it’s okay. And he said, no, I, I know a trick. I’ve loaded balloons a lot, I’m gonna, I’m gonna help you make sure that you, that you get these in. And the trick, by the way was to put a piece of paper on top of the balloon and then that they, like, there’s like less static and they go in. But so those interesting little things that you can do to exceed someone’s expectation in the moment and training everyone on your team to look for those opportunities to exceed their expectations.
RV (32:13):
Mm-Hmm.
BH (33:18):
Yeah, so that’s a great question. A lot of it is planning ahead so that you can be more present in the moment to look for those little things. Hmm. Of, you know, oh, they’ve got a kid with them, I’m gonna offer them a sticker. Or they’ve got, they’ve got a lot of bags, I’m gonna make sure somebody’s helping them carry them like the, the, the human things. In the book I talk about this idea of intentional experience design, which is how do I bring more intentionality to every part of the experience? Because one of the, one of the things that I talk about again and again in this book is your customers are going to have expectations that constantly rise because they’re not just comparing their experience working with you to the best experience they’ve had with your competitors. They’re comparing it to the best experiences you’ve had anywhere.
BH (34:07):
So you need to constantly be looking at even your experiences that you have as a customer with, with other parties around you to say, how can I make this better? And this is not in the book cuz it just happened a few weeks ago, but we were out at a Mexican restaurant after a baseball game one day and the kids were hungry because it was a little bit late. And I was like, oh, we’ll just go to a Mexican restaurant so we can like, feed them fast. They’ll at least be chip and salsa. And the waitress came to take our order and Cato, my five and a half year old said, excuse me, did you know a lot of restaurants have apps and if you had an app, we could have ordered our tacos on the way here and you could bring me tacos right now
BH (34:43):
And like, he wasn’t even trying to be a jerk, he was just like, it was in his mind it was like so inefficient that he’s like, why do you have to have a person come ask me what I want to eat? Like someone has already solved this problem. So knowing that your customer expect your customer’s expectations are always going to be getting higher. So looking in that moment, it’s, it’s about how can I serve them quicker? How can I serve them in a way that goes above and beyond their expectations? Like I know I always when I check into a hotel, I notice when somebody goes above and beyond, obviously there’s a couple brands who give you cookies, but if you go to a Margaritaville resort, they offer you a rum punch. A lot of times when you check into a Marriott resort, they have like a wheel that you can spin if you’re a part of the Bonvoy club to like earn bonus points. So just those little touchpoints a above and beyond of am I offering someone a water? Am I offering someone a piece of candy? Am I showing them that I’m happy to have them here? And I don’t think of them as just another customer. I think of them as a person whose life I can improve because we’re, you know, connected in this moment.
RV (35:45):
Yeah. And, and you know, I think you nailed it with it’s going, how do I stay? You have to be, the real magic is being present in the moment to be going, what can I do to make this moment better? Like, magical for them versus scrambling to just meet their expectations or because your brain is off somewhere else, cuz something else fell apart. So like a lot of it is is caught up in, in, in the, the planning. So Brittany, I know we, I know we have the r which, you know, we can wrap up quickly, but before we do that, where do you want people to go if they want to connect with you and learn more what you’re about and you know, get the book, et cetera?
BH (36:27):
Well, my website is britney hodak.com and I hope everyone checks out the book. It’s available everywhere books are sold, including on Amazon as a hard cover and an audiobook and an ebook. But if you go to Britney hodak.song, excuse me, my ho my own name is hard for me to say, apparently if you go to britney hodak.com/gift, you can download the first four chapters of the book totally free because I want everyone to get the framework that they can use to start creating super fans in their own personal brand and business right now. So britney hodak.com/gift.
RV (37:03):
Cool. Very, very cool. Well send us out here. What about the r Yeah, yeah, tell us about the r We don’t, we, we don’t wanna leave everybody hanging too much, but you know, so you got start with so, so super, the acronym, start with your story, understand your customer story, personalize, exceed expectations, and
BH (37:25):
Repeat,
RV (37:26):
Repeat,
BH (37:27):
Repeat. That’s it. I wish customer actually, I I don’t wish customer experience will set it and forget it. I know a lot of people do. I actually love the idea of constantly looking for ways to exceed expectations. But in the fifth pillar, I talk all about the systems and processes that you can use. Another great, great quote, this one’s from Elizabeth Arden. You know, sorry, I know you’re, you’re very Mary Kay loyal, but this is a good quote. Regardless of your preference for, for makeup brands, Elizabeth Arden said, repetition makes reputation and reputation makes customers. So it’s about showing up and doing this again and again, transaction after transaction, interaction after interaction because you become what you do.
RV (38:09):
Yeah, yeah. Which, you know, the other surprising bonus of this is you go, oh, it’s not even five steps, it’s four steps, and then I just do ’em over and over again.
BH (38:19):
It is, it’s 20% easier than I promise. So hopefully I exceed your expectations with four things to remember instead of five. Yeah.
RV (38:26):
Well, and frankly, like, if you get the story part right and you really understand who your customer is, and then you repeat a lot of this is about personalizing and exceeding expectations, and you go, all right, those are like two things that I gotta do is, is like, just go, how do I set everything up to be in this moment serving on people, loving on them at a level that’s higher than what they’re used to seeing? And what a great way to be an awesome person and you know, create superfans and drive and make more income in the process. So Brittany, you’re the best. Thank you so much for this friend. Everybody go get the book Creating Superfans. I’m a, I’m a huge believer. I’m a huge fan. We make our whole company read it, adopting it as part of our culture. It’s a big part of, of what we see as the next level for us at, at Brand Milds Group. And anyways, friend, keep kicking butt out there. We’re cheering for you.
BH (39:17):
Thanks buddy. I appreciate it. I’ll talk to you soon.
Ep 395: Simple Steps to Grow and Scale | Andy Bailey Episode Recap
AJV (00:00):
So you want to scale your coaching practice. This is a conversation that I have with so many individuals who are beginning on their coaching journey or who’ve been on it for a while, and they go, I’m ready to take it to the next level. So figured why not have this conversation in a recorded sense so that we can share it with the masses. So a couple of things that I think are really important to have this conversation. The first thing is asking yourself, why do you want to scale? Because you don’t have to. And I think the important thing to realize is that scaling takes a lot of work, a lot of time, a lot of resources, and it takes people, right? And I think what people also don’t realize is that often in order to scale, you will lose money before you make money.
AJV (00:58):
Not always, but often. And the truth is, is that our reasons for scaling are often out of line, are out of alignment, meant with what we really want, and we think, well, I need to scale because that’s what you do in business. And it’s like, not really. It’s your business. You get to decide what you do. And there is nothing wrong with just going deeper with the clients that you have and making purpose your bottom line, versus trying to scale revenues and actually lose on profit. And I think there’s just sometimes too, too often we focus too much on the money. Now, clearly we need to make money in business to pay our bills. Clearly we’re in business to make some sort of profit to like enjoy the fruits of our labor, but not at the cost of our happiness, our peace, our joy, our our time with our family.
AJV (01:58):
In other words, why are you doing it? And so I just would encourage that before you go, yeah, I’m ready to grow and ready to scale that you really actually answer the question, why? Why do you want to scale? Because you don’t have to. Now, if you choose to then let’s talk about that
AJV (02:49):
That’s what I’m talking about, right? And it’s like, okay, now I’ve got to duplicate processes, duplicate systems, duplicate myself with more human capital, and that, that will require your time and your money and your resources. So one, be prepared for work. Number two don’t expect it to happen overnight. Let this grow over time. Let it grow organically and let it grow by demand. That’s important. You do not have to bring on three people. It’s like you bring on one and then you bring on another, and then eventually you bring on another. It’s like let this happen by demand and let it happen organically so that you don’t find yourself upside down going backwards instead of actually growing forward, which is what you wanted in the first place, right? Number three, get super clear on your culture and your people acquisition process before you can start growing in terms of the people component.
AJV (03:43):
You’ve gotta be really clear about who you are, who your clients are, how you do what you do, why you do what you do, and what makes you unique in all of that. And you’ve got to align yourself with people who line up with that culturally and beliefs and values. Like that’s important before you start expanding your company, which is also your reputation. This is a reflection of your personal brand. You’ve gotta make sure that you have all of this work dialed in so that you can be a magnet to people who are like that. Or you can be the opposite, right? You can be repulsive, polarizing to the people who aren’t. And you wanna be a little bit polarizing in the fact that I would love your culture or not for me, you need to make it that clear so people can make an a easy yes or an easy no.
AJV (04:39):
And so that you can make an easy yes or an easy no. So get clear on your culture and your people acquisition process. So what do I mean with our people acquisition process? Where do we find people? How do we interview ’em? How do we make the offer and how do we onboard ’em? Right? So a couple of things here I think that are really important is one, where do people come from? In my personal opinion we’re kind of at a place in our life where you’re gonna need to come from someone I know, right? There are very few resumes that I put online when, and, and I’m talking specifically about a coaching business, right? But it’s like, I know you or I have a client who knows you or a friend who knows you, or another business owner who knows you.
AJV (05:23):
So network, why? Because this is going to be such a key part of the reflection of your reputation, but also it’s because if I’m going to entrust my clients to you, which is a really big important part of the relationship I have with my clients, then I need someone else who can vouch for you. And I don’t, I’m not talking about stranger references, like, I want to know you. So where do you find people? It’s like you network, right? You network through your friends and business acquaintances. That is what we do, right? Through our own employee base, our client base friends. I don’t put job ads up anymore because it’s a very lengthy process to filter through the masses to find a mi maybe might be one or two potentials, right? And so that’s not the answer for everyone. I’m not talking about scaling with dozens of people.
AJV (06:09):
I’m talking about the ones and the twos, and it’s like, I’m gonna network myself to finding that right person. That’s where we do slow down the interview process. You don’t have to make a decision in 24 hours or one week. It’s like meet the person in person. Even if that requires travel time to get together, it’s like you must meet in person. They need to do a shadow day, they need to get to know you, you need to get to know them. We always do the spouse test, which is are they married to crazy? Right? At the, one of the great lessons we learned from entree leadership at the Dave Ramsey organization, it’s like, man, you’re not just, it’s very much like a marriage. It’s like you’re not just hiring a person, you’re, you’re hiring who they’re attached to. So are they single?
AJV (06:53):
Are they married? Do they have kids? It’s like those aren’t deciding factors and whether or not you hire someone, but man, you do need to know those things about the people that you’re going to spend 60% of your time with every week. It’s like, I need to know where you’re coming from. So I know that if we’re how and if we’re aligned and then shadow days, right? It’s like they gotta see the job, not read it on a piece of paper. They gotta experience the job and you need to experience them experiencing the job. Those would be all things hire for experience. These are a couple of tips. Hire for attributes, not skills, hire for their values and their character traits, not just skills. Now with that, it’s like, yeah, you need to hire for experience. You need to hire someone who can do the job, but you also need to hire someone who shares the same cultural values and beliefs that are in alignment with you and your client base, especially if you have an existing client base.
AJV (07:49):
All right, next thing set pricing based on your people talent, right? So as you start scaling in people, this allows you to have different pricing tiers. It’s likely going to cost a different amount to coach or work with you than it does the people that you’re now bringing on. So that allows you to have new tiers, new levels of service. And I think this is really important for two different reasons. One, most of you are underpriced and you need to increase your prices. And most of you need to increase your prices for you. So this is a great opportunity for you now to have a tiered pricing schedule where the current pricing you have is now the pricing to work with my coaches that I’m bringing on board to help but to coach with me, and now I’m increasing that, right?
AJV (08:32):
It’s a simple supply and demand. You increase prices when there is more demand than supply. When you have more supply, i e a new person, then you can keep prices the same, right? And then over the course of time you have to hire another person. It just allows this opportunity for you to set pricing the way it should be, which is a little bit based on supply and demand of your time and availability, but as you bring on more people you don’t have to outprice yourself out of the market that you serve or love unless you want to. And that’s up to you. And then the last little quick tip, because I’m trying to keep these short is create recurring revenue lines, right? When you set your coaching pricing model, when you’re thinking about scaling, now this is specific to scale.
AJV (09:17):
It’s a, you have to have products that allow you to have some recurring revenue. If it is always, I’m gonna sell a, you know, three month, three month contract and I’m constantly trying to renew this quarterly thing, you’re gonna be in sales mode all the time, right? So what can you do to create some monthly recurring revenue models or annual recurring revenue models that make it a no-brainer for people to sign up for those? Now they may buy additional services that aren’t that project-based services, but this is a membership model, is what I’m talking about. This is it could be an annual mastermind model that renews and recurs over time, not a one and done. But this is a month to month or a monthly with a six month, 12 month whatever contract model. These could be online education platforms, memberships, the list goes on and on.
AJV (10:10):
But make sure that as you are selling, you don’t sell calls one at a time or you don’t sell just a quarterly contract where you’re always in renewal season, but find ways to create recurring pricing models that allow you to create a base foundation to give you some breaks to do the work. Because if you’re a solopreneur, a coach that is looking to scale, even if you have a couple of other coaches and you’re going, what’s that next tier? That next level the biggest thing, it’s like, it’s really hard to create both lots of new revenue and nurture and care for the existing client base that you have, right? And so some of the very first physicians that you may need before too long as a salesperson. So you’ve always got someone focused on bringing new business in while you or your coaches focus on keeping the business that you have.
AJV (10:58):
So first questions first. Why do you want to scale? And if you go through that process and still determine, yeah, I do, then you’ve got a quick checklist of things to go through. But just remember purpose comes before profit. Now that isn’t, I didn’t say revenue, right, that it’s like, make sure you’re doing what you’re doing and you’re going deep and wide and making an impact and loving what you do, and weigh all the pros and cons of how much of that will will temporarily go away in the scaling mode. Now I’m all about scale. I’ve scaled businesses. We are scaling our current business. I am not antis scaling. I am anti undoing it because somebody else is doing it. I am anti doing it for the wrong reasons. I am anti doing it because of our ego and our pride. I am pro doing it because there is demand that is requiring you to expand your reach and
AJV (11:52):
Impact, and you can do it right. And it’s like you have the desire to do it, is what I mean by can you have the desire and the ability to do it. And you don’t always have to. There are gonna be seasons where you’re like, I’m good. And maybe that’s just for a season. So just give yourself the permission to be happy where you are and love the work that you’re doing and the impact that you’re having, knowing that there’s always a season to grow and to scale. And sometimes there’s a, there’s a season to just go deep with what you’re doing and define that deep work and passion can easily be the thing that you look for versus the very next, you know, business move. So with all of that said there are reasons to scale. There are reasons to not, and I hope this quick conversation helps you vett those for yourself. We’ll see you next time.
Ep 394: Scaling Your Coaching Practice with Andy Bailey
AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode on the Influential Personal Brand. I’m so, so excited to get to introduce you guys. To my friends a Andy Bailey today. Before I give you a formal introduction to Andy there are two things that I think is really important for everyone to know. Who’s tuning in is one, as you guys know, since you listened to this podcast, you know, we serve the expert, community coaches, consultants, trainers, speakers, authors, or any of you who want to be one of those things. And a huge part of what we’re gonna talk about today is how does scale your coaching practice, right? But we’re gonna talk about the business components, the personal components the leadership parts, the sales parts. And so if that is you and that sounds appealing, then this is probably an episode you wanna stick around and listen to. The second thing that you need to know is how I met Andy Bailey, which now would be, I don’t know, 14, 15 years ago.
AB (01:03):
Hey, right after you moved to
AJV (01:04):
Nashville. I mean, it was like within months, and we got connected through a mutual acquaintance. But I remember coming to your office and I was working at our former company, and I met you there, and I still have it, and it’s sitting on my son’s shelf. And you gave out this little Yoda, these little bobblehead Yoda. Do you know what I’m talking about?
AB (01:24):
Hundreds and hundreds of those things we given out. But yeah,
AJV (01:28):
I still have it. Do you really? I should have brought it up here as proof that I still have it. But it’s
AB (01:35):
My
AJV (01:37):
And I carried around. I still, I had carried around that to two companies, several offices, a new house, and it has made its way onto the shelf of my son’s, both of my son’s study room. And, you know, for years, people would come into my office and they would say, are you into Star Wars? And I’d be like, no, I’ve never seen it. And they’re like, why do you have a Yoda? And I’m like, oh, well, I’m gonna tell tell you this great story about this person I met named Andy Bailey, who did not give me something with his logo on it, but gave me something that now makes me tell his story everywhere I go. So I have used that on stages on podcast interviews. And you may not know it, but I talk about that little Yoda and meeting you all the time.
AB (02:22):
Well, I need to get a bigger stash of Yodas to start. That’s gonna be the the outcome
AJV (02:27):
Yeah. And, and I still have that little sucker. So I just think that’s really important because so many of us are trying to figure out in a world that’s really noisy, how do you stand out and how do you be memorable? And sometimes it’s the personal things about yourself that stick with people the most. And I don’t get to see Andy a whole bunch. She’s now lives in Colorado, but I still have your Yoda on my shelf. And so I don’t see you all the time, but I think about you every single time I walk by that little Yoda. So, again, for those of you who are tuning in I’ll give a quick formal intro of Andy. But this is, that’s one of those things that’s like, we’re all trying to figure out how do we grow in business? How do we scale?
AJV (03:09):
How do we get people to know about what we do so they can buy your products and services? And often we skip past the simplest of things, which is just help people get to know you. Be memorable by just being you, which is exactly what Andy did for me 15 years ago. And now you’re on this show set. Now let me formally introduce you and we’ll get down to business. But Andy Bailey is the founder of two awesome companies Petra coach, which we’ll talk about, and his newest company that will also talk about called Boundless. But he helps businesses scale to the point of selling or scale to just the point of healthy profitability. He helps so many people that I personally know with their leadership teams, their sales teams, their executive team. He’s a serial entrepreneur. He and I are part of the same EO group here in Nashville, the Entrepreneurs organization. He is a, a speaker and a constant adventurer. So without further ado, Andy, welcome to the show.
AB (04:10):
Oh, aj, thanks for thanks for the introduction. There’s a lot in there for sure. We’ve been an EO member for since 1997. When I speak to those groups, I always kind of weave that in. And I’ll say, is anybody older than me in the, or? Like nobody in the world has been a member longer than 97. I’m sure there’s a few, but if there are few and far between,
AJV (04:27):
Oh, that’s so funny. You know, things, I, I just hired two new people and on both of their you know, I’m like filling out payroll yesterday and both of them were like, born in 2000. And it was like, how old am I? What do you mean? We’re born in 2000? So when you said 1997, it’s like, I’m like, I was just filling these out yesterday going 2000. How old are you? I’m like, doing the math and it’s like, oh my gosh, you’re babies. You’re babies. Well, I, I’m I’m so excited to have you on the show, one, because I just, I know you personally, I know that you’ve got such a breadth of wisdom of not just in business, but in this really awesome niche business that we happen to be in, which is in the coaching world, right? It’s like you have built an enormously successful coaching business that helps other people build their businesses. So there’s so much dual benefit of the conversation that we’re gonna have today. And so I’m gonna start super broad and I’m just like, whatever wisdom you have to get, I’m gonna take this personally as like my free coaching hour with Andy, cuz you’re real expensive. But for everybody else’s gonna get some benefit too. So here’s my first question. If you had to nail it down to like the top one to three things that you think business owners need to do today to grow and scale, what would they be?
AB (05:49):
That’s pretty easy. So I, I think in this order of importance, and this is never a popular answer cause I’ve, I’ve, I’ve given this answer at colleges and at talks before and everybody wants me to say stuff like, you know, find something you’re passionate about or define your purpose and put a big, like, you know, all that stuff is great, but first and foremost, it has to be profitable. Hmm. If a business doesn’t generate a level of profitability, it can’t fulfill purpose, it can’t take care of others, it can’t fulfill a mission, none of that stuff. Mm-Hmm.
AB (06:39):
We were talking about people earlier. You, you have to, and we see this in EO quite a bit now. I have the fortunate I get to go talk to a lot of EO and business people and big groups and big crowds and usually leadership or the leader themselves, they invest in their own personal growth. Hmm. But they don’t do the same for their team members. Hmm. If you take a, a general business that’s about five or 10 million in revenue, and if you took their p and l and just looked at what is the education line or the learning line the majority of that’s gonna be tilted towards the owner of the business, the entrepreneur themselves, and then it just goes right down the scale all the way to the frontline. So we’ve got to make sure that we’re investing to grow our people.
AB (07:24):
Sometimes I’ll, I’ll speak to it as, you know, if a business is growing at 20% a year, everybody in the business has to grow at 20% a year. They have to build additional capacity. Capacity can be knowledge or skills or, you know, feeling better, whatever it might look like. But we have to make sure that we’re investing in the people. So, so profitability, focusing on
AJV (08:23):
Mm-Hmm. Those are good. And I have a question for each one of these cuz I think these are one just sound business
AB (09:13):
Be the, be the, be be good. That’s the answer to your
AJV (09:16):
Question,
AB (09:17):
Yeah. That
AJV (09:19):
AB (09:23):
Yeah. well we have some rules in business. One of ’em is do we say you’re gonna do be, you know, be on time every time, finish what you start and say please and thank you. Like that’s four rules in business that everybody should be following. Your competition doesn’t do that. It’s easy to outpace your competition if you do those four things. But what I’m saying about being good is if I stack up everybody else that does what I do and you know, people are gonna pick me, I, this sounds like an arrogant statement, but people are gonna pick me outta that lineup nine out of 10 times. I’ve, I’ve literally had spent a thousand days in rooms with teams like let that seek in for a second, 1,008 to 10 hour days working with teams of people over the last decade plus all the prep work, plus all the reading, you know, the 300 books that went into it.
AB (10:09):
I’m good at what I do. I’m really good at what I do. That means I don’t have to go market myself all that much or go sell myself all that much. It means I can be more profitable. It, it means I can do all the things in business that I want to go do. Now my job now, because of the scale of Petra, is to get other people to be good, which is a whole nother challenge. And that’s what I’m working on. But the answer to the question is, if I can give you one piece of advice, go be good at what you do. Yeah. Really, really good.
AJV (10:41):
I love that. What I wrote down for myself is be so good at what you do that you’re the only option, right? It’s like you so outpace everyone around you that you are the only option because you’re so good at it.
AB (10:52):
That’s right. That’s right. Whatever is your chosen field. If it’s writing or speaking or coaching, especially your audience, you know, probably a lot of solo entrepreneurs or solopreneurs, you know, they’re, they have to, they, they probably spend a lot of their time in as my website, right? As my business card ride. Do I have my, my thing put together is the cover of all that stuff is good and you gotta do that. But if, if you’re not delivering at the point of delivery to a level better than everybody else, it’s not gonna matter that much.
AJV (11:22):
Mm-Hmm.
AB (12:33):
The time piece is probably the one that’s most difficult, especially in our time now. Cause everything is instant and you have an entire generation that grew up on everything is at my fingertips. If I want something, I just push a button in the car comes, picks me up, takes me. Like all that stuff is instant. There’s no real concept of time. And you’ve heard the statement and everybody probably has heard the, you know, every success overnight success is a 25 year journey always,
AJV (13:00):
Right?
AB (13:00):
Mm-Hmm.
AJV (13:29):
Yeah. And that kind of leads into the second thing that you said, which is be growing as yourself, the leader, right? The entrepreneur, the business owner, but also have your team grow. And so I’d love, do you have any just kind of like tips or, you know, best practices, rules of thumb, whatever we wanna call it, of how much do you invest in your team, right? Like what, what’s a good budget policy? Do you let them pick? Do you pick like what’s a good practice?
AB (13:57):
I don’t think there’s an answer to what not, not a universal answer. You know, if you’re, you know, 10% of gross margins should get, like, that stuff probably doesn’t exist cuz everybody needs something in a little different degree. But certainly if you’re running an organization that has people in it, other than you, you should be working with the individuals to figure out where are their gaps. You know, what is the place, not weaknesses, but gaps. Mm-Hmm.
AB (14:42):
Or you’re gonna Yeah. Experience a lot of chaos and pain. Right? So what do you have to do? And sometimes that’s people skills. Like, Jimmy, I need to teach you how to actually deal with people
AJV (15:37):
Good.
AB (15:38):
The company just don’t focus on that.
AJV (15:40):
That’s good. But that, I mean, that’s the whole, that’s the whole concept. I remember hearing this years ago, it’s like, if you grow, the business will grow, right? So it’s like, you know, it’s like we’re all, businesses are just a collection of the people, right? And their experience skills, knowledge, right? It’s like, businesses don’t exist without humans. Some human has to be there. So it’s like, where are you growing? And as long as you’re growing the business will likely follow you in some capacity. All right. And then the third thing, sales and marketing, which you kind of referenced this a little bit. It’s like, man, if you’re so good that you’re the only option, kind of sell yourself. But in a world where it’s easy to compare your step one to someone else’s step 1000, or you’re year one to someone else’s year 12. And when you get in a world that’s so noisy with distraction of, oh, we’ve gotta, you know, we’ve got this growth funnel and we’ve got this email thing and we’ve got this new website thing and you’ve got all things digital that are real distracting and surprise, they actually cost a lot of money and also take a lot of time, what would you say are the one to two things? It’s like, just pause for a minute. If you really wanna grow sales, this is what you need to do. What would you say?
AB (16:58):
Ask
AJV (16:59):
AB (17:02):
Ask, ask for the sale. I mean, most people are, you, you, we don’t get what we, I mean nobody, you don’t get a date unless you ask for a date. Like they don’t just show up. I mean, maybe they do these days, but they typically, you have to ask in some form or fashion. We hide behind a bunch of that doesn’t put us face to face with people. Mm-Hmm.
AB (17:19):
AJV (18:06):
Way undercharging. Let me make sure you heard that way. Undercharging. Most of you.
AB (18:12):
Yeah. Yeah. And I find that even in business, especially in small business, and it’s one of the hardest things we do. Like we, we coach it’s 10 million to a billion dollar companies now. But anytime that we go into an organization and we do a financial review and, and we have like le we call ’em levers, we can pull these levers. One of the levers is increase in price. Hmm. And you would’ve thought I just shot somebody’s dog in the room and made ’em watch. When we started talking about we’re gonna have to do a 3% increase in price, well shut the market and paper costs 17% more gas is 40% increased freight to bring the stuff to the warehouse went up by 70% last quarter. What do you mean you’re freaked out about passing along this percentage increase to the customer? Well, I’m gonna go tell ’em.
AB (18:54):
It’s a price increase. Everybody’s got a price increase. Mm-Hmm.
AB (19:37):
Mm-Hmm.
AJV (20:21):
Yeah. That’s so good. You know, it’s so funny cuz I know exactly who you’re talking about. And, and not only did she double her business, she had a wait list. She had a wait list of people who wanted her services to do their, you know, very at that point, high-end weddings. And it did double her business and then had a wait list. Because I think a part of that is, you know, I think what I have found anyways in a lot of programs out there is if you, if you don’t have confidence in your own pricing, the consumer base has just a lack of confidence in what it is. And it’s like, that’s only this amount of money. It can’t be that good. It’s like we even associate pricing with quality, which is often not true. Right. And I think the great analogy to that is a book, right? It’s like, I think books are one of the most undervalued and most important things in the whole world because it’s like, you think about how much I prepared Noah offense and for this podcast and it was like 10 minutes. But you think about how much I would prepare for a blog, I don’t know, maybe it’s 20 minutes, but how much time I take to prepare for a book is years. Yeah. Right? The amount of editing and distilling and back and forth and it’s what, $24 and 99 cents to buy a book?
AB (21:41):
Yeah. You make books. I got a couple of ’em myself,
AJV (21:44):
You know, and it’s like, but it’s like I think we, we go, oh well, you know, but Right. Somehow it’s like, if I wanna coach with Andy, it’s gonna cost me $20,000. Right. It’s like, or I could read a freaking book. Right. And it’s not that it’s, they’re clearly different, but a lot of times we just undervalue things because they are underpriced and it’s like when you get it priced right, people actually, you attract the right audience. And I just, I see that happen with our clients all the time. It’s, they’re not attracting their right audience because they’re not priced right. They’re attracting an audience that actually is the opposite of what they’re looking for based on pricing.
AB (22:20):
Well, they, and they won’t volume too. They, they’re, you know, well I can get, they won’t buy it at that. Everybody else is charging $99 and if I charge more than $99, they won’t buy it. Well, everybody’s buying the other person’s now. It’s like, you know, do you want all of those because you gotta go do the work that represents all of those. If you triple the price and you got one third, the amount, you’re actually better because you’re working one third is often or the same money. Like Correct. It, it, it, it doesn’t make any sense. I mean we, we’ve got, we in our organization, Petra today, we’ve gone from, I remember the day that we went to $2,500 a month was our standard fee for coaching. We have companies today that are 25,000 a month. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (23:35):
Yeah. It’s kind of back to, it’s like people don’t pay for time, they pay for experience. That’s right. And your ability to consolidate that and to super easy to, you know, like to comprehend strategies and principles that my team can then go and deploy. Right. That’s what we’re paying for. So, kinda on that note, you mentioned Petra, which you have scaled to a very healthy eight figure coaching business over the last decade. So if we were to just take a moment and narrow in a little bit of, not general practice, but like scaling a coaching business, like what does it take, what do you need to know and how do you do it? What do you got for us?
AB (24:15):
Well that’s, that’s a, I should probably write that book cause a lot of people wanna know that. What I did in the very beginning when it was just me, was a, I went to some kind of thought leader gurus that are around the coaching world. And I started asking the question, cuz this is what I do and I teach other people to do the same thing. If I wanna achieve something, go find somebody who’s already done it and just ask ’em how they did it. You’re asking me now. So I went to two or three people who are kind of kings of the methodology and just said who, you know, I, I would like to, I’m my history comes from recurring revenue. So I learned the reoccurring revenue thing back in when I, in my twenties. So I did not want to just trade my time for money for the rest of my life.
AB (24:58):
I wanted to make sure I built something that returned return revenue without me doing it back in the story. So I asked a few people and they said, you know, I don’t really know of anybody that that took, you know, a methodology turned and that they would deliver to a group of people and turned it into a practice with. So I had to figure that piece out on my own. Extremely difficult, more difficult. And I, and I started a software company aligned, as you’re familiar with it’s in New Orleans has 25 or 30 employees, does great down there. We’ve got a marketing company as well you know, in, in the Petra imbalance. So I, I started these kind of traditional businesses alongside this coaching practice after having a traditional business for 18 years prior to that and exiting it, coaching practice factor 10 more difficult to scale factor a 10
AB (25:52):
Like, it, it’s an incredibly difficult thing. So how did I do it a little bit at a time? So we’ve made some mistakes early, we got some wrong people in the seats outta necessity. I learned that lesson really quick, meaning there was so much business coming in the door that I just really needed the relief. Mm-Hmm.
AB (27:01):
AB (28:20):
We can do all the online training, all the shadowing, all the books, everything, everything. But as your speakers on this absolutely understand you’re not as good. I don’t care what, you know, from stage, the 50th time as you are gonna be the 500th time experience is the best teacher.
AJV (28:43):
Yeah. So funny. One of our early mentors, when my husband Rory was competing for the world championship of public speakers, I, we remember this so clearly, and Eric Chester is the one who told us this. He said, the only difference between a good speaker and a great speaker is a thousand speeches. I said, go give this presentation a thousand times and a promise to you, it’ll be great. Yep. And that’s what he did. That is literally what my crazy husband did. In the back of a Denny’s with two, two people to any school or free club that would have him. And, and that first 12 months when he was competing, he did that speech probably 340 times. And that’s once a day. Y’all like, there’s only 365 days in a year. And out of 25,000 contestants, he came in second. Right. What he says he is the number one loser
AB (29:52):
There’s, you have no choice. But most people, most people will not go do that. And we talked a little bit prior about, you know, just the societal viewpoint today is, I won’t give me that now. I deserve it. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (30:37):
Yeah. I think that’s a good reminder to all of us. And even like starting Brain Builders Group, like we turn five years old in just a couple of weeks. Right. And it feels, it feels like yesterday, right? But we were build building our first coaching company for 12 years. And you know, the thing that I’ve learned is like, the more that you do something, the quicker you can redo it and make it better. But, you know, it’s like we stepped into building brand builders groups constantly frustrated of like, why isn’t this working fast enough? Right? And it’s like, but you look up one day and you’re like, oh, that’s because it’s like, again, I just, I have, I have so much to learn in the patience category, but it’s like, and it takes time to build anything good takes time. And if you rush it, you’re gonna cut corners and you’re gonna skip things that are crucial to the foundation. And I know from our community and from people listening, it’s like, man, you wanted to work so bad and you wanted to work so fast that you’re often tempted to just skip steps. But it’s like you’re always gonna have to repeat those steps at some point.
AB (31:39):
And everybody’s looking for a like a silver bullet. Like a, can I use a piece of technology? Can I use a, you know, like no
AJV (31:52):
Yeah. That’s good. So I, I think one of the things too, because you have done this, how many, how many coaches do you have at Petra?
AB (32:01):
There’s about 20, 25, 26, something like that.
AJV (32:03):
That’s a lot. That’s a ton. So if you were to give any tips, and I know we only have a couple of minutes left here, but if you were to give any tips for people going, wait Andy, I have to go hire people. Like where do I find good talent? Like how do I find, attract, train, and keep good talent? What are your tips?
AB (32:27):
First of all, it’s a decision process. And I, I’ve had this conversation, especially when somebody, I, I, I’ll use an example. Been working with the company now for a while, like a decade, a while. And when they first approached me, highly successful, highly profitable, just a few people kind of run like a fraternity house. And they were in the sales business and they all made great money, I’m think, I mean like millions a year, right? So, and they want, but he wanted a business. He’s like, you know, I feel like, I feel like I need a business. I’d like to, I wanna scale this thing. I wanna turn it into an actual business. I know it’s just a job right now and it’s a good job, but an actual business. I’m like, are you sure dude? Like, you need to be sure.
AB (33:12):
And there’s nothing wrong with solopreneur lifestyle business, you know, staying small, staying small and being great. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Cause it takes an enormous amount of energy to scale something beyond yourself. Mm-Hmm.
AB (34:07):
The second piece is you’re going to lose money before you make money. Mm-Hmm. So if you make 2 million a year doing what you’re doing today as a solopreneur, you probably are gonna get to a place where you make it half million dollars in the first three years of your little venture off into being a business. Cause now you’re paying other people to do this stuff 30% as well as you were doing it until they can get it up to the a hundred percent where you want them to be. And you gotta be willing to suck that up for a period of time in order to get scale on the other side. Right. So you’re gonna, it’s gonna cost you not just effort and energy and time, but a lot of money to go build something like that as well. So at the end of the day, just be cautious with the decision itself.
AJV (34:48):
Yeah. I think that’s actually really wise. And sage advice because I think we often get so tempted where we think we have to scale. We think we have to grow. And the truth is, you
AB (35:00):
Know, you don’t have,
AJV (35:01):
You don’t,
AB (35:02):
I’m at a place right now with Petra where we, we, you know, we had meeting, we had a meet half a half a day meeting today. I mean, our business does really well. It makes, it makes really good money. I’m not that involved in it anymore. You know, I’ve built it so it could run on its own. That’s what we do with other companies, might as well do it my own. So all of my businesses operate pretty much without me. But in order to go from where we are to the next level, you know, the 25 it’s gonna take a lot of my time and attention and I’m weighing in my mind like, am I actually willing to go do that
AJV (35:55):
AB (35:56):
What are you looking for from an attribute standpoint before you look at the skillset? Skillsets can be taught, attributes are innate and they’re just part of the being.
AJV (36:06):
Mm-Hmm.
AB (36:06):
AJV (36:21):
Old office. Yeah.
AB (36:22):
AJV (36:43):
Yeah. I actually, I love that it’s, you know, and actually I really love that it’s what can you do to slow the process down versus, you know, how do I speed it up? And I think so often it’s like, how do we make faster recruiting decisions and how do we expedite the onboarding? And it’s actually, I really love the advice of like, no, slow it down. Right? It’s like, don’t make these hasty decision decisions. Know exactly who they are. Make sure they know who you are. And that, again, takes time. So slow it down.
AB (37:15):
Well, you, you’ve had the experience. I’m making an, again, another assumption and I talk to a lot of business people. You know how difficult it is to get somebody out of your business once they’ve been there.
AJV (37:25):
Oh yeah. It’s, it’s annoyingly difficult and to do it, there’s not gonna create any sort of legal ramifications or everyone leaves on good terms and everyone’s happy. It’s like, you know, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s a little bit like getting married. And you know, for those who’ve been through this getting divorced, it’s often a lot easier to get married than it is divorced.
AB (37:49):
Super easy to get married, super easy, really difficult to break that thing up. Yeah. Same thing is true and
AJV (37:55):
Painful for all the parties involved. So slow it down. I love that advice.
AB (38:01):
You wouldn’t rush into a marriage you would date for a while. You’d pick different people, you’d sit with ’em, you’d talk like, you learn about somebody before you make the commitment. Same thing is true here.
AJV (38:09):
Yeah. I think that’s so good. Andy, if people wanna learn about Petra and what you do for businesses, and if somebody’s in a state of like, I am scaling and I do need this kind of advice, where should they go to learn about Petra?
AB (38:22):
Just go to petra coach.com. We have some online tools and some downloads there. We also do some live events virtual live events. May the 18th, I don’t know if this comes out prior to May the 18th, but we, we do have a live event in Nashville that people are welcome to sign up. Most of this stuff is free as well.
AJV (38:39):
Ah, that’s awesome. And I’ll put all that in the show notes. But then also you’ve got this awesome new company boundless, stop me. And that’s really more about the personal development side. And so can you give us your 32nd? Tell us about Boundless and where people go to find out about it.
AB (38:54):
Yeah, so as we were talking about earlier, like growing the individual inside of the business, that was a missing component inside of Petra wasn’t something that we could spend a lot of time with. So we started the business a couple of years ago that St took the tools for growing an organization, a company. And we just turned those tools into tools for the individual. We call it high performance for high performing humans. So it’s literally, think of it as life planning. Where you, where you gonna be in your life? What do you want in 10 years? What do you want in a year? Very, very detailed. We created a journal system that goes along with it so you can write every day. And it’s a process I’ve been following personally for 12 years and I just turned it into this stuff. It’s been, this has been a fun journey creating this.
AJV (39:35):
And people can go to boundless.me to check out the more personal development side. And then also in the show notes Andy’s been so gracious, we’re gonna include an awesome QR code where you can just sign up for quick, easy little, you know, snippets of information that’ll come to you every day. And so that’ll all be in the show notes and I’ll put all of the other links in there so that you guys can learn, stay in touch and continue to get these awesome pieces of wisdom from my good friend Andy Bailey. Andy, thank you so much for being here. I so appreciate you. And for everyone listening, make sure you stay tuned for the Cliff Notes version of this episode, which we’ll release shortly after this. We’ll see you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 393: How to Break Free from Being Busy | Dan Martell Episode Recap
RV (00:02):
Dan Martel, my guy. I gotta tell you, I really enjoyed my conversation with Dan. And I am I’m actually reading his book. I don’t always get to read every book of every author, but I’m, I’m loving it. I’m about halfway through it, and I’ve just really enjoyed following this guy. You know, like the people I follow online, I, I like to really follow people I guess, you know, that I consider are practitioners like, that. They’re actually building really big things in real life. And, and, and it’s, it’s not so much just perception and that, but like, they actually have big businesses and stuff. So I love to sort of follow and learn from. And, and Dan has done that a lot and has a great reputation and we’ve become friends. And I, I really, really enjoyed getting to know him a little bit.
RV (00:49):
And, and and I’m, I’m a fan. I’m a fan. So, you know, obviously the, the theme of his book and everything about Buyback Your Time really brought up a lot of memories for me and around my second book, which was How To Multiply Time. So Procrastinate on Purpose, five Permissions to Multiply Your Time, which I don’t talk as much about these days anymore since we’ve you know, the company that we, we exited in 2018, we had spent more time talking about stuff there. And then Brand Builders Group, the last five years has really been focused on building people’s personal brands. But I thought I would take this opportunity to share some of my favorite time multiplication strategies that came out of my second book. And you know, sort of sync ’em up with some of the things that I’ve been inspired by Dan here, again, to help you get better control of your time and specifically for entrepreneurs, right?
RV (01:46):
And so that’s who this is really for, is if you are an entrepreneur and you’re busy and you’re buried and you’re overwhelmed and you feel behind and you feel like you’re, you know, drowning, or you’re struggling to keep up, like these are the three biggest concepts that you need to know that I think and I know confidently will change everything for you. And the first one is the ultimate premise of how to multiply time. So, by the way, my TED Talk, you can go watch for free my TED Talk. If you just, you know, Google Rory Vaden Ted Talk, you can watch that for free. Or you, if you actually were to watch the Ted Talk or if you were to read Procrastinate on Purpose, my second book, the premise of both of them is the same, right? They’re based on the same content. And to me, this is the, this is the singular big idea that you must understand as an entrepreneur. And if you don’t understand this, until you embrace this, you’re gonna struggle. You’re just, you’re gonna always keep working faster and longer buying into this lie that if you work harder, somehow it will create more time. And it’s not
RV (02:58):
About that. That is not what creates more time. The way that you multiply time is by giving yourself the emotional permission to spend time on things today that create more time tomorrow. You, you give yourself permission to spend or invest time into the thing doing the things today that create more time tomorrow until that switch flips in your brain, you’re gonna struggle, you’re gonna be busy, you’re gonna be buried, you’re gonna be behind, you’re gonna feel like you’re drowning. You’re gonna feel like like you’re going to, to to live consumed feeling like you’re never caught up. And it’s because you have to break free of the paradigm of just urgency. The paradigm of urgency is I have to work faster, I have to do more. And you have to shift to what we call the significance calculation, which is thinking not about, you know, urgency is how soon does something matter, but significance is how long does it matter?
RV (04:02):
What’s the impact of this activity on tomorrow and the next day and the next day? And so you have to start thinking in terms of significance, not just what fire needs to be put out today. You need to be evaluating your dec your, the decisions of how you spend your time through the lens based upon the criteria of significance. In other words, how is this activity, how is this use of my time going to affect tomorrow and the next day? So I can do it today, but if I do it today, I have to then do it again tomorrow. If I, however, forego doing it today, and instead build a system today that can do it, then tomorrow the system will do it and every day thereafter, the system will do it instead of me. And that is the switch that has to flip. This is one of the things that I wrote in procrastinate on purpose, is that the next level of results requires the next level of thinking.
RV (05:08):
What got you here to where you are today as a performer will not get you there as a leader. You, you have to shift. This is a paradigm shift. It is a mental transformation, right? And, and this is the crux. This is what we know is true, that if you don’t make this transition, you’re gonna struggle. And those of you that are members of ours, by the way, we, one of the 14 courses that you have access to from us is called Multiplier mentality. So you, you, if you’re one of our members, you already have access to this course, you can go through, it’s one of our personal development courses. We don’t talk as much about it these days cuz we’re so focused on like the tactical, personal branding stuff. But so that’s the, that’s the first thing is how do you multiply time?
RV (05:51):
You multiply time by spending time on things today that create more time tomorrow. Don’t just do it. If you do it, you’re going to trap yourself into a lifelong prison sentence of having to do it again tomorrow. So instead of doing the thing, build a system to do the thing. Spend your time today, build systems that do the thing, and then tomorrow you will live free. Because instead of spending your time doing the thing, the system that you have built will then do the thing. And there’s basically, you know, five parts to that system which make up the focus funnel, which is the content of my TED Talk and the multiplier mentality course and the procrastinate on purpose book. But that’s the premise. Okay? So that’s the first thing. That’s the big idea. You gotta understand. Second big concept you need to understand is the concept of time arbitrage.
RV (06:46):
Time arbitrage basically meaning you, you, you make your win in the delta. So arbitrage is going, I’m gonna buy something, you know, I’m gonna buy something at X, but I’m gonna sell it at y, right? That’s basically arbitrage is going, I buy something at X, but then I turn around and I sell it at y and I make my money in the spread. I make my money in the delta. Well, that’s what multiplying time, a lot of multiplying time has to do with time arbitrage, specifically in the area of delegation. So the focus funnel from this, you know, the procrastinated purpose book, my How to Multiply Your Time, Ted Talk, and the Multiplier Mentality course, if you have access to it talks about five, the five parts of the focus funnel, eliminate, automate, delegate, concentrate, and procrastinate on purpose, which is where the title of the book comes from.
RV (07:44):
But in, in section three delegate, that is what time arbitrage is all about. Basically going, I am going to buy someone else’s time at X dollars and then I’m going to engage myself in activities that produce results at y dollars. Now, the concept for this, the principle that we teach is called M v o m v O T, it stands for the money value of t of your time, the money value of your time. Dan actually refers to a similar concept in his book. He calls this your buyback rate which is basically going, what is your time worth? So the way you figure out what your time is worth is you take every, you take your income, right? Like just go to your taxable income you know, or if you’re an entrepreneur, you might have to like add back some of your tax deductions to get to like what is your, what is the total amount of money you made last year personally, like for your personal time, whether it was salary or if it was commissions, or whether it was through your 10 K and it was profits or it was dividends.
RV (08:51):
Like if you just go, how much money do I make in a course of a year, all of the sources. And then divide that by 2080, which is the number of working hours in a year that will give you an hourly rate. We call that rate your m v o, the money value of your time, meaning every hour of your time is literally worth, let’s call it let’s just, let’s call it $48 an hour. Okay? So I think let’s just, well, let’s look, okay, a hundred thousand. If you made a hundred thousand dollars a year, okay, divided by 2080 doing this math on the fly here, that’s $48 an hour. I was right. Okay, so that means if you make a hundred thousand dollars a year, you get paid $48 an hour. So the concept of time arbitrage is to then say, what are all the activities that I am doing in my business or in my life that I could hire someone else to do for less than $48 an hour?
RV (09:57):
Then what I do is I go, I’m going to do that. I’m going to hire those people to do those things, right? And this could be everything from an assistant to manage my inbox and calendar. This could be someone to cut the grass, do the grocery shopping, cook for the kids c clean the house. It is doing my social, managing my social media writing copy, doing graphic design. Like what are all of the tasks that you can get done? And you make a list of those for less than $48 an hour. And then you actually hire those people and you go, great, I’m going to arbitrage my time. I’m going to pay them. Let’s say let’s, I don’t know, let’s just use $20 an hour. I am now going to pay those people $20 an hour. And with the hour that I now have where I’m not doing the thing that I hired them to do, I am now going to repurpose that hour into activities that generate me $48 an hour, like selling or like marketing or doing content creation or building relationships or what, whatever it is.
RV (11:04):
Like whatever are the key income drivers of, you know, or the key revenue drivers of your business or the key income drivers for you personally, I’m going to reinvest my time. So part of the issue, again, this is a mental block, this is a limiting belief. This is what holds entrepreneurs back is they go, well, Rory, I can’t afford to pay someone $20 an hour to do those things. I don’t have it. And the answer, you know, the thing that I I need you to know is you already are affording it. You are already paying someone because you’re either paying them at their rate or you’re paying yourself at your rate. So if you are doing that task, you are paying someone for it. You’re paying yourself and you’re paying yourself at $48 an hour, you’re paying $48 an hour for you to do the task instead of paying $20 an hour for someone else to do the task.
RV (12:02):
And so this is how you ratchet up, this is how entrepreneurs ratchet up their income. But if you never learn to do this, then you stay stuck doing tasks at lower rates of pay, and you never free up your time to spend time on the things that pay higher rates of pay, like, you know, selling and, and, and building relationships and doing strategic things and building content and building your brand and personal development and, and, and education and you know, all these things and building systems, right? Building systems is one of the, one of the highest value uses of your time because it multiplies time. So that’s what happens. The reason you’re stuck is you are stuck doing all this stuff both personally and professionally, and you’re paying, you’re charging yourself too much because you are doing it. So you already are paying the money.
RV (12:54):
So that’s the, that is time arbitrage. And it’s going, okay, I’m going to buy someone else’s time at $20 an hour, and then I’m going to repurpose my time into things that do $48 an hour. And this is what, you know, basically billionaires do. All you do is you keep ratcheting it, ratcheting it up, and ultimately you go, yeah, I’m gonna pay, you know, $250,000 a year for a C-level executive to manage this function of my business. That’s a lot of money. And you go, yeah, it is a lot of money, but if you can make a million dollars a year by repurposing the time you would be spending doing that, doing something else, not only are you buying your time back, you’re also creating jobs for other people and you’re buying your freedom. So, but it’s, it takes it’s risk, right? It is risky and you have to have the, you have to first of all get past the mental blocks.
RV (13:44):
You have to think differently. Just like I said, the the next level of results requires the next level of thinking. The way that Einstein said it was, Einstein said, you can’t use the same level of thinking that created the problem to solve the problem. You have to adapt, you have to evolve, you have to be around people who have gone on this journey before you. And I think, I feel like it’s a good time to mention, if you’re not one of our members at Brand Builders Group, you should go to free brandand call.com/podcast and request a call with our team so that we can talk to you about what it looks like because our services are insanely affordable, in insanely affordable. When one, you become a member, you get access to 14 of our courses for less than what most people sell one course for, right?
RV (14:30):
So you know, you, you have in your disposal, in your immediate ability you know, the opportunity to access this education that is worth millions of dollars. And it doesn’t cost nearly as much as you, as much as you might think. So request a call free brand and call.com/podcast and talk to our, our team and we will help you with the mindset piece. But then you have to have the actual discipline to actually go spend that extra time on the activities that drive more income, and that takes risk and that takes discipline. And oh, by the way, we have a course called Conquering Impossible Goals, and a book called Take the Stairs that helps you with that and helps you build your discipline and create your ultra performance plan. And if, if you, you know, invest with us at a certain level, you’ll have your own private coach, you get to come to our events, right?
RV (15:20):
So that is the, the, the, the example that is how time arbitrage works. And you reinvesting into your own personal development is an example of time arbitrage. You’re going, okay, I could spend 10 years of my life learning how to become a bestselling author, or I could invest a couple thousand dollars and brand builders group can teach it to me in two days and I know it, and then I have it for the rest of my life. That’s time arbitrage. Personal development, self-education is one of the greatest examples of how to multiply your time. It’s getting coaching and, and you’re, you’re compressing time and you could learn it on your own. You could do that, but how long is it gonna take? And what is the M V o, what is the money value of that time? What’s the hourly rate of your time multiplied times how long it’ll take you to figure it out on your own?
RV (16:13):
Can you pay to just compress that time, whether through education or hiring people, time arbitrage. If you can get, if you can get past this limiting belief, if you can, if you can unlock this, this new level of thinking, then your, your mind will operate in a state that allows you to create more wealth. That’s why if nothing else, go watch my TED Talk. It’s free, right? Pay 20 bucks and buy my procrastinate on purpose book. We’ll walk you through the whole thing or become a member of ours and we’ll coach you through it step by step. But you’ve gotta understand time arbitrage to get to the next level. The third concept that is huge for multiplying time is something called the 10 80 10 rule. The 10 80 10 rule. And many people talk about this concept, I certainly employ it. And the way that this works is when there’s a new project, you can’t just hire someone and go, okay, I hired them, they’re gonna do it, and it’s just gonna be perfect and fine.
RV (17:22):
It should be done. Typically, that’s gonna end up at as a little bit of a train wreck. So what you do is you spend the first 10% with them, right? You map out the project, you give them the scope, you, you give them instruction, you lay it out, then the middle 80% is what they do for you. And then the last 10% you come back in and you kind of give them feedback, you tie together the loose ends, you polish it up, and you can like send it out the door. Where people go wrong or experience frustration with delegation is they try to delegate and then abdicate. They try to go, well, I paid this person to just solve this problem and it wasn’t perfect. And so delegation doesn’t work. That’s just not realistic, right? Like, people need more coaching and probably because you have a specific vision of what you want this to do.
RV (18:20):
Now, mathematically, some people will say, well, that’s frustrating because I’m paying someone to do a job that I am still doing. And the answer is yes, kind of. You are still doing part of it, but 80% of it you’re not doing. And here’s the thing, you gotta realize, 80% done right by someone else is always better than a hundred percent done right by you. 80% done right by someone else is better than a hundred percent done right by you. Because even if they only get it 80% right now, you only have to do 20% instead of a hundred percent. See how that works? Like, yes, it can be frustrating to hire someone and they don’t, they, they, you can’t just abdicate it. You can’t just go take this and do this. Very rarely does that happen. But if they can get, if they can carry 80% of the load, you still gotta be there for 20%, but that 80% is freed up for you to now reinvest.
RV (19:32):
So even if you can’t outsource the entire thing, it still makes sense to do this. But this is where most people just can’t get their mind wrapped around it. And, and so, and it doesn’t mean they’re bad people, it it, but it, it means you’re, you know, like your income’s gonna be limited as an entrepreneur and, and you’re gonna be really, really busy. For those of you that have more of an employee mindset, which is fine, right? There’s nothing wrong with it. The beautiful, you know, the hard part about mon, the hard part about being an entrepreneur is you take all the risk, right? You pay out the money, and now you gotta go backfill and make a sale to generate that money, otherwise you’re in trouble, right? So, and you gotta repurpose that time into something that creates more time and more income tomorrow.
RV (20:16):
So you take all the risk, but with the risk con comes the reward. And that’s why you make more money if you’re successful, you make less money. If you’re unsuccessful, the, the advantage of being an employee is you get a consistent pay no matter what, right? The, you don’t take the risk, the, your employer is taking the risk. And if that’s you, that’s fine too. Totally fine. You know, employees are so valuable to everyone, especially to entrepreneurs. But if, if you’re an employee going, okay, I wanna raise my income, one of the things that I would be thinking about if, if I were an employee is going, I wanna be around people and around businesses who are multipliers. I want to be in the proximity. This is one of the reasons why Tony Robbins says proximity is power. I wanna be in the proximity of multipliers.
RV (21:12):
Why? Because multipliers are always going to be reinvesting and they’re always going to be growing. So they may not be able to pay you top, top dollar now, but whatever they pay you, if you can help that multiplier perform at a higher level, they’re gonna reinvest it back into the business, into the systems and into you. And the longer you’re around, the more valuable you are for them because the more you’re helping them multiply time. And so as they ratchet up, you are going to ratchet up with them. So you’re kind of like riding in their wake. And that happens a lot, right? You go, what does Elon mi, what does Elon Musk’s personal assistant make? Or his chief of staff? I don’t know, but my guess is probably a lot more than $50,000 a year because of trust. And, and you know, they know the systems and you know, they know what he wants before he asks for it and the time.
RV (22:07):
So either way, whether you’re on the entrepreneurial path or you’re more on the employee path, be around multipliers. And by the way, if you’re an entrepreneur, even if you’re an entrepreneur, you wanna surround yourself with other multipliers. Case in point, right? Look at our clients, Louis Howes, ed Millet, Eric Thomas, Amy Porterfield, our revenue and my income has gone up. As I have surrounded myself with people like that, as I have served them right, as I have added value to them, I’ve helped them grow. And as a result, they’ve grown and they’ve brought us with them because those people are multipliers, right? So you always want to go, how can I be in the proximity of multipliers? Being in the proximity of multipliers? These are people who are creating jobs, they’re taking risk, they’re paying for results, and their time is worth a lot. And so as their time becomes worth more and more and more, they are able to afford to pay more and more and more, which means they’re gonna hire the people that are in their proximity.
RV (23:15):
So those are, those are concepts that I wish I would’ve understood when I was young. Like I would’ve made so much more money, so much faster. I’d made so much more impact, so much faster. I would’ve surrounded myself, frankly, with a lot of different people than I did. Although I did a, a good job, actually, I’ve done a pretty good job of surrounding myself with successful people. But these are the kind of mindsets it takes to go from somebody like me, born in a trailer park, raised by a single mom. You know, we couldn’t afford boxed cereal to, you know, now six different multi seven figure businesses and two multi, or two eight figure businesses that we have built. It’s the mindset your mind has to change. And so to become a multiplier, you have to learn how to think the way that multipliers think.
RV (24:13):
So those are just three, you know, simple ideas as multiplying time. I mean, again, I wrote a whole book on this subject. It is powerful stuff. It has the power to change your life. So I hope you’ll request a call and talk to our team, get plugged into what we’re doing, or at least stay plugged in here, right? This is, we’re, we’re, we’re giving you free, free insights and inspiration as much as we can to help you multiply your impact, your income to the next level. So share this episode with somebody who needs to hear it. Somebody you know in your life who’s an entrepreneur, somebody who wants to build their personal brand, somebody who’s busy, buried behind, and overwhelmed. Send this episode. Will will you. And if you get a chance, leave us a review on the, on iTunes. That helps a lot of other people figure out if this is the right show. And keep coming back. And thanks for being here. I hope we’re gonna, I hope and trust and am committed helping you continue to multiply. We’ll catch you next time.
Ep 392: How to Build Your Own Media Production Team with Dan Martell
RV (00:02):
So straight up, you are about to meet one of my favorite people to follow online. And I actually started following Dan Martel before we became friends, and I followed him for like a year. I really loved his content because there’s certain people, and I, I follow less than a hundred people total online. And the people that I follow are people who I have deciphered are people who are achieving real results in real life, not just they have lots of followers, or they have a big personal brand, but I’m actually following people who are real life business owners. And I was able to, to, you know, sort that out quickly with Dan. So he is an angel investor. He’s a, he’s an influencer, YouTuber thought leader. He’s also the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of this book. It’s called Buy Back Your Time. And we’re gonna talk a little bit about that.
RV (00:55):
But before that, he founded Scaled and exited successfully three different technology companies within a 10 year period. So in two, in 2012, he was named as Canada’s top angel investor. He invested in companies like Intercom, Udemy, unbalanced all very, very successful companies. And now he runs a SaaS academy and is basically, he has one of the largest coaching companies in the world. He specializes in talking specifically to SaaS founders, which I am not, but we are a recurring revenue business because of coaching. And we also, you know, have a membership component of that, which is like the online version of ours. And so a lot of the principles that apply to SaaS companies apply very much to any recurring type of revenue model. And so I really, really love, love Dan. I believe in his stuff. And then I saw his book, came out, hit the Wall Street Journal, and then he was doing an event in Nashville, and I was like, man, I want to come over and meet you. And we met up. And so anyways, here he is the man, Dan Martel. Welcome to the show, buddy
DM (02:02):
Rory, it’s an honor man. I’ve I’ve been a huge fan of your work and you know, just congrats, man. Like watching all my friends that you work with, the support you, you give them and the, the results they’ve gotten. It just is a testament to the mastery that I know you focus on, you know, when you, when you deliver for people, and it means a lot. I think there’s a lot of folks out there, you know, selling stuff and not delivering, but you know, I could tell within our first conversation that that’s that’s not you. You’re somebody that over-delivers and it’s awesome.
RV (02:35):
Well, thanks brother. And I we really do my wife AJ says this all the time, she says, utilization equals retention, utilization equals retention. And she just is always about over-delivering and getting people using it. And even though, again, we don’t do SaaS, I know that like so much of what you teach is just around that same thing of providing a quality product, making sure people have a great experience using it, training the team to sell marketing. Like all, all, all in. And so I want to talk about buy back your time, okay. The book, but I wanna talk about it specifically to personal brands, which you’re uniquely equipped to talk about. And one of the things that you were sharing with me before we started was how you’ve been applying this principle to your new life as a YouTuber and a influencer. And you know, you’ve gone from being you’ve gone from being an entrepreneur to being an investor, to now also you’re, you, you said, you said something to me, you said, right now you’re really investing in media. So I’d love to hear about what that means and also why at this stage in your career, do you suddenly care about investing more into media?
DM (03:54):
Yeah, it’s an awesome question, Roy. I mean, my, my quick arc was, you know, I, I grew up in a really tough environment, got in trouble with the law at a young age, diagnosed with a D H D, you know, ended up in prison twice by the time I was 17. And in rehab, actually taught myself to code. And that, that literally became my new addiction at that point. It kind of filled the hole that a lot of the you know, the addiction I was, I was suffering with you know, left. And then I got into entrepreneurship, which is this like, beautiful forcing function for betterment, right? Like, if you think of like getting big, like growing a business, if you wanna be more successful in a business, you gotta go look in the mirror. So my, my, my message for a long time was about, you know, like growth and mindset and all these things.
DM (04:44):
And the problem was I struggled with disconnecting from the obsession of building, right? I had two failed companies right out of the gate, 17 again at 19. And it wasn’t until I was 24 that I hired a business coach that essentially showed me how to operate scale, begin with the end of mind, a lot of the principles that are fundamental that I just was lacking, right? I just thought we’d build a product, people buy it, you have a business. And it was through that experience in my third company that made me a multimillionaire that I essentially like crater my life because I was engaged with a woman that it turns out, you know, to have, to have a successful relationship, you actually gotta be present. And I just wasn’t, I, I didn’t know any better. I was so scared of failing because of the momentum I’d built that I I just kept working a hundred hour weeks and I wasn’t present.
DM (05:36):
And eventually I came home one day and I found her in tears in the kitchen, and she just took the ring off and walked away. And it was about seven weeks before the marriage. So that was my wake up call to all of this. And that’s really where the buyback principle, which I teach in my book, which is, you don’t hire people to grow your business. You hire people to buy back your time, because if you do the second, you get the first, but you don’t necessarily get the, you don’t, you know, most, most entrepreneurs build businesses. They grow to hate. So I, I started coaching companies I invested in 15 years ago, this core principle, right? Like I had to learn it for myself. I exited that company, sp and then I went to Silicon Valley and built two venture backed companies and really understood scale and leverage.
DM (06:23):
And I started tweeting and blogging. And that’s kind of the beginning of like the, if you want to call it influencer phase, but I did it as very much from a marketing point of view. You know, it’s like, oh, if you have an audience, you can hire easier, you can get customers, you know, inbound marketing started to pick up back then. What shifted for me recently was, honestly when the book came out a few months ago and it became a Wall Street Journal bestseller, I underestimated the value of a book by 10 x. Okay? Like, and, and Rory, you know, this better than most. It is one of the easiest way to build credibility. So like, I had all this business success, but I don’t know, there’s just something about a physical book that all of a sudden now people see me in a different light.
DM (07:09):
And then what happened as I was doing all this media stuff like Instagram, social media, I have about a million followers across all my platforms, but I was, I was doing just enough. Like I wasn’t, I wasn’t like thoughtful about it. I wasn’t, I would say investing in it. And there was just like perfect tsunami of some friends of mine that I watched essentially, like grow their audiences and see them get access to opportunities to impact people on a level I couldn’t even imagine. I was like, how did that happen? How did you get on national tv? How did you, you know, get a New York Time bestseller? How did you get these, you know, 50 k speaking opportunities, et cetera, or even access to deals, right? And it, it just occurred to me that the, if my goal is truly to, to have an impact to serve at risk youth, which is near and dear to my heart, then it’s, it’s irresponsible of me to not lean into it.
DM (08:03):
Like, it, it, it kind of doesn’t make sense if you tell me your goal is to help people and you intelligently look at how can you help people? Well, the, the, the trade of putting out content and serving literally millions of people and it costs you nothing huge leverage. I’m all about, you know, buy back my time. And then, and then from that opportunities tip of the spear for me to buy companies, which I do with one of my private equity companies I’m involved in, or like coach in SAS Academy or, you know, travel the world and speak, or, and it’s funny cuz you mentioned reoccurring revenue in coaches. That’s actually a big part of the people that have reached out recently because they’ve seen me scale not only SaaS Academy, but like helped other friends of mine in coaching industries just understand the dynamics that are present and just natural in software as a service SaaS, right? So that, that was what shifted is just this realization if I wanna help people investing, you know, dollars and cents into building a media team. And that’s, that’s the identity shift for me. It went from being a marketing function to a media team. So I look at myself as a media person, not as a talent in a marketing function.
RV (09:16):
So, so, so hash that out for me. And, and, and, and also this applies to how does the buyback principle apply to creating lots of pieces of content, which is something that, you know, I’m watching, I’m watching you do, and watching you uplevel sort of the, the quality of what you’re putting out. And so I’m really curious to hear what, what is representative of that mindset shift from marketing, you know, function to media company, and then also in addition to the mindset shift, what is the, what’s the tactical expression of that in terms of how many people are you hiring? And like, what does that mean you building out a whole studio and you’ve got like, tons of producers and like script writers or, or like what does it mean exactly?
DM (10:05):
Yeah, I mean, I, the other thing where I wanna be careful that I wanna scare people away, right? So I’ll give you the like, like low budget version and then I can share what I’m doing. Yeah. But I’m also not ignorant to the fact that, you know, I have dollars and cents to invest and some people may be trying to make more money, but even
RV (10:22):
Though you do have limited of money, you’ve still stepped into this. You, even though you’ve had money, you’ve stepped into this. Totally.
DM (10:28):
Yeah. Yeah. I, I think it’s, it is literally one of the best trades any person can do with their lives. And I think, you know, you’ve seen people like Gary V and many others been screaming at the mountaintop about this and it, and I’ve known Gary for 14 years and it took me this long to finally get, and again, the book was the catalyst, the book came out and I was like, whoa, how, how is this thing helping tens of thousands of people? And I’m not like, talk about leverage. So here’s, here’s the first thing is the whole idea of just capturing what you do, right? There’s this great book called Show Your Work by Austin Cleon. It’s for artists, but I, I really, I read this book and I leaned into it. So for example, I have two cameras on me right now, like on my desk, they’re, I don’t even know what kind they’re, but canon something, whatever.
DM (11:15):
And all my meetings from coaching calls to all hands to investor reviews to this podcast I just, I just click a button on my laptop and it records everything and then it saves it to a Dropbox that synchronizes, right? And it puts it up into the cloud. Now then I have a team that goes through all that footage and they decide like, oh, that was actually interesting. That was not right. So to me, the whole idea of just like start capturing stuff right, is just such a basic idea. A lot of people I know are doing audio podcasts, but they’re not recording video. So, and, and it’s fascinating to me. I’m like, well, you’re already talking to the person, just like, do it on a platform, do it on Zoom, and then just grab that video content and put that out, you know? So that, that was like the easiest thing to do.
DM (12:03):
And then what I started doing to level up the capturing side is now I just hire freelance videographers in different cities. I predominantly go like LA or Vegas or you know, in my own city when I’m doing speak engagements or, or coaching sessions and they’ll just come and, and video record just me. So just now asking for permission, so like when I have clients fly in for, for a v i p day the rule is, is like the videographer will be there, he’s recording me, but not you. And, and none of your stuff will be in the video. Well, all of a sudden I, I’ve take a, you know, a, a six hour day and produce 50 pieces of content that I didn’t have to like go into a studio and shoot right now. Some people are gonna have a hard time with that cuz I don’t think they actually know what they’re talking about.
DM (12:55):
So their content ain’t that interesting. I mean, Rory, that’s the truth, man. They don’t, they don’t know how to tell a story. They don’t know how to make a point. So some people will be like, I feel like I am not as good. But the truth is, is a good editor a good what’s called a times stamper or Clipper, they will find the nuggets, right? And you, and over time what’s cool is like I only see my social media content that gets put out there. Once it goes out, I literally have a creative director that takes care of deciding what he thinks is, is appropriate or not inappropriate and, and puts it out. So I get to consume it at the same time as my audience. But it acts as a feedback loop because I can see what they think is interesting. I can then see what works on social media and then I can go, oh, that message seems to resonate so I can think about that when I’m sharing or talking or doing other stuff. And you can be
RV (13:43):
Surprised by your own brilliance. Occasionally you’re like, wow, I can’t believe I said it. That was really freaking
DM (13:48):
Good. The editing skills, they literally, they’ll take 20 minutes of me rambling and just like punch it into a 35 second reel and I’m like, wow, it made me sound so smart. But that’s, that was good. Yeah, I think, I think the key is just start capturing and then, and and have essentially a videographer and an editor, ideally the same person, like on staff part-time. I think it’s, you know, as much as you have a bookkeeper and you have an assistant, you should probably start thinking about getting a full-time or a part-time videographer slash editor.
RV (14:17):
Yeah. So talk me through the specific like team members. So is that, is it really just, do you think it’s, it starts with one person who’s like a videographer and an editor on staff?
DM (14:27):
Yeah, I think, I think there’s, there could be two components to this. There’s the, the creating the, the reels, the video assets, and then there’s publishing. So there’s the copywriting and publishing side. So you know, at the easiest level following my own, you know, advice in the buyback principle, I would say your assistant can probably write first drafts of a lot of the marketing collateral, right? Like, especially if you have a body of work they can go look at and say, oh, this is how you wrote your newsletter, this is how you write a caption. I mean, truth is with chat g p t, you get a transcript of your video and you ask AI to do it, it’ll get it 90% good, right? Like better than you could write it. You can even say in the tone of somebody you admire like the Rock or Joe Rogan, you can literally ask it to write in a certain tonality that’s appropriate for you.
DM (15:14):
And then you can just come in for a couple hours once a week and just edit that stuff, right? But again, my process is do something till it becomes, you know, timely. So if you’re trying to produce at scale like I am then you start hiring people that are just a copywriter and somebody that manages your social media posting schedule. Because I mean we’re, we’re taking all that raw video and we’re producing LinkedIn posts, we’re producing email copy, we’re producing Facebook posts. We’re literally, all social media platforms are driven from that raw capturing of video for written format and, and email.
RV (15:52):
So, okay. And I’ve heard you mention a couple different terms here and what I hear you saying is version 1.0, it might be a part-time videographer slash editor and your assistant, and maybe your assistant is taking the transcription of the video and using chat G B T to help write the captions.
DM (16:11):
Totally. Yeah. And then scheduling it on social media for publishing the publishing
RV (16:15):
And like they have to go in and schedule it or log in and post it or whatever. So then what about, but then you, you have copywriter, you have like a social media scheduler person, video editor, and then creative director. So at this, at this point then, is that at my
DM (16:34):
Scale? Yeah, at my scale. Because again, the amount of content I’m putting out, I think three reels a day. We’re, you know, I’m spending probably 15 k a month, right? So like a major investment. And I’ve got my creative director, we’ve got one or two video editors. We have one person that just does timestamping. They literally go through because I’ll produce, you know, today I probably have about five hours of capture from all my different calls, podcast interviews. I just did a keynote. So, so somebody’s gotta go through that and just timestamp the clips of what’s interesting to cue it up, up for the editors. And then we have a copywriter, I’m assuming on retainer. Again, my creative direct today cuz I’m all about, and you know, people read my book, I’m all about delegating outcomes, not tasks. I’ve delegated the whole thing to my creative director.
DM (17:27):
They manage their team in budget and then they’re the conversation I have in regards to feedback on, hey, this worked really well. I remember my, my creative director the other day, his name Sam, he goes he goes, Hey man, he sent me a text message with two, two videos. He’s like, there’s this video and this video. And it’s like, this one was good but not great. This one went viral. He goes, you, you need to calm down. And I go, okay, well first he’d asked if I was open to feedback, which the answer’s always yes, but I love his approach
DM (18:23):
So he now is giving me feedback into topic content. Like things that are like, hey, talk more this way. Tell more stories use more feeling words. Like it’s just this beautiful feedback loop. And I think if anybody wants to just become better at communication in general, it’s kind of a life hack because it creates an audience that you can serve, costs you nothing. Especially if you just capture the work you’re doing already. And it is a forcing function and a feedback loop for you to become better at a skill that will transcend anything you could do. I mean, becoming a world-class communicator in the moment where you’re able to pull vocabulary and tell stories and just be on point. Like that’s, that’s the thing that is the X factor, right? When you look at your clients, you’re like, man, they’re really great at what they do.
DM (19:17):
It’s because they practice. They had, they had reps. And that’s what I, that’s the way I look at it is like, it’s just this beautiful kind of feedback structure that just keeps feeding every other project I’m working on in my life. It makes everything else I do easier. I mean now, I mean we we’re adding thousands of people per week on my Instagram account. N now I’m getting people I’ve wanted to connect with start following me cuz they’ve seen something I put out there. I mean that, just talk about speed. I I it’s just, it’s fascinating that it took me this long to figure it out.
RV (19:50):
So, and coming, so coming around, so you have a creative director, a video editor, a times stamper
DM (19:56):
Who, a copywriter and a copywriter. Yeah, and a
RV (19:59):
Copywriter. So four, so really four at, at your current level of scale, you got four. And those are all full-time people.
DM (20:08):
Copywriters part-time times stamper is per hour editor is per project. So yeah, they’re not full-time. I mean you can, again, there’s different levels of quality. You can do some people, you can get people to produce videos for you for like 25 bucks a video, right? Or 15. I mean I’ve seen people, I mean my DM and I’m sure yours are too, they’re just full of people offering to do edits. So you, you don’t have to spend that much, but you’ll also, you know, the results are in what you invest. So if you, if you wanna, you know, have a conversation with, and that’s why my creative director is the ultimate hire because I need somebody that’s really trying to understand the platforms and what’s popping now and gimme that feedback so that we can kind of iterate cuz it’s not just about kind of a set it and forget it. It’s a very creative process.
RV (20:56):
And that person’s full-time the creative director. A
DM (20:59):
Hundred percent. Yeah.
RV (21:00):
Gotcha. And then what about graphic design?
DM (21:03):
Yeah, it’s part of the editor stuff. I don’t even know
RV (21:06):
The video editor does the graphic. Yeah, I
DM (21:08):
Think we have, we have a really strong design template structure that my designer, so I have a part-time designer Rich, who does all my design work. But he’s given like kind of like an asset library to the, the video team so that they can pull from so they don’t have to ping ’em every time.
RV (21:24):
Yeah, I love that. That’s, that’s super helpful just to, to see. But yeah, that’s a big in, I mean, 15,000 a month is a big investment even with chat G B T and everything else that you can use like, and and yeah and doing video editing so you know, you’re, you’re in a couple hundred thousand bucks a year and so you gotta have a way to monetize that. And in your case you do that with coaching. So I’d love to hear how have you applied the buyback principle to scale the coaching business? Cuz obviously that’s the thing that’s gotta pay for this cuz you’re not making, you’re not making $200,000 a year on brand deals and stuff like that. You’re not messing around with that as much as you’re not yet.
DM (22:02):
I mean this is funny, right? It’s like what? Yeah, the amount of opportunities now, like, you know, speaking fees, I think if you can sell tickets to an event, I mean you, you’re in the 25 k plus level, right? 50 K speaking. It only takes a few opportunities to kind of justify those expenses. The brand deals I don’t do yet, although, you know, my videographer or my creative director keeps talking about it cuz like there are certain products that I do love and I just happen to share often because it’s in my world. So like anything you can do to subsidize a media production I think is an interesting thing to consider. Again, financially it’s a different game for me. But you know what’s interesting is I actually don’t monetize my personal brand directly for SaaS Academy SaaS Academy’s. Kind of like how, I mean the, I think there’s two parts of the question.
DM (22:49):
How have I applied the buyback principle to the coaching business? There’s a few ways I will, I will tell you this Rory cuz you know, I’ve, I’ve had a lot of friends that coach, right? It’s, it’s because it’s easy to do. It’s like real estate agent or a social media expert. Like there’s not, the barrier venture is pretty low except most people get stuck in one-on-one coaching, right? And they don’t have an audience, a lot of their customers are through referral. So there’s always this feast or family because a customer comes in, they help ’em get a bunch of results and then they feel like they run outta runway and they go some results. So what I’ve gotten really good at because of my software background, is understanding how to design programming for my coaching clients and, and essentially productizing the coaching in a way that would allow me to buy back my time.
DM (23:40):
So for example, I actually did a video the other day about this. Like I now have a instructional designer that creates all of my growth playbooks. You know, you came to my event at that event two day event, I’m only on stage for an hour and I’m teaching, right? And that even that training at my scale, cuz you know, we have over a thousand clients, it’s a very big organization. I’m not creating that training now I know people listen to that, that, that coach are like, so what somebody else can coach my clients. My answer is yes at scale. Like I just, I just think I wanna bust the belief that coaches think that your job is to be the emotional container for your clients. Your job is to create a framework that your client can see themselves in and then from within that framework understand where they’re starting and give them the sequences of success for them to execute, get feedback on and move forward, right?
DM (24:44):
And I’m just, I’ve always been somebody that like, you know, I read this great book called The Goal Eliah Gold Rat, I believe is his name if I’m pronouncing it right, but it talks about manufacturing and systems design and that’s just, that’s how my brain thinks. So it’s like I always go left to right, raw material, finished product, even if it’s in coaching. Okay, what part can I then get support on? So like in the early days of coaching, it might be having somebody else, you know, onboard the client right? And set the expectations and schedule them up and send the invoices and schedule the next call. So like just having an executive assistant or an account manager help you out, right? Buy back your time from doing 10, 15, 20 hours a week on that kind of stuff. And then over time you might say, well I’m gonna hire somebody to help me on the marketing stuff.
DM (25:32):
Well, we just talked about, and and eventually you might have somebody like, here’s, here’s a great example. My buddy Motown one day he called me up because he was just like really stressed out the amount of work he was doing for all his different coaching clients. He had just did this big launch and had like a hundred new clients. And in that offer he, he talked about like helping them set up and, and you know, work on their Facebook ads, right? It’s just like this amazing offer. He, him as a coach, he’s a business coach, but part of that was the Facebook ads and he was just like overwhelmed. And I asked him a simple question. I said, do you know anybody else that’s a consultant, a freelancer that’s better than you, than Facebook a on Facebook ads? And he goes, yeah. I said, how much would you have to pay that person for their time?
DM (26:18):
And he goes, I don’t know, like a hundred bucks an hour. I go, cool, you have a hundred clients that paid you tens of thousands of dollars a coach with you. You can just pay somebody else to do that part of it and you can still be involved, right? What I call the ten eighty ten rule. The first 10% on the ideation, the creativity side of like the position, the other 80% of setting up the ads and the landing pages and the lead capture and all that stuff. Give that to the, your buddy and then come in at the last 10% to do the review. And that’s the 10 80 10 rule. And I mean this is, this has been around forever. This is how Andy Warhol built the factory of how he painted so many paintings back in the day. He was notorious for it. It’s how you know Tom Clancy, even though he is passed on, still writes books like people, there’s ways to capture the magic and then create systems around having other people support you on different parts of it. And that’s, that’s for me, even in coaching I think is a missing art that would allow a lot more coaches to scale and support more people if they got themselves and their beliefs out of the way.
RV (27:24):
Can you just give, hit us with the buyback principle directly? Cuz we kind of skipped over it and jumped, jumped right into it. Just, just like, what’s the main premise of what does it mean to buy back your time? And cuz you, you’re touching on it in different ways, but I’d love to just kind of get it
DM (27:40):
Straight up. Yeah. The buyback principle states, we don’t hire people to grow our business. We hire people to build buy back our time. So that’s fundamental to everything I do. Okay, what does that mean? It means it’s a calendar, not a capacity problem. Most people hire folks to do work in their business, video editors, copywriters, et cetera. But they don’t start with the first principle, which is look at your time, look at your energy and, and buy back things that suck your energy that are low value to pay somebody else to do. So that’s why that’s the buyback principle. But the process is this thing called the buyback loop, which is, which is essentially anytime you feel like your calendar is at capacity, right? And that might be anybody listen to this? Then you do three steps. You go audit, transfer, fill. Okay, audit is doing a time and energy audit on our calendar over the last two weeks.
DM (28:34):
You look at it and there’s a whole process for doing this, but I wanna look at what things light you up. Cuz some things could have lit you up and now take your energy and things that light you up are not there, right? So like look at your calendar for like red or green. Is it red takes your energy green, it lights you up and then put a dollar sign to those tasks. Is it $1 sign? Meaning that, you know, you could pay somebody very little like $15 an hour to do for you? Or is it $4 signs, which is like hiring somebody to do your job, like a c e o type pay and there’s a gradient in between, right? Whatever that is. If you just then take everything that’s in a in the red, that’s a low dollar amount to pay somebody else to do.
DM (29:14):
Typically, if this is the first time you’re doing it’s an executive assistant and you bring all that off your pa your plate, that’s the audit side, then you transfer all those tasks to them. And I teach that in the book. I mean, we can dive in as nerdy as you want to. I love this stuff. And then, then we fill it with things that light us up that make us money. Like I really believe that if people just gave themselves permission, right? Some people feel so guilty asking somebody else to help them, right? Or they have anxiety around having somebody else do things on their behalf delegating, right? They, they in their, their soul, it’s just like they’re so scared somebody’s gonna embarrass them through their work or whatever it is. And, and these people get stuck usually around three, 400,000 a year. They’re, they’re really great at what they do, but they never grow a business.
DM (30:01):
And then the next level is about 2 million a year where they hit this, this ceiling of complexity that they can’t break out of usually about 13, 15 employees because they, they gotta fu you gotta fundamentally change, right? So once you audit your time and calendar and you do this as frequently as you get at capacity, transfer that to other people, then you fill it with things that are going to either one of three things. Either build your skills, like uplevel your skills. So some people are like, well I don’t know how to do that thing. I don’t know how to build a media team. Cool. That’s a skill. Google it, search the books, read the books, go to the seminars, find the experts, learn then it’s beliefs. What are my beliefs around the world and my scarcity mindset and my money beliefs and my people beliefs that are stopping me from expanding, right?
DM (30:46):
Because at the end of the day, the world doesn’t get easier, you get better. So we have to expand our mindset and our worldviews. Then there’s character traits, right? In regards to, you know mental toughness, consistency positivity, your communication skills. These are all character traits of who you are that maybe you just haven’t become the person who can get to that next level. So the whole point of buying back our time is not to go do a four hour work week. It’s to actually become more. And that’s why like for me, I want creators to create, I want people to build mini empires and an empire. My language is somebody that creates a life of unlimited creation. They never have to retire from. That’s, that’s what I want. For every person out there that feels like an artist or a creator or a visionary, I want you to do all of that to the highest level with no hand break on. But the only way you’re gonna get there is if you understand how to buy back your time.
RV (31:46):
Yeah, man, I love that. I, I think even just giving yourself permission to just, I mean, one, one of the one of the biggest epiphanies for me as an entrepreneur was realizing everything that I hate to do someone else loves doing. And they would, they would be happy to do it and just be paid to do it for me. And just like, once you have that, that epiphany, it’s like, man, you are providing jobs, you are transferring money, you’re making your life better. And I, I think it’s, it’s just it’s a, it’s a completely freeing breakthrough in realization to, to when you start doing this and you start really buying back your time. So I love this. I think this is, this is so fascinating, interesting. I don’t want to let you go without asking you a little bit about this is a little bit off topic related to the book, but or maybe it’s not, but I, I wanna talk about retention and, you know, your expertise around SaaS companies and their valuation and going, I have to think that what’s really driving a lot of these valuations is reducing churn, reducing the amount of lost customers every month, the people who are canceling.
RV (33:11):
And I know you’ve seen so many of these, and so I wanted to just ask you a couple, like, if we talk about how do we reduce churn in any type of subscription business. So whether it’s a SaaS company or obviously you obviously have a coaching business, it’s gotta be the same. Like you’ve gotta have some thoughts and some strategies for how to reduce churn. Yeah,
DM (33:35):
I, I really wanna encourage people like pause and go get a pen. Okay? Cause I’m gonna, I’m gonna share it, but
DM (34:24):
Okay? So, so if you collect that information over a dozen clients, then what’s beautiful about that is every product improvement shouldn’t be made unless it improves retention. Okay? First and foremost. So if, so, like, what’s cool is you don’t have to be that smart about how do I make my product better? You literally just have to say, well, the people that didn’t stick around, why did they leave? And use that to ideate around those opportunities. The other thing to understand is there’s this thing called the growth ceiling, okay? And the growth ceiling. If you have a subscription business, I can tell you to the day, Rory, this is what’s crazy cuz it’s math. I can tell you to the day when you’re gonna hit your gross ceiling, meaning that your ability to grow is gonna be capped because as a percent of customers that leave every month, your ability to add new customers to just replenish that pool decays.
DM (35:21):
Like you, you’re just not able to spend fine channels to replenish. So there’s this point, and I can tell you the day and I can tell you the dollar amount, your business will, will essentially hit the ceiling at at that point. And so essentially, based on your current numbers, I know what size of business you’re running, right? It doesn’t mean you can’t make it better, it’s just this is it, right? If I, if I know how many new customers you add, I know how many customers you lose every month, how many you have right now, what you charge per month on average, that gives me that data, right? And it’s a spreadsheet that we’ve created. So then what you do, once you understand why people are leaving, you need to understand what’s a normal churn number, okay? Because, because trying to get a hundred percent retention is impossible and it’s, it’s actually unrealistic and there’s a point of diminishing returns.
DM (36:11):
But in your industry, trying to understand based on the way your model works, what is normal. So if you sell to small to medium businesses, it’s different than mid-market or medium sized businesses or larger businesses, they’re all different. Larger businesses churn less, medium churn a little bit more than large and then small turns a lot higher. So once you understand what the norm is for your world, then you just try to fix it to get to normal. Okay? So that’s like step two. It’s like wire canceling. Let’s fix that to try to get to like kind of best practices baseline. Then there’s this thing, I don’t wanna lose everybody, but it’s a term called expansion revenue. Okay? Expansion revenue is the dollar amount that a, a group of people will end up spending with you. Either through their expansion into a high level program that counteracts what’s called contraction revenue, which is cancellation in downgrades in your world.
DM (37:08):
So if you think about it, you might have a hundred people in January, out those a hundred people, how many people left? How many people downsize, how many people expanded? So if you think of that group of people in January, by December, you know, you wanna get to a place where you are at least, I mean I wanna, I know our numbers, which are the best in the industry just cuz this is my world, but I mean, for most coaching organizations, they wanna be at about 70 to 80% revenue retention, right? Meaning that out of those a hundred customers in January, by the end, if they spent a hundred thousand a month, you’re at 80,000 a month for that group of people, right? So, so that’s where you gotta start thinking about what’s 12 months later. You talk about 12 months later. Yeah, 12 months later.
DM (37:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Within an annual period. Cause cuz that’s gonna give you some insights into what we call the, the strategic P three s, the product positioning and packaging, right? So like, what are you selling? How are you delivering it? How are you positioning, who’s the customer? Cuz some people have high churn, they’re selling stuff to the wrong people. And then what’s your packaging in regards to like how your packages work, right? So pricing strategies and kind of like the plans you might put together and like, that’s the next area to focus on. So to give you a sense of like, what’s the gold standard in software, it’s 130%. Okay? So companies like Slack, Salesforce, HubSpot, et cetera, they’re in the 120 to 125% revenue retention. Meaning then that’s why software is so valuable in the market is because if you fix these problems and you really dial this stuff in, it does become an annuity, right? No different than insurance plan or whatever. It’s like it will continue to pay dividends based on a customer. You might have to pay a little bit of money to acquire them today, but your product expands with them and they, they spend more every year, which is a, a really cool thing to watch happen. But that’s, that’s the model.
RV (39:05):
And so you’re, you’re saying, so 130% would mean cuz you’re saying a hundred percent isn’t realistic, but that’s because if you lose 20% of the people in
DM (39:15):
Coaching, yeah, it’s very rare in coaching you’re gonna get that. I would say if you are at at least 80% revenue retention, you’re in the top 1%, 5%,
RV (39:25):
But you could through expansion revenue. So even though 20% of your customers leave the other 80% that stay, if some percentage of those are upgrading to something else, the net revenue number of those of that, like kind of
DM (39:41):
It could, I’ve never, I’ve never, I haven’t seen, yeah, I haven’t seen it yet. Usually what you’ll see is what’s called logo churn versus revenue churn. The logo churn for most coaching organizations, I would say the average is about 40% per year, if not 50% per year, right? That’s the average. Like most people are not good at retaining customers. If you can retain 70%, so you’re churning 30%, then revenue expansion will make up the rest of it. That’s where I get that 85, 80 85 revenue retention. Does that make sense? So I’m taking into consideration accounts leaving and expansion into higher level upward mo motion. But like when I look at most programs, the way they’re structured, you know, a third of the people in this program are gonna upsell into this next level, but that thing’s usually twice as more expensive. But again, there’s still cancellation contraction in that program.
DM (40:32):
So it’s actually an interesting thing like to, to figure out for your business is like as a coaching organization that focuses on subscriptions what is your growth ceiling? If you understand the calculation, like where do we essentially, what’s the, what’s the highest potential output of this engine that we’ve built? And do we wanna invest another four? Like, I mean, I see people all the time, they call me and they’re like, Dan, we’re thinking of spending like hundreds of thousand dollars building this thing. It’s like, for what? They’re like to improve this. And I go, what does that mean long-term? Is that realistic? Like, what’s your ROI on that? And they’re like, well, I don’t really know. That’s the whole point. It’s if you have decent numbers, then the plan is to operationalize that and don’t break anything, right? And maybe add more people. But if your numbers aren’t good, then fix that, then scale back up. But at a certain point, most organizations, especially coaching organizations, there’s gonna be this natural place where they, they end up, right. Some people that’s 60 million a year, some people that’s 6 million a year, right? That’s just the way it is,
RV (41:31):
Man. I love that. I knew you would have awesome thoughts there. We could do a whole nother episode sometime maybe on just coaching retention. But this has been awesome. Y’all, the book is called Buy Back Your Time, wall Street Journal, bestselling book. Dan, where do you want people to go if to connect with you and, and learn more about what you’re up to?
DM (41:51):
Yeah, Instagram’s my favorite. Dan Martell two ELs a Martel, find me on Instagram. That’s my favorite place. I’m on other socials. And then, you know, if you do get the book and it serves, please leave me a review. The team and I are creating a movement around buying back your time. It’s like my, as you know, it’s the topic I’m most passionate about. I don’t think there’ll ever be a day where I’m not excited about trying to teach people how to get their time back to go create more in the world. Cuz I think that’s, that’s what we’re here to do. We’re here to become better versions of ourselves and then share ourselves with the world through our business, through our community, through our church. And I really wanna see people kind of elevate that for themselves using this process.
RV (42:29):
I love it. I love it. Well, I can’t recommend you enough, my friend. Thank you so much for being here and we wish that you the best of luck and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll be following you and cheering you on.
DM (42:40):
Appreciate it, Rory. All the best.
Ep 391: How To Get Your Brand Protected | Heather Pearce Campbell Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
All right,
AJV (00:59):
And I think that’s really important. And I’m not really a litigious person. And sometimes, you know, I can be pretty old school and just wanna do like a, a good old handshake. But when it comes to your ip, when it comes to the things that make your brand, your brand, or make you know, your content, your content, there are just some things you really do need to protect. So simplicity does not always equal protection in a legal sense. So you may think that let’s just make it a, you know, everyday language, one pa one page agreement. But do you want ’em simple or do you wanna be protected? And I think that’s just really worth sitting on for a minute of going. There’s just some things that we need to, like cash up, you know, some time, effort, and money on, and make sure that you, you protect the right things in the business and you should know what those are.
AJV (01:52):
So let’s talk about what are those things in the business that you should actually, you know, spend some time protecting? All right. Here are, you know, kind of high level the areas that you wanna spend some time on. So number one is entity structure. I thought it was a staggering statistic to learn how many small businesses, how many entrepreneurs actually never get set up as a legal entity. If you have not done that, stop listening, get off your computer off of whatever you’re doing and go do that right now. And so what I mean up by that is like, are you set up as a sole proprietor? Are you a partnership an L L C? Like how are you set up legally? Now, the easiest, simplest thing for most people to do in the United States, cuz not all countries have a limited liability company infrastructure for legal entities. But in the US we do, and that’s probably one of the quickest, easiest, simplest entity structures that you can set up. When it comes to the S corp conversation that everyone
AJV (02:58):
That I know is constantly talking about, that’s not an entity that’s a tax election. So you have to be an L L C and then you can fill out a piece of paperwork, check a box, and then have the export tax election, which it has some pretty awesome tax benefits. But you’ve gotta qualify for it and fill out a little bit of paperwork. It’s not that big of a deal. But not to get on a tangent and digress. Make sure that you actually have a legal entity set up, right? You need an operating agreement. You actually need to have legal documents stating what your business is. You need to have a business tax license, right? You need an an f e I N number, like you need those things. Like that is important. Step one basics, right? Step two is make sure that you’ve got the right business contracts.
AJV (03:49):
Now, do you need to spend tons of money on a variety of contracts? Depends on what level your business is in. It’s one of the reasons that at Brand Builders Group, we partner with Legal Website Warrior and Heather Pierce because she is an attorney who has been working in the personal brain industry for a really long time and has created an incredible set of contractually binding agreements in a templated form. Now, that’s not gonna work for every single type of agreement, but for some of your basic ones, it’s a great template to then customize and, and versus spending $3,500 on getting an agreement, maybe you spend a couple of hundred dollars of having an attorney just to review what you’ve done with a template, right? So that’s an easy workaround. That’s what we’ve done for most of the path at Brand Builders Group to be honest.
AJV (04:41):
But the first thing you wanna make sure that you have in place is just your service agreement. So whatever is your primary service, make sure that you have a legally binding service agreement for your primary service. Second to that is make sure that you’ve got your website and any digital online protection, right? So this is your terms and condition for your website, your privacy policy. If you, if you have any sort of financial information that is shared in terms of earnings potential, make sure you have your earnings disclosure. You can go to brand builders group.com at the very bottom in the footer to go, oh, that’s what she’s talking about, right? You should have all of those don’t copy and paste, right? Cuz those are custom to Brand builders group. Don’t do that. But this is again, an awesome template, the website kit at Legal Website Warrior, but you can go and buy and it’s pretty much 95% static and really good to use.
AJV (05:32):
But those are things that are required, right? You could get in a whole bunch of trouble and have to pay a whole bunch of money by just not having some basic things on your website. And so go pause right now, if you have a website, go make sure you have terms and conditions, a privacy policy and an earnings disclosure if applicable, right? So that’s the next thing after that, if you have any sort of referral partner or affiliate relationships, that requires a separate agreement, right? So you have your service agreements, which are for your products and services. There are two different types of service agreements to consider. You’ve got one that is for a more high dollar ticket offer. That’s going to be your service agreement. But then the other option, if you have just like courses or an app or a low dollar ticket or a low dollar ticket offering of like a a low dollar membership that’s like, you know, 20 bucks a month or something like that, you may want to opt to not doing a full service agreement, but you could just do a terms of payment agreement where you, you know, it’s like if you are on iTunes and it just says like, you know, terms of payment payment terms you just click on that and that’s kind of it.
AJV (06:46):
And it’s like it gives you a whole bunch of stuff to read through, which you likely never read through. So it’s like a click of a button that says, ah, I agree to these terms of payment. That’s another way of doing it, that you don’t have to have a full service agreement where you have to put your name in, date it, sign it, you just put a button. So that’s another option as you’re looking at, are you doing this for volume, right? Right. So low dollar, high volume, or is this high dollar lower volume where you need a full service agreement? I think that all just depends on what you need in that agreement. Ip, IP protection payments, subscriptions deliverables, the list goes on and on, right? Which is why attorneys exist. But also why templates are really helpful and we’ll save you a ton of money, okay?
AJV (07:34):
So you need service agreement you definitely need your website, online protection, you know, set up. Then you would have some sort of an affiliate agreement or referral partners if that’s applicable to you, but that’s the next one. Outside of that, you would need employment agreements if you have employees or if you want to, you have to have an employment agreement. If you’re hiring an employee, let’s just call it, you’re gonna need that. And then contractor agreements, right? So if you have 10 90 nines that work for you or vendors, you need a 10 99 agreement. And those are all the different types of business agreements. Now, we could go for partnerships, agreements, partnership agreements, and you know, stock agreements and you know, we could go on and on. We’re not getting into that. We’re just talking about the basics, right?
AJV (08:17):
Do you need an employee, have an employment agreement, you have some contractors, you need a 10 99 agreement, right? So let’s just talk about the basics, but you need those things right after that, it’s ip, right? And these are in no sort of chronological order, just fyi or I importance order. But ip, right? So I love the way that my friend Heather Pierce the creator of legal website Warrior defined this. She said the IP conversation is really around copyright and trademarks, right? And you think about a trademark that is your very high level, right? Think about it. It’s like that’s your, your titles and your subtitles. It’s the high, high level stuff. Whereas copyrights is for the body of work, right? So trademarks are for your business name, your logos, your tag, your taglines, what I would call like your headline statements, right?
AJV (09:05):
And then copyrights are really for the body of work, the content, the curriculum. Trademarks take longer. Copyrights can be, you know, done pretty quickly. I think I applied for and sent in and got several copyrights back within like a six week period where trademarks take a few months. Now, should you file for every piece of content? No. you could, but you don’t. But you wanna have your business name and your logo and your tagline if you have one that’s important. And if you have a very unique niche set of content, then yeah, you’re gonna wanna copyright some of your proprietary thought leadership in IP that’s in a course or a book or something like that. So again, this is a high level conversation. Yeah, we did an entire podcast interview on this with Heather Pierce, who’s an attorney. So if this was just scratching the surface, which it is, I encourage you to go listen to this entire hour long conversation and check it out. And don’t just learn from us, but get legally educated, make sure you’re protected, and make sure that you keep growing in a way that you’re never going to pay the piper down the line for the foundation that you didn’t set in the beginning. So go check out the podcast and stick around. I’ll see you next time.
Ep 390: What You Need Legally To Protect Your Personal Brand with Heather Pearce Campbell
AJV (00:02):
Hello brand Builders Community. Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast, AJ Vaden. Here I am one of your co-hosts, and I am joined today by not only a friend, but also someone that we happen to be a client of. So you guys are gonna get to hear from Heather in just a few minutes, but I wanted to as always, remind you why you want to stick around and listen to this episode. Now, there are some episodes that we do that are for very unique niche groups of you listeners. And there are some that are for every single one of you today is one of those episodes that is for every single one of you, because today we’re gonna talk about what do you need legally to protect and build your personal brand. So we’re gonna be talking about the legalese of what you need for IP sales agreements, contractor agreements, employment agreements, all the agreements, right?
AJV (01:04):
This is service agreements. We could go on and on, copyrights, trademarks, whatever the, wherever the conversation leads us. What I have found in my own business and in my own relationships through other entrepreneurs is people often just default to one of two things. They suck it up and go hire an attorney and then complain about it, or they do nothing. And Heather has created this awesome middle ground. And we’re a customer. We’ve been a customer for about five years. I’m a huge advocate, and we’re gonna learn all about the details of that. But ultimately, if you have any concerns around like, am I really protecting my business legally? Do I, am I doing anything to actually protect my intellectual property, which actually does have a lot of value, then this is a conversation that you wanna stick around to. Not to mention if you stick around Heather is also thrown in a really awesome free bonus for all of you listening, which we’ll also have in the show notes.
AJV (02:01):
So, okay, now let me formally introduce her, cause I could go on and on about why you should listen. But she and I were just talking about how we’re both moms of two little, so Heather is a warrior of mama, which I love that. Also you’ll find that her I don’t even think it’s a side hobby project, but your second business, a legal website warrior. I love that you call yourself a warrior mama. She’s a nature lover. She’s a dedicated attorney, attorney and legal coach for world changing entrepreneurs, which is all of you, right? She’s also the creators I mentioned of the legal website Warrior, which is an online business that provides legal education and support to coaches, consultants, online educators, speakers, and authors, which couldn’t be more perfect, perfectly aligned to serve the audience that we also serve. And so, without further ado, Heather, welcome to our show.
HPC (02:59):
Thank you, aj. It’s so great to connect. Oh my gosh, I feel like we’ve been in this very synergistic alignment for years now, and I was just telling you like just a couple weeks ago, right? I met Rory in person, which it’s always so fun, and I was really hoping you would be there. It’s so fun to meet people that I’ve either been connected to or have worked with or provided support to in person. It’s like one of my biggest joys. And so it’s really great to be here today and connect with you. And I’m super excited because your people are my people, right? My people are your people. We serve the same audience, and it’s a really important conversation.
AJV (03:38):
Well, and I would also say it’s like, not only is it an important conversation, I feel like with the way that the virtual world of business is growing at such a unbelievable rates and the content creator economy it’s, it’s kind of a necessity. And it’s one that most people, one, they don’t chalk up the books because they’re going, attorneys are ridiculous. Why is this so expensive? I feel that way often, and I’m, it’s such a blessing that we were introduced to you so, so many years ago. Or they’re just going, I don’t even understand what this means. So here’s my first question. Why a God’s green Earth? Do legal contracts and documents have to be so confusing? Like, why is there so much legalese that just makes everyone else feel dumb?
HPC (04:30):
Mm-Hmm.
HPC (05:24):
HPC (06:32):
Right? So it’s interesting, yes, you, you will get court’s writing opinions because their job is to interpret contracts. And so there’s so much that people don’t see about what has gone into legal drafting and the current interpretation of, of legal language that is super relevant to this conversation. Yeah. And so what I typically do, the way that I approach that, especially with small businesses where it’s like, usually what we’re doing is getting a core set of documents in place for them, right? A core set of tools that are going to cover their primary services, protect their IP, support, their JV relationships, or some of the ways that they’re promoting and growing the brand, right? But it really is a limited set for the most part. And I’m a big believer that people should understand these tools and know how to use them in their business and have confidence using them in their business.
HPC (07:33):
And so what I will do, and, and even if you think about like the enrollment conversation, right? So you guys work with big names and big brands, and you help people build these amazing personal brands or do a huge, you know, book promotional campaign or whatever, right? That all started with an engagement of some kind, right? And hopefully legal language that supports that relationship. And what I will often do is like create the, the version that clients will use, and then if they need me to, in order to support those enrollment conversations, create a cliff notes version. Like, here’s what this section means. Here’s what we’re, here’s the goal and our objective for this section. Here’s so that they can have the conversation directly with a potential but everyday client. Yes. With a potential partner that breaks it down so they don’t have to feel intimidated about presenting that contract and actually enrolling somebody. Right. Or misrepresenting what it right means, right? Right. So there are ways to deal with it, but ultimately, you know, for folks listening that are like, oh, can I just have the one page contract? My question again is gonna be, do you want a one page contract? Like, are you so committed to that versus actual protection in, in your business? There is a difference.
AJV (08:57):
Yeah. Actually I wrote this down. I think that’s really, I think that’s really good because I hear this often of why does it have to be so long? Why is it so complex? Like, can we just make it simple? And you know, it’s like what you’re saying is, do you want simplicity or do you want protection? And those, those often can be the same, but often not. And I love what you said about this you know, lawsuit or whatever it is going on. And I always remember back in English class, the example, the simple example is let’s eat grandma versus let’s eat grandma. Right? Those are two really
HPC (09:31):
Different
AJV (09:32):
Statements all based on a comma.
HPC (09:36):
Yeah.
AJV (09:36):
Right? And I think
HPC (09:37):
That’s exactly it.
AJV (09:39):
Yeah. And what you really have me thinking is, shoot, I need to have you go back over all of our contracts,
HPC (09:44):
AJV (09:45):
And it’s sometimes I get frustrated because I know the US specifically. So for those of you who are based in the us, we’re way more litigious than many countries. And at the same token, you know, there’s sometimes you just gotta play the game even if you don’t like it a little bit. And so what is that game for people who are building their personal brand? So what are the fundamental assets? And when it comes to legal documentation for the, you know, author, speaker, coach, consultant out there, or one who is aspiring to do that. And I think that’s the first is, you know, I’ve just thinking of all the different conversations we can have around just ip, right? Just ip, we could have the next two hours. So we’ll just, you give us what you think this audience needs to hear, cuz I know you know it really well, but what do we need to protect our personal brand?
HPC (10:37):
Yeah. Such a good question. And I, I wanna comment really quickly on your reflection of the US market being very litigious. Yes. And part of that is we are a very commercial mm-hmm.
HPC (11:34):
If you are anywhere in the world, this conversation applies to you in part because the concepts are really the same wherever you’re at. And most likely, if you are like so many of AJ and Rory’s clients or like the types of clients I serve, your business is international. You are not, not restricted to your geographic boundaries and you are reaching people all over the world with your message, your opt-ins, your email newsletter, right? So, so the, it’s really important for you to understand the framework because mm-hmm.
HPC (12:29):
So you may have to swap the actual strategy or solution, but the framework is the same. So that’s a quick overview. And if you’re reaching into the US because a lot of international clients get this wrong. They, they don’t think about their, their risk from the standpoint of needing to understand u US laws u us i p laws as well, just from the fact of reaching it because they don’t know legal concepts. Why, how would you, how could you know legal concepts if you’re not an attorney based in the US that does business law? Right? So for example, I had one client, really gang buster’s business, very well known. He’s based in Canada, but probably 70 to 80% of his business comes from US-based clients, right? He does live events, he does online events, he’s a speaker, he’s an author, right? He does all the things that this audience does, and he’s advertising on Facebook and social media platforms to the US-based audience.
HPC (13:32):
And guess what? Get slapped with. Basically it was initially a cease and desist and then lawsuit from a US-based company who owned the trademark that he was using in Canada to reach into the US with. So even if you are established in your home base, if you have not done the research in the US around the phrases, the names, the things that you’re using, you could be in trouble. Right? And so for him, we ended up in this battle. It, it luckily, you know, I got involved early enough, we were able to keep the train on the, on the tracks, and we ended up buying out two registered marks from the US based company. And so now his brand can run wild in the US but that was completely an unexpected hurdle for him, right? And so, so it is just a reminder, I wanna set the context because it’s a reminder that if you’re listening and you’re in this audience, the world has become a lot smaller based on the digital age and online e-commerce. And you do have to really understand the rules of the road. So, okay. I know that sounds scary and people are like, oh crap, I just wanna turn this off right now.
AJV (15:05):
Oh, that’s, so, honestly, that’s such a great reminder of for all of us, of going, you know, I mean, most of us would probably love to spend our money in other areas. Oh yeah.
HPC (15:19):
Be honest. Oh yeah. However, being the outside of the vehicles, right?
AJV (15:24):
Yeah. But imagine building an entire brand around something and then to get a cease and desist. So it’s like, like everyone just let that like sink in for a moment. And that gives me a little bit of heartburn,
HPC (15:59):
And I wanna get back
AJV (16:01):
To your question. Yeah. That’s a good reminder to everyone of like, yes, you think it’s not, doesn’t pertain to you, but it it ultimately does
HPC (16:08):
It, it ultimately does. And it, the analogy is like we get into vehicles, most of us every day, right? We put on our seatbelt, we, you know, do certain things before we drive down the road to make sure that we’re safe. In the online world of business, people just fly into that space. No seat belts, no understanding of the rules of the road, and yet they are entirely responsible for understanding mm-hmm.
AJV (17:06):
I will just say, well, I’ll just second thought one quick thing is not to mention there not to frighten anyone, that’s not the point. This is helpful conversation, but I’m a part of EO at the Entrepreneur’s Organization here in Nashville. And about a year ago, maybe two years ago when everything was just going not so of everyone going digital and online, there were people out there intentionally hunting out websites that were not a d a compliant and then slapping you with lawsuits. Right? I mean, there are people that make a business out of your lack of policy understanding compliance and legalese. Yeah. You know, and you’ve got the whole thing with GDPR that, you know, it’s, there’s so much to learn. It’s like, it’s impossible for the everyday entrepreneur by myself to keep up with that just like taxes. Yeah. Which is why I think what you’ve created with legal website warrior is so, so helpful. Okay. I could get sidetracked five more times. So no,
HPC (18:07):
These
AJV (18:07):
Why
HPC (18:08):
Though though, these examples bring it to life, right? Yes. Because I think a lot of people sit back, I mean, before we went live, you and I were talking about how people just don’t look into this bucket, right? There’s so much resistance or fear or whatever. And, and I think there’s also what, what I see and have seen for years, cuz I’ve been practicing law for over 20 years now, right? It’s people discount themselves and the size of their business before they even get started. So I, I often hear like, well, I’m too small or I’m not really, I’m not really like that business that needs a A B, C X, Y, Z or whatever. Let’s be clear that 99.9% of all businesses in the US are small businesses. That’s right. We, you guys, we are the marketplace. We are the marketplace from a numbers perspective. Sure. You hear about all the big businesses, Starbucks and Nike and IBM and whatever those are, you
AJV (19:07):
Know, our few and
HPC (19:08):
Compare Microsoft. Yes. And of course they throw a lot of weight around. They’re big brand names. And when you hear about data breaches and stuff, it’s those big businesses that you hear about. But small businesses every day are battling the same battles in their businesses that they just don’t get reported on. Right. And, and it’s important to understand that collectively we have so much influence and so much sway and are responsible for such a huge percentage of, you know, annual G D P. I mean, it’s just massive. And so we also have to elevate our own thinking around where we fit and what our role is and the reality. And I’m a huge believer that a rising tide lifts all boats. The more of us that can get educated, especially in the mission driven, impact oriented business space, the better we can be at business. Amen. The better our peers are gonna be, the, the more impact we will all collectively have for good. And thi this is the whole point, this is the whole point of business of what I do, probably of what you do, right? I mean, I just feel it to my bones. It’s what I get up every day to do is elevate the level of business that my clients are in.
AJV (20:26):
I love that.
HPC (20:28):
So back to your question about like, where do we start? What do we really need? What are the essentials? Right? Especially as a personal brand or a, you know, different names expert based business, solo entrepreneur, right? But a lot of solos, like they end up building small teams over time as they build these businesses. So it’s not that we all stay there but what do we need and how do we not count ourself out of the conversation to begin with? So, and I have a framework and I think that’s probably what I will share at the end, right? That for people that wanna walk through and understand the whole framework, I’m laughing because in Rory’s live presentation a few weeks ago,
HPC (21:21):
I have a framework for that. So I have a framework for this map and I, I give it away for free and I teach on it and I speak to it. And it is the same framework that I give to free to clients who go through my legal basics bootcamp. It’s the same framework that I walk people through for clients that want a risk assessment of their business and they pay me a couple thousand dollars to do that. It’s the same framework that I implement for my Catalyst Club clients that are paying me $25,000 a year to do this work inside of their business. Right? It’s the same. So you are getting the same framework I teach to my clients that are making two and 3 million in revenue a year and are really in that scaling phase and are playing catch up on their legal needs, right?
HPC (22:04):
So, so again, you’re not too small, you’re not too small to learn this, you’re not too small to get started on this. So where do you start? Step one, and this is even before we get to like some of the essential business contracts, is do you have a business legal entity set up? Right? It is the difference between protecting your personal assets and what you’re building on the personal side of your life and not protecting it, like hanging that out to dry. And I, I spend a lot of time on this point and some people listening are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve had my entity for years. But understand 60% of the US marketplace of small businesses in the US marketplace, sole proprietors, 60%. It’s a massive number of people that never get to step one in my framework of actually setting up a proper legal entity.
HPC (22:59):
Whether that’s a C corporation, whether it’s an L L C. Yeah. So it is a really relevant issue. And if you’re listening thinking like, well, you know, I’m kind of an island, I have a home-based business, I’m just a coach or whatever. No, stop it, stop minimizing yourself because there is real liability that goes along with your business model, with your work. And even though the liability might be less than, for example, running a on location-based gym
AJV (24:29):
So real one real quick question, I won’t derail promise. Do you have a entity preference for people getting started? Recommendation?
HPC (24:38):
I totally do. And it’s because most of my clients fit within this particular model right now. There’s always exceptions. So if you’re listening and you’re like, look, I’m gonna, you know, here’s where I’m starting, but my ultimate goal is in five years to, you know, build this mega machine and spin it off and sell it for a hundred million dollars. Like that’s a different path. You’re more of a traditional startup path. You need to start in a different place, right? Who I’m speaking to are the personal brand builders that are creating a business because through that business model, they get to fulfill their personal mission in the world. They get to do meaningful work that changes the lives of their clients, changes their industry landscape. So it’s about, it’s actually about being able to do the work. Mm-Hmm.
HPC (25:36):
That that’s who I’m talking to. And if you are there and you’re like, okay, great, and maybe you build a small team, maybe you do other things and your business doesn’t totally look like just a solo personal brand builder, entrepreneur for life, that’s fine. You’ve got flexibility. But I would recommend the l l C model because it’s easier to manage mm-hmm.
HPC (26:28):
So it’s not that complex, it’s like filing a single form, but what it does is it results in some tax savings for you if you’re an L L C and you’re really starting to generate revenue. So this is also one of the benefits of setting up an L L C is you have some flexibility in tax treatment, you can make that election at any time and really bring some additional benefit into your financial life. Amen. So I know check, check six, check. Yep. So, and yes, if you have questions, get in touch, go visit any number of my past, ask me anything lives like this is something that I drill into people and cover a million times. So there’s more out there on this topic. But also if you’re like, well, does this really apply to me? Again, when do you hire an attorney? Is if you’ve got something really unique and you just need custom advice, right?
HPC (27:17):
Mm-Hmm.
HPC (28:16):
Right? And then let’s pretend you’re like, okay, I, you know, my next step is that I’m building out more of my online presence and maybe I wanna create my first digital course. Great. Going online, which a lot of people have had to do, right? Thank you Covid. I spent a huge portion of the first year of covid, like trying to help anybody in my database. Like, get online, get your stuff protected, get the website protection package, right? Whatever. It’s, it, the online hub, often as you evolve in, in these types of businesses, becomes like your home base for your business, right? You’re setting yourself up as an expert in the space. You’re publishing articles or blogs or maybe video tutorials or something that drives traffic to your website. Again, builds credibility, right? You might do other things as well as you evolve, launch a podcast mm-hmm.
HPC (29:09):
HPC (30:09):
So the difference, and, and you know, for folks listening that are like, oh, well I can just go get some free templates online,
AJV (31:20):
Well, and not to mention on that note of borrowing with the bunny
HPC (31:51):
Oh, right. Or even worse, somebody else’s business listed in your like
AJV (31:57):
Yep.
HPC (31:58):
Oh, people. And, and this is, you know, I have to get on my soapbox for just a minute because on this point, whether it’s legal, whether it’s somebody else’s content, right? Like we all have different areas of expertise. The thing that I teach repeatedly and embed into my audience and my list and people that show up and engage in my life calls is if you did not create it or hire somebody to create it or pay for the right to use it, do not even for a split second, think about taking this off the internet. You can get in such hot trouble so fast. So for example, let’s talk about even just taking something legal related from somebody else’s site. One, if it’s truly worth taking, they paid
AJV (32:47):
For it, right? And it’s customized and it
HPC (32:49):
It’s customized. They hired somebody to do it. So tell me how you feel about showing up and taking something that they paid somebody else to create for them. It’s just unethical and there’s not Wow.
AJV (33:03):
You know, it’s like, this is like one of those things. It’s, it’s like what I tell my kids all the time, I’m like, at the end of the day, no one, not every mom specifically is not gonna know all the things that you do. So only you’re gonna know the choices that you make. And it’s like, this is like, you know, parenting 1 0 1, it’s like act like someone’s always watching and would you do this if mom was standing right next to you? And it’s like, I do that. I am a big believer in, in God and it’s like, I’m always like, nobody else might see this, but he does. So totally. What am I doing? And I think a part of it is, it’s like it’s gonna come to bite you in the tail. I literally read through other people’s stuff and I’m like pretty sure that’s not your company. And they’re like, oh crap. Missed that. So glad you saw that. I’m like, ok, you should probably go back and read that, please. Well, Anna, no, I have a quick question for you because I wrote this down as you were talking so I didn’t forget we would come back to it. So this has been an ongoing conversation in our own company because this is where I get free legal advice for two minutes.
HPC (34:05):
Happy to provide it, right? Better listen up folks, listen up.
AJV (34:10):
But like, we have like five different product and surface offerings, right? We have courses, we have memberships, we have Immersives, we have Mastermind, we clearly have products. So like we have all these different things. We do book launch fulfillment, we have lots of offerings. And the question has been to simplify, do you need a service agreement for each one of those individually, right? Or the complaint has been, oh, can’t we just like have one that mentions everything And our default has, like, I know it’s more annoying, it creates so much work when we do like company-wide updates, but we have a service agreement for every single thing individually. Mm-Hmm. Is that overkill or could we consolidate?
HPC (34:52):
Oh, this is such a good question. And as brands grow, this really becomes an increasingly important question. And if you’re listening and you’re thinking like, well, I just have, you know, two or three things right now that I am doing in my business, still super relevant. Because you need to be able to make strategic decisions as you grow. And the the key part of this conversation because there are multiple ways to, to do what you’re asking about, right? And yes, you can have a client service agreement that looks like an actual quote unquote traditional legal agreement. People either sign it physically or through like DocuSign mm-hmm.
HPC (35:44):
I have read and agree to the terms of purchase whatever, which I have never done ever, but okay, right.
HPC (36:43):
Mm-Hmm.
HPC (37:38):
Optimize for numbers, optimize for the ease of enrollment. That can, that can work all the way up to multiple hundreds, even a couple thousand, you can do terms of purchase with that process, right? And some people, even with higher dollar amounts are still gonna prefer digital because it’s better for their business model and their business system. Mm-Hmm.
HPC (38:35):
So generally what that looks like is memberships you know, any digital offers that are pre-recorded. So courses, you know, those kinds of things that are hosted on platforms optimized through terms of purchase, a digital click. You have to do it the right way. Let’s be clear, there’s lots of wrong ways that people are still doing this. Sure. So you have to do it the right way to have adequate legal protection. And that’s part of what I teach inside of my website protection package. But if you go through the effort of, and it’s not that much effort, I’ll be clear, it’s just about knowing where to put things, what order. A lot of people just do this stuff out of order. Mm-Hmm.
HPC (39:25):
Right? Gotcha. Now if you’re running, let’s pretend like one of my clients is running to just launched like a $29,000 a year. Pretty elite. Like it’s invite only membership club for women. That’s combination like networking, you know, masterminds. She’s bringing in like really famous people in the business world to talk to these folks. So she’s very high level. Do people want to click a box and enroll that way? Probably not. Yeah. You really, if you have that business model, you are optimizing all the way for user experience and you’re optimizing to also create and ensure that you have very high level clients in that experience. Right? Optimizing for clicks for easy enrollment means you’re gonna have a few misfits mm-hmm.
AJV (41:03):
Yeah. Super helpful. Really good. And I think that just even those little points of delineation just help so much of like, what do I need when, yeah, so totally. I’m watching the clock and we have like seven minutes. Okay. And so we talked a little bit about entity structure, super helpful business contracts, right? Mm-Hmm
HPC (41:47):
Super easy to implement.
AJV (41:48):
It’s a no brainer. Like if you don’t have those things and you need to go to our affiliate link to have a legal website warrior which I will put in the show notes, but if you don’t use our affiliate link, just go cause it’s worth it. The website protection kit is just such a no-brainer because people are hunting people like us out online and going, oh, they don’t have this boom, I’m gonna sloppy you with a lawsuit or you can just pay me this amount of money and I’ll forgo it. Like I know that’s Steves, but unfortunately, like I know three people that happened to with the A D I A D A compliance issue. Yeah. so just do it, right.
HPC (42:26):
Just do it. And the final point I will add about that because it is kind of a templated package. You modify certain parts, but it is pre-built for this very, very narrow niche that I serve. It is not for the industry at large, it is not for bigger business. It is, it is not even for brick and mortar like, you know, mom and pop selling widgets, gidgets and gadgets, but like it’s for a very specific type of business. And so it’s literally pre-built to fit your business model right out the box. And that’s what I cared about doing with all of my documentation,
AJV (43:01):
Which means a lot. And just little things like you don’t think about like earnings disclosures and
HPC (43:06):
Totally thanks your privacy policy that’s required by law. And now we have all of these changing legalities with international privacy issues. Like there’s a lot to cover. You don’t have to do it yourself, but I want you to feel so good about being in your business and not wor like the, the way I’ve had certain clients describe getting the support that they need is like, I did not realize I was carrying around this 50 pound backpack. Yes. And I finally got to put it down. Yep. These are people who have made millions of dollars in their business, you know, and it’s like they finally got it resolved in a way that suited them. So anyways, that’s my pitch. Just go do it in regards to like what else you need because you did we, we talked about legal entity, we talked a bit about business contracts.
HPC (43:55):
Just understand like any exchange of value that you have in your business, right? Maybe you’re hiring independent contractors or employees or, or you’re working with JVs or affiliates or you know, any number of ways that you’re exchanging value through your business. Maybe it’s additional services or offerings. Mm-Hmm.
HPC (44:47):
The next bucket, and we won’t talk about all the buckets, right? And if you want more information on the other buckets, just go through my little freebie. It’s super fast. Five minute videos delivered once a day for a week, like five days. Yeah. So it’s super easy, very accessible. It’s gonna link you to other resources and things you can go take a peak at. But the third bucket ip, I really want to talk about ip, right? Because a lot of people are like, well what about ip? Understand you do a lot of heavy lifting to protect your IP in the contracts bucket. Mm-Hmm.
HPC (45:46):
Yeah. Think of your brand or your business as a mountain trademark registrations protect what’s visible from the marketplace. So if you live close to a mountain, you know that like what sits above the clouds or your city or whatever is the Snowcapped Peaks the very top of that mountain. That’s what trademarks protect. This is gonna be your business name. Mm-Hmm.
HPC (46:39):
And all of the folks that I serve are massive information publishers. Like you literally need to think of yourself as a publisher, like even Rory of a framework for that, of a framework for that, right? We publish when we’re experts in our spaces, massive amounts of information. So registrations are available to protect that trademark registrations, protect the top copyright registrations, protect the body of your work. So if you’re publishing books, if you’re, you know, creating a video series, like I said, all the ways that your work is actually taking a tangible form in the world.
AJV (47:17):
I’m so good. And that’s such an easy way to think about it too. Yeah. Jessica, people get
HPC (47:21):
Those, yes, get them mixed up all the time. And I just want, like, I’m such a visual person, I just want you to remember that analogy of the mountain trademarks are at the top, which means also that they’re a little bit more of an investment. They take a little bit longer to obtain super, super powerful assets to have in your business. And then copyrights, you can be strategic about what you protect. And my question for you if you’re listening right now is like, where do you start when it comes to co copyrights are much more accessible. You can file them on your own and it’s like $45, very, very accessible, right? So whether that’s a video suit series or a workbook, or maybe you’ve self-published a book, ask yourself like, what is the best expression of your work or your framework or your ideas? And start with that. Like you have core assets in your work, start with those. You don’t have to register everything, but start with what you know to be core to your work, right? Mm-Hmm.
AJV (48:39):
Oh, this has been so helpful, y’all. Like we could literally go off and on and on talking about this. This is like scratching the surface as Heather mentioned. She’s offering a free little mini course. I’m gonna put the link to access that in our show notes. I’ll also put a link to her company legal website warrior. If you want to use our affiliate link, do it.
HPC (49:22):
Check, right? I know there’s been, like I said, in parallel universes for so long. I should go check up and we can chat if there’s anything that you’re missing. But I so appreciate you. I what I want for people, cuz some people are probably listening and still feeling overwhelmed. Just understand. The thing that I love most about entrepreneurs is their grit. Like the perseverance, the willingness to like roll up those sleeves. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (50:16):
Ah, so good. Heather, thank you so much for being here. Everyone else stay tuned. Check out our Cliff Notes version of this episodes and we’ll see you next time on the influential Personal brand. See you later guys.
Ep 389: 3 Elements of Mental Toughness | Todd Durkin Episode Recap
RV (00:02):
Huh. I love the fire that Todd Durkin brings to the microphone and to the camera, man. I’m a, I’m a fan. This guy’s enthusiasm and, and positivity and his energy that he brings, it is contagious. And as a friend, as a client, as a colleague, I am I really have enjoyed my time around Todd Durkin and I, the interview that we did. If you didn’t get a chance to listen to it, go back and listen to it yourself. You’ll catch a bit of his energy and just his intensity, which I, I really, really loved. And you know, as always, what I’m, what I’m doing is I’m, I’m taking these interviews and sharing back with you things that I’m being reminded of, things that I’m learning myself, the ways that I’m internalizing or processing what has just happened during that interview. And today’s no different.
RV (00:58):
This is inspired, you know, by all this, this conversation with Todd. But I boiled this down to what I wanna share with you are three elements of mental toughness. These are three kind of pieces of your, these are three parts of your mindset that you have to get right, if you’re ever going to really be mentally tough. And I think these are three things that people don’t actually do very well. Like, these are three very rare things. These are three things that are unfortunately uncommon amongst most people in the world, but among the elite, among the top one percenters among what we would call the ultra performers. I refer to them and take the stairs in my first book as ultra performers, or in my second book procrastinate on purpose. We call ’em multipliers. You know, today, we might just call them like mega influencers.
RV (01:55):
But these ultra performers, there’s, the thing you gotta understand is that it is their mind. That is the, the magic is in the mind, right? It’s not their skills so much. And, and it’s, it’s that there’s mental conditioning. It’s like that story I shared about Navy Seal, Joe, the, the human body can take near anything. It’s the mind that needs conditioning. So here’s three elements of mental toughness. First one, something that you need to understand if you’re going to be successful in anything, is that the intensity of your discipline needs to match the magnitude of your dream. The intensity of your discipline needs to match the magnitude of your dream. This is one of the biggest problems we have in the world today, is there’s people, you, you see all these dreams and like people, all these fake flus online who are showing like, oh, these cars and these private
RV (02:58):
Jets in these homes. And so it’s like, oh, we all have these dreams and we have this huge dream, and yet we have this weak level of discipline that is a recipe for failure, right? That’s a recipe for disaster. Or it’s at least a recipe for a broken heart or unmet expectations. You can’t have a huge dream and very weak discipline. The intensity of your discipline needs to match the magnitude of your dream. Big goals are for people with big work habits, right? Right. I’m all about having big goals. I’m all about dreaming big. I’m all about, you know, achieving the impossible. I’m all about going for the thing that no one else says you can do, but you better show up and put in the work. Like you better show up and be ready to play. You better show up and say, I am willing to do what no one else is willing to do, so that I can have what no one else is going to have.
RV (03:51):
That’s the mindset of an ultra performer. I’m not saying you have to like it, I’m not saying it’s fun. I’m certainly not saying it’s easy. I’m saying that’s what it takes. That’s how it is, right? Also, I would say, and I’ve, I’ve said this several times before, discipline becomes dormant in the absence of a dream. Discipline becomes dormant in the absence of a dream. So part of increasing your discipline is increasing your dream. Because if you don’t have a clear dream, if you don’t have a clear picture, then there is no reason for you to make the sacrifice. And so the human brain left to its own default, to its own design, will naturally gravitate towards the path of lease resistance. This is escalator mentality thinking, which is where the title of the Take the Stairs book my first book even comes from, right? So you have to, if you wanna increase your discipline, one of the ways to increase your discipline is to increase the dream.
RV (04:50):
Because then you go, ah, now I have a reason to do it. Now I have a reason to make the sacrifice. But discipline goes dormant in the absence of a dream. So if you’re struggling with discipline, it might just be you don’t have a big enough dream. But so step one is like, have the dream, but then step two is make sure that the level of your discipline matches the magnitude of your dream. That is a connection that ultra performers understand. Most people do not. Most people will never get it. I mean, literally go to the mall, walk around, you can look at world or look, go to a stadium. Look at most of the people there are never going to make the connection that I am talking about that I just shared with you. But a 100%, 100% of the world’s wealthiest people, most successful people, highest performing people, top achievers, top athletes, top actors, top singers, 100% of those people will have made that connection.
RV (05:46):
So if you wanna be one of those people, I recommend you understand that and you make that connection. Number two, the power of community. I loved what Todd was saying when he said, hire an appointment with a trainer, right? Like, hire a trainer if for no other reason than to create the accountability in your life to show up and exercise, to show up and work out. If you don’t have the self-discipline to get up and exercise and do what you need to do, then hire a trainer for no other reason than to, to make sure you show up, right? Like there is power in accountability, there’s power in community. And if you’re not where you wanna be in your business, if you’re not where you wanna be in your personal brand, if you’re not, if, if you’re not achieving the things that you want to be achieving, one of the first things you have to do is look at who you’re spending your time with, right?
RV (06:47):
Who are the people around you? I can guarantee you that the people you’re spending time with are not people who have achieved those things. If you’re spending time with people who have achieved those things, you will become that person. You will. It, it happens by default because you, you absorb their mindsets, you absorb their tactics, their beliefs, their relationships, their, their, their, the things they focus on. You absorb those things. So you have to curate your own community. You have to curate your own community for your life. You have to hand select deliberately. Choose intentional in intentionally pick who you’re spending time with. And that’s another reason why. I mean, if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, if you’re not yet a member of Brand Builders Group, I’m going, the amount of money you have to invest to become one of our members is so minuscule.
RV (07:44):
Not only compared to what you’ll learn, and, and not only compared to what you’ll earn as a result from what you’ll, but it’s so small just compared to the power of the network, of the people you would meet. Like, if you learned nothing from us, if you never implemented anything from us, the r o ROI you would receive just from being in the room with the people who are at our events, right? And who are on our virtual trainings and who are in our Facebook group, is so tremendously powerful. Like, it’s huge because it’s a community. It’s a community of mission driven messengers. It’s a group. This is something we never anticipated when we started. The company, never even thought about. It was like, wow, if we’re successful, what will happen as a byproduct is we will have hundreds of people who are world changers, all who coalesce, like, who all assemble in the same area.
RV (08:41):
And it is incredible. Our members are incredible. Like the people we see in our Facebook group and, and our community group and on, on our virtual trainings and at our live events and on our virtual events, I mean, mean, it blows my mind, the stories. I mean, our members are amazing. So you need to curate that community. And if you’re trying to build your personal brand and you’re trying to like, use your personal brand to grow your business, then I, I cannot recommend enough going to free brand call.com/podcast, request a call and find out how you can join our community, right? We have all different investment levels, right? Even we, we, we’ve designed this to be affordable for people who are even starting out in the very, very beginning. Cuz that, that was me one day. That was us one day, right? So we have a heart for that, for that early messenger.
RV (09:27):
But like, if you’re serious, like get serious and take that step. Request the call, show up for the call, find out what the investment is, figure out what the right level is for you, and get your butt to the community. Like, get plugged in. If it’s not with us, that’s fine. Whatever your goal is though, whatever your dream is, whatever your mission is, whatever, whatever is the thing you’re wanting to achieve or accomplish or do or become, you have to surround yourself with other people who are trying to achieve or do or become those same things. The power of community. And this last one, this last one is, I’m gonna name this concept. I’ve never named this concept before, but I came up with a name for this. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve thought about this a lot and I’ve talked about it some, but I’m gonna officially give it a name right now.
RV (10:24):
This is a, this is a, so officially a new concept that I’m introducing formally is the concept of something that I’m going to call standup speed. Standup speed. What is standup speed? Simple. Your standup speed is how fast do you stand up after you got knocked down? That’s it. That’s standup speed. How fast can you stand up after you get knocked down? How fast do you bounce back after you have failed? How fast do you make the next call after the last sales call rejected you? How fast do you post the next video after the last video flopped? How fast do you get on the next stage after your last stage bombed? Like, how fast do you publish the next episode after the previous episode? Nobody listened to like, that is standup speed. And those are practical, physical, external expressions of standup speed, right?
RV (11:31):
Those are behavioral things that you could, that you could notice and you could see and you could actually measure. But really where standup speed really starts is in your mind. It’s in your mind. It’s going, how long are you going to let something negative affect you before moving on from it? That’s your standup speed. Like, literally, think about this. You go, there are things that happen every day that, that suck, right? Or aren’t good. Like, or, or, or with some regularity. There are things that happen all the time, right? We, we have stuff right now. We have, we have this leak in the house. You know, we have a seven year old brand new house, like a very like pretty nice house, right? Custom-Built home. We have this huge leak that is like destroying a wall inside of the house that we are like, okay, now we have to get this repaired.
RV (12:27):
And you go, we did nothing to do that. Like, it, it, it was completely out of our control. Like, we did nothing to deserve that, I don’t think, right? Unless it’s God or the universe going, you know, some, some, some version of, you know, like what goes around comes around karma like coming back to us, but like we have this huge leak and you go, if you have a huge leak in your home, you know, we had a gas leak not too long ago and I go, oh, you have a gas leak. Oh you have we had a flat tire. I had a flat tire not that long ago. Had a flat tire, right? Or you lose a customer or you lose an important engagement or you lose a team member, which is, to me, one of the most devastating things is when I is, when when we lose team members, that’s like really devastating, right? You know, you go, okay, something negative happens.
RV (13:18):
What your standup speed is, what is the distance between, or the amount of time that passes between when the negative thing happens and you go, ah, this sucks. How much time passes between that and where you go, all right, I, all I can do is all I can do is control what I can control and move on to the next thing. Whatever that distance is there, that’s your standup speed, right? That whatever that time lapse is that that span between something bad happened and I’m immediately going into action mode about doing something about it. And not only going into action mode about doing something about it, but I’m letting go of the negative thoughts and the negative energy that surrounded that event. What is that distance? That is your standup speed. And most people’s standup speed is so slow. It’s so slow. We think the reason we’re not more successful in life is cuz like, we can’t go zero to 60.
RV (14:18):
Like, man, if that, the key to being successful in life is like, if I could start a business in 90 days, or I could make a million dollars in 90 days, that would make me successful. That’s not the speed that matters. You can crawl like a turtle, you know, in that race and eventually win. That’s all about consistency. The speed that matters. Where speed matters when it comes to success is your standup speed. It’s going, I got punched in the face. How fast did I punch back? Right? I got knocked down. How fast did I stand back up? I got rejected, I got doors, slammed my face. How fast did I knock on another door? How fast did I make another phone call? That’s the standup speed. And, and, and not just the behavior, but how quickly were you able to let go of, to release, to lose to, to shed the negative energy, the negative thoughts, the negative patterns, the whoa is me. Why did this happen to me? This is so terrible. This is so expensive. I’ll never break free of this. All of the victim mentality that shows up, which is not unwarranted, right? I’m not saying you’re weak for having those thoughts, you’re human for having those thoughts. Those are normal things. But where your strength comes from is realizing that those negative thoughts don’t serve you at all.
RV (15:40):
Having the thoughts helps you zero. In fact, it makes it worse. There is nothing about a negative thought. There’s nothing about negative energy, nothing about stewing, nothing about sulking, nothing about soaking inside of excuses or rationalizations or justifications or just things that, that you did nothing to deserve, but were bad. There is nothing about sitting in that place of negativity that does anything to serve you, that does anything to help you achieve your goals. That does anything to help anyone else. It doesn’t help you be successful. It doesn’t help you make more money. It doesn’t help you make more impact. It does nothing. All it does is keep you stuck and making you feel sorry for yourself. It’s a victimhood. It is a victim mindset in going, how long am I going to allow something that happened to me in the past? How many days am I gonna carry that forward?
RV (16:37):
How many times am I gonna take what was in the past and project it into my future? For how many minutes or, or moments? For how many moments or how many minutes or how many hours or how many days or how many years or how many decades are you going to carry that negative energy forward? Just answer the question, not to me, to yourself. How long are you going to allow that negative energy from that past situation claw at your future and pull you back? That’s your standup speed. Because what do ultra performers do? They fail and forget. Fail and forget. Fail and forget. Fail and forget tragedy and forget set back and forget somebody hurts them, forgive ’em and forget, forgive ’em and forget, forgive them and forget, fail and forget. Like their standup speed is like instantaneously, like instant. Their, their standup speed is instantaneous.
RV (17:38):
He go flat tire. That sucks. Call a tow truck, pick up the spare, get an Uber, buy a new car, whatever it is. But you immediately go into action mode. And, and I’m not saying that is the life isn’t hard. I’m not saying that things aren’t unfair. I’m saying life is hard. I’m saying life is unfair always for everyone. Is it more unfair for some people than others? Sure. Maybe. I, I, yeah, I mean, probably so. I would, I would buy into that. But is that what determines your success in life? No, I would, I would, I would rarely, on very rare occasion, I, I might, I might accept or acquiesce to that. But, but typically, no. I go, I know people who have, I know people who have overcome every setback. I know people who have been raped. I know people who have had family members murdered.
RV (18:26):
I know people who have been spit on. I know people who’ve been called racial slurs. I know people who have gone bankrupt. I know people who have been homeless. I know people who never had a formal education. I know people who have been burned, have been, who are quadriplegics, who grew up without a mom or a dad. Like I know people like from almost every horrible situation you could think of. I know personally these type of people who have overcome it and been successful anyways, who have overcome it and survived, not just survived, but they have thrived anyways. Not just thrive, but become world changers, multipliers, ultra performers. In spite of the fact of these setbacks, because they have extraordinary standup speed, they quickly engage with what is proactive, productive, and positive. So what is your standup speed?
RV (19:24):
How long are you gonna let the negative things of the past affect you? How many times are you gonna complain that you have too much work to do? How, I mean, how many years have to go by of you feeling busy before you stop telling people you’re busy? How many you know days do you have to live feeling overwhelmed, bef before you finally just go, I’m not overwhelmed. That just is what it is. And I’m gonna do, I’m gonna do my thing and I’m gonna go as fast as I can. Like, how long are you going to allow negative energy to hold you back? Standup speed. You need a faster standup speed. I need a faster standup speed. So much of my life, I can look back as going. It has been, my mental toughness has been about this conditioning. This one skill is what is my standup speed? How fast can I go from a negative thing happened into productive positive action And not just action. Action is huge, right? But also shedding myself of the resentment, of the worry of the fear of the heartbreak, of the sadness of the, of, of this thing and going it because it does nothing to serve me. Now, grief would be one exception. I think there is a time for grief that grief should happen when you experience loss and you go,
RV (20:46):
Yes, I’m gonna grieve. I think that’s a part of the healing process. But even that, at some point, you have to move on from, I mean, what are you gonna do? Spend the rest of your life grieving about something you lost or someone you lost? I don’t mean any disrespect to anyone who has lost someone. We’ve all lost people. But I think in many cases the way to honor that person is to move forward and do something significant, maybe in their memory, in their honor. But I do think there’s a, a, a, there is, you know, a psychological place and a necessity for grief, but not forever. Right? Now, how long? I don’t know you decide, but I go, how long is it really serving you? How long is it really serving you? I, I, that’s for you to figure out, right? I’m not telling you when or what’s the right amount of speed, but I’m telling you, when it comes to generally being successful in life, increasing your standup speed will radically transform the probability of you achieving the things that you want most in your life. This is not something in your d n a, this is something in your character. This is something you develop. This is something you code. This is something you drive with your own discipline. It’s a decision you make. I am no longer going to allow myself to be affected by negative energy and negative things that happened in the past. I’m not gonna allow myself to say I’m overwhelmed. I’m busy, I’m stressed, I’m frustrated, I’m tired. I, i like, it doesn’t serve you.
RV (22:21):
If it doesn’t serve you, don’t let it stay with you. If it doesn’t serve you, don’t let it stay with you. Stand up speed. Do it, my friend. That’s all we got for this episode of the Influential Personal Brand podcast. That was my rant. And I love you. And I’m talking to myself, right? I’m talking to myself going, Rory, you need to pick it up, Rory. You need to get, you need to get up faster. You need to bounce back faster. You need to quit complaining. You need to quit sulking. You need to quit soaking. You need to quit whining about this or that, or whatever. Just respond. Just re just respond to it, deal with it, and, and focus on the things that, that make a difference. So I’m on this journey with you and I’m grateful for that and I’m, I’m grateful for you being here. I hope you find it encouraging, encouraging enough to share this with somebody who needs it. Share this with someone who, a team of people who you know are going through something tough. And keep coming back, will ya? I appreciate it. Hey, leave us a review and a comment if you can at some point. We’d love to hear your thoughts and we’ll catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand Podcast.
Ep 388: Having a High-Performance Mindset with Todd Durkin
RV (00:02):
Well, one of my favorite quotes is from a Navy Seal. My friend Navy Seal Joe, and he said, Rory, the human body can take near anything. Hmm. It’s the mind that needs conditioning. And today I’m gonna introduce you to someone who is a new friend of mine, a client of ours and an expert on high performance mindset. His name is Todd Durkin, and when I say he’s an expert on high performance mindset, we’re gonna hear some of his story. But just to give you a frame of reference, he has been part of the mental and conditioning coach for people like Aaron Rodgers, drew Brees, and U F C Champion, Mike Chandler. So we’re talking some of the premier athletes in the world. Todd is also the author of the book called Get Your Mind Right. And that’s why I brought him here today. He’s gonna help us get our mind right and stay in that high performance mindset. So brother, welcome to the show,
TD (00:56):
Man. Roy, thank you for that introduction. Great to be here.
RV (00:59):
Yeah. And I can’t, it would, it would be, it would be wrong not to give a shout out to our man, Bob Wheatley, who is one of our clients and one of our team members and one of my favorite humans who I really respect. And that’s obviously how we met. Met you, you were his coach, right?
TD (01:13):
Yeah, B Bob used to come down and train in San Diego at my gym, fitness Quest 10 when he was a pitcher at U S C. And every year he and his brother Brent would come down and train with me in preparation for his season. And then ultimately Bob became a professional pitcher. But the Wheatley family is an amazing family. And when Bob reconnected a few years ago after his professional career, he said, Hey, I’m working with this guy Rory Vaden and Brand Builders Group. And I’m like, what’s that? Bob came on my podcast, we talked about you. And I’m like, I gotta meet this guy at Rory. And that’s how we got connected, Rory.
RV (01:49):
I love it. I love it. Well, so I wanna hear, I, I wanna hear about what it takes to have the kind of mental conditioning at at this, you know, elite, athlete level elite entrepreneurs. I know you also coach entrepreneurs, especially now in recent years. But like, tell us a little bit about the backstory first. So you mentioned, you mentioned your gym. Sure. How did you, how did you kind of get into where you’re at now?
TD (02:13):
Yeah. Well, one thing I always say, and I’ve said for 23 years in working with those athletes and entrepreneurs is this, get your mind right. Get your mind right. Get your mind right. But the reason I say that is because I wanna know how you get your mind right when your mind’s not right when you’re struggling or when you’re down, or let’s say you used, you know, you’re a high performer, but maybe you’re, you’re overwhelmed or you’re stressed, or you’re depressed or you’re down, or life through your curve ball. I’ve really set my life to be one where I was the underdog, right? Growing up, youngest of eight kids, parents were divorced earned a college football scholarship. And when I went overseas to play professional football in the World League, I hurt my back and three herniated discs, spinal stenosis, degenerative back disease. And at the age of 25, my dream of playing in the N F L was shot.
TD (03:02):
I’m like, what do I do now? Cuz from five to 25, I wanted to be a pro n f l quarterback. And I did a lot of soul searching. I had to heal my back pain without surgery, ideally, which I did. And I was like, man, what am I gonna do next? And that led me down this five year circuitous route to ultimately open my own gym. And being from the east coast, I was born and raised in New Jersey and moved to San Diego. After living in 13 cities in five years to heal my back, I opened my gym with no clients, no money and no business plan. Not a good way to start
RV (04:04):
Uhhuh
TD (04:10):
Right? So what happened was, I started working with everybody, didn’t matter who, like, it wasn’t athletes. I did not work with athletes. It was anyone who would come in. Cause I had to pay the bills. And I’d laugh now because I was working with people from teens on up, the people in their seventies, obese non-athletes, tennis players, you name it. I worked with them. But in through a fortuitous or not moment, I, I met a guy named Vaughn Parker. Vaughn Parker was the starting left tackle for the then San Diego Chargers. And I actually did body work and massage therapy and waling along with training. Vaughn had a bad back. So when I worked with Vaughn, session number one, I’ve got him on this table and doing all this hit rotator release technique. And you know, he had just signed a 20 million y year deal, which was a lot of money.
TD (05:02):
It’s a lot of money now. It was a lot of money in year 20 2002. Well, the table, Rory, when I was working with him, broke in half with him lying on the table, 310 pound left tackle for the single chargers. It breaks in half. Like, my gosh, my gosh, my first pro athlete table breaks in half. He’s lying on the, on the floor saying what just happened? I’m like, I’m not sure. But I had just watched this v h s tape on time massage. So I br I take off my shoes. I start doing this time massage work because what do you do? You bootstrap it, you figure out what to do. And he’s like, this is amazing. This is wonderful. How long you’ve been doing this work? I’m like, this is like the first session I’ve ever done with time massage. But I had a, a background in body work.
TD (05:46):
Well, Vaughn, after that session was like, that was the most amazing work. The San Diego Chargers, we, we’d love to have you come down and, and do some work in, in the team room after the games to stretch us out, do body work. And lo and behold, I become the, the, the sports therapist for the San Diego Chargers. I met LaDainian Tomlinson, the first round pick for the Chargers, drew Brees. That’s how they ultimately became clients of mine because one guy named Vaughn Parker brought me to the Chargers for two years. I trained those guys and, and did all their body work. Ladainian came into my gym, he brought Drew into the gym. I’d been training Drew now for 22 years. And the rest is history. Cuz in the athlete world, it’s all word of mouth. And in 23 years of my career in the fitness world, a lot of doors have opened up.
TD (06:33):
But it was my pain back in my back injury that all of a sudden these guys would come in like, man, I got a bad back, my bad back. And that was my vehicle to change lives. And for the better part of two decades, what I’ve learned is that physical pain often perceives your deepest purpose. And even the last three years of the pandemic, I can tell you what in, in doing a lot of depth work in helping people overcome the mindset aspect of, you know, being down and out. Ladainian wrote the forward to my first book, the Impact Body Plan. Drew wrote the Forward to I Get Your Mind Right book because I don’t care if you’re a high level, you know, athlete or you’re an entrepreneur, you, you have a successful business or not. Mindset is everything. Energy is everything. And what I’ve learned is my gift is in mindset and helping people get their minds right, especially when their minds aren’t right. Because I’ve been down that road multiple times of how you gotta fight for your mindset, your heart set and your soul set.
RV (07:31):
Yeah. So I want to, let’s, I wanna talk about that cuz I mean obviously you mentioned Covid, like it’s been a heavy, it’s been a heavy last few years for the whole world. And you know, in the United States, we got a lot of political divide. We got, you know, covid and controversy of our vaccines and, and you know, all this George Floyd and all of these, you know, massive external things that are happening. But then it’s like alcohol is, you know, through the roof anxiety and depression and all that sort of stuff. So like, talk us through that. If your mind’s not right, like what’s the, what’s the first step that you do? Like when you say get your mind right, and you go, okay, how, walk me through, how do I get myself out of that spot?
TD (08:16):
I want to get deep on you for a moment because I believe everyone’s got a struggle. I think everyone has a struggle. Even the most successful athletes and entrepreneurs in the world have a, have a struggle. And the last few years there’s been a struggle on some level, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. There’s, there’s a struggle. And a lot of times a struggles, especially amongst men. We don’t talk about it many times, but I know in a lot of the people who I’ve been working with there’s a struggle, mentally mindset, overwhelmed, maybe anxiety, maybe depression, maybe they feel like they’re off their north star. And, and, and man, I used to be, everything was flowing and now everything’s a push. And I’m like, brother sis, I, I feel you. I know because Rory, the back pain I had 25 years ago, for me, it resurfaced in the middle of the pandemic.
TD (09:09):
Why? Well, because I have the mentality of I’m gonna save the world. This isn’t a good thing, by the way, because I took on the onus of I’m gonna save all the people I work with in my coaching groups. I’m gonna save all the gyms in the world. I’m gonna save my own gym. And I literally said this, get on my back. Get on my back. We got this, we got this. Well, my body broke nine months into the pandemic. My knee started hurting. I had a second knee replacement, 52 years old, knee replacement. Six weeks after that, my back starts killing me. I spent all of 2021 in debilitating back pain where they told me I needed a massive fusion of my back. Here I am Rory, I I I’m a coach, I’m a trainer. I I I’ve had all this success in the fitness world and I’m, I’m breaking physically and mentally.
TD (10:03):
Cuz when you’re in pain, you, it’s all consuming in your head and you, you can’t get outta your own head. And here I am, I just wrote a book, June of 2020, it came out. Get your mind right. And here I am the Wright maniac guy. In my mind, I’m like, I am practicing everything I say in the book. And I’m like, God, why are you putting this on my plate? Why are you putting this on my plate? So when I say, you know, how do you get your mind right when your mind ain’t right? There were a time, even the last couple years, I had to fight like mad to get my mind right myself personally. And what I found was, the more I shared that, the more people were opening up and like, they’d be DMing me or hitting me up like, Hey Todd, like, man, if they only knew, like my marriage is good, my family’s good, you know, business is good, but let me tell you, I I am really struggling right now.
TD (10:51):
I’m like, okay, where are we at? Like, number one, like, I wanna make sure you don’t do anything stupid for yourself personally, but I wanna make sure that, you know, you start to feel an alignment again. And when you say, where do you start? For me, this is me personally. I’m a man of faith. We gotta look at all your core values and are you, are you living in alignment with that? Because let’s face it when you look back at your struggles, it’s always the struggles that ultimately allow us to go to that place that allow us to grow. But none of us love pain. None of us love struggle. But in the last three years, it’s those struggles that ultimately allow us to find what we’re all searching for, fulfillment, joy, peace, happiness, harmony in our lives. These are the things that we truly want.
TD (11:35):
And where do we start? I think it’s with a lot of tapping into the whispers. I call it my book, tapping into the whispers is what’s God revealing to you? Where do you need to go? Do you need to slow down? You need to speed up. Do you need to spend more time with your, your kids and become a better father or mother? And to me it starts with a lot of, of internal doing the work and, and talking to a coach or someone, a therapist, or even a doctor about where it’s at is how do you get your mind right? You, you, you, you do that soul searching, it takes. Now I can tell you all the things you need, okay? You need to be working out. Well, what if you can’t work out? I I couldn’t work out with my back in knee.
TD (12:12):
Were all jacked up. I mean, I’m crawling in my backyard thinking I gotta get my mind right. I know movement’s a key part of it. I talk about it all the time. But what if you’re so in pain, you’re debilitating and you’re on a couch and, and you’re like, man, I I I need to take a nap all the time. I’m exhausted because pain is killing me. So to me it’s like, you gotta fight. Like Madden have other people around you. I call ’em fire breathing dragons. How do you surround yourself with fire breathing dragons that’ll say, you know what? Get your tail up, get your booty up and move. I don’t care if you take a five minute walk, you listen to a great podcast like yours, Rory. You listen to some, some great music and whether that be gospel music or old school music, hip-hop music, you move your body, you listen to the right messaging, you listen to that message is gonna really heighten your vibration so you can operate a different level and you fight light mad for your identity.
RV (13:00):
Well, and I, I mean, I I pick up the move your body thing, which is, which is really huge. But I, well, I heard you before that when you’re talking about like listening to the whispers, it almost, it’s, it almost seems like you’re, you know, there’s like a part of like listening to your body, listening to your soul, listening to God, listening to what, whatever term you want to use of interpreting that signal about what needs to happen and what, what do you need to do? Like how do you tap into that?
TD (13:30):
You develop a routine in the morning, in the quiet time where you sit there in silence. See, silence is the hardest exercise you’ll ever do. Be like, Hey, what’s the hardest exercise you do with the, the guys in the gym? I’m like, it’s called meditation or prayer. And you just sit there and silence and you listen. I used to think prayer was, you know, talking to God and you’re praying like, dear God, can you please bless all my problems? And I got these challenges and through a lot of work with my pastor and and mentor a lot of prayer is actually listening and listening and tapping in and tapping in the whispers means this, I believe that when you hear shouts, it’s ego. And when you hear whispers, it’s God. So if there’s these shouts going on all the time, it’s probably your ego saying, I need to do this or I need to do that.
TD (14:18):
But if you consistently journal your, your whispers and day after day after day, it’s saying, what I was writing down in 20 20, 20 21 is slow down, slow down, slow down, slow down. For months I was journaling the same thing. Slow down. How do you slow down when the world is so fast? Or when you’re trying to figure things out, your mind is racing and it, it, it, it creates anxiety. How do you slow down? And one thing I’ve always said, and I’ve watched some of the best athletes in the world do this, and I’ve come up with the good ones could speed a game up and the great ones can slow it down. The good ones could speed a game up. The great ones.
RV (15:01):
What do you mean by that?
TD (15:02):
What I mean by this is this. If it’s I’m an athlete, I’m a coach. As a coach, you look at the world’s best athlete, think about a two minute drill. A two minute drill is if you were to watch a quarterback go down the field in a two minute drill, while it’s really happening fast, everything is beautifully slow and he’s in control of the rhythm of a game. Life is the same way. It’s really fast right now. There’s a lot of things going on. A lot of decisions have to be made. You’re trying to juggle your family and all of the things with your business and revenue and payroll and the team and leadership. And it could be overwhelming. But when you can slow the insides down where you can actually control and not get anxiousness or anxiety, or you’re constantly just reacting to everything, I believe the best entrepreneurs and business folk in the world actually operate slowly and that’s hard to do.
TD (16:01):
So I liken the, the athlete to the successful businessman or businesswoman who can slow things down, at least in my world the last several years is when oper, when I’m operating at my best, the insides are actually slowed down. Despite everything on the, on the outside world is really, really fast. When I react to the speed on the outside, all of a sudden now my anxiety will start to heighten. I feel overwhelmed. I feel like, man, I’ve got 50 things going on and I need to really reduce this. And Rory, we talked about this on my podcast cuz you talked about what you, you shared with, with Lewis. How’s going from 17 to three? It’s how do we simplify? You know, it’s, it’s this, it’s this simplification process is really complex, but for me it’s how you slow things down early in the morning before people get up.
TD (16:51):
You sit down and if you open up a blank notebook or a journal and you just sit there and listen for a minimum of five minutes and then start to write, that’s part of your morning routine. And you, and yes, exercise and movement is, is a part of that. But if you can tap into the whispers and slow things down and really listen, whether you call it meditation, whether you call it prayer, whether you call it quiet time, I believe that is going to allow you to give, get you some inner peace and to really tap into the profound wisdom that’s already there versus just reacting to the day, boom, boom, boom, boom.
RV (17:29):
You think that like, you know, like I’m thinking about Mike Chandler, so I’m not, I don’t follow UFC that close, but like I know he’s, you said he’s fighting Connor McGregor coming up and like, yep, that’s, that’s the real deal. Like how do, how, how does somebody like that incorporate Wyatt time or slowing down their mind? Is it something that happens before a match? Is it, is it, does it happen during a match also somehow?
TD (18:00):
Yep. Yeah, that’s a good question. Let’s, let’s face it, if you’re a UFC fighter, you gotta train like mad because it is me metabolically one of the hardest things you’ll ever get. Those
RV (18:10):
Guys are, I’m in there insane, insane,
TD (18:13):
Insane. But let me, let me, let me liken it to this. All of us should be training with that same intensity. We should all be training with that same intensity. Now, it might not replicate, you know what Mike Chandler, who, who is, who is prepping for Conor McGregor as we speak right now, but that intensity when training and if you’re a a, a 40 or 50 or a 60 year old man or woman, you have to be training with the intensity that is going to allow you to release all of the, the, the angst and anxiety and stuff on the inside so that when you feel, when you’re done with your workout, you feel more at peace. And now you’re not being run over by overwhelm or anxiety. That’s the first aspect.
RV (18:59):
You say training with the intensity you’re talking about physical, like physically,
TD (19:02):
I’m talking physical, working out,
RV (19:03):
Physically moving in in a way that’s comparable to release the internal turmoil.
TD (19:09):
100% interesting. Now, when that’s done, the best time like Mike would do is then when you’re, you’ve got all the junk out of the trunk as I would call it now tap in and take 5, 10, 15 minutes of quiet time to reflect on the inside because Mike, who is tr is in in great shape, in great condition like an N F L athlete would be as well. Then it’s, Mike is a man of faith. Mike’s gonna be in prayer. Mike in the locker room is gonna be very calm prior to that, that fight. Now in the cage, you’re gonna be a little, you know, you’re gonna unleash it a little bit, but if you get too hyped up, you start what hyperventilating you get short of breath and breath. What I would say is this, I said this to Drew Bre, I asked him this question, when you’re coming out in front of a a 70, 80,000 people, are you hyperventilating and you’re stressed or are you relaxed?
TD (20:03):
He said, well, a little bit of both because I know that someone’s trying to kill me. So if you realize that every one of us has 18 to 22,000 breaths a day, if you take a deep breath right now, you have 18 to 22,000 breaths a day. How can you slow your breath down to number one, be thankful and grateful for breath and realize that if you can slow your breath down in the midst of a fire, in the midst of a fight, in the midst of chaos and turmoil, then you can operate more functionally. So to answer your question, Mike is in tremendous physical shape, but he’s also going to be tremendously disciplined in the practice of prayer and quiet time as well. In the mental preparation, the mental preparation for that fight is visualization. Can you can you envision the game a thousand times before you play the game?
TD (20:55):
I would tell a high school athlete, like I would tell an entrepreneur before going to a big meeting or like, Mike’s gonna fight Connor. You’re gonna fight that fight a thousand times before you fight that fight. Because mentally you’ve gotta make sure that you can visualize, you’ve gotta smell what you’re gonna smell in the ring, in the cage. You’re gonna smell it, you’re gonna visualize it, you’re gonna see it when you’re walking out. You’re gonna feel the music, you’re gonna feel it. So you can be relaxed in that situation. The power of the mind is amazing. So if you can use that visualization every single day to manifest what you wanna manifest, that’s the power of, for anyone who might be listening, like, man, I lost myself. I used to, I used to have the edge, I used to have the mojo and I’ve gotten my butt kicked, my tails between my legs, fear or not my, my friend.
TD (21:38):
You can get it back. You just gotta get aligned with those habits, those values, and make sure that we can recapture that mojo and that edge. Just as Mike Chandler would do, a Drew Brees would do an entrepreneur would do is get it back. Cuz we don’t wanna be that p i p that previously important person. We wanna be that v i p that we have it, but like that self-talk, oh man, I don’t know. Am I too old? Man? I’m getting my butt kicked. I, I don’t know if I still got that edge. I don’t have the energy levels. Like stop, stop telling yourself these things because the self-talk gets ingrained and gets wired in your brain. Just as someone that’s at the elite level, at 25 to 35 years old, physically performing at their best, stop telling yourself what you can’t do and start using positive self-talk that will allow you to operate back in the, in the position that you used to be.
RV (22:28):
I wanna talk about TT talk about, talk about the difference, right? So you, when you think about a Drew Brees and Aaron Rogers, you know, these are the premier performers. Ladainian Tomlinson in his, in his time was, you know, one of the greats.
TD (22:46):
Oh my God,
RV (22:46):
What, what, what is separating them from everyone else? Because you go, I mean, to get to the N F L, don’t you have to do all these things? I mean, to even to even be there, don’t you have to have self-talk and you have to be training hard and you have to have visualization. You, you know, I don’t know how many of ’em do quiet time or journaling, but, but certainly controlling your breath, I mean, certainly the physical regimen, I think. Yeah, but then you go, you know, to me those things don’t even represent, like to me those are almost like the price of admission to getting to the league. It’s not, you know, like what separates Drew Brees from, you know, any other N f l quarterback? I mean, or, or do you think it does, do you go No, there’s quarterbacks in the N F L that are not, they’re not doing that kind of routine with their, their mental conditioning like they are with their physical conditioning.
TD (23:43):
The, there are, there are quarterbacks that aren’t, there are some that aren’t, but I’m talking absolutely. Okay. I’m talking Rory about the elite of the elite. How do you become elite? And I would say there’s two things. One is extreme discipline. And now that sounds rhetorical, but when I say extreme discipline in nine years of training, LaDainian thomason, I can’t count on one hand the times that he was late or ever missed a session ever in nine years, he’d be un early, he’d be doing his mobility work, he’d warm up on the treadmill, he could see him prepping if he wore that little headband. I knew he was being serious that day, but he always showed up. Now were there times where he didn’t feel like it 100%, but he also told me, Hey, I wanna be better than Emmett and Walter and I’m gonna train to be the best to ever play the game.
TD (24:33):
Now whether he’s the best to ever play the game or not, it’s not important. What’s important was his desire matched his discipline, right? And he did that. Drew Brees people will tell you when you, when you were around Drew in, in the 20 years that he was playing and training here with Darren Sproles and, and all the guys he trained with you know, everyone from, you know, chase Daniel and, and Zack Erz and Gerald McCoy and Srosy, all these guys. Drew made everyone better. Why? People say, why do those guys come to you? Do, what do you do that’s different? I believe the best of the best needs someone to hold them accountable and get their mind right, because who’s gonna call people out when you’re at the top of the game? I didn’t understand in 2006 when LaDainian won the MVP and he said this to me, what’s next?
TD (25:26):
What’s next? It made me think like Rocky four, when, you know, you know, you lose your passion, you take all your passion and you lose it. And, and that like, what’s next? Like, what do you mean we do it again? I didn’t understand that when I was in my early thirties of like, what’s next? Just let’s run it batten lt. But what he was saying was, I need a bigger dream. I need something to keep me fueled up. Because when you have reached what you may have believed is your pinnacle of your career, and maybe you’ve tapped out at a certain financial level or you don’t know how to continue to operate year after year after year at the highest level what I have learned is it’s mindset. So when I say extreme discipline and mindset of the two things that separate all of the world class high performers I’ve ever worked with, it’s one thing to get to the top and I love the climb, but man, oh man, it is a far different thing to stay at the top knowing that man, I gotta recreate and reinvent myself to get to another dream.
TD (26:22):
You know, pastor Jeremiah, he’s not an athlete, but let me tell you, at 80, 82 years old, I’ve had the opportunity to train this guy for seven years. This guy inspires me. He’s always like, how do I get to the next level? I’m like, doc, you’re, you’re one of the top the top pastors in the world and have a huge following. H how do you get to, like, how do you do that extreme discipline and mindset at 82 years old to say, we ain’t done yet. The best is yet to come. I’m like, man, I I gotta pick up my game. That’s when you talk about iron sharpens iron. You put yourself on other coaches or, or entrepreneurs or other mission driven messengers, as you would say, Rory, man, now you get inspired when you go to a live event and I’ve been at your live event. I’m like, dang, Gabrielle, like, fires me up, Ryan fires me up. Right? All, all the, when you’re around other people who fire you up, your mind all of a sudden like, man, I gotta pick it up. We all need that.
RV (27:17):
Mm-Hmm.
TD (27:19):
String discipline, extreme discipline and mindset. The mindset of, I ain’t done yet. I gotta find something to go deeper. I need a coach to take me there. I need, I need, I need someone to, to sharpen my sword or call me out like I call drew out or LaDainian out or any of my, any of these guys that aren’t doing the things the way they need to, I’ll call ’em out. Most people wont call people out. If you’re, if you’re already successful, they’ll kiss your tail. We don’t need more tail kissers. We need people that are gonna call us out and, and say, Hey, you got more in the tank, but you need to pick it up and stop drinking the way you’re drinking. And you alluded to that. Or Hey, why are you doing that stupid habit? It’s all about habits. So what, what do you, why are you not taking your quiet time?
TD (28:00):
Or why not working out the way you, you need to work out. Like when you get some serious accountability in your life and you’re like, Hey, let’s pick it up because you got more in the tank versus settling for mediocrity because now it’s like we just kind of like settle. It’s nothing worse than settling for mediocrity. I hate it. I hate it myself. If I’ve ever been stuck, I’m like, man, I gotta pick it up. I gotta do something. Go to a personal growth workshop, hire a coach, read a great book. Like do get around people that are actually inspiring you. Make sure you’re going to the gym and working out, getting into an environment. These are things that you know and you gotta stop doing. The stupid habits that get you in trouble. Eating like garbage drinking, too much alcohol, doing other knucklehead things that, that we sometimes, as as humans do recalibrate, reignite and reinspire.
RV (28:50):
Mm-Hmm.
TD (28:56):
Up.
RV (28:57):
So don’t even, just don’t even just don’t even worry about it. Go, just go,
TD (29:01):
Go just sh go The heaviest way in the, in the gym is the front door. Or if you’re really like, man, I’m real. I, I I know that but I’m not doing it. I’m weak in the flesh. Then hire an appointment with a trainer where I come from the background. I’ve been in the training world for 20, almost 25 years and my, my gym for this question, it’s, it’s built on accountability. Now I’m doing less training these days and focusing on, you know, the entrepreneurs and athletes that I wanna work with. But the bottom line is this, if you really wanna show up, then set an appointment with your trainer in your respective community. And I’ve got folks, if you don’t like, I don’t know any good trainers, then reach out to me and I’ll set you up with a trainer in your community. Cause I know I’m worldwide. And watch what happens when you have a session once or three times a week at 6:00 AM 12 noon, 6:00 PM whenever you don’t show up because it’s in your calendar. Pastor Jeremiah three times a week is with me. He, he makes it 12 noon. I’m like, why 12 noon document Murray workday. He like, cuz it’s not convenient
RV (29:59):
TD (30:01):
He’s like, I need to have the discipline to do the things that are most important because I know that my physical strength and energy that I get from the gym and you are going to allow me to write the prolific work that I wanna write. So I’m gonna schedule it in the worst part of my day. 12 noon. I’m like, that’s pretty brilliant. That’s an 82 year old man who is trying to change the world. And he does it Roy, I have a nutritionist myself. Wait, you’re a coach, you’re a trainer, you’re a speaker. All the, yeah, I need the accountability. I need to have my meals delivered because if I don’t, I don’t eat lunch cause I get too busy. So it’s the accountability. So how do you do it if you’re, if you like show up, well, I’m not showing up then hire, hire a coach or a trainer or an accountability coach like myself to say, get your boot to the gym.
TD (30:49):
I’m gonna follow up with a text. And did you get there? You either did it or you didn’t. And if you want to, if you wanna perform at the level you say you want to, then you better show up. I have a guy I once train named Jacque Suze. He came with me the first year, a small college division three. He said, man, I wanna make it one year in the N F L. I said, that’s all we gotta do. Jacques show up every day for the next three months. Jacques is there, made it in his first season. Jacques played 12 more season in the nfl. He’s now coaching in the N F nfl. But it’s like the extreme discipline to show up and you don’t feel like showing up. And if you don’t, I’m gonna text you. I’ll come get you outta bed. If I have to like show up and do the things that you say you wanna do because there’s nothing worse, then you tell me you wanna be great.
TD (31:28):
It’s like I tell my kids I got three kids. Don’t tell me you wanna be great. Like do the work, show up and do that. Because the last I check is that you know, a lot of people have talent, but not everyone wants to work for that. So they always say that hard work beats talent with talent don’t work. A lot of talented people out there. If you can match talent with hard work, watch out. You can do whatever you want. You can take your business to the next level. You can recapture the essence of of you, you can get your edge back in life. So to me, what I’m finding is a lot of 40, 50, 60 somethings right now that have lost that edge. I’m like, get your edge back. Get your life back. Cuz man, if you feel like you’re drowning or you’re struggling, you’re overwhelmed, you’re burnt out, man. Now’s the time to reset, recalibrate.
RV (32:15):
Mm-Hmm.
TD (32:21):
Website’s probably the easiest way. Todd durkin.com. Todd durkin.com. I got all, everything that we do is on the website. I’ve got a podcast, the Todd Durkin impact show. It’s my way of of getting people to get fired up. Cuz the motivational aspect is one thing. And I’m on social media, Rory, I love Instagram. I love Instagram. I’m, I’m on that all the time. You can always DM me, but my website has all the opportunities. Bottom line is this motivation’s in the in the head, inspiration in the heart. So motivation dries up if you don’t constantly feed your mind, you know, fertilizer and get that mind right by listening to good message and listening to pods and getting your workouts in. You gotta protect your dome. You gotta protect your dome. And if you don’t, you’re gonna slowly follow down the abyss of depression and and anxiety and you feel like everything is like caving in on you. That doesn’t have to be the case. And I say get your mind right. Get your mind right. Get your mind right. Change it today, change it today and make it make it part of your mission. We talk about a meaningful mission is make it your mission to get your mind right, get your heart rate, get your soul right. And when you get all those things aligned, then you can recapture the essence in the mojo that maybe you’re really striving to do.
RV (33:35):
Yeah. Well, brother, I appreciate the, the, the inspiration and the injection. I feel like you fired me up and I lo I love that you’re helping people get their mind right. Thanks for sharing a little bit of that with us and we wish you the best. Good luck to you, man.
TD (33:51):
Thank you. You as well. Thanks so much.
Ep 387: Redefining Success | Ryan Blair Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
All right, y’all. Today we’re gonna talk about redefining success and what does success look like to you? I just had this awesome conversation on our influential personal brand podcast with a gentleman named Ryan Blair. He’s a multi-time, multi, you know, time entrepreneur, billion dollar companies and just wise beyond his years and also humble extremely humble. And one of the things I loved about this conversation was this conversation of redefining what success looks like. And I think a lot of us are challenged today, specifically in 2023, with looking around and defining our success by what other people are doing. And I only know that’s true cause I know I suffer from it. And I can’t be the only one, right? I can’t be the only one who looks around going, man, is like having a really nice house. Does that mean success or free time?
AJV (01:01):
Does that, is that success or, or money? Is that success or fame? Is that success? And we, we kinda get caught up in it when we look around. And one of the things that I have found is that, for me at least, and I can only speak for me, but I know that there’s gotta be other people like me out there, is I need to put blinders on when it comes to success. I, I need one of those cones that like go around the heads of dogs after they’ve gone to the veterinarian. And I need to not be able to see what anyone else is doing. I need to be able to focus inward and upward of going what? Like, what God? Like what, what do you have for me? Not what does success look like? Like where does that word even come from?
AJV (01:42):
It’s what do you have for me? Because the, the truth is, is like I already know what God has for me. He has a promise for eternity. And that’s what I’m working towards. And my challenge for living in 2023 is that there’s so much things that distract, distract me from what I really should be doing, which is raising two awesome human beings, St. Jasper and Liam being an amazing wife to my husband helping, serving working. I believe in hard work. Those are things that I believe in. And that doesn’t always mean it’s gonna result in millions of dollars. It means it could, but it doesn’t mean that it will, that doesn’t mean I’m any less successful of the person next to me. And so I’ve spent a ton of time over the last few months really thinking about what, what is success to me? And here’s a couple of things that have come up with myself and my husband, Roy Vaden is, success today doesn’t look like more dollars than our banking account, which I’m not mad about it. I I’m not, I’m not saying I don’t wanna make more money. I think the more I make, the more I can give, the more I can do. But also I’ve realized it’s like, man, we, that was the only thing that we looked at in terms of success for a really long
AJV (02:58):
Time. And today, success looks like free space on the calendar. We’re buying back our time of going, I know success today looks like freedom with time to do what we feel like we’re being called to do. Not forcing ourselves to do the things that we think we should be doing because someone else told us that’s what we should do. Someone else could be our parents, our neighbors, our colleagues friends, right? But it’s like we’re defining success by the amount of hours that we have in our day to do the work that we want to do. Not freedom in terms of, Hey, I wanna, you know, go have a lunch every single day with a girlfriend, which I would love to do. But it’s like, no. It’s like, do I have the hours to do what I feel like God is calling me to do?
AJV (03:47):
That is success, right? The second thing is, success looks like having the confidence to say no, right? So the first thing is time. The second thing is the ability to walk away the wherewithal to know that’s not good for me, even though it seems like it today. I know six months from now, that’s not a good decision for me. That could be relationships, business deals, investments. There’s a lot of temptation to go, Hey, that’s going to be a great r o i. However, it’s gonna also simultaneously cause a lot of stress, right? It’s going to take away time and put pressure on versus give me time and take pressure off. And so it’s confidence to say no. It’s willingness to walk away. That is what success looks like. The next thing success looks like. How many lives impacted? How many people served versus again, dollars in the banking account.
AJV (04:43):
I believe that the dollars come when lives are changed. When people go, I want to pay you. Like you’re, you’re helping me so much. I desire to give you my money, versus I take your money and then hope I do a really good job. That is success. Success has shifted to, I want more time to do the work I’ve called to do. I want to feel convicted and saying yes when it’s a yes and feel powerful to say no when it’s a no. And man at the, and most of all, it’s, it’s helping. It’s serving, it’s feeling freed up to help someone in a way that someone else has helped me. It’s, you know, paying it forward, but it’s a, it’s a life impacted, it’s a life changed knowing that that will result in probably financial success. And even if it doesn’t, that is more successful, right? Not dollars, not social media followers, not even email list subscribers. It’s like I subscribe to all the things. I think social media is a powerful tool. I think AI is a powerful tool. I think owning your own context is a powerful tool. Those are tools, but that is not success. Those are tools that help you be
AJV (05:56):
Successful. Those are tools that help you on the journey, but those are not success money. That is a tool, not success businesses, right? Those are tools that does not define your success. Cuz the truth is, is no matter where you are, there are successes and failures, failure failures all day long, every day all through life. You are not a success or a failure. We all succeed and we all fail. And so what is success? Right? And I think that depends on the season that you’re in. And, and that should change. It most definitely will change and it should like success. What it looked like for me prior to having children versus what success looks like for me today is wildly different, right? The number one thing I think about more than anything else on this planet is how do I get my kids to know and love the Lord?
AJV (06:51):
If I achieve one thing, then call it a day, my life was successful, right? That is not probably what I would’ve said pre-children. I didn’t have context of what success looked like in the stage of life, right? And success will likely look different five years from now and then five years from then. But it’s like, it just take a moment to redefine what that is. Without worldly voices popping in, friends, voices popping in, siblings, parents, even your children popping in. It’s like, if we don’t define it, we won’t find it. And so you’ve gotta take the time to define it so then you can go after it. And I don’t know what it looks like for you. So I’m just sharing what it looks like for me today because it’s wildly different than it was at any other time in my life of going, I’m for the first time actually going, what would a successful day look like?
AJV (07:47):
A successful year? Knowing that I am not a success or a failure. I simply have successes and failures. But I’m just me who also has successes and failures at the same time. So just a, a word of encouragement. And also a prompt to spend some time on before you go after that next thing you’re after or even after. The thing that you’re after right now is just take a moment and define what does success and this thing look like for you in this season? And then make sure you continue to iterate on what thats, that success is in every season that you enter. So hope that was helpful for you, and I hope you stick around. I’ll see you next time.