Author: Nicole Gale

Ep 386: How To Turn Your Job Into Your Calling with Ryan Blair

AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode on the influential personal brand, AJ Vaden here, one of your co-hosts. I am joined today by a newer friend. However, although he and I are just getting acquainted to each other, I have heard about Ryan Blair for years, and we have lots of mutual friends. And then a good friend and team member of mine joined his mastermind this year. And praises just come every day if not every hour, about Ryan and what you’re doing with your new company Alter Call. And so just mad kudos in respect all that you’ve built and all that you’re building. And so I feel super honored to get to have you on the show today and to get like the next 40 minutes of your brilliance and wisdom, and to get to share that to our awesome community with Brand Builders and the influential personal brand podcast.
AJV (00:55):
So I could continue complimenting you or we could get to it. Let’s go, let’s, let’s dive in. Everybody who’s listening, if you’re not familiar with Ryan Blair, let me just give you a very high level, quick background. He’s a number one New York Times bestselling author. He’s a serial entrepreneur. And by that I mean like a whole bunch, like a $2 billion company is what he built as an entrepreneur. But it’s some really fascinating background information is was gang member turned businessman, and, you know, talking about billion dollar sales. And, you know, just like, that’s kind of an interesting story we’re gonna have to hear a little bit about. But your, your newest company, alter Cloud is the one that you’re building and growing right now and touching so many lives, including the lives of people that I know and hold super near and dear to my heart.
AJV (01:51):
You’ve been a c e o, you were part of visas, you’ve got books, you’ve got all these inspirational messages. I could go on and on and I’ll just tell everyone the reason that I wanted to have Ryan on today is selfishly because I really want to learn about how he’s been able to include the personal aspects of his life into his business, right? And so if there are things that you’re trying to figure out of, you know, for me personally, it’s like, as you guys listen, you hear this all the time, you know, I’m really into Jesus and I’m really into my faith. And it’s always like, what’s that fine balance of bringing that into my work, right? So if there are things that you believe in or, you know, the world can be unfortunately really polarizing right now, doesn’t matter which way you look, there’s something that somebody’s for or against and you’re trying to figure out, like, do I bring that into my business?
AJV (02:45):
Do I keep it separate? Thus keeping you separate from your business and your message, or can you find a happy medium of a way filled with, you know, acceptance and grace, but also truth and love of how do I combine what I personally believe into what I’m building in a business? So that is why I wanted to have Ryan on, but also mad businessman, building wicked awesome companies. Plus a lot of, I think the emerging trends that everyone’s talking about with AI and technology are all gonna be a part of our discussion today. So the point is, stick around. It’s gonna give fun. Brian, welcome to the show.
RB (03:22):
Thank you for having me, aj. I’m a big fan of your work and thank you for the kind words.
AJV (03:25):
Oh my gosh, I’m so excited. So give us just high level, like when you say was gang member, turn to businessman, like, let people know, like, what does that actually mean?
RB (03:36):
Well, you know, I have to because we’re among fellow brand people. I have to tell you, I’m a good storyteller, , and I went through a very difficult set of adversities as a child, but I packaged them into a story that made me the hero in my hero’s journey. Hmm. And I needed to do that to get through those difficult times of being a gang member, losing my family. I went through a lot of adversity. I could, I could give you a long list of, you know, some pretty difficult things that I’ve experienced, but I’ve just crafted a story and I’ve made myself the hero in the journey. And I’ve told that story to millions of people. And that story resonated because it was truthful. And yet I dealt with a lot of adversity. I overcame it. I was vulnerable in the telling of the story.
RB (04:24):
So I could go into the art and technique of sharing your adversity, or I could tell you specifically about mine. But you know, when I looked at the pattern from a spiritual standpoint and I saw all these crazy things happening, and then a mentor showed up into my life and it changed my life forever. And another mentor showed up and another mentor showed up, I said, God’s gotta be at work here. And so it was my duty to explain God’s work in my life and to put it into books and movies and some of the other things that I’ve done, because I could just see the creator’s craftsmanship at work in the crafting of my character and my competency to be the man that I am today.
AJV (05:05):
I love that. And so I would love to know, cause I think mentors and rather they’re people who come alongside you and do it in a loving just free or their paid coaches or whatever it is, like the power of mentorship in your life. Can you just talk about that for like 60 seconds?
RB (05:25):
It’s the most important thing. I I’m praying for a mentor now on a particular subject, a spiritual subject that I, I need somebody who’s in office who anoint people in their callings. And I need to, to talk to this person about exactly what they do and how they do it. I need people to teach me different gifts of discernment, or I’m learning to sing. I have a mentor that teaches me that I’m learning to box. I have a mentor that teaches me that, you know, I, I used to spend a lot of money on stupid stuff like bottle service and lavish vacations. Now I spend even more, more money on mentors and I’m growing like crazy because of it. And I’m in the greatest season I’ve ever had because I have all these great coaches that are teaching me how to become a better individual and how to enjoy life more and, and how to, you know, put together different skills that I wouldn’t learn otherwise.
RB (06:14):
So mentorship is extremely important. But before I could afford mentors, I pursued people. And when people showed up with information that I felt that I needed to have in order for me to achieve my goals, I extracted that information. I was very prepared, very diligent. I’d write up hundreds of questions in preparations for these meetings, even as a young 20 something year old want to be entrepreneur. And if I could get an entrepreneur in front of me that knew more about entrepreneurship than I did, I wanted to close the gap as much as I possibly could. And I valued every single meeting as though God had sent the person to me to transfer this information that I needed to be able to further my journey. Mm. So it’s, it’s been a part of my process since I was 17 years old and I’m now going on 46 and I’m investing more in the process now than ever.
AJV (07:06):
You know, it’s interesting, I just had a very similar conversation with my husband Rory. And I was in a, an unusual season for me in 2021, where just found myself in a funk. And I didn’t really pinpoint why. And it’s because I spent all of 2020 trying to be the problem solver. Mm-Hmm. versus being the learner and kind of spent the whole year working versus learning. And in 2021, I recommitted and I said, I’m gonna read the Bible cover to cover every page. I’m going to read, you know, two books a month. I hired a business coach, a personal coach. I was like, I can’t, I hired, I had a therapist. It was like, I went and you know what’s so funny? It’s like I look back now and I’ve continued, I’m reading the Bible again. I’m still doing two books a month. I still have all these coaches.
AJV (07:55):
And my husband literally gave me one of the greatest compliments of my life the other day. And he said, babe, like I can see not only like do are you happier? He goes, but I can literally see you growing. Hmm. And it was like, that’s beautiful. The greatest compliment of my life. And like to that about, you know, free mentors, it’s like I had forgotten the power that a book has to change your life. And it’s like, for those of you who can’t find a free mentor, it’s like, get yourself a good book. It’s like, you know, it’s years of preparation to get those words on pages sometimes that ultimately can really change your life. So I love that. And I, I think this is really good cuz you’ve already brought it up a couple of different times around this idea of like, God orchestrating things in your life.
AJV (08:41):
And you know, one of the things that I love about what you do is you don’t shy away from your faith. And you actually do the opposite, right? Yeah. You run right into it and go, now this is a part of my business. It’s a part of what, what I do, how I do it. And that’s a part of your uniqueness. And I’m curious to know how did that decision come about? And for those of us out here that are struggling to balance that line with what’s personal, what’s business? Any advice you have around that?
RB (09:15):
Yeah, it, it’s very hard. Because the business world has removed God from the conversation. They have made it a completely secular conversation for the most part. Majority of, we’re not supposed to bring our faith to work with us. We’re supposed to separate that and our work, if not properly, boundaried will take over our entire lives, especially as entrepreneur. So for those of us who are entrepreneurs, we have to boundary work, right? For those of us who are underachievers, let’s say you got a boundary life because life will take all the available space and you don’t get enough work done for the overachiever and the entrepreneur. You got a boundary of work cuz it will take all the appro, all the space and then you won’t have a life. And I’ve been on that side of the equation for far too long. So, you know, the way that it came about was simple.
RB (10:07):
I had built a business that was built on the greet of Wall Street. You know, I was a publicly traded company about making my numbers. It was filled with ego, it was filled with just non-spiritual activity, let’s say, for lack of better words. And when I had stepped down as c e o of that company and take care of some family matters, I thought I was done with entrepreneurship. I thought that you could not be a spiritual and be an entrepreneur at the same time. Like people talk about being conscious and a capitalist, I thought those two things were mutually exclusive. Like this isn’t gonna happen. And in a lot of contemplation, a lot of you know, getting deeply connected to my faith, I realized that my calling was to fuse the two together to teach people how to be spiritual entrepreneurs. And in order for me to step into that calling, I had to learn to embody both the spiritual and the entrepreneurial gifts that I had been able to obtain throughout my walk.
RB (11:02):
Mm-Hmm. . So I, it was very hard though because I had to walk away from making hundreds of millions of dollars and I had to walk away from an older version of me and I had to learn how to become a spiritual leader. Mm-Hmm. . And I had no idea what it took to be a spiritual leader. It is not easy. It looks easy on paper. It is hard work to learn and craft yourself and grow yourself in such a way that you can be relied upon spiritually by the people that you’re called to lead. Mm-Hmm. . And it’s the hardest work in my life. It’s harder than any athletic endeavor I’ve ever done. It’s harder than any New York Times bestselling campaign I’ve ever worked. It’s harder than any I p O I’ve ever pursued. It’s harder than all of that because you are going to constantly be greeted with challenges and opportunities to change, to change your character. And you have to embrace that. And each person that you get that gets called into your life is going to bring you things about you that you need to, to work on and change. So it’s the fastest, most conducive to growth environment that you can ever participate in. But because it’s conducive to growth, it’s also conducive to lots of challenges that stimulate that growth.
AJV (12:17):
Mm-Hmm. , I I love that so much cuz it’s, you know, as you’re talking, you think it’s like I literally can think of like, you know, two or three people in my life where I’m like, oh yeah, they definitely present the biggest areas of growth for me and to people. I do what those people are my three-year-old and six year old where I’m like, well, I need more patience. Like, God help me can but more patience. I need that. But it’s like, I’ve never been so in tune with my impatience Yeah. As I have been trying to raise to godly men. And I think that’s really powerful. But you gotta be willing to embrace it.
RB (12:56):
Yeah. Every, every relationship that we have should be treated as sacred. Mm-Hmm. , the real difference between a spiritual entrepreneur and a secular entrepreneur is a spiritual entrepreneur sees their work as sacred, and therefore they treat the work as sacred. They treat the relationships as sacred. And if you’re a spiritual leader, you are, you are, you’re convincing those that work with you to treat the work as sacred too. And if you can get everyone treating your company and your work as sacred and your customers as sacred, for that matter, you’ll have a blessed business and it will grow. It will thrive. It’ll be the greatest opportunity for not only your personal growth, but for the personal growth of everyone connected to the the business. And so the, you know, people ask me how I’m able to recruit such talented talent, and the answer’s simple. There’s no greater growth opportunity in the world than this vessel that I’ve created. And that’s my belief system. So when they show up here, I say, if you’re, if you’re interested in growing and you’re interested in really getting to know what you’re capable of, this is what we stand for. And this is what we do here. And that’s why we’re able to attract some of the engineering talent and some of the scientific talent that we’ve attracted because we believe that we’ve created the greatest growth engine for our people possible because we treat our businesses sacred in our relationships as sacred.
AJV (14:14):
Hmm. Those are just two good life lessons. I don’t care what your business is, . Right. Those are just good life lessons, right. On the note of what you’re creating, right? So you go from this you know, very, pretty well known right. Product business with visas to this what I would call more of a, you know, services personal per professional development world. Like why this shift from a very productized business to something that is more development oriented. And I think for a lot of our clients and a lot of people listening, the reason I ask is they’re leaving one thing to do a new thing. And, and some of ’em, lots of them struggle with, well, what is this new thing? This is what I’ve been known for, this is what I know how to do, and now I’m heading into this uncharted territory, and am I really equipped for this? Am I really good enough for this? Does anyone really wanna learn from me?
RB (15:10):
Yeah. Yeah. You know, God doesn’t call the qualified, he, he qualifies the called as the old saying goes. And I’ve certainly been getting qualified in, in this, this calling of mine. You know, I, I didn’t think I’d ever be a one-on-one coach with people. You know, I used to sell out stadiums and now, you know, I’m doing thousands of hours of one-on-one coaching calls, and I’m learning to be a better coach. I’m learning to listen better to, you know, to counsel people and to, to help people on a one-on-one basis. And I’m also called to work with groups. So we have experiences and so forth. The the thing that I’ll, I’ll tell with you other than just that, or tell you other than just that spiritual belief that you know, that I’m being qualified in this calling and that I’ll, you know, I’ll have the right people come to teach me the skills that I need in order to, you know, fulfill God’s purpose in my life and my personal mission and that.
RB (16:02):
But I, I also have always looked at the analogies between businesses. So yes, I was in the consumer product space and I learned a lot about consumer products, shipping billions of dollars with the computer consumer products around the world. I’m taking those best practices and those learnings, and I’m applying them now to a technological product that we’re building here at Alter Call. So prior to that, I was in broadband wireless, I was in telecommunications, and I took a lot of the best practices from that business. And I created all visas in our, a lot of our pricing models and shipping models. And our financial models were all, because I had brought with me prior experiences and prior investors and prior business understanding, and it in a completely outside business, that’s where real innovation occurs. Because if you have experience in one business and you can apply it to another sector, that’s where innovation happens.
RB (16:54):
If I was born and raised in Tony Robbins, you know, and, and I showed up and I worked with him and I learned all about what he does and everything he does and how he runs a business, and then I went to start my own, it would just be a knockoff of Tony Robbins, right? Mm-Hmm. , that’s, it wouldn’t be anything different or maybe subtly different, but I wasn’t, I was born and raised in a totally different business. So I’m applying all that I’ve learned in those different businesses to this concept of, of how do I heal at scale? That’s my personal mission. So I’m taking the technological insights that I’ve obtained to the various tech companies I’ve invested in. I’m taking the personal growth insights I’ve obtained, and I’m, I’m building a business model that’s different in the personal growth industry. Mm-Hmm. But that said, the, the last, you know, item that, that really surfaced was, you know, at Visa Salas, I was in the weight loss business and I went really wide in the way that I impacted people.
RB (17:47):
So think of it like going wide like width, not to use a weight loss analogy, but I went for a billion pe millions of people, 3 million people. Now I’m going deep in the impact that I want to make. Eventually I will be called, as I master that deep impact, I’ll be called to go wider and wider and wider, but I’m called now in a season in my personal life as a leader and in the business that I’m creating to create the deepest impact that I can. And then from that deep impact, we will start to go wider as we go. So it’s, it’s very, I could very much see the creator’s craftsmanship. And then one other item I’ll just mention to you, you gotta be willing to walk away from something. And what I walked away from expertise in the direct selling industry, expertise in consumer products.
RB (18:33):
Mm-Hmm. , billion dollar dreams. Those were no longer my dreams. My, my dream was to build a legacy, build a company that makes the deepest impact possible, not the widest impact possible. I’ve already done billions a year in revenue. I’ve already made many millions of dollars. So I’m looking for depth. Not with, but a lot of entrepreneurs haven’t had a, a massive hit yet. They haven’t had a company on Wall Street or a number one New York Times bestselling book. So they’re, they’re called to go wide. Yeah. And that’s great. Once you’re called to go wide, then you might be called in another season to go deep as I am now.
AJV (19:07):
I love that. I I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of or read the book, the Circle Maker?
RB (19:13):
I have not.
AJV (19:15):
So this is a new book I just started reading and you just said something and I had just read this yesterday in this book. And I, I loved this description of it. It’s that, you know, if you’re searching for your purpose for what’s next, it’s, it’s often has nothing to do with God. It has everything to do with us. And they said, the problem isn’t that God doesn’t give you what you want, it’s that we don’t know what we want, so we don’t know what to ask for. Mm-Hmm. And I feel like that’s a lot of people today, it’s like they think they want something because they’ve seen it somewhere else. But it’s really come down to redefining what does success look like in your life? Like, what is this thing I’m going after?
RB (19:54):
Yeah. When you’re, but when you’re on the spiritual walk, there’ll be a resonance. And if you really get to know your soul and you do the internal work, you might help one person and you’ll be like, that lit me up that I felt something there. And that’s a clue. And with obedience, you go, you move toward that clue. God uses clues for you to really determine your calling. He doesn’t just tell you what your calling is because then you wouldn’t discover it. It wouldn’t, you wouldn’t earn it. Right. So God uses clues. And what I do is I just, I conduct a number of experiments and the ones that completely fail, I had no business experiment. You know, that, that experiment didn’t work. That wasn’t my purpose. The ones that succeed, I know okay, that experiment, it had some light to it, it had, it had some energy to it.
RB (20:39):
The Holy Spirit was in that experiment. And I then go deeper into that experiment. And, and that’s the process that I use. But I’ll, I’ll tell you with regard to purpose, we all have the exact same purpose. And that is to leave the world better than we found it. And to share our love and wisdom abundantly. That’s it. Now the vehicle for expressing that changes. Yeah. But we shouldn’t get caught up in the vehicle. We should get caught up in the fact that I’m here to serve. I’m here to make the world a better place than I’ve found it. I’m here to leave behind my love and wisdom to my son and to all that I mentor and my true legacy. I’ll never be able to calculate it. Cuz I have no idea how many people my son’s gonna make an impact in the lives of, or his son or their sons or anybody’s children.
RB (21:26):
I have no idea what my true legacy is going to be. So I should just focus on service. The more that I serve, the more that I’m able to step into that calling. And then I get the feedback in real time when I’m on path. And when I’m not on path, God will use detours and close doors to get you back focused on your calling. So if a friend of mine says, let’s go invest in Bitcoin, and I entertain the idea, next thing you know, I’m heading in that direction, I’ll start to have some feelings that I’m, I’m not on the right path right now. And then I’ll get redirected. Mm. Like, you know, to, to where I need to, you know, to focus.
AJV (22:00):
I love that. My friend always says, and I’m sure she got this from somewhere else, but I love what she said. It’s like what often we feel as rejection is simply God’s protection. Right. I love that old saying. Now you mentioned something about now the way you do it and the way we all do it will change over the course of time. And I feel like we would be remiss if we didn’t talk about some things that are inevitably changing in the way that we work and do business. And you’re kind of at the forefront a lot of this and the technology companies that you’re investing in and AI and just what that looks like for business today and what it’s gonna look like in the future. So let’s shift a little bit and talk about Yeah. Technology as it is just warp speed, changing the way that we work and live and communicate and do life. But then also some specifics around like what, what you’re finding in ai. So this was open up that Pandora’s box.
RB (23:01):
Yeah. Let me, well, you know, I, my background, I started my career in technology and I’ve always viewed myself as a technologist at Visas. I, I saw the cloud as, you know, my work and then everything else was just a product of that. So I’ve always been heavily invested and involved in technology. I, I, I knew that AI was going to change some industries, and I got that insight about five years ago before I started alter call. And I started looking at AI in the addiction industry because I lost my mother to addiction. And I’ve lost many friends. And my family’s had a very difficult time with it, and I had some challenges with it as well. And so I thought, is there a way that AI will make an impact there? And, and so I’ve started my, my research five years ago.
RB (23:48):
And then I decided to set my sites on the coaching industry because the accuracy of the AI wasn’t at the level that where we could detect addiction and and improve outcomes. But the accuracy has improved. And so now we’ve been investing heavily in AI powered coaching. We have three AI scientists on the team right now as well as number of engineers. And we’re expanding our team and we’re building AI powered coaching. So I just got off a call before this one where I was having my coaching calls reviewed where it would tell me the sentiment, the questions asked and answered the use of language that the onwards and transition words and, and a full analysis of my coaching calls to help me become a better coach. And so that’s some of the innovations that we’re doing. We’re, our goal is not to eliminate the coach.
RB (24:34):
Our goal is to power the coach and to augment the coach. Yeah. but there are a number of jobs that will be eliminated as a result of ai. And if your job is one of those that you’re worried about being eliminated, my advice to you is simple callings will not be eliminated. Mm-Hmm. jobs will be, careers will be, but when a person is called to the highest level of mission, no employer is gonna wanna remove a person that is working in their calling. Mm-Hmm. , we can look at a job and we can rationalize, you know, the removal of a job or even the removal of a career from our container. But if a person’s operating at that calling level, they are so valuable to us that we would never want to remove them. We would reskill them, retool them, give them a new role, get them empowered in a new role.
RB (25:25):
Right. So my advice to each of you listening in, if you’re worried about your job or your career being taken by ai, you need to learn how to step into a calling and need to learn to greet your work as such. Because if you do that, you are irreplaceable. And if your employer wants to replace you, there’s many of us that are gonna pick up people that are, that are gonna be called to the work. And that’s what I’m looking for when I’m working with people. I’m not looking for people to take a job with me. I’m looking for people to share in this calling with me. Mm-Hmm. . So that’s extremely important and that’s part of the work that we’re doing at Al Alter call. One of the reasons why I believe we are called to heal at scale and, and in utilize AI is the scale part of that is because there’s going to be a huge need for coaching coming up here to retrain and retool people Yeah. That are losing their identity as a result of their careers and their jobs being taken over by, you know, robots, so to speak. Hmm.
AJV (26:19):
You know, it’s interesting and I think, you know, even pre ai I would say it’s like I kinda, you know, I loved what Ariana Huffington said, it’s, it wasn’t the great resignation, it was the great like reassessment, I forget the exact words. Yeah. But it was the, it wasn’t a great resignation. It was the great, you know, like reassessment of like, what am I doing with my life? Yeah. Like, what, what am I doing? And do I even know who I am? Because my entire identity has become my job. Right. Yeah. You know, and I think that’s just unfortunately a lot of the work culture in Americas, you know, we all do this, we all suffer from this. As soon as you meet someone, it’s, my name is and your name is, and then what do you do?
RB (27:08):
Yeah.
AJV (27:09):
Right? Yeah. Have you ever had anyone say, so tell me who you are, right? No. It’s like, what do you do? Right. And I think that there’s a lot of doing that happens and that all of our identities have got sucked into this doing part of why versus just who you are innately. And I think there’s, I think the reason in my opinion that the coaching industry has blown up so much, had very little to do with everything going digital or the great, you know, quote unquote resignation and much more of going like, I, I wanna find who I am again. And the demand for that desire has created a booming industry. Right. The coaching industry just in the US will do more than 20 billion this year. There’s more than 1.2 million people just on LinkedIn in the US who identify as a coach.
RB (27:59):
Yeah.
AJV (27:59):
Right? Yeah. And it’s like, those may not be full-time jobs, but there’s a demand of going like, teach me a new way. Teach me a better way. Someone show me, guide me, mentor me. And that’s what you’re doing with this. So I’m so fascinated. So I literally, I wrote this down and I was like, AI powered coaching. So like, tangibly speaking, like what is this? Like how, like what is this?
RB (28:25):
Well, one and I’ll, I’ll just give you an insight that I’ve pondered recently is the reason why we have so many coaches is because the education system has failed us completely. And we should have had great teachers that taught us how to know our body, taught us how to balance a checkbook, taught us how to be an entrepreneur. And instead we got Henry Rockefeller and or Henry Ford and Rockefeller education system to turn us into industrialists to identify with creating products for others. Yep. Basically we became worker bees. That’s right. And and that’s the entire education system that we’re in, and it is failing us. And that’s why we need coaches to go find a level of mastery and the internal skills or external skills mm-hmm. and then bring those to us. So that’s why we have a million coaches because we have a deficit of millions of teachers.
RB (29:13):
And so I’m a huge fan of the coaching industry. It’s expanding everyone moving into the coaching industry. I see it as the age of the messenger. Like we have people out there with the message and they’re sharing it. And so I applaud everyone who proudly says, I’m gonna become a messenger, a messenger of yoga, a messenger of, of whatever practices and so forth. So that’s where I see us from a macro basis and from a historical basis. But, and that’s why I’m so excited by the, the investments that we’re making in AI and so forth, but what, what AI powered coaching is going to do, because it’s such an unregulated industry what we are doing is we are extracting the best practices and we’re doing so by evaluating the outcomes from the clients. And then we’re taking those best practices and training our coaches and how they can model those best practices to accelerate outcomes for clients.
RB (30:07):
Our vision is that we can reduce the time that it takes to get to an outcome. We can and, and also make it more affordable to get to an outcome so that we can make coaching available to the masses. I believe that everyone should have a coach. And, and if you think about it, our family structure is disintegrated as such that we just don’t have fathers as coaches anymore, or mothers as coaches anymore. Even when we have mothers and fathers, oftentimes they have to go work, you know, like a slave and somebody else’s job, and they can’t bring back their best selves to coach the children. So we, we have to solve this problem through this new you know approach. And so we’re using AI and technology to make our coaches more efficient, to improve our client outcomes, and to to eventually make coaching faster and more afford more affordable.
AJV (30:57):
I love this. This is so cool. And I honestly, what I think is so cool about it is, again, this isn’t replacing coaches, this is empowering coaches. It’s allowing you to do what you can do at a more rapid impact, right? Yeah. And it’s like, man, just the learn to, to shorten the learning curve for people. Yeah.
RB (31:19):
So, yeah. One of the, one of the things that we, we do analysis on is the emotionality of the coach and the correspondence to that of the client outcome. So like, I get a feedback report after every call, and on some calls it says like, my sentiment was neutral. And I’m like, that’s not what I wanna bring to my clients. They pay me a lot of money. Right. I want, I wanna bring the best sentiment. And so just because I’m able to have AI evaluate and, and run models and tell me my sentiment, my tonality, and tell me the use of questions and answers and the amount of presence that I bring to my calls, I’m now a better coach because of that. That’s our mission, is to take an unregulated industry and to give frameworks and teaching, teaching methodologies, and then use ai to evaluate these coaches so that way they can become more efficient and more productive and create greater results in the marketplace.
AJV (32:10):
Love that. Fascinating. all right. So I know I’m watching the clock. I’m always trying to be sensitive. We got about like five minutes last here and I have a, a couple of random q and as that I wanna just like hit you with, so you mentioned earlier, yeah, some jobs will be eliminated, not callings, but jobs. So what do you foresee other jobs that are likely gonna pass away with the future of ai?
RB (32:35):
Well, a lot of ’em in, in, in my, my particular case, you know, you know, teachers are you know, there’s going to be a a front on teachers, any, any job where people are not doing a good job at it, where the industry is being cornered by unions, by, you know, and teachers is one of those, there’s some good teachers out there, don’t get me wrong, but then there’s some terrible teachers out there. And so the opportunity to re you know, eliminate those jobs and disrupt those jobs is very high. So you’re gonna, you’re gonna see any of those jobs where people are not serving at their highest level are, are going to be highly impacted. But it’s also going to force us to evolve. And just, for example, chat, G P T, which we’re all very familiar with, when, when I go on there, I ask great questions and I evolve the quality of my questions and I get nuanced answers as I am able to ask better questions.
RB (33:36):
So just that large language model is gonna teach us as human beings to ask better questions. Mm-Hmm. , which is one of the most important things that we can learn in the personal development journey, is to ask very intelligent, nuanced, precise questions. Mm-Hmm. . And so here’s a feedback engine that’ll tell you whether or not your questions, you know, are, are very good because you’re, you know, you’ll, you’ll, you’ll get better information or richer information by the quality, by the merit of your question and by the quality of your question. Mm-Hmm. . So there’s, there’s a huge evolutionary component to what AI is going to do to us. So many of the jobs that’ll eliminate that are eliminated are going to forge people to expand their skillsets. Mm-Hmm. expand their way of, of doing business and make new jobs. And I think that we’re gonna have a massive renaissance of new jobs created because of these things that will certainly replace the jobs that are taken away in the short term.
AJV (34:30):
Well, yeah. You know, it’s like too that I’ve already seen this pop up in a few places is, you know, I, I live in Nashville, right. Music city, and there’s just like, I get bombarded with like all these different webinars and stuff going on in the city, and it’s like, is AI going to destroy music city, the songwriting business? You know, that just like something flew across my inbox and it’s like, I have a lot of friends who are singer songwriters and I’m like, no, it should make them better. Yeah. Right. It should. It’s, it’s, the collaboration should be quicker, faster. What did take months could now take days. And, you know, we live in the, you know, creator economy in the world that, you know, we are in, we, you know, we serve the expert, right? We say our target audience is the mission driven messenger. There’s been a lot of talk about like, is AI gonna completely replace copywriters and graphic designers? And I’m like, no, unless you’re not good at it. Unless you’re not efficient. So I had this great conversation with a good friend of mine where he’s got a full-time copywriter on his staff and his, his outcome, like his output every week is one blog.
AJV (35:36):
Hmm. And we’re like, not now. should
RB (35:41):
Be 10 blogs a day.
AJV (35:42):
Not now . It’s like, we’re gonna need to see that increase. And so what I have found in like, similar to what you’re saying, it’s like it’s going to disrupt the areas that need disrupting. Yeah. But if you are good and you can use, like, this is a tool just like anything, but you gotta learn how to use the tool and that is going to require coaches. Yeah. And I’ve already seen this pop up, all these classes of going, let me teach you how to ask, you know, AI the right questions. Yeah. And it’s like there’s already this new era of education.
RB (36:13):
Yeah. It will, it’s going to certainly improve efficiencies for all of us, which is a good thing because the more efficient we are as entrepreneurs, the more income we can generate, the more income we can generate, the more we can pay salaries and, and all of the things that we get to share our wealth with. So that’s, that’s gonna be a magical boomer, a coaching business for example, that had one blog a week, you know, and, and, and couldn’t hire another blogger to do another blog per week, can now get 10 blogs out there a week, and that’s gonna spread their wings and, and spread their message and, and generate more revenue. So we’re gonna see an expansion and many industries and companies would get capped at a certain revenue size, cuz it was just extremely hard to build beyond say, 30 million a year. Mm-Hmm.
RB (36:54):
now with these tools, the, those 30 million year companies have the opportunity to become 300 million a year companies. So you’re gonna see an expansion in the capacity of the small business. Yeah. Which is going to create a lot more revenue for all of us to be able to share with our stakeholders and so forth. So that, that’s gonna be you know a huge you know, a huge benefit that we’re, we’re at the very beginning of, no one is the, the company that got stopped at the scale of 30 million has yet to learn how to use these new tools to break through to 300 million mm-hmm. . But those cases, those use cases will start to emerge and you’ll be like, wow, this industry we only thought was capable of getting to 30 million a year was the max that you could do in a coaching business, for example. And now there’s a company utilizing these modern tools and they’ve gotten to, you know, 3 billion a year. So you’ll start to see the expansion of the market caps as a result of these tools.
AJV (37:46):
Mm. It’s gonna be interesting fascinating. I think it’s the word. It’s gonna just be interesting and fascinating. All all right. Next question, because you mentioned this a few times, and this is something that is a constant conversation in our house, is how do you think this impacts, or just what is your personal opinion on the future of college and higher education in the traditional sense?
RB (38:11):
Well, there’ll always be a marketplace for ego and greed and you know, many people that go to colleges are sent there by way of ego and greed. Right. So, you know, I I get personal identity outta my son going to Harvard, so I’m gonna insist that my son goes to Harvard, I’m gonna make this poor kid go to Harvard. You know, that’s gonna be in our, our, our ecosystem for quite some time. Yeah. But you know, it, it’s, it’s not going to be a necessity. It’ll give you bragging rights. It’ll give you ego benefits, but it’s not going to be a necessity. So I, I went to a, a decent little school called Cal Lutheran University, and then I dropped out my senior year and I’ve never cared whatsoever about, you know, any of that because I’m learning and growing each and every day, and I’m applying skills and getting feedback as an entrepreneur. You know, these things are only as good as the belief that they create within you. Mm-Hmm. . And so, you know, college is good to create some belief within you and give you some structure around learning. And that’s worth a hundred thousand dollars or 200,000 if you’re gonna make, you know, millions a year. But it’s certainly not worth $200,000 if you’re only gonna make 30 or $40,000 a year.
AJV (39:26):
Unfortunately, the only thing I retained from college was how to play corn hole and beer pong
RB (39:31):
.
AJV (39:32):
But I got a lot of practice. Yeah, right. I’m really good at that.
RB (39:36):
That’s priceless though. That’s priceless. I imagine that family outings.
AJV (39:42):
Oh, I dominate, dominate. But it is, you know, it’s interesting. So you have a son
RB (39:48):
Yeah.
AJV (39:49):
Who’s how old
RB (39:51):
Reagan is 14 years old.
AJV (39:53):
He’s 14. So to college you’re not with Reagan.
RB (39:57):
It’s whatever he wants, you know whatever he wants. If, if he wants to go to college, you go to college. If he wants to start a business, he is got a VC in me to help him start a business, whatever he wants. I my parenting method is a little bit different in that I’m looking for what is his personal calling, what is his soul called to do? And then I want to put everything I can to support that. So if he’s called to be a musician, I don’t care if there’s any money in musicianship mm-hmm. , if he’s called to be a, a botanist, I don’t care if there’s any money in botany, I want him to do whatever he’s called to do. And I’m here to support that. Help him identify that, witness him when he is in his calling, witness him when he is in his higher self versus his lower self and help him, you know, learn how to step powerfully into a calling. Of course, I would dream that one day he would take over his dad’s work, but if he chooses to do something completely different, then you know, I’m gonna be his number one supporter and I’m gonna invest in him every step of the way.
AJV (40:56):
Good answer, Ryan. You know, mine are little, right? So I’ve got a three-year-old and a six-year-old and, you know, we are on the homeschool path. My kids are homeschooled now, and, you know, we’ve taken the stance of if you wanna go to college, that’s fine. If you want us to pay for it, you’re gonna have to convince us why it’s the good idea. You’re gonna have to convince us of why, what exactly are you going to be doing? Because I know what I did. But I think Yeah, I love that. You know, I just finished reading how successful people think by John Maxwell. Yeah. And like, my biggest takeaway from that entire book was don’t build your business based on profits. Build your business based on purpose. Yeah. Right. And it’s
RB (41:39):
Like, yeah, I love John. John mentored me for a couple of years. I I have a personal relationship with him and I love him dearly. He’s one of the he’s a great source of wisdom and for all of us, Steve, it, it, it is by Reagan’s 14 by the time that he enters the workforce. Yeah. It’s gonna be about callings and whatever that calling is. And the last thing I, I do wanna share with you something that you mentioned about the national concept. You know, my words are going to be easily replicated via ai, but the delivery of those words is unique to me. Yeah. So I need to work on the artistry of my delivery. So does every musician, right. Because it’s going to be the way you deliver that song that’s going to be the essence of mm-hmm. of, of you. And so we need as speakers and, and lecturers and teachers, we need to work on becoming better artists. That’s good. Because AI will give our information away to everyone, but the artistry of our delivery is what we need to go to work on.
AJV (42:32):
That is so good. And, and, you know, honestly, that’s so true. It’s like reading something versus hearing it and feeling it. Yeah. You know, it’s, I always tease, it’s like I often don’t want to see some of my favorite authors speak in person because I love their words so much, but then when I hear them as presenters, I’m like, well, that ruined it. It
RB (42:54):
Ruined, right. Yeah.
AJV (42:56):
Right. Totally ruined it.
RB (42:57):
Yeah. You’ll more vice versa, right? Yeah. You’ll, well, we’ll no longer pay a person to do research and organize the information then deliver us information. Because I could do, I could ask Ja G b t Yeah. What are the benefits of it all plant-based diet compared to X or Y I don’t need to go to a seminar, you know, for that information anymore. So the, the people that are in the delivery of knowledge and wisdom are gonna have to become better artists and get, and, and, and go on a growth path where they’re bringing in more information from consciousness or from the Holy Spirit and they’re delivering it to the world. So it’s going to eliminate the people that have earned false wisdom. Yeah. Or un or they have unearned wisdom. They just got it through a bunch of research. It’s gonna eliminate that job. And those of us that are wisdom holders and, and, and growing in that we’re gonna have to get better at the delivery of that wisdom.
AJV (43:48):
That’s so good. Like that’s gonna be the big takeaway from this for me is like, don’t be concerned with what’s gonna go, but like, focus on your artistry. Yeah. That’s the thing that no one can take, no one can replace. It’s, it’s yours. But you can work on it and fine tune it. Ryan, thank you so much. Y’all, if y’all wanna catch up with Ryan it’s at Real Ryan Blair on Instagram. So you follow him on the gram, but also check out Al Alter call this amazing program that has coaching. You’ve got masterminds, you’ve got all types of things involved in it. And so go to alter call.com. I’ll put both of those links in the show notes. Ryan, is there anywhere else that you should tell people to go find you learning
RB (44:34):
You? No. No. I, I love meeting new people, so if you hit me up on Instagram we could start a conversation.
AJV (44:40):
Awesome. Y’all, thank you so much for sticking around. Be sure to tune in to the Cliff Notes version of this episode on the podcast, and we’ll catch you next time on the influential Personal brand. See you later.

Ep 385: Online Marketing Funnel Fundamentals

RV (00:02):
I love talking about funnels, , that’s such a nerdy thing to say. I never would’ve thought, like years ago I would hear myself say it, but I love it. I love marketing automation, and it’s probably because I hated selling door to door so much , the idea of just calling on people and interrupting them and like bugging people. And so now there’s this whole world that exists of marketing automation where people who are interested can find you and they can come to you and they can self-serve their way through your content to let you know that they’re interested. And I just, I love that. I love sales too. I do love sales. I didn’t, I didn’t love going door to door because it was, it was extremely difficult. But I do love sales and I love selling, but I really love marketing automation and funnels.
RV (00:59):
And of course, you know, that was the topic of the conversation here recently with my friend Lauren. And so I wanted to share with you some of my own thoughts related to funnels and constructing funnels. And I, I thought I would start with a definition of like, what is a funnel really, because there’s a lot of, that means a lot of different things to a lot of people. But in the world of marketing automation and in brand builders groups speak, right? For our company, what is a funnel? Like to me, a funnel is just a series of automated emails with links in them that you can click on that take you to landing pages where you can watch videos which allow you to learn about something to where you might then click on something, click on another link, and then buy something, right? It’s just an automated system of nurturing somebody to making a decision, a financial decision to do business with you.
RV (02:01):
But, you know, there’s a lot of over complication that happens around funnels. I mean, at the end of the day, these are emails that you’re sending that have links in them, right? So you, what are the components of a funnel? They, they’re emails with links. When you click on those links, it takes you to pages. Those pages have videos on them. So you’ve got emails, links, pages, and videos, and ultimately that’s it, right? And then you click another link, it takes you to another page where you put in a credit card information. So the, the, the strategy matters way more than the technology. And that’s a brand builders group mantra that we talk about is, is just the strategy of, of going, how are we laying this out and, and what are we doing? And, you know, before we even get into the strategy, what I wanted to share with you, e even before that would be, is my philosophy. It’s our philosophy. It’s this part of our culture at Brand Builders Group. But our philosophy about not just funnels,
RV (02:58):
But selling online in general and, and, and selling in general, but specifically in the world of content marketing and marketing automation. And it’s, it’s something that we call the rule of 10. And it’s based on another mantra that we believe, which is this trust must take place before there’s a transaction. Trust must take place before there’s a transaction. If you want someone to buy from you, you can’t just think about what are the tactics and the tricks and the technology that I need to use to like get someone to buy. And what you really need to be thinking about, which is the bigger conversation, which like almost nobody is talking about, which is the entire sale, is that before there’s a transaction, there has to be trust. You have to build trust, they have to trust you. They have to like you, they have to believe in you.
RV (03:51):
They have to believe that you can help them. And I think maybe they don’t need to believe this, but I would want them to believe this and I would want you to want them to believe this, which is that you should want them to believe that you actually care about them. That you actually give a crap about them succeeding. That it’s not just about you reaching your hand to their pocket and pulling out their credit card and taking money from their account and transferring it to yours, but that you, you’re concerned about a transformation taking place in their life. And so you’re focused not on just creating transactions, you’re focused on creating trust. You’re not just focused on creating customers, you’re focused on creating fans. You’re not just focused on like creating conversions. You’re, you’re focused on creating transformations for people. And so we, I, I think of this, or we call this, we refer to this as the rule of 10 because you can, even if you get all the technology right, and you do the sequencing, right, and you write the emails properly, which is a big if, right?
RV (04:58):
There’s a lot of bad copywriting out there. And even people who will charge you for copywriting that really don’t know what they’re doing, and, and, and they will, can charge you a lot like and there’s a lot of people who will charge you a lot of money to build funnels and they really don’t know what they’re doing. So there, there’s a lot of, there’s a l a lot of potholes here on this journey, but like before all of that, I want you to aspire, or at least consider this to aspire for the rule of 10. The rule of 10 says that I am gonna provide to you 10 times the amount of value in advance of me charging you for something. Which means if I’m gonna sell you something that costs a hundred dollars, I’m going to try to provide a thousand dollars worth of value to you before I ask you for the a hundred dollars.
RV (06:01):
If I’m gonna try to charge you $10,000 for something, I am going to try to give you a hundred thousand dollars worth of value. And if I’m gonna charge you a hundred thousand dollars worth of value, or, or excuse me, if I’m gonna charge you a hundred thousand dollars price, right? If that’s the cost, then I’m going to aspire to make the value of what I’m providing to you worth $1 million. And I think too many people are in this space just trying to go, how much money can I get for the least amount of value? And, and you don’t have to do this. I’m not saying that doesn’t work in the short term like that. You can’t create money that way. I mean, you can, but it totally runs out, right? Like eventually, it, it’s not how you build your reputation. The way you build an incredible reputation is you charge for 10, but you deliver a hundred and, or you deliver a hundred before you even charge for 10, right?
RV (07:00):
Or you, you know, deliver 50 and then ask, and then, and then ask for 10 while you’re delivering another 50. But, but it’s the rule of 10 that people are always getting 10 times the value of what they’re paying for. And it’s just, it’s, I don’t know, it’s just a, it’s a philosophy that we have and, and it’s not the only way to make money. I know plenty of people who make lots of money from what I would consider taking advantage of people. I think it’s the opposite. They, they deliver to people a 10th of the value of what they charge for. They, they charge, they charge a hundred thousand dollars and they give them like a thousand dollars product. Like, or they charge $10,000 and they give somebody something that is like really worth a thousand dollars. I see that a lot. But that’s been our pH our philosophy is not that, our philosophy is the rule of 10 the other way.
RV (07:47):
And, you know, it’s worked out well for us. And that’s all I all I can share. And like, you know, that’s why we, we, we only teach what we do. We only teach what we actually practice. But I think part of the power of this, you know, honestly, there’s value to your consumer. There’s value to your, to your avatar, to your customer, to your prospect. And that’s a good reason to do it. But part you may not realize, which is equally as valuable, is it’s valuable to you. Because what I have found, if you’re a true mission-driven messenger, right? If you’ve found your way to this podcast, this episode, you’re still listening. You’re like following me and AJ and our team at Brand Builders Group and the stuff we do, and you’re, you’re starting to like be introduced to the philosophies that, that we have.
RV (08:29):
You’re probably a mission-driven messenger, which means there’s a part of you that goes, I do wanna make money, but I don’t wanna just make money. I’m not okay making money at the expense of somebody else. I’m not okay taking advantage of people. I’m not okay using tactics that are a win for me, but they’re a loss for someone else. If that’s you, you’re a mission-driven messenger. And here’s what we know about you, because this is us. We sometimes struggle to sell. We sometimes struggle to promote. We sometimes struggle to have the conviction to say, you should pull out your credit card and buy this because we’re so nervous about taking ad you know take not wanting to take advantage of people or overpromising and underdelivering or just, you know, not being vain. We don’t wanna be arrogant, we don’t wanna be conceited. And so, but what happens is you need to be an avid promoter in order to create revenue.
RV (09:21):
And so the way you do that is you create the rule of 10. And so you go, what gives you the confidence and the conviction to do it is because you know that it’s worth it, right? And you know, there are people who pay me a hundred thousand dollars for like a couple days of time. And I know for some of you that might be like insane cuz it is for me, honestly, right? Like growing up in a trailer park, to say that out loud is like a weird thing to go man from where I was to, to where where I I I am now or we are now is wild. But it’s because what they’re gonna learn and what we’re gonna build with them is not only worth a million dollars, but probably millions of dollars, right? Because we’re helping them construct a company or create strategy or develop a sales team or a sales plan, or launch a book or write a keynote or, or, or create a whole ecosystem for their, their their personal brand.
RV (10:18):
Those are worth millions of dollars. Millions of dollars, right? And I’m completely convicted in it. And so it’s important that you are convicted in, in what you’re selling. Now most of our clients at Bra Builder’s Group don’t pay anywhere near that amount of money to us. Like nowhere even near that. But we’re always priv providing the rule of 10. So people know that like, hey, our goal is to offer 10 times the value of what you’re paying for. And it gives you conviction to sell when you operate that way. It’s also really great for your customers, right? It’s great for your reputation, it’s great for altruism and service and impact, but it’s also great for your own conviction. And that’s part of the part of what I, I wanted the point I wanted to make. And it, it helps you increase your conversions because you have more confidence.
RV (11:03):
The second thing about funnels that I really wanted to, to share and underscore for you is have realistic expectations. Have realistic expectations. And I thought I really, you know, I I sort of threw this question at Lauren in the interview, which is a tough question to answer. You know, to put someone on the spot to go, Hey, hey, if I, you know, if I did hire you and you did all this, like, what’s the conversion here? And you know, the the, and the number I used, I said, if you have a 10,000 person email list, how many are gonna convert? And you know, I really appreciated the way she did it cuz I, I feel like she did a, a good job, like an honest, an an honest job. But you gotta like understand when, you know, there’s this like dream of like, oh, I’m gonna, I’m gonna sell thousands of courses, or I’m gonna, you know, have a membership with thousands of people.
RV (11:51):
Or, you know, I might have a mastermind with dozens of people painting these top dollars. Those are good dreams. They’re, they’re great business models. We do a lot of ’em, we’ve done a lot of ’em, our clients do ’em, we know them really well. They’re, they’re great things. But what you gotta really understand here is the minuscule total conversion percentage, right? If I have 10,000 people on an email list, if I send that email, first of all, only 20% of the people are gonna open it. So that’s 2000 people, right? If I’m lucky, I would get 5% of those people to click on the email. So that’s 2000. So 10% of 2000 would be 200 people. So, so if I got 5% of those people to click on it, that’s what, what did I say? 2000? Open it. So, so then 10% would be 200.
RV (12:43):
So a hundred people click on it, which means I got a hundred people coming to a registration. Page five. If I have a a 50% conversion on the registration page, that means I have 50 people who opted in for my training. If I have 50 people who opted in for my training, if 50% of them showed up, that’s 25 people who have showed up. And of the 25 people who have showed up, if I I, or shown up, I’m not sure what the proper English is there shown up if, if 25 people have shown up for that training, even if I convert 20% of that audience, so let’s call it 25 people. So 10% would be two and a half, so 20% would be five people. So even if I con convert, quote unquote 20% conversion of that audience, that means I sold five people, but I sold five people out of 10,000, 10,000.
RV (13:38):
Like, like, notice how 10,000 so quickly becomes five. So I just want you to understand like, the reason we’re so passionate about sales in addition to marketing is because we know that if you have conversations with people, you’re probably gonna close like 20 to 30% of people that you talk to when you talk to ’em one-on-one. And there’s like an infinite, you can sell a price point of anything. Like you could sell a hundred thousand dollars, 10,000, 5,000, you know, 2000, like whatever it is because you’re having a, a conversation. So we love to create real life human conversations to people because they accelerate trust. Well, so we’d love, we love digital marketing also, right? We love social media, we love podcasting. I mean, here I am, like pouring our, pouring our heart and soul and a bunch of money into creating all this free content for you, right?
RV (14:25):
So we believe in those things, but you just gotta realize the reality of the minuscule conversion percentage of how fast those audiences dwindle. And it can take a long time to build a 10,000 person email list. I mean, like a legitimate one if they’re real people. So there’s ways to increase that. We talk about, you know, a lot about that stuff, but the real way to increase it is with trust, with adding value, right? Trust must take place before the transaction and then have realistic expectations. And so don’t be hard on yourself. If you launched something right and you had one person buy, or two people buy, or five people like, you might be getting better conversion percentages than the, the biggest personal brands and the biggest online influencers and the biggest information marketers and digital marketers and social media marketers in the world, like percentage wise.
RV (15:14):
So it just, it takes a high volume to convert. And so that’s why so much of what we do is like use the tools to automate trust, right? That’s we, we have a, a, a course called revenue engine or a topic, right? Like in our, in our coaching curriculum that we walk people through, which is building your revenue engine. And the idea is to use these tools of the day to automate trust. And then typically if you’re a small business owner, we say, Hey, request a free call because on a free call, you can then sell ’em something that costs a lot more money and you’ll convert a lot more of those people. Now, long term, that’s not scalable either, because you can only do so many free calls, but you can hire more people and you can do more. So anyways, it’s just have realistic expectations.
RV (15:57):
Is is all I want you to understand, right? So like a lot of people feel like they’re failing and and they’re really not. And again, you know, we teach this stuff and I shared on the interview like some of our highest performing funnels, a five to 8% funnel conversion, meaning if a hundred people signed up for it, like, you know, got to the page and signed up. So that means like maybe 200 people got to the page, right? We would get like eight calls out of that, but then we would, we would probably, we would our team, you know, we typically sell like 30% and that’s because by the time someone’s on the phone with one of our strategists, they already trust us. We’ve already added the rule of 10. They already have so much value. So that’s what you want to create is reputation and trust and add value.
RV (16:40):
And, and by the way, I know that these funnels are a headache for you. And we’re, we’re building, we’re building templates. We’ve been working for years. I’m talking about like multiple years creating something that we’re about to launch that’s called Instant Automation Toolkit, where we’re just gonna give you our funnels and you can just buy ’em. And we, you can have hours, like you can buy them and make them yours. You can rent them for also like very, very cheap. And like you can start using them to build your entire business gi and we’ll give you our exact templates, not like what we do, but like the exact ones and then you just swap out and change ’em. So we’re working on that and that’s, that’s coming. And the last thing I wanna leave you with here on just understanding funnels and online marketing and digital marketing in general, and information marketing, all things we love, all things we do, all things we believe in.
RV (17:32):
But another philosophy we have that’s really important. And, and again, I just wanna encourage you to try this on and consider it for yourself, but this is what we try to aspire to is, and, and we encourage our, our members, our mission-driven messengers, our members inside of our brand builders group community is to realize, and that to realize that the sale isn’t finished when the cash is collected, the sale is finished. When you deliver the result, the sale isn’t finished. When the cash is collected, the sale is finished. When you deliver the result, when you, when you and your team or your product or your service help the customer get the transformation that they wanted originally, like the job isn’t done until then. And anything less than that is just a self-centered way of operating. And so service centeredness, which is what we believe in service centered selling, is about following it through to completion, being driven and focused and, and, and being committed to helping your prospects and your clients and your customers experience a final result.
RV (18:47):
And if you do that, if you have that philosophy, if you have that mindset, if you have that mentality, all I can say is that it works out. Like eventually you will get paid. Eventually your reputation, your reputation grows, eventually people buys. Maybe it’s not the fastest way to put in a dollar in your pocket, but I’m telling you, it’s the fastest way to get rich. It’s the fastest way to build a reputation. It’s the fastest way to get famous. It’s the fastest way to become influential. It’s the fastest way to build relationships with, with people who are doing big things in the world because people trust you and there’s just no dollar you can place on compromising trust, right? There’s just no dollar value you can place on compromising your reputation. So pursue the rule of 10. Remember that trust must take place before the transaction.
RV (19:36):
Be committed to over-delivering and, and remind yourself and build a culture and a community and a, and a team. Or just carry it as a personal philosophy that you’re, that the sale isn’t finished when the cash is collected, the sale is finished when you deliver the result. I hope you’re getting results from listening to this show. I would love it if you would share this episode with someone who you think needs to hear it. Keep coming back. We’re so glad to have you. And it’s our privilege and honor to, to, to be pour into you as much as we can and in hopes that one day you will trust us enough to invest your dollars with us and trust and believe in yourself enough to invest in your dream. And let us coach you up to the next level. But in the meantime, keep coming back, sharing this with your friends, your families, your colleagues, people are important to you. We love you. We’ll catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand Podcast.

Ep 384: Using Funnels to Drive Revenue Growth with Lauren Cannon

RV (00:02):
So I had a very awesome opportunity for about a year in my career. So when we started Brand Builders Group, one of the clients that we had fairly early on was a gentleman named Glen Stanford. And Glenn, it was the billionaire founder and owner of exp Realty. Well, while we were working with Glen, he actually had opportunity to buy Success Magazine and he bought Success Magazine and asked me to come over and be the interim editor. A lot of people don’t know this, but I was the interim entrepreneurship editor of Success Magazine for like a year, and I really loved it. It was the first time I actually worked inside of like a traditional media company, like on the backend. I had written articles and stuff, but never like sort of seen the backend. So I was there at Success Magazine. While I was there, I got introduced to an amazing woman named Lauren Cannon, who you are about to meet.
RV (00:55):
Lauren has worked at Success Magazine. She worked for a while with Brendan Burchard. She now has her own mar. She, she now has her own marketing agency. And she does a lot in the world of marketing automation and funnels. And that’s what we’re gonna talk about today because I really like her and she like me, I think is a fellow nerd, but she doesn’t look like a nerd. She doesn’t act like a nerd, but she is so smart and so brilliant at what she does. I just felt like you needed to have a conversation or listen into a conversation with me and Lauren, her agency’s called Make it Pretty. And so anyways, Lauren, welcome to the show.
LC (01:36):
Hey, thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to be here.
RV (01:40):
So how did you get into the world of marketing automation? Mm-Hmm. , I mean, you’ve been doing this for a long time. I mean, it’s, it’s not that, you know, the industry’s not that old, but you’ve been, you’ve been in this space for a minute.
LC (01:52):
I have, yeah. Almost 10 years now. So I started with project management. I just, success had brought me over and we were launching new courses and we were doing events and they needed help organizing it. And at the time, I was the project manager of all things and process engineering. I love figuring out how things work and how to make them work better and more efficiently. And through the course of doing that, I just started learning every single skill there was in marketing everyone’s role to where I developed to be able to do it. And then I started to put myself further and further into marketing positions.
RV (02:33):
Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. Yeah. So, so you got introduced to the world of marketing automation and then I guess mm-hmm. . So, so can you just, like, for somebody listening who like, isn’t familiar with that term when they hear marketing automation, and let’s go ahead and talk about funnels at the same time mm-hmm. , because I, you know, some people are like, yeah, I’m, you know, I’m a funnel hacker and I know all about funnels, but I think there’s a lot of people who still kind of hear that term and go, you know, isn’t that what info marketers do? Or like, that’s only certain types of people. Can you just define marketing automation and funnels? Like how would you define those terms?
LC (03:10):
Yeah, I would, I would say, you know, specifically, especially with, with the world that, that we’re in, the industry we’re in as you say, the mission driven messengers, it’s a, it’s a vehicle for delivering that mission and that message in the most effective and efficient way. We wanna make sure that someone is spending more time and energy on developing that mission and developing that message and less time and energy on the delivery of it. Mm-Hmm. so funnels and marketing automations are gonna be how you can not only constantly serve people, but how you can constantly reach more people and it becomes this endless cycle of people coming into your world and into your mission.
RV (03:56):
Yeah. And I, that’s, I love that. And I, I feel like, you know, when I think about it, it’s, it’s going in a tactical sense. You’re driving people to your website or to a landing page, typically you’re offering them some type of value and now, you know, some type of a lead magnet, a free asset mm-hmm. , they’re downloading it or subscribing or, you know, tuning into a, a webinar or a challenge or something. And then they’re, and then they’re, and then they’re on your email list, but there’s a lot more between that and getting them to buy. And I think a funnels a sort of like covers the distance between, okay, I, you, I gave you my email address, but between getting their email address and making a purchase to me, like that’s where funnels live. Yes. And a lot of people don’t know, know that much about ’em cuz they’re invisible. Like you don’t, even, when you’re going through one as a prospect or a customer, you often don’t realize mm-hmm. , you’re inside of this ornately designed infrastructure and architecture. But would you, does that, would that sync up with how you think of it?
LC (05:00):
Yeah, absolutely. You know, there are so many people who, like you said, they can funnel hack, they’ll hack a funnel, you know a big launch that just happened in, in the space was Marie for Leo’s Copy Cure. She just opened that up so you can sign up for her lead magnet, get all the emails, see the sales page, and then, you know, ultimately buy or not. But essentially you have the whole email. So now you’ve hacked the funnel, let’s say. But there’s so much more that happens outside of that period of time that Marie has done to develop that sale. And so that’s what really a funnel is. It’s a whole launch system that is year round and your business delivering content in different ways and segmenting your audience in different ways so that you’re delivering value to what that specific person needs.
RV (05:53):
Mm-Hmm. mm-hmm. . So what, what do you think are some of the most like, practical examples of funnels either that you’ve seen or that you’ve worked on or that you build where you go, here’s how and where and when mm-hmm. you would use a funnel, and, and by the way, just for everyone, if you’re totally new to this term, I, I kind of think of as marketing automation as basically like the tools and the process and the science of building funnels, which are these mm-hmm. sort of automated nurture sequences to move someone from, okay, I’m on your email list to now I’m gonna buy, or I’m following you on social, but now I’m gonna ultimately become a customer. So what are the use cases, I guess, of these that you think are either the most common or you think everyone should have or just that you kind of work on a lot
LC (06:39):
Mm-Hmm. ? Yeah. We have we’ve worked on a lot with speakers who after they deliver a keynote speech, they want to leave the audience with something to continue connecting with them and build that, that relationship. And, you know, if you’re a speaker, that connection you make with the audience is one of the most valuable connections you can make. And you don’t wanna walk out the door without giving them the option to continue that relationship. So we’ll do a lot of lead generation from stage where if there’s a QR code and, and typically something that is related to your keynote but is truly of value to that audience member, something that’s gonna help them take whatever your presentation was and either apply it to their lives or accelerate their results into achieving the results you shared. So not necessarily the slides or something like that, but maybe it’s an ebook.
LC (07:43):
We’ve done quizzes and things like that. So getting these people into your email list is always number one. And then from there, it’s really inviting them into this conversation with you. So not necessarily selling right away, just say, you know, Hey, I’m so glad to connect. Here’s my best content and you wanna deliver, you know, three to five excellent pieces of value content and just get them to keep opening your emails. And you just build these nurture sequence along the way. And then as you have offers that are related to that segment, starting to build in the sales sequences,
RV (08:21):
Uhhuh . So that’s a great example. So you’re on stage, you’re doing a speech, speech comes to the end, you say, Hey, here’s a free tool I put together for you. I’d love to stay in touch, text this number or go to this url mm-hmm. or scan this QR code or whatever. And then it takes ’em to a page. It takes ’em to a page. Or it could be, if it’s a text optin, I guess they’re just like sending a message and now they’re on your email list mm-hmm. . And then like how many pieces of you, you said like three to five excellent pieces. Is there like a rule you follow of like the ratio of how much value you really should be given before you ask for a sale or when you ask for a sale? Or like at what are some of, like, philosophically speaking, what are some of those transition points in your mind where you go mm-hmm. , okay, we’re gonna shift the conversation to like, I’m building the relationship, I’m adding value. I’m, I’m basically giving you free instruction, advice, whatever encouragement to then shifting towards making a sale and asking mm-hmm. for like money from somebody.
LC (09:23):
Yeah. Typically the sequence I would I follow is they enter your email list, they saw you on stage, they enter your email list, the first email they get is a personalized, thank you, I’ve got you here. This is the tool, this is how you’re gonna make the most of this tool. And you know, I’ll be checking in with you tomorrow and see how things are going. And then that second email that is, you know, automatically kicks off in your sequence. It is gonna say, again, following up on the tool, saying, I really hope you’ve seen this and this, and the tool, here’s how, you know, I have this piece, this video that really shows how this tool can effectively make your life better. And then, you know, there might be a Ps I’ve got more coming soon, just kind of teasing that you are going to sell them, but you’re still delivering content.
LC (10:17):
And then that third email is gonna be another piece of value content that you’ve already got written if you’ve got blogs or videos. And it’s also gonna be a bigger teaser that’s like, Hey, you know, if you’re interested, I’ve got this program that I’m gonna tell you more about tomorrow. Stay tuned, keep your eyes on your inbox. And then as you get into email four and five, you can start to build that sale up. And it really depends on what your offer is. If your offer is something in the 20, you know, it’s a low ticket, 27 to 1 29 kind of offer, you can start to build that in around email three and four. If your ticket is something that’s really high in let’s say a thousand dollars to $5,000, you’re probably gonna be doing what we call lead stacking. So you’re gonna have almost another lead magnet that they’re gonna raise their hand for that’s gonna give them a little bit more of a sales sequence in it. So a webinar or something like that. And then you’re gonna put them into that sequence.
RV (11:26):
Got it. Uhhuh, . So you, you were, you were talking, one of the things you shared with me, which I, I thought was powerful, is this this relationship between the lead magnet and the offer. So talk, talk, talk us through why that, what that means and why that matters.
LC (11:44):
Yeah. It’s a lot of people, you’ll, you’ll throw together a lead magnet. You know, you need to build an email list and you know, you need a lead magnet to do that. You see opted pages and that is the best way to build your email list. But a lot of things that I see where we need to go and fix some funnels is they have the wrong lead magnet for what they offer. So you need to make sure that what lead magnet you’re showing people is going to align with your offer. Because if it doesn’t, it’s gonna create a lot of misaligned connection points in that you may not have a properly segmented audience. So y your lead magnet may attract an audience that can’t afford your offer. And then your lead magnet content has nothing to do with your offer. So some of the things, you know, I see lead magnets as a sliding scale in terms of their perceived value and how it connects to your offer. So if you have a high ticket offer, an ebook is not gonna be the best lead magnet. Cuz going from a free, let’s call it 20 page e-book into a $5,000 program, that’s a really big jump. So you wanna, the more interactive and hands-on you are in your lead magnet, the higher price your offer can be.
RV (13:06):
So what are some examples? So, so I love that. So, so basically the higher the price of the offer, the more valuable the lead magnet needs to be.
LC (13:19):
Yes.
RV (13:19):
Okay. And then when you mention, you say the lead magnets are like a sliding scale of perceived value. So if you have it, if so, if an e-book is on the low end mm-hmm. , what would be high-end lead magnets? Like, what would be, so let’s, let’s say you do have a, you know, a six month, one-on-one coaching program and it costs, you know, a thousand dollars a month, right? So you have a $6,000 offer some, something like that. What, how would you do the lead magnet differently?
LC (13:48):
I would do a live webinar, but for something like that I would do the lead magnet stacky method, where you may have someone, especially if you’re going with cold traffic, you have this six month coaching program and, and they haven’t heard of you yet. They bought into what you have to offer, what your mission is, and they, you need to build that trust and rapport still. So you may start with a quiz or an ebook, something that is on the lower end of the perceived value chain. And through that you’re gonna say, okay, I’ve given you value. I, I know this about you, and so I know that X is gonna help you even more, which would be your main lead magnet and a live webinar. The higher the ticket, I would do a live webinar. If you’re, if you’re looking at something that’s maybe 2,500, you could do an on-demand webinar, but something like 6,000, I would do a live webinar. Because what happens in those situations, one of the best ways to convert someone into something like that is a live transformation. So we have people that we see that go live on Instagram every single day and do free coaching, but what they’re doing is they’re building this, this audience that sees these live transformations happening and they can fill up their mastermind of it or something like that. So the more you can create that live experience, the more people will pay.
RV (15:25):
Interesting. So, and when you say on demand, when you say like, on demand webinar, just to be clear mm-hmm. , so you’re talking about like a pre-recorded automated, is that what you mean by an on-demand? Yes. Webinar, yes. Okay. And then, and you’re saying that you might be able to, so if you said, okay, I’m gonna give away a quiz or an ebook or maybe a quiz, then an e-book, then an invitation to a webinar, then they’re on a webinar, then at the end of the webinar, which, you know, you’re adding some value for an hour of the webinar or something mm-hmm. , then at the end of that, now you could make a two, a 1500, $2,000 offer, something like that. But if you’re, and you’re saying that could be a prerecorded webinar Yes. But if you’re gonna go north of that, then you would say you would basically invite people to like watch a live coaching and like a live coaching session of you with somebody?
LC (16:18):
Yes. Yes, I would. And I would spend that time, you know, you may say it’s a, an hour long, I would spend that time, the first, first bit of time teaching, have it, make sure it’s a, a masterclass on, you know, part of your framework. And then, then you wanna open it up to be able to interact with that audience and provide coaching transformations. And all along the way, once you get to that segment, you’re starting to infuse what you sell and say, you know, in my coaching program we go deeper into this and, and starting to, to build into that message
RV (16:59):
Uhhuh . So then that just to like talk about the funnel example. So it’s like mm-hmm. , maybe they saw you speak on stage, then you had an offer for a ebook, then you invite them to a webinar, and then at the end of the webinar you sell something or you invite them to, I guess you would invite them to a live webinar mm-hmm. . And then you, you still do, you still basically do a webinar, but you’re saying incorporating the element of like a live coaching session where they see someone go through the process would then be, is like a key thing for selling a high, high like north of a few thousand dollars?
LC (17:35):
Yes. Mm-hmm. .
RV (17:36):
Gotcha. Yeah. Gotcha. How do you use the funnels in the follow up sequence? So like you know, I mean, I guess I would just be curious, like let’s say you did that, let’s say you built all that out and you go, okay, I’m speaking and they’re getting this free thing, and then they’re showing up for a webinar, or they’re here live, they watch this live coaching experience. Like in your experience, do most of the people that are gonna buy buy right on that at that moment when you make the offer? Or is there a follow up that happens afterwards?
LC (18:10):
There’s a follow up that happens afterwards. And I would say from doing, we’ve built so many launches over the years, ed, there’s really this, this sweet spot when it comes to your launch. And even if you’re doing an evergreen, it follows the same type of sequence. It just turns on and off. And so you’re gonna get about 20% of your sales from that webinar. So 20% of the sales you do in your launch are gonna come from the webinar.

LC (00:04):
The rest of your sales are going to come in the last 24 to 48 hours of your launch. And that doesn’t mean that, uh, you can have a two day launch and the rest of your sales come in the next day. We actually have found the best launch timeline is 12 days. And so that creates this ability for you to share more stories and transformations as you lead into that final close down. Uh, and so in those last 48 hours, about 70% of your sales are gonna come in and you’re gonna send probably somewhere between five and six emails. A And so throughout that 12 day period, you’re sending most like an email every single day. But they’re very prescriptive. Uh, you want to tell them what they’re, you wanna focus on a feature that’s in your program, but highlighting it through the benefits language. And you also wanna have emails that act as your faq. But when you ask questions and your email marketing, you’re not answering questions like, how many video modules is this? It’s more of, this is what I have going on in my life. How is this program gonna fit in my schedule? And so you’re, you’re thinking of what are the sales objections someone’s gonna have? And you’re using those as the questions and doing FAQs through that. And then you’re sharing more case studies and stories of testimonials through that 12 day window.
RV (01:40):
Uhhuh . And did I catch that? Yeah. Did I, did you say that you think that roughly 70% of the sales will come in like the last 48 hours?
LC (01:49):
Yes.
RV (01:50):
Yes. And then, and you said you send something like six, six emails in the last 48 or out, so usually like two emails on the second to last day and then like four emails on the, on the LA on the last day, the day of,
LC (02:02):
Yes. Yep. Mm-hmm. . And it’s a lot, it’s a lot of emails and you know, if you’re out there funnel hacking, you’ll notice like there are some that send 10 emails on that last day. But, you know, part of what we talked about earlier with the funnels there, it, it’s a lot of what happens outside of that window. So they may, someone may be on your list and receiving all these emails and you’re gonna get a higher number of unsubscribes during that period. That’s naturally gonna happen. But what you do outside, once that’s finished, what you do outside that period is you’re building that list back up so that when you come back around to launch a significant high ticket, you have a new list of people. And then you also have this list of people that they really enjoyed the messages, they really enjoyed the emails with the stories that you shared, but they just weren’t ready to buy yet.
RV (02:58):
Ah-huh. . Yeah, I mean that’s, I mean, to me that’s really encouraging and such an important thing for people to know. Like, cuz you do this webinar, right? You like, put all this effort into it and then a couple people buy, you know, if you have mm-hmm. , you know, if it, you have a couple people buy and then you’re just like totally deflated and defeated. Like it doesn’t work like this whole thing and you have to have the follow up part of it to pull this all, to pull this all together. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Um, and so, so in a 12, you, you know, using that like 12 day sequence, so basically is it basically like the first two or three days are getting people to show up for the webinar and then on like day four you run the webinar and then day five and six is like a replay of the webinar and then basically like five to seven days of like, here’s a case study, here’s a question, here’s a story, here’s an extra bonus. Um, if you sign up and then, and then it all ends with like, there’s a deadline. And on that, on this deadline, you know this, there’s four emails on that day. Is that kind of the rough Yes. Arc of it?
LC (04:10):
Yeah. Yeah.
RV (04:11):
How many
LC (04:12):
Yeah, exactly like that. H
RV (04:13):
How many, uh, I know this is a hard question to, to ask and to be pinned, to be pinned down on, but like if you go through this whole process, right? Because this is like, it’s a lot of work and it’s time and it’s money, um mm-hmm. , you build the funnel, you write the emails, you build the email list, you put together the webinar, you do the webinar, you have the live coaching, you have the follow ups, like you do all this stuff in your eyes, what do you see as a successful conversion percentage on of, of a funnel? Right? So let let, I mean mm-hmm. , let’s just say you start with a 10,000 person email list mm-hmm. and go, you know, if I have a 10,000 person email list, how does that whittle down to become how many customers? And like in your eyes where you go, gosh, this, this, you know, this would be awesome. This would be like pretty solid and then, you know, anything less would be like, yeah, it’s less, you know, it’s very much not what we would hope for. Um, yeah, like if, talk me through that.
LC (05:16):
Yeah. So I would say, and I’m not great at mental math, so you may have to help me here. Okay.
RV (05:21):
I can help you do,
LC (05:22):
I’ll do the percentages . Uh, but if you have like a 10,000 person email list and you send out, I’m doing this free master masterclass, it’s gonna be live, it’s your webinar, uh, and let’s say about of your 10,500 sign up for that webinar, you’re not gonna get a huge chunk of people. And then from that 500 about 70% would actually show up to the webinar. And that’s a really good show up rate. It may be more like 50%. Okay. And then from that, the people that stayed on and watched and are now in your s they would probably generate about 5% of sales would be good from that 500. But I would say, I would still say 5% of the 500, that’s what I would track as the math. However, you’re still gonna be emailing your list even if they didn’t show up. That’s where those fourth days are great. Where it’s saying, Hey, you missed it, here’s the replay. And they have a couple days to watch the replay. And even if they don’t ever watch, you’re still sending them through that sales cycle.
RV (06:40):
Yeah. So, so like 5% basically of, so we, we, we call that term funnel conversion percentage, which is the 500 mm-hmm. that opted in a good solid funnel would be like 5%. So 10% would be 50. So 25% would be 25 people. So if you had 500 people sign up for the webinar, a bunch wouldn’t show. You know, some, some would show, a bunch wouldn’t show, some would watch a replay, some wouldn’t. And then I always find it ironic cuz it’s like some of the people who actually buy didn’t do anything. They signed up for the first email. Oh yeah. Waited till the last minute, saw the bonuses and were like, yep, I’m in. And never like watched anything . Um
LC (07:21):
Yep. So we’re all natural born procrastinators, uhhuh, I mean, like you say, procrastinate on purpose. So that’s why that those last days, that’s why the, the timeline is the timeline cuz people are going to wait until that very last minute. And even then, and that’s what’s the hardest is co telling people do not stick to your word. Do not open that cart back up when you close the cart. Because I’ve done it myself where I’ve had FOMO on, on a course and I’m like, oh I know I saw the 27 email that I got from this and it was gonna end, but the next morning I was like, I’m ready to buy and it’s gone. You just, you have to stick to it because you’re gonna open it back up and, and that integrity you’re building with that person is going to convert them. Mm-hmm.
RV (08:08):
. But I think that again, just like it’s good to have you walk through that and I’m glad you said that cuz those, those numbers would match up, you know, I think reasonably with like what the mm-hmm. what we would hope for. I mean our, our best converting funnel that we have is a summit funnel and it’s me interviewing mm-hmm. a lot of our like pretty well known clients and we see about 8% of those people Yeah. Will request a call. So a conversion mm-hmm. for us is, that’s not even a credit card that’s like they request a call. Right. Um, and then mm-hmm. , most of our like, uh, outside of that we’ve got some evergreen webinar funnels that convert it like 5%, but most of them are closer to like two and a half to 4% mm-hmm. . And we’ve got some video funnels that convert at 1.3%. Um, so I think the, um, you know, but if you started with 10,000 people, you might go, oh man, I’m such a failure. I got 20 people to sign up. And it would be like, no, you’re, that’s like, that’s the, that’s how it works. . Yeah.
LC (09:10):
That’s how it works. And you’re doing good. And I mean, that’s a big part cuz it kinda like you said, you’re building a lead magna, you’re building pages, you’re putting people through a webinar, you’re doing, you’re doing so much and people burn out from it. And, and that’s be, you wanna maximize your work and not your effort. And so it’s like you, you have to create all these things, but once you’ve created it once, you can just recycle it. I mean, I can’t tell you with, there are certain funnels out there that they launched twice a year every single year. I’ve gotten the same exact emails in that sales sequence for three years in a row. Hmm. You know, and, and it took me two years before I ended up buying that program. And so it is that like you put in a lot of work and effort to build this funnel, but you can keep it on, tweak it as you go and, you know, everything should start with your program and what you provide, the value you provide and be extracted from that. So if you’ve got a coaching program, take one piece of the framework that you’ve already created and just tweak it a little bit here and there and turn that into your lead magnet. Yeah. Or turn that into your webinar script and then, you know, there’s just so much repurposing and reusing people start from scratch and you should never start from scratch.
RV (10:31):
Mm-hmm. , do you have any, um, tips for Evergreen or on-demand webinars,
LC (10:39):
Evergreen and on demand? I would keep the, I usually like to use those as like my mid ticket kind of funnel. Like if you’re gonna have, if you have multiple offers in your offer suite, I like to use those in my mid ticket price and low ticket. Um, evergreen is, I feel like it’s this unicorn people chase and they think that they’ll sustain an entire business on an evergreen model. Uh, but it, it, you, you need those launches infused there to get those like big pickups of revenue. Uh, and then forever Evergreen. I, we’ve, we’ve run them in the past where, uh, and we have one currently running where it’s to a book and then to a minicourse and to, you know, their entire offer sequence. And the, the secret to it is making sure you build and nurture sequences along the way. So when you do that, say you come off of a sale, you wanna make sure you have about four weeks of just value sequences and it’s not an email every day, but you’re, you’re providing value and then you’re leading into the next thing. And that’s how you can kind of turn that evergreen
RV (11:48):
Uhhuh . And you’re just saying basically like in a series of ascending offers from like mm-hmm. a book to a course to whatever, but you have, it’s like a bunch of mini funnels that you sort of string together with like a value funnel or a value chain in between there of just like, sort of cooling, cooling the jets for a minute and, and going back and adding value. Yes. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. That’s really, really interesting. Well, y’all, so if you’re interested in more of this from Lauren and, um, you want to find out more, we set up a little link. If you go to brand builders group.com/lauren, this is our affiliate link. Um, as I said, she’s someone that I have loved working with. I trust her. I, you know, I enjoyed getting to know her. Every time we talk and hang out, I pick up like some really good stuff. And this has been awesome, Lauren. Like, uh, I think even, even as someone who spent a lot of time studying funnels myself, like I always pick up l you know, new things and, and, and tidbits from this. So, um, you know, last thing I would just ask you is, is if someone is considering their very first funnel right now, like what would you say to them mm-hmm. if they’ve never done this before, but they’re kind of like thinking about it, what do you think they should know?
LC (13:05):
I think one of the most important things to know if you’re thinking about this and you don’t know where to start, is focus on providing as much value as possible in the front end. Do not be afraid to tell people what you do and lift the curtains and, and they wanna buy the how. So people will hold back on how much value they share, but they wanna buy, they wanna buy the how. So always provide that value and then knowing that your product is not your offer. So really focus on how are you helping someone apply and accelerate their results. And that’s gonna be your offer. Once you have a solid offer, then you’re ready to launch.
RV (13:53):
Mm-hmm. , I love that. I love that about helping them apply and accelerate their offer. Like, and that’s what it’s really about, right? We’re really trying to mm-hmm. , we’re not just trying to make money from a stranger and be like, ha, we won, we got you. We convinced you to give us your money. Like, we’re trying to deliver a result for people, um exactly. In their lives. And I think that’s exactly, that’s the, that’s the part that is the difference between slime and service. And that’s the part that I think people can vet out and they can sense like, you’re just trying to sell me something versus you actually care about helping me achieve this transformation. So thanks for that, Lauren. Um, we really appreciate it and we wish you all the best my friend.
LC (14:39):
Awesome. Thank you Rory.

Ep 383: How To Grow Your Business By Changing The Way You Think | Vinnie Fisher Episode Recap

AJV (00:00):
All right y’all. So I was having a recent conversation about growth and scale and which one do you need when, and I had kind of like teed up this conversation as growth is about growing revenue, but scale is about growing profits. And so when should you turn your focus from growth to scale? And in this really helpful conversation, that whole idea just kind of imploded in a really healthy way. And so I thought it was worth sharing is that don’t think about growth versus scale. We as business owners personal brands, entrepreneurs, all the same thing. We need both. We need growth and we need to be paying attention to scale when it comes to profits early on. But don’t confuse the two, right? Healthy growth means that you are not going to go out of business, you’re not gonna run outta steam, you’re not gonna experience burnout.
AJV (01:04):
You’re not trying to do it in some expeditious manner where you’re spending all this money before you’re making it. But you can grow and have a focus on profits too. And this kind of, this concept of you should always have a focus on profits even in the midst of growth or scale, even when you’re doing capital investments with personnel hiring or technology or real estate. It’s like that doesn’t mean you don’t have a focus on profits. You always have a focus on profits, even in the midst of growth phases. And scale does not always mean that there is a revenue growth and a scale growth. And scale means you’re growing profits. That’s not really the right way to think about it. And it was such a healthy conversation for me to come back and go, whoa, okay, I need to realign my thinking here.
AJV (01:56):
It’s like I always need to be focused on profits, even in heavy growth seasons. And it’s not that you can grow or scale, it’s like, oh, they happen together, they can happen together, but you gotta have a good plan. So that’s what the rest of this conversation’s about is how do you have a plan for healthy growth while also keeping keeping your eyes on profits, which should always just happen synchronistically, right? It’s not one or the other. So here’s a couple of things that came outta this conversation is that typically there are two phases of business. Phase one, get customers, phase two, improve operations, and they go in that order, . So I just know that it is easy to sometimes oftentimes get distracted by going, we need to create better services. We need to have better marketing, we need better this, we need more of this. We need to da, da da da da. And we take our eye off the ball, which is actually what keeps us in business, which is we need to get more customers
AJV (02:59):
And we need to keep the ones that we have. And that is a part of improving operations and improving systems. But you can improve on what you have if you don’t have customers coming in. So this is in order one, get customers, two, get more customers, three, improve operations. That’s in order, right? And often we spend all of our money doing the ladder too soon. And that doesn’t mean you don’t still have a heart and a desire and a passion for your customers, but in order to do all the other things, you have to have customers, you have to have revenue to then have expenses to do those things. So get customers, get more customers, improve operations. That’s the order that it goes in. Always keep a focus on profits. Even when you start, you don’t, don’t sell yourself on the bad idea that you’re in startup mode.
AJV (03:46):
So there are no profits. That’s bad business, that’s bad mindset, that’s a bad thinking. It’s like no, you can have a startup and still have profits. That just takes discipline. That takes patience. And those are things that are required for good, healthy growth. Good. It was a good reminder for me. It’s not growth versus scale. It’s growth and scale. And the reason that people don’t like to talk about growth often is because growth sounds like work and scale sounds like automation. . So like, but growth is work, but that’s what works, right? It, it does take effort and it takes investment of time, money and resources. Yeah, growth is work, but it’s also what works. The other thing is just this importance, like the radical importance of your mindset as an entrepreneur. That’s, and not just an entrepreneur, but just as a human being.
AJV (04:44):
The mindset is really important. And so these were some of like the key takeaways from this conversation around growth and scale, but more important of well, how do you get there? And the conversation naturally led lended itself to this important conversation on attitude and mindsets. And these are a few of the takeaways that really resonated with me. So I hope they resonate with you is number one, you need people. So don’t take advantage of them and don’t take ’em for granted. You need them. Do you need people as clients? Do you need people as team members? You need people as your friends. You need people and people are not a burden, they’re a privilege. And it’s not your burden to lead people. It’s your privilege to lead people. And that’s a radical mindset, right? I hear this term a lot. Like, I got people problems. No, you don’t not you have people responsibilities, right? And that’s just a slight mindset change. Now, I don’t have people problems. I have people responsibilities cuz it’s my privilege that I get the chance to lead a team of people who are committed to me and my company and my mission.
AJV (05:57):
That is a privilege that I get and it’s my responsibility to help lead these people. It’s not a burden to, to take care of problems. So, so powerful. Just really helpful of going the way that we allow ourselves to talk to ourselves and the way that we allow things to populate in our vernacular and our vocabulary, in our conversations. It actually does one of two things. It incredibly helps, is incredibly helpful or it’s incredibly detrimental and it’s completely the thoughts and the words that you allow into your mind that put you on a certain trajectory. You are rather gonna go down the path of I have all these problems, all these people, all these issues. And then you’re just, it’s Debbie Downer mode, right? It’s like I got all these things to go. It’s so crazy. Or it’s, I get the privilege of leading a group of people that have, are committing 40 hours of their life to me every week and they’re committed to seeing through a vision that they’re buying into.
AJV (07:04):
Like that’s a privilege. What a different even physical feeling that comes upon me of going, it’s my privilege, not my burden, right? It’s my responsibility, not my problem. Just those little things make a radical difference in how you view growth and revenue and customer acquisition and customer retention and profits and scale. Just those two slight things, majorly just in a 45 minute conversation can shift the way that you approach the rest of your day, if not your month or even your life. So your mindset matters when it comes to how you wanna grow your business, how you, how you wanna actually keep people, keep clients and retain profits. Your mindset matters. And then the last thing I was gonna share from this conversation is I asked a question. I said, if there was one common denominator of success of like when you see this and people are companies if there was one thing that you said, I know when I see this, that success is inevitable.
AJV (08:08):
It may not be around the corner, but it’s inevitable for this person in this company. What would that one thing be? What would that common denominator be? And I love the answer to this question. You said I know for a fact when people can actually see in themselves and their own companies the mistakes that they’ve made and they have the courage to change them, I know that at some point they’re gonna win it. Whatever they’re doing, it’s going to turn successful, it’s going to grow, it’s gonna have profits, it’s gonna make a difference. But when you’re able to look yourself and your company in the mirror and go, that’s not working, that was a mistake. And that’s okay cuz we can change it. And when you have the courage to do that and you actually do the, have the discipline
AJV (08:55):
To do the work that it takes to make those changes at some point down the line, it it could be quickly, it may not be quickly, but at some point you’re going to be successful. That was really humbling and enlightening of going. All it takes is for me to be honest with myself about what I’m doing in my own business, in my, with my own time. And that is the indicator of success of can I be honest enough and then have the courage to do the work that’s required to make the change so helpful. I was like this philosophical dream that happened in this conversation with so many nuggets in such a good way. So I took away so much. I hope that you grabbed at least something from my downloads and hopefully it helps you and your business and on your day and if it, if enough not today, that it helps you at some day in the future. So I’ll catch you next time. Until then, I’ll see you later.

Ep 382: Building a Profits and People First Mindset with Vinnie Fisher

AJV (00:02):
Hey y’all. Welcome to a new episode on the influential Personal brand. I have got a really special guest today because it’s not often I bring on a guest where I’m their client. But today I have a new friend, Vinnie Fisher, who is the CEO of a fully accountable, which is our bookkeeping controller, fractional C F O Tax Strategy Firm, , that’s all the things that we use. It’s basically the Financial Department of Brand Builders Group and Vinny founded and as the CEO of that. He’s also an author of two amazing books we’ll talk about and there might be more than two. This is just, I’m thinking of the two I know about. But before I introduce you to Vinny, I actually wanna tell you why you need to stick around and listen to this episode. So before we get into it, you’ll know if this is an episode for you.
AJV (00:53):
We’re gonna talk today about the differences between growth and scale, because they’re different and we hear from our community and our audience all the time. I hear this all the time. Well, it’s just time for me to scale. Why there, why? And most of us don’t have to, we think we should. And so we’re gonna talk about the differences on a business standpoint of what it means to both grow and scale. And then we’re also gonna talk a lot about the mindset that kind of comes around that. So if you’re in a particular season of your life or your business where you’re going, I wanna grow, but I don’t know how, or I wanna scale, but I’m not and you’re confused between what is growth and what is scale, then truly this is the episode for you. And if you’re really confused on if you should or should not grow or scale, this is also for you. This is a lot around that mindset around that. So this is an episode that you wanna stick around for when it comes to that. Now let me formally introduce you to Vinny Fisher. Vinny I already mentioned is the c e o and founder of Fully Accountable. But I also have here, and I love so much that this is in your bio cuz people never put in it’s like that, that you’re married, you’ve got, you married how long?
VF (02:13):
Almost 30 years.
AJV (02:14):
Almost 30 years. That’s one of my favorite things ever. Nobody ever puts that in their bios anymore. But my husband and I just celebrated our 16th date anniversary. So we’re, we’re nerds. We celebrate dating and married. So
VF (02:29):
Actually we’re 31 years if I add the three or I was slow playing the whole situation. So it’s me, .
AJV (02:35):
But I love that. I think that’s a testament to success both in and out of business. So I love that. That’s in your bio. Alright, so let’s talk about all the things. So Vinny, help our audience get to know you. Like what’s your background? Like how did fully accountable Star, you got these awesome books, like why did you write books? Like What’s your story?
VF (02:55):
First off, I wanna start with thank you aj, your energy. I got to listen to a show, but I also, like you said, I know from our teammates you are just a fun person to be around. It’s by the people who like to work with y’all and your team. So your energy’s great. I love what you’re doing for this community. So when you asked if I would be on the show, I felt very humbled and honored to do that. So thank you for having me. Oh, thank you. It’s easy to talk about me cuz I look at myself in the mirror every day. , you know, I I started early on, I’m a lawyer by training. Uhm not an accountant. I actually wouldn’t hire me to be the cfo. F I like you was our first client. I built this organization cuz I saw something that was missing that I needed from the marketplace.
VF (03:39):
So I fast forward to my story is I’m highly creative. Like I’m the one that starts something, right? So, you know, if I was a church person, I’d be a church planter. If I’m a business person, I’m a startup person, not necessarily go and join an existing business. So I highly creative. I had a eight figure health brand, lot of women’s face cream, fun stuff. Marketing. You don’t really normally hear a lawyer marketer, right? And so I like to write highly creative and I had no real capacity to understand all my high transactions. And so I saw a problem I wanted to fix it went to go buy it from the public accounting space and it didn’t exist. And so what I envisioned in my mind in 2014 was more like a 2020 version of our company and we set out the build it cuz the tech wasn’t there.
VF (04:32):
But that’s my story. Like when I look back through it, I have you know, I was trained early on in a big fancy firm cuz I did well enough in school and law school and got recruited in highly professional firm. But I, I look back, I always had like this little like chip on my shoulder because I would’ve come from an impoverished environment and not really like, just physically impoverished, more mentally impoverished. Like we thought small, we were always waiting for the shoe to drop, but there was shame always around our last name. And I just had this chip that I didn’t want that. And so I first phase of my career was always to outwork the next person near me. And I realized early on that there’s a lot of smart people and I’m not necessarily one of them, but my secret weapon is I just usually outlast and outwork most people.
AJV (05:21):
Hmm. I love that. And you know what’s so funny I literally, I’m not exaggerating. One of my my true, like if you were to ask my husband, he would tell you the same thing. It’s like, what is AJ just extraordinarily gifted out? And he would tell you just outlasting the competition. Mm-Hmm. , she just follows up and follows up. My personal sales philosophy is I never hear no, I only hear not right now. Just not right now. It’s gotta outlast the others. Right. , that’s definitely,
VF (05:48):
Well, you know, the opposite of that’s true for me, Rory, our aj it’s so funny you said that because I, I was, had a terrible relationship to the word no because I have a gift of of hospitality, so I wanna say yes to everything, including use of my time. So I had to learn to start saying not right now. That was a verse version of how to learn how to say no.
AJV (06:06):
Oh, that’s so funny. . That’s awesome. Well I mentioned these two books that you’ve got, I’ve mentioned ’em a couple times, but I didn’t tell anyone what they’re called. And we’re gonna kinda, I just, I think talking about false profits and I remember I got a copy of this book when I became a client of Fully Accountables. The firm sent this out and I remember I thought it was so fascinating at the time because I don’t think creative attorneys are typically terms that go together. Yeah. I would say, I would say the same thing with CPAs or financial people. Not to be offending anybody, but Yeah. But
VF (06:42):
It’s true
AJV (06:42):
Typically, right? . And I remember getting this book of going, well they don’t even know that we’re a personal branding firm and they already get the power of personal branding of content creation for their communities. And so I think that I would just love to know like, why did you write that book and what is false prophets?
VF (07:03):
Yeah. You know and by the way, I want all of your community to know we, we love giving out things, our stuff. We don’t really believe in kind of hoarding information. So we built a a page where later on you can get that, it’ll be in the show notes, but it’s just fully accountable.com/influential personal brand. And so the whole gist of it was honestly, I own that health supplement company that we briefly mentioned earlier. And I was making about 8% at the bottom line of a 40 million company. And it felt razor thing cuz we had to keep buying inventory and cash was tight and I knew we were doing something right. We had a really good product at the time, Ella. And it made it into Macy’s and all this fun stuff. And I’m making all kinds of noise on a lot of gross sales.
VF (07:49):
And I was really deflated that there was no money left at the end of the month. We were just big enough where it sucked actually. Like we were making a bunch and I was able to pay bills and have a lifestyle, but it wasn’t like there was accumulation going on. And you know, I one day was completely discouraged and I, I remember a friend being like, well what’s a business like in your space? Like, what’s it supposed to normally make as a profit? And I’m like, I don’t know. I I, I don’t know, I, whatever’s left. And that turned out to be obviously not right. Well, I did a little basic research and found out the type of business we had should have been profiting anywhere between 20 and 22%. And I’m like, wait a minute, I’m not making 8%, I’m losing 14% every month.
VF (08:36):
And then I said, why? And so I woke up one morning, AJ as crazy as this sounds, I’m already successful. This is, at this point this would be my third eight figure venture. Hmm. And I broke one of them tragically and wrote a book about it to kind of cleanse myself back to life. But I woke up and I’m like, wait a minute. It’s not how much revenue is on the top, it’s what we keep. And I was like, I think I know the title of this book I’m gonna write that I didn’t know I was gonna write. And that’s really, and the, you know, the first chapter, I say that every book has certain good principles and I’d say that solving for X was the game changer for us knowing what our business should make as a profit, looking at our direct expenses and then treating my cost to acquire the customer as my real variable expense, not my profit margin was a game changer for me. And actually it was the genesis that led to fully accountable.
AJV (09:30):
Oh, that’s so fascinating. And I, you know, it’s so interesting because like even when I approached you, I said I really want this podcast episode to really be about the difference between growth and scale and like mentally, like simply I just think about growth is revenue growth scale is profit growth, right? And to hear this idea of like you were, you know, I don’t even think people know what their profitability should be like they don’t even know what it could be, but they definitely don’t know what it should be. So just taking it like back to like the basics, like what are good goals for profitability of, and I know that’s like a loaded question based on business businesses, but generally speaking it’s like how do you know like, well what’s a good profit?
VF (10:16):
Yeah. So each, each industry has a standard, you know, and we can use some fun geeked out terms like the variation or the deviation of that standard. But each, each, you know, particular industry has a range that’s an appropriate range for a business model. So like in the public accounting space, a little bit different than where we live. It’s not unusual to think about a 30% profit margin. It’s actually quite reasonable. A lot of the digital world we live in, if you do digital ad agency space, they could live around 35% margin. The marketplace, Amazon sellers, depending on their blend between their own shopping cart versus the marketplace is probably 25 to 27% people like, all right Vinny, you know that cuz you studied a lot, honestly a little thing called the Google . And you could do real simple things like check in with trade associations of the type of work you do, ask some questions.
VF (11:16):
It’s actually much closer of an answer than you realize. You know, I subscribe to things like statistica and other survey things that allow me to extract some data for our data team and things. But even short of that, you there, that is a couple questions away. Like, like I’m not saying go put a Facebook post up of like, hey what should my profit margin be? Cuz you know, everyone’s gonna be a profit on that answer. So that may not be your best place. But there are things like that AJ that can give you a very clear, fair start to that so that you could have a, a base of something you can go after every company including fully accountable. Right? So we should profit about 25 to 28% if we’re in modes where we’re investing in something. That’s the next version of what we wanna add in this, in this case, we’re investing a lot in technology to try to remove some manual pieces to improve on error.
VF (12:13):
Well we’re gonna dip into the teens cuz I had another engineer to the team. Maybe I’ve staffed up a couple. So may right now we’re running at like 18% where we should be at 25. But I can explain to you where those seven points are because I have a baseline of knowing what I’m supposed to be. And I think that is one of the healthy things for a business is get a a a something to, to target after. So you have that and then you start looking at your leaky bucket. I’m not an accountant, I just started realizing where it was leaking cuz I was trying to shoot and needed to shoot for that number and now I can suddenly look at everything a little differently.
AJV (12:51):
Yeah. And it’s like that old saying, it’s like if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there . Exactly. It’s like you gotta, it’s basic goal setting, right? Set a goal doesn’t have to be necessarily legitimately what other people are doing. And I think some of that comes to the mindset that I know we’re gonna talk about a little bit of, it’s good to have perspective around what other people are doing and also go, but I could do it different. Like if this is what I really want, I could probably find a way to get there. So I am curious in a non-accounting perspective, how do you grow profits?
VF (13:23):
Yeah, so I, you know I I think one of the things that’s really amazing about our digital automation world today is that there’s tools that allow us to really get a bunch of stuff done quickly. I love that. One of the downside of automation is we wanna do that to every element of our business. And you know what, 83% of all companies in America are service companies. No. So if I were to say to our average client, Hey, what if I handed you 10 more clients right now, most of them was like, well no, maybe I’ll take four or maybe I’ll take three. Well then I’m like, well why are we using words like scale when you probably can’t even handle some of that growth? And we want, we’re so attracted to some of the automation pieces of growing our business that we get addicted to wanting to automate everything.
VF (14:17):
And so honestly, how do you build profit? I think you address, there’s two phase, probably three phases, but for sure two phases in business only about 7% of all companies America do 7 million of annualized revenue. So that means that the first goal is to actually acquire a customer that they, you have a, an offer that is a valuable proposition to them. The first phase of a business is to do that. The second phase is to improve its operations in its business process. A lot of us have that reversed. We have very little customers. We really want to improve all of it. When I’m like, no, you need some more customers and like, like
AJV (15:00):
Maybe
VF (15:01):
You should worry about that. So I think part of it is, is the phase of having a few more customers, but just a few more. Don’t hear. I need 60 more. Cuz part of my story is I worked really hard at my reputation in the market and mm-hmm. I cared and I still do about that. And so I think how do you build a profit one client at a time?
AJV (15:27):
I love that. I love that so much. As timely to this conversation as many people in the business community are talking about this bank run with S V B and the F D I C and government bailouts and rising interest rates and all the things banking. And it’s been really interesting to go. But if you look at what really happens, at the end of the day, it was a bunch of VC backed startups, really highly in the tech world. And most of them with most of their funding coming from investors, not from customers. Yep. And my husband and I had this really helpful conversation around, if you don’t have customers, you don’t have a business at some point, right? The funding will run out at some point. But you gotta have customers. So how much of our focus is really on sales, right? At the end of the day, marketing, but sales get more customers and once you have more customers, then improve operations, then upgrade the systems, but get the customers first. I love that.
VF (16:29):
Yep. And it’s really hard in fairness to everybody listening that habit switch of get the customer to then turn gears and cuz it’s at that point where I started to become the c e O, once I have a maturing operation, it’s at that point I have to switch gears from only worrying about acquiring a customer to now servicing them better, improving process, deliver efficiency. Like those are s you want those to be first things, but if we’re really honest, those are second things. Yeah.
AJV (17:00):
If you wanna survive. Yeah. If you wanna
VF (17:02):
Survive,
AJV (17:02):
If you wanna make it so good. I really love that. So onto this conversation of a little bit of this growth mindset versus scale mindset. I’d love to just hear your thoughts. They could be tactical, philosophical. Yeah, it could be whatever, but why grow? Why scale? What’s the difference between the two and which one should you do?
VF (17:23):
I heard a great quote. I asked the question at a conference. I actually was sitting in the green room, which, so that’s not a flex, it’s just true. Had a little one-on-one with one of the founders of Legal Zoom and then he was getting interviewed by the conference host. And so I was sitting relatively close and raised my hand and I said, Hey, when should a company worry about growth versus profit? And I loved his answer, it’s the way I think, so I’ll give him the credit. And I was delighted to hear a validation. He’s like, every company should worry about profit. The only ones that have a little bit of a different know the ones that are, are funded sufficiently to re worry about profit later. Hmm. And I’m like, oh boy. Okay, wait a minute. If that’s true, that sets the deck for everybody.
VF (18:14):
We’re all worried about pushing profit down the road Yeah. And worrying about like getting paid later, but building something and making all these excuses right now. So I think everyone is, has bought and sold a bill of goods that isn’t true. Businesses need to build the bedrock of healthy growth in place. Listen, I love these adages of 10 x and they sound super great. They do. They sound sexy. I want them all to be true. They just sound so good. I want all of that. And I’ve had some really amazing growth years, but things like two x two and a half x, three x are more in line with what looks like substantial growth for most of the marketplace. Mm-Hmm. unicorns are unicorns, which is why we call ’em that . But for most part, growth is a mindset of building out something stable.
VF (19:05):
That is at the point in my philosophy where scale starts to come discussion, like fully accountable has been in growth mode. It hasn’t only been recently with the breadth of clients we have and some of the technology we’re doing that I’m even starting to dream about the idea of exponential aspects of growth that could lead to things like scale. I can’t, I’m a growth person. I want scale to always be the thing it is talked about too much mm-hmm. as this thing everyone should do when honestly we need good, healthy, stable growth. And I suspect if more entrepreneur friends of ours believe that we probably could lower the breakage rate a little bit.
AJV (19:47):
So why do you think that is? Because I just know, like in my entrepreneur community and even in the brand builders group community, there is this tendency to go, it has to happen, it has to happen now and it has to be huge in order for it to mean anything. So like
VF (20:01):
Yeah, I think in the beginning, if you look at my story and look at my resume, my first good run was in figuring out the affiliate space in our web hosting company. And I realized, whoa, I just need like a bunch of people to send sales for me. And I remember in order to get affiliate to send me sale, I would always say to our, my affiliate managers, I want you to do everything for them. I want the link there. I want the creative there. I want you to deliver the creatives package the sizing back then I’m a little older aj, in case you didn’t notice. So the things didn’t always size well to the mobile phone. We wanted it on a desktop. Well I wanted all of that creative suite done for them. Mm-Hmm. and one of my young affiliate managers said, we’re doing everything. I’m like, the second it feels like work, no one wants to do it. So the problem with growth is it sounds like work. Mm-Hmm. And scale just sounds super fun, . And so of course I want scale, but growth requires an effort. And so we all want the thing that skips to the easy button line. We all want it. I’m guilty of it. We’re all guilty of it. And so it just sounds more enjoyable to scale than do all the work of growing.
AJV (21:05):
Yeah. It it is. It’s like, you know, that whole idea of like, build it and they will come. No, they don’t. No they won’t. . Maybe build ’em. You gotta tell everyone and then tell ’em again and again and again and maybe they will come. But I think there is a lot of that. I think the other, the other misconception that at least I see and experience in the marketplace and specifically the personal branding kind of like world right now is everyone talks about revenue. And they talk about how they had these, you know, six figure launch, how to make six figures in three days. How to, you know, 10 x your revenue, but yet no one talks about profitability. They talk where we know behind the scenes that a lot of these six figure launches lost six figures at the same time because of the amount of ad spend it took to get that. But that’s not the story being shared. And so
VF (21:54):
It doesn’t sound fun
AJV (21:56):
it
VF (21:56):
Just sounds way fun to say, I just put a hundred thousand dollars through the door even though I plus minus a thousand dollars left. Which is why I love that people like you are like, wait a minute, let’s really push into this subject because it is really what’s left. Not what comes, they have a correlation to each other. Right. You gotta drive revenue in order to be able to keep some revenue. I wanna be fair to that, but man, I, I had a big problem and I’ll be honest, I cared more about acquiring a new customer than keeping one.
AJV (22:28):
Hmm.
VF (22:29):
That was my big problem. That had to be fixed.
AJV (22:32):
Yeah. That’s a but that, that’s a big problem for a lot of people. So how’d you fix it?
VF (22:37):
Through a lot of medication and counseling now you know, school of hard knocks and honestly some personal development. I I had a lot of mindset stuff. I really had to take captive my thoughts. I spoke awful to myself. And I started to realize that I’m really good at acquiring a customer. And when I started seeing the metrics around what it costs to acquire one versus the reinvestment cost of keeping one, I’m like, holy cow, I’m working the same amount to work at getting a new customer. I could actually increase my runway of keeping a customer. And we took that health business breakage rate from like 15 to sub 10 and we were massively more profitable because we worried about keeping them buying a little longer. And it just slowly turned. It wasn’t this like cloud opening moment, but I just really got sick and tired of giving it all back.
AJV (23:34):
Yeah. I think that’s so important. It’s like if we spend as much time servicing, delivering and keeping our customers as we did getting them right now, some of us need to focus on getting ’em. Yeah. But once you have ’em, you also need to have a focus on keeping ’em, otherwise it’s just this, it’s exhausting revolving door. Now you kinda like tiptoed into this conversation around mindset. So I’m gonna just like, I’ll just blow the the door wide open on this conversation because I think this would be great. So you have a book called c e o Mindset. Yep. Right. And, and
VF (24:05):
They can have that free. All they gotta do is, we’ll, we’ll probably extort ’em an email out of ’em, but We’ll, if you live in America, we’ll mail you a nice fancy package. If you don’t,
AJV (24:16):
That’s awesome. That’s so awesome. But there’s a, a couple of things that I kinda like pulled out at, at a high level that I thought would be worth talking about. When it comes to kind of like the c e o mindset of first of all, what is a C E O mindset? Like what is the mindset that A C E O should have?
VF (24:37):
Yeah. So, you know, that’s really great. Right? And so first off, the title is used a lot in a lot of ways, right? And I, I wanna be fair with some of my presumptions of what A A C E O leads people. I, if, if you’re leading yourself, then okay, then wear two hats. You’re, you’re leading yourself in another role. I, I’m fine. I can have a c e O of one. I have personally never done that, but I can see where that doesn’t break down. But my C EShip and the way I see it is I have the privilege of being the leader of an organization of other people on the team. And so, you know, for me, my faith and who I am and what I stand in, and that’s important to me. Like obviously not every one in my company has a person of faith, but that’s super important to me.
VF (25:25):
And so I lead with attributes that I think of look to be really important. But I know someone mutual in your life that’s in mine, John Maxwell, and he did a study of executives and of all the traits that were most important to A C E O their integrity came out as the number one thing. And so I think first and foremost, I think the transparency and integrity of the C E O is hands down, the number one thing A C E O does, they leave people. And so since I’m left with the burden of leading people, depending on the complexity of your organization, I might be reading metrics and then conveying strategy and like helping to unblock blockages. But at its core, I’m helping to maximize the potential of the people on our team.
AJV (26:12):
I love that. And I love John Maxwell. Actually, our entire company is we have a book of the quarter club. Yeah. And so everyone has like, we kinda like all read a book and we’re actually reading how successful people think right now. And they’re easy, simple reads. But you, you said something there that really got me thinking and I was having actually having a conversation with a very successful entrepreneur friend of mine. She’s got wickedly successful med spas all over the west coast. And she was talking about just like, man, it’s like, ah, I got a a a a people problem. Right. A burden. Mm-Hmm. And we just had we’re both people of faith and we just had this conversation around like, what if we stopped looking at people problems as people problems and started looking at them like our ministry opportunities. Amen. Like, and it’s like, instead of looking at my business, like my job, it’s like, no, this is my ministry and these are the opportunities to per to minister. Not necessarily like I’m doing bathtub, bad baptisms at work meetings or anything. Yeah. I mean, I’ll, that’s not what I’m doing. But it’s this conversation around, it’s like, it, this isn’t a a problem, it’s a privilege. Right. This isn’t my work, it’s my ministry. And that just that those simple conversations that we tell ourselves of, it’s not a problem. It’s a privilege I’ve been
VF (27:29):
Given. Yeah. So take captive your thoughts, right? Yeah. So I think it is the battle of the mind and I think the c e o mindset around what it is, the privilege that I get to walk along other people’s burdens. Think, you know, I think one of the things that can be hard today is the world has the vision of humility backwards. Right? The world would say think of yourself like think less of yourself. Mm-Hmm. like you’re in a lower, actually, really, you should just be thinking of yourself less. Yeah. And so I’m always thinking about what our people, because I wanna be honest about something. I love it. I’ve talked to all these high principles. I, I need to admit something, Debbie, my wife knows I’m inherently lazy. I don’t want to do something twice . So I know if I invest in our people and I help it, I don’t want to do something again that I don’t think I should do again.
VF (28:24):
And so there are people who want to thrive in those positions. Hmm. And actually, if I can help them do that, I know that they’re going to be more satisfied in helping solve other people’s problems. So think about our CFOs and you work with one and if I can actually help him capture his strengths, his vision of what he can know that he can do to help you, I know that he’s going to have greater satisfaction which is going to impact him and his family, which will then ultimately impact you and will impact our team. I think the ripple effect of someone who understands the privilege to carry others’ burdens, now we have leadership and that’s the quote above my head, I think about every day without leadership, you know, no vision in people perish. Right? So I think that’s the burden of the privilege I get every day. And I love it. It’s super hard. I go home super exhausted when my brain is un empty from carrying others burdens. And when I’m done doing that or I’m tired, it’ll be time to tag out. Hmm.
AJV (29:23):
No, I think that’s, I mean, I think that’s, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if it’s about growing the business or, you know, it is, it is like both really. It’s like at, at the end of the day, as long as you’re focused on people, right? You’re gonna get more customers, you’ll keep more customers, you’ll get better employees and you’ll keep the good ones that you have. Right. But it’s about having this desired interest of like, I wanna invest in people. I remember, oh gosh, this was a long time ago. Don’t even, I can’t even give credit where credit is due on this. But I remember at some point in my life hearing this, and it has stuck with me and the conversation was around somebody had said like, I just don’t wanna spend all this time and all this money into all these new employees if they’re just gonna get up and leave. Mm-Hmm. , and I remember the speaker, author, whoever it was said, but what if they stay? Yeah. Like, what if you don’t do this? And they stay, like, where do you wanna be? Like, would you rather go through and invest and have the risk of them leaving, but have them high performing or have very average mediocre performance, but they stay a long time? What do you want?
VF (30:32):
Yeah. And so, you know, when we think about principles, you know, the CEO’s mindset, the principle there of that book is all about investing in people. So the best chapter in that is the people chapter not, and not actually that’s my favorite. The first two, the mindset and the people. And what I’m, why I’m saying that is I believe that small and medium as enterprises, importantly all of them, but really the smaller the enterprise, the, the key leader is really going to dictate the heartbeat and health of the company. And for me, my values, who I am, what I stand for are critically important. If I’m surrounding myself with people that I’m gonna invest in that don’t align with that, the organization’s most likely gonna have a heart attack. And so we only really hire for effort, attitude and ability. Mm-Hmm. And what we do is we think of competence, all things equal.
VF (31:27):
Great. We’ll take someone with a little bit more experience. Most people hire competence and then go try to train on the other items. Mm-Hmm. . And they’re mismatched and I, every one of us, including me, when we hire for competence first and, and don’t use our own elements of our scorecard or our core values, we can be very mismatched very quickly with people all the time. I hear people say, oh my gosh, Vinny, they, they all like sound like you. They act like this. I’m like, I hope they don’t all sound like me, but they all have common elements of the way we deliver. Because we work really hard at the people in this organization should be mostly aligned on those issues. And I can tell you there was times when I’ve shown up to one of my own companies where I didn’t even want to go inside. Mm.
AJV (32:15):
I’ve been there.
VF (32:16):
Yeah, buddy. That’s a problem that starts with me because I was building a, a culture of mismatched people who were highly competent.
AJV (32:24):
I mean, that is like, at the end of the day, it’s like people alignment is culture. Right? It’s finding people who already have alignment and then you’re just coalescing in this larger vision that is culture. Right? That is culture. That’s so good. I love that. So
VF (32:40):
I, the mindset around that, your question was like, where’s the mindset? Well, I have to be the custodian of that. Yeah.
AJV (32:46):
So,
VF (32:46):
You know, we have things about clients going too far. Well, uncle Vinny shows up and steps in between that if we have people taking plays off or they need a little bit of like love through a situation or somebody on the team commits some of the unforgivable offenses, well the vice principal shows up. Right. I’m the culture. If I’m part of the curation, I am at most definitely the top security guard.
AJV (33:12):
Yeah. The culture keeper. You’re the culture keeper. I love that. You said something that I wrote down that I thought would be worth exploring to just hear your thoughts. And I’m, I’m conscious of the time, so I only have two more questions. Very cool. Make sure we land it. But you mentioned earlier like you have to take captive your thoughts. Yep. How do you do that?
VF (33:35):
I, I, I’ll tell you this real quick. I, my daughter’s in the journey of getting serious with a young man and I asked her to come up with a list of the attributes she wants in a husband. And she’s like, God, that’s like a lot. I said, okay, I asked you an unfair question. Why don’t you gimme the list of things you don’t want? Oh, I can write that down. She was 10 down before she was even struggling. Yeah. Most of us know the things that don’t line up with us. Mm. And I ask people to create a non-negotiable list of the things that won’t work in their life. And so when you start getting things that sound untrue or not noble, or not praiseworthy, it’s like a, it’s like aspirin is to a headache. It takes the edge off. It’s like prayer is to anxiety.
VF (34:17):
It takes the edge off. Taking captive your thoughts is not getting too spiraling away in untruthful things. And you have these guideposts that keep you there. And then for me, the rest of that verse, which is super important, is then make ’em obedient to truth. What? Well, there is a truth there. So how do I make it obedient back to that? Well, I gotta be able to have this early warning system of where it, it gets all jacked up. And if I can’t do it, I hope and pray. I’ve got people around me who notice it quicker than me spiraling down. Debbie and I have a joke. If we’re in the pit, hopefully the other one doesn’t get pulled down in there with her.
AJV (34:52):
Oh, that’s so good. . That’s so good. They’re my, one of my favorite pastors who also happens to be an incredible author, his named Andy Stanley. And he did this entire awesome series a few years ago called Guard Guardrails. And I just remember, like my husband and I totally binge this on YouTube, this guardrail series. Cuz the whole thing was, if you don’t know truth, then you’ll never recognize lies. And it’s like, you gotta put up these guardrails to keep you on the, the straight and narrow. Right. And it’s like, but if you don’t know truth, then you’ll never recognize lies. And that’s so much of what I hear you saying. It’s like you’ve, it’s hard to take anything captive if you don’t know what you’re looking for.
VF (35:35):
That’s so true. And that’s why internal inventory, like, you know, we practice around my life, radical honesty. Mm-Hmm. , that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be kind. It shouldn’t be compassionate, it shouldn’t, you know, have a little more listening than, than less talking, which we’re not doing a good job of me on this show. Lots of talking . But you know, like all that’s personal inventory stuff. And the more that I’m growing in that everyone around us that I have the privilege to lead with and through grow as a result.
AJV (36:04):
Oh, that’s so, so good. There’s like so much wisdom in this conversation and I could probably easily have like 30 more questions to ask and then it would be like 4:00 PM and it’s a three hour podcast. However I’ll wrap it up to one last question. So in your opinion, because you’ve done this several times and you’re doing it now again, what do you think, if you had to pick one thing right now that you’ve done this a few times and you’ve had successful businesses, you’ve had growth, you’ve had scale, you’ve done it a few times. If you could look back and go, there is one common theme that I know across my businesses, your businesses business in general. When I see this one thing, I know that the likelihood of success is high.
VF (36:51):
So this is the easy answer. Statistically, almost no company has a an executed 10 year plan. And it’s funny, when I started to study that, I also noticed that a three year plan is really hard to do. What I noticed in successful organizations or successful people in life is that when they reach Crossroads, they’re honestly willing to take an inventory of the things that worked and didn’t work. Mm-Hmm. . And they’re the ones that make the necessary and sometimes really hard decisions on owning the things that didn’t work and choose to change those. I I can’t tell you how many of our clients, I could show you the roster who either know or get the advice and choose not to make those decisions. Mm-Hmm. and they’re definitely destined for mediocrity. But the ones who actually at that, that point of where you’re either leveling as a company or you have a tough situation or a person, the ones who, regardless of the amount of information necessary to make a decision, actually make those decisions you’re going to see evidence in breadcrumbs of a lot of success for people who do that.
AJV (38:01):
Hmm. Yeah. Let that in because it is hard to recognize mistakes and then actually do the hard work of changing those mistakes super hard. Y’all, I encourage you to check out this amazing gift that Vinny and his team has put together. I will put this in the show notes, but again, go to fully accountable.com/influential personal brand. They have offered up wickedly awesome free stuff. And yeah, you may have to hand over your email, it’s worth it. Do it. Also to learn more about fully accountable, which as a paying customer and a, a long-term paying customer, I would say I have referred them many times over. And so reach out to fully accountable.com. You can reach out to anyone at Brain Builders Group and we’re happy to do a handheld introduction in. But it’s been super helpful on so many different levels both at the bookkeeping accounting and the fractional side.
AJV (39:02):
It’s been insightful, it’s been helpful. It’s allowed me so much of my time back to do what only I can do to feel like I have a, a team that in the event something do doesn’t go right, there’s a whole company behind it to make it go right. Which you don’t always get that if it’s just your full-time employee. So there’s a, a real benefit of having a company behind that with a varied set of skills and so highly recommend them. And then of course, you’ve got two awesome books that you should also check out Co mindset and a whole bunch
VF (39:32):
Of other resources we threw in there for you too. So it’s great.
AJV (39:36):
So generous. Thank you so much. Thank you for giving us your time on this show. This episode was phenomenal and again, we’ll put it in the show notes, but go to fully accountable.com and slash influential personal brand and grab some of those assets. Benny, thank you so much,
VF (39:53):
Aj. Thanks for having me today. It was really a joy.
AJV (39:55):
Yeah. And everybody else, stay around. Stay tuned for the recap episode that will be coming out in just a couple of days. We’ll see you next time.

Ep 381: My 3 Favorite Email Marketing Tips | Nathan Barry Episode Recap

RV (00:08):
Let’s talk about Email Strategy. You know, it’s funny, after all of These Years, email is still kind of the king when it comes to monetizing an audience. And, and I actually Just got off a call With our internal marketing team talking about the irony of how our email list we’re. This is very rare. I Think this is incredibly rare. Our email list
RV (00:33):
Is about twice the size of Our social media following, Like Most people, like almost all of our clients, it’s the Opposite. Where They’re social media following is like, you know, much larger, and then there’s some fraction of those people on their email list. Ours is the opposite. Our email list is, Is Like pretty massive, definitely massive compared to the Size of Our social media following. Most people
RV (00:57):
That have the size of our email list Are probably the people Who would have millions of social media followers. And so
RV (01:03):
Part of why that is, is it’s just where you place your focus, right? It’s like, what do you focus
RV (01:08):
On? And so I’m excited to share With you Three of my favorite email marketing strategies Of just Kind of like how we think about email in terms of the Way that we use it. And these are like my, my three favorite email marketing tips,
RV (01:26):
My three Favorite email marketing strategies. Of course,
RV (01:28):
This was inspired a little bit by my recent interview with Nathan Berry on our, on our recent podcast Episode. And So I just wanted to kind of share with you some of my philosophies and our Philosophies at, At brand Builders group About how we approach this
RV (01:41):
Subject and treats this subject Because frankly, like we do this pretty Good. I mean, I, I didn’t really, I don’t really Think of us necessarily of like, oh, we’ve got the World’s biggest email list, But it, it Did hit me and go,
RV (01:56):
Wow, That’s amazing. Like so many people are focused on growing their social media following and then trying to like convert that to a, to an email list Where The email list is really where the money is, right? Like the, the, that, that’s where The real long-term relationship happens. And that’s where a lot of the Trust takes place is, Is, you know, somebody’s email. So Let’s Dive into my three favorite email marketing strategies.
RV (02:21):
So the first strategy Is actually understanding something that we call the Four Types of email marketing. And this is actually something that we teach formally inside of one of our lessons inside of one of our courses.
RV (02:34):
So Our building your revenue engine course, Which is where we Teach our entire content marketing machine and how we convert it and nurture leads and automate trust.
RV (02:45):
There’s A section, a very specific section on email, and this is one of the things that we talk about. So this is a little bit of a, a preview for you if you Haven’t ever been through that. If you’re not one of our customers, and if you are one of our members, it’s A good refresh for you. So
RV (02:58):
Four types of email. The first type of email is the one that we all think of. These are broadcast emails, okay? So what is a broadcast email? It’s where you take your entire list or something that we would not recommend doing. We would never say, send it to your whole list. Take a segment of your list, you’ll have much more success with that. And you send everybody in that group the same message at the same moment. So whether somebody signed up for your email list today or 10 years ago, they’re all getting the same message at the same moment. And we used, we used broadcast messages to speak about things that are either timely or they’re big announcements. Those are like the two biggest reasons we use those. So timely, meaning it’s something happening in the news cycle, or it is something happening in the like like a holiday or something, right?
RV (03:53):
And we go, Hey, we wanna just like send out love about this, or it’s, it’s a big announcement. So, you know, we’ve done this recently a couple times in recent years where I can remember we’ve sent out big announcements when our clients have had huge wins, right? So we’ve had 13 clients that have hit the New York Times with a Wall Street Journal bestseller list. So whenever that happens, we’ve sent out some pretty big announcements. We’ve had now five clients go viral with TED Talks. I, we, we, we have another one that’s coming up the ranks that also could be taken off. And, you know, we, we celebrate client wins a lot of times and say, you know, cheer on everyone, Hey, check this out. So that’s broadcast email. It’s also used in launches would be another time that you would use that where you’re specifically saying, Hey, everyone show up for this free training or this, you know, webinar, or, Hey, we have a new whatever, a new podcaster, something like that.
RV (04:48):
So you’re, you’re launching something. So that’s broadcast email. The second type of email is something that people often think of, which I’m gonna call it long-term nurture, long-term nurture sequences. So this one is, you know, if you ever heard the term drip marketing or drip emails or funnels or automated emails, that’s kind of like this is going, you’re pre-scheduling out a series of emails where if you sign up today, you’re not gonna see the same, you’re not gonna get the same email today as someone who signed up 10 years ago, but you’re gonna get the same email that that person got on their first day, like hypothetically. So you’re the, and the, the number one way we use this is for long-term nurture, and specifically we use it for, we call it Evergreen magazine or easing, right? That’s kind of where that term easing originated from is to go, we’re gonna take your best of content of like what’s been on your blog post or what, what you’ve posted on your blog, and we’re gonna convert that.
RV (05:58):
We’re gonna turn that in to a greatest hits series. And so, the way this happens, right? If you think about a blog, every time you post something on a blog, whether it’s a podcast feed that you’re posting, like on brand builders group.com is where we post all our podcast episodes, but on rory vaden blog.com is where we post all of my blogs that I do every week. And so both of those, in both of those cases, they both get pushed down. And so some of the best content is from a long time ago, especially if you’re following one of our B B G mantras, one of our BBB G mantras is save the best for first, save the best for first. Always put out your next best piece of content as free content. Because what you, you don’t need to be worried about people consuming everything you have and then not buying from you.
RV (06:43):
You have to be worried about your content not being good enough that no one ever comes back, no one ever shows up again. So you’re always pushing yourself to get better and better and better and push your best stuff forward. So some of our best posts, a great example of this for me is you know I built my keynote speaking career on this story called Be the Buffalo, and it’s about buffalo’s versus cows. And you know, I, I published this intake the stairs in 2012. A lot of people use this, you know, use this. But I’m the original author of this story, and I was, I was telling this 10 years before it even showed up in my book, which was now 10 years ago. And that’s like a very popular story. People love it. And you know, it’s, it’s, it’s like one of my most highly trafficked pages.
RV (07:29):
Well, if you sign up for my email list today, you’re not gonna see that blog post, that blog post was five years ago. So it’s pushed way down. But I know that’s gonna be one of, that’s something that everybody loves. So I’m gonna take it and I’m gonna force it to you, and I’m gonna save the best for first. So just like we save the best for first with our kind of like blog strategy or podcast strategy going, what’s the next best thing I can put out fresh today? We’re also going to convert that into an a long-term nurture sequence of a greatest, basically, it’s your greatest hits. And we’re going, okay, I’m gonna take my my best blog post ever and I’m gonna make sure that everyone signs up, whether they sign up today or that was, you know, they sign up in six months, or they sign up in two years from now, they’re all gonna see this piece of content that I know everybody loves.
RV (08:14):
It performs really well. And I go, great. I wanna push my best stuff forward even to people who are showing up brand new. And so that’s how we use the, the long-term easing strategy. And so a lot of times, or not a lot of times, this is what we do, is we push our greatest hits into this email nurture sequence so that if you sign up for our list today, like you are gonna see all of our best stuff in addition to seeing some of our fresh stuff, which I’ll talk about in a second. Every month you’re gonna get one email, which is the greatest hits, and that’s the frequency that we do that is once a month. The other part that this does is this, make sure I’m talking to my entire email list at least once a month. So, and, and every time they get something from me, it’s, it’s not new content that I’m sort of like testing out and I’m hoping it works and that everybody likes it.
RV (09:04):
It’s like it’s proven, it’s time tested, we know. And so that’s automating trust, which is what we’re trying to do with our email list. We’re trying to automate trust. We’re trying to add so much value that people trust us and they go, you know what? These guys aren’t just trying to make money off me. These guys aren’t just trying to pitch me their next thing. Like, they actually give a crap about helping me succeed and they actually know what they’re talking about and they can help me. And so as I make money, I’m going to invest with them and, and hopefully they’re helping me make money, and then I’m investing, and then they make, help me make more money and then I invest more with them, right? Like, that’s the relationship we want to have with people, is we’re giving them free content to help them make money.
RV (09:42):
Hopefully they’ll make some money, they’ll invest it with us, then we’ll help ’em make more money, they’ll invest it more with us, right? And we’re trying to like, grow, grow with people. So anyways, that, that means that we have an email going out on autopilot so I can sleep at night just knowing my entire email list is gonna get one awesome email from me every month without adding any additional time to my calendar. Zero. So that’s the second type of email. The third type of email is one that you don’t hear very often and people don’t think about. And this kind of boggles my mind, and this is RSS email rss. What the heck does that stand for? RSS is a technical term, it stands for a real simple syndication. What it means in common sense language is every time I post a new article to my blog, automatically send an email to my list.
RV (10:33):
And this is amazing. First of all, it’s automating something for you. So you go, if you’re we have a whole nother process we teach called the content diamond, which you can go, you can go [email protected], I did a whole free training on this, on the content diamond. Well, if you’re doing the hard work of creating a content diamond every single week, then you want to tell people it’s out there. So we create this RSS so that automatically emails you. And, and by the way, if you can sign up for ours, right? If you go to, you can sign up for my [email protected], and we give you other, we give you a free training as an incentive for you to sign up for it. And then you get, you get free training every week, right? So we’re sending you this free video for me once a week, every single week.
RV (11:20):
And they’re like these little five or seven minute videos that I do and their articles, we convert ’em into articles. And so now that’s on autopilot. We also do [email protected] slash podcast because Brand Builders Group doesn’t have a blog, but it has our podcast. And so we post all of our podcasts there every week so people automatically can sign up to be alerted. And so RSS is this technical, you know, piece of code that you put on your website behind this form that people can say, Hey, I wanna automatically get notified every time you post something new and boom. And so this is cool because it’s automated, but unlike the long-term nurture, which is your old stuff of your greatest hits, it’s all your newest stuff, your freshest stuff, your like most hyper-relevant thing that you’re talking about today, and they’re automatically getting that.
RV (12:10):
So that’s also how we sort of balance the, like staying relevant and super current with our email list along with making sure they’re seeing our greatest hits of all time. That’s like the timeless, you know, principles and stuff like that. So that’s the third type of of email and it’s easy, I mean, easy to set up. So we do that, that’s standard protocol in both internally and also what we teach in building your revenue engine, which is where we teach all of this in social media and getting on podcasts and speaking engagements, et cetera. So, and then the fourth type of email, the fourth type of email is short term nurture sequences. This one actually is more commonly associated with the term funnel. So short-term nurture sequences mean that only a targeted set of your email list is going to get a series of pre-written emails that are hyper-relevant to a behavior they’re engaging in now.
RV (13:05):
So again, out of revenue engine one of the lessons we talk about is building funnels and, and how do we, we actually dissect and show people behind the scenes of our actual funnels that we use to run our entire business. And we talk about the different one. You know, we’ve done summit funnels and we’ve got video funnels, and we’ve got webinar funnels, and we’ve got, you know, just a pdf like download free, free download and free call funnels. We have all these different funnels that we use and we show behind the scenes of each one and how we, how we, how we build them, right? So, but if you, if you, let’s say you sign up for one of our webinar funnels what would happen is you sign up for a free training and then it’s going to say, Hey, thanks for signing up.
RV (13:48):
Here’s a link to the free training you requested. And then what it’s gonna do is we use marketing automation to that can tell us, did you ever actually click the link in that email and watch that free training? If you didn’t, it’s gonna automatically send you another email, like 24 hours saying, Hey, by the way, little reminder, thanks for signing up for our free training. Don’t want you to miss out, you know, here it is as promised, you know, when you have a minute, check it out. Boom, right? And then we’ll send a couple reminders to, to watch the free training. Now, as soon as you click that link and you watch the first couple minutes of the training, again, we’re using Mark marketing automation here, which is what we, we teach people do, and we also actually build templates to help you that we actually can do this for you, right?
RV (14:32):
So we’re building all these templates right now to actually do the programming and coding for you. So what would happen is it’s then gonna shut down that, that we call that the the training sequence, or sorry, we call it the the watch sequence, which is, you know, emails that are designed to get you to watch, watch the free training that you signed up for. So let’s say that you watch five minutes of it. Well, as soon as you watch five minutes of it, we’re using marking automation to shut off that sequence that’s reminding you to watch it. Cuz now we know you already started watching it, but then it starts a new sequence, which would be invisible to the untrained eye that says, let’s say you watch seven minutes, but then you abandon the video, it’s gonna start a new sequence called the finish sequence and it’s gonna say, Hey, we noticed you started watching the video, cuz we can tell, but don’t forget to finish because here’s some of the great things that come at the end.
RV (15:24):
And so then we’ll send ’em a few reminders to try to get them to finish watching. And then if they finish watching, but then they don’t like take the action, whatever the action is, we’ll say, Hey, you know, here’s a couple reminders of like whatever the action was that we’re trying to get them to take. And so you’re using these short term you’re using these short term sequences to move them along, and that’s the fourth type of email. So everybody is, everybody in that group is seeing the same emails similar, it’s like, it’s like kind of a, it’s kind of like a cross of all of these because it is a nurture sequence, but you only get put into that nurture sequence in a very specific moment in your journey where you have clicked on a video or requested a free call, or you’ve watched something or downloaded something very, very specific.
RV (16:14):
And so, you know, like one of them again if you go to, if you go to rory vain.com, there’s a free training section and there’s a, you can download our trends and personal branding national research study. So if you download that, that’s a lead magnet. It’s a free lead magnet. It’s incredible. It’s like this 60 page study, this of all this data that we paid tens of thousands of dollars to get, we give it away for free and then it, it starts a nurture sequence. Right? So everybody who, the only people who ever see that are the people who downloaded that specific thing. So it’s amazing. So anyways, those are the four types of email. I know that’s a lot, but, and that’s, that’s, you know, advanced, but that’s the kind of stuff we’re teaching and that’s like super, it’s advanced, but it’s simple, right?
RV (16:57):
But you go, you gotta build out all these different types. So it’s not just, you can’t just think of, oh, I send emails and that, or I send an email once a week. It’s all of these, it’s at least four major types of email that make up your overall email strategy. So you gotta like understand what’s the mix of these, and also the technology and also the timing of how they intersect, right? So that’s one of the templates that we provide to people is the actual marketing automation campaign that goes, Hey, make sure you’re not emailing people too much. And, you know, give them a chance to opt in and outta stuff and, and, you know, make sure they’re not getting, you know, a bunch of emails all at the same time. Which leads to number two, okay? So this is the number two thing that I wanted to talk to you about.
RV (17:40):
So my second favorite email strategy, which is really important is control the email opt-outs yourself, not the platform. So what do I mean by this? It means that every email marketing tool doesn’t matter which one you use, right? And, and we use all of ’em with clients and we like all of ’em, like we’re kind of like, you know, there’s certain ones we like more than others and whatever, but, but to us, the strategy is what matters more than the technology. The strategy matters more than the technology. And for example, all of the email marketing tools have an opt-out function. They have to, by law, this, this law is called gdpr, right? GDPR compliant. There’s, there’s all of this, this compliance now with how emails needs to be sent and permission-based marketing and all this sort of stuff. So they have to, when an email goes out, there has to be an option to unsubscribe.
RV (18:32):
Well, if you send an email to your list, let’s say you send a broadcast email, and let’s say you send it to 10,000 people on your list every time you send a broadcast email, by the way, people unsubscribe every single time. They always do. So don’t be offended or upset by that. And that’s not a bad thing, it’s not a bad thing when people unsubscribe, it’s a good thing. You only wanna be emailing people who wanna hear from you. But if people just hit that unsubscribe button, it starts to affect sort of like your ranking with the email service providers. And so what we like to do is, is we like to just, we give an opt-out function. But what the, the, the, the, we make a, we actually make a more noticeable link for people to opt out somewhere above the default one that is built in and tied into the tool where we say, if you don’t wanna hear from us anymore, click here.
RV (19:24):
But we also con control the languaging, which a lot of times you can’t with the default setting or not as much. And we’ll, so we’ll say something like this, if you say, Hey, if you want to hear from us less often or more often, click here to control your preferences or unsubscribe altogether, something like that. And then they click on it and then it takes them to a, a form where they can now manage. And we usually give them like four options in our standard suite it. And, and option number one says, you know, I’m a super fan, email me every time you have something new for me. And when they select that, it’s gonna apply all the appropriate, appropriate tags for them to get the broadcast emails, which we send once in a while, the evergreen monthly easing, which is on autopilot once a month, and the r s s feed.
RV (20:10):
So that means they’re gonna get at least one r s s feed every week and one email once a month. So that’s five. And then broadcast emails whenever we send them, which might be once every other month or something like that. So they could get maybe six emails in a month plus any other short-term nurture sequences that they are in. If they get into one of our, you know, free trainings or something like that, then the, the next button down would say something like this. They would say it would say something like I only wanna hear from you once a week. So we go, okay, no problem. We’re going to remove them out of our Evergreen magazine and we’re just gonna add them to the rss. So they’re just gonna get the most recent stuff once a week. And it’s like, download our most recent podcast, watch our most recent video or, or read our most recent blog posts, which are all kind of the same thing.
RV (20:58):
If you’re running the content diamond in and it’s just gonna push ’em to our blog feed and you go, great, once a week, the next person says, ah, I really only want to hear from you once a month. Okay? So that’s option number three, just once a month. So now they’re going to only get our oh, and by, and by the way, on that second one I wanna hear from you once a week we would say RSS plus broadcast, which we send once in a while. And if they say, oh, I really wanna hear from you once a month, we go, okay, great, once a month, let’s unsubscribe you from our RSS feed so you’re not hearing from us every week, that’s too much for you. And we go, but you do wanna hear from us? So we go, great, let’s, let’s put you on the evergreen nurture.
RV (21:33):
Now you’re hearing from us once a month but we are, we’re also gonna keep you on our broadcast e e email, not not, yeah. So our long-term nurture, which is our, our monthly easing and the broadcast e email, which sends, you know, sporadically once in a while. So those are the top three. And then the fourth one will say, ah, you know, it’ll say something like this I only wanna hear from you once in a while, you know, once in a great while or whenever you have something big to share. And so we go, great, unsubscribe ’em from rss, unsubscribe them from long-term nurture, easing, unsubscribe them from oh, but keep them subscribe to the broadcast tool, right? So we’ll keep them on the, the broadcast tag. And then the last one would say, I never wanna hear from you ever again.
RV (22:18):
Please stop emailing. So I guess there would be five options counting that, right? So boom, boom, boom, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So now what’s happening is, first of all, we’re controlling their preference because a lot of times people don’t wanna unsubscribe completely. It just might be like, they’re like, bro, you’re overwhelming me, ro like, it’d be like, Rory, I love you, but dude, I don’t wanna hear from you twice a week. Like, that’s too much Rory in my life, which I can, I can appreciate. Well, I’m not offended by that, right? Some people are like, gimme all the Rory, you can give me like I need, I need, I want motivation, I need inspiration as much as I can get it every day I am like, yeah, you know, great my people, but it’s whatever your threshold is, right? And you have some people like to hear from you for different things or it’s just, what do they have going on in their life?
RV (23:02):
What do they have capacity for? They re they might be in a season of like, man, I’m not trying to gum up my whole inbox. And you know, you just, a lot of it doesn’t have to do with you, it has to do with them. And they’re just going, I wanna be able to read what you send me and maybe I don’t have the time, or your topic isn’t so hyper relevant at this moment that I’m gonna make time to read everything you’re sending me and now you’re annoying me and so I’m just gonna unsubscribe, right? So you’re, you’re wanting to give them a chance to sort of choose their own adventure here. And that’s what we’re, and that’s what we’re doing. So control the opt outs yourself, l and and then the other thing is if they hit never talk to me ever again, we add an unsubscribed tag that anytime we send an email to, we filter against that tag.
RV (23:42):
So we literally opt them out and we will never, we will never send to them again. But it’s not hurting our rankings with our email service provider. And so that’s part of why we do that. And you know, anyways, so that’s that. And then the, my third favorite email tip is super short. It’s super clean, it’s simple, but if you’re not doing this, make sure you’re doing this every single time you send a broadcast email, which is send to the unopens, send to the un unopens. So what does that mean? Well, okay, we’re talking about broadcast email, remember, with four types of email broadcast, long-term nurture, RSS and short-term. So we’re talking about the first type here, which is broadcast email. By the way, I hope you’re not listening to this on two x speed, cuz if you are, this is going really, really fast, .
RV (24:25):
So anyways, when you send a broadcast email, which is to a wide swath of your list all at the same time, boom, everyone gets a launch email or a a, a timely email or something like that. One of the ways to like literally double your opens is you send it to all these people, however many it is, a whole bunch of the people aren’t gonna open like some, usually something like 80%. So if you send an email to 10,000 people, okay, typically like 20% are gonna open and 3% are gonna click through roughly, right? Something like that. So that means if I send it to 10,000 people, 8,000 of ’em aren’t even opening the email, right? So 20% are opening the email and then 17% are opening it, but not clicking Well for that 20%, you know, they saw your email. So we go, let’s not annoy them, right?
RV (25:19):
They, they, they already have it. We know they’ve seen it, but most of the good email service providers will tell you this, 80% or these 8,000 people never even opened your me email. So what does that mean? That means it’s like they never got the email, they never even saw it. So you’re not ano you’re not annoying anybody to send an email to people who never opened it the first time because for them it doesn’t e it’s, it’s not like, Hey, you’re bugging me, you keep sending me the same email. They’re going, no, they, they never saw it, right? Like, you sent the email, they never saw it, they never opened it, they don’t even know that you sent an email. So you send just to the unopened. So you would just send to that segmented list, you could send the exact same message. We, we do, we we literally go send, send a broadcast three days later, take everyone who has not opened the email and send it again.
RV (26:11):
Because if they haven’t opened it within the first three days, they probably not gonna open it, right? So we send it to 8,000 people, the exact same email, and guess what the number of opens in total, it’s gonna be like 20% of 8,000. And, and sometimes it’s higher, sometimes you get a higher percentage on, you often get a higher open rate percentage on a smaller list. That’s almost always true. So you might get another 2000 opens off of your send to 8,000. Well, the net effect there is instead of 2000 opens from your email of 10,000, you got those 2000 plus you got another 2000 from your email to 8,000. And you could actually keep doing this saying, okay, well now there’s, you know, roughly 6,000 people who didn’t open that email I could send to them. So you could keep doing it. We usually just do it twice.
RV (26:57):
Sometimes we’ll do it three times, but if they’ve never opened the email, they, they never saw it. Like, you’re not annoying anybody. So at least do it once. Always, always with broadcast emails and it’s so simple, right? Then these are things where you just go, man, of course like that makes so much sense, but you don’t know until you know, right? And you know, if you don’t have a strategist like us, you know, our team walking you through it, you just literally leaving money on the table, that one thing could literally double the income of your entire next launch or promotion or thing by such a simple tactic, right? Imagine adding up all of those tactics over and over and over again and y’all, this is, this is what we do. So at any point if you want to talk to our team, I would encourage you to do it like we have so much to share and teach you.
RV (27:46):
And so you just go to free brand call.com/podcast to request that call. If you’re not ready to do that yet, I would encourage you, as I said, go to brand builders group.com/podcast and subscribe there and or go to rory vaden blog.com and you could subscribe there and we’ll send you lots of free stuff so that you can be growing your business and building your income and, and increasing your mindset and your motivation and your productivity and all the things that we teach and talk about to help you make more impact in the world. And then hopefully you start making some money from that and you go, all right, I’m ready to level up. So when you’re ready to level up, request a free call free brand call.com/podcast. In the meantime, share this episode with someone who you think would l benefit from it and listening to it. And just thanks for being here, right? We’re, we’re, we’re trying to add more and more value to your life constantly, whether you’re paying us or you’re not, our whole goal is to just add value to everybody as much as we can. And the fact that you’re listening gives us the opportunity to do that. So we appreciate you being here. We’ll catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand podcast.

Ep 380: Advanced Email Marketing Strategies with Nathan Barry

RV (00:02):
I have to say that one of the most powerful forces in the world, I think is marketing automation. And we hear about social media and we hear about podcasting and we hear about YouTube and all stuff. But man, the thing that has changed my life in terms of the digital landscape the most in the last 10 years is email marketing, marketing automation in general, and specifically email. And we’re gonna talk about that today with someone who is definitely an expert on the subject. We’re talking to Nathan Barry. He is actually the founder of Convert Kit, which is one of the largest and most well-known and respected tools among creators for email marketing. And so we’re gonna talk a little bit about that. Just so you know, he’s also an author himself and Convert Kit, you know, as an entrepreneur is a tremendously impressive success story.
RV (00:54):
So they’ve got over 25 million a year in annual recurring revenue, over 3 million in profits. They’ve got almost 60 team members. And they bootstrapped the company 100%. So this was not where you had millions of dollars of investor money, like from Silicon Valley flooding in. They built this for creators and Nathan was a successful blogger before and just kind of created this himself. So he’s also the dad of three boys, which I can appreciate. I’ve got two, so anyone who’s got more than me, I’m like, man, I don’t know how you do it. But brother, you’ve done a bunch of awesome stuff and thanks for making time for us.
NB (01:31):
Yeah, thanks for having me on the show.
RV (01:33):
So I’d love to just hear the story of Convert Kit, like your personal journey. Cuz cuz you started as a blogger, right? And then all of a sudden you kind of were like, saw the need for this and then how, I mean, how to, how to go down.
NB (01:44):
Yeah, so my like traditional skillset is software design. I got started web design and then started building software for the web. And then when the iPad came out in 2010 I was working on a team that was trying to have an iPad app out the day the iPad was released, which was a fun challenge of like designing and trying to test an app, like all in the simulator. Like, you don’t act, the device doesn’t exist yet. And it was fun like going to the Apple store and like buying a dozen iPads, you know, like on launch day and testing our software and all of that. So that was a, a fun world. And I got pretty deep into, you know, iPhone and iPad app design. And then from there I had this idea that if I wrote a book about designing iOS apps, then people would wanna hire me to be the one to design their app.
NB (02:34):
And I, I thought I’ll make money from this book too. Like, this isn’t a charity, but the main thing that I want is design clients. Sure. Right? You wanna hire the guy who wrote the book, obviously. Of course. And so what I did, I built up a small pre-launch email list on MailChimp, got to 800 subscribers you know, teased that, wrote the book, self-published it. And my goal was to make $10,000 over the lifetime of sales for the book and see how many clients I could get. I ended up launching it and I made $12,000 on the first day and never took on another design client. Like, just like, nope, that world is, I’m not a freelancer anymore, I’m a content creator and this is what we’re doing going forward, . I love it. I love it. And really quick in the process, I had made my own iPhone app that was a app called Commit.
NB (03:25):
It’s not around anymore, but there’s other apps that do similar stuff. It was just for building a streak. And I had this streak of writing a thousand words a day. And so after I published the book, my app popped up and said, Hey, you’re gonna write a thousand words today. And I was like no, I’ve, I’ve published the book, but it was like I saw 80 days in a row and I didn’t wanna break the streak. So I was like, you know what, I’ll write a, a blog post about the book launch. So I did that, shared the numbers. And then the next day the app did what it did and popped up was like, are you gonna write a thousand words today? And I was like, no, I don’t have anything to write. And it was 81 days in a row I was thinking like, ah, you know what?
NB (04:03):
I’m gonna write another book. And so I wrote another book on designing web applications. So similar topic, different medium, and wrote like edited and published that in like just over 90 days. So it was self-published, also self-published as well. Okay. Made 26 grand in sales on the first day from that. And I was off to the races, but in that process I really got obsessed with email marketing and I was seeing that all of the sales were coming from the email list, you know, and that was where like giving away a sample chapter, getting people the email list and then dripping out emails and then them coming back and buying the book. All these things were working super well and it was driving more sales than like Twitter and Instagram and everything else combined. And I told this to a friend of mine who’d been in online marketing for long time, what year is this?
NB (04:53):
2013. Okay. Yeah. So talking to this friend who’s been in online marketing forever, I’m like, Hey, email is driving more sales than every other channel combined. And he just looks at me and is like, yeah man, we’ve all known that since 2005. Like, do you want a gold star? Like , you know, this is not a new thing. Great epiphany. I was gonna say 2013 is not that long ago. Yeah. And so but it was, it was brand new to me. And so really I became obsessed with email and email marketing, learning all the best practices. And then I just got really frustrated with MailChimp of trying to like implement these best practices in that tool. And looked at all the other tools. There were others that were like, had more automation were powerful, but super confusing. And I’m like, I’m a designer, I gotta use something that’s like elegant and beautiful. And so I decided to start my own. So it was January 1st, 2013 that I started to convert it. And yeah just over a decade later, it’s a giant company used by you know, most of the top graders, like James Clear, Tim Ferris, Ryan Holliday, Arnold Schwarzenegger has a convert kit newsletter that he sends out every week. And it’s super fun.
RV (06:04):
That’s really awesome, man. So congratulations. Like that’s no e that’s no easy feat. I mean to do, to do, you know, eight figures in 20 million plus in, in re recurring revenue is really, really powerful. So I wanna talk about email marketing strategies specifically. Especially, you know, in today’s era, email marketing has been out a long time. Yes. Email marketing automation has been out a long time. You have something that you talk about just sort of like a general strategy you were telling me about it fly, you call it flywheel for clients.
NB (06:44):
Flywheels.
RV (06:45):
Yeah. So I, I’d love to hear about this cuz cuz here’s, here’s one of the things that, you know, sort of like annoying and frustrating to me is even in just the world of email, one of the things that we teach our students is there’s, we think of emails like there’s, there’s four type four different types of emails. So there’s like, you send a broadcast email, everyone at the same time gets it. That’s what we think of. But then we have r s s emails, which are, every time a blog gets posted, that’s gonna automatically send an email. And then we have like these short-term nurture sequences where you’re someone’s in like an active selling situation and you’re like nurturing them to watch a video or, you know, buy something, there’s a closed card or something. And then you just have like your long-term automated nurture sequence. And suddenly what happens a lot is you end up going, you’re emailing people so much and, and you, you can even lose sight of track of like, oh my gosh, how are they, they’re in all these different sequences getting, so how do you kind of like pull all that together into a, like a, a more cohesive strategy?
NB (07:51):
Yeah. Well the first thing is that a lot of people end up in a position like I did where they realize how powerful email marketing is and then become obsessed and they go like way off the deep end and it’s so fun and it probably generates a lot of money for your, for your business. And then you get to that point where you’re like, oh, now all these cool automations that have set up are starting to step on each other. Like, it, it’s maybe the person that I hired on my team moved on and I now have a new person. And it’s way too hard for them to understand and like, it’s not documented well. And so I think keeping things relatively simple is a good way to go. Like one example that I really like is doing something called an Evergreen newsletter.
NB (08:34):
And this is where instead of sending, well let’s say half your content that you send out is really timely, you know, hey, I’m going on book tour podcast episode’s coming out. Or you wanna like respond and comment to recent news that just happened or, or ride some wave of some conversation in like mass media. Maybe we send that email as a broadcast every Tuesday. But then there’s also, like, you and I have been writing for a very long time. We’ve produced, you know, hundreds of thousands, you know, may maybe millions of words at this point of content. And like if someone signs up today and they’re getting, Hey, this is what I write every Tuesday, like, there’s this crazy back catalog that they’re never encountering. And so one thing that I like to do is set up an evergreen newsletter sequence, and I might send that out every Thursday.
NB (09:24):
And that is actually a sequence time to when you join and it’s like, Hey, here’s my best content over time. They don’t really know that one is the same email to everyone at the same time. And the other is like timed just to them. They’re just like, I don’t know, Nathan kept like, every Tuesday and Thursday he sends me great content. And so I could have an Evergreen newsletter sequence that’s 50 emails, a hundred, you know, 104 emails long, and I got two two years of content and that’s just working for me. And I go, oh, this is a great article that I’m really proud of. I’m gonna put that like in week five instead of week 100 where it would naturally sit. And so you end up making these systems that work for you. So that’s the first thing that I would do is really love it, really simplify that.
NB (10:10):
Another one, maybe if we talk about Flywheel for a second oh, when was this? Back in 2008, I got the opportunity to do like some public works projects in Lisutu, which is a little landlocked country inside of South Africa. And one of the things that we ended up doing was working on installing this well at an orphanage there. And so if you think about like, as a kid, I went camping and you know, there’d be like this hand pump to like pump the water at the campsite. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that’s a, this like up and down motion and if you stop doing it, the water stops flowing immediately. And that’s the old, well at this orphanage had a pump like that and we actually replaced it with a flywheel, which was my first exposure to a flywheel. And so what that is, is this big metal wheel that sits on top of the well and it’s super heavy and it turns in place.
NB (11:05):
And like I remember when we got it all hooked up and we were like, okay, let’s get this going. And I tried to turn it and it was too heavy, I couldn’t turn it by myself. And so like another friend was on the other side and we’re pushing it as hard as we can and we got it turning and as it got momentum, it got, it turned easier and easier and faster and faster. And what it, it got to the point is that like my friend stopped helping and I could stand there and with like, you know, one finger keep this thing spinning and it’s just pumping out tons of water for this whole orphanage. And that’s the idea of a flywheel is having something that’s not a bunch of separate activities. Like it’s all the activities put together into one flow and like you get to continue that momentum and we can apply this concept to newsletters and to creators really well.
NB (11:50):
So there’s kind of three rules of a flywheel. Okay? The, the first one is that each, all these activities have to flow nicely one into the next. Okay? So if we apply that to marketing, you might think, okay, when I publish a an article, I’m like, okay, you know, how do I, we’re we’re, where am I gonna promote this new essay or, or this new article? And you might sporadically promote it a few places. But it’s really different if you say, okay, this is my playbook every time. This is what I do every time I publish an article and here’s maybe where I ask for ideas to give me concepts on what to write next. Right? It’s like, it’s a defined process that that happens smoothly. The second rule is that each rotation of the flywheel should be slightly easier than the previous one.
NB (12:42):
Okay? Right. So as you’re building that momentum, it gets easier. So here’s an example. Most people have an a newsletter where they’re sending out weekly content because what happens? You have to write that content. I know that’s not brutal, that’s not easy. And so a a little tweak is you go from the content that you’re writing, you know, your weekly newsletter like new subscribers are coming in and in that automated welcome sequence that you’re writing, let’s say email three, email four, you have a question, there’s a, Hey, what’s your let’s say we have a marketing, you know, we’re teaching people marketing. I ask, Hey, what’s your biggest frustration with marketing in your business right now? And by asking that question, everyone’s replying to you. Like, hit reply and let me know people are replying. We categorize those replies in a label in Gmail and now every Monday at 8:00 PM when I’m like, shoot, I don’t have a email ready to go for Tuesday yet, what am I gonna write about?
NB (13:37):
I go into that label in Gmail and I go, what are, what are people frustrated with? What are they not understanding? And I pick one out that seems interesting and I write a response to that and then I change it a little bit. So it’s for everyone. And then there we go. And so now in this flywheel, like I just made each rotation easier cuz now my new subscribers are feeding me content ideas. And that made that rotation easier. Mm-Hmm. . Yeah, lemme stop there for a second. We can get into the third rule. Love, but love that. I’m curious if you see any of those things in your business or
RV (14:08):
Totally. Yeah, no, I, I love that. I mean, and the, the whole thing of like, you know, having to write a newsletter once a month or once a week, I mean it really, the, the problem is, it’s like inconsistency is the kiss of death and Right. The one thing marketing automation can do is like, solve that problem permanently. How, like, I want to hear number three, but I’m, I’m, I’m curious how many emails a week is too many? Like the, is like, you’re talking about kind of a cadence here, which is you’ve got your one long-term nurture going and then you have like one broadcast a week. Is that the actual cadence that you sort of follow as like two a week and, and you know, both what have you seen for yourself, but then also when you look at your, you know, your top clients, are they sending more frequently? Are they doing more broadcast? Are they doing more evergreen? Do you know, do they have multiple things happening? Like I’m just sort of curious like in the modern day, what’s the, what’s too much volume or what’s the right, what really what’s the right amount of volume?
NB (15:12):
Yeah, I think the right amount of volume first it comes down to expectations that you set with your audience. Uhhuh. So when, if you sign up for Seth Godin’s newsletter or I think it’s actually just a blog, I don’t know, that’s a newsletter, right? Just RSS to email. He, he posts every day always has, always will like clockwork. You know what, some, some of his posts are like four sentences long. Some of them, you know, might be a couple hundred words. They’re not super long, but you expect that every single day you’re gonna get a note from Seth and you knew that when signing up. And so he’s matching expectations. So is seven days a week or five days a week, whatever, he does too much. No. Cuz he set that expectation and it’s bite-sized enough that you can consume it. I think you need, when you think about cadence, you need to make sure you can maintain two bars. One, can you always match this ca cadence that you set? You’re like, Hey, a daily email, but I miss half of them because I’m busy. Or like, the kids got sick or whatever else. Like, no, don’t do that. So if you, if you hit a, a email once a week every single week like clockwork and you can get ahead, perfect, that’s a great cadence for you. And then the other thing is what cadence can you maintain quality?
RV (16:26):
Ah,
NB (16:26):
Like if you can’t write great content once a week, you know it’s a lot better than that is great content once a month, right? Pick a cadence that you can always hit and say, I will always be able to meet the expectations I set for my audience and I will always be able to put out content that I’m proud of. And some people do it every day. I personally like twice a week of the ev the balance of the Evergreen and the live, cuz I want both formats. And so I do an evergreen email on Fridays and a live email on Tuesdays and that I know I can hit and hit every single week and hit my bar for quality. Yeah. Some, sometimes it’s hard. We are like,
RV (17:08):
I love that I’ve, I mean I’ve heard, you know, I’ve heard the like consistency one, but that’s a really good about the quality metric and and that’s, I I’ve, it’s funny cuz I feel that way about books. It’s actually been several years now since I’ve had a book come out. I’ve written three, but it’s been, you know, we sold our co the last book I wrote was 2015. We sold our company in 2018. And so then it’s like, we basically been rebuilding for five years and you know, people are like, when are you gonna write a book? And I’ve always, you know, I’ve, I’ve had mentors tell me, you only need to write one book and you spend the rest of your career talking about it. And I, I really believe you can do that if you, if you do it right. I’ve had other people say, you need to write a book every two years, otherwise you’ll become irrelevant.
RV (17:50):
And I also can see the case for that. And so I think where I’ve landed is just, I’ll write a book when I have something significant to say. Yeah. And you know, to what you’re saying, it’s like, do the same thing with your email cuz I guess it’s, you know, I guess the big problem is going whether it’s once a week or once a month, the big issue is not that they’re not hearing from you frequently enough, the big issue is that they stop listening to you. Right. Because either the, the, the rhythm is inconsistent or the quality is, is inconsistent. That’s
NB (18:20):
Good. Yeah. They either forgot about you or they decided that you’re not worth listening to.
RV (18:24):
Yeah. I want to ask you about that too, in terms of how do you warm up a cold list? Because that’s a lot. Like, we have a lot of clients who will come to us and they’re like, eh, you know, I have an email list, but I haven’t sent anything to them in like a year. And especially, you know, a as, as a, you know, an email service provider. There’s a lot of rules there too, I think that you guys have to manage on a global level of her deliverability and all that. So like, but like what do you do? You go, these people opted in, like they wanted to hear from me, I was writing to them for a time, but like, I haven’t written to them in a minute. I mean, what would, what’s the, what’s, what’s the right way to to, you know, follow the rules and warm it up and like make use of it? Do you just scrap it and start over or like, what do you say?
NB (19:10):
Yeah, so what you do, one, don’t scrap the list and start over unless it’s been like a decade. It’s
RV (19:15):
Been a decade. We’re not gonna do that. Even if you tell us to anyways, we’re still we’re still uploading,
NB (19:20):
We’re gonna try to resurrect it somehow. Yeah. So the first thing is to, to try to look at what do you know about these people is there’s some cohort, let’s say we’ve got a list of 10,000 people, right? Is there some group that you think for one reason or another is more engaged than others, right? Maybe they bought a course from you, maybe something else. So if you email all 10,000 people at once, a bunch of people are gonna be like, make the news Nathan, I don’t remember him at all. Right? And they’re going to Marcus spam or whatever or not engaged. And the inbox providers, so like Gmail, Yahoo, et cetera, are gonna see that and be like, Ooh, this did not go well. And then my reputation, my domain reputation that I have is gonna go down, right? My Nathan barry.com domain will not be as respected by the inbox providers because of that and I’ll have a harder time reaching the inbox. So what we wanna do instead is warm this up. And so I’m gonna look and say, okay, instead of sending all 10,000 at once, I’m gonna start to build this reputation so that I’m not showing up, you know, with to, with 10,000 people at the party all at once. And the host is like, ah, I don’t want this. You know, so instead what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna say, okay, 500 of of these people bought a course from me.
RV (20:35):
Yeah. You know,
NB (20:36):
I’m gonna email them first and am I, am I right one, hey, I’m back email. Now you can expect a once a week or email from me. Here’s what’s going on, here’s what’s next. It might be the same email, but I’m gonna send it to only 500 people first and the the 500 that I think are the most engaged based on how that goes. Then I’m going to take a slightly less engaged group that I might sylvan, maybe they showed up to a meetup once. Like all of these things that I think there’s a bit more of a connection with. And I’m gonna gradually expand that circle and then people who don’t engage or I’m gonna say, say something in there and say like, Hey, if you don’t want to be on this list, like click here to unsubscribe and I’m gonna put that right at the top of the email.
NB (21:21):
I’m gonna make it really easy for someone to hit unsubscribe rather than spam. I do not want someone marking this is spam. That would be very bad. And so then really what we’re doing is watching that engagement. If people don’t engage, I’m gonna delete them off of the list cuz I want, I wanna take that 10,000 who may not have heard from me for a couple of years and I want to trim it down to whatever number of people that’s really engaged and wants to be there. Let’s say five to 7,000. And I’m gonna do it gradually and warm up that reputation. There’s other things that like get more advanced that our like deliverability team at convert it can help with, which is like making sure that your domain is authenticated correctly. And and we can put together a whole warmup plan or this, but that’s the basic concept is reach out to the most engaged people first and then gradually layer in people who are a little less known.
RV (22:13):
Yeah. Yeah. I love it. So you kind of just like start with the warm circle, work your way out mm-hmm. and then when you get to the, when you get to the remaining cold part of the list, just make something right at the headline to say unsubscribe so that they click that instead of spam and let let them, let them self eject and and not mess it up. I think that’s a good thing. I mean, I think there’s a mentality there for a lot of marketers that are like, well, I’d rather you know, send it to 10,000 people on the hope that someone might do it. And that’s the switch you gotta flip of. Like, no, what you really want is you really just want whoever’s really engaged, even if it’s 500 people, right? You really just want the one, you don’t want to, you don’t, it’s not a good strategy to email people who don’t want to hear from you.
RV (23:00):
Like it doesn’t actually work it and it has a lot of negative, negative impacts. This is kind of like what I hear you, what I hear you saying. So I have another question. I do want to, I want to hear number, I want to hear your number three of your flywheel or your three rules of the flywheel. But here’s another thing is when it comes to creating conversions, okay, so we’ve been, you’ve been talking like what’s your long-term nurture strategy, but let’s say you’re in a launch of some type, like a book launch or a course or a product or you know, or if you’re just making a fourth quarter push, we have a lot of professional service providers that work with us too. You know, they’re doctors and lawyers and chiropractors, whatever. And they’re just trying to drive leads into whatever their small business is.
RV (23:43):
So what about when you’re, when you’re trying to do like a quote unquote close cart situation? Yeah. Does, does, what do you know about effective email strategies there? Does the volume increase? Does it change? Like is there anything that you know about this? If you, if you’re trying to use email to actually sell, like not just build trust and add value, but like in the moments where you’re going, I need people to buy, like this is my moment where I pay my expenses for the year. How do we treat email differently in those seasons versus just the normal?
NB (24:22):
Yeah, you, you send more emails that, that’s the quick version of it. So let’s say we’re doing a a cart close right? Course launch any, any activity and we’re saying, Hey Friday at 10:00 PM like, that’s it, you can’t buy this anymore. A lot of people, you know, Friday at noon would send the last email, right? Or they’d be like, I don’t know, I told them on Wednesday it’s gonna close on Friday. So I probably like, they knew that, so I probably shouldn’t send another email like, no, no, you should definitely send an email. Probably the three things that I would do is I would send an email Friday morning saying today’s the last day and I might even kick in some bonus that I’m gonna give to everybody who bought. But I’m like, Hey, if you bought today, I’m a, maybe I wasn’t talking about it all the way along, but I’ll do this extra little thing to, to kick it over. And just make sure to give it to everyone else that way someone who’s like, Hey, I bought like day one. Yeah.
RV (25:17):
Early words got screwed.
NB (25:18):
Yeah, you don’t want that. Oh, another thing that helps in, in any kind of launch is being able to have multiple deadlines. So let’s say it’s a five day launch, I don’t know, opens on Monday, closes on Friday, you want something that goes away Monday end of the day, right? So that you can do a cart close on Monday, the, it’s still open, but like this extra bonus went away and then, so you’ll get this spike. Or maybe you do, actually I’d probably do that on Tuesday. Now I think about it because Monday gets you all this hype. Everyone who’s excited Tuesday you get this, Hey, this bonus is going away, so let’s let’s you email twice that day cuz you’re like, hey, the bonus goes away. And then that in the morning and then that evening you’re like, this is about to you know, you’re about to lose this back in sales.
NB (26:12):
Find some good educational re reasons to email on Wednesday and Thursday and then Friday morning as like, hey, we’re we’re closing tonight. Here’s some testimonials, here’s things that people have gotten. And then I, I would send an email like the last hour, you know, this is the, you have one hour left to buy it. And then the final thing, cuz you’ll see a bunch of sales happen then, especially from the people who are like, oh yeah, I’ve been watching this, but like every time I’ve gotten an email I’ve been doing something with the kids or you know, whatever Austin, you’re like, okay shoot, I actually have 52 minutes left to do this, you know, and throw a countdown timer in the email. That’s the feature that’s built in to convert it makes it really easy.
RV (26:52):
Well that’s really cool to not have, you don’t have to like put a little third party widget or something in there. You drop a native. That’s cool.
NB (26:58):
And then the last thing that I would do is on Saturday in our fictional example, I would do a down sell where I would say basically send the people who are interested in the launch but didn’t buy. So make that custom segment and then send them an email and like offer something different. Maybe it’s if you’ve had all of this stuff for one package in your, in your course, maybe you’ve trimmed it down to a lighter version and you’re selling that and say, Hey, if that wasn’t a good fit, maybe check out this other thing and it’s to a smaller group and you’ll drive another maybe 10% of sales off of that. You could also do an email and just say like, Hey I noticed you really engaged but you didn’t end up buying. Could you let me know what the reason was?
NB (27:47):
And a bunch of people will come back and be like, oh, it’s too expensive. I didn’t see the value. Like there’s some really good customer research that happens in there and, and you could even have like your assistant go through and be like, oh, well if it’s too expensive, here’s this option. Or if you didn’t see the value, here’s some of their case studies and you know, someone would be like, oh, well that’s, that’s sales, that’s not scalable. And it’s like, okay, but if I, if it takes me another five minutes to send a custom email to make a $300 sale, like yeah, that’s pretty scalable to have a team member be doing
RV (28:15):
That. Especially if you can copy and paste that email 25 times and like pick up, you know, pick up more sales. So, so basically in that, in that theoretical example, you have something you’ve probably been adding value the week before. Yep. And then when you
NB (28:30):
Actually, and you have to build up to the launch, like yeah, it’s so important.
RV (28:33):
Okay. And then when, when, when you open the cart, you have like one email on Monday.
NB (28:43):
I I would, I’m, a lot of people will send more emails. But yeah, I’m gonna end up sending eight emails in five days basically. It’s kind of the cadence.
RV (28:53):
Yeah. So you got basically one on Monday, you got two on Tuesday with like that Oh, the early, basically the early bird bonus. Yeah. And then one on Thursday, one on, or one on Wednesday, one on Thursday. So that’s five and then three on Friday. That’s like eight.
NB (29:07):
Yeah, two or three on Friday and then definitely one on Saturday. One on
RV (29:10):
Saturday. Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. I love that. And
NB (29:13):
You’ll get unsubscribes. Another quick little tip is this is another thing that converts good at is putting a little link in there and j just saying like, Hey, we’re gonna, we’re, we are talking about this product all week long. If you don’t want to hear about it, but you don’t want to unsubscribe, click this and won’t, I won’t send you another email this week and like next week we’re back to our regular scheduled programming and it’ll just pause that for them. Cuz someone will be be like, look man, I’m not gonna buy it, you know, for whatever reason, but I love your content every week and you just don’t want that person to get annoyed. And so right at the beginning and actually the week before, you could say, Hey, we’re we’re rolling into launch week for this. I remember talking all about it. If you don’t wanna hear about it, click this link and we’ll skip next week and or, you know, and I’ll see you later or I’ll see you soon and that’ll save a bunch of unsubscribes and let people kind of control their preferences.
RV (30:07):
Mm-Hmm. . Yeah, I love that. I love that. And I mean, it goes back again to just this idea of there’s this like weird thought that marketers have that somehow if they spam people enough that someone who is not interested will like accidentally decide one day to buy, become interested and become interested, keep them up the head with it more, and then they’ll get excited about it and it, and it’s like, it’s the opposite. It’s like if they don’t want to hear from you, let them not hear from you. Or if they don’t want to hear from you so frequently, let them slow down the cadence, you know, until they’re ready. That’s the whole point of email is you’re just nurturing them in an automated fashion and then you will catch ’em on the next launch or the launch after. But if you, if you annoy ’em, you’re gonna, you lose them here and then you taken money out of your future pockets. So I’m a I lo I love that. So I wanna go back to number three. You said the, there’s three things that great flywheel should have. And then I want to hear, I want to hear a couple specific, I have a couple specific questions for you about convert kits. So yeah, what’s the, what’s the third part about the flywheel?
NB (31:11):
Yeah, the third rule is that every rotation of the flywheel should produce more results than the previous rotation. Mm-Hmm. So going back to the rules, right? It needs to be in sequence, these can’t be scattered tasks. The second rule is each rotation needs to be easier than the previous one. And the third one is that it has to produce more results than the previous rotation. So if you think about that, like, wait, our rules are that rules two and three together is like, it has to get easier over time and it has to produce more simultaneously. Like that’s kind of a high bar to hit. But there’s a lot of creators that have done this. So let me give you an example. There’s a creator his name’s Sawhill Bloom and he writes a lot about habits and mental models and business and, and you know, all of these kind of things.
NB (31:55):
And he’s popular on Twitter. And so he’s built up a good size following on Twitter and he drives a lot of subscribers from his email or from Twitter to his email list and then from there into automations. And he’s got a few things going on here. He he does a referral program where he says, Hey, if you refer three friends to my newsletter, then you get this extra guide that I wrote for free. And so that means every subscriber that comes in, you know, maybe 10% of ’em refer friends. And so that turns into, you know, every one subscriber turns into 1.1 or 1.5 subscribers, and that goes from there. The next thing that happens is he’s got paid products that he is selling that’s pretty normal. So, so he is making money off of every subscriber from there on, from there he is in something called the Convert Kit Sponsor Network, and that’s where we sell advertising sponsorships for his newsletter on his behalf.
NB (32:50):
And so he is making a good amount of money from that, and he’s actually taking all of the money that he makes and pouring that back into advertising to grow his newsletter faster. And so what happens is, if we put some actual numbers to it at the beginning or like February, 2023, he had 200,000 subscribers on his list. And that’s growing at a pretty decent pace from, from social, but he was able to sell sponsorships and make tw about $25,000 a month off of selling sponsorships on his newsletter. He attends twice a week and he is taking all of that money and putting it into something called the partner network that a company called Spark Lu has. And that’s where you can sponsor other creators and like pay them $2 per subscriber that comes to you.
RV (33:42):
What’s it
NB (33:43):
Called? The company is spark Loop and we have a partnership with them. So you get it for free if you’re a converter customer. But it’s their partner network. And so basically you can say, Hey, I’ll pay $2 for every engaged subscriber that someone sends to me, and then creators can go browse it and say, oh, I like Nathan’s stuff. I’d happily get paid to send subscribers to him. So now instead of me going out and like paying Mark Zuckerberg on Instagram for more subscribers, like I’m paying another creator. And so Sahi is taking all the money he makes from sponsorships, spending it there, picking up another like 10 to 15,000 subscribers a month. And so now like he has this flywheel that keeps going around in circles, he’s taking his money, he’s reinvesting it, growing his list. But if you think about it, the more subscribers there are on his list, the more he’s able to charge brands for sponsors, which means the more money he makes, which means the more money he’s spending on advertising.
NB (34:43):
So his list grows faster. And so every rotation, this is actually getting easier and producing more results. So I think he started the year in January at about 150,000 subscribers and today what is it, April 20th or so he’s at 300,000 subscribers. So he is, he’s doubled the list in Q1 by like running the flywheel very aggressively. And he’s a great marketer, but that’s how you can kind of put these things in sequence and then make it so that the flywheel, you know, it’s like a snowball going downhill. It’s like picking up more snow as it goes. It gets bigger and bigger faster.
RV (35:16):
I love it. Yeah, that is really cool. How do you do the referral thing where you say, Hey, if you, if you refer three people to my newsletter, I’ll send you this bonus, which, I mean, does that basically mean you have to set up like an affiliate link for every single subscriber and somehow it has to track if, if if that subscriber sends it out and three people convert on that land? I mean that’s a, is that how that’s being done?
NB (35:42):
Yeah, so basically what it is in, in the same way that we’re all used to affiliate programs, you know, it’s similar this tool, spark Loop has that built in. And that’s something that people get for free with convert Kits Greater Pro Plan, and that’s where it’ll set up that system. And in the footer of your email it’ll say, Hey, here’s your link. You’ve referred two people. Like refer one more to unlock Nathan’s free guide to whatever. Right? Or it could be an email course, it could be maybe if someone’s like, Hey, if you refer 10 people, you know, I’ll send you this shirt. If, if you refer 20 people, I’ll give you this invite. Like you get to come and do this like one day workshop or you know, something else, right? You could, you can offer any kind of custom bonus. And it’s a really effective way of getting your best like your biggest fans to refer more, more people.
RV (36:36):
Interesting.
NB (36:37):
But it’s all, it’s all automated. You set it up once yeah.
RV (36:41):
And this is
NB (36:41):
Basically, I’m obsessed with flywheel and automation, so there’s no way
RV (36:43):
Is that like an HTML code you drop into the email and then it’s basically reading like how many people Yeah, exactly. Subscribe to and pulling that through. Wow, that’s interesting. That’s fascinating. Well, okay, so I don’t wanna let you go before we talk a little bit about, about Convert Kit. And, and I, I’ll tell you like I love all the marketing automation tools and I also struggle with all of them cuz there’s like certain things that they do and like you guys have some really, really awesome features. First of all, a lot of our clients use you and they say it’s very easy to use. It’s like, it’s not super comp, like it doesn’t feel overwhelming and complicated. And so a lot of clients really like that, especially if they don’t have like developers or a lot of team or like a lot of time for the tech stuff.
RV (37:27):
One of the features that y’all have that I don’t think I’ve never seen anybody else have, and I told you this before and I was like, it’s really an amazing feature, is to send emails based on zip code radius to say send an segment my list by people who are all within some radius range of the zip code, which is huge for anyone that does any type of events event marketing and for book book tours and stuff like that. Or even if you’re a speaker and you’re like, go, I want to have a meetup in all these different places. It, I mean, it’s a really, really cool thing. So anyways, w what would you say are like, let’s say, let’s just take three, so I’ve given one what would you say are like three of your favorite features about Convert Kit? Maybe they’re things that you, you guys either do that other people don’t do or you think you do better or it’s easier. But I would just love to hear like, what are your, your top three kind of like favorite features of On Convert Kit?
NB (38:29):
Yeah. First the location based one. I absolutely love, we have a bunch of clients that are musicians. Yeah. So like Tim McGraw and Land Bridges and Mandy Moore and a bunch of others. And their teams are doing that whole thing, you know, they’re like, oh, we’re playing this show, either a huge stadium show or something smaller and it’s like, look, you know, we want to email people within 200 miles of Dallas Fort Worth. Right? Super easy to do. Or another example is you get these customers who are selling like food products, right? Maybe you’re you know, you have like the recipe blog or there’s one that there’s a, a blog called Hey Grill Hay. She runs this fantastic barbecue blog and she’s just getting into selling her own like sauces and rubs that are getting carried in grocery stores.
NB (39:15):
Okay. And what she does I think is just brilliant is if she gets carried in a new grocery store, like they’ll just run this little test like, okay, we’ll see if people, like, if consumers want to buy your product, she’ll be like, cool, what what store did carry that in? And then she goes to her email list, you know, and says like, okay everybody within 50 miles of Denver where like this, you know, store is carrying our product, you know, she emails him and says like, go here and buy this. And then also tell ’em like, Hey, are you like, are you gonna carry this other ver you know, like you only have three other flavors. Where’s the fourth one? You know, whatever. And so these stores are just like, wow, your product was a huge hit, we should carry it. And more.
NB (39:56):
She’s like, yes, you should. I agree , and that’s the, the location-based play. But, but two other ones. One feature that Convert it has that I think no one else has. Well let’s set a scenario. We’re in our product launch and we’re like, Hey, the cart’s open, it’s live. Like go buy it. It’s that Monday morning email that we sent out and you hit send and you’re like, okay, here we go. You’re like refreshing for sales and instead of sales, you get an email back that says like, Hey man, your link’s broken. And you’re like, ugh. Like just this crushing feeling. You’re like, now do I send another email and all of that? No. In Convert It, you go in and you click edit on the link and you change it and you remove the like extra slash that you put in or however you type with the link, you fix it and hit save and all the links come through and, and click through automatically correctly. So it like, you
RV (40:47):
Can edit embedded links after you’ve sent them out.
NB (40:51):
Yeah, and I, as far as I know no other email tool will let you do that.
RV (40:56):
That’s cool. I don’t know of another tool that does that. I mean, that’s, that’s pretty awesome. I mean it was like one you hope you’d never have to use, but man, if you
NB (41:05):
Didn’t need use. But if you do it’ss there
RV (41:06):
For you, it’s pretty, it’s pretty clutch. Yep.
NB (41:08):
Like we’ve got your back. There’s a bunch of other fun things and like you know, like we’ll automatically check to see if any of your links are sending you a 4 0 4. We’ll check your subject. Like we’ll do a bunch of stuff like that for you automatically before you hit send. But probably the picking three, I love automations like as a feature and it, and pretty much every tool, email tool is gonna have automations. Things that I like about ours is you can click into an email sequence and see all the emails listed down the side so you can move between them really quickly. And so it’s easy to see like, oh, what did I send them last week? Or what was yesterday? And you’re not like backing out and going back in or opening a ton of tabs, you’re just like clicking between them. It’s really fast. I’m
RV (41:56):
Not gonna, that’s handy cuz a lot of the time you lose is just in the extra clicks when you’re building these things is like, click in here and then click in here and then click in here to edit it and then click back out. Click back out. Yeah.
NB (42:07):
Yeah, so making things load really quick. And then really like these advanced things that you’d have to be normally be like a marketing automation expert to implement. We’ve got all these recipes like shared automations inside of Convert It. And so you can go through and be like, okay like gimme the book launch template and let me load that in and then just edit it from me. So it’s really like, how do we take something that before only the experts could do and make it so it’s approachable for
RV (42:36):
Yeah. You mentioned that like the, you you mentioned that like deadline sequence, sort of countdown timer inside of an email. That’s a cool thing cuz normally you’d have to use like a third party plugin or like
NB (42:45):
Yeah. How do you install it? Like, paste in this html nobody knows how to do it, no one wants to, so it’s like click little plus icon, select countdown timer, set the date you want it to countdown to hit send on the email.
RV (42:56):
Yeah. That’s really cool. That’s awesome, man. Well just so everybody knows, like if you go to brand builders group.com/convert, that is our affiliate link for Convert Kits. So we are, you know, been fans of Nathan. A lot of our clients use Convert Kit. I wanted to have ’em on the show so you could like, hear, you know, his story and what they’re about. We’ve heard great feedback on it. Some of these, some of these features are really, really hard to find. So Nathan, this has been awesome. Like what’s, what’s the vision for Convert Kit from here? Like where do you, where do you, where do you think you guys are going? Like are there any big things ahead in terms of like what you’re working on or, you know, what’s, what’s that? What’s in the future?
NB (43:42):
Yeah, so our company mission is that we exist to help creators earn a living. It’s deeply personal to me. I grew up in a family where money was really scarce and when I learned about making money on the internet, I was like, does everyone know this? Like, like, I wanna make this accessible to as many people as possible. And so everything that we’re coming out with whether it’s our sponsorship network that we’re building and still in the early days or work at Commerce where you can sell digital products or even this new partner network that we’re working on with Spark Loop, those are all about like, Hey, how can we make it easier? Like, how can we get creators paid? And so that’s really what we’re building is like turning all of this into a flywheel that someone can sign up and say, Hey, whether you have like 500 subscribers or 50,000 subscribers, there’s a lot of great ways to make money. And so that’s kind of, kind of next, that’s the North Star. How much money can I pay to creators every single month? And then whatever crazy ideas I can dream up that makes that easier.
RV (44:44):
I love it. Well, thanks for what you’re doing, man. Thank you for supporting creators. We’ve got a, we have a sh a shared united passion for, we call ’em mission-driven messengers, but like we you know, and the tools, the tools matter a bunch and, and they’re making a big difference, man. So we wish you all the best. We’ll stay connected again, go to brand builders group.com/convert if you wanna learn more specifically about Convert Kit and you know, Nathan, I’m sure I’ll talk to you again soon.
NB (45:11):
Sounds good. Thanks for having me.

Ep 379: How To Keep The Money You Make | Shannon Weinstein Episode Recap

AJV (00:02):
All right, y’all, let’s talk about how to keep more of the money you earn, right? You’re making money now. Let’s talk about some key ways to help you keep some more of that moolah that you’ve been working for. Had a great conversation with a friend and a client, a brand builders group, and I thought I would just take some of these highlights of this awesome conversation around money and taxes and financial literacy and bring them to you. And a couple of like key points. So I’m so excited for this because I personally learned so much from this conversation, so I know that you are too. So here’s a couple of things. Financial literacy is a skillset that you must learn as a business owner and entrepreneur. That does not mean you have to do all of it. That does not mean you need to know everything, but it, it does mean that you have responsibility to know enough that you can make good decisions for your business without just going, Nope, I’m gonna hand that over to the professionals.
AJV (01:05):
Hope they do a great job, and none of it’s my responsibility. That’s not true. It is your responsibility. In fact, the number one reason that small businesses fail is a lack of funding. They run outta money. And that means that they did not have a good, healthy stance on when the money was coming in and when the money was going out, right? That’s cash flow, right? And so there’s a few things that you can do to better understand your financials and manage your cash flow to make sure that you stay in business and you keep more of that money. So here’s a couple of things that we talked about is one is just account dispersion, right? In light of all the things happening with like the S V B banking situation and the F D I C insurance and interest rates and all kinds of market volatility there are some things that you can really do to that makes a difference.
AJV (01:57):
One you need to have account dispersion. You need to have account that’s for everyday operating expenses. Then you have an account that is really your reserve. Used to people would say, keep four to six months of your operating expenses in a reserve account for emergency purposes. I e like covid the pandemic, right? If you didn’t have that am that amount of money in reserve, you likely did not end the pandemic still in business today. However, people are suggesting six to eight months, that’s a lot of money. That’s not a part of your everyday operating cash flow. But that’s a good necessary thing of going. You need that as that backup reserve, right? That emergency fund and the na or in the terms of Dave Ramsey, then actually have a tax account, have a tax savings account where every single month you take 20, 25, 30%, whatever you think you’re gonna end up in terms of your tax bracket, pull that out of your earnings every single month and stick it at a tax account.
AJV (02:57):
So you’re not surprised with a six figure plus bill at the end of a really successful year. And now you’re going, whoa, we can’t afford to pay that right plan for in advance. Now, this is not my money. This now belongs to America and put it in your Little America tax fund and keep it separate so you have a good accurate standing of the cash flow, not only of today, but where it’s gonna be in 3, 6, 9, 12 months from now. Then also have a fourth account that is your true like savings and fundraising for the business. So what are the things that you want to do in the business that you need to start setting money aside for? Maybe you want to buy a commercial building. Maybe you want to do a new website. Maybe you want to do this education or this course, or this mastermind, whatever it is.
AJV (03:44):
You have your reserve fund, which is for the operating functions of the business, but then you have a savings or fundraising fund to go. And these are things that we wanna do. So if we can’t afford them right now, we’re going to start putting money aside so that we can’t afford to them one day without impacting everyday cash flow, account dispersion. Simple, not easy, super important, right? Next is like mindset, right? Know the goal for your money, but you actually need to know like, what are the financial goals that I have for me and the company? Somewhat simple, but often we don’t take the time to go, what is the goal of what I’m doing, what I’m working for? Like what, what am I actually trying to do with this? Then you have to know where your money is going, right? I love this little saying of, I don’t even, I can’t even give credit where credit is due.
AJV (04:30):
It’s been so long, but before you expect you must inspect. So you have to know when your money is going out and when the money is coming in. Simple but not easy, right? You’ve gotta know like when every month or every week of every month, do typically expenses go out and when does revenue come in? That’s cash flow, right? But you’ve gotta do some inspecting before you can create any level of expectation of what’s going to help healthily grow the business. Then you gotta understand like the, the cadence and the sequence of that flow. Is there regularity to it or well, or do you work in seasons where there’s a launch and then there’s a long pause and a launch and a long pause? Are you in a recurring business model where there’s that natural cadence where I can expect that, you know, between the 15th and the 28th, most of all of my recurring payments come in during this time period.
AJV (05:23):
I make payroll on these dates and that’s when the money is going out on these periods. So some of it is just knowing the cadence and the flow of when the money comes and when the money goes based on the type of business that you have. Is it a recurring model? Is it a, you know, buy one at a time kind of model? Is it a launch season model? What does that look like? And then last but not least, it’s knowing how to save and reduce your tax liability. Okay? So that’s the last thing I’m gonna talk about some, some somewhat quickly here. Here are four quick things that you should go and research. I am not a tax professional, I’m not a financial professional, I’m an entrepreneur. So these are just things that you should go and research on your own.
AJV (06:05):
Talk to your CPA financial planner, a professional who’s accredited, who has a license in this. These are just ideas to bring to them, okay? Number one, if you’re an L L C, make sure you’ve got the s corp election. If you qualify for that that allows you to avoid much of the self-employment taxes. Also allows you to qualify for the 1 91 99 a deduction. Okay? So that’s the first thing. Just take that to your professional, right? Look it up, take it to them. Second is the Augusta election, right? So can you rent out your home that is not currently used in use for any sort of everyday business expenses for business events? So client gatherings, company gatherings weekly meetings, monthly meetings, annual meetings. But the Augusta election allows you to run out your home tax free for 14 days. It does require documentation comparison.
AJV (06:59):
There’s a lot of work that goes into it, but that would be worthy of going, do I qualify for that? Could be a really good strategy. Number three, home office deductions, right? The percentage of the square footage of your home that is solely dedicated that you can prove to actual business expenses. You can take that same percentage of your square footage and apply that to all of the household expenses that you have. Your internets electric utilities all the things, right? Maintenance. so do the work, have it documented and talk to your professional . The last but not least is are your kids eligible to be employees? Can you hire your kids to work for you? Previous years you could pay them up to $12,500 tax free. Now it’s up to $13,850 tax free. But you need to make sure that the age ma matches the payment and the payment matches the job.
AJV (07:58):
So you cannot the example my friend Shannon gave is, you cannot hire your two-year old to be your co your core here, right? Your driver that is not gonna work out. But do you have positions in your business? And I will just give this a quick example for me. I am a, I have a personal brand, right? I have a lifestyle personal brand about motherhood and entrepreneurship. I speak about it, I blog about it, I podcast about it. And so I hire my kids as child models so that I’m not renting children that aren’t my kids to be the child model. So why not pay my kids for that? So for photo shoots and all that, I looked up, if I had to hire an agency to hire child models, what would I pay per hour? You gotta do all the math. I created a contract, I did all the things. Then they could be legitimate employees even at younger ages. But you gotta have a legitimate reason with legitimate proof in order
AJV (08:54):
For these things to work for you, right? So that is super high level that is not even scratching the surface of all the things that you can be doing, should be doing to have a better grip on how do you keep more of the money that you earn. But those are some high level things from a recent conversation, and I know if it was that impactful for me, you’ve got to be able to take something from it too. So, hope you enjoyed it. Hope at least one of those gives you some ideas of how to keep more money that you earn.

Ep 378: 4 Financial Facts That Will Help You Keep More Of The Money You Earn with Shannon Weinstein

AJV (00:01):
Hey y’all, and welcome to another episode on the Influential Personal Brand podcast. And y’all, let me tell you, this is an episode that you want to listen to. So before I formally introduce my friend, Shannon, I need you to know why you need to stick around all of you. And I don’t care how much of it you have, but all of you make money. I don’t care if it’s a dollar or a billion dollars. You got some amount of dollars in your banking account. And here are the three things we’re gonna talk about when it comes to your money today. One, we’re gonna talk about how do you keep more of the money that you’re making? Who doesn’t want that? So you’re making it, how do you keep more of it, number one. Number two, there is no minimum income level to benefit and learn from what we’re gonna talk about today.
AJV (00:53):
This is not for billionaires, millionaires, or thousands of errors, . This is for anyone who has dollars, all right? And it’s like there is no minimum amount. These are skills and tools and mindsets that you need to have when it comes to money. It doesn’t matter how much that you have. So there’s no minimum requirements to be a part of this conversation. And then number three, which is, this is just a precursor to just a little bit of what you need to know when it comes to keeping more of that money. The number one tool that you need to have in that toolbox of yours is understanding cash flow. You can have money on a p and l statement and not have money in your banking account. So how do we understand cash flow to help us ha, help us have a happy, healthy financial business?
AJV (01:38):
So without further ado, I’m going to give you a formal introduction of my friend Shannon Weinstein, and we’re gonna talk about all things money. But before we do that there’s a couple of things that you may want to know about Shannon. So I’ll give her a quick formal background overview, and then I will let her tell you guys a little bit about herself. So Shannon is a c p a. So, so she actually has credentials in this money conversation, always a bonus. She’s also a fractional c f o for growth minded business owners, emphasis on the growth minded. She’s a teacher at heart. Her real life relatable example, simplify, which I think is really important, help make easy the financial side of business so you can stop stressing and start scaling. She’s also the host of the most awesome, keep What You Earn podcast, which I got to be a guest on a few weeks ago. And I’m so, so, so excited to get to swap the roles today and be the interviewer, not the interviewee. So without formal ado, Shannon, welcome to the show.
SW (02:45):
Thank you so much for that intro. I really appreciate it.
AJV (02:47):
I’m so happy to be here and have this conversation because I think the best thing about being a podcast host is all this free training, free coaching. Amen.
SW (02:58):
Amen. Amen. Same here
AJV (03:00):
As host. And so to help our audience get to know a little bit about you, I would love for you to kind of just give, like, how did you end up doing this, right? As a C P A? It’s like, right, we know that the trajectory that you were on, but somehow something took you off course to get you to where you are today. So give us a little of the backstory.
SW (03:22):
So nobody grows up in like second grade, and when they ask you what you wanna be, when you grow up, you say c p a. So there’s always an origin story that that deviates from. Well, when I was a kid, I really wanted to work with numbers and spreadsheets. In fact, spreadsheets didn’t exist, I think when I was that age. So I, I lost a bet with my dad and ended up majoring in accounting wi willingly, willingly. But it was, it was fun because what I realized was numbers were a language that I spoke and I actually loved language. I wanted to be a Spanish teacher, believe it or not. And I I fell in love with languages and teaching languages and speaking different languages. And I was like, this is so cool. We can communicate through these different ways and people understand different things.
SW (03:59):
Hmm. So in learning all that, I was fascinated by it. And then I took an accounting class again, a dare from my dad. He’s like, take this and if you hate it, I’ll stop bugging you about, you know, taking over my firm and being my protege and all this stuff, right? And, and I took it and I was like, I actually love this. Hmm. And I realized that it was something it took to me easily, and my dad sat me down and said, this is the language you need to teach people. So that is exactly how it happened. I’ve always been kind of a teacher in the back of my mind and couldn’t wait to share knowledge, teach it. Every time I learned something, I go, how will I explain this when I pass it on? And that has been the, the kind of the anchor point for everything I do since then. You know, working in corporate, working in big firms, and then eventually starting my own practice.
AJV (04:43):
I love that whole piece about numbers is a language because it is like, it really is. And then the financial acumen of knowing what numbers are make up the most important parts of the language, I think is a really important thing that, I mean, I’m just going back thinking in my college days, like, you know, I had a business minor. I actually was a Spanish minor, so also love language. But there, you know, I remember those accounting classes and I’m like, I retained nothing. There was nothing of actual value, real world personal or professional value that I can recall from any of my college courses. Now, perhaps that was my college of choice, who knows? But I do think as we kind of enter in, I also believe that most people didn’t expect to be entrepreneurs, right? They developed into that without having developed some of the financial acumen to help them keep more of the money that you’re earning. And so, I’m gonna start with what I think is what you said. The most important kind of thing is understanding this language with the number one tool, being understanding cash flow. So walk us through, and let’s just like take it down to the basics. What is cash flow? How do you know if you have it? And how do you start learning the language of going, all right, this is actually something I should be looking at as a business owner.
SW (06:09):
So another fun fact about me is that I worked in fitness for about 10 years. So most of my analogies are related to fitness, but I think it’s something everyone can relate to cuz everyone has hated a workout or been on a diet or seen a diet or something before. So it, it’s really relatable and I look at cash flow as your business’s metabolism. Mm-Hmm. So it’s how, at what pace and through what timing are you bringing cash in and paying cash out and paying cash out comes in the form of both expenses. And when you take money out of your business to pay for things personally. So you have to be looking at, are you consuming what your business is producing at the rate that you need to be? Or are you consuming more than your business can produce? And you’re tapping into the back reserves and you’re actually at a sort of a deficit in terms of what you’re bringing out of the business.
SW (06:56):
And what you may not realize is that could be happening even if your bur business is turning a profit mm-hmm. because you’re just pulling more than what your profit is producing. And you may not realize, you just see the bank account and you see a certain number and that’s the metric. But that’s like looking at the scale on a given day and measuring your overall health. Yeah. You don’t know what’s behind that number. That is one data point. So unless you understand how rapidly that is changing, then you don’t really know what that number is telling you.
AJV (07:23):
Hmm. That’s so good. I love thinking about it like the metabolism, right? It’s like, you know, because it’s, it’s easy to think about. It’s like if you eat more than you burn, eventually you’re gonna gain some bees, right? Exactly. And if you burn more than you eat, eventually you’ll lose some bees. So it’s like being able to think about it that way really does make it easy. So what are some of the best tips of like, where, where should you start of going, okay, I don’t do this, haven’t been doing this, I get it, I should be doing it. Where do you start?
SW (07:53):
So I recommend anyone who’s brand new to the idea of cash flow, sit down with maybe a month or six weeks. I say four to six weeks of a cash flow forecast. Don’t get scared, but it actually makes sense when you break down the weeks across the top and let’s say a spreadsheet, or you can, you could even draw it, it doesn’t matter. But across the top you have all the weeks for about four or six weeks. And then you list out every way money comes in, every way money goes out. And you can look at your bank statements as a hint as to where things are going. And you can kind of figure out, Hmm, this is how much money I have now, this is how much I’m expecting to come in each month. This is how much is going out each month. And then the bottom is your cash flow.
SW (08:30):
It’s pretty simple. And accountants like to make it more complicated by throwing jargon in the mix and calling it different things and different labels and cash flows from operations. And it’s like, let’s just keep it simple to what’s coming in, what’s going out and what is happening at the bottom. Cuz I think most entrepreneurs will be surprised to realize that they actually have negative cash flow. Hmm. And that that can be, again, it’s not bad. One month of negative cash flow is not bad, but as a habit and as a consistent habit, it can actually lead to the downfall of a business. It’s the number one reason small businesses fail according to surveys is lack of cash flow or capital. But unfortunately a poor cash flow, you don’t realize until it becomes a problem. Yeah. Like a real problem. It’s kind of like how you don’t realize you’ve been eating too much until the jeans don’t fit. And by then you’re like, it’s kind of too late. I gotta go buy new jeans. So it, you don’t wanna get to that point where it becomes uncomfortable and those problems surface and you really feel the symptoms. You wanna be able to identify those before they become a problem.
AJV (09:29):
So this is, I think this is such a great conversation specifically for entrepreneurs and small businesses, small business owners. I, I think also in this, and I’d love to hear your thoughts and philosophy on this. Like one of our, you know, we’re, we’re Dave Ramsey people, so we’re net free livers. You don’t have to subscribe to all things Dave Ramsey to acknowledge like not having lots of debt isn’t a bad idea. If for no ever reason, then peace. So we’ve always kind of been of this, you know, belief that we self fund, right? We don’t have investors, we don’t have loans, we don’t, we don’t, we just, we self fund. And so one of the things, and I don’t know who taught us or where we learned this along the way, but it’s been, it’s been a true saving grace of we actually, and I’m just like, this is again, philosophical question. What is your take on the amount of money that a good healthy business should keep on hand? And both ordinary day-to-day operations, but then also in reserves. So kinda like your emergency fund above what you need on a daily operating level.
SW (10:37):
So I believe that you should have four to six months in a normal economy of expenses of what I call your monthly burn. So I think your monthly burn, if I were to define that, is anything that you’re committed to spending, whether you make a sale or not. So if that’s the rent for your building or that’s the subscriptions that you’re on or your software or whatever, where if you don’t bring a sale in, you still got these bills coming in, then I would say that could be your team, your management team, your operations, right? So I look at monthly burn and that cashflow forecast is part of that too is like, what’s the burn gonna be over time? Mm-Hmm. But it, it literally is calorie burn. It’s like, what are you burning if you’re doing nothing? If you’re not moving at all, what is the minimum amount you’re gonna be burning every month in cash?
SW (11:18):
Yeah. And I look at that and say that times, let’s say six is what I wanna make sure I have in the bank account at any given point in time. And right now we’re recording this amidst pretty much chaos in the financial industry and a lack of understanding of, of banking and what’s going on. And I go now, I would say six to eight. Wow. I would say six to eight because you just wanna make sure that in turbulent times that you feel extra secure. I mean, look what happened with Covid, that was definitely an evident example of who wasn’t keeping an emergency fund. And I think that you wanna be ready for six. I mean, we literally had six months shutdown. Like we, we’ve been saying this for years, six months in, in the bank. And then I think all the accountants looked around and said, holy crap we were right , like, like people literally shut down for six months and those who who had that advice were like, oh, we’re gonna be okay until August or whatever. And, and I think that you just wanna be ready, you just wanna know that you’re ready and you can tap into that if you absolutely need to. But I think having a good emergency fund of four to six months on a normal day and maybe six to eight if you wanna be a little extra safe is a good bet. And I think that’s reflective of what the cost to operate from payroll, to subscriptions to rent and so on. That’s what goes into the emergency fund.
AJV (12:31):
Yeah, I think that’s really helpful. And you know, you brought up something because we are recording this in the light of what an interesting time with S V B and the government and this bank run and volatility and interest rates and we could go on and on and on. So completely a side thought that just came to my mind because I called up our personal banker as probably the majority of small business owners understood on Monday. I’m like, so let’s talk about my account dispersion and coverage and all the things here. And so I’m curious to kind of get your thoughts. And you can be as vague or as specific as you like around just how important it is to even know the types of accounts that you have in the bank because we definitely are in the middle right now of going, oh, we need to move this here and move that there, and we need to close that account and open this type of account. And that all came in light of somebody else’s tragedy. But there’s great lessons for all of us to learn. So would love any thoughts or insights you would have to share on this really unique time that we’re in when it comes to money and accounts, what type of accounts you need and how many and all the things.
SW (13:48):
So of course it’s gonna vary based on your goals, right? Like the number, like the number of accounts you need, what types of accounts you need. It’s gonna depend on what purpose each account serves and what mission it has. So my, my philosophy on it is, there’s a couple of things. One, my husband and I specifically, if we’re talking about the personal end, and you can do this for your business as well, I do this with my clients as A C F O, but we go through every quarter and we take stock and inventory. Where’s our money? What accounts is it in? Is it doing its job? Hmm. So if we have too much in the checking account, I go, do we really need all that money in the checking account? Can we move it to a high yield savings, getting 4% interest? You know, can we move this over here?
SW (14:24):
Like, is everything doing the job we want it to do? And we just have a, a checkpoint every quarter at a minimum. We have that kind of on the calendar at the end of every quarter to just go through and do a quick update and to do our own little family balance sheet. Now, of course I’m an accountant, so of course we’re gonna do this. And Jason and I, my husband, we’re nerds. But it’s a good habit to just take stock of everything, be aware of where your money’s at. Because when this happened, we weren’t worried. We knew where the money was, we knew what it was doing, and we knew we were under the insured insured limits. So we got nothing to worry about. So we weren’t making any phone calls. We were, we were cool, but the most people get into panic mode and they go, I don’t know where my money is.
SW (15:04):
And I said, well, I think that starts with that. It starts with the awareness of where your money is and also knowing what the goals are. So if you’re in a business, for example, and this goes back to business owners, right? Of if you have everything in checking and you have like multiple hundreds of thousand dollars in checking, I would say if I were your C F O and I see that, I go, do you really need that much? Is that really six months worth of operating expenses, especially for service-based businesses who may have, you know, not that many expenses. Hmm. I say take some of that, put it in high yield savings, take some of that, put it in the tax savings account, take some of that, put it into like an investment account for like that rainy day fund, but make sure that that’s earning interest for you.
SW (15:39):
Make sure that you’re letting your money work for you and that you can call on it if you need to, if you need to keep it liquid. We call it liquid meaning ready access to it. So you don’t have to sell anything to cash it out. And, and that’s what I would encourage people to do is just be mindful of how you’re managing your money and aware of where it is and just make sure that you’re clearly defined on what goal every dollar has for you so that you know if it’s doing that or not.
AJV (16:04):
Yeah. So you just again said something that I wanna kind of like take this rabbit trail naturally here because this is, again, one of those like real simple but really important things of actually having different accounts to properly save for things like taxes. And it’s like we, I have just found like for both us personally and us professionally, it’s like, I don’t know if I’m embarrassed or proud to say this, but it’s like we have like 13 different banking accounts and I’m just like, this is the savings for this thing and this is the savings for that thing. But a lot of it’s not about, it’s, I I can’t, this is not money I can use for every day function. Like this is every single month I take, you know, basically 35% of our earnings and I just stick it in this tax savings account for a rainy day. Right. One day it’s gonna have to come out. But yeah, like I’d love to hear some thoughts and best practices around like, how can entrepreneurs, small business owners go, okay, I have everything in one or maybe just two accounts. What are some of those accounts that would be really good for me to really start developing as my business matures?
SW (17:09):
So I I bel I subscribe to this idea of I think it’s Parkinson’s law that like things will take up the space you give them. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s why we, it’s why we cram before exams and do our assignments the night before. Right? If you gave me two days, I would get the same work done as in two weeks. I just do it the day before . So the idea behind that law and why it relates to your bank is if you are a business owner and you open your checking account on your online banking and you see $200,000 in there, guess what you’re gonna think, I got money to spend. I can do all these things with that. That’s, I could pay for that mastermind, I can pay for, I can pay ahead, I can pay, you know, all these things. I’m rich.
SW (17:45):
You feel like you’re a scooch McDuck in the vault, swimming in the dollars . And then you realize, oh wait a minute, I got that money in the bank cuz I did a launch and I have to make that last three months. Oops. But you don’t realize, you see that money and it makes you feel something and it makes, it changes how you think. It changes how you say yes or no to things. It changes. It’s like I can afford it, therefore I will do it. And, and I wanna be careful with that. And where I’m going with this is when you’re, when you’re designing how you’re gonna organize these accounts, I would say these outta sight outta mind concepts of when you take the money, like as soon as it comes in, just like you said, aj, take a certain percent and put it to taxes.
SW (18:26):
And if you’re taking it out of pure revenue, you can round down a little bit. I say between 20 and 25% if you’re in California, sorry, it’s on the higher end of that, probably more. But it depends on your federal and state tax rates. But you’re gonna want to set aside that money and set it and forget it because your paycheck used to do that for you. They don’t do it for you anymore. So you gotta have the discipline to go move that money and say, that is not my money. I’m hanging onto that for the government, but that is not my money to spend. And then same thing, if you wanna save up I have a particular client right now who’s saving up to buy a license to be able to use certain imagery on her products. So what we’re doing is we actually created a quote unquote sinking fund.
SW (19:05):
So every time she makes a sale, a certain amount goes into that towards the saving. It’s almost like putting coins in that piggy bank when you were a kid and going, I’m gonna save up for my first whatever. Like I did that to save up for my PlayStation mm-hmm. . So it’s the same concept of throw a few here and there, here and there until you’re reaching that goal of like fundraising for your business mm-hmm. . So we actually do that with clients all the time. We set up multiple accounts under their bank account and we use it for different purposes for their payroll, for their savings, things like that. So when you give your money a mission and you have a way to measure it, you’re much more likely to be successful in accomplishing that.
AJV (19:41):
Love that. So good. So good. So, okay, so on the note of measuring it, what would you say, you know, on the topic of how do you keep more of the money that you earn? What are the things we need to be looking at? What are the things that we need to be measuring? What actually can we do to keep more of this money that we’re working for?
SW (20:01):
So as I mentioned before, it’s, it starts with the cashflow forecast or create the initial awareness of where is my money actually going? And then being aware to go, Hmm, well do I want it going there? Is that, is that aligned with my mission? And one thing I always do with my clients is we go back to their three goals or I call their components of their why goals. So it’s like three levels of why. It’s like why are you doing this business? What are you trying to accomplish with this? Like the, the why, why, why, right? And if these expenses don’t serve that or anchor to that, I ask all the time, is this something you really want to do? This something you actually need? Or is this something you think you need? Because so and so is also doing this. Like, do you need to be doing that?
SW (20:41):
And not to be the Debbie Downer, right? , but we wanna be able to to minimize extra costs mm-hmm. and be able to really hone in on what is actually serving the mission. And then I also look at keeping more of what you earn is also understanding the flow of when it’s coming and going so that you can plan. And if that launch brings in a bunch of money, you know exactly how long that’s gonna last you and what your goals are for that launch because you’re aware of what you’re gonna spend over the next, let’s say three or four months. So you’re going, in order for me to do this, I need to do this in terms of selling. And I think that’s a, that’s a big piece of it. The other part of keeping more of what you earn naturally every entrepreneur’s biggest expense is what
AJV (21:23):
Taxes.
SW (21:23):
Exactly. So when you, when you look at taxes, right, it’s saving for your taxes, but it’s also strategizing and it’s also figuring out how can I reduce my tax liability as much as possible using business strategies that maybe I wasn’t taught in school. Because if they teach you these things, they don’t make as much money.
SW (21:45):
Wait, imagine if, imagine if Target taught a course on how to use coupons at their store. Yeah. Right. That wouldn’t benefit them and welcome to our education system. Yeah. So they’re not gonna teach you how to use the coupons. What you have to do is figure it out. You have to start hunting for your own little hacks and and things like that. And to do so legally cuz everything’s in the tax code. It’s just that nobody wants to read that rule book. They want to find someone who read it who can explain it to them. And that’s what we try to do in, in our profession. And and tax strategy is probably the number one thing that can help entrepreneurs save money in taxes that they didn’t even know they were overpaying.
AJV (22:20):
Oh my gosh. This, I don’t know how accurate this statement is, but I remember I was on like a, a two year mission when we started Brand builders goo group to reorient myself to tax law, tax changes, all the things that had changed in the, you know, at that time there were new administration and Yep. And just also getting reacquainted with how do we want to set things up. When we started Brand Builders Group, and I remember in one of the courses that I had bought, they had said, just like most rules tax rules are also built with adjustments, right? And with I would say not that rules are meant to be broken, that’s not it. But it’s like, and this was like the example, and again, don’t quote me on this, but it’s like the tax code is like, I don’t know, I re easy math a thousand pages of which actual tax rules are like 30 pages and the rest of them are the different caveats to the rule. Is that true
SW (23:23):
? It is 5%. I’ll, I’ll say it this way. 5% of the tax code is how to pay taxes. 95% is how to not pay taxes. So the the, it is actually true. So there’s only about a, there’s only a, you know, a, a decent amount of afternoon reading of how the tax cut actually works and what is taxable. And then there’s a ton of stuff, hundreds if not thousands of pages of how to avoid taxes legally by doing, by doing behaviors. The government incentivizes. Yeah. Like donating to charity, owning property, creating jobs, retirement funds. So as the government decides they want their citizens to execute on these certain activities like buying electric vehicles, solar panels, things like that, they start offering these tax incentives to people to say, we want you to do go do more of this and we will pay you for it.
SW (24:15):
Essentially. We’ll we will make sure that you don’t pay taxes on that. So that that way you’re encouraged to do it. That is at the simplest level what it is not to mention this is gonna make it sound so less glamorous, but they literally write tax code to benefit the senators and the congresspeople. So for example, I’ll give you guys an example. When you sell a house, if you’ve lived in that house for two of the last five years, you don’t have to pay taxes on your profit up to a certain amount of money. The reason they did that, guess what the congress person’s term is two years.
AJV (24:51):
So Bo guess .
SW (24:53):
Exactly. But they did that so that they could relocate to another home because they were living in their constituency and then they would have to move so they wouldn’t have to pay the appreciation on their profit. So understand if you live like a congressperson
AJV (25:07):
good,
SW (25:08):
That was actually written for them,
AJV (25:11):
It’s really built to benefit the elected officials. Exactly. So we have to think in those, they wrote it Uhhuh , they
SW (25:18):
Wrote the rule book who, if you had access to the pen and paper to write the rule book, wouldn’t you write rules that kind of work in your favor? And that’s exactly what they’re doing. And of course they represent their constituency, but they’re, they’re also thinking, well I don’t wanna sign and get myself screwed with my, my real estate here. So think about that. Like it really is that simple and it’s like, Shannon, did they really do that? I go, wouldn’t you? Yes. ,
AJV (25:44):
I mean it’s it, but it’s just like kinda one of those things. I just remember being in that ring. Like 5% are the rules. 95% are the exception to the rules. Exactly. Come again, I need to really learn these exceptions. Right? Yep. And it’s like, and at the same time I can’t learn all of them. So give us some hacks. What would you say are like your three to five, like no-brainer, you must be doing this tax saving strategy if you’re in business.
SW (26:10):
So I would say just to, to make sure you guys know how accessible these strategies are. I think once you’re making about 50 K in profit or more, you have tax strategies available to you. So if, if you, if you immediately dismiss that and say, well I’m not rich enough to do strategies, wait for it. Because there’s always a way to plant the seeds now and then be able to take advantage later. I would say number one for me, and I just love it, is the S corporation once you elect to be taxed as an S corp, which is just an outfit we throw on your corporation or your L L C so that the government doesn’t make you pay self-employment tax on a certain part of your profit. And all that really is, is you’re saving so much money with every dollar of profit that you keep.
SW (26:52):
And as you grow, you’re just saving year over year over year. And if you’re not doing that, you can be overpaying so much money in self-employment tax. And it really is as simple as making an election and faxing four pieces of paper to the i r s to avoid so many thousands of dollars in taxes. And I think that many entrepreneurs aren’t even aware of this or they’re a little bit suspicious of it, like it’s too good to be true. And I go, it isn’t because a lot of these guys in congress started these companies and they started doing this. So so it’s absolutely legit strategy and if you’re in good shape with your bookkeeping and you’re compliant and you’ve paid all your taxes so far, you’re in great shape to implement that as well. That’s one of my favorite hacks.
AJV (27:32):
So on that note, so we are an L L C with, you know, the S corp tax selection. And one of the things I think would be great is going, you know, well now that you’re technically an employee of the business, what is an adequate salary to pay yourself so you don’t get flagged Yep. But also so that you are receiving the actual benefit of doing such. This thing.
SW (27:55):
I think the biggest mistake people make with this reasonable salary requirement on an S corp is they, they just kind of pull it out of thin air. We go through a comprehensive analysis where we actually look at comparables, we analyze your time, we analyze your region, we, we look at what people are getting paid to do your job and we look at how much time you’re spending in versus on your business. And we do a comprehensive analysis with our S corp clients twice a year to make sure that their compensation is reasonable and it can be backed up in the case of an audit. And this gets to the point of the strategy is only good as what you write down because if you can’t tell the story through documentation and evidence, your deductions will get disallowed. Yes. So it’s just as important to know the strategy and to go implement it properly with the right evidence, illustration, and storyline that that talks for itself. Then you don’t have to actually explain or you know, have to fight with an i r S agent in an audit you have all the evidence that backs it up.
AJV (28:50):
So what would be some of the evidence documentation that you would recommend?
SW (28:54):
So for, let’s say for the salary, right? I would want comparable jobs in my region. I would want to see maybe a calendar of like, show me how you spend your time. Show me a bit of how you work on your clients. Right. I would just say a lot of that can be proven just because it is the business owner, they are the expert. But a great example too is another tax hack, which is called the Augusta Rule, which Oh yeah, we may have heard about where you can rent out your primary residence to your business for up to 14 days a year at the market rate of rent for a meeting space. Yeah. But when you’re picking that rate of rent for the meeting space, you gotta have comparables. You gotta be able to show that that’s a fair rental rate. Cuz if you’re charging 10 grand a day for your house in Nashville, I’m like, well the Marriott doesn’t charge that, so we gotta figure out how you feel like you can actually, unless
AJV (29:45):
You are in Nashville and then they do .
SW (29:49):
True. But if you wanna host a like three person meeting in your space, it’s kind of like, well you don’t need, you know, the Gran Ole Opry to, to do that. So we actually look at, you know, what is a reasonable comparable rental rate. You know, what is what, what could we use as a basis to argue this is how much we’re gonna deduct and why that would be acceptable by the I r s. So there’s a lot of stuff that you have to do on the backend to prepare to make your case.
AJV (30:17):
Yeah. You know, that’s so good. This, you know, I think both of these are super helpful and it’s, and then it’s like, you know, I’m curious, I mean it’s, I think it’s, we still have like two years with a 1 99 a you know, business deduction with a passthrough, right? Mm-Hmm. , it’s about two years left on that. And it’s again, one of those benefits of an L L C with an S corp. If you’re not taking a salary, then it’s like you get this pass through benefit. But it’s good to go back and go, okay, to justify why I pay myself this amount, this is how much I work in the birth business on the business, this is how I could replace myself, this is what I would pay. Like just having that pre-planned so wise that’s so smart. And then the same thing with the Augusta rule. Like, I did a little BA background digging because I got bored one day and I was like, because also I’m from Dalton, Georgia and I’m like, like Augusta, like Augusta, Georgia. And it was like, yeah. Yes. Actually Augusta, Georgia, because the masters Yes,
SW (31:13):
The masters, yes. That’s how it started. So they wanted to go, let’s be real, the senators wanted to go to the masters.
AJV (31:18):
I mean, I want, it’s like so much of this is so crazy. So one of the things that I picked up, and I’m curious to get your thoughts on this to how accurate or am I just being completely O C D over here, but it’s like I go to like the crazy extent every single month I have like a little meetings template of this was the meeting that was held at my house. These were the attendees, this was the time that it was held. And then I have my assistant make one of those for every single month for our meetings. That did happen at my house, but we actually have meetings minutes from each of those meetings are, is it that level of documentation or is that like overkill?
SW (31:54):
No, no, that is perfect. That’s actually what we, we give templates for that as well. We don’t put in air quotes. They’re legit meeting minutes. They’re they’re they’re legit. They’re, but they’re like the meeting minutes. But also we think outside the box too, because you can use the house for other things than, than meetings. So for example, I have a client who used her home for photo shoots. Yeah, yeah. And that’s great. We have the photos to prove it. We have actually ba behind the scenes footage of how much of the house they were consuming with backdrops and cameras and lighting and, and the catering for the, the, the crew. Like it was a big deal. Like this is a large mansion in LA that happens to be where she lives. And I’m like, go figure. Like this is such a funny thing that I would never let slide for certain clients.
SW (32:34):
And I’m like, no, this is actually like really legit. Like you’re filming content all day in your house. Yeah. And like your kids had to leave, you needed to get childcare. Like this whole thing. I go, I, I can see how that could be, that could work cuz it was actually cheaper than going to another photo shoot location to use the home. Mm-Hmm . So we basically found a comparable rate that we could use that was pretty conservative and and it benefited them greatly to keep that cash flow in house because here’s how these things work, right? Tax-Free cash flow, it’s a deduction to the business. Meaning it lowers your profit and therefore lowers your taxable income. But also when you’re, when you’re paying that, that is not income to the recipient, it’s not income to you as an individual because of the Augusta rule because they give you a 14 day headstart, like a freebie. So basically until you cross 14 days of renting out your house, it’s not really rental income. You don’t have to claim it. So basically cuz of that rule, you get a tax free transfer of cash from your business to you personally if you use this rule the right way.
AJV (33:35):
Okay. So two things on that. This has come up in other questions that around this conversation in my entrepreneur community is one, do you have to give yourself a 10 99 on that?
SW (33:45):
Yes.
AJV (33:46):
Okay. So asking what’s really important to know, because again, auditors ask for it, document it, still gotta document it. This comes up so much in our entrepreneur community. And then the second thing, cause so many people now are working from home and it is your primary quote unquote business and it’s your home. Mm-Hmm. , does this still apply if you have a from home at home business?
SW (34:11):
It can, there, this is a very tight, I had to pay for research on this because this is such a, like a nuanced thing. So, so here’s how, if your home is your business location, there’s two things you’ll need. Now, can you use Augusta? Yes you can. But that would be a secondary thing. And I would start with figuring out what portion of your home is exclusively used for business and is the primary place you conduct business? I e a home office. So if you have a home office space, or let’s say you’re a product-based business, like e-commerce, I have clients who use their whole garage, uhhuh or maybe they have one car and a whole bay of their garage is storage. So I go, okay, let’s measure the square footage of the home office space. That’s exclusively business. I’m not talking about like I’m sitting here in a guest bedroom, I’m not talking about the bed and all the other stuff.
SW (34:59):
I’m talking about the desk area where I actually work. Then I add in like the storage spaces, whatever is like really just business use and divide that over the total square footage of your home. Now you have a percentage and that percentage is how much of your home expenses can be pushed through the business. Yeah. But this is done a very certain way depending on what type of business entity you have, this is executed a certain type of way. And we call this the accountable plan for my S-corp and c corp owners. We call this the accountable plan. And you can reimburse yourself from your business these types of expenses. So you can pay a portion of your mortgage interest, a portion of your rent, a portion of your utilities security, landscaping, cleaning, repairs and maintenance. Like it’s, it’s all over the place and it can actually really add up. And if you’re using a lot of your home as your business, then that’s a really big benefit. Beyond that, you could use the Augusta theoretically to rent space that is not part of your primary business use. But that requires a bit of map and that square footage and like I would definitely back it up if you’re gonna use both of those con conjoined, you have to have really good documentation to clearly separate the, the space that you’re renting versus the space that you’re using for your business.
AJV (36:11):
I think that’s, it’s so good to get double verification from a professional versus my coursework . Yes. But it’s like for, you know, like I’ll give you an example of like, something that we do that we started doing for this unique reason is we host quarterly socials, like quarterly social event for our employees and we do them at our home. They’re not in our home office, but we use our backyard, we use our pool, we use our kitchen, we use our living room, we use our dining room, we use all these non at home business locations that are a part of our residential property to then it’s like if I were to go rent out a rooftop pool and any place downtown Nashville, I’m gonna be paying easily 30 grand easily to rent out this entire rooftop or pay myself to have it here at the vaden villa pool. Well back out those windows. Right? Yeah.
SW (37:07):
I love it. . Yeah. That, that can be beneficial. The, and I wanna add on to this too, that like me saying this doesn’t just make it deductible. Ultimately every i r s agent is going to interpret things differently. Yeah. Be able to enforce them differently. This is just my interpretation cuz there’s nothing in the tax code and this is the burden of it that it’s so specific, it leaves a lot of stuff out, but it’s also so vague that it leaves a lot of stuff out. So there’s a lot of things that they don’t specify about how, how these things interact with each other. So until they put tax code in place, there’s a lot of gray area that isn’t really spelled out and this is one of those things. Hmm. So depending on how you interpret the law or how your professional interprets the law that you can potentially take advantage of this or you know, a a an auditor can easily come to you and say, I don’t think that’s reasonable.
SW (37:57):
I don’t think that entertainment should count. I don’t think this based on their interpretation of the law. And usually when I’m representing clients with an auditor, it’s me and the auditor reading the, the law and saying, here’s what I’m reading and them saying, here’s what I’m reading. And it’s different things. Yeah. And then you have to kind of agree on agree to disagree and agree on some type of like, negotiation, but there’s a lot of gray area and that’s part of why having a professional is key to help you kind of translate that because it’s not really all spelled out for you.
AJV (38:27):
Oh, I love that. All right. One last tax strategy, tax savings tip,
SW (38:33):
I would say. Okay. So we, we went through a little bit of the accountable plan, the Augusta rule. I would say, oh my god, my favorite strategy to implement, even though it’s the most work , is hiring your kids.
AJV (38:43):
Oh
SW (38:43):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the, here’s why it’s my favorite, number one it, number one tax savings straight up. Like you can pay them up to, I think we’re up to 13,850 this year. Oh, oh, up pay them. It went up and it keeps going up. So we increase the standard deduction so you can pay them up to that standard deduction. Now they can, I should say, they can make up to that standard deduction. If they got a job at Wendy’s, then that goes into the mix too. So you gotta make sure that they’re not making more than that limit, otherwise they’re paying taxes. But ultimately you can pay your kids to do age appropriate work and that’s the key to do age appropriate work. You’re not gonna hire your two year old to be a courier and drive you around. Like you can’t do that.
SW (39:25):
So you have to make sure that it’s age appropriate and that you have really good documentation of how they’ve spent their time, what they were doing, how they were doing it the hours they were spending, how much you paid them. And there’s a very mechanical way, which I won’t go into on how you have to pay them through payroll. That requires a lot of setup and infrastructure. But once you build that mouse trap, like once me and my team help entrepreneurs build that system, you can pay them up to 13,850 a year. And the beauty of it is they can also put that into, let’s say a Roth ira mm-hmm. meaning no tax on the way in tax-free growth and no tax on the way out. So if they’re young enough too, you can start this process. Next thing you know, you’re building tax-free wealth for your kids.
SW (40:05):
They graduate school and they have this, this whole amount of money to use to go buy their first place or to go on their next phase of life. So that one of the reasons why I love doing that is the tax-free wealth building. The other reason is I love teaching kids about money. I love having kids get a paycheck and like look at it and go, taxes taken out. Right. Or whatever it is. And understanding what it means to work and get paid. Yeah. Because I do believe that when kids understand that money, you know, isn’t guaranteed that you have to work for it in some way, whether that’s physical labor, being smart, being creative, whatever that may be, that you’re gonna be rewarded for that by being able to make money and learning that at a young age is so powerful.
AJV (40:46):
Yep. That money don’t grow on trees. drives me nuts when my parents used to say that and now I’m like, I’m that parent. I’m like, where do you think this money comes from? Yeah. So like on that note, like a couple of things I think would be great questions of like, okay, so let’s just say your kids are eligible to, you know, be employees with legitimate, you know, business tax Of course. Could you put ’em on a 401k?
SW (41:15):
Could you, could you, yes. It depends on the type of business you have. There’s a ton of questions that just popped into my head. So it’s like case by case possibly I’ll say,
AJV (41:25):
Okay. Because that could be a po potential thing. Again, like these are just all the things that I’m constantly like, can we do this? Can we do this? Can we do this? Mm-Hmm. is, do, is there an a minimum age for something like a four [inaudible] or Roth ira?
SW (41:40):
Oh, the minimum age for those I’m not aware of. That would be a great question for A C F P, but I was thinking you were gonna ask a minimum age to hire the kids. And I will add in that it’s ideal. Most of the SEC social security administration and others generally look at seven and up as like, just seven’s like a functional human that can actually do things. If they’re, if they’re really, if they’re like infants on your payroll, then they’re generally in marketing content. Like I had a, a client that sold baby clothes and I was like, that’s legit. She’s in every single photo. Yeah. So I, I would say that would make sense to me, but the it has to be, again, age appropriate and business connection. So if they’re just in marketing content, but your stuff has nothing to do with family, I would also kind of weigh the options of that. And if it’s worthwhile, it has to be pay that’s is appropriate and experience appropriate. Like you can’t pay your infant 10 k a month or whatever. . Yeah.
AJV (42:34):
So
SW (42:34):
I would not, I would not stretch that to the extent, if they really can’t work more than like 20 minutes a month, I would say, well, let’s be realistic on what you’d actually get paid to do
AJV (42:43):
That. So, and this is I think, really super applicable to a personal brand audience. And it’s like my whole personal brand is about being a mom and an entrepreneur. So I hired my kids as child models.
SW (42:58):
Yep.
AJV (42:58):
Because they were required to be in these big photo shoots for my website, for my social content or blogs because the whole, my whole thing is about like balancing both entrepreneurship and motherhood. Right. And so this is like, I literally went out and said, what would I be paying to go rent some kids , aren’t my kids for these like photo shoots? And it was like, I’m
SW (43:24):
Laughing at, I’m laughing at what agency you would go to to like rent it. Like I know it’s model agencies, but the, like, I need to rent to
AJV (43:32):
Kids agencies. And it was $180 an hour
SW (43:37):
Wow. For one
AJV (43:38):
Through these modeling agencies. Now of course the kids don’t end up getting that. Right. But I was like $180 an hour. Are you kidding me? Yeah. So my kids are child model employees. They are required to do all the photo shoots. I tell ’em to and they’re child models now they’re under seven, but it’s, again, it’s applicable work and it’s, it’s, they have contracts. So we made ’em a contract I had to sign as their legal guardian. Right. And it, there is like, when it comes to payroll, so much additional paperwork and I had to like file all this stuff and sign this stuff and all the things. It’s
SW (44:12):
Gotta be worth it. It’s gotta be worth it. And, and I think a lot of business owners, a lot of business owners have, like, they may do that, but they don’t do that many photo shoots or they may want to do that, but it may not be as applicable. And I go like, is it worth all the work to save a couple hundred bucks in taxes? Like is it, is it, wouldn’t you rather spend that time making more money than worrying about all the payroll documentation, the contracts and all that stuff? And sometimes the answer is it’s not worth it. Yeah. And I’m totally okay sacrificing a little bit of tax savings for a lot of time because it really comes down to is it worth it for you as a business owner, this is one thing I truly believe is that if anyone is just like throwing cookie cutter tech strategies at you, go do this, go do this, go do this without understanding how it actually benefits you or what it actually requires of you in terms of a commitment to your responsibility to maintain that, then I think they’re doing you a disservice because you need to make a co I make a conscious decision on, okay, if I do this, I get this result.
SW (45:09):
But if, is that result worth the work? Mm-Hmm. and the answer might not, maybe no, it may be no.
AJV (45:15):
You know, it’s like I get hit up, we use Gusto and it’s like gusts always like sending something and they keep being like, do you wanna qualify for $8,000 in the, you know r and b credits? And I’m always like, no, no, no, I don’t because the amount of work that it would take to apply and file for that stuff would cost me 20 to get eight. So I think that’s a really good thing. It’s like sometimes we see, oh, credit this, credit that, and you realize yeah, the amount of hours and time and all the things to get that is so much more than what the savings would actually be.
SW (45:49):
Yeah, I agree. And and it’s the same with tax deductions. People misunderstand tax deductions and think it’s like a rebate or a credit and I go, no, A deduction is a coupon, A credit is a gift card. So when a deduction comes in, you get a percentage off. So when I look at it, I like think about going to a store you go to, like I used, remember we used to go to the mall and go to like Ann Taylor and there was just sales everywhere. It was like every day was a sale or New York and Company in those places in the mall. And I’d be like, it’s only this much, it’s 20% off. And it’s like, it’s always 20% off. It goes between 20 and 40. It goes between 20 and 40% off. Like it’s never not on sale because that’s how they’re getting you to buy it.
SW (46:26):
Yeah. So instead of don’t spend a hundred to save 20 because you’re spending 80, you’re still negative 80. So when you’re, whenever you’re looking at tax strategy and deductions, you’ve gotta make sure that there is a benefit beyond the tax savings to the thing that you’re doing. Like don’t go buy a G wagon just to save on taxes because you’re probably not gonna save on taxes. You gotta pay for that in insurance. You gotta pay for the thing, you gotta maintenance for maintenance, you gotta pay for the oil changes you gotta pay. So you gotta be ready for the responsibility of those things. It’s not just a tax rebate as you know, the 15 second videos on TikTok would leave you to believe, but there’s a lot more that goes into
AJV (47:04):
It. I love that. I wanna make sure I wrote this down. Credit is like a gift card. Yes. But a deduction is like a coupon. Correct. That’s so good. Just simple everyday metaphors that we can kind of relate to because it is easy to get caught up in all the, whoever TikTok, Instagram, it’s like, you know, there’s a lot where it’s like, I actually need to verify your fi, you know, your credentials. Are you an actual financial anything? Who’s like, spouting out all this stuff when you actually, you go back and you get to the heart of it and you’re like, that is a lot of work. That doesn’t even apply to me. And you find it after hours and lots of dollars trying to figure it out. So just little simple ways. This is so helpful. There are so many things like we could continue this conversation probably for eight hours and still not cover even like, scratch the surface of things that you do. Shannon, where should people go to learn more about you?
SW (47:58):
So you can find me on my podcast, which is called Keep What You Earn. We have five episodes a week and I drop stuff. I have episodes on everything we discussed today. Much more in depth. And people like AJ on to interview them and learn more about business strategy and all dimensions of your business.
AJV (48:11):
Y’all go subscribe, download, comment, like, share, do all the things. Keep what you earn. Podcast with Shannon Weinstein, y’all, this is gold. This will help you keep more of the money that you’re making. Thank you so much, Shannon, for being on the show. For everyone listening stay in tune for the recap episode, which will be coming up next. Until next time, we’ll see you later.

Ep 377: 3 Sources of Inspiration to Help You Outlast Difficulty | Dr. Mariel Buqué Episode Recap

RV (00:02):
Well, I’m breaking down the interview with one of my newer friends, Dr. Mariel Buque who is brilliant and genius, and I actually love her work. And it was so fun to get to hear the behind the scenes story of, you know, how she goes from being this, this doctor, right? This clinician, this, this woman who’s teaching at Columbia University Medical center or working at, and, and is a professor to becoming one of the most powerful, or one of the most prestigious online influencers in that community in the world. And what I wanna break down for you is there was just, there was one specific line that she said that really got me thinking, which is what I want to, I want to talk about. And she said look,
RV (00:47):
For seven years, I had a steady flow of information. We were just putting information out for seven Years.
RV (00:58):
And I think it’s easy to look at somebody like her and go, oh my gosh, like she got lucky. She has a hot topic. She’s whatever the For some reason, the world fell in love with her The, you know,
RV (01:14):
She’s a doctor. She has, she must have connections with all of this and to overlook the truth, which is that for seven years she put out a steady flow of information. Seven years. Let me ask you, how many years has it been since you have steadily, consistently been putting out information? Not sporadically, not once in a while. For how many years have you consistently been putting out information that helps the world at large that helps your audience? Because if it’s not at least five, you got nothing to complain about, right? I don’t wanna hear about the algorithm, I don’t wanna hear about the topic. I don’t wanna hear about shadow banning. I don’t want to hear about too much noise. I don’t want to hear about only this type of political agenda or that type of political agenda, or only cute puppy dogs or hilarious comedians or, or, you know, silly entertainment stuff.
RV (02:18):
I don’t wanna hear about any of that stuff. Like, if you haven’t been putting out content consistently, it’s on you, right? You can’t blame anyone else. It’s on you. The tools of the day exist. They’re more accessible than ever before. It’s cheaper than ever before. It’s faster, it’s easier. And so the question is, are you showing up? Are you showing up? Are you doing your part? Are you adding value? And, and this part frustrates me a little bit because it’s easy to say, oh, I’m not that smart. I’m not a doctor, I don’t have famous connections. I’m not rich, I don’t have private jets, right? I don’t have a huge podcast. I don’t have friends that have huge podcasts, right? It’s so easy to point to all these things. And you go, yeah, those things can help, but are you doing your part? Like, are you doing the thing that’s in your control?
RV (03:13):
What’s in your control is adding value to people’s lives day in and day out, over and over, consistently, constantly never ending. And so I think a big part of, of what we undervalue, and it’s, it’s because it’s because of virality. And we sort of assume, oh, these people with all these followers that must have gone viral and like they blew up. And it’s like, no, it’s consistency. And so I think a lot of this comes down to just being able to outlast, outlast your competition, right? And when I say competition, I don’t really mean like other people. I mean, can you outlast your fear? Can you outlast your self-doubt? Can you outlast your insecurities? Can you outlast the inconvenience of having to figure out technology? Can you, can you outlast the pain it is and the challenges and the difficulties that come along with getting your message out to the world?
RV (04:12):
If you are a mission-driven messenger, you gotta outlast all those things. It’s not, and, and, and, and if you’re not seeing the success that you want, don’t look back and say, oh, the algorithm, or, oh, I don’t have the right topic, or, oh, nobody cares about this. Or, you know, I, I don’t look this way or that way, or I don’t have this, don’t you? Like, all of those are excuses. And here’s the thing. If you set out on this journey, you said you wanted to change lives, well, you can change lives at any given moment. No one is stopping you from changing lives, right? Making money is a different thing. You may or may not make money. It may, may take, may take time, but if you wanna change lives, you can push a button and publish. You can push a button and record.
RV (04:54):
You, you, you are one button away from literally broadcasting to the entire world. Like, are you doing your part? And if you’re not, at some point, you just gotta reconcile the reality. Like, you gotta go look snowflake. It’s, it’s not that you’re unlucky, it’s not that you’re not knowledgeable. It, it’s that you’re not showing up, you’re not outlasting, you’re not doing the work. And so I’m gonna give you three strategies, three tips, three techniques, three sources of inspiration that I think will help you outlast the competition. And by competition, again, I’m not so much saying other people who do what you do, although you could, you could think of it that way. I just think it’s, it’s outlasting your own fear, your own self-doubt, your own inconvenience, your own insecurity, outlasting, all of the excuses that will come up on this journey, cuz they will, I’m living them.
RV (05:52):
I face them every day, right? Like, I still carry this chip on my shoulder of going, man, I would be so much further ahead if I didn’t have to start over five years ago. Like, I was so much further down the road, I had to start completely over, right? So I know what that feels like, and here’s three things that I want to remind you of and e equip you with that I think will help. So these are three sources of inspiration to help you outlast the inconvenience. Number one is vision. Vision. This comes right outta my first book. Take the Stairs, which still to this day is selling like hotcakes. If you’ve not ever read it, it’s a life-changing book. Like, if you haven’t read, take the Stairs. I don’t know how you’re surviving. Like, it, it’s, it is a, it, it is a quick read.
RV (06:41):
It has got so many powerful fundamental truths about success in general, and it shows up here and it applies to personal brands. Why? Because one of the things that we talk about in there is that the amount of our endurance is directly proportionate to the clarity of our vision. The amount of your endurance is directly proportionate to the clarity of your vision. When you can see something clearly that you want, when you can see it, when you think about it, when you can taste it, when it’s visceral, when you, you dream about it and you focus on it and, and you go, this is something I want in my life, for my life, for my career. When you can see it, then that creates a naturally strong connection to how the sacrifices you’re asking yourself to make today forward you towards that pursuit. It creates a context for action to take place.
RV (07:35):
And so your discipline engages automatically. You become motivated, you become inspired, you become alive, you become activated, right? But discipline becomes dormant in the absence of a dream. Discipline becomes dormant in the absence of a dream. If you’re not dreaming or you don’t have a dream, or you don’t dream that often, or you don’t dream that clearly, or you’re not spending time thinking about it, then there is no reason to make the sacrifice. There is no reason to bear the inconvenience. There’s no reason to endure the pain, to navigate the difficulties, right? To to to survive the setbacks, to conquer the challenges. If there is no vision, there’s no reason. That’s why the Bible says if without vision, people perish because it literally dies you, there’s no reason to put in that effort, that energy, that work because there’s no payoff at the end. But that payoff is something that exists in your mind.
RV (08:30):
The powerful part is not achieving it in real life. The powerful part is having it exist in your mind, which is something you can create and access today and it will use, and in your mind will use that to activate your discipline. So what is your vision and do you spend time thinking about it? And, and when you, when we talk about vision, we mean think of a picture, a moment in your life that you wanna live in the future, right? I i, I tell the story often of like walking through the airport and seeing my book on the bookshelf in the airport with the New York Times bestseller logo, like burst on the cover, right? Or, or being on stage at, in, in front of a huge arena or our house that we live in, right? It was years that I was visualizing this house that I, I wanted to have and, and, and, and not so much because I manifested it, right?
RV (09:19):
It’s because I saw it and I worked my butt off and we worked our butts off to where it became real. But I held it out there. So that, I mean, yes, I’d like to believe that it’s moving towards me, but I was moving towards it, right? And maybe you meet somewhere in the middle, I don’t know, maybe you did manifest it, but I’ve never manifested anything without working my freaking butt off. Like I have never thought about something and had it just like something huge, something significant and just had it show up. Other than one time I did manifest 1 million followers because I went to bed thinking I’m gonna get a million followers, I’m gonna get a million followers. And the next day someone dropped off at my house, a book called 1 million Followers . So it wasn’t quite what I was going for, but it, it was 1 million followers, but it, it wasn’t actually a million followers.
RV (10:10):
It was a book called 1 million Followers by Brendan Kane, which is actually a really good book. I really, I really like it. We’ve had Brendan Kane on the podcast and so, but you gotta have a vision, right? You gotta have something you can see that you’re moving towards. The second thing is you gotta have some good old fashioned commitment, good old fashioned commitment get this also is in take the stairs, we call it the buy-in principle of commitment. And it says the more you have invested into something, the less likely you are to let it fail.
RV (10:50):
The more you have invested into something, the less likely you are to let it fail. That means you should increase your investment, increase your expenditure of time, money, prayer, thoughts, resources, attention, like you should increase your investment. Because when it’s difficult, you’re gonna tend to run away. That’s the, that’s the natural default and design of the human brain to keep you safe. Which means to run away from pain, to run away from fear, to do what everyone else does, which is to avoid the inconvenient and chase the convenient chase the easy escalator, right? And what you gotta do is you gotta be a take the stairs person. You gotta be someone that says, no, I’m, I’m not gonna be like everybody, I’m not gonna run away from the pain. I’m not gonna run away from the fear. I’m not gonna run away from the inconvenience.
RV (11:39):
I’m gonna run towards it. I’m gonna run into it, I’m going to conquer it. I’m gonna be the buffalo. If you’ve ever heard me tell this my Buffalo story, which now is like, you know, going all over the internet which we’ve been talking about for my entire career, being the buffalo charging the storm. That is what it takes is straight up commitment. Because the more money you invest into your dream, the less likely you are just to walk away, right? The more time you’ve got into it, you’re like, I can’t just walk away from this. Like, I’m not just gonna leave this here. I poured my life into this thing. Like I poured my life into pursuing it. And that’s what it takes is to set a goal that matters to you so much that when you go all in, the reason it works is not so much because like you get lucky cuz you went all in or or cuz you figure it out just cuz you went all in.
RV (12:26):
It’s because you, there wasn’t any other option. And so you do it until you find a way. And there’s always a way, a lot of times it takes a long time to find the way, but eventually you find the way, if you stay committed and you stay committed by increasing the investment, right? You do more, you spend more time. One of my mentors early on in my career was a guy named Randy Gage and he said this, and I’ve always loved this, he said, you should always be the number one investor in your own dream. You should be the number one investor in your own dream. You should be investing. Not your boss, not your investors, not the bank, not your rich uncle. You, it’s your dream. If you want it bad enough, you put your money on the table, you put your time on the table, you come to the playing field and you put your heart on the field and you say, this is what I want. This is what I’m after and I’m all in.
RV (13:24):
And if you don’t do that, then don’t be surprised when it doesn’t work out. Like, don’t be shocked when you fail. Don’t be surprised that you, you end give up or you get distracted. And what most people do is they don’t get, they don’t quit, they get distracted and then they quit inadvertently, right? Accidentally. And it’s some good old-fashioned commitment. And that leads me to number three. So the number three, the number three force here that you can use, the number three source of inspiration to help you outlast the challenges is service. Service. To me, service is the greatest and most powerful inspiring force there is.
RV (14:07):
It is getting outside of ourself and what we want and saying, regardless of what I want, regardless of what I care about, regardless of what I like, regardless of what is convenient for me, I’m going to do whatever I have to do to be of value to somebody else, to enhance their life, to improve their life, to, to help their situation. My inconvenience is irrelevant. The fact that it is difficult is not a, not something that factors into the consideration. It’s not a characteristic of the equation. Because what matters is helping other people and making a difference and making an impact. And so honestly, my wellbeing in that is sort of ancillary. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s irrelevant. It’s, it’s not a part of what matters. When you are living in service and there is no fear, once the mission to serve becomes clear, there is no fear, there is no self-doubt.
RV (15:05):
You’re not worried about it cuz you’re not thinking about yourself. You’re thinking about the person out there who needs you. That is what I want you to do. That is how you a last your competition. You’re focused on others and you’re going, yeah, this is difficult. Yeah, I don’t feel like doing this today. Yeah, I don’t like it. Yeah, I don’t like the technology. Yeah, this annoys me. Yeah, it’s hard. Yeah. I’m spending, investing more money into my business. Yeah, but it matters because it matters to someone else. And your message matters. Your message matters to someone else.
RV (15:44):
Your work matters to someone else. Your life matters to someone else. When you get fully present to that. And then you won’t abandon ship, you won’t change course, you won’t alter the destination. You’ll stay focused, you’ll stay on target, you’ll stay committed, you’ll stay disciplined, you’ll stay activated and you will outlast all the fears and inconveniences that show up and you will conquer it and you will do something great. Share this episode with someone who needs to hear it and keep coming back every single week on the Influential Personal Brand podcast. Thanks for being here.