Ep 357: You Don’t Need A Visual Identity To Build Your Personal Brand | Nadine Hanafi Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
Hey, AJ Vaden here. Just making a quick pop in here to talk about something that has been on the top of my mind for hmm, 15 years. I’m not exaggerating. It’s literally been on my mind for 15 years. And it’s on the lines of this concept of building your personal brand, which, you know, to me is just an extension of your reputation. But I feel like there’s a lot of misconception out there about what is a personal brand and people associate personal branding with influencers and social media followers and you know, all the things that you would think about with having an online presence and a podcast and a website and a blog and all the things. And those things are good. Don’t get me wrong. We talk a lot about those things at Brand Builders Group and here I am making a content video for social media and or podcast and a blog.
AJV (00:59):
So don’t get, don’t hear what I’m not saying here. Those things are good and valuable and important, but those are not a personal brand. They’re just not. A personal brand is the formalization of what you wanna be known for and who you want to be known by. It’s the formalization and digitization of your reputation in a way that helps you get out there and become the go-to expert in your space, both online and offline. But again, personal branding, it’s just an extension of your reputation. It’s the intentional desire of becoming known for what you want to be known for. That is a personal brand. But what comes along with that is once those things are formalized as well, how do I get this message? How do I display my content, what I have to say, who I wanna be out into the world? And that’s where it gets a little muddied, right?
AJV (01:58):
Because then we, we get confused that somehow personal branding is all about social media and it’s not. Or we think that branding is all about visual identity and websites and colors and fonts and it’s not. We think that it only has to do with content creation. It doesn’t, those are all pieces and parts of the puzzle here. But there is a, a piece of this puzzle that I wanna specifically talk about today which is the visual identity part, because that is where people get hung up and they get consumed. And it’s what most often stops you in your tracks because you’re so concerned with what it looks like. You forget that you’re actually doing this to help somebody. You get so consumed with how many likes or followers or subscribers that you get that you forget that people who did see it and who did have an it that or who did you did impact.
AJV (02:49):
You forget that those people are real live human beings on the other side of your screen. Or you get so obsessed with doing so many speaking engagements or book deals or whatever that you forget, like you are making an impact with one person and that is worth it, that’s worth it. But back to this concept of visual identity, there are so many EMA emotions that are tied up in, well, what is my brand gonna look like? That that is what the whole concept of personal branding becomes about. And so I was sitting down with a friend, Nadine, who owns this awesome company called We Are Visual and has another company called Digital Brand Kit. And we were having this conversation because on the journey of building my personal brand over the last 10, 2, 15 years I have never really sat down and spent the time if this tells you anything of really creating my own color palette or a visual identity or font, because I believe that’s just a tiny piece of it.
AJV (03:53):
And at some point you actually need to do those things that, that’s important for you to have this visual representation of who you are and how you want to be a scene in the world. And it’s been a long time coming. And so I’ve been going through this journey and it’s been a really hard process for me. It’s been a really hard thing of going, man, I just don’t know if that’s it. So I was having this conversation with my friend Nadine, and she gave me some key tips that I thought I would pass along to you. So step one here’s what she said. And she is a designer. Do not hire a designer as your first step.
AJV (04:31):
That was so helpful because that’s what you think you need. Oh, I just need to go find someone who can figure out and do this for me. Don’t do that. In fact, as a designer, you know, she’s giving me this. If I don’t hire designers your first step, but instead spend time with your audience, spend time with your content and getting in tune with who do you wanna impact? How do you wanna impact them, and how do they need to be impacted, right? How do they actually want to hear from you? And what is it that they need from you? What is it that they want from you? And how can you really make a difference in the people that you feel like you’re called to make a difference for? So don’t hire a designer. Spend time with your audience. Step number one. So helpful.
AJV (05:14):
Step number two follow truths, not trends. And this was so, so powerful. I’m gonna say that again. Follow truths, not trends. And what she said is, your visual identity is what’s true about you, not what’s trending online or in the market, right?
AJV (05:57):
Don’t know, did they go away? I dunno,
AJV (06:48):
Taking pictures of colors and restaurants and sending ’em to a designer. Don’t do that. Because you waste time and you’re never going to actually get a visual identity that represents you. So follow truths, not trends. Number three, she said, here’s actually something to and think about when you think about what you actually need when you’re building out your personal brand. And you have to think about what is an actual set of brand guidelines. Because if you work with most designers, a set of brand guidelines is gonna include a logo, a color palette, fonts, maybe some iconography, some typography. But that’s about it. And she goes, if you really think about it, this is what you need. Buckle up. You’re gonna need colors, fonts, logos, you will need iconography. You will need topography, but you are also going to need brand imagery, right?
AJV (07:41):
So those are different types of imagery, not just icons and just visuals. But you’re gonna need like full like photography imagery, right? Think about all the things that people put quotes on and you’re standing behind and all the things. You’re gonna need imagery, you’re gonna need banners for the different social media platforms. Well, they all have different dimensions, so you’re gonna need a different size banner for Facebook versus Instagram versus LinkedIn versus YouTube. You’re gonna need different banners. You, cuz they all have different dimensions. You’re gonna need PowerPoint files. Don’t think about, don’t forget about that. At some point you likely will do a presentation, whether it’s a webinar or a keynote. But what about p d s? Are you gonna have e-books? Are you gonna have any sort of lead magnets or downloads? What about handouts? Will you able to do workshops or will you do something that you hand out in a virtual presentation or a live presentation?
AJV (08:35):
What about your speaker press kit? Will you do any speaking cuz you’re gonna need something where you have formatted for that. What about a webinar kit or a course, right? Are you gonna need imagery for both the, the, you know, like the cover pages of the courses the different files that have you have in the courses the different thumbnails you’re gonna gonna need thumbnails, you’re gonna need ad images if you ever do pay traffic. What about a media kit? Do you have a podcast? Do you need a podcast thumb? Now? Do you need a media kit? Like don’t go to overwhelmed now, right? But if then if you’re getting into video, do you need video bumpers? Do you need video covers? And the list just went on and on and on and I was like, oh my gosh, that is what you have to think about.
AJV (09:17):
And that is where people get stuck. I, instead of pursuing something that has the ability to change your life and to change someone else’s life, we get lost behind all of these things. And so when I was having this conversation with they dean, I mentioned that she owns these awesome two companies. We are visual, which helps you do things custom. But she said this was the whole reason this this conversation she was having with me is the entire reason that she created the company Digital Brand Kit because she has created all of those assets and templates with dozens and dozens of dozens of preset color palettes and imagery and typography and fonts. So that for people like me, they don’t get stuck in this kind of thing. Instead of focusing on my audience and my content and doing what I feel like God put me on earth to do.
AJV (10:11):
I don’t get stuck behind some color wheel, right? And so I just wanna encourage you the same thing. I’ve gotten almost 15 years in my personal brand without having a formal website or brand guidelines or anything like that. And guess what? It’s working out okay. And at the same time, there’s comes up time like for me right now where I wanna do it and it feels right and it feels like the time to do it. But you don’t have to spend 20,000, 50,000, a hundred thousand dollars on this. You don’t have to spend 10,000. In fact, you can spend a thousand or 2000 get to, to get the things that you need. And when you think about where you’re gonna invest your time and your money and your resources, people get overly attached to the visual part of it because we think that’s all that matters.
AJV (10:57):
And I’m just here, I’m living proof to tell you that it’s not I haven’t had one in 15 years. And at the same time, there comes a time where something is important but it’s way more important to figure out the truth behind what’s really important and how you wanna present yourself than spending, you know, tens of thousands of dollars getting something that’s just trendy and cool. And so I don’t know who this is for today, but I know that it was for me. And so I hope it resonates with someone else out there. And shameless plug my friend nabe, if you’re interested in this sort of thing go to brand builders group.com/db k and check out digital brand kits for your own starter brand. And again, it’s like visual identity is important, but it ain’t the whole thing. So just keep on keeping on and keep doing you. We’ll see you next time.
Ep 356: Create Your Visual Identity in 30 Days or Less with Nadine Hanafi
AJV (00:02):
Hi everybody, this is AJ Vaden here, and welcome to another episode on the Influential Personal Brand. I am here today with a one and the only Nadine and, and Nadine is a very close personal friend. She lives here in Nashville, so lucky that she moved here to Nashville from Morocco where she was born. Although she’s got dual citizenship now, she can call herself a true nashvillian. So I’m so lucky and fortunate that I get to share the same city with my dear friends but also a client of Nadine’s. And we met through mutual friends three or four years ago, and it’s like one of those phone calls when you meet someone and you’re like, I love you like this. Like I love you and I love you. That’s how I met Nadine for a friend bit. It’s like the very first time that we spoke, I was like, you’re amazing.
AJV (00:56):
And you guys are about to experience just how amazing she is with her very unique craft. And before I get her our little formal introduction, I just want to tell you why you need to stick around and listen to this particular episode. Because when you think about design and how you want your brand to look how you want it to feel how you want other people to experience it, I am here to tell you, you are most likely wrong. And we’ll tell you people that I recently made. Cause what most of us do is we look around and we go, I like this and I like this, and this is my favorite color and this is my favorite font here, put it together and make it look great. And then it comes back and you’re like, well, this doesn’t feel like me.
AJV (01:46):
And it’s because you have it all wrong. And if your brand doesn’t feel like you, it’s most likely because it’s not. And it’s because we’re making decisions on the exterior things around us, not based on really how we want or how our brand is meant to be. And so if you’re struggling with like, what is my brand and how do I want it to look like in terms of the visuals, this is an episode that you must listen to. The second thing that I think is really important is most people assume that having an expensive looking brand is expensive. And that’s not true. And that I think outside of Nadine’s incredible creative talents is making it affordable, is her next best specialty. And so we’re gonna talk a lot about that. So if you wanna look like a million dollar brand, you don’t have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to do it, specifically not in the beginning.
AJV (02:48):
And she’s gonna teach you and talk about how you can do that on what I would say balling on a low budget, right? So
AJV (03:37):
It’s going to blow your mind. But over the last 10 years, she has helped hundreds a clients from Suite execs, the Fortune 100 companies like Disney and Verizon to bestselling authors like our good friend Lori, harder from the Earner Happy podcast Sarah, she’s worked with Sarah Knight, she’s helped build beautiful slide decks for so many different Ted Talk presenters. I could go on and on and on
NH (04:20):
Well, thank you and thank you for having me. Thank you for that wonderful introduction. I have one correction to make that I was not born in Morocco, I was born in Minnesota of all places on a very cold winter day
AJV (04:57):
Before we do that, I think it’s worth giving people just a quick story about how you got into design, because it is not the traditional path. No, it’s not like you went to art school and like you came at this in a very different way, which I think is a part of your uniqueness. And what makes you so different is that this wasn’t something that you really came at for, like, this is what I’m gonna go to school for and this is what I’m gonna do in my life. It came by opposite. So why don’t you just give us a high level view of like, how did this ever even become a theme for you?
NH (05:30):
So I like to say that I am a designer who did not go to design school and does not know how to use any of the design tools.
NH (06:17):
And so I accidentally fell into design because my first and last corporate job,
NH (07:10):
I was like, mm-hmm the heck no, I closed it. I was like, I am not watching this. I am not getting through this training. And so I still needed to get some sort of formal training and design for this company. And so I just went through and found other courses inside lynn.com that taught me basics of design. And that was much more interesting to me. I could actually watch hours and hours of videos of, you know, how to do design. And what I figured out is I could take all of those design principles that I was learning and actually apply them using PowerPoint since it was the one and only design tool that I knew how to use at the time. And I basically hacked PowerPoint to make it do what I wanted it to do for me. And I started creating brochures for this company, obviously besides the slide deck that I was creating, which got better and better cause I got better at design, but also brochures, sales materials, one pagers.
NH (08:02):
I even created graphics for the website. Everything I created in PowerPoint. And in this process, one, I realized PowerPoint is an incredibly powerful tool. It can do not all the things that Photoshop can, but a lot of it and all, everything that you actually really need if you’re not a professional designer, creating these, you know, crazy designs. And the second thing I realized is I have probably a monetizable skill here,
AJV (08:56):
Of that. These were PowerPoint design, like we use PowerPoint designs that you created for every single one of our brochures, landing pages, you know, websites. It’s like you would never have an idea that these originated and PowerPoint, in fact, you should be like PowerPoint spokeswoman. This is,
NH (09:13):
I’m working on it. I am. So if anyone knows somebody who works at Microsoft
AJV (09:19):
Put in the universe,
NH (09:21):
I’m a spokeperson. Yes, absolutely. But
AJV (09:24):
I think it’s really amazing because what you have figured out is how to do something. And what I love about it, why I think it’s so cool is that with programs like InDesign or Photoshop for the end user, consumer like myself, it’s like I don’t know how to edit it or move something or update something. And so I’m trapped by whoever was the designer or finding someone else. And it’s like the best thing about you, the way that you’ve designed all these templates and all of these tools for our company at Brain Builders Group is that it’s like I actually do know how to use PowerPoint most people, so I can go in and make the copy edits without having to have the expense or the burden of finding someone else to go and like reformat this. And I think that’s a really important skill set, and you don’t have to be good at design to make very quick updates to something that is already very well designed. So with that said, I wanna kinda like take it up a level and just talk about some of the things that you’ve learned, you know, really over the last 15 years or so of what makes good design and what, what should people really be looking for and what should they really be asking themselves as they go on this visual process for their own personal brands. And I know without a doubt you’re gonna share the horrible mistakes that I have recently made.
AJV (10:45):
I’ll
NH (10:45):
Be fine,
AJV (10:47):
Totally fine. I gave you, I gave you permission to do this, but I do think it’s good. As people are kind of going, right, I’m at this place where it’s time to create some sort of visual component on either a website or a landing page, or I need something, where do I start?
NH (11:04):
Well don’t start by hiring a designer
NH (12:05):
What kind of people do you want to attract? What is the vibe that you wanna create as a brand? And who are these people that are gonna be attracted to that vibration? And so once you have done that homework first, that’s when you can really get into visual identity. So, and there’s really a science and an art to branding, visual branding, visual identity. And so the, the, the art piece is like making things beautiful and all of that. But the science piece is picking out brand elements, design elements based on certain truths, right? So we talked about this before. I am a proponent of don’t build
AJV (13:19):
Emotion to me,
NH (13:21):
Right?
AJV (13:23):
Of what not to do. Yes.
NH (13:25):
Go. Yes. So I developed something called the Blind test and as part of a, a bigger program that I’m developing called The Color Workshop, which will actually be a workshop that I’m gonna be launching soon. And it’ll be a workshop that will take you through a step by step process to help you identify one, your signature color, the color that really embodies your essence as a brand, but also your entire color palette really. And how to, you know, make everything kind of look good together. Part of this color workshop is something I call the blind test. And the blind test is I basically give you all of these cards that have words on them, right? And they’re color cards. So behind the words are colors, but you don’t see the colors cuz the cards are black and white. And so you have to, there are 12 cards and you have to go through a process of elimination in taking out the, the words that you don’t connect with, right?
NH (14:19):
And technically at the end of this process, the last cars that you end with, we then unveil them, right? We take out the cover and then you can see what colors they are. And the reason I built it this way is because we all have preconceptions about colors, right? We might have, maybe we’re following someone on Instagram who uses yellow as their signature color and we hate that person. So we’re never gonna use yellow. And maybe yellow is actually your color
AJV (15:08):
NH (15:09):
Before. And I don’t know where those colors came from, but you probably saw them on someone else’s branding or in beautiful spaces that you had visited. But they felt right in those spaces, they felt right for that person maybe. And, and so you thought that they might be right for you. And the funny thing is, when we did the blind test the first thing I ask you is gimme your first five hard nos
AJV (15:33):
And you eliminated, it’s not exaggerating y’all. No, it’s not exaggerating.
NH (15:38):
You eliminated literally your first three hard nos. The cars that you eliminated were the three primary colors of your actual,
AJV (15:46):
For myself did not follow any sort of process or logic or process.
NH (15:53):
But the funny thing is, is you were not connecting with those colors. You had pick them out, you thought they would work and then for weeks you were, you know, thinking about it and asking people and people were reflecting this back to you. These are not your colors. You knew it in your core. These are not your colors. You just couldn’t figure out why. And then when you did this test right away, it was just so clear you realized why those colors did not feel right. It’s because they were not right for you. They did not represent your energy and we figured out what your energy is. And it was not any of those colors
AJV (16:24):
NH (17:13):
My colors.
AJV (17:14):
I love this idea of like hot pink cluttering, I think some orange might be good, maybe this like sea shell pink. That’s pretty, I like that. And I was like, put this all together, make it look awesome. And that’s what Nadine did. And then she sent it back to me and I was like, well
NH (17:31):
That doesn’t feel right.
AJV (17:33):
Yeah, it’s a real right. And it’s like, and it’s like one of those things where it’s like, you know it, but you’re like, hmm, yeah, what happened here? And, and I think it’s so many of us do that cuz we see someone else’s brand and we go, I want mine to look like this. And what you mean is I want it to look beautiful like this. Not I need these colors. But until you go through this very personal process of going, who are you and who are you trying to reach? Who are you trying to attract? And it’s not just who you are, it’s what is going to attract the audience that you want to build. And when we did this process, I’m, I literally was like definitely not that one and that was great
AJV (18:23):
And it was pink. And I was like, definitely not that. And it was orange. I was like, there you go. That’s why I don’t connect. But here’s the thing, if, if Nate Dan would’ve showed me the colors that were truly coming out from the words, I would’ve never let her convince me of it that way. Cuz I’ve been like, Uhuh red, red is not my signature color. And let me tell you my internal reasoning of why is because I have red hair and I think bright red conflicts where my hair, so I’d never red. I was like, what a silly, ridiculous reason of going. Well I just, I don’t really have red in my wardrobe, so I don’t really think I can be a brand color. But that was like my very illogical process because emotions were tied into it versus going, no, these are the words that I say, define me.
AJV (19:08):
These are the words I wanna be known for. And then when you reveal the color, you’re kind of like, okay, and I need to like settle in with this a little bit. And I think the most amazing thing that happened for me, just as an example for all of you is I had an adverse reaction at first cuz I’m like, don’t really love red. And yet I look at the words and it’s like, bold. And it’s like, well, that’s pretty fricking bold. And it was like, I’m passionate. Well that’s pretty passionate. And it’s like all these things. And I’m like, why am I resisting this? And then it was the craziest thing. So for me, I’ll just give you this example. It was red purple, black gold, yeah. Are my colors. Did I miss one? I think those really, those were. And I walked out into my garage later that afternoon and Nadine, I haven’t even told you this story.
AJV (20:06):
And in my garage, I took a picture on my iPhone like 10 years ago of the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen in my life. And it was so breathtaking. I blew it up on this huge canvas and it’s in my garage and I walk out and I was getting in my car and it just caught my eye. And I looked up and I see this canvas there, and it is the most brilliant sunset of golds and dark shades of black and deep purple and reds and magentas. And for the first time ever I saw that and I was like, that is how I wanna be seen. I wanna be seen like that. And that’s how you should feel. That’s how you know it’s yours. And so I’m just curious, Nadine, if you could give us some examples of, could you just read off some of the words and colors that are represented that there’s 12, we don’t have time to do 12, but to kind give people an idea of what this is process is like. So if you’re not going through this process with someone that you’re working with, you should stop and go, why the heck not? Because if you’re just picking colors like I did at, at some point, you’re gonna go, man, that was fine for a season, but that’s just not really me. And you don’t have to do that. You can actually get it right the first time.
NH (21:27):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So you want me to share some of what the keywords are for maybe your, your colors?
AJV (21:34):
Sure. You can do mine. I think this is just really helpful, but don’t tell us the color until after you read the words and just, I think this was a really powerful process that anyone can do if you just, like, even if you don’t, which we’re gonna give you access to do some of this really cool stuff that Nadine has created. But it’s like, just go Google these colors and go like, what words are associated with these? You can even do that.
NH (21:56):
Yeah. This is public information. So I’ll, I’ll share the words for my signature color, which you don’t know, so I’ll tell you what it is. But my words are creative, abundant, sociable, positive, passionate, joyful. Those are my words. And my signature color is orange. And I connect with orange on a very
NH (23:02):
And that was purple, right? And so we talked about how we can marry purple with red to create these really deep fiery shades of purple that have all of those aspects of red but but still anchored in that purple color and all of that purple means. So let’s see. And another one, black is a color that is used a lot and not everybody that likes black ends up picking black as one of their cards. You did. But black is sophisticated, substantial, efficient, elegant, intelligent, confident, authoritative. So these are examples of the words. So these are the words that you need to connect with or either eliminate or choose as part of this exercise. And you know, and that’s why we do this by process of elimination, because you will find that you connect with a lot of words across a lot of different cards. But the the goal here is to connect with the cluster of word of words where you’re like, okay, I have a, you know, I identify myself with most of these words in this group of words, and that’s what leads you to, to your color. So do you want me to share?
AJV (24:10):
No, I think that’s, I think that’s good. I think, you know, for anyone who is listening, like nad has created so many different tools and quizzes and amazing things to help you do this. So if you go to brand builders group.com/db, digital brand kit db k, so brand builders group.com/db k you can go and check out and she’s got this amazing color quiz that will tell you what season you fall in, gives you all these cool different color palettes. But I think this is a really defining part of, like, this is a part that most people skip as they don’t really do this introspective work. And instead they go right into, well, I just need a website. So can you talk a little bit about like, the purpose of doing brand guidelines before you go into designing Yes. Fires, brochures, landing pages, and just kind of like talk about if you’re ready to go this route and it’s time, what is the process that someone should follow?
NH (25:08):
Yes. So I would say this, A lot of people when I ask someone, do you have your branding? They’ll say, yeah, I have my logo, I have my colors, I have my fonts, and I’m working on my, my website. So yeah, I have my branding. I’m like, yeah, where’s the rest of it? Did you not have your branding? You have the beginning, you have a style guide. That’s what you have
NH (26:02):
Usually because the website was made by a professional and the presentations were made by you trying to mimic what the professional did.
NH (26:52):
You’re constantly in a oh, I need this shoot. Let, let me go hire somebody to do this. Oh, I need that. Oh man, I need to, okay, can you also create this for me? And so you’re constantly on this hamster wheel of asset creation on demand as the demand arises instead of proactively creating everything. And so digital brand is really the solution to that. Like I already surveyed and figured out, you know, surveyed people and, and, and did my homework and figured out all of the assets that a personal brand might need across all your platforms at every touchpoint from, you know, like a podcast if you have one all the way to your social media, to your webinars, to your, you know to your invoices, et cetera, et cetera. And so in order to have that cohesive brand across everything you need to infuse your, your style guide into everything. But you also need to know what all of those assets are, right? So yeah, that is, does that answer your question,
AJV (27:50):
Some of the examples of like what are the assets that most people don’t even think about? Cause you said is like, I think a lot of people at some point are probably, okay, I know I need colors and I need fonts, and I need a logo. And that’s what they think is their brand guidelines. That’s what they think is their branding, but they’re missing so much more. So you can kind of just give us like a checklist of like, what are all the things that you don’t even know that you’re gonna need that you wanna make sure is cohesively done on the front end so that it’s not piecemealed together and it’s, you know, I think the benefit for me is like, if you do all of this work on the front end, it’s so much easier and cheaper and faster to do things later.
NH (28:31):
Absolutely. If you are able to execute on your ideas, like on the go quickly because you have materials that you need to execute on that idea, instead of like, oh, now I have to go create this template or buy this template and then I can create it, that saves you a lot of time. But to answer your question, some of the things that, you know, a lot of people won’t think of, it’s like, all right, so let’s say you go buy a social media, you know, Canva template pack that’ll give you, you know, like all of the little squares. But then are your, like all of those highlights at the top of your of your Instagram account, are those gonna be, you know, look the same
NH (29:19):
Are they branded the same? So just having cohesiveness within your social media is is something to look out for. But also I mean if I’m gonna enumerate things from the db k package, we have a course kit, for example. So if you’re gonna build a digital course, you are going to need slides, right? That you’re going to actually put your content into that, you’re going to then record on your, on your video lessons. You’re going to need the PPS that you’re gonna provide to people as downloads, as free downloads with your course. You are going to need a course roadmap template so that you can paint a picture to your students of like, here’s everything that you’re going to learn in each part of this course and give that to them as a pdf. You are going to need, once you get all of your course materials put together, you’re gonna need to upload all that into a course portal like Kajabi or Thinkific.
NH (30:10):
You’re gonna need to brand that, that’s gonna need a you know, banner image and thumbnails and all of those things. I created all of those things for you already, and that’s all in the course package. So the day that you decide that you wanna build a course, you don’t even know everything you need, you’re gonna open up your course kit and you’ll know exactly what you need to build your course and you’ll have it. And as a bonus, I give you a course outline builder that you can use to actually build the outline of your course and a, you know, in a smart way that’ll make it easy for you to record the course. So it’s weave in in some of the strategy other things that people won’t think about, like your videos, for example. Like you wanna start a YouTube channel, you are gonna need video thumbnails and you cannot afford to be creating video thumbnails
NH (30:53):
Like, especially if you’re gonna have them professionally done. Cuz if you wanna create a lot of videos and every time you need to spend, you know, three hours on camera just putting together one video thumbnail, you’re not gonna get very far. Right
AJV (31:48):
Guesswork. Well, I would, I would, I would second as a customer, as our whole company, as a customer, and then I am personally a customer. It’s like what I would say that I think is really amazing about Digital Brain Kit and what you’ve created is it is all of the design, but it’s also the strategy. And that’s been with like partnerships with a variety of different tools and resources and education that you’ve gone out and done. But I think one of the things that’s really cool for the community at Brand Builders Group is like we were able to work with you of going, here’s what everyone’s gonna need in a speaker kit or in a media kit or, and so it’s like all of those things are pre-built in there. So, and I think that’s a really unique opportunity of going, it’s like you’re gonna need color fonts and logos, yes, but you’re also gonna need imagery.
AJV (32:32):
You’re gonna need the right size dimensioned banners, you’re gonna need thumbnails, you’re gonna need the bumper slides, you’re gonna need the highlights, right? You’re gonna need a press kit at some point. You’re gonna need a media kit for podcasts or just general media. You’re gonna need a PowerPoint slides for something at some point in your life, right? Yeah. So it’s like to have all of this done and kind of prepackaged together is, it’s not just beautiful design. It’s well architected in a way that helps conversion, but it’s also the strategy of going, oh my gosh, if you just think about all those things of how much it would cost and time and money to do them separately over the course of time by finding betting new vendors all the time is outrageous. And so you’ve been able to do that in this well consolidated package. And then I know that we mentioned this earlier, it’s like a part of this is having great design that reflects you and that will attract your audience. The second thing is that it’s done in an affordable way. And so I know one of your things is, is that you, you know, you, you say you need a a beginner brand, right? What do you starter brand? A starter brand Starter brand,
NH (33:43):
Yes. Like a starter home.
AJV (33:44):
Yeah. It’s like, and I think this is a really cool concept of you don’t need to go hire a $30,000 designer to go out and build a very high end professional brand. And what you need is you need something that can get you going. So you can, can you kinda tell us about what that is and what that looks like?
NH (34:04):
Yeah. You don’t need to go hire somebody expensive to create this beautiful professional brand for you if you are just starting out Now, if you’re, you know, 5, 7, 10 years into business and you’re, you’re like, I know who I am, I know who I’m serving, I’m very clear, I’ve got the money. Yes, by all means, splurge away and get yourself the best designer ever. But if you are just starting out, first of all, it’s not a good investment because your brand at this stage of your business is very fluid. You are gonna iterate, you are still figuring out who you are in your market and also who you’re serving and who you’re attracting. And you’re not really gonna get answers to those questions of who are you and who are you serving until you actually get into motion and build momentum and start showing up and start doing things, and then let the market respond to you, and then let yourself kind of figure things out.
NH (34:56):
So as you’re figuring things out, things might change. Who you are might change who you serve. You’re like, you know what, these people are not who I wanna serve. You’ve got a lot of complainers, a lot of freeloaders, like I’m attracting all sorts of wrong people.
NH (35:57):
Like you could get a lot of miles out of, out of a starter brand, maybe five years, maybe seven years with that starter brand. Or maybe you’ll realize six months down the road, yeah, I picked this visual identity, it’s not serving me well. I need to pivot. Well, you’ve only lost $2,000 at this point which is not $30,000. And you also, most importantly, did not lose months and months of, of time of like going back and forth with designers to figure, you know, to build things. All of that frustration and time you now saved yourself because you got all your assets in one instant download. You didn’t go create them and, you know, invest your time and money into creating them. So, so really it’s you know, I like to say it’s like a starter home. Like you can not as a first time home buyer go out and buy your dream home.
NH (36:42):
Like that’s not the smart move. Like, you need to go buy a starter home first,
NH (37:25):
And you know, a lot of people get really personal with it. And so it’s like, well at the end of the day, this brand is not about you. It’s about your business and what you’re building and who you’re going to attract. And the goal here is to get things done, is to make things happen. So stop getting hung up on the colors and on the fonts and oh, maybe this other font looks like this one really, it’s very close, but it’s not exactly, it’s a little bit more round on the edges and it’s like you’re wasting time. You are procrastinating. Just take something and go with it and go make things happen. And then, you know, maybe two years down the road when you have a seven figure business, you can afford to then go to a designer and argue about which font is rounder and better for you
AJV (38:11):
Time
NH (38:11):
To do that.
AJV (38:12):
That’s the best advice that any designer could give someone, is the point of this is not to get caught up in the details. Because I think that’s often what designers do. And I think that’s also why I love what you do so much. Cuz it’s not about the granularity of well, this hangs this way and it’s, it’s like, no, the point of this is to get things done is to get things in motion. It is, is to start knowing that things are gonna evolve and change over time as you evolve and change as your audience evolves and change. But I, I know so many people, so many people that the only reason they haven’t launched is because of something like this holding them back. And it’s like, this is the best advice is like, hey, this is the point is not to make it perfect. The point is to get something done so you can get things in motion.
NH (39:01):
Yeah. And I, I’d wanna share one other thing that’s very important to me to share with the people is if you are going to for any reason, hire somebody to help you with your design you need to know how to choose who you’re going to hire. Oh,
AJV (39:20):
Okay. So if we can just go from, I’m just gonna start with the point is not to make things perfect, it’s to get things done and then you’ll pick up with something else I really wanna share. Okay. So the the whole point is not to get things perfect, it’s to get things done so you can get things in motion. That’s what’s important.
NH (39:39):
Yes. And the other thing I wanna share that’s really important to me is for people who want to go out there and hire somebody to help them with this, and that’s perfectly fine if, if you choose to do so. I would just say you wanna be mindful of, of who you are hiring and how you manage the process because there are, there’s, you can make one of two decisions when you’re gonna hire somebody. You can either hire a an affordable junior designer who is going to get things done on the cheap and quickly, or you can hire a designer who’s also a creative director. The difference between the two obviously is monetary first. The creative director is gonna be more expensive than the junior designer. But the reason why is because the junior designer isn’t is somebody who executes on your vision, your creative direction, and your very specific guidelines.
NH (40:32):
And a junior designer is typically not somebody who is first in marketing, digital marketing, the online business, personal branding or any of that. They know how to make beautiful designs and they will apply exactly what you tell them. But you need to inform everything that you give them. You need to, to educate them a little bit and also give them very specific instructions and very specific feedback because that is the only way that you’re gonna get good actual good design from them. So if you are working with somebody and you are getting frustrated because they’re sending you things that you’re like, well, no, this is not what I asked for. No, this is not what I meant. No, you’re not getting this and you’re in a position, you’re, and you’re finding yourself having to write a lot of mean emails
AJV (41:19):
Nobody wants to do. Nobody wants to. Yeah. Which
NH (41:21):
Nobody likes to write those mean emails. But if you’re finding yourself on the cusp of sending an email that says, no idiot, that’s not what I asked for
NH (42:15):
But still, you have to find a creative director who is also versed in marketing and digital marketing and personal branding and is used to working with high profile brands so that they can actually, you know, steer you in the right direction with certain things and know how to create certain strategic branding assets and communication assets, et cetera. And so, again, that is the other thing that I wanted to create initially when I created the first iteration of Digital Brand Kit, I really just went to make beautiful designs for people. But as I did and I started got into motion, right? And got this into the hands of people, the feedback that I got was, well, I need strategy, I need, I need help actually executing on this. And so that is where I went out and got, you know, took classes and learned more about this. I was like, I’m certified in digital psychology and and I’m certified in all of the things that you know, so that I know how to infuse all of that into these designs so that you don’t need to make those decisions, right? Or figure those things out on your own again, so that you can go and get things done. So I just wanted to caution people about working with other designers and what that looks like and where your frustrations might be coming from.
AJV (43:31):
I think that’s good. So if you get terrible designs, it’s your fault. It’s your fault
NH (43:36):
Basically.
AJV (43:38):
I think that, I think there is a lot of truth in that because when you don’t go through the initial brand guidelines process in general of really defining like, what are my signature colors and what are these things, it’s like how in the world is someone else supposed to get into the inner workings of your mind? Who is your core target audience? What are you offering without a ton of time? And the more time it takes, the more costs. And so it’s like the more work you can do on the front end of being like, I want, I’m very clear on this. And if you’re not ready to invest that amount of time and money, the starter brand that, like, that’s who this was built for. But it’s like as you elevate out of that and you go, now I want something a little bit more, you know, elevated, that’s the word. It’s like you’re still, it takes it’s time and it’s introspective and I think that’s the part that people wanna skip through and they go, I just want something that’s awesome, awesome. Put it up there. And it’s like, well it’s not gonna be awesome unless we go through this process. I think that’s so wise. And I know we just have a couple more minutes yet and I just wanna do a couple of like rapid fire questions for you, for everyone out there who’s going, okay.
NH (44:48):
Hmm.
AJV (44:49):
What, what should I be doing? Like what are some, like the big things I should be looking for? So I’m just gonna do some like rapid fire questions outside of doing like a colorblind test, like what would you say, what should people be doing to have an idea of what their visual identity should look like?
NH (45:08):
Hmm. I’ll tell you what they should not be doing. Don’t go build a Pinterest board
AJV (45:14):
NH (45:17):
Don’t go build a Pinterest board if you’re gonna do one thing. It would be take a piece of paper and write down who your ideal client avatar is. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (46:09):
I love that. I think that’s, I think that’s really wise up going. Your visual identity is not for you.
NH (46:15):
No it’s not.
NH (46:18):
Beautiful picture is that you pinned on pinches doesn’t mean that’s your visual branding. I know you feel
AJV (47:24):
Oh, I think that’s so good. And I, I love that. You know, it’s like, as you were talking, it just made me think it’s like you’re not building a website so you can go look at it. You’re not posting social media so you can go read your own posts, right? You’re doing this so that it reaches someone that you care about serving. And so it’s, it’s gotta be reflective of who you are so that you can attract the people that you are trying to curate as your audience. And that’s, that’s so good. Cause I think the emotions of people, the reason this is so hard for people is because they want it to be so perfect for them and they forget that this is not for you, this is for your audience. That I love that. That’s so good. Okay. Other quick things just like high level, how often do you think people should be posting like visual things online?
AJV (48:15):
You know, cuz I think, you know, I see so many people where it’s like they’ve gone to just like black and we black and white text, or some people just use photography now, or some people have like curated like design posts for social media. And I’m just curious, it’s like one, how often do you think somebody should be posting something that’s like attached to their brand? Like design-wise? Mm-Hmm.
NH (48:44):
Can, are we talking specifically about Instagram? Sure.
AJV (48:47):
Example about Instagram? I think that’s probably the most visual of all the platform. Yeah,
NH (48:51):
I would say just enough that if somebody is scrolling through your, your feed and looking at your images, they’re getting enough pops of your brand color throughout that they’re recognizing that there’s some sort of cohesive you know brand elements that are coming up, you know, over and over again. So I would say as much as you can, but not to where it’s, you know, overkill. So, but just pops of your brand color throughout would be, you know, just so it’s like cohesive with your brand. That would be my
AJV (49:23):
Just enough where it’s like you can get the feel from it. And I think that’s like all these different trends where it’s like so many people are just the, just doing photos of themselves. And so that was the second question is should you infuse your brand colors into your photography?
NH (49:39):
Yes. That’s a great question. Guess what, the only Adobe tool that as a non-designer I know how to use is light room and light room. If you buy certain presets or if you can use pre-made presets that you find in Lightroom, Lightroom will let you put a filter on your images and you can mass do this on many images and just put these filters. So why this is useful is, let’s say that your visual identity has a lot of cool tones in it, cool cooler colors, right? Maybe some blues and some lavenders, things like that. You’re not gonna wanna have your photos be very warm, have warm tones because it’ll clash with the, the, the cooler tones of your branding. So if you wanna have something cohesive in your in your feed, you’re gonna want your imagery to have those cool tones. And that’s something that you can do in Lightroom using these they’re called presets. So if you just literally Google Lightroom presets you’ll find tons of vendors that have beautiful presets that you can just put these filters on all of your images and vice versa. If you have warm colors, go with warmer filters and that will give you that nice cohesive look.
AJV (50:51):
Is Lightroom also the tool that you use where you can like do the cutouts or remove the background?
NH (50:57):
No, that would be, well technically that’s Photoshop, but I don’t use Photoshop cuz I don’t know how to use Photoshop. I use a tool called remove.bg, so the website is removed bg and it’s so awesome. It’s like, I don’t know how much I paid less than $10 a month. And you literally drag and drop an image into this thing and it’ll remove the background for you. And it’s genius. So that’s, that’s another awesome tool that I would recommend.
AJV (51:22):
I think that’s super cool. Specifically if you’re in this like starter brand mode where it’s like you’re gonna be doing a lot of this DIY and just going, how do you do this? Can’t figure it out. Yeah. It’s just knowing some of these really cool tools. So that one’s called Remove bg.
NH (51:38):
Remove bg.
AJV (51:39):
Yeah. So super cool. So any other cool design tools like that that it’s like for you out there, who is the, you know, DIY of going, man, how do I make this awesome, but I don’t, I don’t got a lot of skills, so help me out. Any other tips or tools that you think would helpful?
NH (52:00):
You’re putting me on the spot. I’m thinking I have, like, I have an entire bookmark folder
NH (52:50):
AJV (53:39):
So I love that y’all like, this is so helpful. And it’s, you know, just, it does, again, it doesn’t matter if you are just getting started or you’re super established. We always need something refreshed with our visual identity at some point, right? You’re gonna need a new asset, you’re gonna need a refresh of social media, you know, square images. You’re gonna need new headers, you’re gonna book designs, Prescott designs, new speeches. It’s like the list goes on and on and on. And at some point you’re gonna need to keep things fresh, right? You can’t have the same thing that you used five years ago, and nothing has changed ever since. It’s gotta be refreshed. And so there’s so many different tools that Nadine has created to make that process easier for you. And the easiest thing of all is to make sure that you start with a solid set of brand guidelines that really reflect you. So one of the things that I would just really encourage is at the very least, go to this website and take this color. Yeah. And it’s like, this is an amazing tool to get you pointed in the right direction of this is what you say about yourself without looking at colors, which is a really important thing. So again, brand builders group.com/db. And go take this. Nadine, if people wanna follow you personally, where do you want ’em to go?
NH (55:00):
Well, I would say check me out on Instagram. I’m not very active on it, but
AJV (55:23):
Ah, so generous. If you guys have got questions, you know, dmr most of the questions are taken care of for you with digital blankets, be honest. But this is so many good tips, so many good tools. We’ll link all of those design tools in the show notes for you guys. And we’ll also link brain builders group.com Forge slash dk. Go check it out. Take the color quiz get started. Keep building, keep doing what you’re doing. Nadine, thank you so much for being here. And everyone, we’ll catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand. See you later.
Ep 355: The Four Non-Negotiables for Successful Virtual Events | Bari Baumgardner Episode Recap
RV (00:02):
So Tony Robbins is arguably the, at least one of the most successful personal brands in the world, one of the biggest personal brands in the world one of the, the highest revenue generating personal brands in the world. I mean, you know, he’d, he’d be up there, Dave Ramsey, Tony Robbins, you know,
RV (01:12):
And probably when people needed encouragement and inspiration the most, they found a way to do this and make it profitable and a great experience for everybody. And we got a chance to talk to her. And I have to say, I had, I, I had never talked to Bari. Very rarely do we have someone on this show where it’s like I’m meeting them for the first time during the interview. But that was the case here with Barry. She was referred to me by a good friend of mine, Randy Garn, and, and I, I’d heard about Bari and Blue because you know, we’ve used their technology, et cetera. And anyways, it was such an awesome interview, a powerful interview here on running profitable virtual events. I think we’re gonna try this. I think we’re actually gonna experiment with this format. So anyways, let me give you the, my three highlights and takeaways.
RV (02:01):
In some ways, this one really, this one more than other episodes, really will function as like a summary of what she covered, because she covered so much, and it was, it was so powerful that even, even for my own knowledge and like my own retention, I’m, you know, some of this, I’m just recapping. So first of all, she talked about the four non-negotiables of a virtual event. And the big idea here, which is so simple, but so smart and powerful, is to go, if you want a virtual event to emulate the kind of results that you would have from a physical in-person event, then you need to try to emulate the in-person event experience or, or the dynamics of it as much as possible. And that makes so much sense to me. And she said well, there’s four non-negotiables that we have. So first is the registration process has to take place.
RV (02:56):
You have to go through a virtual check-in process that makes sense. Second was physical swag and sending somebody something physically in the mail. And that makes a lot of sense, right? That’s like super powerful that makes people show up and take it, take it serious. The third was gamification which I think is more of just like a attention, it’s like attention or retention strategy. And then the fourth is interactivity, which of course is the best part of in-person events, is almost, it’s almost always the people you meet and, and you know, the, the relationships you make in the hallways and all that kind of stuff. And it’s, it’s not just what you’re learning, but the people that are there. Well, in a virtual environment, you have to really work just deliberately to recreate that. And so those are four simple things, you know, she walked through them in detail, but I think it’s more of just, you know, there’s lots of ways for how to do those four things.
RV (03:52):
It’s more of knowing what the four things are. And, and, and really to me, the big idea there is going, how can we model our virtual event to emulate the experiences of an in-person event? And by doing that, we’ll emulate the results of an in-person event that will, will emulate the, the experience, the client experience, the user experience of being at a real event in person. And that’s what they’re doing. And that’s part of why they’re getting the kind of same sales results and bigger sales results with these virtual events. We’ll talk about that in just a second. The second big takeaway, which to me was like, I guess the grand takeaway of the whole interview was this very, very simple three day format. And on the one hand, I’m like a little bit skeptical of going, can you really hold people’s attention for three days?
RV (04:47):
But on the other hand, I mean brand builders group, we do two day events, like all of our members the people, our, our our paying members who are in our coaching program, they get unlimited access to our events. So part of what they do is they pay a monthly fee and they can come to, we do an event, we do a two day event every single month, and they can come as many to as many as they want. It’s unlimited access, and the time flies by. So I go, yeah, I, I could totally see the three day format. But the key is, and she made this point, which is also how we’ve constructed our events, is you’re not teaching for three straight days. Like, you can’t just stand up and talk for three days. And certainly not in a virtual event. So the whole thing is it’s gotta be interactive.
RV (05:33):
There’s gotta be exercises and questions and dialogues. And and this is one of the reasons why I think we might try this, is because when somebody comes to one of our events, their life is freaking changed. I mean, when our members, this is why we retain our clients for years. Like on average, our clients stay with us for years. Like we’ve only been in business for four years, and like a third of the clients that signed up with us in the very beginning are still with us, are like more like 25%, 25% of the people who signed up with us like four years ago are still with us. So people hang around and then we didn’t even know what we were doing back then, right? So we’re just figuring it out, like you’ve really gotten it dialed in in the last couple years.
RV (06:17):
And but people, when they have this experience, it’s like life changing and, and then they stick around. And so part of what our team has been trying to figure out is going, how do we get people to sort of get that experience, like get a way to sample that? And I think Barry’s model here is a great one. And so we’re, we’re looking at this. We’re not, haven’t officially announced that we’re gonna do this, but I’m, you know, again, I’m learning right alongside you here with the people who come on this show. And this is one that was, was super compelling to me going, I think we, we should try this because we have a lot of fans that have not yet become customers. And it’s like, it’s like, I think they trust us. I think they kind of see it, but it’s exactly what she was talking about.
RV (07:04):
They’re not totally sure that they could do it or what the next step is, or that it’s worth the money or that. And so it’s sort of like they just need to experience it. And I think this three day format gives people a chance to really experience it and get involved and, and get acclimated and, and, and get familiar with your content and, and what the process feels like to go through. So, you know, she talked about this three day format and you know, the, basically the, the first day is just getting a sense of what is possible teaching some content, like, you know, adding some real value in the first day. And, and probably it’s, I got the sense that like a lot, a lot of the teaching does happen in the first day or, or a big part of the first day is teaching and, and giving people real content but also giving them a chance to sort of establish their own vision and, and, and see what do they see as possible for themself.
RV (08:00):
And then day two is really where you spend more time talking about the gap of, of like, okay, where, where are you now compared to where you wanna be? And what would your life look like if you achieve that? And what’s the process that it takes to get there? And and so you, you sort of, and then you show them the solution and you show them the journey. So like, for example, at Brand Builders Group, we have our brand builder journey. Ours is actually called the Brand Builder journey. In fact, if you’ve never been to our website, if you go to brand builders group.com and then under the about menu, there’s a sub menu. That’s our brand process. You can see how we, we map this out for people just as an example. And, and also if you, if you haven’t yet requested a call with our team, you should go look at this and, and it’ll, it lays out, you know, our 12 like, well, we have a 14 part journey all in that we take people on to go from like concept all the way to eight figure personal brand and becoming one of the most well known people in the world, which several of our clients are.
RV (09:09):
So you can, you can check that out at, just go to brand builders group.com and click on about, and then click on our brand process. But I think that’s what I got a sense is whatever your brand process is, that’s what you lay out on day two. Those of you that are listening that are members of ours, when we, what this would be is when we take you through captivating content and we help you map out all your pillars and you lay out like your high level framework and you, you know, your unique branded methodology and all those, those things, that’s what you’re really introducing them to in day two is what it sounds like. And then tactically, this was important. I was digging, you know, to make sure I got crystal clear on this, at the end of day two is where you make the offer, right?
RV (09:52):
So that’s where you make the offer and you let people sort of hear it and you invite them to join. And and so you think of day two as making the offer. And then day three is basically like closed cart. And so then on day three, they come back. Day three is all about just getting people that are there to make a decision to do something differently in their life, to future cast or to vision what it’s gonna feel like when they do reach the goals that they have and reminding people it’s not too late to join. And then there, it, it sounds like there’s a second offer on day three in the morning, which is the heart you know, the heart pitch and the heart close in the morning. And then I, I thought it was really great where Barry was talking about you need to have celebration.
RV (10:42):
And you know, there, there were a couple, couple key things here. One was having that lunchtime celebration for all, all new members or all people who were joining, whatever the program is that they get to come. And so, you know, like she said, no one wants to miss the start of a program. And so people wanna sign up cuz they want to get to get that invitation that’s really compelling and powerful and, and, and productive. Like pragmatic could go while you’re all here, let’s get everyone together and like actually start the program and, and, and get people going. Really, really smart and simple. And then the other thing that I really loved was where she was saying you know, have breakout rooms in your virtual meeting for sales to take place, right? And I think she said, you know, something like with Tony, they’ve got, you know, dozens of salespeople just standing by running breakout rooms. And so when people have questions, they’re just going, oh, hey, you come over, you know, come in here and talk with our salesperson. You don’t say salesperson, but like, come get your questions answered. That’s super productive. And you know, just really smart. And like, again,
RV (11:52):
She’s emulating what happens in a real life event, at a real life event. You know, you make an offer, people go to the back table to talk to someone to get information about it, and then they sign up. Well, in a virtual room, you got in a virtual event, you gotta create the same thing. So the way you do that is you leverage breakout rooms in Zoom and and if you don’t have a sales team, then you could use like a Coly link and, and let people schedule times with you, you know, that evening or, you know, sometime very, or or in near and in and around the event so that you can close people and, and sign ’em up while they’re excited. And that just, gosh, I mean, that makes so much sense to me. So simple. And, and like she said, the best part about it is the, the, you don’t have to do like a big hard sales pitch.
RV (12:35):
The the format of the event sells itself because people are with you long enough to trust you. You know, if they’re gonna stay that long, like if they don’t, they’re gonna bail, right? So they’re, they’re, they’re gonna stay there. They, they’re long enough to trust you, to feel part of the community and meet people and to really have a true immersive experience, a chance to experience what it feels like to be one of your customers. And you know, I look at Tony Robbins and go, oh, like all of Tony’s events are three and four days and all of these other events I’ve been to where they make high ticket offer, they’re all like three and four days. I mean funnel Hacking Live is that way. And I mean all of Tony’s events, relationship mastery and, you know or Business Mastery and then I think, yeah, date With Destiny and all these, they’re, they’re multi-day events.
RV (13:22):
And you go, yeah, because after someone’s had that experience, they’re like really bought in. And I just love it. So you kind of let the, the format of the event just do its thing, make it, give you lots of time for q and a and, and exercises and dialogue and, you know, networking and meeting. That’s really, really cool. I really love it. And so the third, my third big takeaway there is just the numbers of how this works. And we have another client that’s doing this right now who, who is generating several hundred thousands of dollars, like a few hundred thousand dollars from each one of these events. And they’ll get like a few hundred people there, maybe 300 to 500 people will show up. And so they’re, they’re selling the tickets for a low ticket price, like 97 or, or 1 97.
RV (14:07):
And historically our events at Brand Builders group are $3,000 each. Cuz they’re, I mean, our events are legit. I mean, they are, they’re like more powerful than a college course, but not everyone has that kind of money. And so, you know, I’m going, golly, if we lowered the price on one of these, just a, just a first one where people got a chance to sample it, I wonder if we can move some of those. I bet we could, I bet we could move a ton of ’em. So you, you go, you have a 97 to 1 97, and again, here’s what’s really cool about is, is it’s a virtual event. So you’re not paying for venue rental and for AV and for food and beverage and printing workbooks and like name tags and like having your staff there and coffee and like parking and all the, the massive number of expenses that add up for a, for an in-person event.
RV (14:56):
So you go, I can charge a lower price and I can impact more people. Like, that’s the best part of this is like money aside, just going, man, I can impact more people, impact people all over the globe by doing a virtual event. And, and that’s why you’re doing this, right? I mean, that’s why you’re a mission driven messenger. You’re going, I I want to help people. So, you know, the price is obviously a barrier to the, to the number of people you get to help. And so lowering that price is, is, you know, an interesting idea because you, you can actually do it and you at least break even maybe for your time or you know, the cost of a small team to help you put on the event, et cetera. But anyways, you, you charge, you know, somewhere between 97 to $197 it sounds like.
RV (15:40):
And you know, she said, did you hear this? She said, we’re making offers that go up to $500,000. So at the end of three days, they’re making offers at some of these events that are as much as a half a million dollars for a customer. So that’s pretty crazy just to wrap your mind around. But a $5,000 offer, you know, 3000, 5,000, $10,000, like this is happening regularly. And I think that’s really interesting. So now one thing she did say is numbers wise that in an in-person event, a solid average is like closing 20% of the room, which to me is high. That feels higher than what, what is normal, but let’s say it’s 20%. And then she said in a virtual event, it’s more like 10 to 15%. So it’s slightly lower in my mind. I’m going, okay, call that, you know, 10 to 15% in a live event and five to 10% in a virtual, but the difference is it’s five to 10%.
RV (16:41):
So it’s a lower percentage, but it’s a smaller percentage of a much bigger number because there’s a whole bunch more people there because the ticket price is lower and it’s a virtual event, so you don’t have all the cost of the venue and all that stuff. So it changes the dynamics of this completely, which is really amazing. And, and she said, you know, imagine if you’re just getting started and you, you know, you get 50 people to show up to this thing and you get five people to buy a $5,000 offer, it’s 25 grand. Like for me, when I was first starting, like that was a been big time money, right? Like that’s, yeah, $25,000 is good money. Like for anybody, like, unless you’re Elon Musk, most of us aren’t stepping over $25,000 bills
RV (17:25):
I mean, this was just fascinating, like having her spell out the whole model and go behind the scenes, really, really interesting. And, and it also was powerful that she’s going, it’s not the technology, she sells the technology to help you do it, but she’s just using Zoom, so her technology layers on top of Zoom to make it a little more like customizable and, and gamified and all that stuff. But she’s saying, you know, you can do this, this with Zoom. It’s, it’s not, the technology’s not the magic. The format is the magic. And I can see that, and I, I I love that. So, and again, you know, at the end of the day, the big idea here is you’re impacting lives. That’s it. You’re changing lives. You’re going go in virtual events, give us the opportunity to impact lives at scale. Everything virtually gives us the opportunity, the blessing, the privilege to impact lives at scale.
RV (18:21):
And we can afford to charge lower prices for these in-person events or excuse me, for the virtual events because it doesn’t cost the, the same and you can get people to, to, to show up and and then you can sell more people if it’s a feeder event. Now she’s saying for your real events charge the same price as you normally would because it’s the same amount of time. And the, the value, the content is the same whether it’s in person or not. But for these, for these entry level events to like fill your programs and try to try to use a three day event to fill the program, I’m, I’m excited about it and I’m on board. If nothing else, it’s an experiment. I think we’re gonna have to try just to see if we can reach more people, reach you.
RV (19:04):
Some of you probably are listening are not yet customers of ours and you’ve never had a chance to experience like the Brand Builders group experience. So I don’t know, maybe we’ll have Barry Baumgartner to thank thank for that. So anyways, figure out ways to impact lives. Can you do it virtually? Reach more people, be able to make the money you need, but by charging a lot you know, more people, a lower dollar amount. That’s inspiring to me. You’re inspiring to me. Helping you get your message out to more people is inspiring to me. So I hope you’ll keep coming back, share this episode with somebody that you think will enjoy it. Tell ’em about the influential personal brand podcast or at least go rate us on iTunes, leave a review, and we’re so grateful to have you. Hopefully you’re following me on Instagram, come over and say hi or on LinkedIn. And that’s it for this time. We’ll catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand podcast.
Ep 354: Running Profitable Virtual Events with Bari Baumgardner
RV (00:02):
Well, if you are a mission driven messenger, that’s probably why you’re listening to the show. And if that is you, you had your life interrupted in a big way by covid, as did everyone. But specifically those of us that are speakers, coaches, authors, experts, personal brands of events and speaking at events and hosting events has been a really big part of is what we do. And when Covid hit, the whole world of events changed. And one of the companies that was quick to jump to the front of the line in terms of their thought leadership, the event production going virtual is an event called, or is a, is a company called Sage Event Management. And you’re about to meet Bari Baumgartner, she’s the founder of the company, she’s the chief strategist. She runs it with her husband Blue, who handles some more of the technology and sort of creative sides.
RV (00:56):
But when I tell you that these two and their company went to the forefront of the industry, it happened virtually overnight. Part of it was Tony Robbins was one of their, their big clients where they helped to put on this massive live virtual event he has has unleashed the power within U P W and they’re the team that helped Tony take that event Virtual which has become a smashing success. It’s affected thousands and thousands of people. They’ve also worked with Dean Graziosi, Jeff Walker Jamie Kern Lima, another good friend of ours, Eric Wary, Pete Vargas. Amy Porterfield, another brand builders group client of ours. So they’ve worked with a lot of our friends, a lot of our clients they have a really key technology piece that a lot of people are using, but it’s more of just understanding the strategy of how to produce high dollar offer virtual events and how to use virtual events to to grow your platform and your business. So anyways, Barry is here with me in person. Barry, I’m so glad to meet you. Thanks for making time for us.
BB (02:01):
Absolutely Rory, thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.
RV (02:04):
So what exactly do you do? Okay, so I kind of give that like a background, but like tell us, how would you de describe what you, what you guys do at Sage?
BB (02:15):
Yeah, thank you for asking. I think what’s really interesting about what we do that’s different from a lot of event production companies out there as we lead with strategy first. So our company Sage actually stands for strategic advice for growing events. And from our very first day opening our doors, gosh it’s hard to believe it was 18 years ago out of a guest bedroom in my house, I opened Sage Event Management. And the concept was what’s the strategy behind the event? And you know, I think it’s interesting an event world, so much of it is checklisting, right? Like you have to checklist a little bit to get it done. Yeah. And I often think, and I don’t mean any disrespect to event planners who do it this way, but a lot of times it’s almost like a glorified waitress, a glorified order taker. It’s like, yes ma’am, yes sir, let’s make it happen.
BB (03:00):
You know, it’s an expectations plus kind of industry. But so often I find that people don’t ask why are we doing it? So, you know, if you come to Sage, the first question we’re gonna ask you is, what’s your big why? Like, what are you out there to do to change the world? What does it mean to you personally to do it? Who are you meant to serve? What are your non-negotiables and how do you make that right? Fit client rave, renew and recruit. It’s at the heart of everything we do. And then we design your live event and then we design the logistics to support the live event. So that strategy first approach, I think is what differentiated us from the beginning and led to us working with some of the biggest names in the personal development and business development space. Mm-Hmm.
RV (03:38):
BB (04:40):
Yeah, absolutely. Well first of all, I think that Covid did for the events industry, what nine 11 did to the travel industry, it changed it forever. You know, after nine 11 travel never looked the same. And after Covid, I think events are never gonna look the same. It ushered in a whole new way of communicating with our audiences. And what was interesting, listen, for 15 years we’ve done in-person events and I think of them specifically as enrollment events. Our events always have a high ticket offer. So speakers, authors, coaches who are selling a one to many group coaching program or mastermind. That’s what I think of as a high ticket offer. And so we’re reverse engineering the event around that high ticket offer.
RV (05:16):
Say that again. What did just go, sorry, but rewind there quick. You said it’s a mastermind or a a one to one or a group coaching program? Yeah,
BB (05:24):
It could be one to one like, you know, VIP days or a done for you service. It could be a one to many like a group coaching program or a mastermind. Any of those things could be part of what you’re doing. But when I think of a high ticket offer, I’m generally thinking of an offer that’s 5,000 and above one that would take an audience more than a minute to think about more than, you know, something you might sell on a webinar or a challenge or a launch. You know those well for some audiences I think it’s still a big investment. When you start thinking of a high ticket offer, it’s one that might give you pause. Like that’s a big investment, how am I gonna pay for that? And the, the three day model, the three day event model calibrated properly, this is the framework we’re talking about actually will lead your audience to say this is amazing, I want more.
BB (06:06):
And you’re like, I thought you would, I have something for you. And that’s your high ticket offer. So when you get to that 80% role you were talking about what’s awesome about what we learned from Covid and doing virtual events is that in-person events and virtual events are 80% the same. The framework that we’ve always taught that we use for the biggest names in the business and for people you’ve never heard of is 80% the same, the 20% that’s different between in-person and virtual is what we call tech and touch. The technology is different and the touch points are different, but the good news is the framework for making a high ticket offer is the same. And why that’s good for you is if you wanna do in person or you wanna do virtual, you wanna do both. You’re not sure. It doesn’t matter if you learn the framework, you can easily pivot between the two.
RV (06:51):
Okay. So, so talk to me about the three day event strategy. Cause I know this is like big part of what you guys do and then sort of like, like you’re saying, it’s, it sounds like you were doing this long before, you’ve been doing this for years and years Covid happened, you were one of the first ones to go virtual. You guys did it with Tony, it was the smashing success. And then like all of a sudden you guys blew up and now you’re like everywhere you broke through the wall, as we say it’s like you broke through the wall. But it’s, if, if I, from what I gather sort of your bread and butter is like if you’re gonna make a high ticket offer, you do that over a three day event. So can you just like walk us through what happens over these three days? How long is it, where is it? Like all all that? I mean clearly you’re talking about that we could actually do this virtually.
BB (07:35):
Yes. Yeah. And I really do think that COVID ushered in this virtual opportunity. I think of it as the democratization of live events. Meaning that you don’t have to have a big list, you don’t have to have a big studio, you don’t have to big budget, you don’t have to have a big production. You can do this with a computer, a TV, and a Zoom account. We’ll come back to that in just a minute. Okay. So it’s that simple. So this is what’s really amazing about virtual, but the three day framework that we’ve become known for is based on the fact that there are two types of buyers for high ticket offer. A logical buyer and an emotional buyer. An emotional buyer when they hear an offer is like, sounds great. I meant where do I sign up? That’s my husband blue. Like he’s never met an offer he doesn’t like. Like if you’re that kinda buyer, then you’re an emotional buyer.
RV (08:20):
What’s driving down the street? Saw banners had had free hot dogs, walked home with a brand new Lexus, like for
BB (08:25):
Sure, for sure. Or we have like the toothpaste subscription, the sock subscription, the underwear,
BB (09:09):
Meaning that it’s harder to write a short letter than a long letter. Is it harder to give a TED talk or a workshop? Yep. A TED talk, right? Every word has to be perfect. So why I love a three day event, especially for people who are up and coming and wanna make a high ticket offer, is that it, it’s really flexible and it’s very forgiving. Meaning that if you don’t get your offer perfect in a three day, you have a lot of time for recovery and repositioning, which is especially important for those logical buyers. When you do a one day everything better, be perfect for that high ticket offer or you’re not gonna get the sales you want. So I’ve devoted our business and my life to teaching people this three day model and this framework that actually takes the, the buyer, the potential buyer through a process of, I think of this as buyer’s psychology, what you can do that, oh wait a minute, I could do that.
BB (09:58):
Oh wait, now that I hear how you do this, I will do that. And then when you make your offer, you’re like, oh, I must do that. And when you hear the repitch on the last day, you’re like, I am crazy not to do that. So I think our journey as a host, as an event host who’s making a high ticket offer is to take them from you can do that. To wait, I could do that to, I will do that, I must do that. I’m crazy not to do that. And a logical buyer needs that time. An emotional buyer is like, what you can do that I could do that I’m in, where do I sign up? But the logical buyer needs time to actually process it and think through it. And the three day model gives you the opportunity to do that, whether you’re doing it in person or virtually doesn’t matter.
RV (10:34):
Yeah. And one of the things that you said we were chatting a little bit before is that you know, we were talking about like some of the events like Ed, for Ed Millet’s book launch. Many listeners are familiar. We did a whole bunch of stuff with Ed’s launch. One of the things was a live event. We were using your technology to run the Zoom rooms. So we host Yeah, it was awesome. I mean like, like it was, it was great. We, we, we hosted the event at Steven Scoggins place. He’s a client of ours, he’s one of our strategists. We love the guy. He’s the one who was like, you know, that was one of the first times I heard Barry and Blue Barry and Blue Barry and Blue
BB (11:46):
It is. And here’s what’s amazing about this. So when, when Covid first hit, this was like March 15th, 2020 and Trump was forced to shut the country down and we were actually at an event in Miami and just a quick, quick story. We were flying in from a strategy day in Puerto Rico with Stu McLaren actually to a, to this event in Miami. And you know, we’re a million miles. I mean it’s a dubious honor. You fly a lot, you get upgraded a lot cuz you’re flying all the time. And we almost always get upgraded to first class and we’re flying into Miami and we didn’t get upgraded And I’m like, you know, I turn to my husband blue, I’m like, this is not really a thing. This whole covid thing is so hyped up when the airport’s this busy, the flights are this busy. Like it’s just, I think it’s just a bunch of media hype while we’re at this event in Miami, the country shuts down and literally as we’re flying home on an empty flight, we were in first class on this, we’re the only people in first class.
BB (12:37):
It was like a zombie airport, you know, we’re flying home. I’m like, okay, now it’s a thing. Now we have a problem. And literally we went from, well we were, I remember being in Puerto Rico and having clients call going, should we be worried about our event? I’m like, no it’s fine. It’s not a thing to literally that week people calling and like postpone, cancel, postpone, cancel, postpone, cancel. And if you’re the kind of business we are, we have a lot of repeat business. Somebody postponing to the next year or saying, I’m gonna cancel this year and we’ll revisit this when this thing blows over is lost money. Like you’re not, we were expecting you to do this again next year. Right? So the fact that you’re postponing, you know, where where are we replacing the money from this year? And we had this choice of either going down to being a consultancy and letting our team go, which I really did not wanna do cuz we have an amazing team or rethinking it.
BB (13:23):
And this is like the quick pivot. Within two weeks we went from to our first client, which actually was not Tony, it was a guy named Dylan Frost. I’ll forever be grateful to Dylan Frost of Amazon Wholesale Formula. We went to him and said, Hey, your event was supposed to be the first week of April in person. We’ve tried live streams and broadcasts and some will cast before they’ve never worked not with high ticket offers. There’s never a good conversion on them cuz they’re very passive. I want you to think about this with me as we’re thinking about what’s different and in person and virtual, they’re very passive ex viewing experiences. We’re broadcasting at you, we’re not talking with you. Sure. And we said, but we have an idea for this event being interactive and being virtual and it may be a total disaster. And to give credit where credits due, my husband Blue came up with this idea.
BB (14:06):
He literally said, what if we were to put a bunch of TVs together and link them all together in a way that we could see all these different Zoom galleries, have people come to different rooms so that we can see all of their faces and we can chat with all of them so that it’s an interactive experience. It’s not just that we’re broadcasting at them, we’re actually able to spotlight them and take q and a and interact with them and see their chats. And so again, when you ask what makes us different, I think because of the kind of company we are, immediately what we did different from any other tech platform was rather than focus on the audience experience, we focused on the host experience. What we know to be true is if the host isn’t getting that real time interaction, if they’re not feeling it, the event’s gonna be a flop.
BB (14:49):
So when we went to Dylan, we said we have an idea, let’s partner on this. We’ve got two weeks to put it together. Let’s just float it out there and see what happens. Now this event in person for three years had been about 300 people domestic US. And when we launched the idea of an international, like anybody come one come all you can sign up for this virtual event. It’s gonna be interactive and experiential. We went from a solid 300 over the last three years to 1200 and less than a week. And for the first, and it was free. Was it free? It was paid. It was paid. No, that was one of our rules paid like a webinar is free, a challenge is free, an event’s not free. And this goes back to tech and touch. So thank you for asking me that. Immediately what we did were four non-negotiables that we’ve stuck with since because they’ve worked so well.
BB (15:35):
If you’re going and this is where tech and touch the 20%, that’s different. Think about an amazing in-person experience that you’ve had at an event. You never start an event without registration, right? You have to get credentialed, you have to go to registration and pick up your badge. So one of the first things we did with virtual is say you have to go to registration and pick up your credentials. So we did a virtual check-in experience and that made sure that they would show up the morning of day one knowing what to do. Like you don’t wanna start an in person or a virtual experience. People going, where do I go and where do I click and how does this work again? So by having a check-in experience, just like you would from person just virtualized we did it by Zoom. We literally had live people on Zoom checking people in making sure they knew how to use our tech platform, Avio, which we created virtually overnight.
BB (16:24):
And making sure that they were set up for success so that we started on time on day one with no tech fails. That was point number one of the 20%. That’s different. The other thing that we did is we sent swag, physical swag to every single person who registered even if it had to be overnighted. And the reason for that is we wanted to differentiate ourselves from a webinar. You know, how many webinars do you like? I’m gonna sign up for this, it’s free. I might go, I’ll catch the replay. You’re not really super serious about it. Which is why they generally have a 30% show up rate. But if an event had a 30% show up rate, that’s a disaster. So we made a, we had this idea, what if you got physical swag, someone knocks on the door and literally hands you a box or an envelope with swag in it.
BB (17:08):
You’re like wow, well this is a different kind of event. This is definitely not a three day zoom meeting. This is definitely not a webinar. What, what’s in here? Oh my gosh. Like a journal and a workbook and some stickers and some emoji paddles so that I can you know, interact with you from afar and you can see my interaction and my emotion from afar when you’re on stage. Not only did they get more excited about the event, there was some recipro of frost in that. So they did better at showing up for the event and they were more likely to remember that it was different than a zoom. You know, when you said how long could the meeting be? We were toying around with that on the first one. Like will they stay with us for eight full hours? Right? And what we found was the third point that’s critical on the difference in tech and touch, which is some form of gamification.
BB (17:51):
There has to be some form of interaction with them in the form of breakouts, giving them points for showing up points for taking action. And that’s where Avio comes in. The dashboard that we created allowed them to have a wrapper on Zoom. So they’re all using Zoom technology. There’s 350 million people on Zoom at any one moment in time. Like that’s not user accounts, it’s 350 million people using Zoom at this moment in time. Wow. So people know Zoom and I think that was something else people were getting wrong in the conversion to virtual. There were all these fancy solutions, but it was like make a fake avatar and knock on a fake door, go into it, it was a little too techy and people would be turned off by what do I have to learn in order to attend this event? Right? Everybody knows Zoom. I mean grandparents know it, kids know it, everybody in between.
BB (18:35):
So it was an easy solution but we had to put a rapper on it that allowed people to have interaction, to be able to download resources, to be able to take action and for us to reward that action through leaderboard and gifts and all kinds of interactions so that they would stay with us for three full days. And what we found was 90% showed up consistently event over event. And of that 90% they would stay with us for three full days. And here’s what I really love about virtual. Stay with us for three full days. You remember in person events where at the end of the, I
RV (19:08):
Gotta go early to go to catch a flight. Yep. To get home in time for dinner.
BB (19:11):
You got it. They don’t have to the virtual.
RV (19:14):
So what was the fourth
BB (19:15):
One? Yeah, the fourth one is that there has to be I think some form of interactivity, like that breakout piece that I mentioned is really critical. Like I really think they need interactivity where they’re being do you know in in-person events where it’s like turn to the person next to you or you’re meeting in the coffee shop or maybe you’re chatting in the ballroom waiting for the doors to open. There has to be this component that allows them to interact with the host and with each other. Chat is brilliant for that, but so is sending them into breakouts where they’re literally talking with each other because part of the three day framework that works for a high ticket offer is building a like-minded community. You need to experience virtually that wow, you’re from Brazil, you’re from Russia, you’re from wherever. And yet we’re also alike.
BB (20:00):
I think the thing that people were most craving in Covid, but really has always been true of live events is to be surrounded by a group of like-minded people. Like that’s really critical. And so if, if again with livestream what never worked is we’re broadcasting at you versus having an interactive experience where we’re reading your chat. I mean, what I love most now is standing on stage and getting real time feedback on whether you’re with me or not with me. Whether you get the content or you don’t, whether you love what I’m saying or you don’t, whether you have a question, I can pluck that question out and answer it in the moment. It actually starts to be one of those things and you go back to in person, it feels a little flat cuz the most reaction you could get would be a clap, a laugh, or a, you know, callback, right? Like, you know, who’s with me? You know, that kind of thing. So
RV (20:42):
You’re not reading, reading comments. Exactly. Some people put their life story right there in the chat. So yes. But, and, and I agree with this, it’s like most of it previously was there’s a live event happening and the live stream is, we’re letting people watch that, which is, this is, it’s virtual first. We’re talking to them, we’re engaging them. So I’m still like curious about the three, this three day agenda. Like how much of it are you on stage? Are you bringing in guest speakers? How much time are they in breakouts? Like when do you make the offer like that kind of a thing?
BB (21:16):
Yeah, it’s a great question. I mean I think from a high level like macro view, what I really think works in a three day event is what I call the three by three p g. Meaning that you’re doing three things over three days. So each day, three things. The first day our sole focus is content connection, community. I wanna give you amazing content, especially important virtual so that they come back, right? Like for day two and day three, this is not a bait and switch where you have light superficial content. Like give them just enough to be dangerous and then they have to buy the thing to get the real stuff. Your goal is to really give them amazing content that has them having aha after aha after aha. We often call this accumulation effect where every session builds on the one before it. So by the end of the day you have a real idea of a framework.
BB (22:00):
And again, you’re starting to think, I can do that, I will do that. Like this is possible. I will do that. The next piece is connection. Connection to the host, connection to the community. But most importantly, and this is true for in person and virtual events, most importantly a connection to themselves. Like why we come to events is for a sense of what’s possible for us. And I think what people miss a lot on an high ticket offer is, if I don’t believe it’s possible, I’m not gonna pay you to help me make it possible. I have to believe there’s a future in this that I can do this in order for me to want to pay you to help me do it. So that sense of the future self versus the current self is how we start to establish the gap. The gap from where I want to be versus where I am.
BB (22:42):
The minute I see a gap, what do I wanna do? Close the gap, right? And now that I see it, I wanna close it, which gets me to day two. So day one, content connection community day two is about closing that gap. It’s about pain. The exposure of that gap is, I’m in pain now because I can see where I wanna be. I can see where I’m stuck, I really wanna close that gap. I need a solution that’s the s the solution. And then that’s gonna come in the form of an invitation. So it looks like this, wow, I feel like you’re really in pain around the gap in your life or in your business. But here’s the thing I have a solution for that I’d like to invite you to join me to continue the journey for the next six months or for the next year or whatever it might be.
BB (23:24):
So that second day is pain solution invitation. Literally leading people to want your high ticket offer before you’ve even made it so that when they hear it, they’re like, that’s exactly what I was looking for. Like I thought you would, you know why you’re my right fit client, I know you. Which goes back to what you teach R right? It’s like if they’re clear on their big why and their purpose and who they’re meant to serve, you’re designing an offer that they’re gonna love. And then day three is for your logical buyers. And the three things that happen on day three are decide, commit, celebrate. We want you to make a decision to do something differently. You must commit to something different. Don’t let this be three days wasted. Commit to a timeline. When you gonna start, we have a saying, if you don’t have a plan for Monday, you don’t have a plan, like commit to a date to start and then celebrate.
BB (24:10):
What is it gonna look like when you reach that goal? What’s the celebration you’re gonna have when you reach that goal so that they can again, future cast where they’re going to be. Now if in deciding, committing and celebrating you realize that you could use accountability and community and enhanced opportunity that I wanna remind you this offer is still available to you. It’s not too late for you to join us in this program. It allows time for that logical buyer to be like, you know, I really do need to be here. This is what I’m missing. So three days allows for that. So three by three p, g, content, connection, community pain solution, invitation, decision, commitment, celebration. We weave that into every three day. And I say that when you do that, the structure does the selling for you. You don’t have to be icky or salesy or sleazy. If you give generously and follow that model, your right fit clients can be coming to you on day two and saying, I want more, where do I find that? And you’re be like, I thought you would let me invite you to join us
RV (25:04):
So you’re not, I love this. So you’re not, you’re not actually making the offer. So that, so to speak from stage, here’s what it is here, how much it cost until day three. But you’re kind of seeing
BB (25:14):
That day two, actually we make the offer on day two and we reiterate the offer on day three. Yeah. And I really think of it, if you’re familiar with Launch World, for any of you listening, you know, in a launch there’s a cart close, I think of day three is cart close, but also a little bit more heart close. Meaning that what I’m trying to get them to do on day three is get outta their head and into their heart. We make better decisions with their heart than our head. And a three day event allows me to get the offer on the table. On day two, my emotional buyers be like, great, this is what I’m looking for. I’m all in logical. Buyers are gonna say, I have some questions and we’re gonna say, I thought you would, let’s take some time to answer them.
BB (25:50):
And then on day three we get to say, listen, time to decide, time to commit. And if you are gonna do that, here’s a key piece. The celebration for buyers is that day. So you know, I said it was decide, commit, celebrate. If they do join you, you’re gonna reward them for joining you with a welcome celebration. We’re there together with like-minded people, other people who bought into the program and you can really celebrate that. They made such a great decision, not by deciding to invest in you, by deciding to invest in themselves. Like that’s really the key is like, you’re so smart for investing in you. Mm-Hmm.
RV (26:22):
BB (27:04):
Last Yeah, we like to do it at lunch. And I have to tell you, this is what’s interesting for both in person and virtual. The best call to action I’ve ever tested over 17 years of doing this is a welcome celebration. So if you’re in person, you’ve got the cost of lunch. But think about it, if you’re making a high ticket offer 5,000, 10,000, 15,000. And listen, with Russell, we just did an offer that was 150 with Garrett White. We just did an offer that was 500,000. By the way, the economy does not kill a high ticket offer. It just reinforces one. So these big offers are being made right now and selling quite well. But what’s really interesting is still what outperforms anything is that simple. The program starts at this event. The program starts at the welcome celebration. People don’t like to miss the start of something.
BB (27:47):
And it’s something else to keep in mind is you can’t keep people in buying tension for too long. So by making that offer just before dinner on day two, having that dinner break to answer questions and close people having that repitch the next morning, that heart close, and then having that welcome celebration soon after, we’re able to really tighten that moment, which is I know the offer, I have questions about the offer, I have answers to the offer I’m all in. Think about, I must do this, I’m crazy not to do this. And then the reward for doing that. Yeah.
RV (28:17):
Mm-Hmm.
BB (28:53):
Yeah. And this is where Avio comes in again, you know, we need it a way to easily get people to be able to click on a button saying, I’m ready to buy, and to click on a button to say, I need to talk to someone with questions. If you think of in person back of room is where you would go when you hear an offer from the stage. If you have questions, you go to the back of the room. If you wanna buy, you go to the back of the room. We needed a way to virtualize the back of the room. So Avio, think back to what I said, you needed gamification and a way for them to get used to using the dashboard. If they’re clicking around and they’re constantly getting points and rewards for clicking around over two full days, when it comes time to actually click, I’m all in.
BB (29:30):
They’re like, sounds good. They’re used to being on the dashboard, they click the button, they put in their deposit and they’re in. And the ones who are like, but wait, I have questions. You’re like, no problem. Click the button that says talk to a program expert. When you click on it, it’s gonna take you into a room just like the one we’re on right now where you can be led through a q and a session. So it works like a virtual back of room. Yeah. We do the same thing with welcome celebration. You click a button on your dashboard and it lets you into the welcome celebration, which is a private room only for buyers where we can celebrate the decision that you made and give you the next steps. Just like we would at a welcome celebration in person.
RV (30:07):
Mm-Hmm.
BB (30:25):
Deal all over the map. I mean all over the, we have some hosts Yeah, that, I mean we have some events where, you know, I think of like an event with Dean and Tony. We have quite a few guest speakers. And then there are other events where there’s a primary speaker, the host, especially if you’re an up and comer, like one thing I’d love for you to know is you might be modeling people that you love in this space and seeing a lot of guest speakers, but you don’t have a budget for that. It’s so not necessary. Like you don’t have to have an outside speaker to have a really amazing three day event.
RV (30:50):
Uhhuh
BB (31:28):
Yeah, well I think that’s a great question. First of all, remember I said democratization of live events and I’d circle back around to all you really need is a tv, a computer, and a Zoom account. Now Avio is an amazing luxury. It does make things so much easier, but it’s not something you have to have. Like if you’re just getting started, I would have my computer, my Zoom account. You might wonder why a tv, I think it’s critical to have a TV because remember I said it’s about the host experience. If I can see my audience in gallery view much bigger, I’m gonna be able to read your name, I’m gonna be able to see your face, I’m gonna be able to interact with you. I can have that chat. Scroll down the side so I can see what you’re saying back to me. So I’m a big fan of not doing this on your computer.
BB (32:10):
It’s run from your computer, but you’re actually seeing everyone from a TV. And listen, everybody these days has a TV in their home. So this is super easy to do. And if you really wanna get fancy, then here’s an Uplevel move. Take two lights in your house, take the lampshade off and put them right here in front of you so that you’ve got light on your face.
RV (32:38):
That.
BB (32:39):
This is airing, but
RV (32:41):
Quiet tv.
BB (32:42):
Yeah, I mean, but seriously TVs today, a really good TV is $200. So, but
RV (32:46):
You’re saying, but when you say tv, you’re basically just saying a large extended desktop for your computer so that you can see a bunch of people and feel like you’re not alone in your basement, but that you’re actually presenting to a room full of people.
BB (33:00):
Yes. And Avio makes it easy to interact, but you could give a link to your offer. You don’t have to have Avio and you know, we like to give prizes away via leaderboard and activity. But think about this. If you’re having an intimate event, you could take every registrant, put their name on a sheet of paper, put it in a bowl, and at the start of each session, draw a name. Like you could be old school with this, the same things that we did in person to reward people for coming back on time. We can do virtually to reward them for coming back on time. And we wanna do that, we wanna reward them for staying engaged.
RV (33:31):
So, but like if you’re a, I mean, can anyone use abio? Is this like, can we just go log in and buy the thing and use it for our event?
BB (33:38):
You can and it’s, you know, it’s really affordable. I mean, it’s under a thousand dollars for a year. So super easy to use. And I think we’re in like AVIO 5.0 at this point. We have seven full-time developers whose only job is to work on Avio. But it is, I mean interestingly it’s what we use to run an event for GoPro where we have 40,000 people. It’s what we use to run U P W where we have 25,000 people. And here’s something else that’s really interesting. When you think of, how
RV (34:05):
Many, did you say 20,000? 20,000?
BB (34:08):
Yeah, we, we generally do about 25,000 at U P W virtual U P W. And what I think is really interesting about that, I remember the very first virtual U P W and Tony and I were standing there and looking at the gallery view and we’ve got a lot of TVs, a lot of galleries to make that work. Some are in the cloud, some are in the studio, but we were counting, we’re looking in every, and we’re like, there are two people in that box, four people in that box, six people in that box, the classroom in that box, the 25,000 was the people who were registered and showed up. But I think we had probably closer to 75,000. When you look at the number of families or classrooms or friend groups that attended. And honestly I love that. Why would we not want that? You know, you want as many people as possible to be exposed to your message. Say here, sometimes you can’t control the ticketing, but I want you to think about this. How often in an in-person event does your buyer come to the event and they can’t afford to bring their family in and they’re having this incredible experience and they call home, they’re like, this is amazing. Let me try and explain it to you.
RV (35:08):
And I spend 5,000 bucks in like a 10, 2, 2 minute conversation. No, I don’t think so, sweetheart. Yeah.
BB (35:14):
Yes, exactly. They’re like, it sounds like a cult. That sounds expensive. No, come home as soon as possible. The dog just soap on the floor and the kids are cranky, you know, but with virtual you’re like, Hey, come over and check this out. And I can’t tell you how many people love seeing at U P W where you can tell the buyer, like let’s say I’m, I love Tony, I’m going to unleash the part with, and my spouse is like, nah, that’s not for me. And you’ll watch that spouse kind of walk back and forth behind and then finally the spouse is like, huh, interesting. And then they lean in. Yeah. And then they’ll life
BB (35:43):
Changing. Yeah. Before you know it, they’re sitting on the sofa, then they’re jumping up and down and then before you know it, the kids in the family are there. So what I most love about it, when you think about something like that brand, how often would a nine year old get exposed to personal development? Right? Well now that’s absolutely possible. So I just think the power of virtual isn’t just that you can do it from anywhere. Like literally a computer, a TV, and a Zoom account. You can do it from your home, do it from your basement, do it from your garage. Your attendees can do it from anywhere. So you could be a brand new speaker, author, or course creator and literally have a global audience. Even if your audience is 50 or five. I mean, if you’re like waiting to get started, why not do an event for five people? I mean, what better way to test
RV (36:26):
It out? Does it matter how much you charge on the front end?
BB (36:29):
I really believe in not less than $97 for a ticket.
RV (36:34):
Okay. But that, by the way, I think it’s the’s $7 for three days is like, that’s
BB (36:39):
Amazing.
RV (36:39):
Very, that’s nothing
BB (36:40):
Very affordable. But I think if you were to look at the blended average in our industry, the ticket price in person and virtually quite frankly is somewhere in the 97 to 1 97 range. And by the way, we don’t charge less for virtual. You shouldn’t either. I mean, it’s actually in some ways a better experience and think about it travels up 47% right now. Flights, hotel costs, you know, we’re in a recession inflation. So when your attendee has to buy a hotel, you know, buy a flight, get a hotel room, Uber, then pay for the food down in the lobby and the $7 coffee and whatever they’re feeling broke before they even walk into your room. And virtual, they’re literally just bargaining with their family to give them the time. Like that’s all it takes is honey, can I just have three quiet days to attend this event so that I can change our life or I can change my business. It’s a much easier barter to be able to say, I’ll still tuck the kids in at the end of the night and if you’re really quiet, I’ll make you dinner during my dinner break. I mean, you can do all of that now through the power of virtual
RV (37:36):
Mm-Hmm.
BB (37:53):
Or a $15,000 offer or a $50,000 offer. I mean, just to be clear, the offers that we’re making virtually go up to 500 k I mean successfully. So it’s no different from in person when it comes to the size offer that you can make.
RV (38:08):
What, what kind of conversions do you expect to see on this Barry? Like if you go, I mean let’s say you get, let’s say you get, you know, 200 people to show up for three days and then is that a very different conversion percentage wise if you get 2000 or 20,000? Or do the percentages kind of hold the same?
BB (38:30):
Yeah, it’s such a great question. I love this question cuz I think a lot of people get this wrong. First of all, I think that it, an intimate event converts better whether in person or virtual.
RV (38:41):
Interesting. So smaller is not bad.
BB (38:43):
No. Smaller is actually fantastic. And the bigger the event host, you’ll have them like kind of remember the days when we were smaller and how amazing that was. So, you know, everybody wants to be the big event host, but you know, really a smaller room convert, it’s more intimate. It does tend to convert better than a larger room, but a larger room has more volume. So it’s not like you don’t want a larger room as you grow, that volume works for you. So we might convert less at a 25,000 person event than we do at a 2000 person event, but we have more people. So we’re still making more money technically. Right? So, but I want you to think about the fact that in person a good solid blended average conversion is 20% and virtual it’s more 10 to 15. So it’s slightly below. But we tend to see virtual registrations outpace in person. So we tend to see if, you know, blended average year over year, we see more people register for virtual than in person. So the fact that our conversions are lower is outweighed by the fact that more people are there and they’re staying with us all day and they’re staying with us till the very end of the event.
RV (39:41):
Yeah, okay. But if you had 200 people buy a hundred dollars ticket, they stay there for three days, you, you would expect that maybe 20 to 30 of those people after three days would buy a, some a $5,000 offer maybe.
BB (40:00):
Yeah, I would have a stretch goal of 10, a minimum goal of 10% and a stretch goal of 20%. And for those of you that are more practiced in delivering your content, making offers, you can increase that conversion accordingly.
RV (40:12):
Yeah,
BB (40:13):
So you can do the math, like imagine if you’re just getting started and you went to have an event for 50 people and make a $5,000 offer. Let’s say that five people took you up on that and you made $25,000 from your basement at your first ever live event and launched your high ticket offer. Like that’s a pretty good, we call it a purpose driven payday. Like what I love to say about a live event is that it’s a purpose driven payday. You can have impact and income, purpose and payday. You don’t have to sacrifice one for the other. And there’s no better blaze to try this out than through a virtual event versus having to go get that hotel contract we were talking about where you have real liability. And if that worked, imagine f a quarter later, three months later you’re like, you know, that was so easy, I’m gonna do it again. And at another five people, oh wow, I got so much better. I actually converted 10, not five. And then the next one I didn’t have 50 people. Words started to get out how amazing I am. I had a hundred people. So it’s really easy to start scaling your high ticket offer and literally launch your mastermind, your group coaching business, your done four, you service your high ticket offer through the power of a virtual live event.
RV (41:14):
Mm-Hmm.
BB (41:30):
Not even, and even at our own studio, like we have a studio right now we have five cameras in our studio, but we do this for a living and we’re bringing in some of the biggest names in our space to work out of our studio. So of course we have multiple camera angles and we have a control room and we have an AVD crew. But you don’t need that to get started. You don’t need a big list, you don’t need a big studio, you don’t need a big production and you don’t need a big budget. Like that’s what’s amazing about this. You don’t need all these camera angles. This is about you being engaging. I would recommend standing. I do think it’s important to stand.
RV (42:02):
Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, just cuz you’re in presentation mode for two days. Yeah. so you guys, so that’s another thing that we can do. So, so basically people can engage you to buy avio if they want to do this. And then I guess avio must allow for you to pull in multiple camera angles. I guess there’s that a zoom, is that a Zoom
BB (42:23):
Feature That’s more of a Zoom thing and a switcher thing, like advance level move that would be having a switcher. So you can do that, but even that is super easy to do and some of our students who are just getting started out take that basic equipment and use that. Absolutely.
RV (42:37):
Okay. And then so, so, but then Avio allows you to do the event registration, the gamification, the leaderboards, you have your own little buttons there, click here to talk to somebody. Or if you’re a solopreneur or whatever, you just say, click here to schedule a call with me and you send them to Callen Lee or whatever. And and then so, or
BB (42:58):
You guys ideal, like if they have a question, they just click a button on Avio, it takes them into a Zoom room. And if you’re just getting started and you don’t have a sales team, then you would be the person in that room answering the questions. But if you do have a team member, a family member who can help you, they could be in that Zoom room helping to ask answer questions. A student, a volunteer. Well
RV (43:16):
I just mean if you’re running the event, how you, you can’t, you need somebody else to kind of be there, right. To
BB (43:21):
Do that. Well the minute you walk off stage, you go over to, you know, a computer that’s been Yep. And you just answer the questions. Absolutely. Yeah. Super easy to do. Yeah.
RV (43:29):
And then the other thing is, you guys have a studio where it’s like, okay, I don’t want to deal with the tech, can I just like, can I promote the event and then you guys deal with all this, that’s also something that you
BB (43:39):
Do. It is, yeah. We’re in the done for you business. Yeah. We coach people on how to do it, but we also do it for them. You can come to the studio and do that.
RV (43:47):
Yeah. And then are you, are you also in the I want to, I’m gonna have 5,000 people at my thing and I want you, you know, to come to Nashville and set it, set it all up and kind of like we run it from here and not your studio. Clearly that’s what you did with Tony. Yeah,
BB (44:05):
Yeah. We do that. Yeah. We help, we collaborate with other studios and we also we’ll do what we call a popup studio or even an in-person event, which kind of gets me too, the next question is, should you be doing a hybrid? Cause you’re like, well, if in person’s great and virtual’s great, shouldn’t you know peanut butter, chocolate, amazing. Let’s put ’em together. Yeah. But I really think if you’re an up and comer, you, it’s an and nutton or I don’t think you, I think you should like, these are my in person dates and these are my virtual dates. I don’t think you try and put them together. It is super complicated to run a hybrid event. You need a depth of budget team and resources. It’s much harder to do if you’re gonna do it well. Which is why I think you’re gonna see the biggest names in the business do it.
BB (44:46):
And everyone below that say it really doesn’t pay to do it. I love virtual, I love in person. Virtual doesn’t replace in person, it’s the new and not, or, and I think more and more you’re gonna see people are like, these are my in-person dates and these are my virtual dates versus these are my hybrid dates. And the simple reason for it is that you can’t help but pander to an in-person audience. Like it is the rare host that doesn’t focus on in person, which immediately takes that interactivity, that makes virtual work and reduces it back to that telecast that broadcast, that’s a super passive experience. So if you’re debating this, my recommendation would be if you’re just getting started out, start with a virtual event because it’s so much easier. The net is so much better. Grow into it. When you’re confident in the model, then you can put your money on the line with an in person event. Or if you’re more advanced, make it the, and you know, these are my dates from person, these are my dates for virtual.
RV (45:37):
How many, this is kind of like a last question, but the, what’s the maximum number of people you can have watching these? So that’s another reason to use Abio, right? Because on Zoom you can only have 500 or, I mean, it depends on your account.
BB (45:50):
That is the advantage. Like we’re working, we’re, we’re close friends with the folks at Obvi at zoom. So we work hand in hand with them. We have enterprise accounts which allow you to scale quickly and easily for any size event you’re having. It also adds a layer of security. You know how you can have like a little bit of Zoom bombing and you don’t want, you, you don’t mind if a spouse watches your event, but what you don’t want is somebody just giving the link out and have 50 of their friends log in without paying. Avio gives you a gateway to that so you can control who’s accessing the event.
RV (46:21):
Uhhuh.
BB (46:35):
Yeah, thank you for asking. I mean, the simple easy way is [email protected]. You would think that we would have a really swanky website, a place that I would drive you. But the truth is we’ve been running so hard since virtual hit. I’m embarrassed. Please don’t go to my website. Don’t even think about it. Just go to [email protected] and our team will
RV (46:54):
Go to, you’re saying email, you’re saying send an
BB (46:56):
Email to Yes. Go to event zip by sage.com. Yeah, we do run an event every year called the virtual Event on virtual events. We run it twice a year and we teach not only the model for how we do what we do but also how to design your high ticket offer, how to take it one to many, how to design your live event around it so that people are naturally saying, that was amazing. I want more. And how to use the technology, how to set up your own studio and how to use Avio so that you can make it all work seamlessly.
RV (47:23):
Yeah, well I think it’s great. It’s a great example. We teach, we tell our clients like, you don’t need fancy website. What you need to do do is deliver great value. Teach everything you know for free. People don’t pay for information, they pay for applications. So just go teach what, you know, give out an email address and let them just contact you and then you’ll go for there. So I’d love that.
BB (47:44):
And you know, probably if you’re really smart, hire Rory to make you look a lot
RV (47:48):
Better.
BB (48:13):
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
Ep 353: How to Create an Environment You Thrive In | Lori Harder Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
Hey all, this is AJ Vaden and welcome to my recap episode of my conversation with my friend Laurie, harder. And y when I say go listen to this particular episode, I mean, go listen to this particular episode. It’s so, so good, so many nuggets. It’s so rich. We cover so many topics. It’s legit. I don’t care where you want your business, there is something in there for you. So without further ado, I’ll give you kind of like some of my key takeaways from this conversation, which quite honestly was just as impactful for me if it was, if it as it is going to be for any of you. It was so, so good. So here are a few things that I just pulled out that were phenomenally important to me that just hit me in a certain way, so hopefully they hit you the same way.
AJV (00:56):
So the first thing is we started the whole conversation of just remember that you have a choice. And I think that’s just a good reminder for anyone, no matter where you are in life, it’s, you have a choice of how you feel. You have a choice of your attitude. You have a choice of whether or not you’re happy today or you’re stressed today. And I’m not saying that we don’t have days where we’re stressed and overwhelmed. I have those days often, but those are also choices I make. And it’s, I think it, the difference is am I choosing to focus on the things that aren’t going well? Or am I choosing to focus on the things that are, and it’s not that you ignore the things that aren’t they need fixing, but it’s choosing to put your, your, your hope and your aspirations in the things that are working and not get bogged down by the things that aren’t.
AJV (01:44):
It’s, are you choosing little things that make you feel good versus choosing things that don’t make you feel good? I know for me it’s like, am I choosing to go on a walk or am I choosing a glass of wine? I need to choose a to go on a walk, right? And it’s like you have a choice. You have a choice about are you gonna be disciplined and do the things you know you’re supposed to do or are you not? Are you going to do it? Even if you think it doesn’t make a difference, even though it does or not. It’s like you have a choice and all the things, you have a choice. And I think that is just a good place, a good foundation to start for the rest of this conversation is we all have choices to make. How we spend our time, our attitudes, how we feel, how we treat people.
AJV (02:31):
Those are choices that we get to make. And we do have influence and control over those things so you have a choice. So that was the first thing I think that was really good. Second thing is similar to that is you have a choice in your environment. Now, sometimes we are temporarily stuck in an environment, but that doesn’t mean we can’t create counter environment. So maybe you are temporarily in a, a job per se that isn’t healthy for you and you can’t just up and leave. You have bills to pay, you have a family to take care of, you have responsibilities, but there can be other environments that you surround yourself with i e community outside of work that help counter negative environment. So your environment is a really important part of your ability to make progress. And I love what Laurie said, and I’m totally just stealing this right out of her mouth.
AJV (03:24):
Your environment has a mental, emotional and physical impact on you. And if you are not consciously making decisions, choices to improve your environment, then your mental, emotional and physical wellbeing will suffer. So let’s all just take a second, take a step back and go, what environments am I in that are healthy and good and, you know, moving me in the right direction? And what environments may I be in that are not those things, and how do I have more of the good and less of the not so good? Right? And I think, again, it’s like environments can be places. They can be groups of people, they can be communities, they can be all different sorts of things. But I know for me, and I love what she said when she talks about her childhood and an environment she was used to seeing versus a new environment when she went to go stay with a family a a set of friends.
AJV (04:23):
And she was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. What is this? I, I didn’t even know this existed. If we don’t create new environments, then we convince ourselves that things are just the way that they are. We don’t even know things are possible cuz we’ve never seen them be possible for anyone in our environment. So it’s, I think it’s just so incredibly important to have different and varying environments so that you see new patterns and new habits and new ways of living or thinking or acting or doing that create new possibilities for you. I don’t remember who said this first, but it’s like, you know, it’s like you are who you hang out with. Well, I think that’s probably true for most of us. It’s like we are the, you know, culmination of where we spend our time, energy, thinking resources, right? That begins to create who we are.
AJV (05:12):
So what environments are you in and what environments do you need to be in? I love this quote. This is so good. And she said that your environments are often stronger than your willpower. So if you know that you have a temptation to do things that you don’t want to do, then remove yourself from those environments, right? If you’re trying to eat healthy, then do not put yourself environments where it’s, you know, chips and dips and nachos and hamburgers and hot dogs, right? Remove yourself from those environments. If you hang out with a group of people who aren’t healthy and you’re trying to be healthy, remove yourself from those sorts of temptations, not from the people, from the environments, right? See them on a hike, see them doing something else. But you’ve got to know that if you’ve got struggles in the willpower discipline arena, then you’ve got to change the environment.
AJV (06:09):
So, so good. Oh my gosh, this isn’t like brand new, but such a new fresh context of looking at this really does hit it in a different way. And just remembering, it’s like your environment is often stronger than your willpower. So good. Love this. Okay, moving right along here. This next one is like same kind of quote where I’m like, this should just be all over lord’s social media. I don’t know why this isn’t everywhere she goes, but there is always a gift in what you just did. And if you have ever said to yourself, I just wasted so much time, or I just wasted so much money, or what a bunch of waste of time, resources, emotions, I would just encourage you to rephrase that and go, you wasted nothing. You learned a ton, a ton about what you should do and what you shouldn’t do, what you want and what you don’t want.
AJV (07:10):
But there is a gift in what you just did. And a lot of times that gift comes in experience and it comes in knowledge and cl it comes in clarification. But there is an a, there is a gift in what you just did, whether it was a success or it was a temporary failure, whether it worked out or it didn’t. There was a gift in what you just did. You just have to make the choice to look for it. And that is so powerful because often we look at things that don’t work out as failures and we look at failures as a waste of time. And I’m currently reading a book right now called, called to Create by Jordan Rainer. And in this book he talks about something in Silicon Valley where they talk about the fail faster rule. And that’s just my my, my synopsis of what he is talking about.
AJV (08:04):
I don’t know if that’s really what he said in the book, but this is how I remember it anyways. But the fail, the fail faster role is like in Silicon Valley. It’s like if your startup fails fast, that means that you’re learning just as fast. So it’s like if you haven’t failed, then you haven’t tried hard enough, risked enough that there hasn’t been something that happened enough. And I think that’s both healthy and potentially not as long as we’re willing to express that. You know, failure does not, failures do not mean we are a failure. That means we did things that didn’t work. Welcome to life.
AJV (08:54):
Experience. And so creating different ways of looking at this of like what are the lessons learned? What are the gifts I received from what I just did? Because nothing was a waste of time. There was something that was received, there was something that was learned. There was something that came out of it that is going to make you a better person, but you gotta make the choice to find it. So just, I thought that was such a good reminder of everything that we do, whether it was a, an investment loss or it was a business loss, a relationship loss. Where is in the, what is the gift in what you just did? Also in, in the wins, right? There’s clearly gifts in the wins. I think it’s easier for us to find those, but it’s, it’s a mental, a discipline to find the gifts and the things that we don’t consider wins.
AJV (09:43):
But there is always a gift in what you just did, I just thought was so good. Now, tactically speaking there were a few other things that I wanna share that I thought were equally as powerful here. So with courses we talked about the concept of less is more. The whole idea of this, it’s like you want to save, like this is what we say at brand builders all the time, is you wanna save the best for first. Because if you give, if you serve up the best first, if you give your audience the best first they feel accomplished faster, they feel more empowered faster, they feel more educated, more knowledgeable they feel like they can do things right up front. And so you wanna give them as much as you can as early as you can because that shows a very quick return on their investment.
AJV (10:29):
They don’t need to spend six hours and 66 pages to feel like they got their money’s worth. You want them to feel like they got their money, their money’s worth in the first hour. So how can you do less is more and help them feel accomplished way up front. Love that. Second thing about courses is just don’t forget that fundamentals never get old. We think we have to create some new twists and make new shiny objects and, you know, talk about a brand new way of doing something. And sometimes people don’t need a brand new way of doing something. They just need to hear it in a new way. They need to hear the solid, basic fundamentals in a way that hits them, right? The whole concept of there’s always a gift in what you just did. You could say that a hundred different ways, but the way that Lori said that hit me, right?
AJV (11:17):
The fact that she said, you know, your environments often are stronger than your willpower. It’s not like that has never been said before. She’s never been said that way. And so sometimes it’s not that you’re saying brand new stuff, you’re just saying in a way that your audience can relate to in a way that they don’t relate to the way someone else says it. So just don’t forget like fundamentals don’t get old. Just make sure to share it in your lens and your perspective and provide as much value as possible right up front. Now, when it comes to podcasts, Lori’s podcast now has more than 47 million downloads. So how do you go from a new podcast or a podcast that maybe has a few thousand downloads to millions of downloads? I thought this was really good. Keep it simple. It’s fundamentals, but talk about it everywhere you go.
AJV (12:06):
It’s be consistent. Don’t give up. It takes time. But talk about it everywhere you go. Ask people to share it. Ask people to rate it. Ask people to give reviews on it. But talk about it and then ask people to do what you want them to do. We talked about how it’s like if you never ask, the answer is always no. So you’ve got to ask, remind people, tell people this is how you can help talk about it everywhere you go and tell people what to do. That’s how you grow your podcast and need to do those two things consistently right. Now, last but not least, we also talked about stepping into the world of physical products, right? So that could be anything from t-shirt, shoes to water bottles, wine, food, snacks, nutritional supplements, the list goes on and on and on.
AJV (12:58):
Could be any sort of physical product going from an an educational and information product world to a physical product world. And what are some of the things that we need to know and what should we be looking for if we are considering making this transition or adding a physical product line to our business offering? So first, find some help
AJV (13:53):
That’s the first thing. Second is make sure that you’re just filling a need that you see in the market. Don’t think don’t, don’t create a product as you think there’s a need. Find a need and then create a product to fulfill that need, right? And if you’ve got a trusted audience, you can start by asking them that fill a need that you already see in the marketplace. Cuz there is there. Focus on why your product is different than competing products, right? So focus on what differentiate your products. How are you gonna market it differently? How does it help differently? How does it serve your audience differently? How is it made for your audience specifically? So focus on your differentiator. I love this one that this was so pa impactful. Avoid any sort of products as your first product that have lots of legal tape, right? So anything that would require like fda regulatory issues, anything that, you know, like beauty products,
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Food, beverage nutritional lines, anything that has lots and lots of legal take. What’s gonna happen is most of your investment money or your own money is going to be going to the lawyers versus product development, research and development marketing. Most of it’s actually just gonna go to the pockets of attorneys versus actually helping develop your product. So as your first product entry to market, avoid anything that has lots of legal red tape almost to the end of my list here, focus on one thing. In other words, don’t create a product line that has lots of s skews first. So if you’re gonna create a makeup line start with one thing, right? Is it a lip gloss? Then stick to that. Is it a mascara stick to that. Don’t go, here’s an entire makeup on, we’re gonna have this and this and this and this.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
It’s like, no, start with one thing. So you have centralized focus on what works. You do all of your checks and balances, all your trial and error, all of your market testing with one product. So you get the marketing right, you get the audience right, you get the pricing right? You get the packaging and the shipping and all the things right on one product, and then you expand from there. So start with one sku, one product and that will save you lots of time, lots of money, and actually help you generate revenue. So y’all, there’s so many things I could talk for another 20 minutes on this. But I’m looking at my timer and my time is up. So go check out this full interview. Catch us next time on the influential personal brand. And if this has been helpful to you, please go and like this episode, share this episode, comment on it, leave us a review, rate it. If this is helpful to you and you think it would be helpful to someone else, please share it with them. You get to be the conduit of sharing good information out into the world. So I’m asking for your help. If you like our podcast, the influential personal brand, please like it, share it, leave a review and get it out into the world and share it with a friend. So thank you so much. We’ll see you next time on the influential Personal brand.
Ep 352: 5 Simple Things You Can Do To Better Build Your Personal Brand with Lori Harder
AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody. This is AJ Vaden on the Influential Personal Brand. Welcome to another episode. So genuinely excited to have my friend Lori Harder on the show today. You guys are in for a super awesome special treat because Lori really is the epitome of someone who has taken her reputation and all of the success and all of the things that she’s accomplished and turned it into so many different things over the course of her career. So let me just tell you for a quick second why you need to stick around. Then I’m gonna formally introduce Lori if you don’t already know about her. And then we’re gonna hop into this. But here’s what I would tell you. If you are a person who is in any sort of transition and you’re trying to figure out how do I make a successful transition from one career to another, one industry to another, one company to another, this is the one to be a show that is very much going to help you.
AJV (01:02):
Or if you’re a person who is, let’s say you’re doing many things, but you’re trying to figure out how do you make them consistent and have a good through line so that everything feels like it’s connected, then this is an episode for you. Or if you’re trying to figure out what lane do you really want to be in, this is an episode that was truly built to serve the needs of those questions and for those of you who are going through this process. So with that said, I will now give you a formal introduction of the one and the Only Lori Harder, and then we’re gonna hop in and actually let her talk for a second. So quick interview or quick overview. If you don’t know Lori Lori has built three that is right, three separate seven figure businesses. She is the founder and CEO of a new product line, which we will talk a lot about the evolution of this process as we go through this.
AJV (02:02):
She’s also go a bestselling author of a Tribe called Bliss. She’s the host of the Earn Your Happy podcast, which is if you don’t listen to it, it is a must listen to podcast with more than 46 million downloads, which is incredible. She also is a co-host of another awesome podcast called Girlfriends and Business. She has a lot going on but she also has all this other really cool background information that you may not know. Like you may not know that she was a three time world champion in the fitness industry. She’s an 11 time fitness cover model. She was a gym owner. She’s a seven figure business owner through a direct sales network marketing company. And the list kind of goes on and on and on, which is one of the reasons that I wanted to have her on the show today is because she is someone who has been there, done that, seen the ups, seen the dams, and is still here to tell you all about it. It. So without further ado, Lori, welcome to the show.
LH (03:03):
Ah, I’m so excited to be here. And you guys, it’s been so much fun having you on my show too. So if you wanna like hear the reverse of this, you can go on on that near it.
AJV (03:24):
This is all of the amazing,
LH (03:25):
Hold on a minute.
AJV (03:26):
That’s that accumulates over the years. Yes,
LH (03:29):
Totally.
AJV (03:30):
But like truly like in all honesty, you have done so many amazing things and I bet a ton of our listeners know about you probably follow you, but then I bet there’s a fair share where this is their first introduction to you. And so just to help kinda give everyone a little bit of background, can you just tell us a little bit about how your career started and how you got to where you are now?
LH (03:55):
Yes. I’m gonna give you a brief overview. So I’m gonna skim through some things, but the reason that I’m gonna go way back for a minute is just because I want everyone to know that no matter where you’re from, what your education level is, you truly can create any life that you want. And my story will show that and, and prove that I’m from a really small town in upper Michigan. Like most people don’t even know Michigan has an upper part. Like truly they’re like, it’s lower Michigan, Detroit. No, there is something way up in the woods that is more Canada than Canada is
LH (04:44):
It made what I saw in the world as possible. Very small. It made you know what I thought people were capable of doing very, very small. And that’s not to say it negative, it’s to show you the picture of I didn’t really get to exist outside of this circle. So a lot of the work that I have done now and out in the world and what my book is based on and why I’m so passionate about having these conversations on podcasts is because we need to see what is possible through other people and hear these stories. So doing that when I was 18 years old, I decided to leave, which meant I had a choice. And I believe that you guys all have this. You’re, you’re facing a really tough choice like this right now where you’re going to leave everyone and everything behind.
LH (05:30):
And some of you don’t have to leave things behind. But some of you may have to make the choice to leave things behind and build a future that is completely built in the uncertain and in the risk with new people that you have never met in your entire life. And this obviously isn’t done overnight, but this is what majority of the things that I have done is based on is because I think that everyone who is in a pivot and in a transition is in that moment that I was in when I was 18, choosing, do I choose this very uncertain future or do I go back and stay in my very like contingent based happiness or contingent based group and love? Or do I go and try to figure out what this call is on my heart and why in the heck I’m waking up every single night and why I have low key anxiety 24 7.
LH (06:21):
And this is the place where I just started building everything else. It was like the, the, the first, I think the first big awakening and just breakthrough for me was realizing when I, when I had started working out, I come from a family that dealt with a lot of anxiety. Most of my family was all on some sort of medication or depression medication or anxiety medication. And they were all overweight. And the first big moment for me was when I was in middle school, I went and stayed with a family because our congregations were far away from each other. They were like two hours. So I ended up staying with the family for a week. And first I wanna just say I love my family more than anything. You could still love them and you can also want to be different.
LH (07:07):
So
LH (07:49):
I went home, I lost five pounds. Like I literally had been dieting since I was eight years old. Ended up losing five pounds in this one week that I was there. Cause we were so active and we ate really healthy. What did this do for me being in that environment without even trying made me or, or turned me into something else? Right? I actually got a physical result. I had a mental result. I felt really good and I couldn’t unsee it. And that was the moment for me where I really started getting into fitness and saying, okay, I want to help people transform because fitness has transformed my life so much. So I, I pretty much spent the first from probably 20 to 30 was really that dedication to like that fitness portion of my life in transforming people.
AJV (08:35):
Can I pause right there for just one second? Yes. Cause you said something that I think is so impactful and maybe it’s just hitting me personally right now because one of my childhood best friends right now is in recovery and she’s actually in a program right now. And one of the things that they told her her in this inpatient program is, you know, there are three changes that you have to make if you wanna see real change. Mm. You have to change people, places and things. Oh. And what you just said right there is a really important thing about you said is like your environment actually can have a, a physical manifestation in your life. And it’s like, I think it’s really amazing of going, nothing else changed for you other than being in a new environment. And because you acclimated to that new environment, other things started happening.
AJV (09:26):
A lot can happen in a really good way and in a really bad way. So I’m just kind of curious, it’s like, did, did you notice that in the moment of going, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like this is so different. And then did you notice like the environment made a change? And I’m just kind of curious for everyone who is out there who is, you know, kind of sitting there going, I don’t really love where I am or what I’m doing, or, or they suffer from comparison for whatever reason we all do it. Like what kind of impacts have you seen around that environmental change?
LH (10:02):
I, so I think environment is everything. I think your environment is stronger than any willpower you can create on your own in that prior environment that you’re in. So when I go to make a change or a pivot, this is a huge part of pivoting. When I go to make a change or a pivot, I simultaneously look at what I will have to do, like what kind of habits I will have to do, but what kind of environment I will now have to either buy into, put myself in, or even be looking at, right? Cuz it’s, it’s all of the input. It’s, it’s what we’re reading, it’s what we are looking at and consuming on social media. It’s what conversations we’re having. Mm-Hmm.
LH (10:55):
So whenever I’ve done anything, let’s say when I went from fitness to personal development, I went from going to all the fitness events, reading all the fitness magazines, looking up to all the fitness people. My vision board was full of fitness things and fitness goals to just like that, looking at who is helping people write books, who is authors, who’s an author that has a podcast who is in the space of like writing books that help people write books. I hired a coach for writing books and overnight I flipped everything and set myself up in an environment where it would support me moving forward on the goal of writing a book. And I think that that was a big reason why number one, I was able to like go from you guys. I did not graduate high school. That’s another thing I wanted to share. Went from like an eighth grade reading level to writing a book because I had coaches and had to understand how to do it. And I put so much specific time into that thing. And so I think environment is literally everything.
AJV (11:55):
I think that is like, this is gonna be one of those quotes that I pull out and post all over social media that is so good. It’s like your environment is often stronger than your own willpower. Mm-Hmm.
LH (13:03):
Yeah. It’s easy to forget when you’re with
AJV (13:04):
Me. All these things. I think this is so awesome. I love this. So on this conversation, you went from really having this incredible fitness career to being a cover model, to owning a gym, to then having, you know, this seven figure very successful, which you still have you know, business and network marketing to then transitioning from this that kind of world to this whole new world of more like information products with courses and books and events and a podcast. Tell me how on God’s green earth did you make these transitions successfully? Because I think that’s where a lot of people struggle. It’s like they’ve been known for this one thing for forever and now they’re trying to do this life pivot and they kind of get stuck with, well, people aren’t gonna know me for this, I’m not known as this. And then they just kind of give up. Mm. How did you do that successfully?
LH (14:05):
I don’t know if I figured this out in the beginning or if this was, you know, I think some of the things we do were just kind of, we don’t even realize we’re following a bit of like desire and intuition. But I, I not long down the path started to realize that if you know how to attract people to you as like a, whether that’s a personal brand or whether you are a CEO or founder of something, if you understand how to attract people to you, you can almost funnel them into anything, in my personal opinion. So what do I mean by that? I mean that even if right now I didn’t have any of those things and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do, do, I would just start talking about the things that I was interested in right now.
LH (14:56):
Like maybe I’m like, maybe I wanna start a products company or maybe I wanna start like a skincare line, or maybe I wanna start a wine brand. What I would start doing is talking about wanting to start those things and like the, the journey of what I’m feeling going through it and maybe the journey of how am I setting up my environment, like what we just talked about. And I would be consistent with it because, and, and this is truly what I did. I, I didn’t necessarily always know what I was rolling into, but I always shared the journey of what, where I was at and what I was feeling and what I was thinking consistently every single day. And I think there’s so many people out there that I think it’s everyone, right? We all are on this journey of, of desiring to evolve.
LH (15:39):
And so I think if that is the topic of desiring to evolve and how are you doing it and what does it look like and what are you doing that’s different and what is, you know, what is this journey? Who did you have to maybe leave behind? What was that feeling? All of a sudden I realized I had this audience who was pretty tuned into what I had to say. Mm-Hmm.
LH (16:23):
So whether the product is a book or whether the product is an actual physical product, that company is serving something that I, I feel needs to be served or a need that I see or that I have. And it’s, it’s based off of my personal core values. So I don’t become, I don’t have to become a different person as I pivot into different businesses, I literally get to show up fully me in every single business because it is literally based off of my core values and, and my desires and, and a need at one time. So it’s not hard for me to talk about any of the products that I’ve ever created, whether it’s a e-course or whether it’s a book or whether it’s a physical product because I base all of these things off of things that I either was and lessons I’ve learned.
LH (17:10):
So it’s very easy for me to obviously talk to my past self and talk you through you know, what I went through or it’s very easy for me to be like, this is what I needed and here’s what it does for me. And it’s a part of my life every day so it doesn’t feel unnatural. Where sometimes I know we can maybe be thinking of products or something like that, that you’re like, oh well that’s making money. Maybe I should do that. And then it feels very awkward. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (17:45):
Yeah. I tell you what, that, that is so vitally important. Cause I think a lot of people make their decisions about what businesses or what products or services to get into based on some sort of market analysis or market research. And you’re saying no, it’s the opposite of what are my core values and how do I exhibit those into products or services that I think will serve the people who need ’em because I needed them. And if I did, then so do others. And I think that’s a really strong way, which quite honestly is probably going to be the answer to my next question,
LH (18:19):
AJV (18:19):
Which is how have you kept everything consistent mm-hmm.
LH (18:41):
Yes. I I, so I love this question though, taking it to like the, the second level of this is, you know, what you can do, especially as you pivot, there is always a gift in what you just did. Even if, even if what you just got done with, or maybe you were working a corporate job that you feel like you’re like, ah, I wasted two years of my life or five years of my life. Absolutely not. There are so many gifts that that past thing has given you that you are going to get to integrate into this new thing of yours. I was just thinking about how my past of doing e-courses and meditations and speaking in public and learning to create a talk is gonna help me so much with getting this new product out because I am going to get the product out through events.
LH (19:26):
And if I hadn’t, you know, spoken publicly, if I hadn’t felt like I can just get up in, in front of a crowd now and connect with them on a very human level then I wouldn’t have this great modality and these great ideas around, okay, we’re gonna do events, we’re gonna do some challenges that maybe we include like, you know, some daily rituals and maybe a meditation. Like these are all things that are coming from my past that are now making me think in the grand scheme of honestly, I’m thinking about how do we create community? Because if you can create, you already have a community essentially. If you’re creating your own personal brand, I just want to now take the community I have, insert a product and create even more community around it. So essentially I’m gonna continue being me and building community and also say, this is one of the things I’m obsessed with that I use every single day.
LH (20:16):
And this is what our community does. Or, you know, choose it if you like it. And that’s been, I think that that has been such a huge realization for me is, is if you can build that community, it’s kind of like, what, what does the community need? What are they doing? What are the healthy rituals? What are the, what are the habits of this community? How, how do you, how do you want to connect them to each other? Cuz that’s next level community, right? Like, that’ll really take your community deeper. And it’s just kind of of like rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat that same idea.
AJV (20:50):
You know, what’s interesting is that even as I sit here thinking through all of the things that you’ve done through your career that I can already just hearing you talk, pull out as an outsider looking in, what are some of the through lines that I see, which I think is really fascinating that I didn’t correlate to before, but now hearing you talk about some of your core values and it’s just things that you believe in. It’s like health is a theme through every single thing that you do. Happiness, community, like those are themes through every single thing that you do. And I, so I’m curious, it’s, was that intentional? Like, did you like kind of like outline those before and was that a very strategic decision or did it just evolve and happen naturally?
LH (21:35):
You know, I think I really realized the power of community when I had started the Bliss Project and also when I had started writing that book, because simultaneously while I was doing those things, I was in search. I had, I had told you guys at the beginning of this podcast and aj you know, like I was looking for my own community because I had started kind of the, the fitness thing is a very solo journey. Like, you’re, you’re pretty, you have to be pretty self consumed to get to that point and stay at that point with your body. You, you, you kind of have to be pretty selfish. It’s, it’s actually, it’s actually fairly hard to be social because you really need to control, especially when you’re competing all the time, you really unfortunately need to control what’s going in your mouth 24 7.
LH (22:19):
And it can get really tough if you’re very social. So when I got out of that, and that’s a whole other thing that I had to like, figure out how to like recalibrate and be what does normal look like? What is health? What does normal healthy look like? And I, those words aren’t even the right words to be using. It’s just trying to figure out what, what works for me, what, what is like truly a baseline that feels really good. And so from there I was like so freaking lonely. Like I had started, you know, even, even my when I started the membership, I had a fitness membership, you guys, and, and that was a huge focus for me. That was one of the first things that I really outside of network marketing also started making money with was, it was around the same time I had launched a fitness membership and, and we would do challenges where they were, they started as 30 day challenges, then they went to 14, then we realized people had the attention span that only seven days would work
AJV (23:17):
Try and error.
LH (23:18):
Yes. And even from that, you know, I launched those challenges. We, we were trying to get those right for three years. So I didn’t just throw it out and say, oh, that one didn’t work good. Like, we took the same challenge and we kept launching it and we launched it four times a year. And that’s how it became a really great challenge. So I just want you to like, oh my god, three years to even get like one of those things, right? And so around that, yes, I had, I had a bit of a team, but we were all, all kind of working solo and I was really lonely. And I just, I did not, I didn’t have support around like, I dunno, like when things would go wrong in my business. Like I had my husband, but we can’t count on one person to be everything for us.
LH (24:01):
And we did, we weren’t speaking the same language business wise yet. It just wasn’t a good thing. When I would go to him, like with any stresses or what I should, our creation process was very different. So this was when I actually went to a Jack Canfield event. I was like, I need help. I, I think I wanna start doing other things, but I also need to tribe like, so I had enrolled in a Jack Canfield event. I was also becoming interested in personal development at this time because I realized that in fitness I couldn’t get them to transform if I couldn’t change their mindset. So I wanted to go and learn from people who knew how to do that and, and add it to my program. So this all was happening at once. It was like, okay, this is gonna fix a lot of things for me.
LH (24:45):
That was my hope anyway. And it did. But I ended up going, and simultaneously while I was doing this, he was talking about masterminds and I was like, what’s a mastermind? And he was talking about how he gets together with a group of friends. He did it like weekly or biweekly. And this was this group that would support each other through business and even life. And it was very, it was very planned out. And to me right away I was like, okay, that doesn’t feel like it’s gonna take away from my life. You know, according to like prior experiences where maybe I would try to get something together and the people just weren’t there yet and I was trying to drag them with me and they didn’t wanna go where I was going. I was like, okay, find people who wanna go where you’re going.
LH (25:22):
Create a touch base where you are accountable to them every single week. It did not go, actually we did every other week for one hour, created this with another fitness woman and then another woman that she knew. So a total stranger and then another woman that I had just met. But we all had goals that were similar. We all wanted to grow our business. And that is when I just realized the power of connecting with people. Our businesses all accelerated so fast by doing this. And, and here’s the thing is like, I was serious, so I wanted to create accountability and so did they, like when we first got on our first call, it was like, how serious are we taking this? And it was like, well, I, if you don’t show up, like without an excuse or if you have to travel, like you’re out.
LH (26:06):
Like if you don’t show up or if we go, if you continue to go over or if you come here with a problem but you’re not into it you know, if you, if you’re not willing to find a solution, that’s not why we’re here and we just can’t move forward with you, we’ll find someone else. And so this was like an expectation from the beginning. Well that scared the hell outta me. I was like, oh my God, this is serious. But my vision was so much bigger than my fear because I would pay attention to it daily at this point. I was, I was going on walks or runs or working out and I would specifically choose to visualize what I wanted every single day during those moments of movement. And so my vision was, was just, even, even if it was just 1% bigger than my fear, I kept it bigger than my fear.
LH (26:46):
So really started showing up to that. And that taught me so much about consistency, accountability, who you are around putting it out there, talking through your fears. Like my comeback rate is so much faster when I’m in these groups because it, where where maybe I would be, let’s say somebody tells me like when I was trying to get a a a book deal, right? And they tell me this is real. Your book sucks. Your writing is basic. This idea’s been done a million times. No. Like, no one will buy your book. Okay, well instead of me being like, my book sucks, I shouldn’t put this out there, I’ve already been turned down 20 times, that is a real number. Instead, I got on this call that week with those women and they said to me, are you kidding? Like, this book is amazing. You’re incredible. You’re a great writer. That’s just some, you know, jerk that you literally need to get over and we’re gonna make a plan to get out there again right away. Who’s your next call next day? Get on another call lit. Literally that week because I went right back into it and they made me feel so much better. I got a six figure book deal that week, literally same week where I would’ve not first time author. I would’ve not, I think I would’ve just like walled and given up.
AJV (28:04):
That’s so important because you said three things there that I just like, this is a very big deal. And the first of them comes back as something you already talked about is your environment. Mm-Hmm.
LH (29:00):
Wow.
AJV (29:01):
Four times more likely. And the main reason is they don’t share their failures.
LH (29:08):
Oh
AJV (29:08):
Wow. They don’t share their failures. And so I think the environment is huge. You said the community is huge, but then the third thing is just literally having a support system. Yes. Having people who believe in you is if frigging big deal. Mm-Hmm.
LH (29:24):
AJV (29:26):
Was help you up.
LH (29:27):
Mm-Hmm.
AJV (30:22):
Think this is like a really big deal. Cause I think about all of the people who are in our community at Brand Builders group and I just know that so many of them suffer from, well I have been doing this for like 10 months.
AJV (30:39):
Yeah. And yes. And it’s like, Daisy even hear you say that you were doing the exact same challenge for three years of just going, okay, well that didn’t work. Let’s let’s launch it this way. Okay. That didn’t work. Or show it again. It’s like you were doing it four times a year for three years, 12 times for over three years to go, okay, I think we finally have a formula that works. Mm-Hmm.
LH (31:11):
Yeah.
AJV (31:11):
We were basically stalking these people at this point, but it took two years. We had two years of rejection when we were getting our first book deal. And it’s like people, it takes time. And I love what you said. It’s like, you know, I, again, I wrote this down too. This is gonna show up all over social media in some way so that there’s always a gift in what you just did. Mm. There’s always a gift in what you just did. And it’s like in a huge part is that bounce back factor, that ability to come back and go, okay, well that didn’t work. What’s next? But we gotta have perspective of this. This is a, this is not a sprint, this is a marathon. And it takes time and trial and error and a whole bunch of perseverance. And it’s a whole lot easier to do if you’ve got a whole bunch of people coming along with you on the sidelines.
LH (32:00):
Oh my god. You know what I think of all the time that is, is so crazy because we all watch it every year, is is football, like majority of people like athletics, basketball, golf, like, so I think the reason, I mean, the reason that athletes can number one, get so good and also just like they’re resilient is because they have a team and also they don’t have an expectation around if they fail, they don’t get to quit. There is no quit. Like there’s another game
AJV (33:30):
I think of that,
LH (33:31):
Oh my gosh. With just athletes, they have an expectation of, okay, get back in the game. Like if they suck so bad, like I think of those people who are, who are throwing the, what is it? The, the the free throw or the kickers, right? They don’t get to be like, oh, I sucked and go cry on the sidelines. Even if they just lost something for their whole team or, you know, it was a huge turning. They could have been a huge turning point for their team. They are great and athletes are great because they don’t dwell on the past. They do not dwell on what happened. Their next thought is what’s next? Okay, what can I do next? And I’ve just adopted that. I’ve stopped being willing to look back unless it’s to say, what could I do better? And then I say, what’s next?
AJV (34:17):
That is so good. And that is also so representative in your trajectory through your life and your career of this evolution of all the things that you’ve kind of done. So I wanna kind of pivot just a little bit right now and talk tactically about some of the things that you’ve done. And so I’ve got a few questions outlined that I know are gonna be really important to our audience. So here’s the first one. Keys through your eyes, through your opinion, I don’t care what anyone else says, just through Lori’s eyes, what are the keys to creating courses that both create real value but also generate real revenue?
LH (34:55):
Mm. Well, a few things that I’ve learned is that a good course is only good if people complete it.
AJV (35:03):
LH (35:05):
And a lot of the courses that I created in the beginning I learned really quick and relaunched them. I like segmented them because I came out with like 12 modules, then quickly segmented them to six, like took it down and chunked them up. And then even there we started selling even like individual things like individual modules. So with that said, you know, we can think that we’re perfecting it by adding more, but I think we’re in an era of less is more. And to make the number one thing I want people to feel when they go into a course is accomplished. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (36:16):
They’re true.
LH (36:17):
Because those work, they just do show up, do the work, make yourself feel better, work out, eat well, repeat, do it again,
AJV (36:28):
It’s so true.
LH (36:30):
And so yeah,
AJV (36:31):
Go ahead. That point of less is more. It’s like my number one complaint with like, pretty much every single course that I purchase is I get in and I’m like, I don’t have time for this right now. Totally. Cause I get in and I’m like, oh my gosh, there’s 14 modules I I don’t even care about. If they’re one minute each, I can’t even get that far. I’m like, huh. Cause I wanna be able to like do an entire course in one sitting.
LH (36:54):
Yep.
AJV (36:54):
That’s how I roll. And so if it’s, if I can’t do it, I’m like, oh, now I have to schedule it. And then that just never happens. So I love about the concept of less is more. I would pay more money to get the information in a more consolidated version. And that’s what I hear you saying.
LH (37:09):
Totally. And people do pay that for different things, right? Like how many I was just thinking about the book or the, the audibles that take books and they chunk them down and you pay for essentially the cliff notes of the books. And I was like, see, I will buy more of those, spend more money so that you can just tell me what the book’s gonna tell me right away.
AJV (37:34):
Well it’s a, it’s a whole thing. Like we talk about this all the time when we talk about the keynote business and you know, we’ve been in the keynote business for a really long time and I remember earlier in our career, I remember so many people saying, you charge that for an hour. And the answer is no. You get 15 years of consolidation and experience in trial and error and knowledge and research and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent. You get all of that in an hour. That’s what you’re getting. It’s not an hour rate. It’s no, you’re getting 20 years of stuff primed into an hour. So you don’t have to go through all of that. That’s what you
LH (38:19):
Oh my gosh. Totally. Like literally it was just in a mastermind that was four days long and lots of hours for me to come back with three things that I’ve given to people and they’re like, shut up. This blew my mind. And I’m like, you’re welcome for sitting in there for four hours and traveling and spending all that money.
AJV (38:36):
So glad it cost you, cost you five.
LH (38:38):
Yes. Could now could you go and bring something back to me?
AJV (38:41):
LH (39:00):
Mm-Hmm.
LH (39:43):
Like just sit for a day and say, what are three key things that have changed my life on this journey? And from those key things, you can literally tell a story for each one, each. So break ’em down. You have three things in front of you. Tell a story for each one. Extract the lesson, have them maybe do some writing around it. Like it’s that simple. Like that is what people need is just that moment of like, oh, if I did this, this would really change the game for me and move the needle. How can I implement it? How can I integrate it? And when
AJV (40:16):
Yeah. You know, it’s that whole concept of save the best for first
AJV (40:22):
LH (41:13):
Yeah. I love that you even shared that as I’m like thinking about just different things in the future. I’m like, gosh, why don’t, I mean that’s such a great even marketing idea to be like, look, our conference is one day and we’re just gonna have more of them, or whatever that looks like because we want you to take something from this day and go integrate it like that. Same with courses that we just talked about. Yeah. How can you think of it in a, a different way of like how your people learn best or what do they need most to do? Like is it just the one thing and then go integrate it? Like how could you build it so that it works better for them?
AJV (41:44):
I mean, every, every audience, every community is different, but mm-hmm.
LH (41:56):
That’s
AJV (41:56):
So good. It’s like 30% of the time is learning, 70% of the time is doing. And we do it with you because selfishly that’s how we do it. It’s like that’s, I learn we need, that’s how we learn. And it’s like we can’t be the only ones go home at the end of a a mastermind event going, oh, when am I gonna have time to even look at these notes? Versus no, we’re gonna do those notes in session together. So I love that Less is more help ’em feel accomplished quickly. Give ’em the best goods right up front. Change their life in the first hour. That’s amazing. So, okay. I’m gonna, I’m just like, I’m gonna go rapid fire. I love it. I don’t wanna miss any of these. Ok so next one. You know, I’m sure this is going to be such an easy answer, but how do you get 46 million downloads on your podcast?
LH (42:44):
Oh God. How
AJV (42:45):
Do you do this?
LH (42:46):
You know what, I think it was consistency, like consistently showing up and I talk about it everywhere I go. So at every speaking thing I’ve ever done, I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned it at everything or weaved in like, you know, I’ve had this many interviews and this is what it’s taught me. I talk about it on social media every day. I you know, started a a a text list where I’ll also text you a reminder like, listen to this episode if you’re feeling this way. In the beginning I definitely feel like it was important to do a good launch. And that’s what I focused on. So, you know, if you’re thinking of launching a podcast, I think having a good launch strategy strategy, and I’ll share just a tiny, a couple tiny things around that. If you can speak anywhere when you’re launching, that would be awesome.
LH (43:36):
Or if you can have an event, because I think one of the main things that got me onto new and noteworthy is I was holding a Bliss Project event and I didn’t even really realize what I had done in a, in a good way. So take this and plan it better than I did. But I, I had that event and it had like four to 500 women at it. And what I did is I literally asked them, cause I launched the podcast that week, knowing the event was there, but I said, can you take out your phones and subscribe and leave a review now? And I think all of those going at once, you know, helped it stay up in new and noteworthy. And then I also continued to ask through the event, I’m like, Hey, you know, I spent all this time in front of this microphone because I wanna give you like the, the best stuff.
LH (44:18):
It’s truly like the, the things that have changed my life. If it changes your life or if you like it, would you share it? Would you just remember to share it? And on the podcast, I ask on just about every episode share this with someone. Like you get now to be, even if you’re not the person giving me advice, like you get, like when I share podcasts, I get to be the hero. And I say that like, I’m the hero. I just shared this awesome information. Be the hero. Share this information. Would you share this? Would you rate and review this? People will not do what they’re not asked to do. So I consistently, specifically ask for what I want on every single podcast. You guys am almost a thousand episodes in, that’s over a thousand asks. So it’s, it’s definitely going to help spread obviously when you do that
AJV (45:09):
Well. Yeah, it’s like if you don’t ask, the answer is always no.
LH (45:13):
Yes. Ask so
AJV (45:15):
Good. That’s just, I mean, simple, but again, the fundamentals work.
LH (45:21):
Mm-Hmm.
AJV (45:22):
LH (45:55):
Yes. Oh my gosh. Okay. So for me it was really what is the next challenge? And I felt like I had really done. So I was at that place where that realization where I did not, I did not dream past where I was like, I, I became the author, the the speaker. I had done the things and I was like, I never let myself dream outside of this. This was the cap. And I hit that place in like 2018 and I was like, I don’t think I wanna write another book right now. That was a really long journey. And I, I was feeling, you know, as you can tell from my journey, I’m a bit of a squirrel brain. So I was like, I need, I wanted a new challenge and I was craving a challenge that would force me to become a different person in order to fulfill it.
LH (46:45):
And I also was having a lot of conversations with my husband and started going to dinner with Chris and his friends. And I was noticing this stark difference in conversations. I was so lit up. Not that I wasn’t lit up with my friends, but at the, the place that I was, we were kind of having the same conversations about how do we get our courses out? How do we, you know, all of those, which is amazing, but I, I was having them and my brain likes new things often this know that thy self, right? And so I was going to dinner with my husband and they were having conversations about investing in companies, investing in each other’s companies how to really start pulling in lots of money, hundreds of millions of dollars, if not some of them talking about billions. And this was blowing my mind.
LH (47:32):
I was just like, they’re having this like a normal conversation. Like it because people had exited for 300 million and this guy for 500 million. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. My girlfriends are not having this conversation right now. They’re burnt out and they’re trying to figure out how to launch their next course, which is amazing. But also, what if this was an opportunity for them because they had already built their brands. I was sitting here thinking, okay, these women could, like, immediately I was thinking of all the ways they could implement and help grow these things. Cause I’m like, they have the audiences and you guys are looking for the audiences. Yeah. So we were just missing how to raise money, how to invest in each other, how to start a company. And so I was starting to feel this really big call. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, God, not me.
LH (48:15):
No, why. But I was feeling it like, oh, it’s gonna be you who’s gonna bring this back to your friends? And I was like, oh, crap. So I just literally got that soul hit and it was like, oh gosh, I am on this journey. Learned how to raise money, started learning about physical products. So, so similar, yet so different. So the really cool thing about a personal brand is that if you can start learning about physical products, you have so much of the equation already done that a lot of people who might be good at physical products don’t necessarily know how to do yet. So if these two worlds could collide, it’d be like, it’s mind blowing, right? Because you have both Hals of what you need. You need the marketing, which is like very much of what you’re learning in a personal brand is like how to market yourself.
LH (49:06):
All you’re doing is you’re taking marketing yourself and you’re gonna now market a product that technically is you. If you build it the way that I told you throughout your core values, it’s just something that you do and use, right? So it’s kind of, it’s kind of the same thing. And now people are really buying the core values and the founder and all of those things behind the products, which I think is really cool. So things that you want to know about building a product, find somebody who has done what you have done before. Do not go into this just Googling. Like you have to start by Googling, but then you need to sit down with as many people as you can and say, what do I need to know? What do I need to look out for? I would say start with a product that feels really natural to you.
LH (49:50):
Like a, a need that you see, or that you, you can see the world needing out there. Like a white space. Look for what the differentiator is. Why, why is it different from all of the other products out there? Why is it better? Why are you the person and that your team who can market it the best? I would stay away from your first products for anything that has a lot of legal tape around it. Anything that is really regulated, you, you’re gonna spend this is no joke. You will spend 10 times more on legal fees. There’ll be a lot more things that you cannot do when you are marketing online, when you’re marketing in retail. So it really stops a lot of the organic things that you can do, especially if you have already built a brand. It, it’ll even kind of stop you from being able to use what you already have.
LH (50:38):
So with that said, I would stay away from things that have a lot of like red tape or regulations. Okay. So finding that thing that maybe, and I would focus on one, I would focus on one product so that all of that money in r and d and research and all of the copywriting and everything, you can put all of your money behind that one message and you can tweak that
LH (51:23):
So it’s a lot of energy and it’s a much bigger team. So I would say start with one thing. Start with something that you can see needs to be improved out in the marketplace. And from there, honestly it’s, I don’t wanna say it’s easy, but you just have to have meetings with formulators co packers and you’ll learn all of these things along the way. Cause it’ll be how to make a lipstick and market it out to the world or put it on retail. You’ll get all of your answers, I promise you. And then from there, you’ll wanna talk to people and research people who have done it.
AJV (51:53):
Oh, those are so good. And I, I love what you said too about just avoid any sort of thing that has lots of legal tape because you’ll spend all of your investment money voyers.
LH (52:04):
Yes.
AJV (52:04):
So avoiding those sorts of things, it’s just an easier, easier, not easy, easier mm-hmm.
AJV (52:23):
Before I ask you this last question. For all of you who are listening, I as before we started the recording, I said, Hey, where do you want me to send people who wanna connect with you? Because if you have listened to this interview and your mind is not blown with the amount of information that you have gotten, then you need to go back and listen again. We’re clearly spaced out. Like there is so much richness, there is so much gold in this interview. You don’t even know what you’re listening to because I, I just know how much time, money, resources, education that you have gone through to be able to quickly spit out some of these things that we all get on a free podcast. And so if you want more of that, which I think you do, I think you should probably tune into this. Lori has a really cool daily text that if you just text the word daily to this number, which is 3 1 0 4 9 6 8 3 6 3. So again, text the word daily to 3 1 0 4 9 6 8 3 6 3. Now don’t worry, I will also put that in the show notes. You can grab that. But you are gonna get a daily text from her. So Lori, tell ’em really quickly what this is all about.
LH (53:48):
Oh my goodness. Well, thank you for sharing this. I, this is actually the spot where I create all content from. So you kind of get like the real me sitting down and talking to like a best friend. And these are the conversations or the, the, the quotes or the nuggets that I’m getting from masterminds or things that are really pushing me forward. Or maybe there’s a block and then there’s a thought around the block that helps push it forward. These are some, you know, different things that Chris and I do to really like, keep our, our vision in front of us. These are different affirmations that are rocking my world. These are just like, if I was your bestie and I was sending you like cheerleader texts every single day, like truly from my heart and from here, that is where I, because I sit and I write from my heart, truly. Like, okay, if this was my best friend, what would I be sending her right now? And from there, that’s where I kind of create all other content. So you get the first videos, you get the first texts, all of those things. So I will only spam you with things that will change your life.
AJV (54:52):
LH (55:27):
Oh God. Go, go to the scarier places first. Like at, go to the, do whatever you can to knock down the doors of the people who have done it and ask the go learn from them and ask them questions. Like join their stuff. Ask for one on one time. Like they will, everything that we have said on here, they will accelerate your journey. They will save you money. They will save you heartache. Make sure they’ve done what you wanna do.
AJV (56:18):
Oh my gosh, this is such a good reminder. I says, don’t do it alone. Mm-Hmm.
LH (56:46):
I gotta live. I gotta live there too. I want to.
AJV (56:50):
Y’all, this has been so good and I’m a quick learner. I take advice. Well, so if you got value from this podcast, please share it. Please, please go like it, leave a review, please share it with someone that you think it’s going to be helpful for. Be the hero, get this content out in the world. So and then go do the same, right. Quick learner. Mm-Hmm.
LH (57:31):
Bye.
Ep 351: Finding Your Purpose in the Power of Service | Micheal Burt Episode Recap
RV (00:02):
Well, I loved that conversation with Coach Burt. In fact, I enjoyed it a lot more than I anticipated. Not that I, I didn’t think necessarily. I would, I just really, really enjoyed it. And if you haven’t listened to it, go back and listen to it. But the whole conversation is around activating your prey drive, like your, your P r e y prey drive, like the instinctive ability to pursue. And, you know at first when he was talking about the, you know, he teaches people how to do that, I was like, well, that’s interesting. Like that, that, you know, what’s that gonna be? And then as he talked out, these five activators, I, I, you know, they’re very simple, but very not so obvi, you know, it’s like the not so obvious truth and, and really, really powerful. So I loved it.
RV (00:51):
And it, part of my inspiration as I look back on that conversation and think about, you know, what other, what, what in, what have I learned? What did I learn from it? And then also, how am I sort of internalizing that conversation, which is always what we do with these recaps is thinking about how am I internalizing this? How am I applying it to my own life? And then what would I add to it in terms of clarifying, you know, the message or just kind of like speaking, speaking you know, my own insight in, in, into it, in my response. And I, I, you know, so as, as coach was talking, I love the, you know, just the activating the active nature of everything he’s saying in these, you know, these five activators in terms of overcoming complacency and, and fear and competition and environment.
RV (01:43):
Really, really good. Really, really good. Y you know, the thing that I wanted to kind of talk with you about and share with you is a little bit of some of, I guess the evolution of my motivation in, in my life and, and talking about finding, you know, power and motivation and purpose and how that’s evolved for me. And, and I think early in my career, you know, I was very driven, very ambitious, very focused on this you know, this, I would, I would call it pray drive. Like, I don’t know that I would’ve had a word for it before this interview, but I love what coach is saying is, you know, is activating this like hunger in this passion for conquering and, and, and achieving and pushing yourself to the limits. And I, I really do think that a lot of champions have that, and they figure out a way to do it.
RV (02:42):
And so that’s, there’s so much value in it. What’s interesting is that, well, once I got to you know, once I got married, and especially once I have had become a father you know, and, and maybe just from the result of maturing, hopefully a little bit or, or maybe just having a deeper faith walk, I think today, and, and, and in the last several years, I would maybe say like maybe the last, yeah, probably like the last 10 years, I would say it’s the last 10 years. I have really shifted and found my source of power and my source of motivation in a, from being focused on service. And this didn’t come up so much in, in the conversation. I don’t, I don’t think that it, it disrupts or dilutes anything that coach said, but I think it is, it is something in my own life that has been a, a, a different level of prey drive for me of just going what I do now.
RV (03:50):
What drives me now is, is not the pursuit of achievement for myself. It’s actually, it is actually finding meaning and value in my life and finding purpose in my life. And, you know, the most, the most powerful part of the whole interview, there were several highlights, but the most powerful part of the whole interview for me was at the very end when he said that his mom had been a nurse her whole life, her whole life. And, and she boiled it down to, there’s, there’s three, there’s three reasons people die. First of all, they run out of money. And so when they run outta money, they can’t afford good healthcare. The second is they run out of love, which, you know, their family forgets about ’em, and, and you know, that’s sad. Or they lose all their friends. That’s a really, really sad one. But then the third one she said is they run out of purpose and they don’t have something to get up and pursue.
RV (04:55):
And that really hit me hard, because that to me is the one that is the most avoidable of these three, right? Like, running out of money you know, some of that’s sort a matter of how long you live and how much money you’ve saved and how well you saved. And you know, but money runs out when it runs out, so to speak. And then running out of love, you know, in, in some ways I think that’s, that’s outside of your control. You know, you can’t force people to love you, but running out of purpose and having your purpose go ec be go extinguished to me is heartbreaking. And, and it, and it, and it is, it is defeating. It is. I can see why that would lead to, to, to death because it’s like, why am I living? Living is hard. Living takes work. It’s, you know, it’s, it’s time, it’s energy, it’s it’s pain, it’s setbacks. Like, there’s a lot of hard parts of just being alive. But the other part that makes me sad about that is going not only
RV (05:56):
Is one to me controllable, which is what I’m gonna talk to you about, is going, how is, how is it controllable? How does it become controllable in your life to never run out of purpose, to never have your purpose go e extinct. That’s what we’re gonna talk about here in this, in, in this recap, in this little addition. Because I believe there is a way that it would never go extinct. And the other thing is that if you do this, if you have this kind of purpose, you won’t run out of love. And I don’t think you’ll run out of money either. And here’s the big light bulb that came on for me, was that anytime I were in per I’m in pursuit of achieving things for myself it, it, it’s, it’s sort of self-centered, right? It’s a new title, it’s a new, it’s a new, you know, a possession.
RV (06:45):
It’s a, it’s a, it is yeah, it’s like a, a title I’m pursuing. It’s a trophy. It’s something like that, which I don’t think at all, nothing wrong with this, super valuable and, you know, change the course of my life. But what I noticed is that every time I would achieve one of those things, you know, it would wear off. And it was like, okay, now I need to push myself to the next level and the next level, which again, I don’t think is bad. I think, I think that is something that the world’s ultra performers do. I think coaches spot on. And I think, you know, we have had the privilege of coaching four billionaires, by the way. I’ve, I’ve personally worked with four billionaires in the last like 18 months. And so I’ve been around a lot of these people, and, and they do have a, a, a tremendous drive.
RV (07:29):
But of whatever the thing is, it’s like you need a new thing. You need a new goal. You need a new destination. You need a new target. You need a new timeline. You need to new title. You need, you need a new thing to go after to chase, to pursue, to sort of keep that going, which I don’t think is bad or wrong or, or even unhealthy. But the thing that I have found that I can pursue, that never goes away, that never becomes extinct, that never loses its power, that never disappears, never dissipates, never dilutes and, and it never, it never disappears, is serving other people, helping other people. And I don’t just mean this in like an altruistic sense or like some type of a spiritual sense. I also mean it in a, in a literal scientific, practical, pragmatic, even a self-centered sense.
RV (08:33):
You could even take it as far as that to go, that when I am focused on serving other people, it gives me something to pursue that never goes away. It, it, it gives me something that I, I, it’s a destination that I never fully reach. And it’s a, it’s, it’s a flame that never burns out. And, and the reason this is powerful is because it gives our life meaning, if I am just achieving for myself, if I’m just pursuing for myself, if I’m just conquering for myself, if I’m just acquiring for myself, there’s nothing bad or wrong with that. But what I’ve noticed is, is it doesn’t have the same level of meaning that if I am dedicating my life in the service of other people, because our lives have meaning in the context of other people, if I’m pursuing a goal, my life has, you know, meaning in the context of that goal.
RV (09:33):
But when that goal is achieved or not achieved, the meaning sort of is attached to it. But when I am, I am serving another person, or focused on serving people, my life always has meaning. Why? Because there’s never an end. There’s always people who need help. So when she said people die because they run out of purpose, that’s terrifying, and heartbreaking and sad and unnecessary, because if your purpose is caught up in serving other people, you’ll never run out of purpose. Because there’s always somebody who’s out there who needs your help. There’s always somebody who’s hurting. There’s always someone who’s broken. There’s always somebody who’s going through pain. There’s somebody who’s in a setback. There’s somebody who is, is in the, is the middle of devastation in crisis and, and temptation and indulgence and, and, and just, just pain. There’s always somebody out there, or a struggle or somebody who is trying to achieve something.
RV (10:33):
But, but there’s always somebody there. And so I should never run out of purpose because there’s, there’s never a finish line to the needs of this world that other people have. And I think that, I think that one of the things that we do that I would say is wrong, is people go searching for the pursuit of happiness, and they go searching for things and, you know, material possessions and titles and relationships, and, you know, job positions and, and homes and vacations and whatever. We go per that, we go in pursuit of these things that we think will bring us happiness. And again, there’s not anything wrong with those things. The part that I think is wrong is I think that we are wrong about where happiness comes from. I think we’re what we’re wrong. What we’re mistaken about is about what actually brings true happiness, true joy, true satisfaction, true fulfillment, true peace, and true power. What brings those things is not acquiring, it’s not achieving, it’s serving, it’s helping, it’s adding value. In other words, don’t ask, what is my purpose? Ask, who can I serve? Right? Don’t ask like, what should my next goal be? Ask, how can I be of value to somebody? How can I contribute to their life? How can I make their life better? And what is amazing about that is it is this, this infinite and invincible form of power, because when I am achieving, there are wins and there are losses.
RV (12:34):
But when I am serving, there are only wins. There are only wins You cannot lose when you’re serving someone else. And, and, and they cannot beat you, right? Like, if I’m in a competition, someone can beat me. And again, I think competition. I don’t wanna think competition’s not bad. I think everything that coach is talking about, I’d say like, amen, exclamation point. I’d punctuate it. Yes, these things are true. I’ve done these things. I agree. These are, these are characteristics of high performers. And I think there’s super p valuable power in activating and understanding your own prey drive. And then there’s also, I think, a power in activating this purpose, drive this, this, this neverending desire to contribute to humanity. And I think the, the people who, who really change the world are, are the ones who contribute value to other people, not just the ones who achieve or accumulate or accomplish a lot, but they’re the, they’re the people who help a lot.
RV (13:31):
They, they improve the lives of other people a lot. Don’t ask, what is my purpose? Ask, who can I serve? Don’t go searching for happiness. Go searching for someone to help. If you go searching for someone to help, and you help them, you’ll find happiness. There’s nothing like the feeling you get when you help somebody else succeed. There’s nothing like the feeling you get when you, you know, contribute to somebody else’s success. There’s nothing like the feeling you get to when you, when you add value to somebody’s life, when you help them, when you get to have a small part in their success or their survival or their safety, they’re, they’re you, you have a deep sense of purpose, a deep sense of value in your life, because it, your life is occurring in the context of other people versus your life occurring in the context of serving yourself and just accumulating or achieving or amassing more things for yourself.
RV (14:34):
Not bad, not wrong. I think what is wrong is we’re wrong about where we think happiness will come from. I’ve achieved enough, I’ve accomplished enough impossible goals as, as I teach in our Conquering Impossible Goals course, which is based on you know, our take the Stairs book. And, and there is this energy of, of, or that it takes to achieve a huge goal. That’s why it’s beautiful, and that’s why it’s helpful and it inspires other people. And you often help other people as a byproduct. Like being in your own greatness often inspires greatness around you. And so there is a beautiful byproduct to accomplishing things that are beyond your own wildest imagination, which is that the people around you become inspired by watching, and they start to believe that they’re capable of things themselves. So there’s a lot of value in that way as well, to achieving.
RV (15:23):
But, you know, in addition to that, or as a, as a clarification or a sharpening of that is realizing that happiness doesn’t come from those achievements. I mean, I can pull out, I can literally go pull out in, I, I mean, in, in our, like in our storage, I’ve got trophies of a New York Times bestselling author and being a Hall of Fame speaker and, and becoming the world champion of public speaking first runner up and, and valedictorian and you know, getting my b a when I was 23. Like, I have all of these trophies and plaques and titles and things, and they literally sit, they literally sit in storage, right? Because they don’t, they don’t give meaning to my life anymore. But you never run out of meaning when you’re serving people. You never run out of purpose when you’re helping other people. When, when his mom said, which was so profound that people die because they run out of purpose. They should never run out of purpose, because you only run out of purpose if you’re self-centered. You never run out of purpose if you’re service centered.
RV (16:33):
And this is, this is such a big lesson for personal brands specifically, or for leaders specifically, or for entrepreneurs specifically, because you go, y you, we have the good fortune and the blessing of not having to be worried about our survival. We have the good fortune and blessing of most of us having achieved some level of success. And so it’s like we’re moving from survival to success, to significance. It’s this journey, this transformation that we’re on. And we go, oh, how do I get to significance? I get to significance not by being more successful. I get to significance by being more service minded. That’s how I get to significance. I get to significance. I meaning I’m having longer term impact, longer term sustainability to my motivation, a, a a longer term evidence of my life. And my work mattered not because of what I achieved or a mass or accumulated for myself, but because of the value in the contribution that I made in the lives of other people.
RV (17:32):
And that is a life that is worth living, which means it’s a life that is, is not worth killing and not worth dying, because you always have something else to do. You’ve got somebody else to serve. You’ve got somebody else to help and, and somebody else to save and somebody else to help succeed. And, and, and, and somebody else to mentor and coach. And so for me, I think I have ended up finding power. The, like, I have found my purpose in the power of service. I find my purpose in the power of service. And I think achievement is good. Conquering is good. Prey is prey drive is good. A amassing accumulate. I think those, these are good things because they often empower you to, to be able to be in a position to serve other people, right? Like you can’t you know, you put on your mask first before you’re helping others around you.
RV (18:30):
But you should never run out of purpose because you’re never run out of people to, to, to serve. And and it reminds me, you know, when he said you know, that this idea of count your days that’s actually there. That’s, that’s based on scripture, okay? So this is, you know, I don’t, regardless of if you’re a Christian or not, but like, if you read the Bible in the ancient text, in the, in Psalms, it’s Psalms 90, I looked it up. I didn’t have it memorized, but I knew it was in there. And so I looked it up. So in Psalm chapter 90, verse 12, it says, teach us to number our days so that we may apply our hearts to wisdom. Teach us to number our days so that we may apply our hearts to wisdom. That’s exactly what Coach Burt was talking about, right?
RV (19:18):
Is he was going, man, when you realize that there’s a clock counting down on your life, and you just are aware of that fact of, gosh, there’s, there’s a, there’s a limited time I’ve got here, it creates a tremendous sense of urgency, right? And that’s how I feel. I don’t let one second of my day go by accidentally, even if I’m sitting on the couch doing nothing, I’m deliberately sitting on the couch doing nothing because I’m rejuvenating, right? Or I’m rewarding myself with something. Nothing in my life is accidental. Nothing is unintentional, like every single second. And it is, I’ve, I’ve always felt this extraordinary urgency, this extraordinary urgency on my life, not because I’m desperate to achieve and accumulate and have more, although I’ve had big goals, and I, you know, came from very, very little. And we’ve accumulated a whole lot more than I ever imagined, and, and certainly more than we need, like for our survival.
RV (20:15):
But like, I’ve, even with that, there’s this tremendous sense of urgency, because I know there’s somebody out there who needs help, and that’s what I want you to think about. And that’s the power of numbering our days. And I, I, I, I love that coach brought that up. And then, you know, seeing that reference directly also in, in scripture, and of, of the five that he shared, the five activators of prey drive, again, I, I, I really, I loved, I loved it. So go listen to the whole interview. But the fifth one was the one that hit me the hardest, which was about embarrassment, because it ties into everything we’re talking about here.
RV (20:57):
And when I think about purpose, right after I die, I don’t wanna get to the end of my life and meet the person that I could have been and be disappointed, right? I would be embarrassed by that. I would be embarrassed getting to the end of my life and then being able to see like, oh, this was everything I was capable of, and this is, this is, you know, like, this is what I was capable of. These are the blessings that I’ve been given, the time I had been given, the, the relationships that, the skills, the access to different things. This was everything I was capable of. And I fell so far short of that because I was lazy, or complacent or distracted, or I was indulgent. Like in going, I’d be so embarrassed, I’d be so disappointed.
RV (21:55):
But beyond that, it’s not just me, right? It’s going, I don’t wanna get to the end of my life and be able to look back and see all the people that I could have helped, see all the people that I could have made a difference with. See all the lives that I might have helped transform or even just shape a little bit to see everybody that I could have helped along in their journey. And, and at some point get to the end of my life and see all these people lined up on a wall and go look at all the people I missed because I was indulgent. Look at all the people I missed because I was lazy, looked at all the people I missed because I had too much pride, or because I was scared, or, or because I was distracted. That would be so heartbreaking, you know?
RV (22:41):
And most of all, at least for me, I don’t wanna get to the end of my life and meet my creator and say, here’s what I’ve done with what you’ve given me, and be embarrassed about that report, right? I’ve, I’ve been given so much, so many blessings. We all have. All of us, if you are listening to this, you have blessings in your life, if nothing other than the blessing to have access, to listen to this type of information from wherever you are, which is an incredible blessing. Just to have access to, you know, these types of trainings for free and from so many different, for so many different people, right? We all have blessings. And I would hate to, to show up for my final report and say, here’s what you’ve given me and here’s what I’ve done with it, and here’s what I’m capable of.
RV (23:41):
And there’s a giant gap I’d be embarrassed about that I, I’d be scared about that. I, I wouldn’t feel proud about that. And so whenever I die, however I die in whatever way that I die, I just want to, I wanna know that up until the very last possible moment that I, I was physically or mentally able, that every single last waking breath that I could possibly muster up, I was working in the pursuit of hum serving humanity, of helping humanity, of making a difference, of making an impact on other people, of, of, of serving those people who are in a struggle. And, and, and helping those people who are in different, difficult and challenging circumstances to conquer them and helping people who are facing obstacles to overcome them, and to go with every moment I had. And so, because at least then if I didn’t live up to my capacity, at least I can say I did everything I could, right?
RV (24:48):
Like, I, I took advantage of every single second serving the people around me in the best way I knew how. So I can at least come with a final report to go. I may have not lived up to my potential, but I did everything I could. Like, I, I did the best I knew how to do with what I had, and I helped every single person that I, I could, I could, you know, fathom within my abilities to try to help. But I know I never ran outta purpose. I ran outta life before I ran outta purpose, right? I didn’t run outta purpose, and that caused me to run outta life. That’s, that’s, that’s not gonna be it. That’s not gonna be me. That’s not how I’m going down. And maybe for you, it’s the same. So be competitive. Activate your pray drive. Listen to that interview with Coach Burt.
RV (25:42):
Send him some love on social. Let him know that you heard him here on our podcast. Share this episode and, and, and the interview with somebody that you think it can help activate your prey drive to, to go out and pursue. And, and, and, you know, these are, I think can be, you know, very similar messages is the instinctive ability to pursue service, right? For me, that is where the power is in these days. I have found my purpose and the power of service. But conquer and win and challenge and accumulate and AMAs and, and achieve, and push yourself to the limits and become a champion. And also serve others and help others. And don’t, don’t get law searching for happiness and achievement. Realize that happiness comes from service. Don’t ask what’s my purpose? Ask who can I serve. Thanks for letting me serve you. Thanks, you keep coming back, giving us this blessing and privilege. We appreciate you. We love you. We’ll catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand Podcast.
Ep 350: Activating Your Prey Drive with Micheal Burt
RV (00:07):
Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview. As always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions, and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to, to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do [email protected] slash pod call brand builders group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:54):
Nothing fills me up more than seeing our clients succeed. And one of the things that we’ve done a lot in the last few years as we’ve helped people with book launches, we actually just last week had our 11th client that has hit the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, or the U s A today bestseller list. And while we love pursuing bestseller lists, we also wanna remind people that bestseller lists don’t change lives, books do. And our job when we work with the client is to help them get their book into the hands of as many people as possible in a legitimate, ethical, impactful way that actually changes the world. And so occasionally on this show, we are able to have clients of ours who we feel like we have something to learn from and who we feel like you have something to learn from.
RV (01:42):
And that is the case here for sure, with Coach Burt, coach Micheal Burt. He usually goes by Coach Burt or just coach to a lot of people. And he is we met, he became a client of ours. We’re helping him with a book that he has coming out. The book is called Flip the Switch, and it is all about activating your prey drive. And when I say prey drive, it’s like p r e y. So this is something that he is the leading authority on this term, this concept about prey drive. He defines it as the instinctual ability to see something that you want and have the intensity to pursue it. So he was a former championship women’s basketball coach which we’ll talk about. He’s a 17 time author. And he has been hired by many of the top companies in the world, Dell Inc. State Farm Insurance, Vanderbilt University and others just around helping activate this drive in their teams, helping people to have more competitive intelligence. He’s been featured on shows like CNBC’s, the Prophet and Entrepreneur Magazine, and he’s just really a great guy. I’ve really enjoyed getting to meet him and I’m excited to learn from him. So coach, welcome to the show.
RV (02:57):
Excited to be here
MB (02:58):
With you. You, man, this is this is gonna be fun.
RV (03:01):
Yeah. So tell me quickly about your background as a basketball coach and the track record that you had there. Cuz I feel like that’s a Yeah, I was a basketball player and so I, you know, I understand that world. I think that’s an important part of, of the backstory.
MB (03:15):
Well, you know, I’m in Texas today in San Antonio when I was speaking at an event and, and a person just asked me, what really differentiates you from other speakers and coaches? And I said, well, everybody is differentiated by their unique past, their unique experiences, their unique education. And I started actual athletic coaching when I was 15 junior pro basketball. I was coaching in elementary team at 18. I was at Riverdale High School at 19 while I was in college. And I actually became the youngest head coach in the state of Tennessee at the second largest high school at 22. So I knew very early in life that I wanted to coach, but I was most fascinated by what I called inner engineering the players building competitive intelligence. So around 18, I went to a coaching clinic in Nashville at David Lipscomb University, and Don Don Meyer, the great coach at David Lipscomb, said, if you don’t read another book this year, pick up a copy of the seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
MB (04:11):
And I, at 18 years old, I went straight to the bookstore, I bought it, I became a huge disciple under Covey for the next seven years, where I really learned how to inter engineer whole person theory. I really mastered those seven habits and I began teaching my players those habits. So when you fast forward three or four years, I was really using a lot of business methodology, a lot of personal growth methodology with my players, way more than other people were. We were starting to win a lot of games. And so people were constantly asking me, what are you doing with the kids? And so at 25 years old, I wrote my first book called Changing Lives Through Coaching. That was 17 books ago. And I became kind of fascinated with just how do you activate a drive inside of a person? But that started as a decade as a head coach at Riverdale. We won the first of seven championships at that school. And you know, I kind of became known as this great coach that knew really how to get more out of people. That’s what people knew me for. So
RV (05:06):
You won seven state championships? I don’t want to like over that.
MB (05:11):
I, well, I built, what I did is it took me 10 years to build that place that never won a championship in 30 years. Okay. So I won the first Got it. And then I retired at 31 years old. They were going to win the next seven after I left.
RV (05:24):
Wow. Okay. So, so you were a state championship basketball coach. Yep. And, and you, you use this term competitive intelligence. Yeah. So what is that, what is that? And like define, define that for me.
MB (05:42):
Well, I think when you look at intelligences, you know, whether you study the work on intelligences, obviously there’s iq, there’s physical quotient, spiritual quotient, you know, there’s all these intelligences. And I really said what I was building in my players was what I called, I called a competitive intelligence, which was kind of a combination of intangible things. My players were smarter than other people’s players. They had more chemistry, they had more trust in buy-in. There were more intangible assets that you couldn’t measure, that my teams had discipline. And, and so I started calling that competitive intelligence. It’s like they just knew how to win at a higher level than other people knew how to win based on the unique methodology I was using to coach them, which came from my background with Covey. Right. Me studying under Covey, taking it and teaching my players was really building that competitive intelligence in my players.
RV (06:31):
Uhhuh
MB (07:34):
Well, most experts in the world have, have had a long cycle of building a primary skill, right? That’s the reason they’re experts, is they had a cycle of, of finding their primary skill, most likely packaging that skill, marketing that skill, and ultimately monetizing that skill. So that decade for me was in the trenches, in the laboratory, learning how to activate the prey drive in people of all socioeconomic backgrounds. D you know, high income class, low income class, one parent, no parents, two parents. I was really learning how to win at a very high level, but more importantly, how to take a person and get more out of them. Now, when I started writing books I’d had no intention of coaching adults, Rory, none whatsoever. I wanted to coach. I was gonna go to college. I was gonna be the next male pat summit.
MB (08:25):
I was gonna go on to coach at a major university. That was my trajectory. But when I started writing books people started calling me and said, Hey, will you come over and speak to my team? And it was companies like Dale, state Farm, national Healthcare, and I would just go speak for an hour and then go back to the players, right? Go back and coach. Well, I would go over and speak and they would say, we want you to come back. And I said, okay, what do you mean? I said, well, come back once a quarter, come back. And then people started saying, how much, how much would it cost for you to coach our people? And I had never really thought about that. So I’m like, man, I’m a high school coach. I’m trying to win championships. I really love the kids. I’m not interested in doing this. But, but the numbers was six figures. They would say,
RV (09:05):
But I can be bought. Let’s be clear. I love the kids. I love bad basketball, but like anyone, I can be bought. I mean, let’s be honest. I mean, that’s
MB (09:15):
RV (10:18):
Mm-Hmm.
MB (10:30):
Well, this is what I, this is what the, the whole new book is about, which is called Flip the Switch. I trademarked the two words, prey drive in humans an animal has a prey drive. It is the animal’s ability to stalk, capture, and kill prey. And g God gave me the gift of association. I can hear a concept, I can quickly associate deconstruct a concept, codify it, package it, and then deliver it in a way that activates something inside of another person. And so when I heard that word, pray, drive those two words, I’m like, you know, humans have a prey drive. I had this big revelation. I was with my wife at a, at a conference. The guy said, pray drive. I looked it up and I said, humans have a prey drive. It’s just not been activated. And so many people. And I told my wife, that’s, this is what I’ve been doing since I was 15 years old.
MB (11:16):
I just didn’t know I was looking for a new way to talk about an old thing, right? I was looking for some bja day. I was looking for a new way to talk about motivation. And so what I did is I studied the top 20 motivational theories. I deconstructed those theories. I then associated those theories with me. 30 years of me actually coaching all walks of life. I spent four years in the prison system rehabilitating maximum security offenders. I’ve coached multi-millionaires, I’ve worked with billionaires, I’ve worked with people just trying to get started. And I’ve kind of taken motivation and turned it into a science. So there’s three phases of this drive has to be activated. And, and in the book I talk about about five activators that I have seen. Once the prey drive is activated, then there must be a persistence to that prey drive to really accomplish something big. This is why mastery is so important. And then there must be an intensity to that prey drive, which is targets timelines, a game to play a scoreboard, right? And typically people fall off the wagon. So the first step is to figure out the three phases where people fall off the wagon and then to go to work on these five activators that I talk about in the book.
RV (12:21):
So you’re saying, so step one is it’s gotta be activated number, turn it on, flip the switch to use the title of the book, right? So we have to flip, we have to flip the switch, turn the prey drive on, then we need to do something about persistence, like to keep it going. And then you’re saying,
MB (12:38):
Oh, no refinement.
RV (12:39):
Okay. And then intensity, what you’re saying is like, intensity comes from like having a target or a goal or a timeline or you know, a competition or something like that. So yeah. So let’s talk about the, let’s talk about the activation. Cuz cuz you know, I, I have to say that it, it struck me once I understood actually one, once I saw the word p r e y, like when I saw it spelled out, it made more sense to me. And it caught my attention of like, you know, I associated it personally with like a killer instinct. And basically just like, yeah, some people are are turned off. They have no ambition, they have no drive, they have no pursuit. They have, they’ve, they’ve got, they’ve got nothing that they’re going after. And I think it’s, you know, there’s always there what a lot of people would say, you, you can’t motivate someone. The one thing you can’t do is, is motivate someone, which I’ve always struggled with. I don’t think I really ag I don’t, I don’t agree with that. I think there’s a number of things you can do. And I feel like you’re sort of saying the same thing here. So talk, talk to us about how to activate it and you know, and if you wanna run, let’s run through some of the activators about how to, how to flip that switch in ourself or our team or maybe a child, you know? But let
MB (14:00):
It flip. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you, when you think about activating the prey drive it is, it is an instinct ability to pursue potential opportunity a better life, right? And most people, it has not been activated.
RV (14:16):
And you’re saying it’s instinctive. So you’re saying that we all have this somewhere deep down, turned off, buried, whatever you wanna say, but we all have the ability to, to pursue.
MB (14:29):
That’s correct. Yeah. I think if you look at kids, I have a two and a half year old son and a and a and a 12 week old daughter and a 10 year old daughter. And listen, they pursue, they see things they want and they pursue ’em, right? And, and what happens, I just coached a group of real estate agents today, insurance agents yesterday. You know, the best ones pursue opportunity, pursue deals, they follow up, they see something through to its conclusion. They understand they have to activate this drive every day. So when I looked at the five activators, I said, okay, what have I seen that activates people’s drive to want more, right? Cause satisfied needs never motivate, only unsatisfied needs. The reason we become complacent is because our needs are met. Okay? And that’s really, when you study the motivational theories, they all say the same thing.
MB (15:13):
We move toward things we want when we’re hungry, we moved toward food. When we’re lonely, we move toward people, right? We move toward things we want and what we think will make us happy. So when you think about activating, I started looking at this. Fear is a tremendous activator of prey drive, right? And, and psychologists would tell you when you’re afraid, you fight, you flee. Or there’s a third thing they’re now saying is you freeze. Which is what a lot of people are doing in today’s economy. They just freeze. They don’t do anything. Okay? So fear is an activator, a prey drive. When you are afraid of losing something, something that matters to you, it will activate your drive when you’re afraid of going broke, when you’re afraid of going back to the way you used to be when you’re like, fear can be one of the strongest drivers of a person’s prey drive.
MB (15:56):
Now here’s an example. In March of 2020, you’re in a very similar business that I’m in. Okay? I, I speak, I drive leads, we generate those leads to a coaching business, right? Lemme generate about 3000 leads every 90 days right now, well, in March of 2020, there was no speaking engagements. I was losing about a quarter of a million a month in my coaching business, right? And, and what happened to me is it activated a deep drive in me. It activated two things, a fear and a competitiveness in me, right? The, the old coach in me that didn’t like to lose came out. And the fear of losing everything I had worked 20 years to build, which was an incredible life activated my drive to such a freakish level. I just got to a whole nother level of push and energy and force and creativity.
MB (16:46):
And I actually needed that to activate that drive in me because I had been doing this 15 years and I need, I wouldn’t complacent, but, but there was another gear in me I hadn’t found yet. And through the fear of losing everything, the fear of going back, man, it activated my drive. So, so I push so hard that, you know, six months later in the middle of the pandemic, we did like 1.7, 1.8 million that month, which was a big month for my coaching business. But it all came outta fear. It really started with fear activating my prey drive. Not a lot of, but a lot of people contract when they have fear. High prey drive, people use fear as fuel. So fear is an activator or prey drive, typically fear of losing.
RV (17:24):
Yeah. I mean that like, you know, the, I the, the thing that popped into my mind was like you know, a mama bear, a mama bear kind of thing of like, you, you know, you see your kid getting attacked by, you know, some, some animal or whatever, and all of a sudden you just go savage, right? Like, you just go, you go on ’em. So that makes a lot of sense. That’s, that’s powerful. I, it, it also to me, like really reframes, you know, that, that, you know, there’s a healthy, very much a healthy side of, of fear beyond just staying, you know, safe, but like hitting that gear, hitting that gear. So okay, so fear, that makes sense. What are some of the other ones?
MB (18:04):
Competition is an activator of prey drive. When there’s an, when there’s an adversary, when there’s somebody to beat. When there’s somebody who doesn’t think you’re good enough when there’s a, you know, just any kind of competition can activate your drive, right? But, but competition, I’m a big believer that you need a game to play a trophy to win. If it’s, if it’s in your own, if it, if it’s in your own mind, you need, you know, speaking yesterday, and I was asking my coaching students if they thought I could convert 50% of the room or higher on purchasing the new book, flip the Switch, right? Uhhuh
MB (18:41):
I’m gonna, I’m gonna try to get 50% of the room minimum or higher when I go in and speak to this insurance group to buy the new book. Right? So it’s competition activated my prey drive cuz I’m a competitor. Okay? So competition is an activator. Now you mentioned something earlier, why is people’s prey drive not activated? I actually think it’s because they’ve not been exposed to what a better life would look like. Exposure is an activator, a prey drive. When I see something, when I’m exposed to something, when, when, when I, when I experience something that goes, oh, there’s a be there’s a, I could have a better life. I could stay in better hotels, I could drive a better car, I could live in a better house. I could go on better vacations. I could, right? Like exposure is a huge activator of prey drive. Cause I see something and it expands my mind and it’s like, man, I want that. I want a life like that. Okay, so environment is an activator, a prey drive. Does that because you’re in an environment,
RV (19:37):
Are you saying, so it is environment number four, or are you saying exposure environment? So exposure is, is
MB (19:44):
Number three, environment number
RV (19:46):
Four.
MB (19:47):
Yep. Gotcha. Environment is four. Meaning there’s expectation. Think about playing at Alabama or Georgia. Think about where there’s an environment of expectation. Think about like, when I was a coach, we created this environment that we’re the best high standards similar language lots of accountability, right? Identity teaching people, Hey, we’re the best at what we do. Personal pride being in environments, they just bring out the prey drive in you, right? And then fifth would be embarrassment. This is what I write about.
RV (20:17):
So hold on ho hold on. Embarrassment. I wanna talk about that. But, but the environment one is interesting to me because it’s like winning is such a culture, right? Yeah. And losing is also a culture like you, I think of like Coach K at Duke or you know, the Yankees or the Patriots or Alabama, right? Like they, they win consistently. And, and I remember seeing a study, I, man, I wish, I wish I would’ve documented where this was, but I remember seeing a study and they were studying very, very like wealthy, successful people. And they were looking for what these people have in common. And they found that like the number one thing that all these people had in common was that they believed they were supposed to be successful because they had been told their whole life in our family, we’re successful, our family is smart, our family is wealthy, our our family is intelligent.
RV (21:17):
And they basically like adopted that as a belief system and then it became their reality and it was completely manufactured by the environment. Yep. And similarly you know, there’s, well, there’s I think it’s in the book Freakonomics, it’s either Freakonomics or tipping point. I think it’s Freakonomics where they talk about how in New York City there’s all this terrible crime. And you know, like at the, when you go into the train station if, if the little turn style doesn’t, you know, work, like if you jump over it, you don’t have to pay. You just jump over and then hop on the train. And they were talking about how, you know that good people who would normally pay stopped paying because so many bad people were just like jumping over the thing. And so they were like, well, I’m not gonna pay if no one else is paying. Where normally that would be like a good person. And just like, so it works in the other direction too. I mean, I, I think that people really underestimate this one.
MB (22:19):
I, I do too. Because look at, look at people working from home today. And there are a percentage of people who can activate their prey drive daily. But I would tell you, because we went from working in offices to home, I would tell you that we’re a lot more productive when we’re together, when there’s an environment. That’s why I’m building a greatness factory in downtown Nashville, which is a place where you go to work, learn, grow, connect, you’re going there to be great. It’s called the Greatness Factory. It’s not called the complacency factory. And so, so you know, it, it’s this place of energy. It’s like, man, I wanna work at the greatness factor where the energy’s good and there’s environment. And when I’m in town, I lead sales rallies and every, every tenant gets access to my coaching programs. And they can use the auditorium and the podcast studios and writes a little city.
MB (23:05):
But there’ll be a lot of environment activators of prey drive. Cuz I’m working at the greatness factory. I wanna go to work. So environment, that was a big one that I built as a coach. You know, when I went to Riverdale, they had never won a championship in 30 years. I mean, it was 1979. I had to really build an environment. So we redid the locker rooms, we w we changed uniforms to nicer uniforms. We, we redid the hallways. We put big things of we’re the best. I brought in gold you know, rings, championship rings for the players to wear gold ball balls in there for them to see what they look like. A lot of visualization on what it’s like to be a champion. It took me 10 years of sowing this into my players. But over a tenure cycle, they begin to believe we’re the best.
MB (23:49):
And when you’re here, we activate the prey drive. Now people do not wake up with their prey drive activated. I tell people this when I speak, I just, because I write motivational books, just cause I wrote this book does not mean I wake up with my prey drive activated. I wake up just like everybody else does. Sometimes I’m tired, sometimes I’m irritable, sometimes I’m frustrated. Right? And so I, I teach in the book, how do you activate it every day? How do you go into battle every day? Right? King David was a great king in the Bible until he stopped going into battle, right? And his own troops talked him outta going into battle, right? We’re at our best when we are pursuing, when we are engaging, when we are in the game. This is why retirement is such a bad idea for people. Cuz they quit pursuing their potential.
MB (24:31):
They make themselves not as valuable in the world because, because they basically said, I’m used up. Right? I don’t have anything to pursue. So environment is important. And then the fifth one is embarrassment. And I don’t use embarrassment as a coach, like negative. And some coaches do, they talk the way they talk to people. I don’t do that. I talk to people from an affirmative perspective. Like, you know, Rory, help me to understand, man, you’re the best. I brought you here because you’re the best in the world at what you do, man. You have a pure, unique ability and unique talent. Help me to understand why you’re not playing at the level you’re really capable of playing. Help me to understand why you’re doing four deals a month when you could be doing 12 deals a month. Help me to understand why you’re doing this versus this. I I speak to people in a way that they go, you know what? This is embarrassing. The way I’m playing at the level I’m playing is embarrassing to me and I wanna play at a higher level. So that’s the way I talk about embarrassment in the book is you look at yourself versus your potential and you go, man, I’m not even close to where I’m capable of doing and I want to do better. I want a better life. I want him to level up.
RV (25:36):
Mm-Hmm.
MB (26:11):
Yeah.
RV (26:12):
And he said, I would be so embarrassed to my friends, to my family, to God, to myself. I’d be so embarrassed that I never lived up to Yeah. What I was capable of. I mean, it’s just I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use that in a positive way. And now here today, twice in the same, in the same day. Like, that’s really powerful.
MB (26:36):
Well, I’m glad you said that because I actually take a contradictory view in the book of finding your Why. Chapter three of, of this new book is called Screw Your Why. And it’s called that because I actually, you know, I’ve coached people for 31 years. I think it’s a great book. I think Simon Sinek is a, a genius. However, having said that, I do not believe a person has to find their why to do something big in the world. I actually believe your purpose finds you when you are taking action and pursuing a curiosity, pursuing a, something you’re fascinated by. So I believe in something called because goals. See, you just said it about Matthew McConaughey. A because goal is a big reason that you do something even when you don’t feel like it. Okay. Be because if I don’t work hard, I’ll be embarrassed because I grew up without my dad.
MB (27:28):
I wanna be a good dad to my kids. Because right when they asked Tom Brady why he played so hard in the Super Bowl where they came back when they were down 30 something points at halftime to the Falcons, he said, because my mom was dying of cancer and I flew her in for this game, and I didn’t wanna lose the super goal Super Bowl with my mom in the stance. See what I talk about in the book are these because goals and a because goal was a big reason. Because I make the argument that you can know your purpose and still not be motivated. Your prey drive still not be activated. I could know I’m supposed to coach people today, but when it came time for me to go motivate those real estate agents today, what if I didn’t feel like it because a coach poured into me when I was six years old changed my life.
MB (28:09):
I made up my mind I was gonna spend the rest of my life pouring into other people. Because, because I see myself as the best at what I do because I don’t wanna be embarrassed by my performance. See, this is a because goal. And when I know a person’s because goal and I know the activator, the primary activator of their prey drive, I can really help a person get to a higher level. Because you and I both coach wealthy people. I mean, I’ve coached people making five or 600,000 a month, a million a month, 3 million a month, they still lost a prey drive. So it’s not about them versus the money, it’s about them versus their potential, them versus what they’re really capable of doing. And I need to know their, because goals on why they would want it and why they would want play at a higher level.
RV (28:50):
Mm-Hmm.
MB (30:12):
Like, that’s that, that activated, but that activated his prey drive. See, see when, when somebody shook Michael Jordan’s hand and said, good game. It infuriated him that activated his prey drive when George Carl didn’t acknowledge Michael Jordan at the restaurant the night before. They played the supersonics, it infuriated Jordan, it activated his prey drive. Like he, he, he looked for things like, like when you say something to a guy like Millet, who is, who is, is incredible from stage and getting better every time. Like every time he gives the presentation, he’s better and better and better and better. You know, that activates his prey. Drive that desire to be the best, that competition to be known as the best activates prey drive. You know? And that’s what, so you can see it once you have a, an anchor to it, what prey drive is, which is that, that killer instinct. See that moment you felt that killer instinct to my left, and you don’t get to my let’s level without having that instinct, right? Yeah. So, so it’s like you, that one statement, boom, flip the switch. And that’s really what I think a good coach does. Sometimes. It’s, it’s something they say that activates something inside of a person.
RV (31:15):
Well, well, I certainly wasn’t doing it on purpose. I was an accident. He, he, but he, he he, he, he, he, it just shows you the level of intensity that he operates at. And I, and I, I want to ask you about intensity before we go, but before, before we do that so you’ve mentioned this, we’ve been talking about flip the switch. Okay. We’ve kind of gone through these five activators, but there’s a whole system here for, you know, basically activating this, sticking with it. I wanna talk a little bit about intensity, but where do, where should people go coach if they wanna pick up a copy of the book?
MB (31:49):
Well, if they go to my website, coach bird.com and click on that, you can pre-order the book. When you do pre-order the book. We’re giving you a lot of things, including two full days of coaching with me, one on visionary that’s coming up quick, and one on January 13th called Activate, which is a full day. We also give you 90 days of pre drive for lunch, what I call pre drive for lunch, which are 90 days of sessions with me for 90 days. And, and a breakdown of the book on video of me breaking the book down and kind of a masterclass. So they go to coach bird.com, they can click there, take ’em to Amazon purchase it, and then they come back and show us where they purchased it to get all the freebies.
RV (32:27):
Mm-Hmm.
MB (32:50):
Yep.
RV (32:50):
Which, you know, is what it is. But I’ve also been in, you know, some circles that talk about enoughness and going, okay. Is, is, is there ever a point where you have enough to where you go, Hmm, you know, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve got enough. Like I don’t, I don’t need to keep chasing, I don’t need to keep, like, always moving the goalpost, so to speak. So I’m cur I’m curious about your assessment on either the balance of enoughness with intensity, or do you not, do you, do you not really believe in enoughness at all? Or like, just what’s your, what’s your personal philosophy there about intensity, you know, like intensity and rest or intensity and enoughness not, I mean, obviously you don’t believe in complacency, complacencies the enemies. Yeah. Sounds like. Yeah. But, you know, how do you reconcile that? Or, or is that not really the concern? Because, you know, people spend plenty of time resting and they need to get more time getting their butt in gear. Like, I’m just curious of your thoughts.
MB (33:51):
Yeah, I, I do believe in rejuvenation, which means to make young again. So I operate very much like an athlete, artist, entertainer. I rest, I practice and I play. And when I play, I wanna play at such a high level that it’s deeply impactful to people. But to play at that level, you need rest, you need rejuvenation. So I, I completely believe in that. I typically take one day off per week, just like the Bible says. I typically take one day where I do nothing. Okay. And, and just to myself now to your question about complacency, which is a gradual settling to a place of mediocrity. Mediocre meaning halfway up the mountain, you’re gradually settling to go halfway up the mountain. My mom has been a nurse her whole life and she worked a percentage of her life in nursing homes, taking care of elderly.
MB (34:38):
And I asked her one day, why did people pass away at the end of their life outside of just natural causes? And she gave me three reasons. She said, number one, they run outta money. And when they run outta money, they run outta good care. There’s one nurse for every 23 residents in a nursing home. She said, number two, they run out of love. Nobody comes to see ’em. The only love they get is from the other residents and the people who take care of them. The family forgets about ’em. She said, but the real reason they pass away is they run out of purpose. They don’t have something to get up and pursue. And I saw that with my own grandfather. He retired, he worked his whole life on a farm. He loved it. Get up and work at build houses. He was, he became a single digit millionaire in his life.
MB (35:18):
I mean, he, he was an entrepreneur and then he decided to retire. And my mother said as almost as if the day after he retired, everything in his life went downhill. His mind went downhill, his health went downhill. And then we spent all of the money that he had earned in his life to take care of him 24 hours a day for the rest of his life. And so the, the, the point here of why people watching this should be interested and have an intensity is that you don’t wanna run out of purpose. And, and the prey drive is pursuing something that is meaningful to you. Right now, the average person, average females live into 78 years old. Average average females living to 82, average males living into 78. Put that in number of days you have left on planet Earth. And that will build an intensity in you. Cuz it ain’t a lot of days, right? I’m 46, you look at what, 15,000 more days. If I live to be that age, that builds intensity. I got a long way to go in a short time to get there. Big goals, big goals, big because goals, and that is where the intensity comes from, is I got something big to do on planet Earth while I’m here.
RV (36:22):
I love it. I love that. So powerful coach. Thank you for this. We’ll link up to coach burt.com. Y’all can go there. And yeah, I’d say go check it out, even if you’re not gonna buy the book. Go look at what coach is doing. And the way that we’ve got this whole book launch structured, he’s, he’s following the brand builders method, right? He’s got a lot of, a lot of insane bonuses he’s giving away. He’s really, really overdelivering. So head over to coach burt.com, check that out. Coach, we want the best for you, man. We’re good. We’re excited to be on your team, we’re pulling for you. And thank you for helping us all activate this part of our life.
MB (36:59):
Well, and I think the people out there, let me say this, it’s been a, a absolute pleasure and honor working with Rory. And for those, for those out there watching, he cares deeply about the people he works with. He, he goes above and beyond on what’s asked. He continues to follow up and texts and coach. And if you’re out there thinking about doing this, it’s been a, it’s been a very first class experience for us. So thank you for that. Thank you for believing in me and helping us to hit this hit this list that I know that we’re gonna hit.
RV (37:26):
All right, my friend. So yeah. We’ll everyone stand by for that coach. We’ll catch you next time. Thanks for being here.
MB (37:32):
All right. Thank you, big guy.
Ep 349: 3 Things To Consider If You Want To Write A Book | Bob Wheatley Episode Recap
AJV (00:00):
So I was having a conversation earlier this week with a friend who is a first time author, and we got to talking about all the, you know, exciting parts and challenging parts of being a first time author. And so I thought I would record just a, uh, quick recap of some of the highlights of this conversation that I had, because if you’re listening to this and you are a first time author that you know, you’re just on the precipice of getting your first, first book out into the world, or even if you’re an aspiring author or a maybe one day, that might be something I wanna do, type of one day author. I think this is really applicable to you. And even if you’re a second or third time author, I think there’s some nuggets in here that would be really helpful to you. And, um, so here are some of the highlights from this conversation, uh, that I had.
AJV (00:56):
So, first thing that I think would be really helpful if you’re considering, uh, writing a book or you just finished and you are in this kind of like first author category, is you’ve gotta consider three things. Um, as you’re launching your first book. One, it’s, you have to have a quality product. Um, and that’s a given, right? So, uh, don’t produce crap content
AJV (01:47):
Or You need to write a book? And they’re going, it’s just not time yet. And it’s been a 5, 10, 15 year journey for some people because they know that the book is the last thing you do, not the first thing you do. Once you have proven content that can really make a change, that can really help someone and that can really make an impact. So you gotta have a great product that’s a given, right? Um, but the second thing is you have to have a good plan. Um, so many of us think that you write a great book, it’ll just sell itself. No, it won’t
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Also a plan for marketing and promoting the book to get it in the hands of the people who need it. So you need a great product, you gotta have a good plan, but then also you gotta have a platform. You have to have a place where you can actually talk about this product, which is your book, right? And it doesn’t mean you have to have hundreds of thousands or millions or even tens of thousands followers online. It just means you’ve gotta have a platform of loyal and en unengaged audience. And that could be in the hundreds, seriously. Um, it just, you gotta have a platform of people that you have identified that you can help, and that this content is meant to help them. And you have a plan of how you’re going to get it in front of those people. And that could be through audio, that could be on podcasts, it could be on videos and YouTube and Instagram on social media, but there’s a whole world offline, right?
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Does not have to be just online. So it’s, are you gonna do a book tour? Are you gonna go to local bookstores? Are you gonna do speaking events? Are you gonna do a launch party? Are you gonna go speak at your churches, kids, schools, whoever will have you, chambers of commerce, business journals, whoever. Um, but it’s like, do you have a platform to get it out there? So a great product, a great plan, but then also you’ve gotta have a platform, right? And I think that’s a really important thing to talk about, um, because so many people just talk about the content or they talk about hitting some list. And both of those are just pieces of a really important puzzle, which is, I bet that if you have a desire to write a book or you have written a book, it’s because you, you believe that it can actually help someone, right?
Speaker 2 (04:40):
And, and that is deservative of these three things that require your attention, a really good product, your content, a really good plan, um, and then a platform of people who need to hear about it, right? So, um, those are just kind of like high level three things that I think are really important. But in addition to that, I’m just kind of looking at my notes here, here are some of the other things that I think is really important, um, to just to remember as you are writing your first book, and this is really a conversation for that first time or aspiring first time author. Um, and the first thing is you just have to do it, right? There’s so many people who go me one day, well, it’s like, no, just one day. You just gotta do it. So you just have to start writing.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
And it doesn’t have to be perfect because it’s not going to be, it’s not going to be awesome, right? So just focus on saying it ugly first. Just get it on paper. Uh, you know, we have this saying, um, my husband Roy and I always say there is no, uh, good writing, only good editing. There are no good writers, only good editors. And so don’t worry about if it’s good or if it sucks, just get it on paper because then you can go back and edit it and rewrite and rewrite and re-edit again and again and again to make it good. But you have to have something to start with.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
So you just have to start riding and expect the first round to be bad
Speaker 3 (06:44):
No, don’t even send it out to 10 and goes, I hope somebody likes it or somebody will give me some constructive, you know, criticism. Find three or four people who you value their feedback, who have been where you want to be. So who have done this process or who fit your core target audience, your avatar. And actually give it to a very few group of people who you’ll entrust that will actually lead it, actually spend time on it because they want to help you. They want to see this succeed, they wanna see you succeed, but they will also give you the hard but necessary input and feedback to make it better, while also encouraging you along the way. Um, and that’s a diligent process, and it should be a select and small group of people. And this is what my friend Bob said. He said, don’t waste your editors, right?
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Don’t waste ’em. Um, you don’t need feedback from dozens or, you know, even, you know, half a dozen people. You need a good set of feedback from three or four people who can actually provide you with real insights that will make a real difference. So don’t waste your editors, don’t waste those big asks. Find a small group of people who will actually go through this and give you the real feedback that you need to make your writing to make your content better. And then last but not least, and you know, we could say this on every single thing in business or in life, is don’t forget to get a coach or a mentor. Find someone to emulate, right? There are so many people who have been through this process. You do not have to go it alone. You do not have to figure it out alone,
Speaker 3 (08:21):
That actually makes no sense to me. So find someone, a mentor, a coach, um, maybe it’s a, you know, a volunteer friend. Maybe it’s someone you pay, but find someone who has been through this process who can guide you through the ups and downs, the peaks and valleys, um, the parts that you know about, the parts that you don’t because there’s a lot of both. Um, and just find someone that you can emulate and who can help mentor you through this process. If it’s free, great if it’s paid, great too. But invest the time, money, resources, and attention that it requires. If this is something that you really wanna do,
Speaker 4 (08:54):
And if you’re not willing to do those things, then it’s probably just not time, and that’s okay too. So anyways, I just thought this was a really great conversation and there were some really big important things. And as we start the new year, I thought these would be awesome takeaways and highlights for anyone who is going, man, a book is on my goal list for this year. I really wanna get that book out. These are things that you should consider as you get through the process of getting that first book out into the world. So good luck, God speed. We’ll see you later.
Ep 348: Tips for the First Time Author with Bob Wheatley
AJV (00:53):
Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode on the Influential Personal brand. This is AJ Vaden here, and I am here today with a very good close personal friend and a fellow brand builder and actually a client turned team member, which is very unusual and very rare for us to have someone like Bob Wheatley on the show today. But we just felt like this was too good of an opportunity to pass up. And so before we get into the details of this interview, I wanted to kinda tell you why you need to stick around for the entirety of this interview. And ultimately, if you have ever had a dream of writing a book, this is the interview for you. Or if you are in the process of perhaps writing your first book or trying to land a book deal or trying to get your book published, or you’re just starting to ideate around this, like, I’m going to do this now, how do I get it in the hands of somebody that it can impact?
AJV (01:56):
This is for you. Or perhaps you have even published your first book and now you’re wondering, how do I sell this
AJV (02:55):
Louis Cardinals and l y’all listen, like that is like no joke. Like to learn about the rigor and the expectations, and quite honestly, the passion and the lack of pay often associated with professional sports. One of the things that I know is that what you’re going to learn about here is some true hard work. This is not fluff. These are the real things that it takes to get real things produced in the real world. These are not get rich quick gimmicks. This is not how do you sell a million books in 30 days? But this is the real work that it takes because that’s what he is been putting in for his entire life, and that is no different than what you’re gonna hear on this show right now. So without further ado, Bob, welcome to the show.
BW (03:42):
What an introduction
AJV (03:52):
We’re so happy to get to be able to do this and a part of why we were so excited to have Bob as a guest on the influential personal brand is because he is a first time author and he just published his first book and it’s going out. It’s going to be available for presale right now, but it’s launching in January of 2023. So as you’re listening to this you have an opportunity to get your hands on this amazing book that we’re gonna talk about but also is because we’ve been able to walk side by side along with Bob and watch the journey of idea to book, to publishing, to holding it in our hands of going, this is a reality and this can happen. And it wasn’t that long, truly. And so we thought this would be amazing opportunity for all of those first time authors or aspiring authors to go, how do I do this?
AJV (04:46):
But then also, we’re just so excited of you for or for you, and we’re so proud of the work that you’re doing. So this is also just a really special moment that we get to celebrate some real life hard work that we get to see firsthand. And so here’s my first question that I have for you, and I pinged you with this earlier. It’s why write a book, right? Because
BW (05:30):
Yeah, totally. And but before I answer that, let me just say, it’s kind of surreal for me to be sitting here cuz if you’re a member, I became a brand builder’s client first I found you guys through the podcast. It was just a friend referred the influential personal brand. Like, Hey Bob, you’re thinking about writing the book. I know you’re in the podcasting space. These guys are doing some awesome stuff. Check out this podcast. So it’s cool for me because I was listening to you guys for a while, you know, on the other end of this show. Now to be sitting here with you personally is just so, so cool. Oh,
AJV (06:01):
I didn’t even know
BW (06:02):
Share that. I, yeah, I was a, I was a podcast listener subscriber, the whole deal. But as far as why write the book, cuz you’re right, there’s so many ways that you can go when it comes to a personal brand or even just having a message to share. I think for me personally, I was always a reader, like when it comes to playing professional baseball, spending time in the minors, we have this saying, hurry up and wait. There’s just so much downtime. And so it’s either you’re playing cards with your buddies, you’re scrolling your phone, or for me, you know, you’re, you’re reading. So most of the stuff that I was reading while I was playing was nonfiction. It was mental game, it was mindset, it was health, nutrition, weightlifting. Like, I just wanted to throw baseballs as fast as I possibly could cuz I wanted to get to the big leagues.
BW (06:50):
But I was reading, I was constantly around it. And so you’re, you’re right that I could get a message out in any number of forms, but I’ve always been a reader. And I grew up in a house of attorneys, oddly enough, my dad’s an attorney, my brother, my sister, my grandfather, two uncles and an Aunt
AJV (07:51):
That’s good. Here we have it. You know what’s interesting is as we come to a close on the year 2022, I have shared this with many people that I’ve encountered over the last few months, that this has probably been single-handedly the best year of my life. Both personally and professionally, but not because something extraordinary happened in our business. Although there’s lots of successes, but there’s been lots of ups and downs, or there wasn’t something extraordinary that happened in my personal life. But this year has been the single most 40 year of my life because of my commitment, my recommitment to personal development. And I am finishing my 15th book of the year. I’ve got just, I don’t know, maybe a third of the this last book I’m reading called Live No Lies by John Mark Comer that I had the opportunity made my, made the opportunity for myself.
AJV (08:47):
I read through the entire Bible this year and then read 15 books. And I, I shared this with Rory about halfway through the, the year this year. And I said, I think I forgot the power that a book has to change a life. And I am just a firsthand example of that this year. And you could ask anyone who is super close to me. I am a different person today than I was 12 months ago. And it is because of the books that I have just completely committed my life to just being in positive reading and filling my mind with things that are gonna help me versus potentially harm me. And it’s, I had just, I have fallen back in love with the power of the written word. And there’s nothing wrong with a short form content and a blog or a social media post or a podcast.
AJV (09:40):
But one of the things that I thought about this year is I do a lot of podcasting and write blogs and write social media posts. And I can tell you right now, the amount of time that I put into my podcast prep or blog prep or social media prep is teeny tiny. But the amount of time and preparation and thought that is required, that is mandatory to write a good book takes a lifetime. And I forgot about that until I have like, been so transformed by books this year. And it’s, it’s one of the reasons why I wanted, I wanted to ask that question because I think there’s just, people have forgotten the amount of preparation and editing and re-editing that it takes to like, make a book a book, and we kind of get consumed with that short form content or pop it in our ear of going, man, we just whipped that out,
BW (11:01):
Yeah. Well I, and I’m so glad you you said that not necessarily about me. I’m saying I have that, I’ve had that same experience where as I’ve written more, I’ve become a much better reader mm-hmm. Because I’m, I’m so grateful for the work that these men and women have put in on those books. Like when I was in the, in the buses, in the locker rooms of the minor leagues reading book after book after book, I really didn’t care. It was, or I wasn’t as grateful as I should have been. Now after having spent two and a half years writing a book, writing, rewriting, editing, throwing stuff away, like there, there is so much that goes into a book just because it is, it’s so complex. And of course it depends on the project, but by and large you have to write 200 pages. That makes sense.
BW (11:50):
Yeah. You know, and you’re sharing like this’s just thousands upon thousands of your own words. And you’re right, like when it comes to a podcast, you and I are having a conversation, we’re keeping it casual. We could pause the whole deal when it comes to a book. It is set in stone mm-hmm.
AJV (12:52):
I have a girlfriend who is just, she’s incredible, her name’s Victoria Jackson. And she hand wrote both of her first books. And I was like, what, what does that mean? And she was like, what do you mean, what does it mean? I had some paper and a pen or a pencil. And I was like, what?
BW (13:11):
That is wild. I couldn’t imagine that my two year book would’ve taken two decades. That’s crazy.
AJV (13:20):
So, okay, well on the topic of getting this book out there and for all of you who are listening, who are these first time authors? I think there’s some really strategic questions that we wanna dive into today. That would just help anyone who is listening in a universal kind of perspective shift and all the different ways that you can actually write a book. Because if you are going about writing a book, there’s a few different ways you can do it, right? There’s the traditional path, right? You’re gonna try to work with a p a traditional publishing house, which means you probably need an agent. They’re gonna have, you’re gonna have a book deal, you’re gonna have a book proposal, you’re gonna do the whole thingy, right? Then there’s the opposite of that, which the self-published route, right? And I always use this example how Elrod, right?
AJV (14:00):
People always go, well, self-published, like is it really gonna get distribution? Well, it’s like he’s now sold 2 million copies of the Miracle Morning. So yeah, self-published can work just fine, right? But you’ve got that where you’re doing all of it and you’re paying for it up front, but you’re keeping all the money on the back end. But then you kinda have this middle world, which is this hybrid model that has really come on strong in the, on the scene in the last 10 years where it’s, it’s like a traditional publishing hat publishing house because they can do some of the design and the editing and the distribution, but yet it’s more like a self-publish route in terms of you’re gonna keep and retain the rights and the money to your book. And so walk us through what did you do? How did you go through that decision making process and what has that decision been like for you?
BW (14:47):
Yeah, definitely. So I ended up taking that middle route. I did the, the hybrid model that you were describing where self-publish the book with an agent. So we call it agent led publishing. And when it comes to the traditional route, I mean, it’s called traditional for a reason. That’s how it used to be. But honestly, self-publishing is becoming so good these days. Not only in terms of the, the product, but the amount of people that are doing it. It’s not like the little kid brother like, oh, you self-published, ha ha ha. Like, you can, you can have a really solid product if you sell publish. And so for me personally, the traditional route wasn’t really in the cards. And I say that was for two reasons. One externally and one internally. The external would be I just didn’t have the platform. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (15:51):
We pause right there just for a second? Yeah, please. I think there’s a couple of nuggets in there that is really important. And we were having this chat before I hit record around how it really isn’t the New York Times, you know, best written book. It’s the New York Times best selling book. There’s a hundred
BW (16:09):
Percent
AJV (16:10):
Called that. And you know, it’s like any chart that you look at is not really a, a critical claim on the quality of the book. It’s how well did the book sell, how well was it marketed? And you mentioned something that I think is really unique. It’s like, I didn’t have the platform to attract a big publishing house. And so can you tell us a little bit about like, what your platform was and and then I can share, you know, feedback of like, we had, we experienced the exact same thing when we were initially trying to shop and get our books sold. But talk a little bit about this platform size and why traditional publishers lean into that. And then what was your size at the time? Just give some, you know, context for everyone who’s listening.
BW (16:55):
I mean, if you think about it, these are for-profit businesses. So if they had to choose between publishing Bob’s book or Barack Obama’s new memoir, like, duh, of course, of course they’re going with, with the president. So in terms of my platform, like even today, I probably have about 10,000 followers between all of my socials. That’d be LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, I might be a little over that, but it’s not hundreds, not hundreds of thousands. Not even close. So small fish in that pond. So I could write this amazing book. Wow, this is the best we’ve ever read. Not that anybody said that, I’m just saying in theory. And, you know, they, they still wouldn’t take my call mm-hmm.
BW (17:49):
Like she, she read one chapter of my book and there was enough to warrant a, a phone call and we’re actually on Zoom and you know, we, we talked for 20 minutes or so, and then I was so glad that I was prepared for this. She asked me, what’s the next book? I was like, let me, let me show you. And so I have it, you know, I have all the files ready to go and pulled up and like, I had already written like 20,000 words of my next book. That was all thanks to honestly my brand builder’s training. So the fact that I am like, you only get that phone call once because my agent, she’s a, as a Christian podcaster and author, she’s like on the Mount Rushmore of the Christian publishing world. Like she is, she is a baller. And so she represents all these amazing authors. She’s 80 New York Times bestsellers. And she said, Bob will take a chance on you. And I think part of that, a writing something
AJV (18:45):
As a compliment to you, please, but then a reminder to everyone else is having quality content is a prerequisite, it’s a requirement, right? That’s not what gets you published. That’s not what gets you an agent. That’s the expectation of it has to be good, it has to have value, it has to exceed the value that I thought I was going to get in this chapter. And that’s, that’s just like basic level, nothing more than that. Everything above that is how are you going to distribute this, right? But I think that’s really important around, it’s like, you know, there is this weird mix of how am I gonna sell the book and how am I gonna market the book? And also how do I make sure this book provides value that has the power to help and change the reader, right? And I think that that’s not something we wanna skimp over of going, you know, this is something we say often at Brain Builders Group is that the book is always the last thing you do, not the first thing you do, it’s the culmination of years and stories and experiences and data and research and all the things.
AJV (19:57):
It’s not the first thing you do, it’s the last thing you do because, you know, this is, this is, this is the, the summation of everything. It’s not the hypothesis. And so the fact that you did that and you had quality work is what even got you the call, right? And so, just for everyone listening, it’s like focusing in on the content and making sure it is value rich and value written like that is, don’t get us wrong when we say it’s a New York Times best selling author and you gotta sell it and promote it and market it. Yes. That’s how you get in the hands of people. But if you really wanna work with people and you really wanna provide value, it’s the content has got to be life changing.
BW (20:38):
Totally. And that’s exactly what she shared with me. She said, typically, whether it’s her criteria or even a, a traditional publisher, they look at three things. They look at the product, they look at the plan, and they look at the platform. Mm-Hmm.
BW (21:27):
We actually have one, like, like you said, it’s not, you know, New York Times best, best writing, it’s New York Times best Selling. So here’s my selling plan. And then the platform, I probably failed that test, but again, it’s two of the three Perfect World. You have all three and then you know, you it’s gang busters and you sell millions of books. That’s awesome.
AJV (22:15):
Yeah. And I think that’s, that’s really significant too. Like, there’s just so many nuggets. If you’re not writing down notes, I would encourage you to like write down some notes because these are some really significant nuggets too. It’s that, and I think so often somehow we just think we’re gonna send a bunch of cold pitches and send out a bunch of chapters and we’re gonna just like network wor network our way in through social media or through our content. And unless you have a massive platform, that is likely not the way you’re going to get to partner with an agent or a publishing house. But the most likely way is that you put on your sales hat and you work your personal, you know, sphere of influence and you figure out who knows someone who knows someone who maybe even knows someone who could get me a call, right?
AJV (23:03):
And it’s like, do not disregard the importance of the statement that Bob just made as I had a friend who knew this person who could refer me in. We all know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone, right. Seven degrees of Kevin Bacon. But we, we’ve gotta be confident enough, inspired enough that what we’re doing means something to actually say, Hey, I’m willing to go out on a limb here. I’m gonna ask for this. Why? Because I’m so convicted in what I’m talking about. I’m so passionate about this that I can’t not, right? I can’t contain it. I can’t keep it in. I have to get it out there. And we all need a little bit more of that if this is something that we really wanna go after, because that’s how it’s most often going to happen, right? It’s a referral in. It’s taking that, you know, sales mindset and going, who do I know? Who knows someone who can help get me connected to the right person? Right? Totally.
BW (24:02):
As far as what we can control, I think that’s absolutely the way to go. Part of it is, you know, divine providence. And if, if God has good works prepared for us, I think he’ll open the doors that need to be open, shut the doors that need to be shut. But yeah, we have a responsibility as well. You’re absolutely right.
AJV (24:19):
Yeah. It’s that, you know, that whole saying, it’s like let God do what he can do and let you know you do what you can do. Right. And it’s like we both have a role to play. I can’t just sit here and say, bring it to me
BW (25:02):
Yeah, totally. So when it comes to self-publishing versus traditional, one of the value add is you retain all of the rights of your book. Whereas with traditional publishing, it’s typically the large pop. You know, you make six figures for some people, I mentioned Barack Obama probably a seven figure advance. Like that’s pretty sweet. That’s a, that’s a big deal. But then when it comes to the, the commissions thereafter, like you’re basically making a dollar a book forever. Once you earn out that advance, they pay you,
AJV (25:34):
You sell a lot
BW (25:35):
BW (26:22):
People can then say, oh, well he’s working with her. Oh, well te tell me more about this guy. Cuz I’ve never heard of him and his 10,000 social media followers. Like, he seems like a nobody but the book. People like the book and he’s represented by, by somebody with a name. So you retain the rights, but then also you have that representation to where if the book really sells, you can just flip it. You can go to those traditional publishers, say, Hey, kinda like a proof of concept, like a beta test. Hey they, they sold 2000 copies in their first three months. Hey, they sold 5,000 copies this summer. Do you want it? So having that agent in your corner, I mean, and they have those, the publishers on speed dial, cuz that is their job pitching the, the projects of their clients to those houses. So yeah, there’s, there’s give and take with both traditional and self. But for me, that hybrid model, just having the representation, having somebody in my corner has been so valuable. Not to mention as a first time author, being able to borrow other people’s mistakes so I don’t have to make them myself so valuable. Having a coach, having somebody say, okay, this is what you need to expect has been, has been just so, so awesome for me. Yeah,
AJV (27:42):
I love that. And as everyone’s kind of like, you know, thinking about this and it’s the way that we’ve explained it, you know, in our, in our own household as we, you know, we’ve done two books with traditional publishing houses and I think there’s pros and cons to all the things, but you know, with traditional publishing, you’re really paying all of the fees yourself upfront in the hopes of making money on the backend, right? Whereas often if you have a six figure plus advance, you’re getting the money on the front end and very little, very little on the back end. So you’re kind of paying for it no matter what. It’s just, do you wanna pay the upfront costs, retain the rights, retain the ownership, retain, you know, I would even say the creative rights of covers, images, titles and you’re gonna pay for it, but then you’re gonna make it back on the backend as long as you have a good plan and a growing platform.
AJV (28:38):
Or do you go, Hey, I’ll forego those things. I’ll get that short term upfront money, but I’m also gonna forgo lots and lots of royalties. You know, and again, I’m talking, generally speaking, there’s plenty of people who make royalties. But I can, I mean, I can attest that in the non-fiction world, you know, we have a national bestseller and a New York Times bestseller and we can not even pay for monthly groceries off of our royalties. So
AJV (29:38):
And this is way before we knew the hard, hard lessons that we know now. We went with a, you know, a kitschy title, something that we thought was clever, called Procrastinate on Purpose, and didn’t have the same impact that we had with Take the Stairs. And then when Rory released his TED Talk, multiply Your Time, you know, it’s got what, 6 million Ted or 6 million views now. And we’re going, what’s the exact same content? What in the world? And it had so much to do with the title. And for three years, for three years we have been trying to get this dead gum title changed. We’ve tried to change the cover image we never liked the cover image. And they will not for the life of us, change the title no matter what or change the creative concept of the cover. And it’s like, those are things that you forego and it’s like, I think those are important lessons to learn. And we’ve, you know, fortunately, unfortunately learned them the hard ways. But again, there’s pros and cons to all of it. But that is a really great pro that you can go, Hey, I’m gonna make some tweaks here, republish, let’s go again. Don’t get that with a traditional publisher most of the time,
BW (30:50):
Right? When it comes to the traditional publishing that you know hasn’t changed is it still has the cachet. You can say, I’m with so-and-so publishing house. It’s like, okay, big deal. Like this is, this is a, this person is a big deal. They know what they’re doing. They like, they have a book deal versus self-publishing. Like we just understand what is what. But you’re right there, there are pros and cons to both. And with somebody in my position, or perhaps the person listening, you might not have the option. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (31:30):
Absolutely. And I think it’s getting stronger and more reputable literally every single month. Not even every year. It’s like every month. That industry is doing a pretty dominant takeover in a lot of ways. So that’s so super helpful. So now there’s this art and science of actually writing the book and getting it in the hands of other people to actually read it. So what we’d love to hear is just what are some best practices and pitfalls, some dos and don’ts of how to get this writing part done in the most effective but also efficient manner. So what are the, some of the lessons you’ve learned about how do you actually finish writing a book? Because we all know someone who had an idea that never got started or had an idea that got halfway started and never got finished. And so how do you actually bring this thing to fruition?
BW (32:27):
Yeah, totally. I, I would say for the person who is considering starting a book, like, Hey, bucket List, I’ve always wanted to do this. Don’t get caught up in the, the perfectionism of things. I would say if, let’s say you have the concept, cuz you need, you need to know the destination of where you’re trying to go. Your first goal should be just create the outline, create the skeleton. You’re gonna put meat on those bones eventually, but create your system. Like, especially if you’re in the non-fiction world, like if you just look at the non-fiction books that you have on your shelves, oftentimes it’s some sort of system. It’s the five love languages, it’s the seven baby steps, it’s the seven habits of highly affected people, right? We’re taking this expertise in whatever field you’re in and we narrow it down. If we’ve spent 10, 20, 30 years, we are like a world renowned expert, or at least we just know more than the reader.
BW (33:28):
Cuz that’s all you need. Let’s make it simple, let’s narrow it down. And so I would say if you are the bucket list person, hey, I really wanna write a book. I’m sure you have the concept there. It might be a little fuzzy, but you have the destination next step, just create the system. Five love languages, seven habits, whatever it is. Like, do a, do a brain dump, write down everything that you believe and then say, okay, how can I piece this together to make it clearer for the next person? Hmm. So that would be the first step. The second thing, and this might be difficult for the perfectionists that are, are listening to this, but that was me. So this is just something I learned as far as pitfalls. Like this is one that I stepped into. This is an error that I made.
BW (34:11):
Your first draft will be bad,
BW (35:03):
Like there’s so many people that have started a book, in fact, I’ve done this myself with previous projects that will never see the light of day, where it’s just, you know, one chapter, two chapter three, dead end. Like just, you just lose the juice. So, and I’m being kind of facetious, like, hey, write a bad book. But like, that’ll be a challenge in itself. You know, you need to write 200 pages of stuff that is just okay. Just okay then give it to somebody you trust, maybe one or two people in terms of the editing process. And then you make it it better and better and better. I would also say don’t waste your editors. Like let’s say you have 10 people that you trust, you’re in a book club or whatever it might be. Do not give it to all 10 of them right away. Because if you do that, then they might all have great feedback. But what happens if they’re not aligned? Mm-Hmm.
AJV (36:31):
I will tell you about that. That’s great advice. Not just for writing a book. That’s great advice for life. It’s like, so often we get bad advice and it’s because we ask the wrong questions or we ask the wrong people. So to be super tight and small and considerate with who you’re asking to do something, I think it’s really why sound advice for writing a book, but also for life no matter what it is that you’re doing it’s being very intentional with who’s the one giving you some of that feedback. I love that. That’s just good life advice.
BW (37:08):
And I can’t say I came up with it myself. If I could get add like one additional thing, have a mentor. Hmm. Have somebody that you’re trying to model. Like as I was playing in the minor leagues, I would watch film of other left-handed pitchers that I wanted to emulate. I was watching Clayton Kershaw, I was watching John Lester. Why? Because they were the person that I wanted to be. So, and there’s gonna be some creative, you know, latitude for you to work with. It is your book, it’s your writing style. Like this isn’t a true copy and paste, but as far as that, don’t waste your editor’s advice. My writing mentor told me that. So if you wanna write a book, if you wanna start a business, you wanna play in the big league, it’s like, get somebody that has done it before and say, Hey, if you were in my shoes, what would you be thinking about that? Again, it’s probably more like life advice than anything, but if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking about writing, awesome. Find somebody who’s written, Hmm. Give ’em a call.
AJV (38:07):
And I think one of the underlying things that you’re saying across this is like, don’t be afraid to invest in yourself. Right? It’s like, it’s gonna be a time, money resource but there’s gonna be all different types of investments. I know that you work a lot of weekends and after hours, but I also imagine it probably doesn’t feel like work. It feels like a passion, it feels like a hobby, like a purpose. But I also know that you invest a lot of resources and of your own money into doing this. And I think that’s just something that let’s not, you know, not address, you know, the elephant of the room. Like this is no joke. This is going to be an investment of energy, time, money and resources. Anything you wanna add to that?
BW (38:55):
Well, yeah, totally. If if it wasn’t a book, if it was some other widget that you don’t sell for $12, you’re starting a business. Like if you’re starting a donut shop, you wouldn’t expect, oh, I think I’ll spend like, I mean 97, 90 $8 to get this thing started. Like, no, you’re spending thousands of dollars, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds depending on the project to start your business. And so it would just depend on the book that you’re writing. There’s nothing wrong with writing something where it’s more like a journal for the eventual grandkids. Totally fine. But if you say no, like, I want to write a book, I want it to be published and I want it to change people’s lives. Don’t expect to do that without an investment. Hmm. Whether it’s time, money, or both. And so you shared it on the front end of the call. How’d you put it? You said something like, I can’t not share this. That’s when you know you have a book in you. If you have something you can’t not share, it’s just like, oh, if I could just share this one thing with the world, like I, I would, I have to. It’s like, well, you totally can.
AJV (39:59):
I love
BW (40:00):
That. Sit down at the desk 90 minutes a day, you know, every day except for Sunday and it will happen like that. That’s been my, that’s been my strategy. And I think that’s one area where playing pro sports, specifically baseball has helped. We had a game every day. Mm-Hmm.
BW (40:54):
And it will be hard. But sometimes, I mean, when it, when it comes to something worth doing, it’s always hard. Hmm. It’s always hard and it’s worth it. I’m already writing my second book. Like it was, it was such a rewarding experience and I’m, you know, I’m kind of like geeking out on this right now, but it’s just what an amazing thing to set your mind to something and finish it. And now moving forward I can share that with people. Mm-Hmm. Like the conversations that you have as a result of your book, the Doors that open, and it’s not for money, fame, anything like that. I now have a connection piece with friends, family, colleagues. I was just at the gym last night and there’s this gal that I’ve kind of worked out alongside for like years and it’s one of those gym relationships where you kinda like give ’em a head nod.
BW (41:48):
It’s like, Hey, I see you every Thursday, but like, we don’t, we don’t talk and Tina talk, actually know each other.
AJV (42:25):
Oh man, I love that. And I love that too of just that great reminder. It’s like, you know, half of it, it’s just showing up. It’s just showing up. I, that just, it reminds me about some of like the early advice I got as a new mom. It’s like, you know, half of the success of parenting is just showing up. It’s just showing up and you gotta do it and you gotta do it every day. Right. You gotta do it every day. And you mentioned something there, it’s like, well you said it’s like, well, you know, it’s like I can’t not share this. And so as we’re kind of like rounding out towards the end of our interview here, it’s like, what is it that you can’t not share? So tell us a little bit about this new book that’s coming out. It releases January, 2023, our Heart’s Desire. Tell us like what, what’s this book all about?
BW (43:09):
Yeah. like you said, it’s called Our Heart’s Desire Subtitles, how our stories reveal the thing we want Most. And so I’m a Christian. I love God. This book is, and it’s so funny cuz you and I hadn’t talked about this. You read the Bible this year. That, that’s amazing. That’s so cool. We should do it together next year.
AJV (43:31):
It’s been, revel a revelation of my perspective of, you know, I’m actually this book I was just reading live No Lies. One of the things it said, it’s like, you know, the Bible is a historical work. And so it’s like I have both read the Bible, both in a historical perspective as well as a, you know, spending time with God, perspective of learning and growing and that, but it’s been more of a, a knowledge journey of a, a historical record. And it’s, to view it that way has been extraordinary. And it’s like I’m now taking that approach with books of like, there are, you know, just these different facets of how you learn. And it’s been so exci. I can’t wait to read your book. I told you earlier, it’s not in my office, it’s next to my bedside. And so I’m so excited to read it. So tell everyone else about it. I’ll stop talking.
BW (44:20):
Yeah, no, that, that was my fault. That was my tangent. I’ll own that. But in, in terms of this book, aj, the reason why that caught my ear, you reading the Bible last year, I’ve done that every year, year for the last five years. Wow. Wow. I have a mentor here in Nashville that recommended that I do it, and it’s just become my routine. Wow. Like, I wake up in the morning, I read the Bible for 20, 30 minutes, whatever that day warrants. And so that doesn’t make me an expert on scripture. I would never claim that. But it does mean I am constantly reminding myself of that story. And so as I had written a couple of those books, like I said a few minutes ago that stopped and started and didn’t go anywhere. I was also learning about story and about writing and stuff like that because that seed had been planted and I was kind of getting there.
BW (45:08):
And so this book came about because I’m learning about story and also reading the story of scripture. And what I realized was the, the similarities between the two mm-hmm.
BW (46:04):
That’s wild. Because you could have humans writing books, writing screenplays in Hollywood. They keep telling that same story, hero villain, love interest to be saved. We want to return to paradise. And then you think about the desires of our heart. Like even we could even take, you know, God out of it for a second. If you look at society, if you look at your window and you say, this is wrong, or you look at any sort of like social dilemma or things like that, all we’re trying to do, AJ is restore paradise. That’s it. Like we just wanna live in paradise. That’s what we are made for. And so if the Bible is God’s word, which I wholeheartedly believe it is, we’ll have that. What an amazing thing. Now God, as the author of that story, has a specific way that he wants that to unfold.
BW (46:57):
But we have the same desire that he does. It’s just that we’re like on the hamster wheel of, oh, let me get to Paradise faster. Mm-Hmm.
BW (47:52):
Hmm. So as the person who’s read the Bible, you know, the last five years, like, all right, well, but I grew up in the church. I’ve been going to Christian schools since seventh grade. Like, so I was in it, I was around it. If there’s somebody who wants to know God but didn’t have that, what would they do? Hmm. Because they’re not, I can open the King James and like, oh, you know, oh, I totally get this right. But I believe as humans, like just on a, on a heart level, we have this story written on our hearts. We want to return to that paradise. We wanna see every tear wiped away. And if what the Bible says is true, that’s exactly what God plans for us. It can give us so much hope. Yeah. So that’s the book.
AJV (48:39):
I hope that it sells millions of copies and I hope that it gets in hands, the hands of millions of people. But I know it’s in my hands, it’s on my bedside and it’s gonna be one of my first reads of 2023. And I would encourage any of you listening, if that sounds appealing to you, to get to see, you know, the work of a first time author to bring this out, but also this really creative and unique depiction of how do we take these pop cultural references and movies and shows and love stories that we’re so accustomed to and start, how do we apply this and learn about the Bible? Then that might be a book for you. So Bob, tell people where can they go to order a copy of the book and where can they go to learn more about you?
BW (49:20):
Yeah. Best place is just bob wheatley.com. Have everything for you there, Bob wheatley.com. You can place an order. We are also given away the audiobook completely free for anybody that pre-orders. So depending on when you listen to this it’s probably still gonna be available for you. Just go to bob wheatley.com. If you place that order, it’ll be super easy right there on the homepage. First name, email your receipt number, and then boom, you have an additional five hours of my voice. So hopefully that’s not a detractor. Maybe I should
AJV (50:01):
So I love that y’all check out Bob. Go to bob wheatley.com. You can order a copy of our Heart’s Desire and if you do it as a presale you’re gonna get a free copy of the audiobook so you can listen and give the copy away. But if you also just wanna learn more about Bob and his story you can get all of his social media handles on his website. We’ll also put all of those in the show notes. Bob, thank you so much. It was so awesome to have you on the show to hear about the journey, but also learn about the book. I’m so excited for you. I hope this gets in the hands of exactly who needs it. We love you, we support you and to everyone else we’ll catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand. We’ll see you later.