Ep 361: Sales Enablement for Beginners | Ben Rigsby Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
So I was recently having this super insightful conversation with a friend of mine talking about sales enablement. Now I’ve been in sales for a really long time. In fact, at my core, more than any other title, professional title that I hold the one that I really hold the most and the one that I love the most is salesperson. Like. So like, I love sales, I’m into sales. I started in sales. I’m still in sales today, to be honest. But this term sales enablement was like, what is that like, fancy term? And it was so interesting to talk about the, you know, I guess today old school sales process that we’re used to in the offline world, right? So it’s, you know, anything from, you know, the introduction to the questioning and overcoming objections, which apparently people don’t use objections anymore.
AJV (00:58):
Now they’re called reservations and I’m not really a PC person. So a lot of these, I’m like, okay, let’s just call it what it is, right? But objections, reservations, whatever you wanna call it, closing. Apparently people don’t use the term closing anymore. But we’re asking for the business, right? And then we’re asking for referrals. We’ve got the presentation with all these things, but that’s in an offline world. But an online world, this term sales enablement is like a really important term. As we drift further and further into this world and we’re finding our clients somehow in a digital space, right? Even if we meet them offline and you know, the real world, at some point they’re looking at your website, they’re looking at your content, they’re checking you out on social media, they’re going through your LinkedIn profile, and there is this online component that that is an ever present and probably ever-growing.
AJV (01:51):
Part of how we attract, nurture leads into clients, right? And then clients into forever clients is the plan. So I was having this conversation with my friend Ben and I thought there were some really cool takeaways that I would put in a little video and share them with you. So here’s a couple of my takeaways from my conversation with Ben. Number one is that lead captures surprise, surprise are the number one best option for growing your email list. People are no longer interested in just subscribing to something where they might in hopes get good information one day. So the idea of, Hey, you just give me your email, I’ll add you to my list, I’ll add you to my easing. Like, that’s not a thing if you weren’t aware, right? And you actually do wanna collect emails,
AJV (02:58):
I’m just saying at the end of the day, you don’t want people to just follow you on social media. You want to turn those followers on social media into emails that live on your email list that you can actually build real relationships with through your own natural correspondence. Rather through a blog or a podcast or an easing, whatever it is you have them subscribe to. You need possessions of those emails. Cuz if you just have followers on social media, you are, it’s rented real estate, right? Those are not your followers, those are Instagram’s followers. Those are TikTok followers. Those are not yours. So we’ve gotta get ’em off of social and into your email list. And so the best way to do that is to offer a lead capture where it’s enticing enough, it’s valuable enough where you’re going. Yeah, I’m gonna give you my private information, my email address in exchange for whatever promise you hold into this.
AJV (03:59):
Something. It could be a webinar, it could be a P D F, it could be a research study. That’s what we do. It could be some sort of, you know, free call. It could be a variety of things, could be an ebook, the list. We could go on and on and on here. Private interviews. I, I’ll stop with ideas, but what do you have to give someone an exchange for them giving you their email address that is a lead capture that would live on your website. That is something you can promote on social media that can live on, you know, the right hand side of your blog. That can live in a lot of different places. You could advertise that on a podcast. It can live in a lot of different places, but it’s, someone’s going to go to somewhere, click something, give your email address and then you have to be able to deliver them information.
AJV (04:47):
Now in an offline world if you’re going, wow, that sounds like a lot, that, that sounds like a lot of technology cuz it is. In an offline world, let’s just say that you are a speaker or you do presentations. One of the easiest things you can do to have a lead capture is to just say, Hey, if you liked my presentation today and you would like a copy of my slides, bring me your business card and I will email you the slides. Guess what? That too is a form of a lead capture. So let’s change the way we think about it. Yes, it can be through funnels and online correspondence and webinars and all those things. Yes, it can, right? But it can also be really simple in an offline setting to still nurture the sales enablement process where you’re getting leads that you can then, you know, turn into fans and customers for a lifetime. So there’s lots of different ways of doing, but if you’re low tech, which is totally fine, just think about what can I give people just in exchange for their business card. People do have those
AJV (05:57):
Mostly today. And if not, just say hey, and if you, and if people don’t have their business cards, you could again, I’m trying to keep it low tech for the non-techies. Just go, Hey, I have a signup sheet in the back of the room. Just give me your name and your email and I will email you X, y, and Z. So it can be simple, it does not have to be high tech if you are not there yet. There are many ways to do this, but then you still have to have them stored somewhere. And yes, you could just put ’em in your outlook contacts if you want, right? You could just add ’em to your LinkedIn profile if you want. Now there are more advanced ways to do that, but there’s some low tech ways. The most important thing is how are you capturing contact information so that you can stay in touch with people in an online world in the sales enablement process.
AJV (06:44):
So that was the first thing, right? I think that’s really important cuz we talk a lot about it in the online world with e-books and webinars. But I wanted to say there was a way to do it in the offline world too. From stage at a Chamber of commerce meeting and a keynote with thousands of people. You don’t have to go high tech, you can just say, bring me your business card or sign up in the back of the room. Give me your name and email. I will send you this. The most important thing is the this, whatever that is, needs to be something of high value, right? So what information do you have that people want? And that is your need capture in exchange for an email address high level. Okay, we can move on now,
AJV (07:26):
And I actually wrote down this quote and I thought this was so good. And he said, the more that you ask someone else to do, the less likely they are to become a customer of yours, ma. So good. Such a good reminder. I’m gonna say it again. The more you ask someone else to do, the less likely they are to become a customer of yours. So good. So think about it. If you are techy and you have all of the, you know, backend automation set up, think about the things that you’re asking people for. Are you making them answer 5, 10, 15 questions in order to get to the next step? Because again, the more you ask someone to do, the less likely they are to become a customer, right? We know that in terms of the sales enablement process and lead captures online we’re going first name and email.
AJV (08:20):
That’s as much as we’re gonna ask from you. I know plenty of people who don’t even worry about the first name. Just give me your email because the least amount of information is going to get the highest conversion. Now, there is a pro to doing that for lead following, right? So, so for emails, but there’s another process that you really wanna consider if you’re actually having people request a call. Because if you’re going, Hey, just give me an email and I’ll, you can request a free call or you’re getting something free, then you really do wanna have a whole nother conversation with, Hey, you’re not asking for emails. This is no longer a lead capture. What you’re doing now is you have an application and that is a qualifying list. So in the offline world, how I would sit down and go, you know, you know, tell me what you’re looking for.
AJV (09:05):
What are you currently using? What do you like about that? Is there anything you would change about that? Who’s involved in these decisions? That’s an offline application, right? That’s an offline qualifying set of questions. Online. You have applications, which could be called intake surveys, they could be called assessments, you can call ’em whatever you want their applications. And that’s going, Hey, what’s your industry? What’s your title? What was your revenue last year? You know, who are you currently using? What are your goals in the next six months? All of those things, those are qualifying questions, right? This is a sales high level capital word here, sales enablement process. So let’s don’t be confused with what we’re doing in order to actually have someone on the phone to convert them to be a raving fan and customer. So there are marketing, which is you’re just trying to get emails, which is the least amount of information as possible, is gonna give you the highest conversion that’s on the marketing front.
AJV (10:06):
Then you’ve gotta think about sales. And for that, you don’t wanna be getting on the phone with people who aren’t truly good prospects for your service. And I didn’t say good prospects now or later. Just good prospects. You should. And we’ll have plenty of calls with people who aren’t a fit right now. That doesn’t mean they won’t be a fit in the future, just like offline sales, right? That is the whole process of sales nurturing. It happens offline and online. So we just wanna make sure we have qualifying questions that go, you’re a good fit for what I do and we’re a good fit for what you’re looking for. Let’s talk. Right? So that’s an application completely different than, Hey, give me the least amount of information as possible, which is going to result in the highest conversion, which is first name or email, or just email.
AJV (10:53):
So again, you just kind of have to know what you’re looking for. We even say we have some funnels where we split test of going, Hey, how, how are we doing with just first name and email? And then we go first name, last name, email. And sometimes we even go first name, last name, email, phone number, because if we don’t have a phone number, there’s just so much we can do with email clutter. So there’s all different types of ways of going about it. But in general, one, you’re trying to grow your email list. The other, you’re trying to get qualified emails for marketing and then you’re doing qualified leads for sales. Think about those in three very different categories, right?
AJV (11:41):
Three different things with three different sets of information, sales enablement. Okay, moving along here,
AJV (12:42):
Marketing’s job is to serve up qualified leads for the sales team. So the sales team can have good conversations and find the right fit for the right person and convert them into being hopefully again, a lifelong customer, a raving fan. And that’s a really important job. So if we’re not getting great qualified, you know, leads from the marketing department, sales doesn’t do their job very well. And if sales has been converting, then we gotta look at like where are the leads coming from? Is it a sales problem as a marketing function? They go together, they’re not separate. And marketing and sales are a union. This is a marriage because the whole point of marketing is to provide good qualified leads to help the sales team and sales team job is to do an amazing job and deliver a great service so that the customer goes, yes, that is what I wanna do.
AJV (13:39):
I do wanna buy your services and your products. Here’s my money. Right? So those two things have to work together. So just ask yourself, how often do my sales marketing team talk, collaborate, communicate, brainstorm, and give feedback all? How often are they sta sharing? How often are we doing this together? Because it’s gotta be all the time, right? Just a great reminder. And then one last thing here is that communication. I love this. I thought this was so good cuz we’re all about lifetime value at Brand Builders Group. We’re constantly just looking at how do we create products and services where our customers want to be a part of this for a lifetime, right? It’s not about like, how do we hold you to your contract? It’s not about that, although, right? Those are things a part of business, but it’s like, well, how do we create a program? How do we create a membership, a service where you go, I want to be a part of this, right? That’s lifetime value. That’s how we interpret that, right? It’s a life of the time of a customer who’s with you. And the number one thing that improves lifetime value is communication with your customers. So couple of quick things here. Just really
AJV (14:50):
Quick tips. It’s like during your customer onboarding, just make sure you’re asking what’s their communication preference? Like, what do they actually prefer, right? Do they prefer phone calls, texts, emails, like what’s best for them? And just simply asking that question allows you to cater the communication experience so they actually receive your communication, right? If somebody is not checking emails ever, or you’re just getting spammed, there is no communication even though you’re making a attempts. Same thing. It’s like if you’re blowing someone up in text and they’re like, oh my gosh, just stop. I only use this for personal and they just opt out, right? Or maybe somebody just actually wants to talk to be like, Hey man, I just, I’d love to hear from someone every so often. These are the things that will just make our communication efforts more streamlined, more targeted, thus more successful. And the number one thing to improve lifetime value is communication. Good, healthy communication. So simple tip, during onboarding, ask them what is their number one preference of how they want to receive communication from your company, right? So simple things, important things, they will make a difference. They’re gonna make a difference for you. Hope you enjoy this.
Ep 360: Business Automation: What You Need To Know So You Know What To Automate with Ben Rigsby
AJV (00:02):
Hey y’all, this is AJ Vaden here and welcome to another episode on the Influential Personal Brand. And y’all, I’m so excited that I get to have such a good close personal friend on the show today. Before I give a formal introduction to Ben Rigsby, Ben and I are an EO together. So if you ever heard of eo, the Entrepreneur’s Organization, so, and I talk about a good post personal friend, I know all his dirty secrets for the most part, at least professionally I know it’s professional, dirty secrets and he knows all of mine. And so that gives us a good, healthy mutual level of accountability with each other. And also we get to see each other on a monthly basis. And so when I talk about like I am bringing in someone who is incredibly skilled at what they do, I say that as a firsthand perspective.
AJV (00:52):
I have also been a client of bins and I have seen him grow and exit a business and grow a new business. And I’m just so honored that he said yes to come on the show today. Probably a little bit of peer pressure made him do that. So grateful for that too. And so lemme formally introduce him. And then we’re gonna kick it off. But before I do a formal introduction, I need to tell you why you wanna stick around. And as I was talking to Ben, I was like, there’s so many things we could talk about, but what should we talk about today? And he’s the one who said, well, here are the three things that we do really, really well. And I was like, yes, those are the things we should talk about. And so here’s what we’re gonna talk about today.
AJV (01:33):
We’re gonna talk about if you are a person or a business who needs help with lead generation, this is an episode for you. If you are someone who is trying to improve your lifetime value of your customers, then this is probably an episode for you. And if you were someone who is trying to speed up the sales process and get people from point A to point Z just a little bit faster, in a more efficient and effective manner, then this is probably an episode that you want to stick around four. So with that said, I will give you some of the formal accolades of my friends, Ben, and then I will tell you something that he left off of this beautiful bio investment bay that I think is the most important of all. So Ben is the founder of Movement marketing.
AJV (02:22):
He serves as the creative, strategic and technical lead for design motion, graphics development and product innovation. I will tell you also, it’s he’s not just someone who leads those things. Ben is that he is certified and all different types of things. It’s like every single time I ask my question, he’s like, oh yeah, I know Domo. Oh yeah, I’m certified in HubSpot. Oh yeah, I do. I was my, I was a photography major. Oh yeah, I can do video editing. Oh yeah, I can build a website. And I’m like, you, and when do you have time to learn all this stuff? So he doesn’t just lead it, he’s the practitioner of it. And I, I, I think that’s a really important part of this. You are also like, not just at movement, but in his former business, they were an award-winning an award winning creative digital agency on tongue tied here.
AJV (03:13):
But I think it’s a really important thing to mention. It’s like when we talk about like how all of these things work together in this digital marketing space. I think digital marketing has a very broad umbrella of things to talk about. And what I love most about Ben is that it really is about how to use digital marketing for business. And I think that’s really important. It’s not just about how to make things pretty, it’s about how do you make them efficient and effective and so that you are improving lifetime value and you are being a more efficient and effective business. And a lot of this comes down to business automation. And I think then you are one of the best people and most robust skills of someone who is well versed in true business automation. And so that’s a huge part of what we’re gonna talk about. And then what he just always so conveniently leaves out of all of his bios is that he’s also got this wicked professional dance backgrounds. And I don’t know why you keep denying this part of your life is my favorite part, but you were on tour with some pretty big people Who’d you go on tour with?
BR (04:20):
We won’t name names, but to your point, yes. I did have a previous life of mine growing up as a male dancer, which is how I met my wife. So thank you for that entire history of my childhood. Yes,
AJV (04:37):
Well you can just go to YouTube and you can assert Ben Rigsby dance videos and I’m sure that you will find some
BR (04:45):
That’s, that is,
AJV (04:48):
And when you say male dancer, just to clarify
BR (04:53):
Professional’s, no polls. No polls, yeah.
AJV (04:59):
Ben, to the show, thank you so much.
BR (05:02):
Thank you. Thank you for having me. That was the most professional opening that I’ve ever seen, so very much appreciate that.
AJV (05:08):
Oh, I’m so excited because I know that you know so much and I also, you’re so humble about it and you never are the first one to go, oh yeah, that’s what we do. Like, you almost never raise your hand and say, I know how to do that. Although that is what you know how to do. And so this is just an amazing opportunity for me to borrow your brain and your expertise for the benefit of our audience today. And so I’m gonna let you pick like out of these three topics that we kind of said, like improving lifetime value increasingly generation and sales enable it and ma enablements with helping speed up the sales process. Like what do you find that most of the companies and most of the clients that you’re working with today, where do you think most people are struggling most right now?
BR (05:55):
Yeah, no, totally. That’s a, that’s a fantastic question. So I would lean in probably in the lead generation area. And it’s, it is not necessarily for the lack of lead generation, but it is purposeful lead generation. So, you know, you look at what’s out there today with social and search and paid and organic email marketing networking. I mean, all of those things are channels and so many more kind of fall into the realm of lead generation. But so often do we walk into situations and the clients don’t have a leads process to begin with. And so understanding, and it’s not like, Hey, we gotta go do six months worth of work. It can take 30 minutes, quite honestly to understand what your leads process is. Because if you are a business owner or you’ve been around business, you have an idea of how you move people throughout the sales cycle. But I do think it begins with documenting and understanding what a leads process looks like. That way as leads start coming in the door, you can automate that, which allows you to scale much, much faster. So I would say leaning in with lead generation is probably where we start. Then we move into how do we actually close those leads faster and then keep those leads longer? Or those customer,
AJV (07:14):
Can you pause right there? Cause I, I don’t wanna skip over this because I know this, but I imagine a lot of people listening are going lead process, leads process mm-hmm.
BR (07:42):
Yeah, absolutely. If you think about an individual and their desire to purchase, they go through all kinds of different phases. They go through some research phases, they go through some qualification phases of are you the right organization, brand, individual that I want to do business with? And then they move into the purchasing process, the procurement cycle. And so if you think about people as they’re introduced to your brand, those people are gonna be some semblance of a lead. They might be the marketing qualified lead. They might have raised their hand and say, Hey, I want to talk to you. I’m interested in your services. We might move them into what we call a sales qualified lead. Then they go into the deal kind of discussion. And those are where we start to understand opportunities. Close one close loss. So like in my world, it usually goes something like a lead to a marketing qualified lead to a sales qualified lead to an opportunity to close one close lost in that situation. And a lot of times we’ll try to move ’em straight from lead into they didn’t close with us. And that is where people start to get frustrated and say, my lead gen isn’t working. And the reality is, it’s not that it’s not working, it’s just that, that we’re missing like three steps in the middle there and we’re wasting a whole bunch of time in that process.
AJV (09:01):
I think that’s most people’s challenge in general is they’re talking to a bunch of people who are never going to buy from them, correct? Right. And so we do something, and I’ll talk about that in a second to help qualify leads, but any best practices and going, all right, you’ve got a lead mm-hmm.
BR (09:27):
A hundred percent. We just worked with an organization on this and, and I should caveat, every organization’s gonna be slightly different, right? So take these examples with a grain of salt. But if you think about your ideal customer a lot of people call that their icp, some people call it their avatar, some people call it their personas. It’s all the same thing. But if you think about who that individual is, what that business is, revenue size, people size, geographic regions, right? There’s probably some common denominators across all of these ideal client profiles that you have. So when you’re thinking about lead captures, and when I say lead capture, that can be online chat, that can be a phone call, that can be a form fill, that can be a gated download, right? There’s so many lead captures. It’s trying to find what are those least common denominators that apply across all your ideal client profiles.
BR (10:18):
And I’ll take revenue as an example, add that question somehow, some way into your lead capture so that you can immediately start to kind of distill down good leads from junk leads from, Hey, these are referral leads that I need to pass out to a partner. So quite simply, if somebody comes in, fills out a form and says, Hey, I’m pre-revenue, maybe that is your sandbox, and that’s what you focus in. So now you know that’s a qualified lead if pre-revenue is not your sandbox or your ideal client profile, you know, to push them to a different resource, right? And so it helps, it’s it’s little tips and tricks like that along the leads process that help hone in your focus to your point and, and saves you time from not talking to individuals that are never gonna do business with you or focusing all of your time on individuals that you truly do have an opportunity to impact. So that’s just a quick example right there.
AJV (11:17):
No, I think that’s really good. And it’s like, you know, a part of I think why this process is really so important for all, especially if you’re selling any sort of high dollar ticket offering. So anything more than a couple of hundred bucks would qualify as a high dollar ticket offering where if somebody can’t click a button and go, I’m gonna buy that, and they’re gonna require conversation, you gotta have some sort of lead qualifying process. And so you know, a form fill, it could be a simple form. We use an application, so we have like a formal application and we went through this process of trial and error which, you know, highs and lows of that. But we recently just got it super tight. So, and I, I would love for you to share some, you know, experiences of what you’ve seen that works on applications and forms and, you know, and one of the things that we discovered, and I I’ve got two comments here that I’d love your insight on for the benefit of everyone who’s listening is one length of forms, length of applications, because we’re so data heavy when we launched our initial application, which was two years ago, so we’ve learned a lot, we’ve come a long way.
AJV (12:27):
It was a 13 minute long application and initially we convinced ourselves that it was like, well, if they’re gonna stick around that long, then they’re super qualified. And what we were finding is about we were getting about a 55% application completion rate, then six months ago we did like a whole revamp of all of our things and reevaluated everything as a more mature place in our business and said, 13 minutes, gosh, why is anyone filling this out? And we reduced it to three minutes. And so now we can fill out this application, it’s about seven questions, three minutes or less, and now we’re at 94% application completion. And that’s a major thing of just going, I wish somebody would’ve said, you’re out of your mind who has 13 minutes to answer a bunch of questions for a stranger so that they can get on a call with a stranger.
AJV (13:25):
And so some best practices around stuff like that I think would be so helpful of what’s a good link, what questions you should ask. Anything like that would be so helpful as we talk about this leads process. And then the second thing I wanna make sure you hit on is you mentioned this is revenue. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (14:09):
They were really nice and said, but hey, I’m not gonna fill out this application, so I guess I’m never gonna get a call. And so then I was like, well, here’s the direct Kaley link. I’d like for you to schedule a call so you can tell us why not. Because it’s so short and it was so fascinating and the, I thought it was a really interesting thing of, and we’re getting like a 94% completion rate, so it’s a very few people who aren’t completing it, but is there a another route for the people are going, Hey, it’s like, I don’t wanna fill out your application. So it got me wondering what question did they get to that made them go? And most of it is income or revenue. And so it’s kind of like rero. And so when we look at the dropout on our forms, our applications, most of them drop out when we start asking any sort of financially related questions because now pretty educated consumer, they’re going, oh no, I’m getting qualified, right?
AJV (15:07):
It’s good, bad and different, whatever it is. But I think it’s important. It’s like there’s limited resources for all companies to some degree. And so thoughts around all these things, what are the good questions? Dropout rates, questions around money, if you’ve seen any trends or best practices. And then in general, for the very few, now again, I’ve only had one email ever who have said, I won’t fill out your application, so I guess I’m not gonna get a call. But also just any thoughts around that for maybe someone who does have a very sophisticated, busy time limited customer profile where they’re just like, they’re not likely going to fill it out. Any suggestions around that? So I know that’s loaded and that’s a lot.
BR (15:49):
That’s fair. It’s fair. And, and I would caveat with, with this statement, there’s always gonna be exceptions to the rule. So you wanna solve for the 80 to 90%, right? There’s gonna be people that fall outside of that, which it sounds like that individual might have. And if that individual turned into a great customer of yours, that’s when you use that example as how should we look at this onboarding experience a little bit differently because we might be missing out on others. So that’s just a, a little pin in that one. But in terms of length, we stick to the rule of thumb, like if it’s a form, less is more. The, the old kind of rule of thumb was six fields or less to get those to get those leads in the door. Now there’s new technologies out there. I just, I was looking at one the other day, clear bit if anybody has looked into that, where it can allow you to accept even less fields and pulls back all the information by looking at aggregate sites like LinkedIn, crunch Base, all that kind of stuff.
BR (16:48):
So we stick to the rule of thumb of less is more, what is the most pertinent information that we’re looking for in that first touch experience? And that might be some qualification questions. Then as time goes on, you can employ something that’s called progressive forms. So as they come back, now that you know that you know their name, you know their email address, you’ve set a little cookie on their computer without them knowing it sounds horrible, but that’s just the way the world works. Now, you can ask them slightly different questions and you can start to build out that customer profile over time without overwhelming them right out of the gate. I think you bring up something that’s really interesting. The more work you ask someone else to do, the less likely they are to become a customer of yours. So it is how do you take the friction out of that experience?
BR (17:36):
And that is less is more. And when they fill something out, you wanna make sure that there’s a value add on the other side that’s worth it for them to give you some of that information. I think you, you also bring up a great point. Anything around budgets or dollars on the first date is dicey, right? It’s like as soon as you ask the budget question, you’ve now skipped to the third date and that person is not ready for that situation. So revenue is an easier thing to ask than, what’s your marketing budget? What’s your sales budget? What do you expect to purchase? Another one would be timeline. What’s your timeline on this? Like if you’re looking to transform who you are as an individual, what’s your timeline? Like sense of urgency? So there are, there are less riskier questions to ask. It could be, how large is your company?
BR (18:29):
Is it zero to 10 people? 10 to 20? I get asked that question all the time when I’m signing up for a service. So that feels like that’s just a default one. So there certainly are some riskier questions, budget and revenue, and there’s some lighter questions like size, industry perhaps urgency, timelines, items like that. But we really do stick to this concept of less is more. And that is sometimes a fight with, with a client. And I say a fight, but it’s, it is a good argument to have because again, there’s always gonna be exceptions to the rule. So like if you have a very in depth application where you need to know information, well, maybe that’s not the first step. Maybe that is the second step. But the first step is we’re warming them up to, hey, now that you’ve filled this out, here’s how our process unfolds.
BR (19:18):
And we explain that before they’re just launched into that experience. You mentioned something quite beautiful, which is analytics around every single one of those questions. And so you can take the subjectivity out of the mix by saying, Hey, they made it to question eight, but on question nine, that’s where we’re seeing the biggest drop off. Why is that? And so now you can start to ask some introspective questions of, is it the question? That’s the first thing we would change is let’s just change the question, see if they get past eight. Now, if they don’t, then now we’re dealing with length and time invested versus value received. And so those are really important concepts, especially on a first touch conversion. Because those are the ones you want to make super, super easy for that individual to get hooked into that. Now you can nurture some of those, those harder or more time intensive asks down the road. I don’t know if I answered any of your questions,
AJV (20:15):
BR (20:43):
It does
AJV (20:44):
To be easy. And so one other quick question on this because I think this is really good. I wrote down is like clearly less is more, but you said six fields or less mm-hmm.
AJV (21:34):
So that we can try some phone outreach, right? Cause you, you we’re interested enough to fill out this form, we want a little bit more. So I’m curious around any data around what’s it like between just an email, first name and email, first name, last name, email, add in phone number. Like what are the potential drop off opportunities of getting people to fill out your forms for people who are going, all right, I need to start collecting emails, I need to start doing something, but what’s the bare minimum and what should I really be asking for?
BR (22:05):
Totally. And so this is where we, in our minds, this is where it draws directly back to the leads process. So you just mentioned there’s, there’s multiple different ways for an individual to fill out a form diff varying links, right? For entry points into bbg. And so in that situation, what I heard is we’ve got some marketing qualified forms, we’ve got some sales qualified forms. So obviously the ones where people are raising their hand and saying, Hey, I want to talk to you. Those are gonna be some forms that have some additional fields because we need to make sure that we’re the right fit. But they’re willing to do it because they’ve already researched your brand, they’ve looked at your material enough, they’ve seen you speak, whatever it might be, and now they really do want to do business with you. So they’re willing to go the extra mile.
BR (22:52):
Some of those lighter forms are gonna be more on the leads or marketing qualified leads to where I’m just signing up for your email newsletter. Like, I just wanna see some content from you. And those are the individuals that quite honestly, we are probably wasting our time talking to right now. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (24:22):
No, I think that’s really important and insightful for people who are figuring out this digital part of their business in terms of lead generation of going, you gotta have marketing forms and then there’s sales forms and think about those as two completely different things. And on a sales form, you likely want your phone number, right? It’s like
BR (24:43):
A hundred percent like
AJV (24:44):
You, but I think those are just, those are so simple. Often they get bypassed and they’re like, oh, I only need one form on my website. It’s like, not really.
BR (24:55):
No, no, no, no. You
AJV (24:56):
Kinda have multiple points of entry. Some are just for marketing and I love that. Just a very distinction of what are your marketing forms where you’re just trying to get their emails for nurture and then what are your sales forms where it’s like, no, like there’s an opportunity here. We’re going to talk to you, we’re gonna offer a call. Right?
BR (25:12):
That’s exactly right. And, and honestly like we will even choose channels matched to forms. So like if we’re spending dollars, so paid advertising, we wanna drive a little bit higher to that SQL side of the house. Because at the end of the day, what the organization is looking for is revenue growth. And they don’t really care as much about the leads coming in the door. They really care about close one opportunities. And so when we’re spending dollars with Google or Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn, whatever the channel is, that is when we’re driving more qualified forms, going to very specific landing pages away from the marketing side of the house, more on the organic side, so social seo, search items like that, even email marketing, that is when we start to drive a little bit more of that marketing side of the forms, knowing that we’re gonna nurture them over a longer period of time. So that’s it, it’s, again, there’s exceptions to all of these rules, right? But like, just by default, that’s how we think about it until we get into conversations and unpack something and we, we say, oh, okay, well we need to do something a little bit different here because of this one, one specific thing in this client’s business. So
AJV (26:26):
Yeah, I think that’s really, I think that’s really good. And if for all of you out there, here going, what is he talking about with all these words? So sql, sales qualified lead, right? So paid media, paid traffic, make sure you’re collecting more data because it needs to lead to revenue for your return on investment. This is why I wanted you to come on the show. It’s like you are talking about a really advanced process here with like really creating the dig digital infrastructure for a thriving sales business in a marketing business. And this is a lot of work, right? This is not for the faint of heart.
BR (27:00):
It is. It is. And it, it’s, it’s, it is a process that you can certainly crawl, walk, run into and one that, to your point, we’re saying a lot of acronyms, right? We’re a bunch of geeks that found our cool doing what we’re doing, and we’ve, this is, this is our world, right? And so often and I talking to somebody that is like, what the heck are you talking about? So thank you for breaking that down. And you can certainly start very, very small and grow it over time into, into the behemoth that you know, you want it to become.
AJV (27:32):
That’s good. So, okay, so now we’ve got leads, right? Yeah. Let’s say, okay, now we’ve got leads. So give us some best practices, some highlights of now how do we make this leads process the most efficient and effective that it can be to go, all right, leads in the door, now they’re a customer.
BR (27:50):
Yes. So a lot of times there’s like this magic handoff point of lead came in the door, we’ve qualified that lead and now we’re handing it over to sales. And we talked a little bit about this at the beginning of this conversation. And you know, if you think about any organization, it can be one person in the organization or it can be 5,000 or more people in the organization. Every organization has got some concept of marketing, sales and operations. It can be the solo entrepreneur that’s doing all three that they don’t even know they’re doing all three. But the reality is that persists across every thriving business that exists. And so there is this handoff going from marketing to sales, and usually the, the clientele that we walk into, there is not a defined leads process, which creates some chaos in that situation.
BR (28:40):
And the chaos occurs when leads are coming in the door that are not ready to purchase or perhaps not the right clientele for us. And the sales team or the sales individual is flooding their time, dealing with individuals that are not ready to close. And it creates this frustration that starts to persist across the business. And so when I say we start with a leads process, it is not only to solve the understanding of who we should nurture to why we should nurture to those individuals and growing those leads in pipeline over time, but it’s also to make that handoff more effective going from marketing into sales. And that one experience can speed up the close rate of your pipeline immensely. I know it sounds crazy, but if you’re focused on the buyer that is ready to buy right now, you can close that individual in a day.
BR (29:31):
If you’re focused on the buyer that isn’t gonna buy from you for six months, you’re gonna be spinning your wheels. And so that is a huge element right there. Then you can start to do things very uniquely. Like we’ve all been in this situation where we’ve been part of sales sequences where you get those 13 emails, those 10 emails that are like, you know, they’ve got the bulleted list and then the final one is you either are stuck under a washing machine or you just don’t want to talk to me, right? Like they’re getting more and more and more creative, right? And so one of the things that we have started to see is this power of CRM technologies, right? Whether you’re using a Salesforce or an active campaign or a Dynamics or a HubSpot or something else, right? But being able to track engagement of individuals in your pipeline is hugely important.
BR (30:25):
And the most simple is, Hey, I just sent an email from my Outlook, you know, email program or from G Suite, I need, did the person ghost me? Did they not, did they not see my email? Why aren’t they picking up my phone call? Having insight into when somebody opened or clicked on something or engaged with a piece of content so you can time your sales follow up right? There is also very important. I have found over my tenure that sales is around timing, having good timing, being able to build relationships, but you gotta meet somebody where they are when they’re ready for that purchase cycle. And so from a sales enablement, it is the one to one emails. I have never really found much success with sales sequences. I know others have, and I’m still trying to unpack why that is and why I haven’t been able to do it well.
BR (31:21):
But the reality is, if you can give a sales team good leads coming in that are ready to purchase, that speeds up that process. And if you can equip that sales team with some technology around understanding engagement of content, of email reads, opens, document reads opens, it equips that sales team to time their follow ups a little bit more effectively and close those deals faster. And so we see, this is crazy, but we have seen when the marketing to sales handoff is perfected, that close rate speeds up by some crazy number like 65 to 70%. It is insane when the synergy is happening between those two pillars in the business.
AJV (32:05):
So what is the one thing or one of the top things that you can do to really better improve that synergy from marketing to sales?
BR (32:16):
So I know I’m a broken record right now, but it is working with the seal sales team to understand the leads process. And, and it it, it is, it’s crazy. But like, if you can bring the sales individual or team or think about it because you’re also the salesperson, why are these sales closing? Why are these sales not closing? You’re gonna pick up, up on patterns that are carrying from one deal to the next, from one customer to the next. And there might be one pattern in your business. There might be 20 patterns in your business, but you can design the leads process to cater to the sales team. So one of the first things we do is we ask, what’s a lead to you? Like, what makes a lead a lead? And you know, you’ll hear conversations around, well, it’s it’s this individual, it’s the owner of the business.
BR (33:07):
They’re this age, you know, it’s this size of an organization. We’re like, cool, cool, cool, cool. All right, let’s talk about your customers. Why did they become a customer? All right, that’s a good story. Why did this customer become a customer? And we start to unpack that and you start to see patterns. And those patterns are gonna be demographic patterns. They’re gonna be behavioral patterns that now you can gain that system and design an entire marketing program to feed those type of leads to the sales team and take everything else and put it over on the sideline and nurture to those individuals over time trying to get them into this side of the house. And so it really is a coordinated effort. I, I am a firm believer that marketing’s job is to serve up sales leads. Like that is marketing’s job 1 0 1. And yes, it is look, tone, feel, it is brand awareness.
BR (34:00):
It is credibility of the brand. It’s all those things, right? Like we, we have to do that. Like that’s just default stuff that we have to go do. But our true job, the job of are we gonna be fired or not fired? Are we gonna be successful or not successful? Is how many leads did we deliver to a sales team that actually closed? And that is why we start with, let’s talk to the sales team, let’s understand the customers, what are good, what are not good, and how do we get more of the good to you? And that’s where we, that’s where we start.
AJV (34:30):
I think that is so incredibly important for anyone listening to just take a pulse on for a second is the best research, the best data you actually already have access to. It’s your clients. That’s right. It’s your customers. I think it’s so easy to get caught up in gotta have the crm, gotta have this, gotta have that. And it’s like we overlook the obvious, which is I need to take a good look at who has purchased from me, why did they purchase? And how do I find more people just like them?
BR (35:06):
You are spot on. Spot on. And, and honestly, the first time we engage, when we find out that somebody doesn’t have a leads process, we wanna see the last two years of customer data. And, and I say customer data, they’re like, what does that mean? I’m like, I just need to see accounts and I need to talk to an accounts person or a salesperson and understand why some of these individuals closed or d or or why they do business with you. So you are spot on because the historical context of that is what you, is the easiest, most impactful thing that you can move forward in the quickest clip. Versus trying to say, all right, let’s go spin up a search campaign, let’s go spin up a new xyz. It’s like, yes, you can go do that, but you should go do this thing first cuz you’re gonna make more money quicker doing that.
AJV (35:54):
Yeah, I think this is really, I think this is just really important for everyone who is going, well, I don’t really have money to go do X, Y, and Z. And it’s like, yeah, but you do have some time to talk to your customers to really focus in on where did you come from? Why were you attracted, why do you buy? And how can I replicate that process? Even if it’s on a very small scale. It’s like how do I replicate that until it’s a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger? You don’t have to have tons and tons of automation to do some of the basics, which is back to you gotta know who your ideal client is and you gotta get really specific on what made them buy, what attracted them. And it’s like, even as you were talking, I was thinking about in my head like, what are the commonalities that we see, the trends that we see in our sales pipeline?
AJV (36:41):
And you know, this is, you know, we consider ourselves sales professionals way before we consider ourselves marketers. Mm-Hmm.
BR (38:02):
It’s so true. It’s so true. And, and even like if you’re thinking about lead captures, like you just said it right there, form fills, right? Somebody’s ready to move on it. So if you don’t have somebody looking at the forms all day long, every day, you might miss that opportunity. And if that is not a possibility for you, that’s when you might step into something like live chat. Cuz it forces the conversation a little bit differently. A click to call forces the conversation a little bit differently. So again, it, it is assessing what your availability is, what your team makeup is, and what are gonna be the best conversion metrics or conversion, I’m sorry, technologies for you in specific circumstances, but you’re right, you’re absolutely right.
AJV (38:43):
Ok. Right. I have three questions and I’m watching the clock intently. I’ll try to make these quick so these can be rapid fire if you want. Do you think that there is an ideal CRM automation software out there in the market today?
BR (38:58):
Yeah, I am biased. I will say that we work with, we work with them all, but the one we prefer to work with is HubSpot. And, and I’ll tell you why and a very quick clip, it’s because it has the crm, it has all of the marketing automation, email, social, all of that stuff built into it and it has all of the sales enablement built into it as well as long as well as customer success. So the reason we like it is because it’s the self-contained system where you don’t have to spend a bunch of time, money or energy doing integrations from one system to the next. It’s all contained. The teams are all working out of it, operations, sales, customer success, marketing and it’s super intuitive for the customer. It’s like WordPress on steroids for a crm. So that’s the one we work with the most. Now we’re also used to working with Salesforce, which that is, that is a b fee tool. So good luck with that one. And then Dynamics as well as some others. So yeah.
AJV (39:57):
All right. So HubSpot is your personal favorite. Okay, the next question I had is for this like Legion and also the sales enablement process of like converting quicker, are you finding that most people are spending money on paid traffic or is it more organic?
BR (40:16):
So it’s been an interesting shift. It really has over this concept of the deprecation of third party cookies compliance, which would be the gdpr the ccpa, all the regulatory stuff that we are now bound to as marketers. I don’t know that I’ve necessarily seen a shift. I have seen, well I haven’t seen a shift per se from paid media to organic, but what I have seen is an, an acceleration of using that historical data and building your own customer list or email marketing list and using that to push out content much more than I have seen going after similar audiences, custom audiences and items like that. So I guess after saying that, yes I have seen a shift going back towards organic moving a little bit away from paid media. Paid media is kind of a dicey thing right now in the sense of you have to have a very strong content game to be really, really effective from a paid media standpoint. So
AJV (41:18):
Yeah, I think that’s wise. And again, I ask because we’re not paid media users, we’ve haven’t had to be, and it’s like we do a little here and we do a little there, but it’s like, it’s not really our thing and it’s, I would prefer it not to be
BR (41:56):
That? Yeah, so subject lines and preview techs are, are gonna be very important. Also, I would suggest if you’ve got a program, most of ’em have it like I would think Constant Contact MailChimps of the world. Of course any of these more CRM heavy type technologies have this concept of AB testing, which is basically send out, you do two variations of it, send it out and it will pick the ones that’s the most top performing and send that one to the rest of your audience. It sounds like used to be AB testing was this concept that people are like, what? I’m gonna pay you a lot of money for that. That sounds awesome. Now anybody can do it. Quite honestly, now what we talk about internally is subject lines be outlandish. Like think of what are more aggressive things that are just gonna get somebody to be like, what? And do a double take on that’s what we want. If it’s an event and you’re saying something like, Hey, come to my event, like that’s not gonna work at all. Like you’ve got exactly what you’re talking about. Like give the best first, put that thing in the subject line and preview text and be a little bit outlandish. You can always pull it back, but start aggressive, see how that looks and then pull it back from there. That’s what’s
AJV (43:12):
That you a little bit, the more outlandish, the more people are going, what’s in here? What is this? What is this about?
BR (43:17):
It’s a hook. Yes. Yeah. Like we’ve pushed out some wild subject lines and I’m like, I’m gonna get in trouble for this
AJV (43:30):
I think that’s awesome. You know, it’s interesting, again, as I’m just like, as you’re talking thinking through like what, what are some of the things that we’re doing? Many things are just the process of trial and error, but the one subject line in our sales pipeline that gets the most clicks and the most replies is one that is called Meet your Chief Strategy Officer. And it’s been so interesting that out of all the ones that one is the one that people are like, what is who, who is it and what, what do they do for me? Yeah, but it’s your chief strategy officer and it’s like just you got, but again, you only know what to use once you really know who your ideal client is.
BR (44:13):
That that is true. That is absolutely true. And I would highly recommend using some tools that allow you to do some AB testing and there’s plenty of, of, of very cost effective tools out there. But I love that because it just leaves you wanting more. Like what do you mean meet my chief strategy officer? And so you’re looking for a hook, that’s all you’re looking for in a subject line.
AJV (44:34):
Love it. Okay. we only have like three minutes left but I wanna make sure we get to touch on lifetime value just a little bit. So what are some ways that we can help grow this, increase this, give us some, give us what you got, what are the I
BR (44:49):
Love it. So the number one thing that I see where customers start to churn or drop off is by lack of communication. And we kind of talked about it a little bit with the application process, right? Like if you throw somebody into something where they have zero familiarity with the odds of them bugging out are gonna get increasingly higher as those experience start to unfold. So what we have seen is when we close one a deal, now let’s, let’s start up some internal communication. Let’s make sure the teams are aware that hey, we just, we got a new customer, we got a new client, whatever we want to call them, new member whatever that is. But then there is a series of marketing nurtures and funnels that now need to go out to that newly added customer or client, kind of giving them an idea of what they can expect over the next couple of days, next couple of weeks, months, whatever that looks like in your process.
BR (45:42):
But we want to foreshadow what the delivery is before the delivery happens, right? And the more communication that we can provide to that individual that feels personal, makes them have an unbelievable experience and people that have an unbelievable experience are gonna talk about it and they’re gonna stay with you for more stuff. And so as we give them that experience, now is our opportunity to introduce some upsell, some cross sell, some other opportunities. We don’t wanna do that right out of the gate cuz that’s just disingenuous and it kind of turns people off. But at the same time, communication, onboarding that client effectively foreshadowing the delivery before the delivery happens. I mean, it’s the simple things in life that can trip us up or make the difference. Like I will tell you in our business at Snapshot, the the first agency that we started it was simply answering the phones.
BR (46:39):
Answering the phones, which is a simple thing. Created an experience that allow clients to come back to us. So it just, communication is everything. Your products are probably awesome, your service is probably awesome. The thing that creates issues in everybody’s world is communication. And so solving that through the customer experience creates happy customers. Happy customers stay with you for a much, much longer period of time. Of course there’s other things you can do, right to extend the lifetime value, but that is where we start is how do we start to automate the onboarding experience for clients?
AJV (47:18):
Oh, that’s good. So alright, same kind of thing. I wanna do rapid fire, best practice for onboarding. Like what, what should happen during the onboarding?
BR (47:26):
So we ask the customer, do you like email, text message or phone call? So let’s dial it into their preference. And we’ve got systems in place that can handle all three of those. So if they’re not an email person and they’re a text message person, all of our communication needs to go through text until it can’t and then it goes through a different channel. So that, that’s where we start is curtailing it to the customer.
AJV (47:52):
Okay, love it. Again, back to the customer, you want good customer experience and you need to ask the customer what you want their, or what they want their experience to be. Mm-Hmm.
BR (48:20):
Late. It is, it is very true. I would tell you if, if once the delivery is fulfilled, like if it’s a product or if it’s on, if it’s an ongoing service, it’s much easier to upsell along that way. But if it is a, a finite, tangible thing, once that thing is in their hands, we might have missed that opportunity. So I usually look at it from the standpoint of just the same as a lead coming in the door to a sales getting closed. There’s, there’s, let’s call it 10 touch points. There’s more, there’s less, right? But once that deal is closed and the product is in hand, there should be touch points along that way. And so once you design what those touchpoints should be, you, it will become clear. This is where we want to introduce similar products, similar experiences, similar services. And what we have found is the more effective communication in that process. You don’t even have to bring it up. The customer brings it up to you and allows you to respond to it as more of a consultant than a salesperson. And when you can start to frame your mindset of sales is just trying to understand the problem that that person is faced with and you have put yourself in a position to offer them a solution, that’s what sales is. And so in that customer onboarding experience, there’s plenty of opportunities to do that as well.
AJV (49:44):
Love that. Okay watching the clock one last question around kind of like lifetime value. What do you think, other than communication and obviously having a good product or service, right? What do you think is the most important thing that companies can do today to increase the tenure of their customer staying with that company?
BR (50:06):
That, that’s a great question. So one of the, one of the big things that we’re constantly looking at, and this is why I don’t believe necessarily that marketing is what it used to be from a marketing, like just events, look, tone, feel, right, brand awareness, all of that. But innovation. So like if you have got a service or a product and you want to keep that customer for longer, you’ve gotta keep innovating that thing, whatever that thing is, and introducing new value. Some of that new value needs to be at a freemium model to keep them engaged. If they’re on a reoccurring revenue model for you, you need to bake that into your process or into your revenue matrix. Some of it is upsell’s opportunity, but I would think outside of communication and outside of building relationships with your customers, it is continuously innovating the products.
BR (51:01):
If you look at any kind of churn that you might be having, the churn is because the problem either is around communication or the person is just either done using your product, has gotten what they needed outta your product and doesn’t need it anymore. So how do you keep that need and that desire there? And that is through introducing new features new concepts, sister products, right? That extend, you know, your your main product even longer. So there’s, there’s things there, but I think in a rapid fire state, I would say innovating on your product,
AJV (51:35):
Ben, this is so good. Like this is so good. Y’all literally just got thousands of dollars of, of free digital marketing advice. And it’s like, I probably took a page and a half of notes and was like, here are three things that our sales and marketing department need to powwow on. This is for new beginners, this is for established companies, this is for companies who are scaling. This information is just so rich. So Ben, if people want to learn more about you and what you do at Movement, where should they go?
BR (52:07):
They should go to make mvmt.com/bbg.
AJV (52:13):
So make movement mvmt.com/bbg and I will put that in the show notes. Y’all check out Ben, his company, his team, they are so awesome. But then also if Ben other than searching you on YouTube or dance videos, if people want to find you and connect with you personally, where should they go?
BR (52:35):
I am avid on Instagram and LinkedIn, so come at me at at ben Rigsby. You’ll find me on both those channels.
AJV (52:45):
Ben. So awesome. Exceeded all expectations. Thank you so much for being so great. Thank and everyone else, stay tuned for the recap of this episode and we’ll catch you next time on the influential Personal brand. See you later, y’all.
Ep 359: Developing a Mindset of Persistence | Annie F. Downs Episode Recap
RV (00:02):
Some of my favorite interviews on this podcast and show are the ones where we get to hear the story about how a mission-driven messenger or personal brand started in the very beginning. And if you haven’t yet, make sure you go back and listen to the interview that I just did with Annie F Downs, because that’s the story that she tells about how she got started, how she made her first dollars. And I, it’s just so, so inspiring and, um, and actually inspired me. And so I’m gonna share with you some of my, some of my thoughts and highlights from, from the show, uh, from that interview. And then also just kind of like some of the things I want to add to it and, and share with you. Um, the very first thing that I wanna do is something very tactical. I wanna share with you some of the data about podcast advertising dollars, um, because that came up in our conversation.
RV (00:53):
She hosts a podcast and she also runs a podcast network. And so we were talking about monetizing a podcast. Um, and so I asked her in the interview, you know, how much do you charge for the ads? And how much can you really make as a podcaster and when do you start making money, et cetera. Um, and, you know, she, she openly admitted. She’s like, I don’t really like know all of those, those specifics, um, you know, off the top of my head. But, um, you know, she threw out some numbers. And, and then, um, we actually, at Brand Builders Group, we have a course called Podcast Power. And you know, this is where we teach people one, one of, we have 14 courses in our full curriculum, right? So our members who are, uh, paying members of our, of our membership community, they get access to 14 courses.
RV (01:35):
And one of ’em is Podcast Power, and we have a whole section in there on advertising dollars. And so I didn’t know the numbers off the top of my head, but I went ahead and went into the course, grabbed that specific section, and I wanted to share a couple of those with you just since it came up in the, in the, in the interview. Um, and it, it admittedly, you know, making money from podcast ads is, is a little bit of like a gray box because it’s, it’s not like it’s, I guess it’s a free market system, right? Like so many things, um, there, there’s not a, a hard and fast rule of how it has to be. Um, it’s driven by supply and demand, and it’s driven by like how many, what your show is about and how much advertisers want you, and they want access to your audience and how convicted they are that your audience is the right fit for them, et cetera, et cetera.
RV (02:21):
So, um, that’s part of what it comes down to. But, um, I did wanna just share with you these are, these are the numbers that we, we share with our paying clients, right? So, and, and if you are one of our members, you can go into podcast Power in our workbook. It’s on page 42, um, of, uh, that workbook’s 137 pages, which, you know, obviously we’ve got lots and lots of content we’re teaching y’all. But, um, so the number that we were using in that conversation with Annie was if you’ll have a podcast that gets about 10,000 downloads per episode, and I loved what she said, and I would edify what she said, that basically the first week, uh, will be a number. So let’s say like 5,000, whatever the number of downloads you get that first week will probably double over the next nine weeks.
RV (03:08):
So if you get 5,000 on the first week, then you probably will get another 5,000 over the next nine weeks. And that’s, we see that to be, you know, about right, too, just like, you know, using rough numbers. So we’ll use 10,000 downloads per episode. Um, right? So if you’re doing an episode every week, that means you’re getting around like 40,000 downloads a month. So that’s a, you know, that might take a couple years to get to give or take some, depending on what your topic is and your, you know, who you are, et cetera, and, uh, your network. But, um, for a 15 second ad, um, and this is what we did, is we sort of pulled together data from our, uh, clients and we work with, you know, some of the biggest podcasters in the world, our clients of ours. And, um, you know, we got hundreds of of members.
RV (03:53):
So we, we see this, but it’s, you know, this is, again, this isn’t like scientific per se. This is our poll of our community to try to put some real numbers to something that’s kind of an obscure conversation. Um, that for a 15 second ad, um, that, uh, if you, if you did four episodes a month, so we’ll just stay there, we’ll just say, if you had 10,000 downloads an episode and then you were doing four episodes a month, an advertiser might pay you around $720 a month, um, which would be, you know, like for four episodes, like $180 per episode. And if you were doing four episodes a month and they wanted, they wanted all four, if they wanted a spot on all four, then you might make $720 per 15 second ad per advertiser, right? So if, if it goes up to a, if a 60, that’s for a 60, a 15 second ad read, if you were looking for like a 62nd ad read, um, those, uh, uh, come out to approximately like $25 each, like, you know, for like a A C P M, right?
RV (05:02):
And so if you go, all right, if we’re gonna have 10,000 downloads per episode, then you would, you, an advertiser might pay, uh, 250 an episode or a thousand dollars a month to be on all four of your episodes. So, you know, Annie off the top of her head, she said, yeah, if you have a podcast that’s getting 10,000 downloads an episode and you have an episode coming out every single week, then you know, I said, what would that podcast make in a year? And she was, she was reluctant to answer, but she threw out a number that was, uh, I think she said like maybe $40,000 a year is what that podcast would make. Um, and you know, when I went and looked up our data and what, what we actually formally teach, um, so we’re seeing around a thousand dollars a month for one 62nd ad read.
RV (05:53):
So that would be $12,000 a year, but that’s only for one 62nd ad read. So if you had three 62nd ad reads, um, in each episode, that would be $3,000 a month or $36,000 a year. So I actually think she was pretty close. I actually think that’s about right. Um, and for those of you that are podcasters are aspiring podcasters, you know, anyone who’s an experienced podcaster knows that if you start the year with 10,000 downloads an episode, it’s gonna grow. And it, it’s always, it’s one of the beauties of the podcasting medium is it’s constantly growing and, um, it’s just a snowball that builds and builds and builds and it’s a really, really beautiful and wonderful medium in that way. So, um, yeah, so that is, uh, you know, a, a good, a good rule of thumb if you get up to a hundred thousand downloads an episode, you know, you multiply that by 10, now you’re talking about making, you know, $10,000 a month per advertiser, uh, which would be like 400.
RV (06:51):
If you had four of those on each episode, that’d be like $400,000 a month or 5 million bucks a year. Like that would be pretty massive. So it may not scale quite up to that, but that’s, you know, you can make real money over it long term. But in the short term, if you’re podcasting, you’re not gonna make much money from advertisers cuz you’re not in front of that many people, right? They’re paying C P m, which is cost per thousand impressions. So you don’t, if you don’t have thousands of downloads, then you’re not getting, you’re not getting many impressions and they’re not gonna be paying you, uh, much for those, right? So, um, that is a little bit of data there. And if you’re an early podcaster, and even if you’re an experienced podcaster, right? Like our, our podcast gets, you know, well north of, of that number, but we don’t, um, we don’t have ads on our show other than our own ads.
RV (07:39):
And so we offer just people, uh, our various free training and we give them a chance to, um, you know, uh, learn from us or engage with us or request a free call at some point. That’s what we really want you to do, right? We want you to go to free brand call.com/podcast and request a call to say, Hey, we’d love to talk to you about what is your dream, what is your vision, um, to build your personal brand and monetize it, and then talk to you about how we do that and how we help people all the way from the biggest personal brands in the world down to people who are just starting out. And we’ve got stuff for, um, every different budget. So anyways, if that’s you, let this be our ad read, uh, here in this and go to free brand call.com/podcast and request a call with us.
RV (08:19):
So I hope that is, I hope that is helpful for you. That was something I wanted to make sure and look up, um, and give to you the, the, the next thing that I was inspired by listening to that, uh, you know, re-listening to that interview, re going over my notes with, uh, uh, Annie and was just, you know, she said something and it was kind of like quick, but she said, get help before you can afford help get help before you can afford help. And this really reminded me of a concept that is in my second book, which is Procrastinated on Purpose, five Permissions to Multiply Your Time. And in that book, which is also based on the, uh, which my, my, my viral TED talk is based on my, my TED Talk’s called How to Multiply Time. Um, we talk a lot about the concept of getting help in your life, um, like extra hands to help you with things and hiring people to do it.
RV (09:15):
And what people always say is they say, I can’t afford it. Like they say, Rory, I would love to hire someone to help clean my house, do my landscaping, edit my videos, write my copy, do my website, et cetera, et cetera. And they say, well, the problem is, I, I can’t afford it. And so I want to reintroduce or remind you, or if you’ve never read my book, um, that second book, the, I want to introduce to you the concept of mvat, M V O T and m OT stands for the money value of time. Now, the, the concept of the money value of time, first of all, should not be confused with the time value of money. The concept of the time value of money is about knowing what is $1 worth today out in the future based on some assumptions of compounding interest.
RV (10:03):
And that’s a powerful concept also, but not what I’m talking about here, right? That’s the time value of money is basically knowing what, uh, an amount of money will be worth at some point in the future, um, based on, you know, compounding interest. M v OT or money value of time is just a very, very, it’s a much simpler calculation and it’s a much simpler assumption and a much simpler thing. It’s a much simpler thing to explain, which is just that all of us have an hourly rate of pay, all of us do. Now, you might not get paid hourly, right? You might be a salesperson on commission, you might be an owner who’s on profits. Um, you, you, you might be, you know, and, and, and an investor who gets dividends, like, uh, we get paid in different ways, but all of us can figure out what our hourly rate of pay is if you just take the total amount of money you earned, right?
RV (11:02):
Whatever you earned in income, and you divide that by the total amount of hours that you’ve worked for a year. Um, and to do it quickly, you know, rough math here is to use the number 2080 for the number of working hours in a year. So if you just approximately, you know, did you take 200 2080? That’s about what HR professionals use to estimate the number of working hours in a year. And if you take that amount and you divide that, uh, take your total income and divide it by 2080, it’ll give you your hourly rate of pay. And what you’ll find is, let’s just say somebody, if, if somebody makes like $150,000 a year, okay? So if you made a $150,000 a year divided by 2080, then that means you make $72 an hour. Let’s say if you make $75,000 a year and you divide that by 2080, that means you make $36 an hour, right?
RV (12:02):
For the, for the, the, the time that you’re working. So here’s the thing, as people always say, I can’t afford it, I can’t afford to hire somebody else, but the the key insight is to realize you already are affording it. You already are affording it. You are paying somebody to do that work. You are either paying someone else at their rate of pay or you are paying yourself at yours. Because if you are using an hour of your time to, to complete any task, I don’t care what the task is. If, if you are completing a task, then the opportunity cost of your time is equivalent to whatever your mvo is, is to say, if, if instead of mowing the yard for an hour, if I took that hour and I use that hour and reinvested it into work and to income generating things on average, that’s the hourly rate of pay I make.
RV (13:00):
So the way to think about it is to realize, you know, if you make $75,000 a year, every hour that you’re doing something is you’re paying $36 an hour to do that task. It’s like a, it’s like a, a price of admission. You’re saying, oh, I’m gonna pay $36 and I’m hiring my, you know, I’m hiring myself to do this. Whereas if I could hire somebody for less than that rate of pay to do that task for me, then I could reallocate that time and I could reinvest that time into things that generate income or generate more money at that rate of pay my mvo or higher. And what you find is that if you do that over the course of time, then your mbot gets higher and higher and higher because you spend more and more of your time. You spend a higher percentage of your time focused on higher income p earning activities, and you spend a lower and lower percentage of your time on non-income producing activities.
RV (13:58):
And then you are you. But that work still needs to be done. It just doesn’t need to be done by you and you’re able to afford it by reallocating your time into higher profit activities. That is the concept of mbot that is, uh, in the delegate chapter, uh, along with another powerful rule called the 30 x rule. In my second book, procrastinate on Purpose, five permissions to Multiply Your Time. But I bring it up here because this is the conversation that Annie was saying is she was saying, I always by help before I can afford help, and that is how it has been with me too. I’ve never felt like I have extra money around to hire the next person. We don’t, but we know we need the help in order to grow. And so what happens is I’m always trying to minimize my lifestyle expenses, right, in order to create more that I can reinvest into hiring people to help us get things done.
RV (14:56):
When you do that over and over and over again, at some point it catches up and now you have people who are getting things done and making things happen, and now you start to make more money and you’re making money off of the system that you’ve built right off of the network or the infrastructure or the, or the organization or the company, because you’ve got a group of people who are all doing things and they’re, you are paying them. That’s, that is what an entrepreneur, that’s what it means to be an entrepreneur. You’re giving life to, uh, jobs around you. You’re a job creator. And Annie’s story was that she, she talked about how she couldn’t even afford to pay her assistant. She could barely afford to pay her assistant. Um, when she first was getting speaking gigs, most of the money was going to the person who was booking the gigs for her. And I’m not saying that I like it. I’m not saying that that’s how it should be. I’m just saying that’s how it is.
RV (15:56):
And if you’re serious about changing the world, if you’re serious about being a mission-driven messenger, if you’re serious about like wanting to do good work in the world, you are gonna have to make sacrifices and you’re gonna have to make short-term sacrifices in exchange for the long-term payoffs that come, which is money, it’s influence, it’s impact, it’s income, it’s purpose, it’s peace. It’s all the things that are these beautiful rewards that show up from, from doing it. But there’s a price that you have to pay right there. There’s, there is sacrifices required. This comes from my first book, take the Stairs, the Pain Paradox. The Pain Paradox says that one of the key mindsets of UL ultra performers, one of the key distinctions that UL Ultra performers have made is they realize that, that the short-term easy leads to the long-term difficult. Meanwhile, difficult short-term choices lead to easy, long-term consequences.
RV (16:55):
And so you gotta make that choice. And that pulls me right into, you know, the third thing I wanted to share with you about what it takes to make it on this journey as a mission-driven messenger. And at the very end of the interview with Annie, I said, Hey, if there was somebody out there right now who’s in, you know, struggling in that moment, what would you tell? What would you tell them? And effectively what she shared is you have to make a decision that you’re not gonna quit at some point in your career, at some point in your life, you have to resolve, you have to conclude. You, you have to come to a, a summary analysis that says, I will not be stopped. I will not quit. I will not give up. I will not abandon. I will stay, I will fortify, I will edify, I will solidify this commitment.
RV (17:57):
I’m not going anywhere. You can’t get rid of me, right? There’s no one in this world who can stop you except you. You are the one ultimately who gives up. You’re the one who ultimately fires yourself. You’re the one who ultimately calls it quits. No one else can do that for you. They can bounce you around from different opportunities and close certain doors, but at the end of the day, you are the one that decides if you’re gonna be successful or not. And you decide and you resolve that you’re gonna keep going even when it’s hard. You, you have to, you have to reach this point in your life. You have to reach this time where you say, I don’t care if it’s difficult, I’m gonna succeed. Even if it’s difficult. I don’t care if it’s inconvenient. I’m gonna succeed even if it’s inconvenient. I don’t care if I’m having a hard time affording it.
RV (18:45):
I don’t care if there’s rejection, I don’t care if there’s fear. I don’t care if I am tired, if I’m exhausted, I don’t care. I am going to rise above that. I am going to succeed in spite of that, I am going to do it anyway. And that is what it takes. That is what it takes to be successful in this industry or any industry. It is that personal resolve that, that discipline, that commitment, that vision and that that persistence to just say, I am going to rise above all that. If the world throws this and that and whatever at me, it doesn’t matter. I will not be stopped. You can’t stop me. I’m going to do everything in my power. Then I’m gonna find a way or I’m gonna die trying. Nobody is gonna wave their wand over you and say, you deserve to be a a messenger.
RV (19:34):
You deserve to be an author. You deserve to be a speaker. Right? You, if you’re waiting for that, you’re gonna wait your whole life. Stop waiting for that and go get it and decide. The only person who waves that wand is you. And you. You wake up and you say, this is what I’m gonna do with my life. I’m gonna inspire people, I’m gonna help people. I’m gonna make a difference. And I will not be stopped. I might get rerouted, I might get tired, I might have setbacks. It might be hard, it might be difficult, inconvenient, uncomfortable, challenging, and it might be scary, but it doesn’t matter. This is the life that I choose for myself. I am in charge and I have a future that I’m pursuing and I am writing my story and I am the author and I decide that this is how it’s going to be. I’m gonna make it. Even if it’s hard, nobody else can do that for you except you.
RV (20:41):
And that is the power that you do have. That power. And, and listening to Annie’s story was just such a great fresh reminder of that to me, right? She was a four-time author, right? She had an agent and four book deals and she could barely, she was barely making it. And now, you know, you see her, she’s on stage in front of thousands of people and she’s got this huge podcast in this amazing network, all these great opportunities. She’s inspiring people, she’s changing lives. Like she’s doing all these wonderful things. And people see and they go, well, I could do that, I could do that. Right? They look at her on stage like, that looks like so much fun. I could do that. Why? How come I can’t do that? Cuz that’s not the job. The job is overcoming the fear. The job is overcoming the inconvenience.
RV (21:28):
The the hard part is all the parts you don’t see. It’s not given up when most people will, right? It’s not accepting someone else’s rejection as, as permanent. It’s realizing it’s just temporary. It’s just a redirection. And you can make that decision right now. And if that’s you and you are ready to make that decision, I would say the first thing you should do is you should come and join us because we are among the very best in the world, if not the best in the world, at helping mission-driven messengers to reach more people and to make this dream come true. We know a lot about it. We’ve done it, we’re doing it. We have several people doing it. We, we, we can help. But you gotta make that decision that you’re not gonna be stopped. So I hope you do that. If you’re ready to make that decision, go to free brand call.com/podcast, request a call with our team.
RV (22:22):
Uh, if not, if you’re not quite at that point, um, just keep tuning in and keep hanging out and keep learning, um, and keep, uh, checking in on these amazing guests and these inspiring stories. We’re so grateful for you that you’re here. Um, share this episode with somebody who needs it. If you would go share, go tell Annie, uh, go find Annie on social media and send her some love. Let her know that you heard her, her on the Influential Personal Brand podcast. Um, and just give her a thanks for showing up and being a part of, uh, this amazing community. So, you know, they, these folks do it for free. They come on here because we’re friends and because they wanna help other people just like you. We’ll catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand podcast.
Ep 358: How to Build a Bestselling Brand in the Christian Market with Annie F. Downs
RV (00:02):
Well, if you have listened to this show for any amount of time, you know that I am a hardcore Bible thump in Jesus freak. It’s true. We are at Vaden villa and our church that we go to in Nashville is called Crosspoint Church. I’ve been on the board there for several years and one of our teaching pastors and leaders of the church has been a friend of mine who I have admired from afar for years. We’ve gotten to know each other a little bit. Her name is Annie F Downs. That is our guest today. You’re going to hear from her. So she is a New York Times bestselling author. She speaks all over the country. She does sermons, she does Christian conferences, a couple business gigs every year. She has an Damazing podcast like the Lineup of People on her podcast.
RV (00:45):
Her podcast is called. That Sounds Fun. And she also has a podcast network called the That Sounds Fun Network of which one of our other one of our clients, Matthew West, who’s like I’ve got major, major man crush on Matthew West
AFD (01:25):
Rory. That was the kindest introduction. You could just make me cry sitting right here. Thank you very much.
RV (01:30):
Well, you’re awesome buddy. And then you also do weddings cuz we saw you at Chris and our, our, some of our best, best friends, Chris and Lexi got married and then we’re like, what
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Annie’s doing this? How did, wait, you know, that, how did this, how
RV (01:43):
Did this happen? So,
AFD (01:44):
Hey, that’s so fun. It’s such a gift. I got started the ordination process through Crosspoint a couple of years ago because two of my friends got engaged on the same weekend and they both asked me to do their weddings. And I was like I can’t do weddings. Let me make a call
RV (02:13):
So tell me a little bit about all the things you’re going on. So like, when you think of like Annie f Downs, just give us a lay of the landscape and, and you know, I think I share with you a little bit like there’s a lot of people who listen to this show. We, we haven’t talked much about how the, the church market and the faith market and just in spirituality conference, you know, in general. Yeah. so tell us like what makes up the landscape of everything, the moving parts of the N E F Downs Empire?
AFD (02:41):
Yeah. I think that’ll help for people to kind of get a picture of what the businesses look like because we are not a ministry, we are a business. Got it. I get to do ministry work, I get to do work that is faith-based, but we want to run really successful businesses. Got it. And I think there’s a different responsibility and a different expectation when someone thinks you’re running a ministry than a business. Maybe it’s just in my own brain. Sure. And so I’m like, oh no, I wanna run a really good business.
AFD (03:24):
And so it’s called Downs Books Incorporated. Inside of Downs Books is all the writing I do. Okay. All the speaking I do. And that, that sounds fun. Podcast and the, let’s read the Gospels podcast. So everything I make and everything my team makes is under the Downs Books co company. Got it. What is also in our office is my manager Kelly Haywood has K c h entertainment here too. So she has, I have five employees at Downs Books. She has four that help kind of run the high level things, right. Like they, when we launched the, let’s read the Gospels podcast, they’re the ones figuring out how do we do the website and how do we do the graphics and how do we, so they’re kind of the behind the scenes machine for a lot of what we do. They do what you hear music managers do or managers for people on tv. It’s, it’s the same relationship. It’s a management relationship.
RV (04:16):
Interesting.
AFD (04:16):
And then across the hall, is that, that sounds fun. Network, a podcast network for our friends listening who don’t know, it really works just like a TV network where all the shows have something in common, but they’re different. And what a network a allows is community and income because we also have a sales team that helps get advertising. So we have 17 shows on the network, although that sounds fun. Network. And we have five employees over there as well. And so we’re helping these 17 shows to help them book guests. Sometimes we help them meet each other so they can be on each other’s shows. We help them find ad partners that are really good fits for their content and their audience. And so that’s what we, we get to do. I’m, I’m a co co-owner and a founder of the Network. Okay. Both of my shows are on the network, but I’m not in the, like, daily running of that company.
RV (05:08):
Got it. Got it. Yeah, that’s really interesting. I didn’t even know that you had that. So Yes. So,
AFD (05:15):
And then I also teach at Crosspoints. I’m also on the T team. That’s
RV (05:18):
And you do weddings. Yeah.
AFD (05:19):
And I do weddings.
RV (05:20):
Right, right. Occasionally. Occasionally. That’s the other part. For close, for close friends. That’s right. And then, so, so let’s talk. So let’s go to Downs Books. Okay. And let’s talk, let’s talk in there. Cause that sounds like that’s sort of the core of like where you’re spending’s righting your, your time. Yes. how did you start, like, and, and how did you make your first dollars? Right? Like Yeah. Go all the way back to the beginning and like mm-hmm.
AFD (05:52):
Yeah. You know what you’re gonna love Roy, I think I may have told you this in our real life before, but I, when my fourth book released, I also applied to teach at the parent teacher store in Green Hills because I didn’t have enough money to pay my assistant. Wow. So, so it has been, I mean, it is not one of those like, and your listeners and friends probably know, like, it’s not one of those, like when you get your book deal, there you go. It’s like, no, the, if your book deal is, if your book’s coming out in a year and you get a $10,000 book deal, I’m just making an easy number. I mean, you’re, after you pay your agent, which you should have an agent and you should pay your agent once they get their percent. And once you pay taxes, you’ve made $5,000 in a year.
RV (06:59):
AFD (07:01):
Then I was like, that
RV (07:01):
Was your first book. That was your first book.
AFD (07:02):
Yes. Yes. Okay. And I thought, this isn’t working. And you know, you, you don’t pay your agent. You the, you know, the agent takes a percent. And so at this point I’m saying to my agent, you’re not making any money and I’m not getting the right books. So what are we doing? So, so we made, I made no money through this until a couple of years later. I mean, I was writing I was writing like for like one of those Groupon kind of websites. Okay. I was writing ads for them. So I was making like a, a small income off of that.
RV (07:37):
But not like your con not your content. You were just doing copywriting for
AFD (07:41):
Something? No, no, no. I did copywriting for probably three years behind the scenes while in front of the scenes. I’m trying to author and travel and speak. Yeah. My book does get picked up by a publisher in 2011. After I self-publish it, I self-publish it. Cause I was like, at this point I’ve written the book. I have an audience of a couple of thousand people who have been with me in this journey. I just want a book that my grandkids can have on their bookshelf that my, that their grandmother wrote one time. Right?
RV (08:09):
Yeah.
AFD (08:10):
When we put it on Amazon in the first quarter, I put it up in quarter four because I wanted to hit holidays. Okay. And it was for teen girls. And we sold about 2,500 in that quarter.
RV (08:21):
Wow.
AFD (08:22):
And when that happened, a publisher said, I’m sorry, we said no to that. We didn’t know you would sell the books. Right. And you sell the books. And so they came back, Zondervan signed me for a book deal in the winter of 11. And the book came out in August of 2012. And my first book deal, my advance was $7,000.
RV (08:45):
Nice.
AFD (08:47):
So I
RV (08:48):
Filling in to go.
AFD (08:49):
Yeah. I seriously thought, here we go.
RV (08:52):
So like that was at least, I can’t believe it, over the course of three or four years. Years, that’s like 65 cents an hour. I mean, some somewhere. It was wild. Somewhere in there.
AFD (08:59):
Yeah. Yes, yes. So what ends up happening though is, and I don’t know this behind the scenes, what I know is I’ve gotten a book deal offer and then I get a phone call from the publisher that says, Hey, would you like to travel and speak on a Teen girl tour? And it’s every other weekend for the school year. And I thought, well, yeah, the here’s I, I thought I wasn’t gonna get to do this anymore. And suddenly I see this job for the next year. And what had happened, Rory, is the publisher had made a deal with a record label here in town that had point of grace on it, the word word record label. And it was a conference called Girls of Grace that was for teen girls. Huh. And the sponsorship deal included a speaking spot. So Zondervan was a sponsor of the tour. Ah. The sponsorship included a bunk on a bus and a 20 minute slot. And I was the only new author that lived in Nashville. Wow. And so I was the only one who could bus out
RV (10:00):
AFD (10:03):
That’s right. I’ll take it. Cause built So was your cause built the whole thing.
RV (10:06):
So that wasn’t until 2013 then?
AFD (10:08):
Yes, 2012 and 2013. The book came out in ap August of 12. And the tour started then. And so what I would do in every city, Rory, is I, we would get there on a Friday. I would have most of Friday free, cuz the conference was on Saturday. So we bused out at midnight on Thursday would go to Columbus, Ohio. Yep. Friday I rent a car or get in an Uber and I drive to every bookstore that will look me in the face and I say, Hey, I’m Annie F Downs, do you have my new book? And if they did, I would sign ’em. And if they didn’t, I would ask them to carry it. So I’d go to three or four bookstores in every city on our first day in the city. The second day when we had our event. When I’m speaking, what’s also happening is all these youth group leaders are there. And so I’m, I have a, this is very in line with what you teach us to do. I have a thing on the screen that I say, Hey, if you want a 30 day devotional for free, here’s all you gotta do. Hit the do this QR code or whatever. And so what ends
RV (11:02):
Up happen, it wasn’t QR codes back then, I don’t think, think QR codes didn’t become popular until Covid. That’s what’re right. Covid left behind in its wake was QR codes for the work. Exactly.
AFD (11:10):
Right. I think it was probably just an a web address. Yeah. I think they just could take a picture of that, of a place on my website. And so what that, what that tour ended up doing is giving me a bunch of emails of teen girls and their leaders Wow. And a bunch of youth pastors who said, can I want her to come back and speak to our youth group or to our college ministry or to our women. So I had it for, and I ended up being on that tour for two years. Wow. So I was in front of thousands and thousands of leaders who then bring in speakers to their own
RV (11:40):
Church. Got it. Okay. And so, and so at that point you’re collecting email addresses, which good on you. Like that’s a game changer to ca to capture all that. But it’s not like millions of email addresses. It’s like no, no, no. A few thousand. You do that for a couple years, you got five or 10,000 emails maybe.
AFD (11:57):
Exactly. I pro I think we ended each year, I think we ended each year with five more. So I think the first year was about 5,000. Second year was about 10.
RV (12:04):
Okay. But now these people have seen you speak and so now they start calling you to come speak at their church. Yes.
AFD (12:11):
Yes. Interesting. So then they say, Hey, we saw you at Girls of Grace in Min Minneapolis. Our church is 30 minutes from there and we have a youth conference that has a thousand students. Will you come speak
RV (12:22):
Uhhuh
AFD (12:26):
Yes, I was paid. I feel like it was a couple of hundred dollars. It wasn’t very much and it was one bunk. So I also was my own merch person. Right. Which is very normal. This was, I was treated Yeah. Very well on this tour. That is, I mean, you know, there’s those big music tours like Winter Jam where you don’t get paid. You’re just glad to be there and you, what you get paid is how much merch you move. Right. Right. And so I, I had one bunk, so I set up my own merch table. I would train merch volunteers. I was counting in merch, I was counting out merch and and I got paid a couple hundred dollars.
RV (13:01):
I mean this is sounds more like a musician start. Like
AFD (13:04):
It totally is. And in fact, so much of what you see shaped in my career is because who we can watch here in town do this is musicians. And so my friends that are musicians, I was watching them and going, wait, you don’t do your own books at the end of an event? Who does that? Wait, you aren’t making this decision? Who does that? And so I really am, I do look as an artist, if you like, looked down from the sky at me and a country artist, we look very similar and how our businesses run versus if you look down me on mine and another author who has as many books out as me, doesn’t have the kind of team I have, doesn’t have the kind of processes I have cuz I look like a musician.
RV (13:46):
Interesting. So then, so, so then these youth leaders start calling and that’s, are you getting a thousand bucks to speak?
AFD (13:52):
No, I’m getting 500 bucks to speak and travel for two people.
RV (13:56):
Wow, okay. Yeah. So not a lot of money still going on.
AFD (14:01):
Right. So we are, that’s why, I mean it took, I put three teen books out 20 12, 20 13, 20 14. And then in 2015, my first adult non-fiction came out. That was a memoir called Let’s All Be Brave. And when that book came out is when I did not have the money to pay my assistant who, because I, I’m a big believer in like get some help before you can actually afford the help. Yeah. Like you be the hustler to make the money so that you can have help because mm-hmm.
RV (14:51):
Uhhuh
AFD (14:51):
RV (15:10):
Yep. And so then so then that book came out. So that was your fourth book. So now you’re starting to get some, some advances that are at least like, you know, more reasonable advance to kind of like build your career. Yes, yes. You have some royalties coming in
AFD (15:24):
Probably. That’s right. So the good news of taking small advances is you do usually get money on the backside. So I have 11 books out and I make money on the backside of nine of ’em. And so I’m getting mailbox money every quarter. We try to treat book money, like foundation money that we don’t touch unless we have to. So we just deposit that. What we’re actually trying to run our budget off of is speaking money and podcasting money. But the podcast didn’t start till 2014 and it didn’t start making money until 2017 probably.
RV (15:55):
Ah-Huh.
AFD (16:14):
That, that was a muddy season, as you can imagine, because I’m still getting these calls for teen girl conferences or for college conferences even. I am, at this point I’m 34 and I am way out of actually living life as a teenager or living with teenagers. And I’m mostly talking to 20 year olds cuz I’m at Crosspoint, I’m volunteering in the college ministry. So my time is spent with people in their mid twenties. So that transition was really hard. I, we had to work really closely with my booking agent and kind of be like, Hey, we, we can’t keep taking these, we have to start setting me up. So the transition looked like if a big church called and said, Hey, we’ve got $2,000. We’d love for Annie to come speak to our college women’s group and there’s 500 girls that’ll come great. Annie would be happy to do that. Could you do a luncheon the next day for the women? Yeah. And invite any women and it won’t cost you any extra, but Annie would love to talk for 20 minutes to women in your church or could she get a meeting with your women’s minister to talk about what y’all are doing for women’s ministry? So the the transition was, if you’re gonna pay me for what I’m known for, will you let me do for free what I’m trying to do?
RV (17:32):
Mm-Hmm.
AFD (17:36):
And so it was muddy though. It was not fun that we had to say nos. We didn’t wanna say we had to do things cheaper than I wanted to do, but I, and I also ended up changing publishers because it was really hard to not be considered the the new girl who wrote for teenagers when I was trying to be a peer with my friends who wrote for adults.
RV (17:56):
Right. Yep. And then so then you start speaking at women’s groups and then from there it’s just like you’re speaking and the spinoff starts to come and then you speak at That’s right. So, so what’s do you the like is there’s, they’re speaking at women’s groups and then they’re speaking at like is a women’s group, like a Christian, like a conference, is that primarily then
AFD (18:20):
Probably a conference? Yeah, that’s right. And a lot of churches do their own like women’s retreats and women’s conferences that are for whatever they are. You know, it could be a hundred women in a room or it could be 10,000 women that go to some of these. And the ones that, you know, one of the things that happens a lot is they will end up reading your book or, or going through a Bible study I’ve written and, and, but they don’t have the money to fly me or to bring my assistant or whatever. And so the opportunity is to go like, man, who in your community could do this? There’s people right there. Right. But the transition started happening where people would bring me in Saturday and say, will you stay and speak on Mother’s Day to our Sunday morning? And so then I started being able to, to get invitations that were not just female audiences but we’re men and women together. And that’s when I started doing more Sunday mornings.
RV (19:16):
Do people get paid to speak at a church on a Sunday?
AFD (19:19):
Sometimes, yeah. I mean if, if you are traveling and you’re leaving your normal life, yes. I think it’s, it’s considered an event. So a most ti Sundays, if I’m speaking somewhere else, there is some honorarium attached to it. For me with Crosspoint, that is not, that is not true. Only because that’s my, that is how I serve my local church and I only teach four or five times a year. And so it’s, it’s the way I get to give back to the church that gives me so much. And so there are exceptions to the rule, whereas with a conference, there is no exception for me. Like, if, if you can’t, if you can’t bring me in and and pay me to do my job, then I’m not the right fit for you. That means that God has somebody else for y’all. That’s a little bit different on Sunday mornings to me. I don’t do merch tables on Sunday mornings. There’s just some changes that are not rules that anybody else has to follow, but are rules that are for me that I’ve created that are like, nah, we’re not gonna sell books on a Sunday morning. I just don’t like the way that feels, so I don’t do that.
RV (20:21):
Got it. But so they might, and then, I mean I’m sure it varies, but like when you get, when you get into the Christian market, ultimately you have local churches doing program for their membership. Yes. And they might be bringing somebody in and they’re paying that speaker to come in or maybe doing like a rev share, like a ticket sale kind of a thing. Yes. Or you have conferences where it’s like a regional kind of lots of churches sort of promoting, there’s a promoter, either a church is hosting it and then you have speaking on Sundays and all of those can be paid things in the church world.
AFD (20:58):
Yes, that’s right. And the conferences, that’s, that’s exactly right. Those are the three options. You’re gonna do something local, you’re gonna do something community sized or you’re gonna do Sunday mornings.
RV (21:06):
Mm-Hmm.
AFD (21:20):
For some people it’s okay if it’s not for everybody. Yeah. I, it just, it is for me. Yeah.
RV (21:25):
Lots of, I mean lots of authors, lots of Christian authors, that’s what they kind of do. I feel like they do like a, a big church tour of the whole country and that’s, that’s part of how they sell their, they how
AFD (21:34):
They sell. Especially in July and August or June and July when pastors want some time off. I mean that’s why you see so many authors and pastors sharing their stages with other people is they want, they need some weeks off and understandably Uhhuh
RV (21:53):
Tell me about, so let’s talk about the podcast. So I’m b I’m Curious cuz that’s part of like, you have the, that sounds Fun network and then you also have your two, your two podcasts. Yep. So when do you start making money from that and how, how do you make money from the podcast and like, tell us about that a little
AFD (22:09):
Bit. Yeah, so it’s, it’s ad revenue, right? So it’s, it is the same as a TV show. It’s commercials and, and there are multiple ways to do it. There is what’s called a di, which is just a drop in where, where it’s not the voice of the host where it literally is a commercial. So you hear that a lot on some of the shows on other networks. I think Gimlet does it. It’s, it’s not good or bad, it just is. And where they’ll have a read that goes before you start listening to the show you’re listening to. So for me, what we do, we all add host Red Ads for my show and for the That Sounds Fun Network. We do host red ads. Those are the most genuine we believe for what we are making and, and they pay the most. And so for my show I started having advertising partners want to work with us about 2017.
AFD (22:58):
So my producer at the time, Chad Sna from Sound On Sound Off Music or Sound on Sound Off Productions, he had a friend who had done ad sales for a long time. So I hired him for a while, then I joined a network. It was not a great fit, but that’s was the next move is I joined a network. When I left that network is when my manager and I kind of went like, Hey, we can build a better thing than what I’m experiencing Hmm. As a podcaster. And so we got a sales team. So they work with ad partners, they work with like advertising companies that are kind of over multiple different companies that want to advertise. And so they, it literally is a, Hey Annie, I mean it happened this morning. Hey Annie, there’s a brand that wants to be on the podcast. Can they go ahead and send you an example of of their product and you can see if you like it and see if it’s something that you’d like to talk about. And that’s how we do.
RV (23:50):
So how, how does that, like how big of a pod, like how big does a podcast have to be before it can start advertising?
AFD (23:57):
That’s a great question. So it, depending on what kind of money you wanna make, you can start advertising with someone like Anchor that’s run through Spotify. You can do ads for Anchor starting immediately now. You’ll get paid if you have five listeners, you’ll get five pennies or something. You know, like, but there, there is a availability for anyone who starts a podcast to start making advertising money right away when you really make money that can pay for your production and actually help run, run your ministry, your company, your brand. We see that about 10,000 listeners in the first 10 weeks is when advertising partners are really interested in working with you in the
RV (24:38):
First, that’s the, that’s 10 weeks like each,
AFD (24:39):
That’s the number they look at episode. Yep. So you look at an episode that releases on January 1st, you’re gonna what the advertiser partner doesn’t they like the first week that matters to them, but what they actually look at is what’s the arc of the whole show? So how at the end, so when we look at stats every week, you, you know me Rory, I look at stats constantly. It’s like I
RV (24:58):
Love it. I did not know that about you.
AFD (24:59):
Oh you did? Oh listen,
RV (25:00):
I didn’t know that that
AFD (25:01):
Is about you. That is science. Like that will tell, we can say I think everybody loved that episode. Well no they didn’t, nobody listened. So we gotta look at the science. So I love the stats. So every Monday in our staff meeting we look at how did our shows do it one week just cuz we’re interested. But what we really go back and look at is the show that released 10 weeks ago, how many people have listened? And usually we have about double from one week to 10 weeks. So what, what what happens in one week happens again in week two through 10 of listenership. And so that’s what advertising partners look at. So when we’re looking at shows to add to the network that really want, that are hoping it’ll be a financial benefit to that show where the host is like, Hey, I need to make money off of this if I’m gonna put time in. Then we say man, well as soon as you get to 10 thousands when you’ll really start seeing ad partners be interested
RV (25:50):
And how much do they pay? Like how much does it cost? Let’s just use 10,000. Like let’s say it’s, yeah, let’s say you’re at 10,000, which means if I calculate you’re saying you release an episode, you get 5,000 downloads this week and then another 5,000 downloads over the next nine’s weeks’. That’s right On that on that episode. Yep. How do you price it and what do they like, what do they pay kind of thing?
AFD (26:11):
Well this is outta my expertise level because I don’t know any of that. What I know is we do CPM cost per million and, and I know that it actually varies based on the partner. So someone like a Thistle Farms who we really believe in and love and want to talk about, they may not have the same cost or same ability to pay for a show that, that a huge brand like Better Help does. And so we can work with Thistle Farms and say, Hey Annie loves y’all, so here are the, the five ad slots. This one is the one we will get to you at a price that works for your company, but we can’t give you this one because this one is double that cost or whatever. Right. And so, and each show is different. And so it really varies. Our sales team, we have two full-time sales team members here and that’s what they do constantly. And the other thing Roy, is they’re not just doing, do you wanna buy this show? They’re saying, do you wanna buy a year worth? And so that’s the bigger number that they’re looking at is can we find ad partners that believe in us? Like we believe in them enough to go, Hey, for a year let’s make a contract. Mm-Hmm.
RV (27:18):
Mm-Hmm.
AFD (27:29):
Watching. It’s per episode. Yeah. Because for example, let’s use Thistle Farms again because we love them. Everyone go shop at Thistle Farms. But if Thistle Farms, you know, if they they don’t actually care how we did this month, they care how we did on the show that they’re on. Right. And so they wanna look at the 10 weeks. It’s cool, you’ll see people do all time. We hit 2 million, we hit 3 million downloads. That’s awesome. We do it for the network, we celebrate with everyone and we celebrate on our show. But what advertising partners really care about. And so therefore what podcasters should really care about is how did each episode do after 10 weeks?
RV (28:01):
And and if you, let’s just say you have a show that does about 10,000 downloads per episode.
AFD (28:08):
Yeah.
RV (28:09):
In a year, like at a high level, how much revenue do you think one show like that? You know, oh boy,
AFD (28:15):
Give or I, I don’t wanna mess this up. I mean I bet if you’re doing weekly shows, I mean this is going to be a guess Rory for real. If you’re doing weekly shows at a 10,000 downloads and you do, let’s say you do 45 shows in a year cuz you take a couple off or whatever, I mean I bet you’re gonna make maybe a thousand bucks a show. I bet you’re making 800 to a thousand bucks a show. So, you know, four $40,000 maybe.
RV (28:42):
Okay,
AFD (28:43):
Interesting. I could be really off about, I think that’s about what, but you know, also the cost to make a show is about $500 per episode. Yes. If you’re hiring outside. And so that’s, that is a thing. People don’t factor. They wanna start a podcast and they want to make advertising money. Well, y you’re gonna be outta pocket for a little bit if you c if you don’t have the skills to make it sound good. Mm-Hmm.
RV (29:08):
You. Yeah. Yeah. That’s interesting cuz we had, we had a podcast that had millions of downloads that we sold as part of when we sold our last company. But we’ve never run ads on our, the only ads we run on our show are for our services. Yeah. And so that’s, and that’s, you know, because we’re offering people free calls to learn about what we do. And that’s usually when you’re starting out, that’s gonna pay a lot, a lot more money Yes. Than you’ll make from advertisers until you get really, really big.
AFD (29:35):
Absolutely. And we still, I mean still on my show and on shows on the network, we use the opportunity when we have empty ad spots to talk about the products we make. That is a hundred. And one of the things on our network that we really believe in is the community part. And so one at a quarter you’re advertising for another podcast and it’s on the network mm-hmm.
RV (30:07):
Yeah, that’s really cool. I noticed that like Caleb is doing this now where they’ve got, they’ve got Caleb podcasts and you know, people are really doing this Interesting to see how it all happens. Well, yeah. So as we’re wrapping up, like, so tell us a little bit about what you’re working on. So I, I know Carlos Whitaker used to be really he used to be around Crosspoint a lot. I never really got to know him, but I know you, you obviously have your, your podcast. That sounds fun. You’ve got the books, but you and Carlos are teaming up on something exciting in 2023, right? Yeah.
AFD (30:40):
In June we’re going on tour together. It’s called the Here for You Tour. We just kind of wanted, he and I are good friends. We have a lot of the same audience, but also a lot of people who don’t know each other. And, and we thought, man, what we wanna do is let’s just go talk, let’s go meet up where our friends are already at and gathering. And so we’ve got about 12 cities we’re going to in June where we’re gonna get to show up and talk about Jesus and talk about what’s going on in culture and feature some local businesses. Like it’s kind of just gonna be a really fun hang night that we get to do. It’s really exciting. And the other thing we’re working on that I’m really proud of is the let’s read the Gospel’s podcast. And Roy, the idea really was like, what if there’s so many people who want to read the Bible in a year, but but don’t finish.
AFD (31:28):
Yeah. And so can we give some steps that would Enbridge people to a year? So we are gonna read Matthew, mark, Luke, John every month. And so people can start with on January one, February one, March one. And, and so the only commitment you’re making is a monthly commitment. We’re just gonna do it 12 times. So you can do it with us all 12 times or you can do it with us once, or you can do it with us in April. Or if you’ve never listened to Matthew, mark, Luke and Johnny, you don’t even know what they’re about. I’m gonna read the whole thing to you. And so, and
RV (31:56):
You’re reading it, you’re, it’s in your voice.
AFD (31:58):
It’s me. Yeah. We’re reading it 12 times man. It is an interesting year because we are really having to, it takes about 15 hours to read and so, and we have to do, so that’s two or three hours a week. So it’s really changing our rhythms next year. Cause I’m not doing any besides you, you’re my last outside conversation besides my shows until 2024. Nice. Wow. Because we just, my voice, we have to, if I’m gonna tour and travel and do a pot, do that sounds fun twice a week and read the gospels every month, that’s about all my voice can do. Yeah. So it’s changed my availability in a really interesting way. I’ll be very interested to see what happens. What happens when we focus like this next year.
RV (32:44):
Well, one thing that’ll be awesome. So, so we read the, we read the whole Bible this last year, which was the first time we ever made it through. Yeah. We’re in a, we’re in a family bible study. It’s the coolest thing is every Sunday from like three to seven, we found a Bible study. And the thing that that was a game changer was all the families pooled to buy babysitters. And so the kids go off with the babysitters and so then the family can actually like eat and do bible study. And it was, we read the whole Bible and the the thing, which was amazing, super power, powerful experience to read all the way through. But the thing that I’m most craving is you have to go so fast that we didn’t get to spend enough time in the gospels. And I’m like, man, I’m really, I’m really craving more time there in Matthew, mark, Luke and John. So that’s a really cool idea. That’s very, very, very, very powerful. Well Annie, where should people go? I got one last question for you, but before that, where do you want people to go if they wanna like learn more about you and connect up and see what you’re, what you’re up to?
AFD (33:42):
I, you know me Roy, I’m like embarrassingly easy to find. I’m just Annie F Downs everywhere. F is in fancy. So Annie f Downs will get you everything you need. Annie f Downs slash Gospels will get you access to all the resources we have to go along with the podcast. And then the here for You tour is here for you tour.com. So that’s where I’ll be all this year, all those places.
RV (34:02):
I love it. So my last question is just Annie, like thinking back, you know, let’s say somebody’s listening right now who, you know, maybe they are an aspiring author or maybe they’re an aspiring speaker, or maybe they’re in that like transition mode between like, I’m serving one audience, I’m doing one thing in my life, but I really want to be doing something else. Like, you know, those can be long dark seasons and, and Yeah. You know, those can be trying times. Like what would you, what would you say to that person if they’re listening right now?
AFD (34:30):
Yeah. You know, the thing I I, the only thing I would’ve regretted so far is if I would’ve quit. I have made mistakes along the way for sure. I don’t regret my mistakes. We had a, we’ve had some big ones that I’ve done and we have done some massive cleanup around it. I I don’t regret mistakes. I would’ve regretted quitting. And so that’s what I would say is don’t give up and get some people around you to help you because what they can help you do is not even decide whether to quit or not, but help you decide how do you pivot this thing so that it actually works for you. And so that it actually meets the needs that you believe the world has, that you are uniquely gifted to meet. And so ask, ask some, ask for some help and do not give up.
RV (35:13):
I love it. I love it. Well, we’ll link up to annie f downs.com. You can check out the tour, the shows. Thank you so much for such a transparent, open sharing, Annie, of just how all of this works and, and just hearing your story. It’s, it’s super encouraging and you know, we’re praying for you, my friend, and, and we wish you the best.
AFD (35:31):
I love you guys. I’m really glad to be friends with you and your wife, so I’m thankful for y’all and for the work you do, it matters to me.
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.