Ep 327: First Steps to Launching Your Expert Business with Chris Ducker | Recap Episode
RV (00:02):
How do you find your niche and how do you find your first customers? That was the topic of conversation primarily with my good friend Chris Ducker. Welcome to this recap edition. I’m gonna be highlighting you know, some of my three top takeaways from that conversation with Chris, sharing some of my own thoughts here. And just hopefully helping you put this into practice because you know, as I shared Christa something very similar to what we do at Brand Builders Group. He focuses on helping experts build their personal brand, does it in a different way. He’s in the uk, we’re in the us He does mostly membership sites and, and group virtual trainings. We do mostly one-on-one coaching with people, but I’ve known him for years and love dialoging and just sort of like sharpening each other’s saw, diving in on personal brand strategy and online marketing and nicheing and all of those things.
RV (00:56):
So I’m gonna share with you my top, my top three, I’ll, I’ll say take aways. They were things that either Chris shared or things that it, it inspired me to talk to you about. And specifically I wanna, I’m gonna share with you three ways to find your niche, like, to help you actually niche down. But the first, my first takeaway was one of the things that Chris said early on, which is just going, How do you become someone’s favorite? Right? Like, become someone’s favorite. That’s what we’re trying to do. Like that is, that is what I want to do, right? Like, and, and, and I don’t know who needs to, I don’t know if you need to hear this, somebody listening needs to hear this. You don’t need to have millions of followers. You don’t need to have millions of downloads. You don’t have to have hundreds of employees.
RV (01:50):
You, you don’t have to, like, you don’t need those things. And in, in many cases, the chasing of those things, I think is what holds us back from actually receiving and achieving and accomplishing the things that are meant for us. Because we’re like caught in this distant facade and dream of like, Oh, we have to change the whole world that we’re missing out on. Like, we can change the lives of the people that are right in front of us. We can be someone’s favorite, and that’s what I wanna be, right? Like of course I wanna have, you know, reach more people and have more people buy, buy our books and our listen to this podcast and follow us on social media and join our email list. Yeah. You know, we’re, we’re generally speaking, we’re moving in the direction of, of more of those people, but getting consumed with that is really risky business. It’s really dangerous because it, it pulls you away from, you know, what I think Chris was talking about, or at least what it made me think about when he said, How can you become someone’s favorite, Right? Like, you go, maybe you won’t have millions of podcast listeners, but you’re have hundreds of
RV (03:00):
People that your show is their Favorite show,
RV (03:04):
Right? Your book is their favorite book. Like listening to you speak or watching your reels, or you know, your talks or your YouTube shorts or your, your, your YouTube videos or reading your blog, your, their favorite. How do you become their favorite? It, it’s, it’s actually way easier than people think. It’s easier to become somebody’s favorite by
RV (03:26):
Serving a More narrow group of people. Be because
RV (03:32):
There’s a couple reasons why, and I asked Chris this question and I liked the answer that he gave and, and I’ve got another answer that I wanted to share with you is I said, Why do you think that is? I said, Why, why is it that that the more you niche down the, the more you know the quicker you have success and like the more financial success you experience quickly? And he said, Well, I think a lot of it is language, right? And and I think that’s a part of it for sure. Like, it’s, it’s, we, we use the term native tongue. Like you’re able to use terminology that your audience relates with, and they go, Oh, you serve me
RV (04:06):
Like I’m your Person. And when and when your audience can show up and they, and they know, Oh,
RV (04:14):
Talk to me like I’m your Person,
RV (04:16):
Then it just creates this really quick intimate bond because you’re, you’re sharing their language that they understand and, and, and that’s super powerful. But, but the other thing, you know, as I was thinking about the question I asked him, which is
RV (04:31):
Why does it work
RV (04:33):
So much better to, to niche down rather than to go like, you know, broad market? Like what is it about that? What I realized,
RV (04:44):
What I realized is that I think the, the real, the real thing
RV (04:48):
That’s happening there
RV (04:49):
Is when you serve a smaller market, you have more opportunity and more availability and more specificity in being able to serve them in a deeper way. When you serve a narrow market, you can serve them in a deeper way. Because when you, when you serve a small group of people and you, you just ask, what’s the next thing they need? What’s the next thing they need? Then all of a sudden you can fully like, like own it and step into it and be a part of it and, and go, Oh, this is what they
RV (05:26):
Need. And, and part
RV (05:27):
Of what’s making me think
RV (05:28):
About this is the
RV (05:31):
Is the,
RV (05:33):
The, the, the book tool the book launch tool, right? So we are
RV (05:39):
Doing,
RV (05:40):
You know, book launches. One of the things we’ve been helping people with, and we’ve been doing it so much that it’s like, Oh, they need a template for this, and they need a template for this, and they need a template for this. And it’s like,
RV (05:49):
Through the process of
RV (05:51):
Coaching people on such a
RV (05:52):
Narrow specific part of their business, we’ve been able to create these incredible
RV (05:56):
Tools that we never would’ve thought to create if we were just sort of like serving the whole world. But it’s like the more we get specific on going, yeah, you know, like, I mean, if somebody’s launching a book like Brand Builders Group, I mean, we might be the best in the world at this, and we’ve just done it so much. And you know, I mean, just this year, I mean, we’ve had four clients, Ed Mylet, Eric Thomas, Tom and Lisa biu and Lovey Ajai Jones. We had four clients just this year that we’ve helped hit to New York Times, Wall Street Journal and or USA Today bestseller list. So it’s like, we’ve just been living in this, you know, for this season, especially recently, that it’s like, golly, for whatever reason, those have come to us and we’ve been, and, and we’re developing this depth, this real depth of knowledge.
RV (06:44):
You can’t do that when you’re trying to serve all different types of people and cater to all different types of businesses because you have to sort of stay super high level because, you know, it’s, it’s sort of like there’s this, this plane of there is, there’s principles that you can teach and then there’s practices and, you know, the, the, the principles of success are general. They apply universally. Like my book, Take the Stairs, a great example of that or my TED Talk, How to Multiply time, their principles. They, we, we teach at the principal level, and so they apply universally, which, you know, like people will watch a free TED talk, but I don’t make many money when they watch a free TED Talk. I do from the few of the groups that hire me to speak, which is a very small percentage of the people who watch it and, you know, take the serious book.
RV (07:30):
A lot of people read it, but it’s a $20 book, and which, you know, my royalty is 15% or whatever the number is, It’s not a huge amount. Versus when, when we’re serving people in, in the practices way, like we’re giving people verbatim scripts of what they can sell, what they can say to generate free calls and how to sell high dollar offers and exactly how to structure their sales pages. And these are the steps to do a book launch. And here’s how you, here’s how you get your first speaking engagements and, and here’s how you train your sales people, how to do free calls. And here’s what you say to ask for referrals, and here’s what you change to add humor into your presentations, and here’s how you better construct your funnels, and here’s how you optimize your offer structures, and here’s how you create more urgency.
RV (08:12):
And here’s how you, you know, like write your email copy and like, we can do it with such specificity because we’re, we’re, we’re serving experts and, and, and personal brands on really marketing and sales, how to generate more leads. And so who is that for you? Like, who can you be their favorite? Who can you be their favorite? So that’s the, that’s, that’s the first thing. The second thing is how to niche down. Okay? And this is where I wanna share you three specific questions. There’s three different ways of nicheing down, and I call this the M three model, okay? This is the M three model. This is part of our, this is one of our curriculum elements for our, our paying members at Brand Builders Group. Okay? So when you look at differentiating, how do you differentiate yourself from others in the market?
RV (09:05):
The first m is the, the market is the who. Okay? So here’s the three M’s. Market model and method, market model and method, Okay? So the, the first one is to say, can I differentiate in the market that I serve? Meaning in who do I serve? So market is the who model is the how. Method is the, what market is the who model is the how, Method is the what. So who do I serve? If I serve a very specific type of person, then that you’re automatically nicheing down and creating differentiation. Now look, you know, even like brand builders group, if you go, Okay, who do we serve at a high level, it’s, it’s probably entrepreneurs. Then you go, there’s a level down from that, and it’s like, okay, it’s anyone who does professional services. You do the level down from that and you go, Okay, it’s really experts.
RV (09:56):
And you go really down to the core. It’s like coaches, speakers, authors, consultants, professional service advisors, right? Like they’re, they’re experts. But then we narrow down to say we serve mission driven messengers. So they’re not just experts, They’re experts who care more about service than they they do about sales. They’re people who care about money, but the money is subservient to the mission. Our audience are people who wanna make a bigger impact. They wanna make the world a better place. Yes, if they make more money as a byproduct of that, that’s a great thing. And they need money in order to do that, cuz it takes money to, to make impact and, and do big things. But it’s like the mission is first. So that’s a part of how we have quickly differentiated and delineated and defined who we serve. So that’s who you serve.
RV (10:47):
It can be a demographic, like an age and a geography and, and, but it also can be a psychographic like mission driven messengers, which is their mentality. So who do you serve? Next is model, right? So the business model is, that’s when we say model, that’s like what is your business model? How do you service those people? You know, this came up on the show with Chris, which is like, he serves people through online courses primarily, right? We have a different business model. We are a, a one-on-one coaching model. Now we have courses, we have membership site, but that’s mostly just to help people have an affordable way to step in. Our goal is to work with people at our live events and one-on-one because man, when we get a chance to like talk to you and deep dive with you and, and help you not just teach it to you, but do it with you, it’s life changing.
RV (11:43):
I mean, we, we have, we can improve. Like there’s certain techniques we teach that can help people make six figures in 60 seconds. Like changing what you say on stage. I was using this example this morning with our internal team where we changed what one speaker said on stage and made a hundred thousand dollars in just adding a, a little 62nd pivot in what they said from stage versus when they hadn’t done it. And, and a hundred thousand dollars difference, like a hundred thousand dollars in this one pivot. We can’t do that though, unless we’re working with you one on one. So that’s our model. So, you know, Uber changed the model. Taxis had a business model, which was you go stand in the taxi line and, and you waited for them. Uber said, We come to you wherever you are, right? And instead of standing in a line, you push a phone a button on your app, and they come to you iTunes and, and Napster.
RV (12:40):
They, they changed the model. It was the same method in terms of the, what it was still music, but the model was different. It wasn’t by a physical CD or a cassette tape. It, it was, you know, go online and download a file or, or you know, basically plug into this, this platform that, that, that plays files. That is a change in model. Airbnb is, is a model. It’s like instead of staying at hotels, you know, people are renting out their homes. That’s a change in business model and it’s a way to differentiate. And then the third m m three is method. The method is what you actually do. So that’s like what you actually teach. So again, just using Chris as an example, since we kind of do something similar, you know, we both have frameworks and we both have a map. We both have, you know, like a roadmap.
RV (13:30):
We call ours the brand builder journey. And we both have techniques and, and exercises. We take people to help them clarify their audience you know, grow their audience, manage their, manage the different parts of their business, et cetera. But what we do is actually different. The models that he teaches are, are ones that he’s come up with that have worked for him and his clients. The ones that we teach are different. We have the 15 piece of copywriting. We have your content diamond for managing social media. We have the modular content method for writing your whole book in like two days. We have the something, something that we call pillar point formulas, which is like how to make your TED talk go viral. And we have our, our bestseller launch plan for launching books. And, and we have all of these different frameworks where it’s like the, what we’re teaching is actually different.
RV (14:18):
You can’t get what we’re doing from anyone else. You could get something similar, right? There’s lots of people who do something similar to what you do, but they can’t do exactly what you do if you’re creating your own unique methodology. And that’s part of what we teach people to do in captivating content is we teach you, we help you, we facilitate the creation of your own thought leadership, of your own original ip, of, of your own unique methodologies and frameworks and diagrams and charts and tables that they can’t, they can’t, no one can get it anywhere else in the world except from you, because that’s different differentiating your method. And that automatically creates differentiation and distinction. So that’s how you, you niche down, I would say focus on those three. You know, the market. Who, who am I serving? Who can I serve specifically the, the model.
RV (15:10):
How am I serving them? How can that be different? And then the method, what am I, what am I actually teaching or doing for them? That’ll help you niche down. And then the, the last, my last takeaway this was directly from Chris, just, you know, the way he said it was, you know, I said, What’s the best way to get your first customer? And I listed off all these different marketing method methods, and I loved his answer. He said, he said, Choose your weapon. Choose your weapon. And, and here’s, here’s how I internalized that. The formula for success is to do any type of marketing, because you’ll do it really well. Like, but the formula for failure is to do all types of marketing. The formula for success is to do any type of marketing. But the formula for, for the, but the formula for failure, the formula for failure is to do all types of marketing.
RV (16:04):
Meaning if you do all of them, none of them are gonna, you’re not gonna do any of them well. So you can take any of them and, and focus on them and do them really well, and it will work, right? Like you can become a master of cold calling. You can become a master of, of sending direct messages of email marketing, of social, of podcasting, of YouTube, of LinkedIn, of whatever. But if you try to do all of them at the same time, they’re not, it’s not gonna work. Like it’s, it’s just, you’re, you’re, you’re not optimizing for, for your resources. Like, especially if you’re a small business. So the formula for success is to do any type of marketing. The formula for failure is to do all types of marketing. So choose your weapon, choose one form of marketing, choose one platform, one technique, one strategy.
RV (16:51):
Learn it, do it really, really well. And if you come to Brand Builder’s Group, we’re gonna teach you, we’re gonna teach you how to get referrals and we’re gonna teach you how to go out and do presentations. Cuz we know that that is the fastest path to cash for high dollar offers, is referrals from friends and family. And we’re gonna teach you exactly what to say, when to say it, how to say it, who to say it to verbatim, right? In our Pressure Free Persuasion course. And we’re gonna teach you how to create world class presentations that drive massive trust and leads immediately into your business using our, our world class presentation, craft training which is based on brand dna. So but whatever it is, choose your weapon and, and just do, do one really, really well and you will succeed. The riches are in the niches.
RV (17:38):
This is, this is counterintuitive that by narrowing down your focus, you will make more impact, more money and, and just more of a difference in the world. So don’t be afraid to just let go and say you have permission to not need or chase millions of followers. Just become the favorite of a few people. And the better job you do at doing that, the more impact, the more income and the more influence you will create. Share this podcast if you wouldn’t mind with somebody who you think will benefit from it. And keep coming back here week after week on the influential Personal Brand podcast.
Ep 326: First Steps to Launching Your Expert Business with Chris Ducker
RV (00:02):
Well, some people might say you should never, you should never promote competitors or people who do something similar to what you would do. And to that, I would say, let me introduce you to my good friend Chris Ducker, who does something in the vein, the similar vein to what we do at Brand Builders Group O, honestly, and he’s one of the best in the world at it, and I’ve known him for years. And I have always been someone who just rejects scarcity and believes in abundance. And if people can learn from me or him or both of us, all the better. Chris is one of the entrepreneurs, one of the pioneers of this space, of sort of online experts in helping them become more well known. He’s written couple different books that were sort of flagship to the space, so Virtual Freedom.
RV (00:49):
And then more recently, Rise of the Preneur. He’s got a program called The Preneur Incubator, which takes people who are just starting out as sort of experts in trying to like find their way as a year long program to help them make six figures. And he’s running a, an event coming up, a free experience where you can check this out. It’s called The Elevated Entre, the Elevated Entrepreneur Experience. And it’s coming up and he messaged me about it and I was like, Yeah, man, we wanna tell people about it. So we want you to sign up to check out the free experience. You can do [email protected] slash elevated. But obviously you’re gonna get a chance to meet him and learn about him here. I’ve had him on the show before. I really admire him. He’s a real entrepreneur. He’s built businesses in the Philippines, in the US and the uk. He operates out of the UK right now and has just truly built virtual businesses. Has a great reputation. We’ve got lots of of very similar friends that we, or friends that we share with one another. And anyways, he’s just a stud. So, Chris, welcome to the show, man.
CD (01:55):
Yep. This is so good. You called me a stud right at the end of the introduction. stud.
RV (02:01):
Yes,
CD (02:01):
I’m down with this. This is good. Can we end the chat now on that very eye?
RV (02:06):
I stud real,
CD (02:07):
Very real
RV (02:08):
Note. That’s, We’ll cut that for Instagram. Chris Ducker’s a stud. Yeah, we’ll just, and we’ll just push it, but
CD (02:16):
Good to be back on the show, dude. Thanks again for having me back. Appreciate
RV (02:19):
It. Yeah. I, I, and I, I, I, you know, I think the easiest way to describe to people what you do is that in, in some ways it’s similar to us. I mean, in many ways, you, you help them build launch, build scale expert businesses. You help them figure out what they should be known for. And I love talking about it, and your stuff is super affordable. It’s super good. It’s totally legit and trustworthy, and I think people should know about it. So, you know you, before the show, we were just kind of talking a little bit about like, what’s the starting point for somebody and how figuring out what you want to be known for is like a big thing. And there’s, I think with, you know, obviously the pandemic, I don’t think we’ve had you on since Covid, right? So the world is
CD (03:08):
Maybe right at the beginning. I think I might maybe
RV (03:10):
Right at the beginning. But like you know, how, where does somebody start? Like what’s the, what’s the first step here of going, okay, maybe they just got let go from their job. Mm-Hmm.
CD (03:34):
Well, the first step is a little selfish actually. And there’s nothing wrong with that. The first step to figuring out how or what kind of expert business you’re gonna build is honestly to figure out what, what it is you wanna be known for. And I think a lot of people try to go too broad, too kind of wide, the beginning of it all. And they don’t understand the entire kind of process of nicheing down or nicheing down to our brothers and sisters from the other side of the pond there,
CD (04:21):
That’s what we want. We want to ultimately become somebody’s favorite. That’s what we wanna do. And we will never become somebody’s favorite by being too broad, by being, by casting that net too wide. So, as an example, if I can share an example, like if you think health coach, there are a gazillion health coaches out there, it’s very vanilla nowadays to say that you’re a health coach, right? But if you say, I’m a health coach that works with men, now we’re starting to get somewhere. Now we’re starting to niche down a little bit. But if you’re a health coach that works with men in their forties and beyond, now we’ve niched down one step further, but let’s try one more step to really nail in here. You’re a health coach that works with men who are 40 plus who are recovering from major surgery. Boom, there’s your niche, right?
CD (05:13):
There’s your niche right there. Now, it doesn’t mean that you’re gonna have a thousand prospects visiting your website every single week, but what it does mean is that whenever anybody does visit your website, you and the language that you’re using in the marketing, the copy that you’re using, the imagery, everything, it’ll all sing to them. And they’re very quickly turn around and say, Yes, Rory’s my guy. I wanna learn how to be able to get back in the shape, how to get my strength back, how to start eating healthier again, and really give myself a new lease of life following my surgery. I’m gonna give this guy a call. Mm-Hmm.
RV (05:51):
Well, okay, so I I love that. Concur with that. The when you said, when you said you may not have thousands of people coming to your website, but the people who come, you’re gonna be speaking right to them and they’re gonna say, Where have you been all my life? We use the term native tongue so that we say like, you’re speaking in their native tongue. Like there you go. They, they, they get you and they get that you, that you get, they get that, you get them. And it’s like, okay, what I have found, Chris, that holds people back is the emotional. In order to do that, which is wonderful and brilliant, you have to sort of separate and let go of this. Like, I’m gonna have 5 million followers and I’m gonna have 60 million people on YouTube, and I’m gonna be the person who’s on billboards.
RV (06:46):
And like, there’s like a, when you talk about nicheing down, it’s like you are at the same time, it feels like there’s almost like you have to do this emotional release of the desire to be known by everybody. Yeah. And instead say, I’m going to deliberately and intentionally choose to be known deeper by the few than a little bit by everybody. How do you overcome that hurdle? Like, what would you say to somebody go, and like, cuz I think that’s what people struggle with. They go, But I wanna help everybody. Right? And you gotta almost wave byebye to that. Or do you think, how do you think about that? Well,
CD (07:24):
You do. You gotta wave. Bye bye. You know, without a doubt. Like I say, like you gotta market like a magnet, right? That’s my thing. Like, you market like a magnet. So at the same time that you’re attracting the right people into your ecosystem at the exact same time, just like a magnet, you’re repelling away the wrong people, right? Like, we don’t want the people that don’t, you know, they don’t kind of jive with our vibe, right? Like if, if they don’t understand where we coming
RV (07:49):
From, Yeah, you can’t be here if you can’t jive with my vibe.
CD (07:52):
If you, if you’re not jiving with my vibe, baby, I don’t, I just don’t want you around. Simple as that. So like, I’m, I’m just a big believer that, you know, you put more of you into what it is that you’re doing, you will attract more likewise people into your world. So for example I practice boni. I like to drink fine single malt whiskey and American bourbon. I like to build Lego with my children. All these things make up part of me and my personality. So I’ll talk about those things when I’m coaching people, as you know, I’ll use examples of, you know, when you get a, a raw piece of material that will eventually become a beautiful bon eye one day, the branches are all leggy, and the scr in this foliage missing, and you know, all this, the roots might, might not be very strong.
CD (08:43):
And all these, you’re building up this tree from scratch, fundamentally by pruning back, by wiring, by feeding, by watering, by repoting, using different types of soils for different types of trees and all these types of things. All that, what I’ve just said, just there, that’s building a business too. We use different types of soil in different types of industry. In other words, we say and do things differently in one industry than would do in another one, and so on and so on and so on. The branches, the foliage, that’s staff, customer suppliers, product services, experiences, whatever it is, right? So when I talk about those things, people who get it get me, and therefore, you know, they, they, they just naturally gravitate towards me. So I think you have to kiss goodbye to a certain amount of the population. You could, You sh you can’t please all the people all the time.
CD (09:33):
And quite frankly, if you try and do it, it’s just exhausting. Plain and simple. It’s burnout is inevitable as far as I’m concerned in that scenario. And so I’m all about, like you say, I would rather have a hundred people on my email list that open every single email, buy everything that I put out, read every book that I write and talk about me when they’re at the dinner parties, the conferences, the coffee meetings, right? Rather than 10,000 people on the email list that do didly squat. Yeah. So I think by nicheing down, narrowing down that message, and also the big thing is the language that you use becomes that much more attractive to that person because you’re speaking directly to them based on wants, needs, pain points, et cetera, et cetera.
RV (10:23):
Yeah. Uhhuh when you talk about nicheing down, like, so in your example, you used you know, health coach for men over 40 who recovered from surgery. The, who is a big part of that example, men, the, the, it’s, it’s, you’re nicheing down by who you’re serving. So it’s sort of like the, what that you’re doing is health coaching, but in your example where you were nicheing down was by the who you’re doing it for. Correct. So it was like, it wasn’t what you were doing, it was who you were doing it for. Is, is that most of where nicheing comes from? Does nicheing come from, not so much nicheing what you do, but who you do it for? Or are there other types of nicheing or like is that sort of like the primary vehicle or like the most practical thing that people can do if they’re going, okay, how, how do I niche down, Right? Like, I’m an accountant, I’ve spent my whole life being accountant and so you go, okay, who are you going to be an accountant for? I mean, that’s clearly one way. Is that, is that the best way? Is that the only way? Is that kind of the most practical way or what do you think? I
CD (11:40):
Don’t, I don’t know whether it’s the only way or whatever, but I mean, like, I think it’s probably the most practical when you think about building a business. It’s hard enough as it is to build a business, right? Mm-Hmm.
RV (12:52):
Similar who,
CD (12:53):
Very similar,
RV (12:54):
Very similar who, but the way that we do it is very different.
CD (12:57):
Couldn’t be any different. It couldn’t be any different. You go one on one all the way, I don’t wanna work with people one on one, It doesn’t fire me up. I wanna work
RV (13:06):
With people. That’s a great, that’s a great distinction cuz that is exactly, That’s exactly it. Yeah.
CD (13:13):
Yeah. I see. And like I said, right out the gate, you can be a little selfish. Like, it’s okay, this is your business, right? Just because I don’t help or work with people one on one doesn’t mean that I couldn’t do it, but I don’t want to do it. That’s the, you know, that’s the, the definition of why I don’t do it. It’s because I don’t want to do it. I want to pe I wanna work with groups, I don’t wanna work one on one. And so just because we can do all these different things doesn’t mean that we should do them all. I’m often, when I say that I, I instantly get a flashback to when I was learning how to drive my driving instructor. Her name was Vanessa and here in the UK around built up areas. The speeding limit is 30 miles per hour. And I just kept going right up to that 30 number look 29, 30, 29, 30, 31, 29, 30 29 30. And she pulled me over after about my third of my fourth lesson. She said to me, Chris, I wanna just clarify something real quick. It’s a speed limit. It’s not a speed target. Just because you can hit it doesn’t mean that you should be hitting it all the time. And that’s never left me that lesson. That’s
RV (14:30):
Good.
CD (14:31):
It’s just like the way that we monetize our personal brands. Let’s count ’em off books, coaching, high level consulting advisories on boards online courses, speaking. There’s so many different ways that we could end up ultimately monetizing our expertise. But just because we can do all those things doesn’t mean mean that we actually should do
RV (14:52):
Them. Well, for some it’s a speed limit. For some it’s a speed target. For others it’s a speed suggestion or a speed minimum. A speed, a speed, minimum speed suggestion. I have to tell you buddy. So, so we just got back from Australia and I rented a car and I totally forgot that they drive on the other side of the road from, we drive on in the US and I drove, I drove an eight passenger van for 10 days on the other side of the road. We had some like one time must
CD (15:24):
Have been in the middle of nowhere,
RV (15:25):
CD (16:09):
Mean, you know, the, you know, the, the what and the why’s and everything. I mean that, I think that can probably all be pretty much, you know, integrated into those two
RV (16:17):
Major
CD (16:17):
Well focus. Yeah, I mean, you know, it really comes down to this, the type of person that I want to work with. That’s the who, you know, the why is because I feel called, because I’ve been in that position before. I want to help them out. Now I know what to do. You know, the, the, how well I’m gonna do it via these types of programs or this type of thing. You know, the when, well, I’m gonna do it, you know, the second and third quarter of each year, I’m gonna take the rest of the time off. You know, again, your business, you get to call the shots, you can be a little bit selfish but obviously at first you gotta pull back on the thro and tick some boxes and make sure that you’re doing things in the right way for the right reasons. And for me, that all centers around the person that you’re working with.
RV (16:57):
Mm-Hmm.
CD (17:49):
It work? Yeah, I
RV (17:50):
Why does it work, Right? Why does it work? Because I think if people really understand why, I, I really, I really think people are hung up on this emotional release of going, Okay, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna have millions of millions of followers. I’m gonna find a small group and I’m gonna serve them really, really well. And if we can get them to kind of latch onto why it works and that it really is the way, I think more people will let go of that more quickly and, and kind of follow the path.
CD (18:18):
Yeah. Well I think, I mean, you know, again, I think it comes back to the language that you use. I think people, consumers are, clients are prospects. They wanna be made a fuss of, they wanna feel special. Who doesn’t wanna feel special? Who doesn’t wanna feel as if somebody’s talking directly to them, rather than just a whole bunch of folks, right? And I just, I I, I think that’s one of the reason why it works so well from a marketing standpoint. When you’re talking to somebody, an avatar specifically, and that avatar has a specific set of problems that you have a specific set of skills to help them with, you know, Liam Nielsen taken style, right?
RV (19:01):
Nice.
CD (19:01):
It, when, when, when you are doing that, you are going to be more successful than you were if you were, again, here’s, here’s me using the same term, casting the net too wide. And that’s the reason why it works so well. Because people wanna feel special. They want to be made of fuss of
RV (19:20):
Mm-Hmm.
CD (19:36):
Example, I, I’ve got an accountant friend of mine who could be an accountant for any company on the planet. However he specializes, specializes in working with angel investors and corporations that invest in startup companies. Here in the uk there’s a whole bunch of government schemes in that regards. I’m sure it’s probably the same in the United States as well, but he works specifically with people who invests in and advise startup companies, right? He could work with anybody as an accountant, but that’s what he does. That’s his niche and he’s very, very, very successful. So I think it’s about picking one thing and just, and just, you know, running for the wheels
RV (20:18):
On, but in like, in that example, you go, Okay, everyone has an accountant, but if I’m that type of person, an angel investor, I need a specialized accountant, which means I can have two, I can have my general one, but now I can have my other one. So I don’t have to be the only accountant they ever hire because they’re hiring me for this specific thing. Like if I am a surgeon on this specific thing, you might have multiple surgeons in your life, but you’re gonna be like, I, I, I I need this one. Yeah. Alright. Well I love that. I think that’s really important. So I, I wanna shift the rest of our time to how do you get the first customer, because this is the other big roadblock I think people struggle with. You know, first of all, it’s like they gotta sort of let go of the, I’m gonna be all things to all people with all in all places on all platforms all the time.
RV (21:05):
You know, when it’s like you’re a solo entrepreneur or you have a few people, it’s like you can’t do all of these things all the time really well. The other big roadblock I think people really get hung up on is the first customers. Like the first sales are like, if you are doing this as a side hustle, you know, and you don’t like your job and you wanna do your own thing and you’re going, but I’m scared to make enough income to, you know, create a exit ramp, so to speak from my job. What, like, is it, is it social media? Is it going live? Is it sending emails? Is it blogging? Is it speaking? Is it, you know, knocking on doors? Is it like printing out flyers? Like what the heck? Like how do you get your first customers?
CD (21:51):
Well, it’s all of those things, but you can’t do them all, you know, So it, it’s, it’s choosing your weapon. The when I say that phrase, as you know, I’m basketball head. So as a hoop guy, I think back to the eighties commercials with Converse, where you had magic and you had Larry, both MVPs both won their championships, both had exactly the same pair of sneakers from Converse. Magics was white and purple and gold and Larry’s was black and white identical shoes. The two of them back to back muskets at dawn, holding the shoes, like guns with the phrase choose your weapon,
RV (22:39):
They
CD (22:39):
Both fit your foot exactly the same, but you’re either a Larry fan or you’re a magic fan, so you’re gonna buy the shoe that relates to that, to that person, right? Same sort of type of situation. Finding your first kind of customers is about, well, okay, I can, I can record a podcast and start publishing that every week, or I can do a YouTube channel, or I can be on Instagram all day long, or I can dance on TikTok. You know, I can do all these different things. But again, just cuz you can doesn’t mean you should. Not only that, but also if you go all in on one particular platform with one particular offer, you’re way more likely to get a sale happening sooner rather than later than you would do if you had a whole bunch of different offers and you were focusing on a whole bunch of different platforms.
CD (23:23):
So my advice really for anybody that wants to get kind of going with things, the lowest hanging in monetization fruit, when it comes to monetizing your expertise is your time. It’s you, it’s working with people one on one. Fundamentally, it doesn’t need to be done forever, but it is, it, it’s the easiest sale to make because you’ve got all this experience in your memory bank. Somebody else wants to download it into their memory bank. They’re happy to invest X amount of dollars per hour to sit with you and learn from you because you’ve been there, done that and you’ve been wearing the t-shirt for years. The only issue with that particular monetization strategy is it’s not super scalable, right? There’s only so many hours in the day, which means you can only work with so many people. Now, you could end up ultimately working with a smaller amount of number double triple called Dr all your fee and end up making more money that way.
CD (24:14):
But even then, your time is gonna get maxed out sooner or later. And so that’s when you have other monetization vehicles, like digital courses, group coaching, and that’s all the type of thing coming into play, Masterminds, things like that where you can ultimately make more with less effort, but straight outta the gate, it comes down to really just charging for your time. You know? And, and you know, I did this exercise maybe three years ago with one particular client of mine who was just getting started. It was in the branding and, and design world graphic design, that sort of type of stuff. And he had a good following on his on his blog, but it was kind of not really doing anything. And he was feeling a little bit down heartened about it because he’s got all these people on his email list.
CD (25:01):
I think at the time he had maybe a 1500 or so people on his list and he just wasn’t making any money. You know, you try, he was trying to throw a whole bunch of stuff out to see what people would bite at. And I just said to him, Look, Phil, the next time you send out an email, put a little PS note. I call this the power Ps put a little Ps at the end of your email that says, I never do this, but next month I’m opening up five spots on my calendar for five 60 minute consultation sessions. If you’ve been reading my emails for a while or visiting my blog for a while, you’ll know what I’m good at and what I’m not good at. If you think I can help you and you’re willing to pay, I think it was like 500 bucks for the hour, then click this link first five people to sign up. We’ll get the time. 24 hours, all, all five slots gone, two and a half grand off one email sent to a list that’s been emailed over and over and over again. Never bought anything because he wasn’t selling anything of value. So ultimately it really comes down to just choosing that weapon and choosing that vehicle, that platform. For him, it was email for you, it might be podcasting or for something else, and just sticking to that for a little while until you get some hits.
RV (26:08):
Yep, yep, yep. I love that. I mean, that’s, that’s great. So basically it’s just like any tool, any of those marketing methods will work as long as you mm-hmm.
CD (26:48):
Yeah, cool. So this is, I’ve never done this before, actually. It’s the first time I’ve done it. What I’ve done is I’ve taken all of the best stuff that I’ve taught my paying clients over the 18 months from basically now going backwards, and I’ve put it into a three day cycle. So we’re gonna meet up three days in a row for about 60 to 90 minutes each day, Okay? On day number one, we’re doing what we call our diagnosis snapshot. And we’re kind of looking at auditing our business, what’s working, what’s not, what have we got, what have we not got, what’s missing? And even if you’re just starting out, this is a great way to be able to kind of really start to ascertain exactly what you wanna do and what you don’t wanna do. So we’re gonna be doing that as well as a whole bunch of marketing staff and platform building and stuff like that on day one, Day number two, we’re gonna switch gears a little bit and start talking about actually conversions.
CD (27:42):
So I’m a big believer that conversations lead to conversions. Like I genuinely believe that. And so one of the things that we do as a company every single day is we try and start as many new con conversations every day as possible because, you know, leads generated today end up being a client signed up this week or next week. That’s the way I look at it. And so what I’m gonna do on day two is I’m gonna teach a proprietary system that we use ourself, that I teach to all of my paying clients, that basically allows you to create a nice, steady, consistent stream of warm leads coming into your business every single day, every week, every month of the year, without even spending a single dollar an advert in a way that is simple to easy really easy to execute and understand.
CD (28:32):
And that will get genuine results for you. So we’re gonna do that on day two. And in day three, I’m gonna be walking everybody through what I call my six figure up and roadmap, which will show everybody step by step exactly what they need to do, and most importantly, when they need to do it in their journey, in order to get up to six figures and beyond as quickly as possible. Some people to go through this training will get up in over six figures or prorated, thereabouts within three months. Some people take a year, some people 18 months, but follow the system, follow the roadmap, you know, the hint is in the word, it’s a map. Follow it and you’ll get to your explanation.
RV (29:10):
Mm-Hmm.
CD (29:44):
Sequence, you know, it’s some things you should do, some things you should not do. And the things that you don’t need to do, don’t even look at doing them. Don’t even think about doing them. You just stay in your lane. Remember the movie American Wear Wolf in London? Do you ever
RV (29:59):
See that photo? I never saw itm. I remember it being around, but
CD (30:03):
It’s such a good movie. There’s a part at the beginning of the film where the two backpackers, the American backpackers are in Scotland or somewhere in the uk and they’re in an old pub one night, an old countryside pub. And this old scabby, crunchy looking old dude walks up to them and says, Stay on the path. Don’t drive off into the mos, stay on the path kind of thing. And what do you think happens? They go off the path, they go into the mos and one of them gets turned into a wol. So just follow the map and you won’t get turned into a Wol symbol. I don’t d you got, I dunno where I was going with that analogy, but I think you
RV (30:43):
Follow the map. It did. Follow the map. Stay on, stay on the course. Stay, stay on the on, on the, on the plan. So again, you can help head over to brand builders group.com/elevated if you wanna check this out. I recommend Chris. I trust Chris. You know, he’s a real entrepreneur. He’s built real businesses online and offline, which is very rare these days. So you can check that, check that out. Three free days with him getting a chance to, to sample some of this work. And buddy, I just I miss you. It’s good to see you. Thank you for making some time. I hope everything goes well and make sure you look us up when you, when you come back over to the, to the us the US of America.
CD (31:23):
Without a doubt. Without a doubt, man. I, I can’t, can’t wait to come hang out with you guys again and it’ll be nice to see AJ again. It’s too, it’s been too long that we’ve been hung out in person. I think the last time we saw each other was beginning of 2020 just before everybody went. Covid crazy, right? That that was the last time I saw you in San Diego.
RV (31:43):
Crazy. Yeah, it’s, it’s goes by fast that way. Well, we wish you the best brother. Thank you for being here.
CD (31:50):
Thank you. Appreciate it.
Ep 325: Life Lessons of an Entrepreneur with Denise Villa | Recap Episode
AJV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
AJV (00:54):
Hey, AJ Vaden here. And here is the recap of my recent conversation with Denise via and I love conversations like this because they’re just real. And if you’re looking for a real conversation with a, a real entrepreneur, who’s not shy about telling you the ups downs, good, bad, ugly all of the in between then go check out the full episode on the influential personal brand podcast with Denise via lessons from a real life entrepreneur. But I’m gonna pick out a couple of them that I thought were really important for this recap episode that we’re gonna talk about right now. So one of the things that I think is pertinent that I’m gonna share just because it relates to me. And since I’m doing these recaps, I get to decide what to talk about. But I, I loved her take on what it’s like to work with your spouse.
AJV (01:50):
And I worked with my spouse have for a really long time, little known fact Rory Vaden and I were business partners before we were spouses. We were business partners before we fell in love and got married, we kind of broke that Cardinal rule. And we have a unique perspective that we’ve never not known each other as business partners. Whereas many couples who work together became couples before they started working together. And we don’t know what life looks like, not working together. And perhaps that’s God’s saving grace or us in our marriage as we don’t know any other way. But I, I loved a couple of things that she said I thought were really insightful. And what I loved most is that what often you hear people talking about are ways to make it work. Like how do you, you know, still find time for each other and not let work conveyed the off hours.
AJV (02:50):
And how do you divide and conquer and how do you stay in your own lane and how you not kill each other?
AJV (03:43):
AJV (04:30):
It is hard, there’s hard things about it. And there’s also really good things about it. We just choose to talk about the hard ones and we don’t often talk about like what a blessing and what a gift it is to get, to build something together with your spouse or your family to, to get to enjoy seeing each other’s gifts at work, however they can drive you crazy. And I think just making that decided choice up going, man, like what are the, the gifts, the blessings in this creates a heart change in me, at least that makes the more challenging parts, less challenging, because I get to take a, a, I get a front seat of seeing my partner, my husband, my, you know, my spouse, my friend live out his potential, live out these gifts that God has put in his life.
AJV (05:22):
And I’m really grateful for that. And I, I love that part of our conversation of it’s easy to talk about just like, oh, how do you make it work? How do you not kill each other? How do you like not let work take over? And I love that there’s also a piece of this, of like, how do you get to just sit back and revel and the awesomeness that is your, you know, dad, child, brother, sister, uncle, husband, wife and get to see them at work. And so I just love that perspective on that of working with your spouse. So that was the first thing second thing that I just kind of, of wanted to highlight but I thought was really fascinating is
AJV (06:08):
You are sitting with so many responsibilities and of which include taking out the trash to pay in the bills to, you know, sitting on boards, to writing checks, to being featured in media, to letting people go laying people off, hiring people, leading people, managing people. And I just don’t know if you know, the, the letter CEO, chief executive officer are all encompassing enough for what really happens on a daily life as an entrepreneur of a small business. Right. and I thought that was a really good take of going, like what it really means to be an entrepreneur is that you’re willing to do all of the things. And you’re not above any things. If you know the mate isn’t there, it’s you clean it up, right. Trashman, didn’t show up, you take it out, person, quit, you do the sales call, next person quits, you do this call.
AJV (07:08):
Right. And it’s, and I think a part of that is an ingrained feeling right. Of it’s a, this is mine and it’s whatever it takes, right. It’s like, I like so many things in my life today to parenting.
AJV (08:08):
And that includes our clients, our employees, our mission our, you know, our company is like another baby, right? It’s like a child. But we get to do all the things to take care of the thing that we love, that we have to do all the dirty work. And it’s so hard. Those things are true too, but it’s that, that slight perspective shift that again makes all the challenging things, just a little less challenging. All right. And then my third thing kind of on this same kind of same line, right? I, this, I love the kind of title of this, just lessons of a real life entrepreneur of what is it like to go through the different ebbs and flows, the peaks and valleys? The good and the bad of having an exclusively high growth company to, wow. Now we’re having to lay everyone off just to survive and then to come back and go, okay, now things are back again.
AJV (09:08):
And, and that’s an emotional roller coaster and like buckle up, hold on tight, cuz you just dunno how fast the drop’s gonna happen and then how fast it could pick back up again. And I loved what she said about like how do you create some consistency right. Both mentally, emotionally, even physically of making sure that your work, isn’t just the only thing in your life. And I think that’s the real takeaway for me is I think as American entrepreneurs and I can only say that because I am an American. But I’m sure this is true in most countries. Our identity gets tied up in our work and our identity is not what we do. Our identity is who we are. And if all we do, if the only thing we do is work, then we lose side of all of the other pieces of us.
AJV (10:05):
So to create more consistency, to create more stability, what we do is we have to have a little bit more diversity and all the things that we do, right. I can honestly say before I became a mother work was way more all consuming than I would care to admit today. But I think through becoming a parent, I realized it’s like, oh man, I had really put too much of my identity into one thing. And I wanted to be really careful not just to dump it into the next thing, which is motherhood of going well, where is my identity and who am I, if it’s not just, you know, being Jasper and Liam’s mom or doing this ex company or doing these ex services or whatever it may be. But it’s really making sure that it’s like, I have more diversity in my life of recommitting my life back to, to Christ and getting more involved in Bible studies and increasing a friend group.
AJV (11:08):
I didn’t have friends for a really long time work was everything. And it was creating, you know, routines and habits that’s that created some separation where everything, everything wasn’t centered on just this one thing. And I think that that’s necessary in my opinion, so that your identity doesn’t get just tied up in one thing because that isn’t your identity. That is a, a phase of your life. It is something that you’ve done, although it may be a large phase of your life, but it is not who you are. It is simply something that you have done for a period of time until you move on to the next thing. Y’all so many takeaways, those were just three highlights. They had a common central theme there. Loved this conversation, loved these takeaways. They were important to me. I hope they’re important to you. So stick around and we’ll see you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 324: Life Lessons of an Entrepreneur with Denise Villa
RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
AJV (00:54):
Hey everybody. And welcome to another episode on the influential personal brand today is super, super special. Cuz I get to interview one of my very closest dearest, best friends, Denise Dorsey, Denise vi I, I know Rory’s like it’s via not Dorsey
AJV (01:54):
And I’m just gonna tell you guys why you need to listen if you are listening to this and you’re trying to decide if you should make the leap from what you’re doing to what you feel like God called you to do, you should listen to this episode. If you are a, a working mom, if you are trying to balance entrepreneurship, being a CEO, being an executive, being a leader, just being in the frigging workforce while also trying to balance being a mom and manage your family you should listen to this. If you’re trying to juggle multiple jobs all at once Denise is the CEO of the center for generational kinetics. She is still sitting as COO at a very amazing biomed company. She also runs a real estate development and investment group. Urban gravity’s, one of the fastest growing real estate developers in Austin, Texas.
AJV (02:47):
She is also an author of the economy. It’s like the list goes on and on. So it’s like, I often go, do you sleep? Like, do you like what? She’s also a marathon runner. It’s like, I’m like, I’m pretty sure I’m like way below standards when it comes to Denise and all of our accomplishments. But it’s like, you should listen. I’m going, man. Like what are the peaks and valleys of managing all the things because although they’re rewarding, they’re hard. Like let’s get real. They’re really hard. Also if you work with your spouse or you’re considering working with your spouse, you should listen to this episode. If you wanna write a book or you wanna go out and speak or think, think about this, not only working with your spouse, do you also wanna write, write a book with your spouse?
AJV (03:35):
Like these are all the things that are Denise villa Dorsey that you should stick around and listen to. And that is just really scratching. Really truly like barely scratching the surface of all things. Denise and I would say most importantly of all, I’m so excited for this interview. One, she didn’t wanna do it. She was super reluctant because she’s super humble. And doesn’t often put herself in the spotlight and so I’m genuinely excited to help the entire world get to know your brilliance and you’re, you’re so steady. Like you’re so consistent and calm and sometimes I’m sit at the dinner table with you and Jason and Rory and Jason is so animated and him and Rory are over there, scheming their ideas. And I’m like, people like, what are you talking about?
DV (04:44):
Aww, AJ, you’re so sweet. I think the podcast is over. I’m gonna take all these beautiful things you just said and I’m done
AJV (04:51):
DV (04:54):
And I’m excited to be here with you and thank you for having me really.
AJV (04:57):
Oh, I’m just so excited. And I’m honestly, I’m too, I’m so excited to get, to hear the parts of you and your message and these, these interesting parts of your life and your career that don’t get to come up in normal conversations where, when we’re with our kids or when our we’re and our husbands, or we don’t have extended amounts of time together for you guys listening. I live in Nashville, Tennessee, as you may know. But Denise lives in Austin. So our times are like far and through between. And so when there’s so much to catch up on like so many of these questions, I’m like, oh my gosh, I don’t know the answers to these. I’m so excited to see what you’re gonna say, but, okay. So we’re gonna start here of helping our audience get to know a little bit about you.
AJV (05:40):
And I think a part of your backstory is really unique and really important to the people who listen to our podcast. Because as I mentioned this to you, it’s like much of our audience are trying to make the decision of, do I stay where I am or do I go and do something different? Right. And there’s nothing wrong with where I am, but at the end of the day, I just feel like something’s missing. Right? Sure. Part of me that’s like, could I really do it? Or is there something bigger for me? It’s like, is this what God really intended for my life? And, and I think you’re one of those unique people in our life that it’s like, you made a really dramatic shift in your professional life because you were already so successful as a teacher and then a principal and in the world of education and academia.
AJV (06:32):
And that’s like, that’s a no joke job, a super underappreciated underpaid job, by the way. But you made a major decision of going, I’m going to leave, like what? I went to school for, what I thought I was gonna do my whole life, what you’ve been doing, what you’ve been very successful at doing to go out and go, I’m gonna, like, I’m gonna jump this ship and I’m going to join the crazy people on the world of entrepreneurship. And what I would love for the audience to hear is like, what’s a little bit of your backstory of like, where were you? What made you want to make that kind of jump? And ultimately, why did you do it?
DV (07:08):
Yeah, no, that’s a great question. And I’ve pondered that a lot, I wish I had like a, a straight answer and it was exactly at this point, but I think a lot of things happened and when I reflect back on it I wouldn’t have traded any of the experiences for it, but it was kind of the catalyst to move forward. So at the time I was a a principal at a, at a high school in Texas, a 2200 student, so very big 200 over 200 faculty. And things were going, you know, full, full on crazy times. Like just, you know, the amount of hours you put in. They need to, all those kids need to, you know, and it was my job to, to do that for everybody. And I loved it. It was fulfilling. It was really a great place to be.
DV (07:58):
I was also doing my PhD at night. So I was finishing my dissertation. I had also just finished and completed a year of, of an internship for super. So that was kind of my pathway. And I was on this pathway. I knew where I was going and my husband who’s been entrepreneur since he was 18 never known anything else. And was also traveling at that time. I probably 220 days out of the year. Wow. And you know, I just took a moment and we both did, and we’d had some really big life changes happen. Within that year as well. One of my best friends was diagnosed with stage four cancer. And one of my other best friends was gave birth and ended up being in the hospital with a hole in her heart and they weren’t sure she was gonna make it.
DV (08:52):
And there was just a lot of things going on. Quite honestly. And my husband said, you know, why don’t you take a moment, let’s just take a moment and breathe, finish your dissertation take a sabbatical and, and go back to education. And I said, no,
DV (09:50):
It wasn’t like a, you know, I had didn’t have a plan in place. It just, it just was. And basically once that opportunity happened, I just jumped both feet in and, and did it. And I love education. I love the kids, I, the parents, schools everything about it. But now that I’ve been an entrepreneur now for 15 years, I think, going on, no, actually going on 17 there’s no other better place in the world for me. I just enjoy so much and I still help people. I just help in a different way. And I think that’s why I enjoy it so much.
AJV (10:31):
I love that. And you know, it’s interesting, like this is like the third conversation I’ve had in a really short time period where I have talked to someone who had some sort of life event that occurred in one of these pivotal decisions that they’ve made. You know, I’ve, I’ve had those. And I was just talking to someone earlier today about that she left a very high paying corporate software job of, you know, what happened is her mom was diagnosed with cancer and she goes, man, is this how I wanna spend my days? Is this what I wanna be doing? And like, to hear you about a friend and then the daughter of another friend. And I know that these life events cause us to wake up, right? Like so evident, so many, right? So many of us, what I’m curious is just to hear your genuine opinion and your perspective of why does it take that sort of thing to actually cause us to do what we want? Like, what is it about us as humans, right? That’s like, I’ll stay on this path, even though I know there might be something more for me until we realize life is short. And it’s a lot shorter than I used to think yesterday, because today I have news I didn’t have yesterday. I’m just, I’m so curious, like, what is, is it that
DV (11:54):
I can’t speak for everyone, but I think for, for me I’m very goal oriented. So I mean, I’m still goal oriented and my husband does this too. People think we’re crazy about this point, but in my bathroom, I have a glass board, not a white board, a glass board, and it has all of our goals for the year so that we can see them every morning when we’re taking a shower, when not
AJV (12:16):
Taking a shower,
DV (12:17):
They’re just like right in front of me, there’s no reason not to pass it up. So I think for me as very goal oriented, I set these goals. I wanna be a principal by this age. I wanna be a superintendent by this age. I wanna do X by this age. And, and then life just continues happening. And, and then all of a sudden you’re given a moment of pause because of some life extraordinary event. That just for me, you know, just put everything else aside and, and gives you pause and thought and, and how, and what do I wanna do? I mean, I spent the last days of my friend’s life with her and I could not have done that as a teacher or as a principal. I just wouldn’t have allowed me to. So I wouldn’t change that transition for anything.
DV (13:07):
I mean, I was meant to be but I do think that you, people just go on this journey and it’s just so fast and furious you know, that we don’t take the time to, to stop for a second. And then we get the time and, and we think, is this where we’re supposed to be? I mean much like COVID yeah, COVID paused the world. And then so many people that came out of it were attorneys and now there’s screenwriters and moved to Costa Rica or, you know, people that were screenwriters who were like, I don’t wanna be this anymore. I wanna do this. I mean, and I just think that we don’t have enough pauses in our life.
AJV (13:46):
Oh, I love that. I’ve, I’ve shared this quote a few times now. But I was reading an article and that just like flashed across my screen one day. And it was from Ariana Huffington and she said, people have been calling this the great resignation, but I don’t think that’s what it is. I don’t think we have a great resignation. I think what we are experiencing is the great reevaluation yeah. Of what do we wanna do and how do we wanna do it? And what’s the in and what’s worth it. And is, is money really the answer to all the things. And many of us discovered, no, it’s not.
DV (14:21):
Yeah, exactly
AJV (14:23):
Not. And I think that’s a huge part of it’s like these life events cause us to reevaluate what we thought was important.
DV (14:29):
Mm-Hmm
AJV (15:52):
Is. And 30 age is just a number,
DV (15:55):
But it does. It gave me pause. Just thinking about where I wanna go.
AJV (16:00):
Yeah. I just, I sometimes, and I, I totally feel that and it’s like, you know, my husband, Roy’s turning 40 in just a few weeks and I’m not, I’m giving myself, I’ve got a full, like what, 22 more months before
AJV (16:16):
AJV (17:09):
So you also, you have an enormous entrepreneurial community. And one of the things that I think would be really interesting for our audience because it’s like what I tell people all the time, it’s like a personal brand should be treated like a business because it is one, it is one, right? It’s your reputation. It’s what people think of when they think of you. And regardless of what that looks like rather you are an executive or an employee or a salesperson, or you go out on your own as a solo entrepreneur or you build a company. It doesn’t matter anywhere in between. There are components of entrepreneurship that are present in everything that we do. And so what I would love to hear from you for our audience is what do you think are the necessary skills? And those could be mental, emotional, or tactical skills that it requires for someone to make it as an entrepreneur.
DV (18:05):
Oh, that’s a great question. So patience, I think is one. I have a lot of patience. Some entrepreneurs would disagree. They would say patience is not, is not a great one. And I would disagree with them back. There is so much patience needed in becoming an entrepreneur. It’s not overnight successes. All the overnight successes. Majority of them were never overnight. If you think 10 years is overnight, that’s their overnight success. Nobody ever talks about the 10 years before the overnight success. So I think patience is one tenacity. Tenacity is huge. You’re gonna get shot down. You’re gonna get said, be said, no, you’re gonna say, they’re gonna say that this is the worst they’ve ever seen, whatever. But if you truly believe in what you’re doing, then you, you you’ll keep going. You definitely just keep going. So it’s necessity would be another one. I think also being a listener, not just a communicator, not just being able to speak eloquently and, and cheer on the crowd, but to also be a good listener. Hear what people are saying, take that in, take the feedback, make the adjustments go back out there. I think those three are probably my top ones that I feel that are necessary to be a great entrepreneur. Other at least for me,
AJV (19:33):
Oh, I love that. And I think, you know, the patience one, I didn’t expect you to say that, but that is so true. Like when I said earlier, it’s like, you’re so steady. It’s like patient, would’ve been the other word. It’s like, you’re so patient like you are. And I think that’s like, I think that’s a really great reminder to everyone who’s listening today is yeah, there is no such thing as an overnight success like that does not exist. You see the success overnight, but there is no overnight success, right? It’s like, correct. Just cause you just learned about somebody doesn’t mean they hadn’t been hustling for years. Exactly. Get to that point. And I love, I love it when people say, oh man, they just came outta nowhere. And I’m like,
DV (20:11):
Really
AJV (20:13):
Thing. Like come outta nowhere that it’s like, you know, our awareness of someone is what makes us think like, oh man, they just blew up and it’s like, Mel, they didn’t blew up. Right. They’ve been building that engine for a really long time and then they just turned it on. Right. Exactly. That’s a great reminder to all of us, of man. It’s not gonna happen overnight.
DV (20:35):
You know, nothing ever does. And nothing that is worth really having at the end of it is ever just so quick. It’s not like a, it’s not like a light switch. And I also think the, the three that I mentioned are great. Especially if you have a partner that has the opposite of the three
AJV (21:23):
Oh, that’s such a great transition too. It’s like Jason and I share more of those personality traits and you, and yes
DV (21:29):
You do do
AJV (21:30):
AJV (22:28):
And so I, one I’d love to know it’s like, what have you seen both personally and just in the entrepreneurial community of what makes a successful partnership. And then the second thing is I wanna talk about, and then how do you work with your spouse? And you and I both sit in the boat and I, I share this with you often. It’s like, there are so few people that are at my life stage married to their business partner where we’re the sitting as the CEO of the company, we have young children, like it is a rare situation in most events. And it’s got amazing, beautiful components and really frigging hard ones. And I know a lot of people who get started, like they get started with their spouse cuz that’s who we can afford. Right.
DV (23:32):
Okay. No, that’s great. I think for me, number one is trust. You have to trust your partner, your business partner infinitely. If you do not or have reservations or even have like a little inkling that their trust isn’t there, it’s just not gonna work. It’s just, I can’t imagine going through every single day of what people do in a business and not completely 100% trust your partner that you’re working with. So that would be number one. Number two for me is figure out what you’re good at, figure out what your partner is good at and then stay out of each other’s way. We learned that the hard way working together. And I think the first year we really overstepped on Jason stepped over on my toes. I stepped on his and it wasn’t until we figured out our lanes and we stayed in ’em that we were able to grow and we were able to be successful in our partnership.
DV (24:35):
And, and even now, I mean, we’ve been doing this together, you know, almost 15 years and every once in a while we crossed lanes and we’re like, uhoh Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope. Let’s get back in our lane and I think that is very helpful for, for us and for other partners. And I think lastly, this has to really do, if you’re married to them, maybe not your, you weren’t married to them, but we really came up with rules around our household as well. Now I will not say that I follow every single role to a T. But I try. And the last thing we wanted in our relationship was our relationship to be all about work is so easy to all of a sudden all the conversations we’re having or about work or about your kids. And we just didn’t want that.
DV (25:27):
So we set boundaries on times a day that we can talk about our business on the weekends. You know, there’s no disgusting on Saturdays and on Sundays you can only get me until noon. Because if you’re my husband, he wakes up at 6:00 AM. He wakes me up at six 30. And the first thing you have is out of his mouth is, Hey, did you get this transaction done? Or, Hey, did you close this deal? And I’ve not even opened up my eyes for like two minutes yet. They’re like, can I brush my teeth first? So we really laid out boundaries around that. That was very helpful. And then, you know, finding people like you and Rory, I mean, you guys are amazing, but finding other like people that you can have the conversations with and talk to people, it’s a rarity of what you and I do with our husband and to have that back and forth with somebody to share it with is phenomenal. And that’s very helpful.
AJV (26:22):
Yeah. I think, you know, you said two things in there that I just wanna like pull out. Cause I think these are so significant is one of them is around the trust factor. It’s like, you’ve gotta give your partner. And you could say your partner is anywhere from a vendor to a contractor, to an employee. It’s like, I think this transcends just a business partnership, but you’ve gotta trust and give them the benefit of the doubt even when you’re not sure. And so my question to you in this is how do you build trust in business?
DV (26:52):
Oh, that’s a good one. So I’m all in or I’m all out. That’s my, so I in business, if I’ve decided that you’re my partner, whatever that is my salesperson you’re a partner in our business. You’re a vendor, anybody, anybody that we’ve touched, I’m a hundred percent in you’re on our team. I completely 100% trust. However, if that trust is broken is really hard for me to repair it. And that’s just me, myself. I’m a hundred percent in giving you everything, but if you break it I’m out. And I, I tell people that front I’m very open and honest without with anybody that I work with. Like you have everything, but you destroy it. And I walk away. Like I just, I just not worth my time nor can I do I wanna work on it to get it back. I just don’t.
AJV (27:50):
So I’m just writing this down cuz that’s like, I think so what I hear you saying and what I’m writing down is that it’s like, you have to make a choice to be all in. Yeah. Right. It’s not like, oh, it just happens. Right? It’s like, no, I’m choosing to be all in. And I’m choosing that. You’re my partner. I’m choosing to trust you.
DV (28:07):
Exactly. Exactly. No reservations, because if there’s any reservations, then there’s no reason for us to even be partners in anything.
AJV (28:17):
Okay. So that is so, so, so I guess one of the things that I’m hearing too is this has actually been a really recent conversation in our household and our business is Roy’s always telling me, babe, you’ve gotta give me the benefit of the doubt.
DV (29:09):
Right. Exactly. And for people listening I’m a lot like RRY so it doesn’t, we share a lot of the same characteristics. So surprised
AJV (29:21):
Patience is one of virtues. I have other gifts, other gifts. But it’s like, but it is, I think that’s like so important it’s like in any relationship is you’ve gotta make the choice to see the benefit of that. I have to make the choice to trust you. Because if not, then everything is filled with doubt.
DV (29:41):
Yeah. And, and then you’re going behind their, their, I wouldn’t say their backs, but you’re going behind and trying to double check the work. Did this get done? Did that get done? Did you know everything? You know, and it’s just, people make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes, we’re all human. And there’s a difference between like, oh, I messed up. That’s a mistake. And there’s a difference between a total mistrust of something that you did like that the, to me, those are very different.
AJV (30:10):
Okay. I’m,
DV (30:11):
It’s an error. I’m not forgiving when you deliberately, you know, right. Needed me to not trust me.
AJV (30:18):
Yeah. The same thing with like your kids, right. It’s like, yeah. You know, it’s so much of leadership of business is parallel to parenting. Being a parent has been the best leadership training on the planet.
DV (30:33):
AJV (30:34):
If you like, it’s like trying to get these two little humans to do something that I want them to do. And there’s no incentive. There’s no money. There’s no, like, it’s like, oh man, OK. I’ve gotta really get my negotiation skills to work with these two humans. But I think that’s like so true. It’s like, but it’s all in a choice of like, I’m choosing to say, you know, Jasper, I know that you wouldn’t intentionally knew such a thing, but that’s a choice because the other half of me is going you little rat. I know
DV (31:08):
AJV (31:08):
You know, and it’s like, that’s such a choice and it happens in business all the time. Right, right. It’s so easy to fill our mind with. Well, I mean, they’re just doing this because you know, it’s easier for them or I’m the one stuff doing all the really hard work they’re out there getting to do what they love and what they’re passionate about. And then I get stuck with everything they don’t want.
DV (31:26):
Mm-Hmm
AJV (31:27):
That’s really good. The second thing I wanna highlight is you talked about these rules. So can you give us an example of like, what’s a role that you guys have in your house to protect, you know, your personal relationship? So the business doesn’t take takeover?
DV (31:42):
Sure. So one big role is, like I said earlier about talking about business. So no talking about business on Saturdays and Sundays, we can start after 12. And so I will say, you know, Jason could talk about business 24 7. So you know, sometimes 1140, he’ll be like on a Sunday, Hey, I have 10 more minutes and then we can start talking
AJV (33:02):
So what do you guys talk about if you don’t talk about, if you don’t talk about at your daughter and if you don’t talk about work, what are you guys talking about?
DV (33:10):
Ah, what we talk about things we wanna do, where we wanna go, you know, places that maybe we wanna live. We talk about, you know, our families, our parents, maybe we, my husband travels quite a bit still now. And so there’s a lot of things in a week that transpire that I never get to even tell him about. I told him I’m a podcast with AJ. He’s like, there’s just like a lot of things that you have that you never get to share. And so we talk about things like that. And then we talk about I’m part of entrepreneur, you know organization here in town. I have a lot of entrepreneur, friends and things that are going on in their world and I wanna hear about his friends. And so that’s the, the timing that we use to celebrate those kind of experiences.
AJV (34:03):
Yeah. And I, I ask cause of genuine co you know, curiosity for my own marriage. But also because I think that’s really good for all of us to go, you know, this is like one of the big mantras. That’s in my life right now is that I want people to care much more about who I am than what I do. Yeah. I don’t wanna be defined by my work because that’s how I defined my own worth for a really long time. And I’m in recovery from finding all of my worth in my work. And what I have found is like in all general natural situations, it doesn’t matter if it’s with my husband or at a networking meeting or at my EO group or, well, a group of friends, like somehow it always transitions to, well, tell me more about what you do. And I’m like, it’s so hard to like pull out of that world and go, no, actually just wanna talk about I,
DV (34:59):
The best book you just read
AJV (35:01):
Or something. And it’s like, it’s like, it’s amazing. And I don’t know if it’s this way all around the world, but I know that it’s like this in the United States. It’s hi, here’s my name? And the next question is, so what do you do? Yeah. And it’s ingrained in this component of our lives. And it, it folds over into work is the majority of what our life is about. And I was so genuinely curious of not just for our own spouses but for each of us out there of like the thing that I love about personal branding and reputation is that it’s at the heart of who you are and who you are, has nothing to do with, with what you do. It’s a piece of it is not who you are and finding things to talk about that allow people to get to know more of who you are, I think is a kind of a novel idea, believe it or not. Well,
DV (35:51):
I also think that people have to be open to the discussion, right? I mean, in the United States and I, I I’ll say this just in the United States, you and I both travel a lot outside of the United States, but here, so many of the conversations when you meet someone are so superficial. Yeah. And they don’t go deep. And what I have found, you know, as being part of the EO community for the last 10 years, I mean, they really trained on like specific questions and to get deep and come vulnerable. And if you’re not gonna be that person, then we don’t need you in our community. Mm-Hmm
AJV (36:37):
If
DV (36:37):
You’re not gonna have a meaningful conversation with me, well, you know, there’s a hundred emails I could probably answer. And I really wanna spend the time with you and get to know you and learn, how did you become you? And I’d rather have that conversation than answer the hundred emails for sure. Oh
AJV (36:53):
Man, I’m gonna write this down. How did you become you? Not what do you do, but how did you become you? I’m always writing down what are good questions that I can ask that are not, so what do you do or tell me about your work or like that’s a really good one. So so do you, do you ask that to people?
DV (37:13):
I do. I do. I do ask that the, the first, the first glance, you know, especially if they’re outside kind of the entrepreneurial world, not heard about these things, they look at me going, excuse me. Oh, what, and, and so then it’s really probing. Like how did you become you? Where did you grow up?
AJV (37:33):
The first
DV (37:34):
Question you have, like, you know, just kind of going down the journey and then you see the person getting more comfortable. Cause at the end of the day, people like talking about themselves, they really do. It’s just, we’ve been trying to really, for a lot of people, we only speak about this and we don’t speak more about this and we do this and you’ve learned kind of these ways to put yourself out there. So that you’re, you’re captivated in the best light. And so when you kind of go in a different route, people are just more willing to have conversations. And then you’re able to share about you and your story and your authentic self of who you
AJV (38:11):
Are. Oh, I love that so much. Anything that helps me create stories around, tell me who you are not about what you do is like a big thing in my life right now, I was at a it was a charity event thing and I was standing outside, standing in line to get a glass of wine. And this young lady walks up to me. She just introduced herself. You were just like chit chatting. And she just says, well, what’s your name? How do you know the host? And she goes, how do you fill the hours of your week? And I was like, I’m sorry, what
DV (38:45):
A great question. I’m gonna write that.
AJV (38:49):
I stopped in my tracks. And I said, you mean like, what do I do for work? And this was like six months ago or something. This is like, kind of like triggered my own default to asking these silly questions. And she’s like, well, I mean, that could be a part of it, but you know, just how do you feel the hours of your day? And I was like, well, in the mornings started, I was like, well, in the mornings I have two toddlers. And so, and then I started like regurgitating my schedule. And she was like, that’s so fascinating.
DV (39:21):
AJV (39:22):
It was one of those things. I’m like, how do I spend hours? But it was like such a nice of, and then I said, are you intentionally trying not to ask like the people do for work? And she goes, yeah, it’s a really intentional effort of mine. And I said, I’m totally stealing this and I’m gonna
DV (39:52):
I love
AJV (39:54):
Very similar. It’s like, so tell me about how you became you. Right. I love that. I, I love that. And so, alright, so I’m gonna flip that on you. So Denise, how did you become you?
DV (40:06):
Oh, I should have never given it away.
AJV (40:12):
You
DV (40:12):
Know, I think our life is fools with, we talked about it, ups and ups and downs, right valleys. I’d say I became me starting with a very strong minded beautiful kind mom. I was very fortunate to have her in my life and, and to have her in my life. So my dad died and I was five. And my mom raised me as a single mom for wait till I was about 14 when she remarried. Luckily for me though, I have 52 first cousins and 32 aunts and uncles. So I always had family around. And I think, you know, they helped me become who I was. All those cousins all lived in the same city. So we were always at somebody’s house. I was always playing sports. I was mostly boy cousins for some reason we didn’t
DV (41:30):
I think it was probably one of the only lies that I’ve ever really told her, which at that time in my life, I really needed to get away. It was time for me to fly the co and she really wanted me to stay. And I graduated from high school, top 10% of my class, and I’m a first generation college graduate. My family didn’t know really the how to make the transition for me to go to college. And I said that UT Austin was the only college that accepted me and I wasn’t accepted anywhere else. And, and mind you, I did pay my own way. So this wasn’t a financial burden on my family, but I needed to go. And I left and I, that was probably a huge pivotal moment. So I went from this little pond of an all girls Catholic high school to all of a sudden 50,000 students at UT. And it was awesome. I loved UT
AJV (42:36):
DV (42:39):
Awesome. And then I just, I kept growing. I found my passion for teaching there and felt really fell in love with it. I really felt that was the right place to be. And I would not have found that without two things, one, my mom who gave me permission to look outside of making money and to really find something that I was good at. And then secondly, was an offsite internship I had to do at the school for the blind, visually impaired and the two together and the young boy that I was working with at the school paved my way for the next 14 years. And then you know, there was lots of movement and I think years later, about eight years after teaching six, six to eight years, I decided that I wanted to go in and get my master’s and then my PhD in education.
DV (43:34):
And I think for me that was also a big pivotal point. I think I realized that I could do something even more than just for me, it was helping my classroom than it was even more. If I could help the school, then it was even more I could help a district. And so I really wanted to expand that. You know, so I think that’s really, and then from there I came an entrepreneur and then that was, you know, that was crazy. I mean, our journey has been fascinating at our companies. I’ve worked with the largest brands in the United States. We’ve been truly blessed in so many ways. And I think all of those things made me mean
AJV (44:20):
I love that. And I, I think, you know, this whole thing is like building an influential personal brand. And I think the best way you can build influence is you just get to know someone that’s the best way to have influence it’s. If I don’t know, you, you have very little influence over my decisions day to day, but if I know you and I, I like you and I trust you, you have great influence over my daily decisions and behaviors. And I, I love that. And I think if we all need to be a little bit more focused on how did you become who you are not, tell me about how you did all these things you did. Right.
AJV (44:56):
And I, and it’s like, and I still, like, there’s still a huge part of teaching in you. Right. And for those of you listening you know that about a year ago, we talk about this all the time. We launched our, you know, national research study, the trends and personal branding you know, it’s Denise’s company, her and her husband’s company that fielded this research for us. And it’s like today, he’s like, you run a team of researchers, right? It’s like, there’s still that education component that has stayed with you, even through your entrepreneurial journey. It’s like, you are a research firm, right? It’s like, you’re doing research for books and you’re doing research for these huge brands, but there’s a seriously academic part of what you do that has made you so successful
DV (45:39):
Completely. And thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. Teaching is, is embedded in me. I love it. Sometimes I come off just as a teacher or my husband always gets mad at me. He’s like, don’t use your teacher voice on me. And I don’t mean to, but I, I love, I love getting educated. And so kind of my love language is to serve others in the, in that same way. So I really enjoy being part of those educational moments with our team and training our talent development programs that we do even like our talent acquisition and just teaching about the jobs. It it’s, it’s fascinating. And I get so much inspiration by seeing somebody’s face to slide up. I mean, I remember when I was younger, I started teaching when I was 22 and I remember thinking how that would never go away for me.
DV (46:36):
And you know, now I’m 50 and it still has never gone away for me. It’s, it’s almost amazing coupled with, and I will share this coupled with now, many of the students who I was in educational, like I said, for 14 years, just about so thousands of students that I’ve interacted with and I get every once in a while, somebody who pops up who comes up to me and says, are you miss be? And I say, yes. And, and they say something that just, you know, makes me smile. Like, I remember when you said this joke and I’ve always kept it with me, or I’ve had a couple of people say I became a science teacher because of you, those moments in time, you just they’re true blessings.
AJV (47:21):
Amazing. No, I’m not miss via I’m Dr. Via
AJV (47:25):
DV (48:52):
Okay, those are good questions. So why gen Z? So our company is really founded on separating generational myth from truth. So that’s the core. And it was founded because we were finding out that CEOs were using data and the data wasn’t matching what they were saying. So that’s kind of how our company really started is, well, if they’re taking this data and it’s not matching what they’re saying, there’s teaching element and saying, they’re not understanding the data for some reason, another, or the data is not being read in a way that shows the information correctly. So let’s just make our own research company, that one shares the data correctly and shares a story that goes with it. So gen Z is kind of that new generation. There were so many myths that came up with millennials and you guys did get a lot of hate.
AJV (49:52):
A lot of it.
DV (49:54):
And so of course, when gen Z started coming up, there was a great way to bring out what we were seeing with this generation. And we have been following them for probably a good seven years now. And what I love about this generation from the very beginning was really their, their money sets, which was huge, never saw it in any other generation except the baby boomers. And so that has been a huge part of them and their hard work and diligence which once again, was being portrayed in their earlier lives. And I think we’re seeing it again still into adulthood. So those are two of my favorite aspects about gen Z. I’d say the learning part of writing a book with your spouse. So this was two years of a labor of love. And I will say labor of love
DV (50:59):
I have come up through an academic work body of literature writing as you’re being published for different peer reviews, right? It’s a very different writing style than my husband who is a, you know, a, a published author multiple times over that has a very different voice and merging those two together. Oh my goodness gracious. That was probably the hardest things that we did. But at the end of the day, it worked, it took a lot of giving on my part and a lot of giving on his part. And there was many things if you get the book and you’ll notice, oh, Denise definitely wrote this. Because I channel data a little bit differently. Well, when my husband does so well, as he makes the everyday user read it and understand it instantly. And so we just, we really had to practice merging those two voices. And and so on top of doing the research, which took about a year to do then putting that together and merging the two voices, it was definitely almost as hard as having a shut
AJV (52:08):
It’s kinda like birthing a child of sorts. And I love the stories of anyone who has ever gone through the process of writing a book, you know, back like what we said. It’s like, nothing happens overnight.
AJV (52:21):
Neither does writing a book. Y’all it’s like, and I, we have so many people who enter into this very fortunate community. We’ve been able to help curate at brand builder’s group of going all right. My goal is the next 12 months is to write a book, get it published. And I’m like, we’re gonna need to adjust those goals.
AJV (53:03):
And Rory is very gray, right? He’s like, well, that’s the best part of this and the worst part. And I’m like, Nope, she’s this or this
DV (54:10):
Completely. And you have that backup to show you, Nope, this is what it said. And it’s statistically valid and we’ve done confidence in our roles and, and you can play up all the words and it’s, it’s valuable. And it also aligns with what you’re doing. It makes you feel like I’m doing this right. Or
AJV (54:59):
Yeah. You said something that just made me think about this is, you know I’m I’m, as you are. It’s like, I think feedback is one of the gifts that I didn’t always want. But I always need, and it’s like, I love getting feedback and input, and to me doing research was like another way of getting feedback. Yeah. It was, I can’t see what I can’t see. And sometimes I’m just, you know, the old saying I’m too close to the forest to see the trees. Yeah, exactly. Cause I need to get outta my own echo chamber. Right. Mm-hmm
AJV (55:44):
Like that was really good to go. You know, I think one of the big data points that came up to me, which I thought was so interesting to hear yours about gen Z was like mine about personal branding. Was that testimonials 62% of Americans say that testimonials is the number one most important factor when deciding whom to hire, not if you have a book or viral, Ted talk are large social media following none of those things, it was like at the very, very top of the list. And then 10 percentage points down was the next one, but 62%. Where do you have testimonials of other people validating that you are, who you say you are and you do what you say you’re gonna do. And for us, and the way that companies and people spend marketing dollars, I’m like, oh my gosh, this is the cheapest, fastest, easiest thing that you can do. It’s like you take that or it’s like, get on national media, create a viral Ted talk, get a New York times bestselling book. And I’m like, oh my gosh, like we’ve been, we’ve been putting all of our time energy resources into potentially the wrong avenue. It’s not that we shouldn’t do the other things, but it’s like, where should the majority of our intent go? It was so, so helpful.
DV (56:55):
And if you’re a gen Z, you’re gonna look at least 10 of ’em before you make a decision. I mean, you know, so there is some even way the different generations look at reviews who you’re trying to hit will give you some idea of what do these need to look like, or how many should I have up there, et cetera. Which I think is, is really helpful when you’re looking at your own personal brand or your company or anything, really people, people search those number one thing. And I, you know, I will say that we had so much fun working on your report. I just, I love working with friends because it gets me even closer into the mindset of what you do and what you and Rory do. And it was really neat working on that project.
AJV (57:39):
DV (58:28):
Aw, thank you, AJ. It was a pleasure. Thank you for having me really appreciate talking into doing it.
AJV (58:34):
Oh, this was so awesome. I love it. And for everyone listening make sure you stay tuned for the recap episode and we’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand. See y’all.
Ep 323: High-Performance Secrets of NBA Superstars with Alan Stein Jr. | Recap Episode
RV (00:02):
High performance secrets from NBA superstars. What a fascinating conversation with Alan Stein. And man, I loved that more than I, more than I thought I would. You know, I’m just not, I’m not a huge sports guy anymore. Although I used to be, it was like my whole life growing up as a kid was Chicago
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Bulls.
RV (00:22):
But what a tremendous conversation, if you didn’t listen, go back and listen. It is fantastic. I’m gonna share with you some of my highlights. If you didn’t pick this up Alan was a skills trainer for NBA superstars and I’m talking superstars, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, step Curry. This guy was in the gym, working with them and you know, has written a book and started as a speaking career, sort of, sort of talking about it. And, and so I’m gonna share with you my three top takeaways from the interview of what hit me and also what I’ve been, what, you know, how I, how I interpret and internalize all these conversations. And the first one is really from Kobe Bryant. So it’s coming from Kobe Bryant by way of Allen,
Speaker 2 (01:07):
But Kobe said something so important. He said the best, never get bored with the basics. The best never get bored with the basics and from somebody that was so spectacular as a player,
RV (01:23):
As a performer, as Kobe Bryant,
Speaker 2 (01:25):
To
RV (01:25):
Hear him
RV (01:26):
Say that is, is moving to me and it’s inspiring to me and it’s validating for me and it’s edifying for me because I agree with that the best don’t get bored with the basics because the basics are what hold everything up. The, the really I would, I would say the, the people who are the best are the best, because they’re the best at the basics. They’re not the, they’re not the best at the exceptional. They’re not the best at the flashy. They’re not the best at the extraordinary. They’re brilliant at the basics. And that’s the thing to ask yourself, are you brilliant at the basics? Are you like, are you brilliant? Are you executing the fundamentals? Are you doing the things consistently that need to be done to grow your business? And, and when I think of like sales, right? I go, referrals are the basics.
RV (02:14):
It’s the fundamentals, but it’s the only thing you need. Like, are you asking for referrals in your business? If you are, you’re probably succeeding or you will be soon when, when you look at marketing and you go, are you putting out content consistently in many different places, right? Our content diamond formula that we teach are, are you following that? Are you doing it consistently? If you’re trying to be a speaker, are you speaking consistently? Are you, are you, are you on podcast interviews consistently? Are you, are you being brilliant at the basics? And personal branding is no different. Like these are the things every single weekend and week out, I gotta create a video. I gotta create a podcast. Our team’s gotta run a production
RV (02:53):
Schedule to just keep things going.
RV (02:55):
We gotta drive leads. Our sales team has to show up. They have to, you know, have conversations. They have to call follow up. They have to close. We have to onboard new people. Like we have to, we get to, we get to do all those things. And, and if, if the basics are good enough for Kobe Bryant, the basics are good enough for me. They should be good enough for you. And it’s, it’s the secret. It’s the truth. Like here’s the irony is I think people look at superstars and they go to superstars thinking if I could just get access to this superstar, then they’ll teach me the secrets. Then, then like, there’s, there’s some hidden playbook that we’re looking for. We, we convince ourselves that, that there’s something that they know that we don’t know. And if we could know what they know, then all of a sudden everything would be unlocked.
RV (03:44):
And there is a secret that they know that we don’t know the secret is there. Isn’t a secret. There isn’t a secret. The secret is to be brilliant at the basics, or as Kobe says the best don’t get bored with the basics. And so they’re not chasing flashy. They’re not chasing fancy. They’re not, they’re not chasing the spectacular they’re mastering, dominating and becoming brilliant at the basics. And so the question is, are you, am I, are we, what are the basics in your business? And are you dominating them? Are you mastering them? That was just so, so powerful for me. The second takeaway from that conversation with Alan was when he said these ultra performers, these superstar athletes have an amazing blend between confidence and humility, confidence, and humility. And I totally agree with that. I’ve seen the same thing over and over with ultra performers that I’ve been around in my life.
RV (04:52):
You know, and, and people think they, they get this mixed up. This is an important distinction. And it’s a balance that you need to understand that that confidence and humility are not at odds with one. Another confidence is not the opposite of humility. Pride is pride is the opposite of humility. Like being prideful is, is like, that’s more about who you’re doing it for, right? To me, confidence is the way you’re doing it, but pride is who you’re doing it for. And so when, when, when you have confidence, the way you’re, it’s the way you’re doing it, you’re doing it bold. You’re doing it aggressive. You’re doing it assertive. You’re, you’re, you’re doing it. You’re doing it with fire. You’re doing it with passion. You’re, you’re all in. You’re leaning into it. You are, you are, you are utilizing and accessing and withdrawing and leveraging and polling and investing every asset you have into to what you’re doing, the way you’re doing it and doing it well, pride is totally different. Pride is who you’re doing it for pride, prideful and
RV (05:56):
Being prideful is like, I’m doing it for me. I’m number one. I want everyone to see, you know, how great I am to me, that’s pride. And that’s the opposite of humility. But I think people, especially, if, if I may say, I think Christians are, are an interesting subgroup of people who struggle with this. At least I can speak for myself as a Christian, right? Because it’s like the meek inherit shall inherit the earth and, and humility is valued. And so it almost feels like if I’m being confident, I’m somehow being unholy, I’m being unspiritual or are I’m, you know, I’m, I’m not, I’m being less Christian, but I don’t see those at conflict at all. At least not now, I’ve been able to reconcile. I do see pride as being an issue because pride is doing it for me, showing the world, look at me, look how awesome I am.
RV (06:44):
Y’all need to respect me. And you bow down to me. And pride is a massive problem because it is in conflict with, you know, the first commandment of like no other God’s before me, where it’s like, humility is my life is in service of God. And my life is in service of the people around me. It’s not about elevating me so I can be humble and extraordinarily confident at the same time, I can be bold and humble. I can be confident and meek. I can be aggressive and assertive, assertive, and, and still be holy. But pride is different. Pride is like, I’m taking up the space of the most important of the most high, and that’s a problem. But and that’s different even than, than taking pride in your work. I think that’s different than being prideful. So these players, you know, probably take pride in their work, but they’re not prideful.
RV (07:38):
It’s not look at me. I’m the best. I’m the man y’all bow down. They’re they’re but they are extremely confident. I can take that shot. I’ve I’ve practiced this thousands of times. I loved, I loved when Alan said this in the interview, he said, if you hadn’t seen how many times Steph Curry had taken these millions of shots in an empty gym, you wouldn’t be as impressed when he makes 12 threes in a game. Right? It’s you know, for most of us like, oh my gosh, 12 threes, this is in a game. This is superhuman, but you go, nah, he’s like hitting 12 threes in an hour all the time, because he’s shooting millions and millions and millions of shots. It wouldn’t seem that like, you know, it just wouldn’t be that much of a superhero, cuz it’s like, it’s, it’s more like muscle memory.
RV (08:22):
And so I think that’s, what’s really cool is you can be confident and bold, but you can also have the humility to put in the work and, and focus on the basics and to keep practicing. And you know, I, I loved when he was telling the story about how Kobe was, you know, most players are working out once a day, the best are working out twice. Kobe’s working out three times a day, he’s leaving his first workout by the time people show up. And it’s like, he realized that if I do that every day, no one will ever catch me. Like over the course of a day, it doesn’t add up to much over the course of a, of a week. It doesn’t add up maybe to much, but over the course of a season, two seasons, five seasons, you know, a decade, it adds up so much.
RV (09:03):
So this blend of confidence and humility, you can have both, they’re not competing. They’re totally reconcilable. And you need both, at least, you know, this is a high performing secret of NBA superstars. According to Alan, which I concur with. And then the third one actually I thought was super relevant, especially for personal brands. Now at brand builders group, I think there’s sort of three core audiences that we serve. And, and I, I think of them as experts, entrepreneurs and executives. So experts are like speakers, coaches, trainers entrepreneurs are people who are more like professional service providers or direct sales people, or just, you know, they have some type of business and they’re, they’re not selling a product related to their expertise per se. They’re, they’re just driving leads for their existing product or their existing business. And then you have executives who are mostly on the hunt for a raise or promotion or maybe getting hired at some other company or, or just industry visibility.
RV (10:01):
But when I look at the expert portion of our audience, speakers, coaches, and coaches specifically, this was super relevant because, you know, I asked Alan, I said, you know, are you ever like insecure that, that you’re coaching the best players in the world? Like clearly they’re better than you are. And yet they’re receiving coaching from you. And I, I loved what he said, as he said, I knew they were better players than me. And they knew they were better players than me, but that doesn’t exclude them. That doesn’t exclude me from being able to add value to what they’re working on. Right? Like that doesn’t exclude me from being able to help them. And that was a really powerful and an important moment because you know, a lot of you, if you’re coaches or speakers, it’s like, you don’t necessarily have to have done something at the level or to the full extent that somebody else has.
RV (11:03):
You need to be an expert, you need to have results. You need to know what you’re doing, but you can still add tremendous value. So first of all, there’s, there’s that right? You can still add value, but the other part that hit me was going, there’s a big difference between being the world’s greatest player and being the world’s greatest coach. There’s a big difference between being the world’s greatest player and the world’s greatest coach. They’re not the same thing, many most nearly all of the world’s greatest players were never the world’s greatest coach. In fact, in all of professional sports, it’s extremely rare where a player wins a championship as both a player, and then goes on to win a championship as, as a head coach. Now, I, I look through this up a little bit and it’s, it actually has happened more often than I not specifically in basketball in football it’s like Mike, Mike DKA and Tom Flores.
RV (12:03):
And like Gary Koyak, there’s only a few in football where the, they won a super bowl as a player, but then also won a championship as a coach. And, and, you know, specifically as a superstar, like, I, I wouldn’t, I don’t, I hope he wouldn’t mind. I, I wouldn’t think of Gary Kubiak as a superstar player. He was a great player. I was Denver Broncos, right. I was Broncos fan. So I, I, I watched Kubiak, but a great coach and you know, an amazing hall of fame career. But my DKA, I would say was, you know, superstar and one as a coach, but that’s very, very rare now in the NBA. Steve Kerr did it you know, of course won championships with the bulls and then also won as a, as a coach. And Phil Jackson has done it, you know, but mostly as a coach, I think nine rings as a coach and two as a player.
RV (12:53):
And again, I wouldn’t think of him as a superstar player, but he is one of the greatest coaches of all time. And I didn’t know this, but Patrick Riley won a championship as a player. And then also, you know, as a, as a coach, but bill Russell was a superstar player and also won championships as a coach. But outside of like those, I, there weren’t a ton. Like it doesn’t happen that often. And, and, and even when it does it, doesn’t, it doesn’t exclude this point here. That there’s a difference between being the greatest player or one of the world’s greatest players and one of those greatest coaches. And it’s very rare and hard and not necessary to be both. And I think about this at brand builders group, right? Like, you know, we’re coaching many of the biggest personal brands in, in the world, right?
RV (13:36):
I I’m I’m or, or coaching advising, you know, being their strategist, I guess, is the technical term, but like ed, Mylet got way more followers than we do. He makes a lot more money than we do. He’s sold a lot more books than his launch than we did, but he’s humble enough to invite in somebody like, you know, us because we know something about it. And, you know, you, you, you take his reach his reputation. I mean, his, the success of his book launch is because of him. I mean, there was a whole team that helped him. We were part of that team, but it was really because of, of him, but yeah, our system helped. Yeah. We coached him through it. Yeah. We, we have a process that really made a difference and you know, of course he’s been super generous and, and grateful publicly about that.
RV (14:22):
And, and it just shows you that going, Hey, I’ve never performed in terms of, in some of those metrics as, as the way that he has. He allows me to speak into that Louis House, same thing, Eric Thomas Tom and Lisa BIU these, you know, we we’re, we’re getting more and more, we’re working with these very, very like high profile clients because we get really good results and we, you know, the word is spreading that what we do actually works and it’s ethical and it’s honest and all that stuff. So personally I experienced this now. I think I’ve performed in many ways. Like if you say personal branding, you know, speaking author, there’s many ways that I’ve I’ve been a great player. I don’t know if I would say superstar, I mean, a hall of fame speaking and, and New York times bestselling author are, I mean, I guess very legitimate things, but it doesn’t matter.
RV (15:12):
The point is for you, if, even if you’ve never been the greatest player, you’ve never been a superstar. You can still add value like Alan who, who was interviewing. He’s not gonna be in the NBA hall of fame yet. He’s coaching some of the best players in the history of the game, because he knew the game really well. And he was a great coach. And so I just hope if you ever have that, that sort of imposter syndrome of like, ah, you know, am I qualified to coach entrepreneurs who do better than me? You go, well, sh sure you might be, you might not be, but you might be, if you have legitimate insights that can help them, even if you’ve never been to that level yourself. Now that said, I really pride myself and AJ really prides herself. We pride ourself as a culture at brand builders group that we teach people to do things that we do and that we have done.
RV (16:04):
So, you know, we’re not teaching someone like ed, Mylet something that we haven’t done ourselves or tried out. It’s just, we’re teaching of something that we know that we know works. And then because of who he is and his reputation and his reach and his trust and all of his other relational capital and all the other assets that he has, it’s just, it, it’s a, a bigger result on a, on a grander scale. So, you know, it’s just kind of a balance, right? But like, don’t feel that imposter syndrome that just because someone’s older than you, or you know, maybe you think somehow smarter than you, or maybe they make more money than you, or they have a bigger business than you. It doesn’t exclude you from being able to add value to what they’re doing just in and of itself. And then also going well, yeah, the greatest players don’t hire the other greatest players to teach them.
RV (16:55):
They hire the greatest coaches. So you go, maybe I wasn’t, maybe I’m not the greatest player, but I’m gonna focus on being one of the greatest coaches who’s ever, you know, been in this profession. That’s awesome. Right. I mean, Phil Jackson has nine rings as a coach. I think it’s nine and two as a player. And it’s like, people think of him as a coach, one of the greatest coaches of all time, like he’s coaching Michael Jordan, you know, Kobe Shaq. Incredible. So just keep that in mind. And again, at this points to how insecurity and self-doubt is always, you only feel those things when you’re thinking about yourself, you don’t think about them when you’re, when you’re thinking about other people, when you’re just going, I’m here to help. I’m here to serve. I’m here to add value to you. I’m here to make a difference in, in your career, in your life.
RV (17:43):
I’m not worried about what you think of me or what my credentials are. I am here focused on you. I’m here to help you. That is a part of the essence of what makes a great coach even, and especially at the superstar level. So thank you for being here. Thank you for the honor of allowing us, me, AJ, our team at brand builders group to speak in your life. It it’s a, it it’s, you know, preaching to the choir here by, by definition, you’re here. Listening is a sign of, of humility and coachable coachability, and also hopefully confidence and boldness to go chase your dreams and knock ’em down and do the work it takes to make them a reality. So share this podcast with someone who, you know, who’s a sports fan. Who’s also thinking about building their business or they’re an entrepreneur or building their personal brand. This is a great one. Both the recap and the interview with Alan, make sure you go follow Alan on social and leave him a comment. Send him some love. Just say hi, let him know. You heard him here on the influential personal brand podcast. We’ll catch you next time.
Ep 322: High-Performance Secrets of NBA Superstars with Alan Stein Jr.
RV (00:02):
Well, it’s not every day that you get a chance to talk to somebody who worked closely for years and years and years with people like Kobe Bryant and Steph Curry and Kevin Duran and our guest today, Alan Stein Jr. Did exactly that. So for 15 years he worked as a, basically a, a high performance skills and mental training coach for NBA superstars and athletes. And in the last few years, he’s transitioned over into speaking and writing. He’s got a couple books out. His first book has done very, very well. It’s called raise your game, high performance secrets from the best of the best. And then he has a new book out called sustain your game. And I just saw him in person recently at the event that we had for ed my let’s book launch in North Carolina, and we sort of connected there. And then he was on ed my let’s podcast a couple weeks before I was. And anyways, I just, I really love Alan and what he’s about and the people he’s hanging out with and, and what he’s doing. And I just was sort of curious, like, man, I, I wanna know what’s going on behind the scenes with some of NBA superstars and to see if I can get a little free coaching for myself. So welcome to the stage a Stein Jr. What’s up, man.
ASJ (01:18):
Aw, man. It’s so great to be with you. I’m looking forward to a fun conversation and I’ll give you all the coaching you want my friend
RV (01:23):
ASJ (02:06):
Well, you know, I’ve never gone by or embraced the junior part of my name. And, and throughout my basketball training career, it was always just Alan Stein. And when I decided to make the distinct pivot outside of, you know, to leave the direct training space of basketball and inter corporate speaking when I went to get my website domain and social handles Alan Stein was taken so I, I wanted to try and figure out a way to keep that branding consistent. But I also wanted to find a way from a searchable and SEO standpoint to kind of differentiate my two professional lives. So if you, you Google Alan Stein, you’re probably gonna find a lot of stuff from my basketball days and training. But when I add the junior, now it’s a very distinct difference and that’s kind of the corporate keynote speaking. And in writing that I do, and it’s allowed me to have alanine jr.com and at alanine Jr. On all social platforms. So smart, there’s kind kind of a branding play and just a, a separator for sure.
RV (03:03):
Yeah. I love that. I mean, that’s really smart to have that consistency, like man, it’s so it’s so tricky when you’re like, how do I tag this person on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and it’s all different every time. Like I actually have some issues with that myself because when we sold our company, some of my profiles were caught up in that transaction. So, but anyways, so I wanna, I wanna talk to you about what you talk about and what a lot of people ask you about, which is like, what is it, what do you learn? What have you learned from coaching? I mean, you’re not just coaching professional athletes, you’re coaching or coached some of the most legendary players in the history of the game. I mean, Steph Curry, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, like these are, these are at the, the absolute peak of the peak of the peak of the peak performance in one of the most competitive games in the world. So I’m curious, you know, for both myself and for the person listening, how do, what can we take from the, the mindset it takes to operate at that level?
ASJ (04:09):
Three things jump out immediately. And, and my favorite part of these three things is they have such high utility. You know, they, they apply to every area of our lives. I mean, these three things allow me to be a better speaker and run a better speaking business. But they also allow me to be a better father. And I’ve, I’ve always been fascinated by principles and strategies that have that type of utility. The very first one is, is something that I learned from Kobe Bryant that changed my life forever when he said the best, never get bored with the basics and that if you want to be good at anything, you have to work towards mastery of the fundamentals relentlessly during the unseen hours. And you know, the very first thing I do with anyone that I work with is get them to identify what are the basic building blocks required to be good in this specific area of your life. You know, if, if you want to thriving in healthy marriage, what are the basics of having a thriving and healthy marriage? If you wanna run an elite speaking business, what are the fundamentals required of doing that? So getting clarity, and I know that’s what you all are all about getting clarity on the basics and the fundamentals, and then having the, the humility to stick to them on a daily basis was definitely the first lesson. The
RV (05:20):
Second was, let me hold on. I wanna stop there cuz I wanna dig in on, on, on, on this, like there’s, this is so true for us because Alan, you know, people come to us and they go, oh, I wanna become a New York times bestselling author. Like, so and so, or I wanna have a podcast like Lewis Houser, I wanna speak on stages. I wanna have, you know, have millions of people watch my videos like Eric Thomas. And then it’s like, okay. And we go, great. We’ve broken it down step by step systematically. There’s there is no question about if we can teach people to do all of those things, we are a hundred percent sure that it works, cuz we’re doing it ourselves in addition to like doing with, with other people, but nobody wants to do it. And it’s the same thing. Like when, when you think of you know, like you think of Kobe Bryant, you think of the game winning shot, you think of these epic highlight real dunks. Tell us, like, tell me a little bit about him in real life. Like to this point of never being bored with the basics and to the fundamentals, even when he was at his peak, was he doing that or did, was that just sort of like something he did to get to the NBA or like how long was that a part of what his philosophy was?
ASJ (06:29):
Such an insightful question and I’m glad you went in that direction. You know, continuing to work on and work towards mastery of the basics, remained a fundamental component throughout his entire career. And then he took that same mindset, you know, when, when he left basketball and re and retired and he had that same mindset in business. Now what’s important to, to have discernment is I’m not saying that he never graduated to more advanced techniques and more advanced skills and drills. He obviously did what I’m saying is he never left the basics behind. He realized that those were the foundation to which the rest of the house was built. So the very first time I had a chance to watch him work out in one of his private workouts. Back in 2007, he spent the first 45 minutes doing basic footwork, basic shooting mechanics, basic ball handling drills.
ASJ (07:18):
I mean to the tune of stuff that I had already taught those things to middle school, age players. And here you’re talking about, you know, arguably the best player of a generation, certainly the best player in 2007. And yet he still made the commitment to focusing on those fundamentals for the first portion of his workout. And then of course, again, he would matriculate up and graduate to more advanced techniques, but he would never leave them. And, and as I’ve been a part of and, or studied other thriving organizations, especially in sports, you know, a, a duke basketball or a new England Patriots back in their heyday, you know, it was the same thing. You know, their practices and their workouts were built on the fundamentals of the game. They never left those that wasn’t something they said, well, we’re gonna do these things until we get good and then we’ll just leave them behind.
ASJ (08:06):
They made sure those were a staple of everything they did moving forward. And, and I know in my own life, you know, anytime I don’t believe I’m getting the results that I, I think I’m capable of when I, I sit with some self-reflection and some introspection, I usually realize that I’ve, I’ve started to skip the basics. I’ve started to, to kind of, you know, move on to more advanced techniques and leave them behind. And as soon as I refocus that lens and get that required clarity and get back to the fundamentals, I see my performance escalate again. So it’s, it’s not about never moving past them is just about never leaving them behind
RV (08:42):
Mm-Hmm
ASJ (08:56):
Well, this is another part that kind of a part two to the story of when I saw him work out, that I thought was so cool was he had cuz the workout that I watched him do was really, really, really early in the morning. I mean at 3:30 AM type of work to some people that’s almost late cuz they’re considering it from the day before, but that was his first workout of the day. And, and he said to me at that time, cuz I asked him why he chose to get up that early. And he said even the most dedicated and determined NBA players in the off season, cuz this was an off season workout. He said the most D driven and ambitious NBA players will work out twice a day. They’ll work out for two to three hours mid-morning then they’ll take a little break and they’ll work out for two to three hours midafternoon and he said, if I only do what everybody else does, then I’ll only have what everyone else has.
ASJ (09:43):
I need to do more than they do. And this, this really parlays into, you know, ed my let’s concept of the power of one more. So Kobe said, if I can go in and get my first workout before they’re even awake and I’m leaving the gym from my first workout, as they’re coming to the gym for their first workout and then they’re coming home from their first workout and I’m heading in for my second workout, he said, I’ll always be a step ahead. And, and that might not matter over a couple of weeks or maybe a couple of months, but when you start to stack years and in his case decades, he said, no one will ever be able to catch me simply because I’m always doing one more than they are. And that was really kind of the, the cornerstone of his Mamba mentality.
ASJ (10:24):
And, and with that said, and I always make this disclaimer and I especially make it with younger players when I would work in that space. I don’t want everyone to think that the answer is always more as better. And that, you know, you know, if, if, if you’re working 12 hour days that working 16 hour days does not necessarily mean that that will improve your business. I mean, there’s, there’s a variety of, of different individual scenarios, but I just liked his mindset and his mindset was my edge is going to be my work ethic, my, my obsession towards mastering the fundamentals. And I’m always gonna do a little bit more than you’re going to do and you’ll never beat me. And I, I think that’s an incredible mindset to have.
RV (11:03):
Yeah. Well, I mean, I have to say like, you know, there’s a lot of this, like anti hu, like, you know, everyone was like, oh, the hustle culture. And then there’s like been this pendulum of like, oh, anti hustle. You don’t have to hustle. And you know, I’m not saying that you have to work your whole life. Like that’s all you do to be successful. But when I just look at the reality of the stories of the people who have become the elite in their profession, the volume of time spent matters tremendously. Like, and, and you know, I think, I think a lot of people would look at Kobe Bryant and go, oh, he is gifted. Right. Cause he was drafted straight outta the out of high school. Right. And go, oh yeah, totally gifted. Like just like wonder kin like the, the chosen one.
RV (11:49):
But then to hear this story of going that happened for decades and so people, they couldn’t catch him. And so it, it’s a different side of the story and it go, I’m not advocating for all we do is work, but I am, I, I can’t argue with the facts of the matter, which is that no, nobody gets to be at that level by just doing it. Part-Time like nobody. So that’s, that’s power, that’s powerful. And you’d say the same is true for Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, all the other teams in organizations you’re working with.
ASJ (12:23):
Absolutely. What, what most novice fans don’t see is that, that peak behind the curtain of the unseen hours, which I’ve been privy to. And you know, obviously this is during the NBA off season when we’re recording this, but let’s just say it was in the heart of the season. And, and Steph has one of his magical games where he knocks down 12 threes and scores, 60 points and people are mesmerized by that. And, and I certainly get that. It’s an incredible feat, but if they knew how much work he put in during the unseen hours and how many millions of shots he’s taken and Macon in empty gyms, when no one else is around, it actually becomes less spectacular. And I say that with a smile, cuz I’m not diminishing that type of feet, but when you shoot that many shots in an empty gym, when no one’s around, you’re supposed to make those shots.
ASJ (13:09):
When the lights come on and the cheerleaders start dancing and that’s how those guys look at it, you know, they’re never surprised by their unbelievable performances. It’s an expectation for them, but that’s because they’ve put in the work to deserve the right to, to perform that well. And that actually leads to the, the second lesson that I learned from those guys is they do a masterful job of blending confidence, which is what they earn through time in the unseen hours. They blend that with humility, which is what allows them to stay open to, to feedback is what allows them to stay open to being coached is what allows them to say, you know, you all might say I’m the best player in the NBA, but I’m not as good as I’m capable of becoming. So I’m gonna get back in the gym. You know, I mean, when, when I watched Kobe go through that workout, he was already an NBA champion already, an Allstar already, a multimillionaire, you know, 20 times over, already a surefire first ballot hall of Famer.
ASJ (14:04):
And he’s in the gym at three 30 in the morning working on his craft because he doesn’t believe he’s as good as he’s capable of. And when you can blend that type of confidence with humility, you get something really magical. And, and that’s something else that I’ve, I’ve tried to apply in my own life. I mean, I, I’m not anywhere on a performance level of a Kobe Bryant, but I wanna make sure that I am earning the right to hold someone’s attention when I’m on stage speaking, but I wanna stay open to being coached and, and to growing and, and developing and working on my craft. I mean, I, you know, my next speaking engagement, I aim to make the best one that I’ve ever done. But I also know that 10 years from now, if you have me back on your show, I will be a better speaker, 10 years from now than I am today because of my commitment to craft. And that’s, what’s most important to me.
RV (14:53):
Yeah. Yeah. I, we, we bumped up against this a lot because we have a fair number of like quasi celebrity or celebrity clients that we work with at brand builders group. And, you know, it’s, it’s a little bit amazing to be like, wow, we’re coaching, we’re coaching. We’re punching above our, our weight class here because like some of these people are, I mean, they’re real good and they’ve have, they’ve gotten, you know, had real success in real reach, but then, you know, so there’s like this initial part where you think, oh, that doesn’t make sense. Like why would somebody who’s the best in the world take coaching from somebody who has never even experienced that level personally. And it’s like, no, the reason they’re, they are the best in the world is because they take coaching from, from, from those people. Meanwhile, the people who you who need coaching are the ones who have no idea what they’re doing and they’re not good and they’re not starting and they’re set they’re, they’re not doing it cuz they think they’re above coaching and it’s, it’s not the weak or the, or the untalented or the UN gifted who get coaching.
RV (16:03):
Its the opposite. It’s the, it’s the, the elite highest performers on the, on the planet. And I think that’s amazing. So you talk about earning your confidence. So I like what you were saying there. So you’re so talk to talk to me a little bit more about that. You’re saying that they’re earning it through what they do in the, basically the unseen hours.
ASJ (16:26):
Yeah. They, they understand intimately that repetition is not punishment. Like that’s one of the lessons I teach my own children. Repetition is not punishment. Repetition is the oldest and most effective form of learning and skill acquisition on the planet. And that is never going to change. Even technology won’t change that you have to get in reps if you want to be good at anything. And, and they understand that and they’re willing to put in those reps to an unbelievable degree and you know, the reason Stephan Curry will go down in history as the greatest shooter the game has ever seen is not because he did a bunch of reps to get good. And now he just coast, he’s still in the gym working on his craft. He is still putting up shots, you know on off days and in the off season. Cuz that’s the repetition is what’s what’s required. And certainly it’s true in the speaking game. I mean the, how
RV (17:15):
Do you more reps
ASJ (17:17):
Get on stage the better you’ll be.
RV (17:18):
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. There’s, there’s no replacement for stage time and for sure. So when you, a lot of people listening are, you know, some type of a coach or a consultant or a leader, you know, kind of this experience like I’m presuming that you’re not, you, you’re not gonna be in the hall of fame, the NBA hall of fame as a player yourself. And so I think there’s a lot of people who end up sort of coaching above their weight class. Like I was talking about. Did, did you ever have insecurities or self doubt yourself? I mean standing on the court with these guys saying, Hey, do it this way. Not that way. Did you ever experience any of that? Like, well, who am I to tell, you know, Kevin Duran, like how to, how to whatever block somebody out or block a shot and how did you get past that?
ASJ (18:09):
Well, I, I got past it. One, by being honest, I mean I wasn’t trying to BS anybody. Those guys knew they were better players than I had ever dreamed of becoming, but they also knew that doesn’t exclude me from having certain expertise or experience that can still add value to what it is that they do. You know, a good portion of coaching comes from that, that intellectual knowledge from certain experiences from having a different vantage point from having different perspectives from shared experiences that you’ve had from other players. So I had to lean into that and say, yes, I realize that you are a better player than I ever. Would’ve been. However, I can still add to your game. You know, I can still give you things that will make you a better player. And with guys like that, you have to prove that very quickly, you know, the, the quickest way to get an elite level player to tune you out is the moment they don’t think you can make them better.
ASJ (19:04):
You know, I think that’s one of the reasons that coach Kay was so successful with, with the Olympic teams was because those guys, and then you’re talking about Kobe, LeBron, Steph Curry, KD, those guys knew that he still had something that could make them better. So they didn’t discount the fact that he was a college coach and they were pros. They realized that he could still make them better based on his experience and expertise. So to me that’s the most important part. I mean, if you look at, and, and I certainly wouldn’t want to go on a tangent of who’s the greatest player of all time, I’m, I’m still kind of in the Michael Jordan camp. And a lot of that is just based on my own age, but Michael Jordan is arguably the best player to ever play the game. So from that previous logic, he could never have a coach because no one is going to be better than him.
ASJ (19:51):
Right. Well, how foolish does that sound? Even me saying it out loud, you know, Phil Jackson was never as good of a player as Michael Jordan, but you better believe Phil Phil Jackson had a, a perspective and a philosophy and experience and expertise that he could use to help mentor and, and groom Michael Jordan to become the player he was. And, and, and I think all of those guys will acknowledge that. So to answer your question, yes, there were certainly moments of kind of that imposter syndrome. Oh my gosh, are they gonna listen to me? But I had to quickly move right through that, lean in with honesty and vulnerability and show them and prove to them that I have something that can make you better.
RV (20:29):
I love that. Okay, so you left us, hang in here, you got three, you covered to cover two of them. So I wanna, I wanna make sure that we have time to get into the third one.
ASJ (20:39):
The, the third is those guys were certainly driven by external results. They wanted to make Allstar teams. They wanted to win NBA championship rings. They wanted to win scoring titles. And, and those were often north stars that, that provided clarity and direction for where they were headed. But after that, they didn’t spend any time focused on results. They put all of their effort into the process. They put all of their effort into what are the habits I need to establish? What are the micro skills I need to develop? What are the behaviors that I need to exude on a, on a daily basis that will get me closer to that north star or that goal? So it wasn’t so much, you know, I want a championship ring as much as it was, what do I need to do today to give myself and my teammates the best opportunity to be a champion next season.
ASJ (21:27):
And they were very, very process driven. And when you can combine, you know, the, the humility and vulnerability, it takes to stick to the basics when you can earn your confidence in the unseen hours, but stay open to coaching and feedback, and you can stay focused on the steps and the processes and the habits you combine, those three things together. There’s really nothing that can stop you. And, and, and there’s no one arguing that the guys that, that we’ve been talking about were born with some physical predispositions that allowed them to be world class athletes. Sure. I mean, they’ll tell you, they were born with certain levels of athleticism, but so are a lot of people and they didn’t actualize it. And then of course, going back to what I said originally about these things, having high utility in the space that you and I play in, it doesn’t matter if you’re five feet tall or seven feet tall.
ASJ (22:13):
It doesn’t matter if you have a four inch vertical jump or a 40 inch vertical jump, the physicality is no longer relevant. So now these things actually are the separators and the difference makers in business or in entrepreneurship or in any of the, the playgrounds that we play in. So these are all things that are under our control, which goes back to your brilliant point, that you can lay out the blueprint of exactly what someone needs to do to reach a certain level of success. And it’s been proven, you guys have proven it with hundreds and hundreds of elite level clients. Problem is people just don’t stick to the script. They don’t execute the blueprint, they get bored with the basics, and then they try to do things their way, if they will follow your recipe, they will get unbelievable results.
RV (22:55):
Yeah, it’s funny. Like you know, I played basketball in high school was my whole big, you know, consuming focus. But when I, when I got to college, the, the way I was able to let go of the dream or what helped me let go of the dream was R realizing that I was competing. I know in, on something that I couldn’t control, which was the physicality part. And so I was like, well, if I’m always gonna be under massively under resourced in this area, I’m gonna quickly shift my attention into something where that is not a part of the game. And you know, that it actually was a pretty quick flip of the switch where it was like, it went from being my whole life to, I pretty much dropped it. You know, just because it was like, oh, I, this is I’m gonna go.
RV (23:46):
I’m gonna go basically find another game to, to play and to, to compete in, which is, which is really cool. So I mean, this is awesome, Alan. I, I, I think it’s, it’s, it’s amazing to me how, how consistent this story is. And, and people don’t necessarily want it to be that way and they try to rationalize it and popular culture tries to change it, but it’s like, this is the deal. And it’s super duper powerful to, to get to see it. So where do, where should we send people? All right. So we have, so your, your, your, you had raise your game, which was the first book, and then sustain your game, just came out. Where, where do you want people to go? If they wanna connect more with you and like, keep up with what you’re doing.
ASJ (24:31):
My primary speaking website is Alan Stein jr.com. And then I have a second,
RV (24:35):
Don’t forget the junior, don’t forget the junior
ASJ (24:38):
Don’t don’t ever forget that. And, and it’s a quick side note to that. Not implying that you ever would, but if you ever meet my father, he’ll tell you the biggest dad, joke of all time. He’ll say I’m Alan steins. I’m the original, he’s the carbon copy.
RV (24:53):
I think that’s funny.
ASJ (24:54):
Yeah, that’s good stuff. So Alan Stein jr.com is the speaking site, stronger team.com has info on my books podcast and online course, and some one-on-one coaching. And then I’m very easily found and very accessible and resp responsive on social media at Allen Stein Jr. On Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. And then of course you can just search for the books on Amazon or audible or wherever you like to get your books or audio books.
RV (25:18):
I love it, man. Well, what a, what a cool glimpse into what it takes, and then to see you applying it in your own life, in your own business, what you’re doing now as a speaker is really, really cool. Like you can, you can see the, the trajectory of your career just shaping up nicely in terms of like your ability to apply this to other people and to companies and organizations to build stronger teams. It’s really, really inspiring brother. And you know, I’m very encouraged by that and inspired by you. So, so stay the course. We’re cheering for you.
ASJ (25:51):
Thank you.
Ep 321: 4 Ways To Increase Your Content Engagement with Nora Sudduth | Recap Episode
RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
AJV (00:54):
Hey, all welcome to our pod recap. This recap is with my conversation with Nora Sudduth from hello audio. Oh my gosh. I’m nerding out over here. Like I literally have like my little workbook why I still have paper. I don’t know. But this was the most surprisingly unexpected, powerful, insightful content rich interview I’ve had in a really long time. I’m like blown away and it’s in fact, as soon as I hit stop on our left interview, I literally was like I’m in your website right now. I’m signing up for this demo. I’m like, how do I register right now to do this? Y’all this is amazing. I’m so excited about this. I am so excited that I randomly said yes to this pitch. It’s this was divine introduction introductions, so, okay. I could go on and on about that, if you haven’t listened to the full interview, you must, this is incredible.
AJV (01:49):
Just the content itself of how do you create more engagement and consumption with your content specifically around audio, but not, not only around audio. So, alright, I’m gonna tell you my big takeaways, there’s more than three today, so I’m just gonna give them all to you, but I’ll make it short and succinct. I have my timer on I’m paying attention to what I promise. Okay. First thing we started with this was amazing. You do not have to have huge online audiences to build amazing businesses. So great reminder, you hear this from us all the time at brand builders group. If you listen to this podcast, but start with your current reach, right? You don’t need to go do paid traffic. You, you can, but you don’t have to, you don’t have to go worry about building, you know, hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of followers online to get business.
AJV (02:39):
You can, but you don’t have to, you already have an audience, right? They’re the people at the T-ball game or the people you sit next to at that concert, they’re the people at church or your kids’ schools. They’re the people in line at the grocery, like there are people all around you like, so go and look around and who are the people that are, are already in your audience that you already have access to that are already in your reach and do they even know what you do? And do they know people who need what you do or do they need what you do? Oh my goodness, how easy it is to forget that we have an audience right in front of us, when all we pay attention to is the social media PLA platform. Y’all turn it off for just a minute and get your eyes off the screen and look around.
AJV (03:22):
Like, don’t forget the real life human beings right in front of you and who they have access to. Right? It’s like all the audience you need is probably all around you. Most of us don’t need thousands of clients or even hundreds of clients. Many of us just need dozens of clients. Do you don’t need to go online to find those people to write in your local community. So don’t forget the power of the offline reach. I love that. Second thing, this was so powerful is like, don’t forget that your path happens one step at a time. You may not be doing what you’re doing right now in five years or in one year, but take that next step. And it’s okay to know. It’s like, this is my next step. I know it’s not my last step. Take steps in between. I’ve had so many conversations about this here lately is that you know, for me, this is what makes me think of is, you know, writing a book, creating the, your life’s content, your life’s message.
AJV (04:18):
Isn’t the first thing you do. It’s the last thing you do. And on my recent interview with a Mori tepo who wrote the book, bring yourself, we talked about how I was like, she was writing her book for 10 years before she wrote her book. And what I mean before that is she was creating her content. She was settling in on what she really believed she was teaching it. She was speaking on it. She was coaching on it. She was mentoring on it way before she ever wrote the book. So it’s like, you’re writing the book right now. You’re writing that keynote right now. Like you’re, you’re doing all the things right now. And your first step is not have to be your last step. Your path is step by step. Oh, that was just so inspirational to me. I loved that. Now get down to some of the technical things.
AJV (05:02):
We had a great conversation around why content does not get consumed. So why is it that we people who are interested in learning and information, which is who you are, if you, you know, buy books, buy courses attend seminars, you know, conferences, all the things listen to a podcast like this. It’s like, we, we want information. We wanna be inspired. We wanna be entertained. We wanna learn. Right. But why is it that some of us start and never finish? Or why do we spend money and have our actual actually start it? And I thought this was really good. She said, there are four keys to improving your consumption. Y’all buckle up. So, so good. Number one, make it enjoyable.
AJV (05:59):
And it’s not to say that learning is boring, boring, but what people really remember is how you made ’em feel. They remember the stories that you tell they remember the, the pieces that were outrageous or entertaining, or they believe the, the authentic nature in which you are just real and who you are much more than often. They remember the pieces of information. And I thought that was a really great in a great thing. And I loved what she said. She goes, more information does not equate to more value it doesn’t, which leads me to the second point time, make this consumable and short amount of time. Right. I love, she said time is my primary currency. And what we all have to figure out is what is the currency of our audience? Are they buying this to make more money?
AJV (06:57):
Have less stress increase their level of fulfillment? Are they doing it to have more time? Like, what is the currency in which your audience is, is trading in? Mine is time. So she was speaking my language. It’s like, I’m always like, how do I have more time? How do I do less? Right. less is more thing. And I love what she said. It’s like more stuff. Does that mean more value? And as she was talking, I was just thinking about myself as a consumer, whether or not you relate to this or not of how often do I look at something and I go a thousand dollars. Okay. But what’s included. And it’s like, you know, it’s like 42 training videos and access to group calls and, and it goes on and on and on. And I’m like, I don’t want any of that.
AJV (07:41):
I just, I need, I need, like, I need one thing. How, how do you get me? One thing that I can do in like an afternoon and then call it quits. I would pay more money for that, of going. I don’t have to do all of that. Right. In a two hour session, I’m gonna get everything I need. I’m like, that is worth it to me, give me that. Right. It’s a part of why I love conferences and events because I know I’m gonna go and it’s gonna, I’m gonna start and I’m gonna end. And I’m gonna have everything I need at the end of that day or two days, how do we create value based on the currency in which your audience is trading loved it. And I love that reminders, like more information does not mean more value, right? Often people want it to consume it and the least amount of time possible.
AJV (08:21):
So trying to add more stuff on actually makes it less valuable and more overwhelming. Ugh. So good. Number two, or number three, increase the likelihood of results speak the language of your audience. What do they want from this? What are they gonna get from this? Right? Are they, do they want to double their income in the next 12 months? Right? Do they want to 10 X their reach? Like, what is it that they’re going to get from this? Tell them exactly the results they’re going to receive. So increase the likelihood of results and go at the end of this. This is what you’re going to get. That increases consumption. It helps ’em make it to the end, cuz they know at the end, this is what I’m gonna be able to do. This is what I’m gonna be able to achieve or eliminate.
AJV (09:05):
So tell them right. Increase the likelihood, say, well the results are different for everyone. It’s like, well, that might be true, but what are the common denominators for everyone at the same time? So increase the likelihood of results. And then this was like where we spent the most time. And I think this is really important. It’s increase the ease of use, make it easy to use, make it easy to consume. If you’re making courses make sure that if you make ’em video, you also give an audio version, right? If you have a six hour course that requires someone to be in front of their computer, especially post pandemic. That can be a bit exhausting. It can be a bit much when they’re in front of their computer all day long, but it’s like, but could they go and do this out on a walk, right.
AJV (09:49):
Or, you know, on a hike or with the dog or in a park or in the car. So it’s making it easy to use. And I, I love that. It’s like, is it when you walk in, is it six hours or is it 15 minutes? Right? It’s like, I can get something done every day for 15 minutes. But if it’s a hour or two hours or six hours, I don’t know. I don’t know if I can do that. Make the workbooks easy to download, easy to write in, make it easy. Y’all make it easy. Y’all I cannot tell you how much I found value in this. And I’m kind of picky. I really am. This was so good. I totally am signing up for this free demo. I am going to hello, audio.fm. I am signing up for this free demo. I am getting the free trial.
AJV (10:36):
I’m gonna make our whole marketing team watch this so beware. This is very likely going to be integrated into our world very soon. Love the concepts, love the conversation. Go check out the full interview. And then just remember I thought this was the, the highlight, but just remember it’s like we pay to shortcut our path to success. And that was one of the last things that Nora said is that we pay to shortcut our path to success. So make sure that you’re helping people do that. If you’re creating content, you’re trying to help them, you know, not make this many same mistakes that you did. You’re helping them expedite their journey. You’re giving them a shortcut to success and people will pay for it, but make it easy. Right? Tell ’em what it’s worth. Right? Know what currency they’re trading in and make it enjoyable. Make it fun. Y’all so, so good. I could go on and on go listen to the full interview, go check it out and we’ll see you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 320: 4 Ways To Increase Your Content Engagement with Nora Sudduth
RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
AJV (00:54):
Hey everyone. And welcome to another episode on the influential personal brand. I’m super excited today because I get to interview a newer friend. And as you guys know, if you guys listen to the podcast, you know, that we do not accept pitches very often. In fact, we have only accepted three pitches in the history of the influential personal brand and Nora happens to be one of those individuals. So I’m gonna introduce you to Nora and today is really special for three reasons. One, I’m getting to know Nora kind of at the same time that you are. So all of the questions I’m gonna be asking are super out of my own curiosity of going. Tell me more, tell me more. I wanna learn Nora about this. But two Nora is the creator and co-founder of this really amazing product called hello audio.
AJV (01:43):
And it’s all about consumption rates and engagement with audio, which if you’re listening to this, you are already in the mix, right? So this is really, really important. And really what we’re gonna answer is why are you not getting the consumption and engagement rates that you want and you need with audio. And then thirdly Nora self admitted that she doesn’t get to talk much about her personal brand. And so this is also a really cool invitation of not just getting to learn about some really cool things with content consumption and engagement and her awesome company. But I’m also generally just so excited to get to know you and how, why did you create this? And what’s your backstory. I love hearing stories like this. So if you’re listening stick around, this is going to be an energy and content impact episode.
AJV (02:34):
Now on a, a very high professional level, I will read Nora’s bio for you. But just really quickly
NS (03:34):
Oh my goodness. Thank you for having me. I’m so excited to be here.
AJV (03:38):
Hi, I am so excited. And so I wanna continue that conversation. I wanna help, I wanna get to know you more in our brief conversations, I, haven’t got to hear this part of your story. And I know our audience is many people who listen to this are in this transition of, you know, do I keep doing what I’m doing or do I really go for it? Right. Do I really like go out on that limb, jump off the cliff and do what I feel like I was put on this planet to do, or do I stay comfortable? Right. Do I play it safe? And I just keep doing the thing that I’m doing, but you, you took the leap, like you left it and you started hello audio. So I wanna know the story. How did, how did you do it? Why did you do it? Like, how did you get to where you are?
NS (04:18):
Oh, I love it. So I did, I took that traditional path to success or what we were taught right. Is that traditional path. I have a handful of college degrees, right. I started in computer science before there were many women in computer science. So I’ve got that degree. I’ve got an MBA, I’ve got a master’s degree in engineering. And I did, I, I started that, that corporate kind of path, that corporate climb and what I realized, and I didn’t, I’m not one of those folks that hated corporate. I had great experiences. I learned just, I’ve worked with so many different businesses, even, you know, exact target before they sold to Salesforce before they had a successful exit. I’ve worked with so many amazing humans along the way. And so, as I climbed, I would say up that ladder, I think I got further away from what one of my core values is.
NS (05:08):
And I am obsessed with client success. Mm-Hmm
NS (05:53):
Cause I almost didn’t have a family. Right. I almost didn’t have that. And so at, at the time my dad was diagnosed with cancer and I knew that our time was limited and after he passed away, it’s just like, you know, we all have those moments in our lives where we have that realization of, you know, life is short and am I doing what I really want to do? Is this an opportunity for me to reassess some of those decisions? And, and to, like you said, stay comfortable, which there was there would’ve been nothing wrong if I would’ve stayed, you know, in that trajectory and kept going or do I want something else? And so I think that was one pivot point for that kind of help me wake up if you will. And maybe jarred me a little bit to rethink things. And the other thing that was happening was at that point when my dad passed away, I had a little kindergartner.
NS (06:40):
My oldest was in kindergarten. She is now in high school and getting her license, which is crazy. So time has definitely jumped here and I’ve been doing this for a while, but at the time she just, she was obsessed with the school bus. I wanna take the school bus home and I’m like, I am at the office until six o’clock like, you can’t take the school bus home. No one is home at 2 35 when that school bus is coming home. And so she just was like, I wanna take the school bus home. And I’ll tell you, I was sitting in a corporate meeting and there was a lot of meetings in corporate. And so I think this was one of, of many, and I just felt frustrated. I was feeling that sense of not being happy. And, and I, you know, some women collect shoes and handbags, I collect domain names. So I probably have like 600 over 600 domain names the time
AJV (07:28):
My husband, oh my gosh,
NS (07:30):
Can’t help it.
AJV (07:31):
The amount of go daddy, renewal fees that he’s come across my, my credit card.
NS (07:35):
You don’t wanna total. And when you total it up for your taxes, you’re like, oh my gosh, I need to sell. So, and I have sold some, I made some, but still, yes, it’s not. I don’t know if it’s any healthier than a shoe obsession. Quite frankly, it mights probably a lot more expensive. But as I said in that meeting and I bought the domain F the meeting.com, I still own that domain, but I was like, wow, what that, and, and as I look back, I’m like what energy that is, like, if that’s where I really was in life. And I knew it was a lot of things happening. So I left that day and I allowed my daughter to take the bus home. And so as she took, and I met her at the corner and the bus came and her, the joy that she was filled with as she came off, that school bus, granted, even a kindergartner, she was so excited. And I thought, you know what? I want more of that.
AJV (08:24):
Yeah.
NS (08:24):
Amen. I want more of that. And so I started putting things in place to plan that exit. And, and, and I’ll say this for anyone that is in that situation. Well, I think one of the biggest mistakes, or one of the biggest things we’re told when we look for a business opportunity, right? There’s a lot of folks that wanna sell you a Bizo right. There’s lots of different types, lots of different things, but where I think I had the most success in terms of that transition and that exit was, I started with my existing reach. I didn’t just build a product or create a service and then wonder how to get in front of people. Because I think that stops a lot of folks. I think one of the biggest things I did correctly was I started with my existing reach. I didn’t just say, okay, there’s this internet out there, this black box who the heck knows who’s in it, but they’re my clients.
NS (09:14):
I don’t know them yet, but they’re clearly who I need. And instead of doing that, I was like, no, who are the people already around me? Who are the people that already, that already know me that already trust me? And you know what that looks like. We, we forget our real life connections. And I know things have changed pre you know, post pandemic and all the things. But I, I looked at, okay, I was going through my TaeKwonDo. I went and got my first degree, black belt and TaeKwonDo with my daughter. I’m like the studio, all the people there, they’re in my network. Think about your professional network. Think about your personal network. Think about the stores you go to each and every day, the clubs that you’re a part of the memberships that you’re a part of. We don’t, we overlook all of these people that are in our existing.
NS (09:59):
And we’re like, oh, I don’t, I don’t have an audience. I didn’t have an email list. When I started, I had existing reach in every single person listening to this, you have your existing reach. And so I started there and I was like, you know what, I’m looking at, what I can do for people and the results, cuz I’m a very, like I said, I’m obsessed with client results. So what can I do for folks knowing my expertise, knowing my experience. And then I looked at my existing reach and I looked at what, where, where that intersection was now. I didn’t worry about like, well, what if I don’t wanna serve this audience five years from now? Mm-Hmm
NS (10:47):
And that’s how I started. So that was how I ultimately got to the point where yes, I was doing the side hustle in the evenings and on the weekends and before work. Right. Everyone’s like, yeah, you have a nine to five. Well, I didn’t have a nine to five. I felt like I had a seven to six. And then I was, you know, doing things after the kids went to bed or in the morning before they woke up or on the weekends when they went down for naps or all the things, cuz I had a, I had a younger one as well at that time. So I had two and I, I looked at that and I said, that’s the, that’s the path. It’s just step by step. But I think one of the biggest takeaways for me there is start with your existing reach and that’s ultimately so step by step by step. I put those things in place and I was ultimately able to leave that corporate position. And I created a marketing agency of my own and that was my first step into Andre. And I didn’t stay there, but that’s how I initially stepped from corporate into this entrepreneurial space.
AJV (11:42):
Oh, I love that there are so many gems and even the, your story of, you know, I already wrote down like two things and this is, we’re so aligned in this. And I know that we, we don’t know each other, all that well at this point, but I like one of my life mantras is that you do not have to have millions of followers to make millions of dollars. Yes. And we, we try to like instill this and it’s a great reminder to everyone who’s listening. Is that just start with the one? Yes. Like, and it’s, it’s a weird thing because offline, right. And our actual real circle of people we see every day, if we knew that we impacted one person’s life, that would be, we would be so fulfilled and content with that. It would mean something. But yet if we only have one like or one share or one comment online, we somehow think it’s a failure.
AJV (12:36):
Absolutely. It’s the online digital nature somehow often minimizes the impact of a changed life. And I love that. We talk so much about your offline reputation, your offline strategy, as much as your online. I love that. I love that so much. And I love too that you said it’s like the path is always step by step, right? It is. You may not be doing this in five years, like focus on what’s the next step. That’s true. So, so you went from marketing agency, so you left corporate yes. And had your own agency. So then I’m so curious to know is like, how did you go from that to hello audio? And then also tell everyone like, what is, hello, audio? So what was the path of creating a SAS product and how did you get to where you are now?
NS (13:23):
Absolutely. so I had that marketing agency and I grew that marketing agency agency in a multiple six figures in less than nine months. And it was at that point. And if you have, if you ever had a marketing agency or if you’re done done for you, you E you have a choice to make, you’re either gonna grow and you’re gonna hire more team members, or you’re gonna kind of stay in that niche kind of boutique kind of space. And, and it’s a choice and there’s not a right or wrong choice. It’s just a choice of what kind of business you want. And around that time where I was making a decision, I had started to use ClickFunnels in my agency because everything was WordPress. Right. And then click funnels was brand new at the time. And I mean, brand spanking new. And so I started using it, Russell found out what I was doing.
NS (14:03):
And all of a sudden I got a Voxer from Russell Brunson. And I, you, I mean, if I could’ve captured the look on my face, when I got that boxer from Russell Brunson and it was like, Hey, I think we need to talk. I would like you to rebuild my certification program. And so I was like, well, okay, right. Like this is, so here I am trying to make a decision if I’m gonna grow or grow this agency or kind of keep it small. And now I have a third option, which I never suspected, which was shut it down and go work and partner with Russell Brunson and rebuild one of his training programs. And so, you know, talk about what an amazing opportunity. So I’ve of course said, yes, partnered with Russell rebuilt. That certification program took that from like 300, about 300,000 a little bit more to like 4.1 million in 18 months built another seven figure coaching program for Russell.
NS (14:54):
And again, this is because I was so passionate about client success and SAS, right. I love technology. My first degree was in computer science. So this was a natural fit. And through that work and, and reviewing thousands of marketing campaigns and helping just so many people have success with their marketing campaigns. I ended up meeting Lindsay and Derek Padilla, who are the co-founders of, of hello audio. And, you know, I was actually, both of them are former community college professors who really also genuinely care about student success, right? It’s what they do. We all want our students to succeed. And so we had this shared value and as we had both started helping folks kind of with their online courses. And really, I was kind of maybe more focused on the marketing and sales piece of trying to help your digital products grow. And Lindsay was helping folks help be essentially become a better teacher online.
NS (15:49):
And so it was such an amazing partnership and, and a relationship that started there. And then it was Derek that kind of said, Hey, people don’t finish. Like the stats are there. They’re not finishing online courses. What can we do to help? And that’s how hello audio started. So it came from both of us, all three of us actually being so passionate about our, our students having success and knowing that consumption was getting in the way, which sounds silly. But depending on the study, you read, it can be like 3% or maybe I’ve seen a few that say up to 20% of courses get consumed or content is consumed. And people, when they don’t consume your content, they don’t get the results. And so that’s actually how hello audio started. The original product name was podcast, your course. And so as we look at, okay, what does that look like?
NS (16:38):
What are you talking about, Nora? Like, what’s this podcast thing isn’t like, right? Most people are familiar with public podcasts, right? If you’re listening to this, you already know this is an amazing public podcast. And so if you think about the way public podcasts are structured, most people are like, they assume you have to have a show it’s updated daily or weekly. And, and it’s open to the general public, right? As, as a public podcast, anyone can subscribe private podcasts. On the other hand are a little different. They look and feel like a normal pod pod, right? They still, you can play them in your favorite podcast app, your favorite podcast, player of choice. But as a, as the content owner, as the content creator, you get to choose who gets access to that. So now you could actually put some gated content, whether it’s your opt-in or whether it’s your course or other paid content.
NS (17:27):
Now it’s not kind of change a little bit about what it, what it means to be a podcaster. You can now have a podcast without having a show. You’re just using podcasts as a communication channel. And you’re meeting people where they’re already at. Cuz as we look at the numbers, millions of, of north Americans are listening to audio content in their podcast app each and every week to the point where the hours consumed are actually rivaling the number of hours that were consumed in Netflix every single week. Wow. So I’m thinking, why are we not meeting people where they’re already at? Your audience is already in their podcast apps, listening to content. Why aren’t they listening to you? And so that is how we originally started. Hello, audio. And then the use cases just grew from there.
AJV (18:13):
So, okay. There’s like, I could go like 15 different ways right now. I know, I know things. So one of the things you said is that consumption, right? The data around the consumption was like a real problem that is you guys could solve. So I would just love to hear your feedback rather. That’s just your own personal opinion. Or if it’s more scientific, whatever you’ve got. Why, why do, because I think, I think this is same ha it doesn’t matter if it’s a course or whatever. It’s like, we do the same thing with books. Like how many books they’re sitting on my bookshelf at a bot with great intentions, like, oh one day, right? Same thing with courses. And then there’s other books where I’m like, you know, I must finish this. Right. And so I’m so curious, like what is the data around consumption with courses and online content and why do you think that is?
NS (19:00):
You know, it’s fascinating as I look at it’s it, and it varies the percentage it’s fascinating to look at, is it just the login that we’re requiring people to log in? I look at the work involved and the effort involved, and this is kind of back to anything that we offer for sale. Right? I look at their belief, so that consumer needs to believe that by doing the work or by participating in their own success, they’re going to get a result. So that level of certainty needs to be a certain level. I think, for people to engage like it, whether it’s a book, I believe I’m going to enjoy this. So the level of certainty, I think the higher that is the more likely they are to engage. So a and by the way, they’re, they’re a lot more likely to buy your stuff.
NS (19:42):
NS (20:28):
And yet it’s so convenient for you to play at any time, anywhere when we’re not sitting here at the screen. So if you think about what audio does it unlocks all of the hours of the day that you can reach your ideal person or your customer or your student, whatever that looks like for you when they’re not sitting at a computer and I’ll tell you, especially post pandemic, people don’t really wanna spend that many hours sitting at the screen. And so you’re giving them that option. Let, ’em listen to you while they’re walking the dog, while they’re sitting in the carpool line while they’re taking a walk that’s to me, it, it like ease in convenience, allows for greater consumption. If you make it a lot more difficult. And that also is the medium too, right? If, if you’re doing like a 60 some page ebook or are like, that’s, that’s gonna go to the graveyard of PDFs, we all have one. We all know it’s there. I have multiple bad Dropbox and Google all these.
AJV (21:24):
And I’m like, oh, when am I gonna ever have time to get through 4 45
NS (21:28):
Pages? You’re no you’re. And, and with good intentions, you were interested in the topic. We all raise our hand and we’re like, that sounds cool, but you know what? That’s a lot of work. Yep. And I’m not gonna get to that. And so, and then, so that would be the second thing, easing convenience and, and dove dovetailing into the, the third and final one here I would say is time, right? What do we, time is money. We pay to shortcut our path to success. And so if I look at your content and I think this is gonna take me hours to get through, or, you know, if I can’t fit it in to the time pockets that I have in my day or in my life, that’s just gonna be really a lot more challenging for me to consume. And so if I look at for whatever content you’re putting out there, this is fulfillment content for your courses or your coaching program, or, you know, your book.
NS (22:17):
Or if I’m looking at your marketing content, I’m talking about your webinars, I’m talking about your summit presentations, all the cool stuff you’re doing in, when it comes to creating content, if I can make it easier and more convenient to consume, if I can shortcut the path to success and, and, and allow folks to get that, like reduce the time to, to value as, as another kind of term to reduce the time to value. And if I can increase the perceived likelihood that they’re going to get the result that, that, that we’re promising or that your content is promising, that level of certainty people are going, you’re gonna see engagement go up. Those three things I think are critical in order to see your engagement and consumption rates go up.
AJV (22:59):
Ugh. I love that. There’s so much like I wrote just like the, I wrote four. I, I made one up or I heard one extra one. I love
NS (23:07):
It. It’s okay. Bonus.
AJV (23:09):
But I love this. I think this is so powerful for anyone who is listening, who is a content creator of any, of any type, whether it’s written or video or audio, but four things to increase consumption one, make it enjoyable.
NS (23:23):
Yes. Right? Oh,
AJV (23:24):
Yes. It’s like, I’m not gonna do it if I don’t like it. If it, if it’s hard, right.
NS (23:29):
I don’t want it.
AJV (23:30):
I gotta want it. So make it enjoyable. And I think a huge part of doing that is the combination of the story, right? The emotional parts. It’s like, it’s, I think about some of the, my favorite and this, I always think about this. Some of my favorite books are also my least favorite keynote speeches.
NS (23:50):
Yes.
AJV (23:50):
And true. Right. The content is so good and the stories are so good in the book, but then when you hear the speaker, I’m like,
NS (23:58):
What happened?
AJV (24:01):
You know? And it’s like, yeah. And it’s like, it’s weird because it like dolls the value and all of a sudden this great content I’m like, all I can think about is how horrible about 60 or 90 minutes was. Yeah. So it’s like, make it enjoyable. It’s gotta be somewhat right. Edutaining right. The combination of that,
NS (24:17):
To, to that point. Exactly. Most people think the only way they can add value is to give more information. And that’s not true. You can add value by being entertaining. And by being insightful, like there’s, it’s, you can do more, you can add value more ways than just more information.
AJV (24:33):
Absolutely agree with that. But I think that’s just, that’s a great takeaway. If you’re listening is like more information does not equal more value. No, that’s really important. Right. Write that down people number two. So the first thing was, make it enjoyable. Number two increase the likelihood of results. Yes. So tell people, what are the results you’re gonna get if you complete this, like, that’s really important. Like how many of us buy something going a hope, this has the answer.
NS (25:00):
Yeah. Let’s hopefully it’ll work. I
AJV (25:02):
Need you to, I need to know that it’s in there. Right. So increase the likelihood of results. I love that. Three, make it easy to use. I wanna come back to this one, cuz I have a question for you about this one. Sure. and then the last one is reduce time to value, right? Like I think we do the same thing where it’s like, well, I’m gonna make it eight hours and oh, 165 pages because then it’ll be worth the dollar.
NS (25:30):
No, right. No, it’s just not gonna get consumed. That’s what’s gonna happen.
AJV (25:36):
But it’s like, we do that all the time. It’s like these whole value ladders are built on and you get this and you get this and you get this. And it’s interesting because sometimes I’m going, what am I gonna do with all that?
NS (26:30):
Yes. Amen.
AJV (26:31):
I would, I would pay five times the amount of money versus it’s like, this is a 16 hour course with and I’d be like,
NS (26:38):
No, thank you.
AJV (26:39):
I couldn’t pay enough money to do that.
NS (26:41):
Can I pay to have someone do that for me? Can, is there add an option?
AJV (26:46):
Can you just give me the cliff notes? Can you tell me what you learned in a 15 minute coffee?
NS (26:50):
That would be great. Where’s the summary.
AJV (26:53):
The cliff notes please. But I think those are like really important things of like, we get it wrong. We try to add and add and add and add. And really what that’s doing is it’s like when people get in there and they don’t use it, then they think they’ve wasted all this money. Yes. When really the core thing, if we would’ve just kept the main thing, the main thing we could have added even increased the price tag because it doesn’t, it’s not gonna take you that long to get there.
NS (27:18):
That’s right. Because time they value that time. They value that time. And, and to your point, you should know your primary currency. So I like to talk about like, what’s the big promise of your product or the thing, or even if it’s a free training video, you still have to sell that thing. It is still a free offer. What is the primary currency? It what, okay, doesn’t matter if people are sending you their email address and then you’re giving them back something in return or if they’re giving you cold, hard cash, doesn’t matter. There’s still a currency exchange happening here. And so what I like what, this is a great exercise. If you’re listening to this that I love doing this, put you have a column for increase and a column for decrease. And I want you to think about what is that thing, the training, the product, the course your workshop, your book, what are, what are all the ways it can increase something in their life or in their business and decrease.
NS (28:08):
And I want you to try to be as specific as possible. If you can put a timeline on that, cuz we just know time, time is, is key here. People pay for that shortcut to shortcut to success. So do you help them to X their revenue in six months? Do you help reduce or decrease churn in their companies in the next 90 days, whatever that is for your business. Try to think of it and articulate it in, in a, in a currency exchange. Because that way, if you look at and, and chances are, I’m sure all of the folks listening to this, you’re all amazing. You can do more than one thing for people. There’s probably you’re gonna do this exercise. You’re probably gonna have 20 different things that you can increase or decrease in someone’s life or business. The key is to understand what’s the primary one that they care the most about. What’s the one that they’re going to pay the most for. That’s how you’re gonna be able to monetize your expertise in a, in a very scientific kind of a way.
AJV (29:04):
Oh, that’s so good. And it’s like, that’s really a short list of answers. Really? Yes. I mean it’s like most people are gonna pay to get more time. Yeah. They’re gonna pay to make more money or they’re gonna pay to have more fulfillment.
NS (29:18):
Yes. Less stress,
AJV (29:20):
Less stress,
NS (29:21):
More ease. Right. You can go on and on. But if I love the idea of like, oh, they’re actually giving me something and I’m giving them something in return and the clear I can be about what it is and why it’s so valuable, the easier it is to be able to sell.
AJV (29:37):
That’s so good. Do you feel like that translate into copy as well?
NS (29:42):
It does. Oh my God. That is your, I mean, to me, that’s copywriting gold. I would say that exercise. And then the other exercise I always recommend for copywriting is you have to get into the mind of your consumer and write down all of the potential problems they think they could have. And all of the ways that you’re providing a solution for those problems, it’s like problem, solution, exercise. Even if you think it’s crazy. Like I don’t what, and there’s honestly, if you go through this, there’s gonna be some pretty common ones. I don’t have time. I, I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t believe this is gonna work for me because I’m special or my business is special or I have this special circumstance. Like there’s very common ones that come up. But if you can be able to, you know, those going into your marketing and sales campaigns, then your copy addresses them directly. I think those two exercises, the currency exchange. And then I would say your prospect problem list and your solution list is gonna be the two biggest things you can do to improve your copy.
AJV (30:37):
Ah, so good. And keep it short, right? Yeah. Like that time to your novel emails. No, I had to write a text. This is so funny. I literally one of my newer friends who is helping me break into the sport sports world, her name is Ashley. And she’s like, I’m not really good at email. I’m traveling all the time. So just, can you text me all these things? And I’m like writing this text and I get down. I’m like, oh my gosh, I have just written the longest text ever made on planet earth. And I literally, I sent it and I said, and now I know you’ll never read this. So I’m going to have to send an email that is a third of this link. And it was like, like as I’m writing it, I’m so annoyed with my stuff. I’m like, oh my gosh, why am I still typing?
AJV (31:23):
Why is this so long? Why am just taking so much time? But it’s so true. It’s like, if I have to scroll, I just go, I’ll do it later. Yep. I have to do, it’s gotta stay above the fold. Right. I think those, those are so good. Okay. So I wanna come back to this really quick thing. I literally could probably spend another hour talking to you. This is such a great company. I love this Nora. So ease of use. How do you make it easier for people to use? So I wanna answer that. And then I’m so sensitive of the time. I also then wanna go out, like, I want people to understand like, what is hello, audio, and really dive into this concept of a private podcast. Because at least to me that’s a really newer term. Right. And this gated content, but like how does this help? So, okay. So first ease of use and then let’s talk about private podcast.
NS (32:08):
Yes. Ease of use. So one of, I will say, even from a hello audio perspective is we were building this tool yet. Yes. It’s important in SAS, but I would argue it’s important in anything that people buy, but SAS specifically, why do people not buy software? Because they have a perception that it’s going to be a pain in the butt. They have a perception that it’s going to take them a long time to incorporate it into their business.
AJV (32:31):
A lot of money
NS (32:32):
And yeah, it, it is. Yeah. And depending on where you’re coming from a lot of buddy but it’s, it’s really the, the ability to kind of speed up that time to value, reduce the time to value speed up that success path because you’re making it easy for them to do. And so what other doesn’t matter, that’s why we see for example, authors, when there’s like the PDF version of your audio book or the, the book, and then you have the audio book tend to, if we look at comparisons, a lot of times your conversions on the audio book will be higher because it’s easier to consume. Right? Right. So if we look at your course, is it, are you making it easy to get through meaning are lessons maybe two hours long or are you chunking them up with very specific kind of headlines or very specific targeted engagements if you’re a coach and you do coaching calls, are you putting those replays in a locked membership site where you’re not providing time stamps or, or how can you make it easier for people to get through the content or to take the action?
NS (33:30):
So whenever I’m building an online course, I look at all right, what’s the information they need, what are the actions that they need to take? And what is the support that I can provide her that they’re going to need to take those actions and it, every single step of the way, how can I make it easier for them to consume the information? It it’s again, not creating 16 hours of content. It’s giving them only what they need to take the action. How can I make the action easier to take? Sometimes that’s templates, sometimes it’s swipe files. Sometimes it’s, it’s a certain level of support, right. And giving them that. But it’s all about making it easier. And with hello audio, when we built that, that was actually one of the non-negotiables in building that piece of software is it has to be easy to use if it’s not easy to use, people are not going to use it. And we, that was, that was how we, so now when we look at 70%, I think it’s a little over 70% of our folks said, join, hello, audio, and, and create their first private feed. They do it in less than a day. They launch their first feed in less than a day. And that isn’t a very important metric for our company, because if our product is not easy to use and they can’t get that value quickly, then we’ve done something wrong. That’s kind of what, what we truly believe.
AJV (34:45):
This is so good. So, alright. So I have a personal question for you that. Sure. So while you were talking, I pulled up think GI where we house all of our courses. Right? So as a part of brain builders group, our membership program, you get access to 14 courses. And so I it’s a lot, it’s a lot, right. That’s where I’m going. Right. So I broke it up and that’s why I pulled it in here. And so this has been a, it’s been a hot topic in our company because we have broken everything down into six lessons. Right. And at first everyone was like, that’s just too many. But the reason we did it is to make it bite size. Yep. So here’s what I’m curious to know is like, do you think the way that we’ve broken this up is still too long. So there are six lessons and in each of those lessons, we break them up into a training, a hot seat. And then a workbook. And so the training is 29 minutes and then the coaching hot seat is 15.
NS (35:38):
Okay. But they’re, but they’re distinct. Yeah. Which I love. And I think that, I mean, if I look at a 29 minute training, is that too long? No. Be, and I don’t think it’s never a number. I always look at the content. Are you giving more information that’s necessary knowing you no. Right. Like you’re giving exactly what they need to take the next action and nothing more. Does that mean you don’t care about them? And that you’re like, oh, let me over deliver. No, I like you are over delivering by keeping it as tight as possible. And that’s what I love
AJV (36:10):
Makes me so happy to hear, because if you told me something different, I’m pretty sure my team would’ve been like, we’re done. We
NS (36:16):
Quit. Your team is amazing. Your team is amazing. And here’s what I’ll say
AJV (36:20):
Backwards. Taking more ideas in here. That’s thing helpful to know. Cause it’s like we spent six months basically re orchestrating this from basically what you said is people are like, it’s so long, it’s hard prior to doing this. If you add all these up, you know, it’s like 12 hours of content. And it’s like, we had, ’em when we first started, this is so good for everyone to know. Like, don’t think just because that’s the way you start, that’s the way you have to end up. I know. But you know, when we started putting all of our courses in here, they were in two day, segments is a day, one and day two
NS (36:56):
Are long days. Those are
AJV (36:58):
One was six hours and then day two was like five hours. Right. But that’s how it was. And it wasn’t until like, we probably just had to have it that way. Cuz we have so much curriculum for, it was probably look that way for almost two years before we said, okay, let’s start going through our curriculum and how do we break this up? But that took a process of going, what is the best way to break this up and what is that right amount? And do we include both video and audio or is that too much? And we opted to do both video and audio right. As a, you know, but it’s really interesting of like even going through this, like we just launched our new version of our course membership just April 1st. So we just got it to the way that we wanted four years later. Yeah. And here’s the thing that I think is fascinating. The content itself has not changed.
NS (37:52):
It’s still valid. It still works.
AJV (37:54):
Yeah. And I think that’s a great reminder to anyone who is listening. It’s like just because you’re constantly reinventing and changing doesn’t mean the core content has to change. It’s just the format, the medium, the duration, the delivery mechanisms of it change. This is always a great reminder to me. I’m not sure if you know this, but our first book, so my husband launched his first book, take the stairs which hit number two on the New York times, we were super grateful, super blessed. It was a really awesome time, but we just celebrated 10 years of that book being out. And here’s the funniest thing B the exact same keynote today that he did 10 years ago, when the book launched
NS (38:38):
Still,
AJV (38:39):
When it launched, he was probably charging $7,500. Now his fee is 30. Yep. It’s the same content. The only thing that is different is the way that he delivers the content. That’s it? And I think that’s a great reminder to us is you don’t have to make new content. No. To make it better.
NS (39:00):
Yes. I, and I love that. And the fact that you’re zeroing in on the delivery mechanism, our, you gotta keep in mind markets evolve our habits as consumers evolve. I don’t know anyone who’s listening to this that does not have a, have an ideal customer that is busy. We’re all busy. And so while we, you know, before we would deliver things on like tele seminars, I don’t know about you, but the thought of sitting on a phone or having a phone for like hours on end, like we used to, you know, granted this was over a decade ago, but that was really popular. We have to continue to evolve our delivery mechanisms and our delivery channels to meet people where they’re already at. And that’s why I love. And we actually do integrate directly with think GI we have a lot of folks that host their courses on think GI and they automatically create private podcasts for courses because it’s just the delivery mechanism.
NS (39:54):
Some people will absolutely have time to log in and go through the videos. And I would even argue if you even have a visual course, there’s still benefit for people listening to where you’re taking them. Cuz we all know with learning repetition is key. And so when you sit down to watch that video where you sit down, it sounds like when you have your amazing workbooks and people are working through that, they’ve already heard it. Right. They’ve heard it once and they know where we’re headed or they know where you’re taking them. And that can provide a massive difference in terms of the results that your folks get.
AJV (40:24):
Hmm. I love that. And so you said something that’s really fascinating. It’s like you can create private podcasts yes. As courses in your membership site.
NS (40:33):
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
NS (40:36):
So with, with private podcasts, it kind of is it’s interesting that you can create all sorts of podcasts with different content. So we have a lot of teachers and a lot of online educators that use hello audio and they podcast their course. They have a private podcast version and Amy Porterfield who I know you just recently had on she’s one of a, she’s a hello audio user as well. And so she uses hello audio to deliver her DCA content to her, her audience because she has a lot of folks that are doing this as a side hustle. She has a lot of folks that are busy and here’s the thing. Her videos are amazing. They’re and, and she’s not trying to replace those videos. She’s just making it more convenient and easier to, for her audience to consume that information so that when they do sit down to do the work, they’ve already listened to it.
NS (41:23):
They have another option to get the information they need to get the results that they want. So for, for me, having, it’s easy to be able to just drag and drop all your course content and put it into a private feed that is still protected, right. That’s still very much protected cuz we all know that you put a lot of hard work into creating your premium courses. Right. But it’s also other things as well. We can, we can podcast. So if we look at the coaching calls, this is a great opportunity for coaching calls. You have group coaching calls, how many, and I know we’ve probably both invested heavily in coaching programs during our careers. How many times have we really logged in and watched that hour plus long zoom video really? For me hardly ever. Right. Hardly ever. And even if I start watching it, I have now opened bazillions of other tabs and I’m doing other things background
AJV (42:14):
I’m yeah. It’s just, it’ll just like, you know, absorb into my brain somehow. Yeah.
NS (42:34):
It expires, it expires and, and you get to set that time that it expires, you can set it to expire immediately. Or if you wanna give folks an hour because maybe they’re like me and they’ve got a bazillion devices and you wanna load it on maybe your iPad and your phone, you can do that as well, but we have it set so that you can choose to expire immediately after it’s used.
AJV (42:54):
So I’m curious, have you had any use studies on doing this for like private content? Just for your email list?
NS (43:03):
Yes. Okay.
AJV (43:04):
I’d love to hear
NS (43:05):
That we have folks. So we kind of use, if you think about a private podcast almost as the new inbox, right? So if your newsletters we have tar ZK is one of our users. She’s an amazing copywriter. Her emails are fantastic, right? Obviously she’s a copywriter, so she makes them, she’s a storyteller. They’re fantastic. And yet what she does is she’ll also read them and she has a private podcast called Tarzan, reads her emails, pretty clear what it is. Right. And it gives her subscribers a way to consume that content. Because I mean, I don’t know about your inbox. I probably have a lot of, let’s just say a lot. I don’t wanna get skewed a lot of unread emails in my inbox on a daily basis. So I probably will never need to read. Right. So just to give myself a little bit of an out, but it, it gets more and more crowded.
NS (43:53):
And so this gives her a way to con communicate and reach her existing list. And in a way that is, it allows her to express her personality. Think about reading that newsletter or reading that email and how different the experience is when you read it. And you’re listening to that person, read it with all of their intonation, their brand voice right now, that connection that we have with that person is more intimate. And it’s stronger because of the, the fact that it’s consumed in audio versus doesn’t this there’s nothing wrong with that email that email’s amazing, but it now takes our connection and our relationship to a new level.
AJV (44:30):
Yeah. Well that’s the, the thing with, you know, whether it’s, you know, audio or video, but it’s the audio component it’s like, don’t they say that hearing is like one of like the biggest sources of memory of smell and hearing, but it’s like one of the things too, it’s the thing that’s challenging about the written word is that you miss the tone and you miss those interests. I think, you know, it’s like we, I tried to all the time, it’s like, anytime I’m trying to write heated email, I’m like, delete that. Do not send that
NS (44:59):
That’s gonna not
AJV (44:59):
Be right. Cause it’s like, you always read it in the mood that you’re in, not the mood that it was sent, but totally different connotation and tone and feel when you hear someone in the intent that they desire to send us. Yes. Very much. I love this. This is so fascinating. Okay. So last two things, Nora. So what do you want people to know about hello audio?
NS (45:22):
Oh, well, hello. Audio is a great way for you to reach your consumers where they’re already at. And, and again, we made it easy to use, but even easier to try. So one of the things that we did with hello audience, we removed, I know a lot of SAS companies do this. They ask you to put in net credit card before you try it. We do not. So we have a free seven day trial, no credit card required to allow you to just experience it. So if you do wanna check it out and you’re interested in creating a private podcast for any sorts of content that you might already have, go ahead and go to hello, audio FM. And you can try it out for seven days without any requirements. No, no credit card requirements. It’s just making it super easy. There you go. Ease in convenience, reducing the friction
AJV (46:02):
Practice, what you preach. I’m gonna go from that. Absolutely too. And then last and not least, where can people follow you and learn more about you?
NS (46:11):
Absolutely. You can connect with [email protected] or on Instagram at Nora set.
AJV (46:17):
Oh my gosh, Nora, this was awesome. There is so much richness in this conversation and it’s like, I took an entire page of notes and I’m like trying to pay attention and come up with questions. Like I gotta write this down. This is so good. I love this. This was genuinely one of my favorite interviews that I’ve done. And it’s like, like I told you, it’s like into the audience, you know, it’s like we usually only have friends on it is very rare that we would take a pitch that somebody sent us. But I was so fascinated in this, that you have been the surprising delight in this conversation. Thank you so much for giving us your time today.
NS (46:53):
Oh, thanks for having me. I’m this has been amazing. I’m so glad we connected.
AJV (46:57):
Oh my gosh. I can’t wait to learn more. I can’t wait to stay connected. I’m so fascinated. And you, this has been such an awesome conversation. Thank you so much, everyone listening. Make sure you stay tuned. Come back for the recap episode and we will see you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 319: How to Get Publicity with Selena Soo | Recap Episode
RV (00:02):
How do you get publicity for your business, for your brand, for your book, for your mission, for the, for your nonprofit, for whatever it is that you’re trying to do or advance in the world. That was the subject of this week’s interview with Selena Soo. It was awesome. And I really enjoyed meeting her. I was the I, that was the first time I’d ever met her. I I’d heard about her for years just through friends and stuff. And I’m gonna share with you my some of my takeaways from Selena and also I’m gonna share with you some of my own philosophies here about how publicity works and things that we have learned. We’ve, we’ve done a pretty decent job of getting our share of, of publicity over the years. So it’s something that we definitely know about, and then also helping our clients regularly get national appearances for, for different things.
RV (00:52):
Which is, which is great. But one thing I wanna point out is even if you already listened to that interview with selena the first the first time you listen to it, you probably listen to it like as a student, which is like, sort of how, how I was like, what she was saying and trying to learn from her, but go back and listen to it again of not what she’s teaching and not what she’s saying, but how she’s doing it, of all the guests that, that I’ve ever interviewed on this show. And I won’t speak for all the guests that AJ’s interviewed, but of all the guests that I’ve interviewed on this show, I could tell that Selena was a true pro at being a guest because of the way that she sequenced the conversation. And she one thing led to the next and she had frameworks and all of these things, but by the way, if you’re a brand builder, like if you’re one of our messengers, one of our messenger messengers, one of our clients you’ll, you’ll hear her doing things like frameworks and pillar points and the things that we teach you to do and captivating content.
RV (01:59):
And so just like watch how she does it. She was a tremendous guest all the way down to her lead magnet and everything. So just two different ways to learn from her. One is what she was saying. And two was like how she was doing it all. And I recognize those things, cuz those are all things that I try to do and things that I do actually do that have made a huge difference for converting media appearances into leads for your business, right? Like you know, there’s, I, I, I am, I think of myself almost as a professional guest, I’m trying to be a guest and I have a limited window, a limited time, a limited opportunity to be in front of someone else’s audience to deliver so much value quickly in a way in a sequence that creates context for a, a conversation to continue and then to open the door and offer them a chance to find me and stay in relationship with me and us and our team at brand builders group. And then, you know, you know,
RV (02:58):
Turn that into revenue and impact and relationships and Selena did a, a magnificent job of, of it as well. You could go listen to me as a guest on someone’s show too, and you could also see some of those things. So that’s what we’re gonna talk about a little bit here. I was really, really impressed with her. So how do you get publicity? How do you get publicity? First thing that she brought up, which I really loved because I don’t think we hear about this enough is that if you don’t have a mainstream product, you don’t really need mainstream media. If you don’t have a mainstream product, you don’t really need mainstream media. Like, so what do I mean by that? I mean that many of us think, oh, I wrote a book and now I just, I wanna be on good morning America or the today show or Oprah or, you know, the school of greatness podcast or ed my letter, like we think, oh, this would be the secret.
RV (03:53):
Like this would be the key is I gotta get on mainstream media. But in reality you don’t because first of all, the riches are in the niches. The riches are in the niches. You you’ll you’ll often make more money, get more leads for your business by being in a, in front of a smaller number of people. But it’s the right people, this more like rifle approach versus the shotgun approach of like, I just wanna be in front of massive, you know, numbers of people, because if you don’t have a mainstream product, then that means it doesn’t apply to a lot of people. So if there’s a big mass general audience listening, then you’re going, you know, 99% of the audience may not care about what you have. And so it’s not serving that media outlet well, and it’s not serving you well, and it’s not, it’s not serving their, their listeners or their audience.
RV (04:42):
Well, and so you can sort of let go of that idea that in order to, in order for media to be successful, I have to be on the biggest podcast or I have to be on the biggest TV shows or, you know, I have to, I have to be interviewed by the most famous interviewers. You don’t, you don’t, the riches are in the niches. Like so I, I, I want you to, to think about that. Another thing, and I, I talked about this a little bit. I shared this in the interview with Selena, because this is something that we’ve started teaching our, our brand builders clients, which is think of your online audience as an offline room. Think of your online audience as an offline room. So what does that mean? It means for some reason, when we see, like, if you post a video online and you get 14 video views, like a lot of people would look at that and be like, oh, I can’t believe I got 14 video views.
RV (05:38):
Like, you know, I put all this work in for this 62nd video and only 14 people watch it yet. If you were gonna stand up in front of a real life, offline room of 14 people, you’d probably be excited about that. Right? Like your heart would get racing. Certainly if it were 50 people in a room or a hundred people in a room and it like, they are, it’s the same thing. Those are real humans, real people like it’s 14 or 50 people watching a video, just like it’s 14 or 50 people watching you in a room. So those are real human lives. And just, there’s something weird about when we think about it in the context of online. And it’s probably because we’re comparing it to everyone. Like, you know, we’re comparing it to people who have millions of views, like, or their video goes viral and we’re like, oh, why don’t my views?
RV (06:23):
My videos go viral, right? Like I’m only reaching 50 people, sweetheart. You only gotta reach 50 people. Like most of us don’t need thousands of customers to change our life. Most of us, our business would be radically transformed if we had like a dozen or two dozen of our perfect customers this year. Like you don’t need millions of followers to make millions of dollars as AJ says. So think of your online audience as an offline room. And that’ll give you a little more confidence and context of like, yeah, what you’re doing is making a difference. And it will also help you with your media strategy. Why? Because chasing mainstream media, it’s it’s, I don’t wanna tell you not to do it because it’s certainly not impossible. It, it is possible. And, and they, you know, the media needs you more than you need them. So that is true.
RV (07:11):
It’s just, you can expend a lot of energy chasing it and the odds aren’t in your versus you can go after things that you would think of as smaller or like not less important or less significant and actually get in front of a hundred people. And it’s like, that’s a hundred people. That’s a huge audience. You don’t need to be on a podcast that has millions of people. If, if you’re on a podcast that has a hundred downloads, a hundred, not a hundred million, a hundred, if those are the right a hundred people, that’s the same as speaking in front of a room of a hundred of your perfect prospects. So it’s like I would be more specific and target. And we talked about, listen, notes is a great, a great tool for that and spark Toro, where a couple great tools that you could look up that will help you research, you know, different podcasts and things on specific and different influencers on specific topics.
RV (08:03):
So you don’t need to have mainstream media if, if you don’t have a mainstream product. Also to this point, I, I was talking about how clicks are better than views clicks are better than views. So if we’re getting a media appearance, you know, like a, a five minute video clip on good morning, America is not gonna change your life. Like we, you think it will, but it’s not like it’s just not gonna drive that much website traffic. You’re not gonna get it that many opt-ins, you’re not gonna get that many. If any sales like take it from me, but on national TV a few times and had a lot of friends have done it now with a book launch, you get a national TV appearance. You might move a few hundred units with that, like, which is something, but it’s not gonna automatically make you an overnight bestseller just cuz you got on the today show one time, like it’s, it’s different,
Speaker 3 (08:54):
But what can help is when you get a write up and an online and somebody’s blog, like somebody who’s a huge blogger or you know, entrepreneur or ink or Forbes or fortune, if they have a link there to your site, that’s gonna move some people. So clicks are better than views. Although I, I think, you know, full length views, if it’s like an hour long video or an hour long, you know, listens like a podcast, those are super powerful cuz you, they, you have ’em for an hour. Other than that, the real value of national media is really how you repurpose it. It’s it’s, it’s making sure you put the logos on your website. You put the the video, you know, like the clips of you on TV, in your demo videos, in your sales videos and in your press kit, the clips of that, of course, all things we teach you specifically how to do and give you templates for if you’re one of our members which by the way, if you’re not a brand builder member, you should be.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
I mean, I, I mean our stuff is legit. I don’t, as humbly as I can say, we’re changing lives and we have a system that works like, and it’s not only working for us. It’s working for the biggest personal brands in the world. It’s working for people, just brand new intermediate people. Like we got people doing viral, Ted talks, book launches doing seven figures, eight figures in their business, growing their email list, growing their social followers, hundreds of thousands, people going viral with their Ted talks, like our stuff is working cuz it’s system, you know that we spend a lot of time. And, and if you ever wanna talk to someone on our team, you go to free brand call.com/podcast, free brand call.com/podcast and request a free call with our team it’s free. And then we’ve got different levels, right? We’ve got like stuff for beginners and you know, people in between and then, you know, private, like high end one-on-one coaching for like big time businesses and personal brands.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
So anyways, free brand call.com/podcast. Check that out every once in a while, if you haven’t yet. Alright. Second takeaway from Selena. If you wanna get on TV, there’s three things you need to do. Okay. So this is like divided into three subparts. So let’s, if you wanna get on TV and we have the actual TV conversation first of all, start local start with local TV, your local news channel. Why? Because there’s less competition. Two is because they need to feature local news, which is local people. So if you live there, you are a local. So it automatically skews it in your favor. There’s less people asking. They have the same amount of demands for putting out content every single, you know, day 24 hours a day. And and the other thing is because you get to practice, you get to practice, it’s a sandbox, right?
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Like you get to play there in the minor leagues a little bit. Before you go to the big leagues, big leagues, you don’t want your, I, I promise you, you might think you do, but I promise you, you don’t, you don’t want your first TV appearance to be the today show. You don’t want your first podcast appearance to be Louis Houser. Ed Mylet you might think you do, but I’m telling you, you don’t, you want to have practiced and you wanna be confident and tight and sharp and pithy and pointy and punchy and clear. And so that when you’re on there and you’re, you’re delivering your pillar points, it’s like bang, bang, bang. And you know, if again, I’m sound probably like an arrogant jerk here, but if you haven’t yet go listen to ed. My let’s show the ed, my let show podcast and listen to the interview of me on his show.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
What you will hear. There sounds like a spontaneous conversation. And, and in many ways it was and it was very honest and heartfelt and that’s part of the magic. But the baseline of it was that it was the greatest hits of what we teach at brand builders group delivered all in an hour. And so we have, I mean, we have dozens of comments there, there were thousands and thousands of comments, but dozens of comments saying, this is the greatest podcast episode I’ve ever heard on any podcast. Why? Because it’s four years of our life buttoned up and, and, and, and polished and put into this one, you know, 45 minute conversation plus Ed’s magic. And he’s amazing, right? And his audience and all that stuff. Like they love him. They trust him and, and we have great rapport and all that, you know, there’s a lot of things that come together, but we have hundreds of leads that came from that interview because it’s the right combination of all of these, all of these things, not the least of which is that, you know, ed is, is very trusted and he’s got a huge audience, but it’s, it’s a, it’s a great audience, right?
Speaker 3 (13:26):
And it’s like, I would rather have that appearance than the today show because it’s a, it’s, A’s an audience of entrepreneurs, which is our target audience, right. Experts and entrepreneurs. So start local learn to speak in sound bites, catch phrases. For those of you that are listening, that are brand builders internally and captivating content, we call these what pillar points and we teach you the six pillar point formulas. These are six different forms of sentence structure that make it sound smart. And what the way you say it is as important as what you say, the cadence of how we hear things makes it sound smart and even sink and sound smarter than the integrity of the idea itself. And you need to understand how to, to write, speak in soundbites. So like some of my more popular soundbites, success is never owned. Its rented in the rent is due every day.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
When you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. You’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were, you make a life from the problem or you make a, you, you make a, a living from the problem you solve, but you make a life from the passion that you chase. All of these kinds of one liners that automation is to your time. What compounding interest is to your money. These are all one liners that I’ve spent years crafting, right? And then you hear ’em on a, on a TV show and you go, whoa, and it’s, it’s tight. It’s, it’s not three minutes to explain a concept. It’s
RV (14:50):
Like, like the most concentrated core essence of a, of an idea packaged beautifully delivered eloquently in a way that hits the ear and people just go ding. And that’s what you need. You know, when I’m saying we’re going bang, bang it’s it’s soundbite, soundbite, sound bite sound, bite, pillar, point pillar, point pillar, point catchphrase, catchphrase, they’re all, all the same thing, more or less. And then the other thing that she said, which I always forget about, I always forget about this was probably my greatest personal reminder from Selena was think about how to make it visual TVs are visual medium. So if you’re trying to get on TV, think about how to make it visual, right? Don’t just go. Here’s why I’m awesome. And why you should have me think from their perspective, they’re trying to go, how can we put together compelling visual content that holds people’s attention?
RV (15:48):
So just the fact that you’re smart isn’t necessarily make you a great guest for TV. Even if you’re eloquent, cuz it’s like, they need visual elements. So how can I make this more visual? And that was great. And, and again, just to shout out to Selena, like her framework that, that she taught and ran, ran through, which I just loved and you know, it was super simple. The publicity pyramid, you know, she’s a pro she’s a pro like was really, really good. And then the third thing, this is the last one. This is quick one, have one call to action and make sure it’s a lead magnet.
RV (16:24):
Don’t, don’t send people to a thousand places when they’re at the end of the interview and they say, so Rory, you know, this has been great. Where should people go to find out more about you? Be like, well, you can get my book on Amazon. You can follow me on Instagram at this handle. I got a podcast over here. I did a webinar one time on this, you know, I’ll probably go live next week on Facebook over here. No, if you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. Send them to one place, one URL, one call to action, say one thing over and over and over. And again, go listen to me on the ed mallet show. Part of why we got hundreds of leads is not because I’m saying, check out my book over here and I do this and that. And you want info about me on a keynote speaker, duh da no.
RV (17:10):
Yeah. You wanna learn about me? Go to one place free brand call.com and then I give, you know, his affiliate, right? And so everyone there’s and it’s like, well, where else should they go? I would just start there, go to free brand call.com. You know, and his is ed Mylet. You know, the one we use for this podcast free brand call.com/podcast, right? That’s what I’m talking about here. So one call to action, be very specific, clear one URL and send them to a property you control, right? Don’t send them to Amazon. Don’t send to Instagram, right? Like you finally got a captive audience. You finally have an opportunity to build your list and, and, and to start a relationship. And then you send ’em to a website. You have no control over where there’s a million other things going on, send them to a URL, dear goodness, like, and, and learn to create a lead magnet, a lead capture.
RV (18:01):
What, what is that? Right. Okay. All stuff we teach you inside a brand builders group, formal formal training, but a lead capture is a form. A lead magnet is something of value to them, right? And you go, here’s a free training or here’s a free download. Again. Selena did a brilliant job on our show. She had this amazing 12 month media calendar. And I was like, she’s such a pro. She gives one lead magnet, her little calendar, which I, I went and she got me. She got me
RV (18:46):
Download open up PowerPoint, design a seven step checklist to blanky blank, save it and export it as a PDF, and then tell people how to go get it, where to email you and, and how to get it. Or, you know, as you get more sophisticated, you build it as web forms and all that stuff. But that’s the lead magnet is the thing you give them. The lead capture is the place you send them to actually get their information where you capture their info. So when you get these media appearances, oh my goodness, or a speaking opportunity, or you’re on TV or a podcast, like, please don’t send someone to go, go follow me on Instagram so that you can see 1% of my posts. Maybe if you even manage to find my profile and you don’t get distracted by cute puppy dogs or, you know, pictures of Teddy bears rolling around, like, and then if I’m lucky, you’ll see one out of every hundred posts I make no send them to a lead capture with a lead magnet where you can have them in your database and you can own their relationship.
RV (19:45):
I’m not saying don’t use social media. We use social media, but like, this is your opportunity. You just delivered value bombs on a media interview that you spent years practicing and sharpening and getting your pillar points down, make sure you harvest it properly, send them to a place. And don’t just send them to your website. If your website doesn’t have a lead capture on it, which it should be like, you know, lesson number one, lead capture, lead magnet on your website. Yeah. Make sure you have those things straight. So all, all things we’re gonna step you through. If you’re one of our brand builders and do time in, in the right order, but some great takeaways from Selena brilliant job she had, she had all the things we’re talking about, right? It’s not a mainstream media. Our, our podcast is not mainstream media, it’s niche, but it’s right in her niche. She knows that we trust people, our people, you know, we, we, we try to cultivate trust with y’all. We try to give you value. She’s speaking in soundbites. She has frameworks, her little publicity pyramid, one lead magnet, her little 12 media things. She gives you one URL, one place to go download it, pop,
Speaker 4 (20:47):
Pop, pop, pop, pop. That’s a publicity pro. So you know, anyways, we’re gonna get some affiliate links to, to promote some more of Salinas stuff. Hope you check it out. Thank you as always for tuning in. I love you. And thanks for listening to me rant here. I’m just trying to add value. I want to encourage you make sure you go you know, send Salina some love on, on social, like go follow her, leave her a comment. Tell her that you heard her on the influential personal brand podcast. Keep coming back, share this episode. Who do you know in your life that needs publicity? Who do you know, that’s an entrepreneur who do you know, that’s in a book launch? Who, who do you know in your life? Who’s like in this moment going, I’m trying to reach more people send ’em this episode, it’s free. All of our episodes are free. It’s unbelievable. The podcast. I hope you feel that way. I know from your reviews on iTunes, many of you do and you leave us great reviews, which help tremendously. So thank you for that. Thanks for your attention, your reviews, your sharing, your, your loving on our guests. And just for being here, we wanna see you succeed. We wanna see you exploit your uniqueness in the service of others. Have a great one. We’ll catch you next time. Bye-Bye.
Ep 318: How to Get Publicity with Selena Soo
RV (00:02):
If you’ve hung around here for any length of time, you know, that the way that we define personal branding is simply the digitization of reputation. And one of the ways that I vet podcast guests, that we’re gonna bring on to introduce you to is through their reputation. It’s what do I hear about somebody from other people? And that is why you are about to meet Selena Soo. Selena is friends with lots of people that we know, Julie Solomon and Susie Moore, and just like I’ve heard her name for years, Celine Da Costa, who we’ve had on this show, who I really love and adore. And I think she’s brilliant. She actually was the one who finally connected us directly to Selena and Selena is an expert in publicity, you know, visibility and just helping people get seen and, and have more reach.
RV (00:57):
So she, for I think 18 years lived in New York, she had a publicity agency. She’s helped people get featured in Oprah and Forbes and Inc. And she works with lots of you know, experts and entrepreneurs, very similar obviously to our core audience. But specifically in the area of publicity. And so publicity is one of the things that we sort of lightly touch on, but we usually farm out that work to vendor partners. And so she’s a total, a total pro and I was like, we gotta get her on the show so that we can, we can get a chance to meet her. So Selena, welcome to the influential personal brand podcast.
SS (01:34):
Thank you, Rory. I’m so thrilled to be here.
RV (01:37):
So yeah. So let’s talk about publicity and let’s start with the easy ones. How do you get on good morning America?
SS (01:46):
RV (02:33):
Oh, we love frameworks. We love frameworks. Yes.
SS (02:36):
OK, great. So, you know, imagine a pyramid, a triangle at the bottom of the pyramid that is your home base, that is your online presence, right? That’s your personal brand. Cause the first thing that people are gonna do when they hear about you, whether it’s Oprah’s producers or someone else is Google you, and if they Google you and nothing shows up, then they’re not gonna
SS (02:54):
Like exactly. Right. So even just having like a solid website, a social media presence with content like that is step one, right? To really like be present online. And then step two is guest posting. Cause that’s a natural extension from writing content on social media or your blog or your newsletter. So now you’re sharing that same content, but on third party website so that other people can see you. And the great thing about guest posting is oftentimes you can include a link back to your website, right? So that’s good for SEO. It can be good for list building. You know, if you can link up to a lead magnet and there are some amazing places like Forbes, mind, body green that are built on this model of guest posting thrive global, right? All these different places. So that would be the second layer of the publicity pyramid. And then the
RV (03:42):
Third before you, so before you go onto the third one, which as I do wanna hear this, but I will say like, you know, we’ve been on Fox, we’ve been on good morning, America, we’ve been on Fox and friends. We’ve been on, you know, several local. I will say I would rather have a online article with a link to my site than I would be on good morning, America. Like the power of an article that people can read. I mean, being on good morning, America and stuff helps a bunch with credibility, but it’s mostly, it’s kind of like you drive for show and you put for dough and golf. Like most of the national TV is like the publicity perception. Yeah. But when it comes to driving traffic and sales and leads, man, I love a link. I wanna a link
SS (04:31):
Yeah. I’m still on the same page. And that’s, you know, how I started, like following this publicity pyramid framework where, you know, I had my website and you know, my social media, but then I was writing articles and writing guest posts, including writing guest posts for influencers who yeah. You know, mail the guest posts, like to their email list. And that’s how I got, you know, my first gosh, like maybe 2000 subscribers through that strategy. Wow. Yeah. So guest posts,
RV (04:57):
Your first 2000 email, like in your database came from just putting articles on other people’s sites.
SS (05:05):
Exactly. Yeah. So that was my, you know, starting point for really like getting my name out there to the public. And then from there, the next level is podcast interviews and video interviews or guest teaching would also fall into this category. You know, when you’re getting started as an expert, you wanna start with, you know, sharing your ideas through it in content, and eventually then you’re gonna have these back and forth conversations with people. Now, this is really where I hang out on the publicity pyramid because, you know, even though podcasts or doing guest teaching, it can be more niche, but these are people that are raising their hands saying, yes, I wanna be in the room. Or I wanna be listening to this conversation and learning 30 minutes or an hour. Those are the same kinds of people that buy online courses and coaching programs. So that’s really, you know, where I primarily hang out and maybe, you know, a certain podcast might not have the brand name recognition of as Forbes, but again, not all publicity is created equal and it’s not just about the branding. It’s about are my ideal clients who are right for my offers hanging out there.
RV (06:05):
Totally. Yeah. I mean that, I think this is a great example. Like you’re, you, you likely would get more clients from this podcast than probably from a national TV thing because it’s like, you know, there’s a random smattering of people listening, but you know, I, well, something you just said, I’ve never really thought about, which I love is when someone listens to a podcast mm-hmm,
SS (06:47):
Yeah.
RV (06:48):
All right. So is there a step four?
SS (06:50):
Yeah, there’s four. There’s the next level? There’s four and five. Okay. So now we’re moving up, the publicity here, we’re getting more mainstream, so that’s gonna be magazines and, you know, magazines are powerful because people read magazines on the plane at the beach or the dentists office. Like you’re literally getting in front of millions of people. That being said with magazines, typically when you’re being mentioned in a magazine or featured, it’s usually, you know, your expertise, a quote versus like a fully written piece by you. Yeah. So you’re reaching millions, but it’s you know, less in depth. Right. And then with TV, which is at the top of the publicity pyramid, because it tends to be harder to get on TV than to get a podcast interview. That being said, as we move up, we’re reaching more people. But it can be less in depth. Like for example, a lot of TV interviews are just three or four minutes long. Yeah. So it’s kinda really
RV (07:41):
Powerful, even if you’re Tony Robbins like Tony, even if you’re Tony Robbins, you get you Dave Ramsey, you get four minutes and you’re out.
SS (07:48):
Exactly. Yeah. So, I mean, it’s a huge credibility builder to say you’re on good morning, America or CNN. And all of that. And it can be, you know, powerful if you’re spreading your message to the masses with like a mass product, whether it’s a book, an iPhone app or some kind of physical product. So it really depends on, you know, is your message one really for the mainstream mainstream masses, or are you going for a more niche audience? And then also like considering where do you really shine? You know, for some people they really wanna stick to the written word and that’s really where their magic comes out for other people like videos where it’s at. So but I would say in terms of like the law of least effort, the most natural path, it would be building out some basic online presence then going into guest posting then podcasting. And then if you want to moving your way up to magazines and TV.
RV (08:38):
Yeah. It’s interesting. You know, just that whole, this whole conversation that you just went through, which I love the publicity pyramid is what you call it Uhhuh. So, so great. Such a simple framework is so powerful is, you know, people go, oh, magazines and TV is so sexy, but like you’re gonna get way more business from podcasts and guest posting mm-hmm
RV (09:34):
They’re super credible, you know? Or they’re like, you know, some world renowned person in, in, in their field. Yeah. You know, or they’re like famous for, for whatever. And in TV a lot of times it’s like, oh yeah, of course they’re gonna have Brad pit or whoever on there for something. But when it comes to featuring books, I’m often surprised that if you’re a mainstream person, it’s not an automatic laydown they might not have Gary Vayner Chuck on just because it’s Gary Vayner, Chuck, sometimes they do. But a lot of times they have newer authors on or people that I, that you haven’t heard of. In other words, it’s, it feels more random in terms of the, in terms of the selection. It’s not like, oh, this person checks every single box. And so they get invited on this huge show. It’s a little bit of that, but I, you know, a lot of times they they’ll, they’ll grab people that are like newer. I mean, I got on Fox and friends as a first time author. Like the week after my first book came out was my first national TV appearance. And I was like, well, that’s random. Like what are they doing with, what are they doing with me? So like, how do, is there anything you can speak to until like, how do you get those spots? Do, is there anything they are looking for or not looking for? Like for TV specifically?
SS (10:48):
Yeah. I mean, I would say, you know, you wanna differentiate between local news and national news because for local TV they have a responsibility to share the stories and ideas of local experts. So, you know, if you’re an author, you know, think about, well, what cities am I connected to? Where was I born? Where did I go to college? Where have I worked? Where am I living
RV (11:09):
Now? Oh, that’s good.
SS (11:10):
Right. So I would identify all those places and really start with those markets. Because if you can mention your local connection, then you’re kind of at the top of the priority list. So that’s, you know, that’s important. And I would say that before you go on national TV, I mean, that’s incredible that, you know, you were on these national shows, but I also think a big part of it is that you done an amazing job of building your personal brand, that they, they probably had confidence that, you know, you were good on video, but I will say for national TV, they’re gonna wanna see that someone has ideally been on local TV first. Because you know, just cuz someone’s good at the podcast interview doesn’t mean that they’re gonna be good at TV. They’re gonna consider like, you know, do they have a great setup with lighting?
SS (11:52):
Can they, they speak in soundbites because some people, yeah, they can talk on a 30 minute or one hour podcast interview, but can you speak succinctly in a four minute interview? So there’s a lot more at stake and it’s not like with podcast interviews where they’re gonna be editing it later, like you kind of gotta get it right at the first shop. So I will say for like the big leagues, like the big national outlets they’re definitely doing the research in terms of what that person’s personal brand is. Have they done TV before? Are they confident? Do they, you know, smile? Are they presentable? So I would say the first stop is really, you know, to start with local news. And then once you have those TV clips, then when you’re sending in your pitch, you wanna share that so they can see, you know, you have that experience.
RV (12:34):
That’s so good. And, and that, that is, that is so true. Selena that like, you know, I love podcasts. I feel so super at home on podcast. TV goes so fast, it’s it? It four minutes blows by and it’s like, you don’t have time for a setup. There’s no time for backstory. It’s like, you just gotta deliver sound bites. They gotta be tight and sharp. It’s, it’s a different, it’s a different, it’s a different skillset. And, and being on local TV is, is, is, is huge. I love that tip about too, you know, what’s your connection to local. And I would, I would, I would tell somebody, listening, you know, you think you wanna be on good morning America right now, but you actually don’t, you, you don’t want to be on there until you’re ready for it, which is until you’ve had some, you’ve had some reps at local TV, you have the sound bites and like your website is ready for it. And you’re like prepared to like receive that traffic and capture. But yeah, TV is a TV is a is a, is a different beast.
SS (13:38):
And the other thing that I will say is with TV, like they’re really looking to capture people’s interests, you know, with visuals, right. Cause you’re watching TV. So, you know, if you have good role of you, you know, I don’t know, working with clients or if you have like live exercise that the TV audience can do, like those are gonna be things that are interesting if you’re just a talking head like, and it’s just, you know, all they’re seeing is someone talking for four minutes straight. It’s not as interesting. So just know that when the producers are thinking about, well, I have a person on their show, they’re gonna think about not just what are the words are gonna kind of the person’s mouth, but is there something that the person that can share that can capture visual interest or is there activity that would be engaging to the audience?
RV (14:21):
Gosh, that’s so simple, but that’s, that makes so, so much sense. So when you make a pitch, would you include notes about like B roll that you would show or like a, if there’s a visual or something?
SS (14:33):
Yeah. So if you were say a love coach and you were pitching you know, you could talk about, you know, that you have clients that could come onto the show or you have like B role of you working with clients and so forth, or maybe there’s like an activity for someone to do to attract, you know, their soulmate. And maybe you would write out like what the activity activity would look like. Like maybe they need to have a journal that they did. They, they journal in 30 days and you would like mention all these different props so that the segment would look very dynamic where there’d be the talking head, but there would also be props and activities involved.
RV (15:06):
Yeah. That, and that’s why you see probably all the time you see like chefs on there, cuz it’s very visual. Cause they can cut and show the food and like show, show all the stuff. So it’s almost like you, when you’re pitching for TV, what I hear you saying is it’s like, you’re not even just pitching like the content of what you’re gonna say. Yeah. But almost like you’re pitching, think of it as pitching a segment to them of like how this could fold out visually and that makes it an easier. Yes.
SS (15:34):
Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, TV producers are so busy and, you know, think about like with a podcast, there’ll be a certain number of episodes that are released, you know, per month, but TV, I mean it’s kind of 24 7, right. It’s every day. So they constantly need new content. They need to keep it interesting. So if you, as an expert can pitch yourself or as a publicist pitch, you and you’re kind of like mapping out what this segment could look like. You’re presenting something on a silver platter and making it easier for them to say yes. So when there’s so many options, of course we’re gonna say yes to the person who makes our job easy for us.
RV (16:08):
Mm-Hmm
SS (16:56):
That’s such a great question. So I think it’s important to get clear on with your expert topics. Are they niche or are they mainstream? So when I’m speaking of expert topics, it’s like the things that you wanna be known for. And I know a lot of entrepreneurs can be multi passionate at the end of the day. You wanna hone in on a few key things. So for example, at one point I had a business mastermind and people in the mastermind would ask me questions about scaling their business and you know, if they should hire a senior project manager, well, if I started getting bored of my regular expert topic and just wanted a podcast talking about how to grow your team, well then people are gonna circle back and be like, oh, I wanna work with you to grow my team. But like my mastermind is something that maybe is only four 20 people.
SS (17:39):
Whereas with my programs, let’s say I have 500 people you know, in a particular group program. Right. So my primary group program has been a program called impacting millions and that’s about publicity. So if my intention was, I wanna get people enrolled to my publicity program, then what I’m talking about in the media should match my offerings. Right? So looking at your own business, what’s the 80 20, what does the majority of revenue come from? Which offering will, you know, based on that offering, that should be what your expert topic is. And so when you look at your expert topic, is it mainstream or niche? So for publicity, I would consider that to be a niche topic. For me, a mainstream topic is something that applies to most people. For example, if I was to talk about being an introvert, well, you know, half of the population are introverts like approximately.
SS (18:27):
So that would be mainstream. Or if I were talking about networking or relationship building that applies to everyone, whether you’re a student at college or you have, you know, professional job or you’re an entrepreneur, whereas publicity typically, you know, it applies to entrepreneurs who are building their personal brands. So that’s a bit more niche. So knowing that with my offerings, I’m looking for a niche audience, not just kind of anybody I’m gonna target more niche media. So it might not have the same reach, but it’s gonna help me get in front of the right people. So those are the things I consider. But then there’s also, you know, there is a role for just personal brand building in terms of media. You know, there are certain brand names that are very recognizable, like Forbes and business insider. And so, you know, being featured in those outlets can also be really powerful whether or not your ideal client has actually read the article that you’re featured in.
SS (19:23):
But if they just see those media logos on, you know, your site, they see you as a credible expert. And the other thing that you can do with your email list is when you get your media features, you know, put them in front of them, you can add them to your email nurture sequence. You know, you can add those, you know, media logos and trust symbols next to you know, places where people opt in or, you know, make purchasing decisions. So I think that when it comes to publicity, it’s sort of multifaceted. I would say primarily you wanna get in front of people who are your ideal clients, but there is also something to be said about prestige media as well.
RV (19:58):
Yeah, that, I mean, I, I love that. And I agree with that so much. The I have found that most of the major national stuff, the real, the primarily the only real value of the media appearance is how you repurpose the appearance, basically putting it on your website. Also those of you that are speakers, you know, in your demo videos, or even if you’re a coach and you’re not a speaker, you could still have like a little, you know, little bio video. And I’m just pulling up, I’m pulling up a data point on this just for everybody. So one of the things that we did Selena was we led this trends in personal branding, national research study. And we we partnered with this PhD led research firm. And we asked, you know, all these different questions, but one of the questions was how important are each of the following when it comes to paying someone more for a product or service.
RV (20:58):
So I just wanna put a data point here behind something that Sina is saying. So, and we asked you have a, a Ted talk, a New York times bestselling book, a wall street journal, bestselling book a social media file. I’ll go ahead and show this on the screen for those of you that are watch watching this on YouTube. So I had to, I had to pull it up quick. So page 60 of our, of our report which is free, y’all know that you can, you can download this at on brand builders, group.com. But the number one thing that clients say they’re willing to pay more money for is when they see testimonials from their, from their customers. The second is that they’re paid to consult or speak, but the fourth. So this is a list of like 20 things, the fourth, and this is waited to the us census.
RV (21:49):
52% of Americans say they are more likely to pay more money to, to buy a product or service from someone who has been featured in the media as an expert. So that is an actual data point that is supporting what Selena is saying. And of course, we’ve, we’ve talked about this study in other times. And usually the point we make is actually the average pub person in the public doesn’t care that much about a New York times bestselling book or a wall street journal or a viral, you know, Ted talk, they care about testimonials and they care about, are you being paid to speak or, or consult. And then the fourth is that they care are that you’re appearing in the media. 52% of Americans say, they’ll pay you more money just because you have those logos on your site. So like Selena, that is amazing. Like, what do you call it? Prestige? Is that what you called it? Prestige. Pre
SS (22:45):
Prestige. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-Hmm
RV (22:48):
I love that. So prestige PR, so that’s really, really cool. And so the mainstream stuff too, is like, you know, so it’s like money, sex, careers relationships, like, you know, self
SS (23:03):
Productivity, success,
RV (23:04):
Productivity. Yeah. Those mm-hmm
SS (24:08):
I think it’s the same thing. Like having media, it builds your credibility as a go to expert, as you said, people are willing to pay you more, but also people are more interested inviting you to come in to be a speaker at their event. You know, there’s just more trust or more likely to take the meeting. Right? One of the first things that anyone does, you know, before they respond to someone or say yes to a request is they do a quick Google search on them. And when they land on their website, if they see media logos, it’s like, okay, this person is the real deal. And it just also shows that like, you’re taking your work seriously. If someone is just like quietly, you know, doing their work, but they’re not out there sharing their ideas. They’re not building that body of work. They’re not really seen as the real deal. So I would say that media is the ultimate credibility marker. It’s something that every person understands. Whereas if you’re like, oh, I had a webinar with, you know, a thousand people on people don’t really know what that means, but they understand what it means to be featured in a top, you know, magazine, newspaper, podcast, and so forth.
RV (25:07):
Yeah. Yeah. It is. It’s definitely this like universal credibility indicator. I, I I know we’re wrapping up one thing I wanna do how do you find these people? Okay. So, so let’s say, I mean, of course you could hire a publicist and then when you hire a publicist, you’re sort of treading off of that. They already have contact information and relationships with people, and that’s really what you’re paying for. You know, when you, I, I feel like when you hire a publicist, you’re paying for someone who has the contact information readily available and who has relationships to make that for you? They don’t, none of them guarantee results. Yeah. And and they get varying results partly based on their relationship, but largely based on your position in the marketplace. But if you’re gonna do it yourself and, and we’ve, we’ve actually had a lot of people be very successful doing it themselves. I, it how, how do you find the outlets? Like how do you find the people? I mean, do you basically just go to Google or like there anything specific you’re typing in to like find the right person to pitch to?
SS (26:13):
Yeah. I think the first step is figuring out what are the right media outlets for me. So I can share like a couple of very quick strategies that I think will help people a lot. So one of my favorite techniques is called the follow, the leader technique. That’s something that I created. Yeah. So getting clear on, okay, what’s my expert topic. So let’s say someone’s expert topic was, you know, public speaking then they wanna think about who are some other leaders either in their industry or connected to them, right. So they might be looking at well, who else is teaching on visibility? Maybe it’s a publicity expert. Maybe it’s a public speaking coach. Maybe it’s someone that specializes in getting people Ted talks, right. And then doing a Google search on them and seeing what kind of media they’ve been featured in, you know, maybe going to their website and seeing if their media page or even going to specialize search engine.
SS (27:05):
So there’s a search engine called listen, notes.com.com it’s for podcasts. And so if you type in someone’s name into that search engine, within moments, all the podcasts that they’ve been featured on are gonna come up. So if you do that exercise with five people in your industry in no time, you’re gonna have a media list of dozens of targeted outlets that top leaders in your industry have been featured in. And so these are places that you’ll wanna be considering for your own media list. So, you know, using the fall a leader technique is super, super powerful. Also even doing things like leveraging existing research, if you wanna be on top business podcast, literally type into Google, a top business podcast, and people have compiled the top 20, the top 50, the top, you know, a hundred business podcasts. And you can leverage that existing research to start building your own personal media list.
RV (27:55):
Yeah, that’s funny. Yeah. That’s how I, that’s how I met Celine. Actually, she was doing a four podcast on the top personal brand. No, I think it was top podcast for business and, and somebody. Yeah. John Lee Dumas introduced her to us. So that was actually, she put an article together, which was an amazing article. Yeah. And yeah, you mentioned listen notes, which is a great one because that is I was gonna, I was gonna mention, I was gonna mention that there’s another really great tool and I’m trying to remember what it is that will tell you that’s kind of similar listen notes is the best for podcasts for sure. There’s another one that you can like search by topic and it will tell you all of the people who are spark Toro, have you heard of spark Toro?
SS (28:49):
No, I feel like I need to write this down.
RV (28:51):
SS (29:54):
Absolutely. So the thing I’m most excited to share is my 12 month publicity calendar, because when it comes to getting to the media, there’s a few things that you need to understand. First of all, like what kinds of story ideas are they looking for? And one of the things that they’re looking for are timely story ideas. So every single month there are certain themes. And if you can hit on these themes, you’re more likely to get accepted onto podcasts, onto TV, in magazines and so forth. So I have a 12 month media calendar it’s full of 40 pages worth of store ideas, special hooks and dates to help you get into the media. And you love it. Yeah. Impacting millions.com/calendar. And people have used this to not just map out their publicity plans for the year, but they’ve also used it to map out their social media content, their newsletter content. So people can go ahead and get an impacting millions.com/calendar. This took me like a ridiculous number of hours to put together. And it’s 40 pages worth of time saving tips and resources and dates to help you get into the media. So you can go ahead and check it [email protected] slash calendar
RV (30:59):
Genius. I we don’t even have an affiliate link for this, but I went and did it myself. Great lead magnet, so useful and so practical because yeah, it gives you a way, like, all you need to know is what are the topics they’re interested in every month and then just like position what you do to that. Fantastic. So I’m downloading that we’ll put a link to impacting millions.com in the show notes slash slash calendar, impacting millions.com/calendar. You guys can check it out make sure you follow Selena online and send her some love. If you picked up some tips, let her know that you found her from our crew here. And gosh, Selena, this is just so cool. And I’m so great. I’m so glad to finally meet you in person. You, you are an example of your reputation procedures, you, and that’s what we want all of our clients to be. It’s what we try to aspire to be. And you got great tips, a great lead magnet, just, you know, I love it. So we wish you, we wish you the best. Thanks for coming.
SS (32:00):
Thanks so much.