Author: Nicole Gale

Ep 307: How to Dominate on YouTube with Evan Carmichael | 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.
RV (00:54):
Oh my gosh, Evan Carmichael blew my mind. Like it takes a lot. It takes a lot for me to find an educator on something related to personal branding where I go, holy moly. I’ve never heard that before. Now I, we ha this we’re on this episode here. We’re gonna break down. We’re gonna obviously break down what happened in, in the, the podcast interview that you just heard with Evan, but he came and did this, the training, you know, this very, this much longer in depth training for all of our, our monthly members. And it was just, just awesome, like really, really good and love, love seeing somebody who’s a really tactical expert and you know, somebody that we’re now confidently recommending, which, you know, we don’t, we don’t recommend people lightly, right? Like we, we, we flush out what they’re about and if we catch any sniff of them being weird or doing silly stuff, we immediately shut that down.
RV (01:51):
So if you go to brandbuildersgroup.com/evancarmichael you will hit our affiliate link and go over to his training. That is just, you know, that that’s, that’s his training, that’s his, his little monthly program. But for all of our, our like active coaching clients, he did came and did a special thing that we recorded. And it was like, oh my gosh, like just amazing. So anyways you can check that out brandbuildersgroup.com/evancarmichael, which is a link to some of his other stuff, but three, three biggest take takeaways here in terms of how to dominate on YouTube. My, my big three takeaways from the podcast interview specifically. So first of all this is something that’s not necessarily unique to Evan, but it’s super edifying to hear him talk about it. And it just reinforces one of our core central beliefs, which is put education in front of the sale, put education in front of the sale.
RV (02:52):
You have to, you, you, you have to earn the right to sell something to somebody you have to earn their trust. Trust has to be in place first before there’s a transaction. Trust must take place before there’s a transaction. Like the trust has to be in place first. How do you build trust with the stranger? The answer is you give you, don’t ask you, give you give value. First, you deliver first, you teach and, and, and most of you, most, most of our audience and in, in some way are experts and educators, right? Like you have some valuable knowledge that you’ve acquired over some journey you’ve been on in your life, which is what makes you a mission driven messenger, which if you’re listening to this show regularly, anyways, that’s who you are. You are a mission driven messenger. You’re, you’re, you’re, you’re feeling called to like, share your message with the world.
RV (03:49):
Well, why are you doing that’s because you’ve, you have some expertise. Why? Cause you walked the path, right? There’s a problem you’ve been down. There’s a challenge. You’ve conquered, there’s an obstacle you’ve overcome. So take that massive education and put it, give it away and put it up front first. And that is a core central belief. And, and I think when, when people get so lost in, like, how do I podcast? How do I YouTube? Like, what do I do on social media? Like, I don’t know what to post teach. ’em What, you know, like teach ’em everything, you know, give it all away. Right. This is why we were saying all the time, give it away for free. Save the best for first, give away the best thing, you know, for first teach. ’em What, you know, like, I mean, that is how you build.
RV (04:39):
That is how you build trust. Like that, that’s it, that’s the secret. At least that’s our secret. If we got a secret, like however we’ve been able to do what we’ve been able to do. I mean, go look at my Instagram, go read my blog post, listen to all these podcasts you know, my books we sell for whatever, $12 on Amazon, but like, you know, we’re giving away everything. We can that we’re we’re, and we’re pumping it out into the universe as fast as humanly possible. Now I will say part of my action item from this E even though we know this part and we preach this part and we believe this and we do this part pretty well. I think, but was when Evan said you should, you, you should take your live coaching calls and publish those on YouTube. That’s really interesting because we, we do have our customers sign a release that, that gives us permission to, to, to do that.
RV (05:39):
And it, it does, I mean that that’s an infinite stream of content, right? An infinite stream of content is to go take questions for people and, and give them live coaching and publish that online, make that available to people. And I thought, huh, that’s fascinating. Like we’ve got hours and hours and hours and hours of that, but it doesn’t, you know, whatever it is, just teach, add value, share, educate, inspire, entertain. You know, the three E’s is what we, we talk about with our members, your, your, your content marketing strategy effectively is one of the three E you’re either, you know, educating, encouraging, or entertaining some mix of the three, but it’s typically one of those three, you’re either an educator, an encourager or an entertainer. And if you’re trying to sell stuff online, put education in front of the sale, give people a chance to sample you.
RV (06:33):
So anyways, that’s a, that’s a good one. Always good to be reminded of. Number two, my number two takeaway is make data driven decisions about your content specifically with YouTube, specifically, this audience retention curve concept. I mean, what, this, this is so simple and so practical, and like, anybody can do this. Like, why aren’t we, why aren’t we not doing this? This is so straightforward. And, and so if you miss the interview, what’s the audience retention curve. It’s a, it’s a tool it’s a widget on, in, in the back end of your YouTube channel that shows you second by second, how long people are watching and what’s gonna, what happens? You know, remember what he was saying here is, you know, typically the, the highest spike is the beginning is everybody starts watching. Almost everybody starts watching your video in the beginning, and then they keep for a little while, and then there’s some sharp drop off.
RV (07:35):
But then what you’re looking for are the spikes. Cuz if it’s flat, okay, if it’s flat, that means you held their attention. So that’s good. Like holding their attention is a massive victory. If it’s a drop that’s bad, that means we lost people. That means whatever we said right before it wasn’t interesting enough to help people keep hanging on, to hear what was coming next. So that is a big time problem. But then what you’re looking for are the spikes. The spikes are gold because what’s happening. There is people are pausing, rewinding and rewatching your video, which, you know, if you’ve ever wondered, like I wonder what’s the best part. Like if I, if I posted a 20 minute on VI video on YouTube, which 60 seconds of that video, should I post on Instagram reels or TikTok or like a YouTube short and you go, I don’t know, like, you know, I’ve got a one in 20 chance there, or you could just look at the data and see either where you held the audience flat or where there’s a spike and go.
RV (08:43):
That is that’s the clip. Like that’s the hotspot. Just grab it, that, grab whatever that is. Take it out in 60 seconds. And boom. Now, now your, your whole content strategy, like the art is gone pretty much. It’s mostly science at that point. So good. So simple, right? Like, I mean that one idea can grow. Your social can help you get your next great client. You know, it can help you make your impact in the world. It can help you become more well known. It’ll help you drive more leads. Like just that one practical idea. I mean, this podcast is nuts. I mean the, the number of the amount of awesome things that we learn from these incredible guests who all come on the show for free, just blows my mind. I mean, you know, that did you know, like all these guests do this as a favor to, to, to me and AJ.
RV (09:31):
I mean, incredible, incredible. So that was the second one. And then the third one also sort of blew my mind and this one was like, where’s AJ, AJ. I want you to listen to this AJ, this clip is for you. I need to cut this clip. Somebody, can we cut this clip and send it to AJ? Because it was when I asked into question, how long should my videos be on YouTube? And everybody in the world is saying shorter, shorter, shorter, shorter attention. Spans humans are developing. We don’t pay attention. We want things shorter. Right? And, and Evan’s going, that’s not what the data says, sweetie. That ain’t what the data says. Not on YouTube anyways. Not on YouTube. His advice was a minimum of 10 minutes, but really 1, 2, 3 hours hours, 1, 2, 3 hours. That is amazing. 1, 2, 3 hours, no stinking way. One to three hours, unbelievable.
RV (10:36):
1, 2, 3 hours inly. like long form content. And he said, there’s giant demand and very little supply on YouTube. If you’re a true educator, this is good news. Just post a video of you teaching what you do. And, and you might say, well, what if you know, what have I give it all away? If you can teach everything, you know, in one to three hours, then you’re not teaching on the right thing. Like you’re not an expert. If everything, you know, can be taught in three hours, like there’s gotta be more to it than that. Like otherwise it’s like, you gotta, at some point go, eh. I really be charging money to teach this. If I could teach everything I know about it in an hour. So, you know, at least 10 minute videos and put ’em out there and I just go, man.
RV (11:24):
And we had Vanessa van Edwards on our podcast here. Not, not that long ago, like recently. And she was telling us some of her secrets and, and she’s a great example. Vanessa is blowing up on YouTube and I’ve known her for few years now, but like blowing up because of her YouTube channel. And if you go look like her, I, I, I, she, I sent I sent our team, her videos just because I said, look, it’s not that fancy. She’s not doing fancy editing. There’s not fancy lighting. I don’t even think she’s using a microphone. Like, and she’s blown it up, cuz she’s just teaching consistently like these great little tips, these little vignettes, you could do the same thing. Just you know, this is a game of education at scale. I mean, that’s how, that’s how Evan Des defined and described YouTube education at scale.
RV (12:17):
That’s it like that makes sense. And you go, well, I could, I could go speak to, to, to five people at a rotary club or I could record myself on my phone uploaded to YouTube and have a few dozen people or hundreds or maybe thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of people watch it. Why are we doing this? Why are we not doing this? So and long form, long form content, man, that’s a that’s that. And, and AJ always tells me I’m she says you’re a little verbose, honey, a little verbose. But she, you know, she’s like trying to be to cut it down, cut it down. That’s cuz she, she doesn’t she’s like just cut to the point, cut to the chase, give me the deal. That’s how she operates. But the data, the data in general, sweetie says long form content rules the day, at least on YouTube.
RV (13:08):
So I I’m going with, I’m going with my men, Evan Carmichael and the data that makes me happy. That’s excited. Just teach, share what you know go back, listen to the episode. There’s there’s a, there’s a ton of, of great little things in there. Again, brand builders, group.com/evan Carmichael. If you wanna learn more from Evan and check out what he’s doing, very tactical, very specific to YouTube, but extremely, extremely tactical. And this YouTube being one place that I would say, yeah, we’ve, we’ve dropped the ball. Like we’ve never dominated YouTube, like we should, but we’re, we’re getting on the, we’re getting on the, the train. Now, even though I feel like a million years late we’re we’re starting now. And and you know, Evan is, is one of the people that we’re learning from. So check that out and keep coming back, share this podcast.
RV (13:54):
We’ll share this episode with somebody who needs to start a YouTube channel or, you know, you think somebody, you know, that’s really smart and go, Hey, you’re really smart. You should be posting your knowledge on YouTube because it’s gonna change your life. And you should listen to this interview with Evan Carmichael and Roy Vaden at brand builder’s group. So do that, would you for a friend and probably share it to your team, maybe if you’re listening and you’re not the one who actually edits your video, probably wanna share that interview with Evan Carmichael. And might I add the one with Vanessa van Edwards as well? So and Sean can the interview with Sean can, that we did as well was also a great, a great a great one on, on YouTube. So there you go. Look at that. You go, you got other episodes to go listen to right now, if you want more on this subject. So thanks for being here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 306: How to Dominate on YouTube with Evan Carmichael

RV (00:02):
Oh, you don’t even know about the powerful interview you are about to hear right now. My man, Evan Carmichael, first of all, is a genius. He’s so successful. I mean, he sold his first company when he was 19 years old, a biotech firm biotech software company. He’s raised 15. He was raising 15 million for venture capitalists when he was 22 years old. And he’s done so many things for entrepreneurs today. He is known for a lot of things. What we’re gonna talk about is specific his genius strategy on YouTube. And when I say genius, I mean, he’s got over 3 million subscribers on his YouTube channel. He did a, he did a, a training, a full, like a 90 minute training for our members inside our portal for our pain community. And it just absolutely blew my mind and, you know, Lewis Howes and Brendan Burchard and grant Cardone and ed Mylett like Gary V like all of these people are people that look to Evan for advice and ideas on YouTube. So I was like, I’m begging him, please come back on the podcast so that we could sell everybody our entire community at large. So Evan, welcome to the show, man. Thanks
EC (01:17):
For having man. Always, always an honor to be here talking to the one and only rory Vaden. Let’s go, man.
RV (01:22):
Yeah. So you’re such a beast on YouTube. How do I get, how do I become a beast on YouTube? Like what, what do, what are the key things I need to know to just like start dominating on YouTube?
EC (01:36):
Yeah. Okay. So listen to position it let’s go here. Youtube is, is an education platform. Like I think a lot of people think of it as, as entertainment and fun and movies and music. Cool. But YouTube is, is the number one education platform. So, you know, people are trying to figure out how to be, become a more influential leader. Where are they gonna go? They’re gonna go to the library. Like, who are they gonna talk to? They’re gonna talk to their mom, like what they’re gonna go and search and your stuff will pop up and not just your videos, but again, other people’s videos, this content that people are going there to learn. And so YouTube is different than any, every other platform where we wanna be making long form content, teaching people because ahead of whatever, we’re trying to sell, we wanna put information.
EC (02:19):
We wanna put education, okay. We’re teaching people at scale to then bring them into whatever the thing is that we’re selling coaching products, program services, books, et cetera. And the beauty of something like YouTube is one your, your contentless forever. So the videos you make now in a year and two years, and six years are still getting your views, subscribers, attention leads, et cetera, where every other platform it goes away, right? Like Instagram, nobody cares what you posted a week ago. It’s instant, it’s Instagram, it’s gone. Every other platform’s the same. Youtube has the best monetization. So they’ll pay you, right? Like you could be making seven figures just from the ad revenue on your videos, as well as actually building your business. And the best part about YouTube is you can take the content since it’s long form and splice it up to put on all the other platforms.
EC (03:07):
So YouTube will tell you the best moments in every video, according to what the audience cared about, those little highlight moments, you can then tweak and put them to Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and all the other platforms. So all you really have to do is have a regular show long form on YouTube. And now we’re creating content everywhere. Most of the people listening, watching your goal is not to be a full time, just content creator. You got a business that you’re trying to run. We’re, we’re trying to build our membership groups and our coaching services and be a speaker and all of that stuff. And so you don’t have time to all day, every day, be on every single platform. You don’t have to be long form from YouTube, take the data, cut it up to be on every platform. So it kind of sits above all the other social media platforms. And most importantly, to help people’s message get out, to change the world.
RV (03:49):
Yeah. So I wanna dive in on something you just said there, because if we don’t highlight it, it’s easy to miss it. And this is such a tactical thing that you can do where, so the idea of repurposing your content, right? So a lot of people talk about that. We have a thing we teach called the content diamond, which is, you know, taking long form content and dividing it up. But part that you added, you know, specifically, at least to my education, which was so brilliant, was making that a data driven selection to figure that out. So can you talk about like, where do you go on YouTube and what are you clicking on? Like I know you just gotta talk us through it, cuz it can’t like show the screen, but, but what exactly are you looking for? Because just that, that one tip alone goes, if you win on YouTube, even if you don’t win on YouTube, if you suck on YouTube, but you can figure out the moments that win, like you can use that to inform everywhere else. So, so talk more about that.
EC (04:52):
Youtube has the best data platform of all of all those social media networks. And I love the data and I can geek out on it all day long and, and dive into it. It’s overwhelming for a lot of people. The only thing you have to care about is this, the audience retention curve, like write that down. If you don’t know what I’m talking about and you think you might at someday want to start a YouTube channel, come back to that, write it down. It is your golden ticket. The audience retention curve. What that does is show you second by second, where people are either falling off your video or sticking around second by second. So if your intros are really bad, it’ll show you, you lost half your audience in the first 20 seconds. Cool. Like let’s not do that again. And it’ll show you these little flat moments and a flat moment means you never lost anybody.
EC (05:38):
Like whatever you did in that moment was really good. Right? You held their attention that whole time. Think of it. Like if you ever watched those elections and like the election debates and there’s like the red and the blue in America, right? Mm-Hmm and you, you like which, who are you liking more? And they’ve got these people in the audience who are kind of neutral people or supposedly neutral. And they’re like, they’re they’re as the person’s talking, you see the blue line go up where the red line go up. It’s kind of like that on your videos. And it’s completely free. You don’t have to pay for any service or anything else. It’s built into YouTube natively in their analytics. So when it’s a flat line, when it’s a down line, then, okay, that sucks. We need to fix that. Don’t do that again. But
RV (06:12):
A flat moment is good.
EC (06:14):
Flat moment is good. That means you’ve kept their attention. So if you have a flat moment, that’s 40 seconds long. Cool. What happened there? Let’s turn that into a tweet. Let’s turn into an Instagram reel. Let’s turn that into something else. And then you have these rare moments, these special moments where it goes up, well, how does it go up? Like we lost people. We understand why it goes down, but how did we gain people in the middle of the video? Doesn’t make sense, right?
RV (06:36):
Because most people drop off like in the first few seconds or whatever minutes is the big fall off, but then you, it doesn’t just go down. There’s these spikes.
EC (06:46):
Yeah. So why does the spike, like how does that make sense that new people join the video halfway through?
RV (06:50):
Right.
EC (06:50):
Usually not usually what the case is, is the people who are currently watching REW that video to watch that part again, it’s like, what did Rory just say? What was that thing again? And they rewind it to watch that part again, that’s your goal. And that may be 20 minutes inside of your video, but that’s what we cut. And one, we wanna make more content like that, like that can educate you to make better content. But then that also, that’s what we cut. So the flat moments or the spikes, that’s what we cut to take to our other social media accounts because we know that that’s popping. And a lot of people who are making content, whether they’re doing it themselves or they have team, there’s a lot of subjective decisions that go in. It’s like, well, I like that part. And I like this moment and I think we should do here. And there’s a lot of wasted time to be honest and going back and reviewing and watching the footage again. And then relying on one person’s subjective opinion to make the call on what goes through the platforms to make your, your diamond. The data will show you. It’s a lot easier, just look at where we help people on the video and let’s take that to our other platforms.
RV (07:51):
That’s, that’s so powerful. Like what a simple, practical thing to go. There’s no guesswork, like, just look at where people are watching it. So we’re looking, so if something’s flat, that’s like good. That’s solid. If somebody, if something drops, we go, let’s not do that again. But then if it’s a spike, you go, man, that’s, those are your moments that you want to cut it, clip it, repurpose it, use it. Other places love that. So audience retention curve, that’s the name of like the widget in the back, the back end of YouTube that we’re looking for.
EC (08:22):
Yeah. For every video, give it a, give it a couple days after it goes out. And then on every video, just look at, click on the analytics tab for that video and scroll down and it’ll be right there. It’ll be this curve and it’ll show you how the video’s doing compared to your other videos. And it’ll show you the exact moments where people are falling off or engaging. So
RV (08:39):
Love it. Yeah. Here’s another com super common question. We get this all the time. How long should my videos be?
EC (08:47):
So for experts, thought leaders you have something to train on educators long, long, long, long, long, long. So the advice used to be 10 minutes plus, which is which it still is like as a minimum 10 minutes, a minimum 10 minutes, but the highest growth category we’re seen is in the one, the three hour category.
RV (09:05):
That’s insane. What, like who’s watching a
EC (09:08):
Youtube video for three hours, the, the, the entire world right. Like, think, think about if you’re gonna teach, if you’re gonna make a video talking about how do you become an influential leader? Where am I gonna learn that from nobody and the people who are sharing it, like go to YouTube and search. People are talking about it. Are they as good as Rory Vaden on that topic? No. It’s like somebody who came from Instagram and, you know, they’re 25 years old and still trying to figure it out, but they’re gaining a lot of traction and attention because people like you who actually know what they’re talking about, aren’t on the platform. So there’s giant demand and consumption and very little, very little supply period and, and almost no quality supply. So like, am I too early? Am I too late on YouTube? We’re just getting started inside of education.
EC (09:50):
So if I wanted to learn how to become that influential leader, if you did a four minute video, how much are you gonna teach me in four minutes? Not a lot, but if you talk for an hour or you did a coaching session with somebody, or you had a guest coming on, sharing something, people would watch that because it’s the best thing there available. And then when you’ve got your next launch, your book, your course, your program, your private memory, she like, I love this Rory guy nobody’s talking like him. How do I get more of him? And they want to pay for the access to get into everything that you’re offering.
RV (10:19):
And so you don’t worry about giving away too, too much there. I mean, like I mean, how many of those videos is, is it, is it kind of more like have one really killer two hour video? Or are you trying to like crank cuz to do that every week would be pretty tough not to mention, you know, if you did an hour long video every week, that’d be, that’d be a lot of content. Like what would you be charging for if you were giving away that much? So is it kind of like have a couple key key trainings out there and do it that way or
EC (10:52):
It depends what game you’re playing. Often the best thing to sell is access. So the best thing to sell is access to a community. So if you’re trying to sell your, your program, your community, which is awesome, I was able to, you know, had the honor to speak in front of, if you had a lot of long form content that was getting millions of views, you’re gonna convert a lot of those people to want to spend more time with you because they love how you think. Like, you’re, you’re a weird duck. You think differently than other people. Like I want to think the way Rory thinks and I wanna be around him more often. So I wanna join his community. It’s less about the actual ideas. A lot of, a lot of people have paid programs. A lot of the same content is in the YouTube video as in the paid program, it’s just packaged altogether.
EC (11:33):
So it’s easy to find it’s sequential, there’s community, there’s access. And so that’s really what we’re selling, not just the information I’m I put out, I’m giving you every, I got nothing to sell here. I’m giving you the best. Like you’re asking me questions. This is what I do. This is what I teach people will still some of the names that you mentioned want me to help them, their channel. I’m telling them the same thing that I’m telling you guys right now here on Rory Madden’s show mm-hmm right. So that I think builds credibility, builds trust, and it makes people want to have a deeper relationship with you and buy all of your stuff.
RV (12:08):
Yeah. And I know you’re, I know you’re, you’re not selling anything, but we are. If you go to brand builders, group.com/evan Carmichael Evan has this program called Brandly where he walks you through exactly how like every, every time he does a training, he’s reviewing these live videos, showing you the data, telling you exactly what to do. It’s a very affordable program and we were like, dude, you have to let us be an affiliate for this because it’s so good. Like this is Evan is the guy that we go to for this, and it’s gonna restructure our entire YouTube strategy. So you can check that out brand builders, group.com/evan Carmichael. And you’ll, you’ll see brand Alytics and all the people he’s working with. So you know, so anyway, so coming back to this conversation here another common question that we get a lot from our members is when do I need to start a separate channel versus just a different playlist? So like you know, like I’m a good example of that. So we have brand builders group, which teaches personal brand strategy and we help experts, you know, become more well known, build and monetize their personal brand. Then we have Rory Vaden who more classically is known in the more like leadership and personal development space. And so it’s like, can I do content for both on one channel? Do those have to be two channels? Like how do you demarcate, you know, channels versus playlists.
EC (13:41):
So first off, nobody consumes by playlists. So nobody’s like waiting for a new, no, nobody’s waiting for a new Evan Carle video to drop in this playlist, but not this playlist. Right? So where playlists are helpful, the, the biggest value of playlist is on your channel homepage. When somebody goes to your channel homepage, they can see what you’re kind of all about. Like, I just watch one or Eva, video’s my first, I’ve never heard of RO Badden before I watch a video. I like this guy. Hmm. Let me go check him out. They click on your channel. And then they see some of the content that you’ve got. And so that’s where you can structure your playlist, but it’s more of a conversion tool for first time viewers. And it is a consumption pattern for ongoing viewers or repeat viewers. Mm. In terms of a different channel, if it’s a different audience, it’s a different channel. So the easy one is language, right? I have a Spanish channel with almost million subscribers. I have a Russian channel with almost a million subscribers. It’s a different audience, cuz most of my audience does not speak Spanish or Russian some do. But if, if you love my channel, you just first met me and then half my content is in Russian and you don’t speak Russian. You’re gonna not consume most of my content. Right. Because it’s just in a it’s it’s a different audience. So that’s the easy one to understand
RV (14:51):
So different audience, different channel. But like in that case, it’s the same content, but it’s translated. So you’re just taking your, your English based content and translating it to Russian and Spanish. And now you’ve got another 2 million subscribers that way that’s brilliant in and of itself. But if it’s, if it’s the same person, it could live on the same channel. If it has to be a different person, different channel,
EC (15:16):
Not necessarily person. So I mean the, the language is that’s, that’s basically applying the diamond strategy as well. Right. We’re we’re repurposing content. It’s gotta be dub built. So like not just captions, like full on dubbed into that language. If you guys are going there. Okay. It can be the same. It can be different people on the same channel. And that might be weird for your channel cuz it’s called Rory Vaden. So like who is this Jennifer person showing up when it’s your name on it? But it’s audience. So are Rory’s too, like what is Rory known for? Are they, are they two completely different universes that would be completely different audiences or is there enough overlap between those two worlds that it all makes sense and fits under one Veda?
RV (15:57):
Yeah. I mean that’s part of what we’re trying to figure out. Right? Cause so take the stairs is very much personal development, you know, discipline my second book, how to multiply time. And my Ted talk is productivity. They’re very ubiquitous, personal development topics. Brand builders group speaks specifically to experts to help them to help them become an author speaker. So most of my, my work as an individual is helping someone become a better performer at their job. Brand builders group is much more narrow where it’s like, I’m helping you become an author speaker, coach consultant you know, or, or we are. So it is some of the same people, but I’m not, I think they’re probably different. Well,
EC (16:37):
Even in how you presented it, he’s like I help people with this, but brand builders group, we do this right. So brand builders group could be its own channel and it doesn’t have to be the Rory show all the time. Yeah. As you build and scale and grow and bring on guest trainers and experts and coaches and all the people in underneath you, that’s the team channel that R’s the head of and creator and founder, but doesn’t have to be the face for everything where RO Vaden, we , we need to see Rori Vaden, cuz it’s called Roy Vaden. Yeah.
RV (17:07):
Mm-Hmm yeah. So different audience, different channel, but that’s the simple rule, like different audience, different channel.
EC (17:12):
And just in terms of making the content, you mean, you mentioned brand Linux and the offer. I mean, which is awesome. Love to have more people join in. The easiest type of content for a lot of experts to make is coaching. Half of the half of the content that I do live inside brand analytics is coaching people. It’s like, we pull up your channel. I would pull up if was in, I would pull up R’s channel. And it’s part of what, what we did for your group. Right? Like we pull up R’s channel and you just tear it apart in a loving way. But in a, like I’m not here to tell Roy Good job, Hey, you, you keep going, you know, do it Rory. It’s like, oh dude, this thumbnail sucks. Like we gotta fix this. Your intros are terrible. but given advice, not just critiques, but here’s how we fix it.
EC (17:50):
Yeah. And so even if, you know, if you’re teaching the same essential eight to 10 themes to the people you’re talking to coaching is usually a lot easier to do is a lot more fun to do. You don’t need a script to do you don’t need people to show up and give you a, a answers to like 18 questions before they come on. They’re just gonna show up and, and you’re gonna say, Hey, how can I help? And they’re gonna give you their problem. And they’re asking you questions that relate to your expertise. They’re not gonna ask you like gardening advice, right? Or maybe you’re expert gardener too. I don’t know. But coaching videos are easy to easy to make. It’s easier to go longer with cuz there’s always another level to helping them out. And if you think about going to an event, you know, you go to a Tony Robbin’s event. Like the, the best part is not the content. It’s the, it’s the, his interventions. It’s the, the one-on-ones where you see like, oh wow, you see the unlock happen in somebody. And so if you’re a great coach, this assumes you are a great coach. Like if you are not a great coach, you cannot do this because you’re gonna get exposed. And, and, but this is where a lot of people struggle. Like if you’re actually really good at what you’re doing and you’re a great coach, this is the content you should be making. Most people,
RV (18:57):
The clients get, how do you get around the clients being like, oh, you’re sharing my coaching call on your public platform. You just need to get permission from them in advance or something.
EC (19:06):
And not even permission, like please do me a favor. You, you pitch it as a benefit. So if I was talking to two people recently who are both New York times by selling authors, working on their next book. Right. I gotta sell my next book. Cool. Here’s what we gotta do. A lot of authors will sell access, right? So, Hey, if you buy a thousand topics in my book, you get a, a 20 minute call with me to help you out. Cool. That’s trading time for money and cool. You sold a thousand books, pitch it as also YouTube video, 25 minutes with me buy a thousand books and we’ll do a zoom call together. That becomes a YouTube video on my channel as well. And it’s, it’s the upfront and we’re getting paid to do it. So you can, you can recognize members if somebody’s in your membership group and they crossed over a year and they’re coming back for year two, offer them a free coaching call with you, right.
EC (19:54):
As a benefit or you upsell it as part of your sequence at the beginning, they’re buying into the membership group. Hey, if you also, for a thousand bucks, you get a one on one with Rory, that’s gonna be turned into a YouTube video. And Gary V does this all the time with his four DS. Like you, you spend $10,000 to go meet him for a day. And it’s mostly his team. And he shows up for an hour and talks to the members who paid 10,000 bucks to be there for the day and then, and then turns it into content for the YouTube channel. So it’s like you sell it as a benefit, not as a, like, please do me a favor and come on my channel because one-on-one access to Rory. Vaden is impossible, so you can buy it. And it gets turned into a YouTube video, but that’s a contract that gets set up in advance, not afterwards. Oh, do you mind if I turn it into content for
RV (20:37):
Yeah. Do it on the front end, gotta happen on front
EC (20:39):
End. And you use it as a, as a bonus for them that they’re paying for as opposed to like, please do me a favor
RV (20:45):
Uhhuh. Yep. Uhhuh. It’s like an incentive. You turn it into an incentive for them, like for them. And then you get the content out of it. So I know you have to go last question. And again, y’all brand builders, group.com/evan Carmichael, brand builders, group.com/evan Carmichael. You can check this out. Like I it’s insane how, I mean, I don’t remember the exact number, but I’m, this is less than a hundred dollars a month or a hundred dollars a month or something like it’s, it’s, it’s not a lot of money for what you get. Cuz it’s like, this could change your life. Like this is career changing stuff. So check, check that out. It’s so tactical, it’s gonna change our it’s changing our entire world. The, how do I find video editors? Right? So that’s that becomes a problem. Okay. I’m an expert, but I’m not an expert at editing video. You know, what I really need is I really need to hire a video editor and I need that person to go through your training. Is that doable? How do I do that?
EC (21:43):
Or the editing almost doesn’t matter. Like why are people listening to you? Because like, if you think about quality content, it, people default the production quality, like, oh, what microphone using their Rory and what’s your headset, right? And like, what’s the lighting, but nobody’s watching your stuff for your microphone. So the quality isn’t production quality it’s quality of thought. Can you teach ’em to think like you think? And so the mistake a lot of people make is they, if they’re doing it themselves at the beginning, a lot of people do this. You spend 20 minutes making a video and then five hours editing it. You’re training the wrong skill. You’re training yourself to learn editing software as opposed to training yourself, to be a better speaker where your ultimate goal should be to be a better speaker, train, spend five hours making a video and 20 minutes editing it or zero time editing it.
EC (22:34):
Because the ability to communicate your message in front of a camera will be a skillset you use for the rest of your life, whether YouTube exists or not. When, when we’re beaming into your, your living room in VR and eight holograms and all that, you’re still just talking to a camera. And so that ability to get your message out there is the thing to train and practice. So I wouldn’t worry about editing, being the most important thing, train yourself to be a great speaker, train yourself, to press record, deliver a fire message and then release that as a video. Because when you, when I go live on a podcast like this, when I get up on stage, when I’m doing interviews, there’s no edits. I mean maybe if I really mess up, Rory will do me a solid and like cut out that piece. But you get on stage isn’t edits. Like you can’t train yours. If you’re a speaker, you can’t train yourself to only communicate when you’re perfectly edited.
RV (23:21):
Yeah.
EC (23:22):
So we have to train ourselves to be great. It doesn’t mean that you completely disrespect the editing, but my goal would be to, Hey, let’s get your business up to the point where the content is helping you generate enough money, whether it’s through your coaching or your books or your programs, so that then you can afford to hire an editor to take it to the next level. But the editing will not save you. It’s quality of thought more than production quality.
RV (23:42):
And then one of the things we’re not gonna have time to talk about all this, but like, so it’s, it’s less the editing quality. It’s all about the content. And then if I was gonna spend time, I would wanna use, use that time to do things like optimized titles and thumbnails and, and you know, those kinds of things would be a better use of time.
EC (24:04):
Yeah. And, and paying attention to your audience, attention curve, cuz that’ll make you a better speaker too. Mm-Hmm but then you can take that and, and you know, what hits with the audience. So you can take that make maybe, maybe that spike is your next book. Yeah. Maybe that spike is your next training module. So pain. You don’t have to be the expert on all of those things. But knowing enough to be dangerous is important to then you can, you can hire somebody and, and give that work to. But yes, if I had a preference, I would definitely spend more time on, on watching my honest retention curve and working on my thumbnails and titles than worrying about the editing.
RV (24:41):
Yeah. Well, those of you that become members, or if you are a member, we had, we had Evan a couple months ago and it was that awesome, like going, going through it. And so that training is available. That is now a permanent part of our, our library. So if you’re one of our members go watch it. It’s amazing. If you’re not, I would say go check out brand builders, group.com/evan Carmichael and, and, and check out what Evan’s got going on with brand Lytics. And man, you’re so generous. And you know, at this point I’ve known you for so many years, I’m just, I’m just grateful and you really do believe in entrepreneurs and, and so thanks for helping us. Thanks for serving us and thanks for making time to, to come be on the show, brother. We wish you the best.
EC (25:22):
Cool man. Happy to, and happy to do round two whenever you want to.
RV (25:26):
All right. It sounds good. We’ll do it.

Ep 305: What You Need To Know To Hire The Right Talent with Matt White | 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):
All right, y’all welcome to the recap episode of my conversation with my good friend, Matt white who is a culture index advisor and works with tons of CEOs. So this isn’t gonna be my five minute recap. I’m gonna time myself. gonna try to keep it super high level. But I’ll kind give you a background of why I wanted to have Matt on this show. And I mentioned this in the full episode, so please go listen to it. It’s a really great episode. But I just believe that’s, if you’re a leader of any type, you could be a nonprofit, you could be a entry level sales manager, CEO, executive. It doesn’t matter, right. But if you lead people, I really do believe this is an important show to you because there’s so much conversation out there right now around this great resignation.
AJV (01:36):
And I mentioned how I love Ariana Huffington’s perspective on this. And she said, it’s not so much the great resignation as it is the great reevaluation. And I just believe that, and there’s this old saying that people don’t leave companies, people leave people. And although I do believe that to be true I also believe that there is a, a new form of resignation that’s happening right now. And it’s not company resignation. It’s not leader resignation, it’s job resignation, right? They, they have reevaluated that I don’t love what I’m doing. And even though I love who I’m working with and I, I love the company and I love the values and I really do like my teammates and I like my boss. I’m not happy with what I’m doing. And I feel called to do something else, or I’m not using my brain power or I feel stagnant or stuck.
AJV (02:28):
And I think that’s a lot of where we’re experiencing right now is people want a different job environment. They want different skill. They want different to put their skills to different uses. And that’s why I wanted to have Matt on to talk about the culture index, which is a it’s an assessment tool specifically designed for company leaders to create the ideal job position. And then you have your candidates take it. And what you’re trying to do is figure out based on the job that you know, needs to be done. And based on this person’s natural skill sets, how much of a match are they or not? And I think it’s really important that you know that, but also that they know that I’ve had interviews in the last year where I literally, they, somebody, I, I can think of this specific example.
AJV (03:12):
I was looking for a new EA about six months ago. And so I had my profile filled out. I knew exactly what I was looking for in an EA. I know what skills and you know, like what their natural, you know, talents need to be. I know how they need to problem solve and what their motivator should be to work well with me. And I remember this one girl filled this profile out and she filled this out. And in the interview, I like really liked her. She was very sales, mind, marketing minded, all these things. And I was like, that’s a lot of what I want. I want someone super proactive. And it’s like, if I hadn’t have done the culture index survey, I probably would’ve hired her, but she filled it out. And on our second interview, I said, I’m gonna make this a really short interview.
AJV (03:55):
You’re not a fit for the job. And you’re not a fit for this kind of role ever. So I would encourage you not to take it. And I said, here’s your culture index profile. And I’m telling you right now, you would be miserable doing this job, even though I really like you. And I know that you say you could do it. I need someone who wants to do this, not treat this as a stepping stone. I, I need someone who wants to do this for the next three to five years, not for the next three to six months. And I said, but you have the profile of the ideal salesperson. You need to go find a sales job. That is where you’re gonna thrive. It’s where you’re gonna succeed. It’s what you’re gonna love. And I actually reached out to her just a few weeks ago for an open sales position we have.
AJV (04:31):
And she said, it’s actually finding, I took a full-time job actually in a sales position. I’m so glad that we had that conversation. And it was such a blessing to both me and her of going, I know what I need and that this ain’t it for her. And it’s not it for me. And so getting really in tune with that I think is really important and a great reason why you should listen to this. And then there’s two other quick things that I’ll give you that I think are really important. And it was at the very end of my conversation with Matt. And we were talking about how, like, people don’t leave companies and sometimes they don’t even leave people. They leave jobs, they leave jobs that they’re not happy and they don’t feel fulfilled in anymore. And so how do we fix that problem?
AJV (05:08):
And it’s by knowing what they want, like, what are their natural behavior drivers and how do we fit that within a job that works for them. And then it got me thinking about I think people often come to companies because they believe in the values and the missions of the company or the leader, right? The leader is super inspiring and has visionary skill sets. But at some point there has to be a transition of your team members, believing in what you believe in to actually believing in you. And I think at the end of the day, that’s what really helps you retain great talent. That’s what helps you retain people is that there’s been a transition of, we started with, because we shared the same beliefs, but today I just believe in you and whatever it is you do, I wanna be a part of it.
AJV (06:02):
I, I, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing. You could be digging ditches. You could be building skyscrapers or helping people build their personal brands. But I believe in you, and I know if you’re doing it you’re gonna take care of me and you’re gonna help me. And you’re gonna believe in me too. And there’s this trust that’s developed and it’s gotta go from, they believe in what you believe in to. They just believe in you. So making that transition of helping your team get to know you. And the last thing I’ll share is that a quote by ed Mylet who am a, I’m a recent follower of, but I love this. He was in an interview and they introduced him as this self-made millionaire, right. A hundred millionaire. And he corrected him and he said, no, no, no, nobody is self-made anything, especially not me. There is no self-made man. There is only team made, man. And that is what I wanna leave you with. It’s like yeah, we cannot do this on our own as entrepreneurs, business owners leaders we require people. So we are self made nothing. We are team made everything and using culture index is a great tool, great way for you to help build a team around you. So thanks for being here. Thanks for being a listener. Go check out the full episode and we’ll catch you next time.

Ep 304: What You Need To Know To Hire The Right Talent with Matt White

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 (00:53):
Hey everyone. And welcome to another episode on the influential personal brand. This is a J Vaden here. I’m one of your co-hosts. And today is super special. I always love it when I get to interview people that I actually work with. And so let me introduce you to Matt white. I’m gonna give you a little bit of his formal bio in just a second, but Matt and I have been friends for a really long time, but I became a client of Matt’s like what, three years ago? Mm-Hmm almost three years. And so I get to both speak on a friend and personal side, as well as on a, a professional client side. And you’ll get to learn a little bit about what Matt does, but I think the most interesting thing that you need to know about Matt is that he is the father to the coolest little kid named Salla, who my oldest child Jasper thinks hung the moon.
AJV (01:47):
And so that’s actually the coolest thing that you need to know about Matt is that he is dad of Salla, but okay, let me give you a little bit of his professional bio. Matt is a trusted advisor and a culture index consultant to CEOs at fast growing companies around the world. So if you’ve never heard of culture index one, you’re gonna learn a lot about it today. But you might be familiar with programs out there like engram or disk or Myers Briggs, and there’s a lot of things out there, but I think can be somewhat confusing. And here’s why our company brand builders group decided to partner up with Matt and use the culture index is it’s not a personality profile. And I think sometimes for me, at least culture index can be a little bit. What would I say?
AJV (02:40):
Not as well of a description as what it is, cuz it’s not about culture in your company, right? This is about finding the right culture of the position that you’re looking for and matching it with what is someone’s natural skill sets like their God-given talents, like who they are and how can you fit that to match the actual needs, the requirements of a position. And so Matt has been leading this endeavor at brain builders group. He does it with tons of clients around the.
AJV (03:11):
country. He happens to be located here in our hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. But today as a business leader, an entrepreneur, a leader of any kind or even if you’re just trying to lead a person of one this is the conversation for you. So you wanna stick around, we’re gonna talk about the culture index assessment, the profile but more importantly, how do you find higher and retain the best talent for your company? So that was the longest introduction ever, ever without what a good one. A good one. Please welcome Matt to the show. So while you’re here, thanks for being here.
MW (03:48):
Excited. Yeah. I’m excited. Thanks for the opportunity.
AJV (03:51):
Yeah, I’m so happy about this, so, okay. So tell people a little bit about how did you get into this? Cause you did not start as a culture index consultant working with CEOs. That’s not where you started. So I give our audience just a little bit of background about how you got to where you are.
MW (04:08):
Yeah. So I’ll act, I’ll go all the way back to college. So I was, I came outta college with a finance degree and I went straight into college ministry. And so a lot of people don’t know that, but I was actually in college ministry until I was 31. And so when I was 30, the first few years, and this is important to one of the things that you touched on about leading yourself was especially in your late twenties and or twenties and thirties, like it’s really about self discovery. And so early on in ministry, I was doing things that were right in my gifting and wiring and it was really fun. But then as it changed, I got kind of bored over time. And when I was 30, I realized my future was not vocational ministry. So then I was like, well, I’m behind the eight ball because I’ll be competing for jobs with people who are six and seven years younger than me.
MW (04:55):
So cuz I have no business experience. And so thankfully I been a member of a gym in Birmingham, Alabama that had just started one of my teammates from college kept recruiting me to come there and try it out. And I ended up going on staff with that startup and because it just really provided the, what I thought was the best opportunity for me to get a crash course in business because I had no business acumen. I just been doing whatever I wanted to do in ministry. And so I joined that when I turned 31 and then a year later became a partner, we franchised it. And so it was a fantastic environment to really learn like the ins and outs of business. I was studying under some great leaders and just cut my teeth in business that way.
MW (05:40):
And then in that process we scaled rapidly. And a few years in, we just didn’t see the growth that we thought we should have out of some of the other partners in the business, long story short, we were introduced to culture index. And so we actually became a client my last year there. And so, and it was kind of the same thing too with ministry. Like when I was starting out with the fitness, a lot of the things that I were, I was doing like opening gyms and leadership were really fun. And then some of my role changed by the nature of the growth of the business. And I just became less and less fulfilled in it. And so you know, as AJ mentioned, when we bring a client on, we train them for two days in how to interpret this data and mobilize it to fix the issues in the business and scale.
MW (06:31):
And so on the way out of the, the workshop that I was in as a client, I called the founder of culture index and said, Hey, my name’s Matt white. I wanna become your next licensee. What do I need to do? And so I became a licensee on the side while I was still doing fitness and you know, cause all of my eggs were in the basket of the fitness business, but then over time I just saw and I was just wrestling internally. I was working with my best friends in the business, but the actual work I was doing just wasn’t out of my skill. It wasn’t in my skillset. I wasn’t passionate about it. And I’d been reading the book of Ecclesiastes and six times in 12 chapters, Solomon says there’s nothing better for a person than that. He or she should eat, drink and find enjoyment in their toil. And it just hit me. And I was like, so I don’t care how much money I make. If I don’t enjoy what I’m doing, I don’t wanna do it. You know, the reality is we spend 70,000 hours of our lives at work. And so I decided to take a leap and move to Nashville and start culture index. And that’s how I got started.
AJV (07:33):
Ugh. I love that. And I think there’s so much brilliance in some of this for everyone listening of just remembering it’s like your path is gonna take different journeys and leaning into that and realizing I’m I know this is where I started, but that’s not where I wanna go. And that’s okay. I think so many of us try to like stick it out and make it work. And it’s like, why punish yourself? Like why punish yourself? Because you’re too afraid to go out and do something that you feel called to do. And I mean, it’s like, I mean, I think you’re probably the happiest now you’ve ever been. I don’t know. That’s just saying as an outsider looking in, but
MW (08:15):
100%, 100%, because again, we spend so much of our lives at work, especially as entrepreneurs and business owners, and this is your baby and this is your passion. And I’m, I, it doesn’t feel like work to me. And sometimes people like, you know, my friends and I’m hanging out at like nine o’clock at night and they’re like, Hey, let’s look at this profile and I’m sorry, I’m you’re talking about profile. I’m like, no, I love this stuff. And I also believe like, you know, in any business, I believe the most important thing in any business is your human capital. Yeah. Right. Like the greatest leading indicator of P and L performance in the business is your human capital. And so that’s where I get passionate about. It’s like not to mention the fact that as leaders, you, you will have massive amounts of opportunity to influence for better or worse the lives of the people that work for you. Yeah. And in my opinion, our cap depends on our ability to lead other people.
AJV (09:10):
Hmm that’s so
MW (09:11):
I just always wanna be a you know, a student of the game of leadership.
AJV (09:16):
I love that. And this is such a great transition too. And before we, we hit record, we were having just a brief, you know, conversation. And I know there’s so much discussion right now, out in the marketplace, around the topic of the great resignation. Right. And if you’re not watching, I’m doing funny ears when I say the great resignation because I, I don’t really know if that’s what it is. And then I read this article a couple of weeks ago by Ariana Huffington. And I thought this was a great re explanation of that. And I love what she said. And she said, it’s not so much, this is the great resignation. It’s more of a great reevaluation and people are taking a step back and going, man, I don’t love what I’m doing. Why not? And how do I get to do something that I love?
AJV (10:05):
And maybe it’s people environment, culture, environment, but what if it’s just the job itself? It’s like, you feel like you’re not wired to be doing what you’re doing and you’re pushing, right. Instead of like having that natural pull that’s easier. Mm-Hmm . And so it’s one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on, because it’s such a hot topic. I cannot tell you how many people in the brain builders group, community and our social audience and our offline audience and my friend group and my family group in our own company where we’re going, man, it’s like, how do we find attract, hire and retain the right person? And interviews are such a tricky thing because everyone is trying to put their best foot forward in an interview. I mean, it’s like people are trained to interview well, right? Hopefully it’s like, you’re trying to get the job, but I think it’s interesting sometime as the individual, we’re trying to get a job that we don’t even want that we’re not even built for.
AJV (11:03):
We don’t even have the skills for it. And it just it’s mindboggling to me sometimes of going, why are people trying to do this when they don’t, they’re not gonna be good at it. And mm-hmm , those were all these kind of like aha moments that we had after becoming your clients and being clients of culture index. And so here’s kind of where I wanna take this conversation for all of our listeners is one, help us understand how the culture index assessment is different from an Enneagram or a disc or a Myers Briggs. So let’s start there and then we’re gonna kind of get into the weeds on like how as employers we can use a tool like this to improve ourselves. And I’ll tell you guys right now Matt has included a link for everyone listening where if you’ve never heard of culture index and if you’ve never taken it this is really unique. It’s different than a typical personality profile. But I’m gonna put the link in the show notes. And so you get to go and you get to take that test and you get to get your assessment report back for free. So thank you to Matt. So just make sure you pop over and get the show notes and grab that link. So you can take this for yourself, but okay. So tell us, how is culture index different?
MW (12:14):
Okay, I’m gonna keep it really simple. So if you’re a business owner or, or not a business owner, you’re leading a team and you you’re part of a business. If your business is not using psychometrics, you’re behind the eight ball because most people are. And so when I say psychometrics, basically, we’ve got the technology now in the research with psychometric, all psychometrics is, is you’ve got psychology and math and they get together and have a baby. And now we actually have data on what will this human being do when nobody’s looking. And when they’re under pressure, in other words, you naturally do who you are, right? And you you’ve talked about the interview process. It’s like when you’re, when you’re interviewing people, it’s simply a sales pitch. And if I need a job, I can convince you, certain profiles are better at convincing others, right?
MW (13:05):
So you, most people are going into interviews and they’re making these very expensive decisions off of subjective information, which is their experience with that person or their track record, which the assumption is what you did over here at this company is the exact same thing with the exact same leadership as what you would be getting here in my company, which is hardly ever the case back to culture index. So there’s really two things you gotta look at when you’re looking at psych psychometrics is what’s the statistical reliability of that instrument. So in other words, how, if we go back to human capital, if that’s the greatest leading indicator of P and L performance in your business, how accurate and valid do you want the data to be that you’re using to make these decisions that will influence the P and L statement? Yeah. So you gotta look at statistical reliability.
MW (13:58):
I can’t speak for any of Graham and all of those others because I, I’m not a practitioner of those. I do know that culture index has an internal or a statistical reliability of 0.9. So 90% of the time it is spot on. Now we can get into why that is part of it has to do with the design. This is a free choice checklist versus a versus a forced choice. So anytime you force a human being to choose one of four or one of six options, it will negatively impact the reliability of it. Mm. So one it’s, it’s, whatever you’re using, you gotta look at, does it really measure what it says? It measures the second thing though, and I think it’s actually the bigger draw is there’s only about 65 culture index licensees in the country and what we hang our hat on is radical candor and the strategic ability of the advisor to lean into CEO.
MW (14:52):
When I understand where your three and five year goals are and give you very candid, blunt feedback about the people you’ve chosen to bring around you and whether or not you will hit those top and bottom line goals in the next three to five years. I mean, I’ve, I’ve been on multiple demos this morning with client, with prospects in Alabama and Georgia, and we’re pulling up and we’re talking about for one example, a construction company, you know, 150 employees and they have their, their linchpin in their business is the project manager overseeing these construction. And they had eight of them. And I’m literally able to say, okay, this one’s worth $2 million. And this one is costing you $2 million. Interesting. And I don’t have to, I don’t have to guess, cuz I ask them, what do they need outta that role? And they say, I need X, X, X, X. And I say, okay, well, how much of your time do you spend telling this person what to do and having to follow up with them because they don’t follow through? Hmm. I spend a lot of time and I say, okay, how much is that worth? Cause for the CEO, the two biggest problems I fix for our CEOs time and money.
AJV (15:55):
Yeah. You know, it’s I love that you say that, cause you’ve done this we’ve had this conversation many times and you just go, horrible idea. Never hire this person. so I appreciate the blood
MW (16:09):
Candidate. Well, and, and, and I I’ll say this too. You, you talked about culture index, so we don’t measure character values, integrity. We also don’t. We also don’t want measure what somebody’s passionate about. Okay. And so we don’t measure good. Is this a good or a bad human, but it’s like this. And we talk about culture because that’s a buzzword, right. Everybody wants a strong culture. And then if I said to one of you owners or entrepreneurs on this call, if you ever, ever seen the movie Rudy, right. If you haven’t, you ought watch it. It’s, it’s a classic, but it’s about a guy who is just passionate about Notre Dame football. And he believes Irish and he played football in college. So he studied it. He had a lot of experience. He knew the ins and outs. And then he got to walk on at Notre Dame and he had more grit, more passion, more drive, more work ethic than probably every other athlete on the team. But Rudy was five foot 10. And if you started Rudy with all the grit and passion and heart and experience at five foot 10 going against a six foot five competitor, statistically he’ll lose nine out of 10 times. And then when you put a square peg in a round hole, I don’t care. What values are up on the wall when your team loses eventually a losing program has a terrible culture regardless of the values.
AJV (17:27):
Yeah. You know, I, what, I, I think one of the things that both as a entrepreneur CEO, but then also as a, as a client, one of the things that I’ve gotten really in tune with is that a lot of people can do the job. It’s just, how quickly are they gonna burn out doing it? Hmm. And that was like a really good insight that I picked up from our work together and using this is, yeah. I mean, you could force someone into doing this and they could probably do it, but for how long before they go, I’m exhausted. This is so hard. I’m not happy. And the, what I love about this as a business owner is I know what I need out of these positions. And it’s so hard to determine that by looking at a resume or social media, or even doing an interview, I, I mean, we do shadow days.
AJV (18:18):
We do call audit. We do all these things to help other people get to know like, this is what the business is gonna be about. But at the end of the day, those are really high level samples. And to what you said earlier, it’s like, I need to know, is this person gonna love doing it and be good at doing it when I’m not around? And I think that is a really important thing. And so I’d love to hear your perspective of, you know, this great resignation or great reevaluation in terms of, for business owners. It’s like, how do we get around this? Mm-Hmm like, how do we use tools like this? Or even if you don’t have a tool like this to better equip your company of going, it’s about finding the, the match, right? And culture and values is a part of that passion, but it’s other, like, you gotta have someone who’s gonna love the job and how do we do that?
MW (19:09):
Hmm. Okay. Couple of thoughts. With two case studies from different clients here in Nashville, one is in a service business construction, and one is a and one is a social entrepreneur. They produce footwear, leather goods, things like that. Okay. So we’ll talk about the service business first, not a glorious industry. right. Very few people come outta college and say, I wanna go dig ditches. Yeah. This client I have here found this one profile 22 years old, just graduated college. And he’s got the right culture index profile for the future leadership position that this my client needs. So he takes a risk. This guy has zero experience, 22 he’s 23. Now he’s been on a year and he is literally grooming him up to take over the business. Hmm. Now, not yet, but it’s like, he’s showing all the right signs now. It’s very important to note, I can’t measure work ethic.
AJV (20:10):
Yeah.
MW (20:11):
You know, like, and you can’t tell from the dots whether or not somebody’s gonna like cheat or steal . Okay. but in that case, like there’s a 22 year old in construction that needed a job. He has the right dots. The key is he didn’t just put him in, say, dig ditches. He understood what motivated that person. And what motivated that 22 year old was opportunity to control my future. And he saw this, he threw challenges at him where meanwhile, I was just having a conversation with him last night. He said, this guy has gotten multiple job offers from competitors. And he, and he told my CEO, he said, I’m staying with you because I think you can help me get where I want to go. Mm. So when you talk about the insight to know what makes people drive, there’s three primary motivational drives in a human, and this is not culture index.
MW (20:56):
Although we measure these, this is from another article I read by Harvard it’s, every human being has a need to achieve the need for relationship and the need. For some level of knowledge and expertise, we just happen to measure. Those are our three primary motivational drives. And so when you can get the talent or not talking about how to go find it, but like the talent’s coming to you where you’re getting applicants like that, you have an advantage when I already know what makes that person tick. And I help them see their future in my company. The other one though, is from the client with a social enterprise. And they, they have, they are inundated with applicants, like just so many that is because of the mission and the cause of the business. Right. And so I think there’s multiple things in there as one, when you talk about the great resignation, I agree with that. It’s a reevaluation because people are gonna have to work. Yeah. Right. They can’t sit at home forever, but like when we, as leaders can learn how to take the talent and inspire and motivate and more importantly, put them in roles that they’re naturally gifted for. I mean, you think about like, Chick-fil-A versus McDonald’s, that’s the same business, but it seems like McDonald’s struggles a little bit more than Chick-fil-A to find talent and it’s fast food.
AJV (22:16):
Yeah.
MW (22:17):
So that has to do with leadership development and culture and vision. And I actually know quite a few Chick-fil-A’s that use culture index.
AJV (22:26):
Hmm. So, so much of it is about that pairing. Right? So one of the things that I have found really difficult is even knowing what you need out of, of a position, right. Like I know that seems kind of silly, but it’s actually quite challenging to go, like, what do I actually need out of this position? So any thoughts around that and how to help business owners and leaders be like, what do I want out of this position? I know what needs to get done, but like, what do I actually need this person to do in terms of what skill sets and what traits and what drivers I’m like, mm-hmm . And then I think too, it’s like, in addition to that, one of the things I’ve found, it’s like, if someone does not, like, for me, I’m only speaking for me. So if any of my team members are listening, like good insight into my brain it’s like, if you need me to create your vision, it’s not gonna work out for you in the long term.
AJV (23:21):
Right. And that’s like, that has nothing to do with the position itself. That’s just knowing myself as the leader business owner. It’s like, I want people who, who see it and who can create it for themselves. But if you’re gonna wait around and you’re gonna make, wait for me to build that for you, I’m not gonna do it. Mm-Hmm . And so I think a part of that is just there’s I think a part of this, that’s a little bit of self discovery of like, what do I need and the people around me. So any advice or tips that you would give to business owners to do that?
MW (23:52):
Yeah. So let’s go back to the first part about the actual job where I see I wouldn’t say most, but I have clients that have struggled with being able to define what do I really need in this role. Mm-Hmm . And I think that happens for a couple of reasons. One, if there’s a lack of a strategic vision in the company of where we’re going, and then what are the roles that we need for that? And then what are the KPIs to define success in each of those roles? Mm-Hmm , without that, it’s kinda like, well, we kind of need you to just take care of things. Well was Patrick Lindsay only who wrote a book called three signs of a miserable job? Oh, one of those signs I measurement in his research. He said that when employees, one of the, one of the biggest detracting factors from wanting to continue working is when my boss couldn’t provide clear feedback on how was I doing and was I winning or not? And regardless of culture index profile, like if you get somebody with good core values and ethic, they wanna come to work and add value.
AJV (24:56):
Yeah, totally.
MW (24:57):
If it’s on, but it’s on the leader to, to define here’s what you do in your job. Okay. So, but that, that we struggle with that when there’s a lack of clear direction. Yeah. And a lack of a strategy. But the second thing is, is because what you mentioned, you know, is we have a different piece of the program where we actually design so that you can answer questions about the job. And then it says, okay, this is the pattern. Or these are the patterns that will produce the ideal behavior, where 80 to 90% of the day, this is how you need to behave. Mm-Hmm, where we, where I have clients that will struggle in being able to define that is, and a lot of times they’re like, well, I want them to be visionary and strategic and macro. And I also don’t want them to be perfect and cross every T and dot every I.
MW (25:48):
And you’re basically saying, look, I want somebody who’s equally good at playing offense and defense at the same time. And so that’s where, you know, I, I challenge my clients, push back and say like, at the end of the day, is it more important for this person to win and innovate or not make mistakes? And usually when you put a straight edge on it like that, they’re able to say, yeah, but I can’t have everything. But if this is what is ultimately gonna make this position successful, they need to be detailed. Let’s say we can measure that. Mm-Hmm or they’re not gonna have direction. They gotta be risk tolerant. Okay. Well, we can measure that.
AJV (26:22):
Yeah.
MW (26:22):
So you can’t have everything.
AJV (26:24):
I think that’s a good reminder to all of us. You can’t have everything. So if someone out there is going, okay, like something you just said clicked, but I’m not currently using culture index. It’s like, what would be like the, the first step advice that you would give to a leader who’s going, this is how you get clear of what you need out of a position. Would you say it’s like, start with the KPIs, like start with the end result in mind? Like, what would you say?
MW (26:51):
Hmm. I go back to the fitness business experience where I learned there and, you know, our CEO was a fantastic strategic thinking visionary. And so we just had this vision for five years out of what we wanted to be. And there was 300 fitness communities and, and it was, and we could clearly define it. And it actually took us four days as a leadership team to come up with that. It’s like, where do we wanna be in the next three to five? Or I think it was five years. And then once we got that end goal, then we backed into how do we get there? And we broke it down. What are the metrics that need to be measured? And then what’s feasible year four, year, three, year two, and year one. And so you take the big picture, but then you break it down to bite size.
MW (27:34):
So then we took it and we said, okay, so this year we’re only gonna, here’s our one year goal. And we had what we, we drew this mountain and we had base camps up to the top of the mountain. And the cool thing was, it was like, I forget who wrote the book, making vision stick. But we did, we, we really focused as leaders in the organization of communicating that vision of where we’re going down to everybody who was even a part-time employee. So they knew what the vision was. And then they knew how, what they do every day ties in to helping us achieve that mission. Mm. I love that. So I would say that, and then some kind of operational system, like traction or scaling up with ver Harnish where there’s, there’s so many resources out there on how to scale a business mm-hmm and the, in my opinion, there’s no really need to reinvent the wheel. Just take one of those and run with it.
AJV (28:34):
Yeah. We implemented traction here at brand builders group, the book traction by Gina Wickman. It was mandatory reading for all of our leaders three years ago. And it’s like, we, we put in place traction simultaneously as we started doing culture index. So okay. So I know I’m, I’m watching the clock. I know we only have a few more minutes left here, but I’ve got like two other, like, kinda like big questions. So one of the things that I find fascinating, and I know if I find it fascinating, all of the other people out there listening also find it fascinating. So help give people some insight into some of these profiles that you have at culture index, cuz there’s a lot of them. There’s a lot. Right. And I know my profile as I’m a persuader. Right. And it’s a heck of a lot easier for me to work with other persuaders than it is some others. It’s just, there’s like a natural ease in it. So give us some, like, what are some like just inside behind the scenes knowledge, if no one, no one’s ever taken this, I don’t know what this is. Mm-Hmm person I’ve heard about it. What is your profile structure and give us some highlights of some of the profiles that are in culture index.
MW (29:42):
Yeah. So let’s go back to some, you know, probably something that’s really familiar for a lot of people is like a disk profile, right? The D I S C it’s been around for a long time reasonably accurate, but it, it, it lumps people into one of four categor categories. Right. So if I know I’m communicating with a high D that’s about 25% of the world, according to disk, the problem with that is it’s kinda like looking at a mountain. If I’m, if I’m a mile away from a mountain, I can tell that’s a tall mountain, but, and I can, I, I can go climb that. But then when I get up really close and I can see the precise, like there, here’s a big crevice, here’s a ma major like overhang that changes how I approach that. And so what you’re really looking at and where I think what I love about culture index is that it is precise in that.
MW (30:34):
And so to, you mentioned profiles, think of it. Like if I’m, if I’ve got, let’s say you’ve got the disc and you’ve got four tools for people, right. Well, how much more precise and accurate can I be? And confident if I were to say, Hey, actually I have 19 different tools and here’s how you use each one of those different tools. And so we’ve broken it down into 19 different patterns. So for example, within the high D for disk, where they have one profile for that, they actually have five. And so that changes and there’s a lot of nuances there. And the big thing too is I, I try to train my clients. So there’s two things that are really important when it comes to motivation and communication. One is that person naturally off playing offense or defense, and then how do they think learn and problem solve.
MW (31:23):
Hmm. And so we call that deductive and inductive reasoning or thinking. And so that changes how we communicate. If, if I’m talking with you as a persuader with a higher B trait, I know that you’re actually going to need some personal interaction. If I’m working with you pretty consistently, because that’s a motivational drive. Whereas if I’m working with Rory, he wants to come to work. And that B is low, even though you guys have the same, a trait, essentially your B is very different. And so you guys are radically different just on that one data point and we’ve got seven mm-hmm . And so the communication piece of verbal processor versus an introspective analytical thinker. So there’s one, there’s one thing though, to know, oh, introvert and extrovert. It’s totally different when you talk in like real life situations within existing context of the team and say, here’s where this problem is coming from. And here’s how we resolve that problem based off this data. Yeah. And, and, and the other thing is that it just takes a little time. Yeah. You know, as you know, as a client, it takes the time to learn really, how do I use this? Cuz you’re actually learning a new language because, because we typically treat other people the way we wanna be treated. Right. And then if you do the math and there’s really 19 major patterns that profiles out there, 5% chance that somebody that you’re talking to is you mm-hmm
AJV (32:40):
, it’s not a lot. It’s not a lot. It’s not a lot. It’s not a lot. You know, it’s so interesting. I remember doing this for our own team and we know we had everyone take this and you know, as a, as a Testament to this for all of us out there, I, I bet every single person listening and probably not every single client that you work with, you have people on your team or have had ’em at some point where you said, I know it’s the right person, but Lord help me. They are not in the right seat. And it’s like, they are going to drive me insane. They’re not helping the business grow. They’re causing issues, but it’s like, but deepen my soul. It’s like, I know they’re the right person. Mm-Hmm . But like, and that happened to us on two different times, over the last three and a half years since we started brand builders group.
AJV (33:25):
And I remember this, I don’t know if you remember this conversation. But we were talking about one of our key employees and I remember this conversation and you said you have shrink, trapped and Eagle . I was like, yes, I did. We have shrink, trapped our Eagle. And it was like a really big aha moment of like really getting to know this, the inner workings of this particular employee’s brain. And I’m going, oh my gosh, no wonder. She’s been frustrated. I’ve been frustrated. Everyone around her has been frustrated. She is doing the exact opposite of what her natural gifts are and what her natural gifts are, are a deep need that we have in the organization. It was just like pew, pew, pew fireworks, going off. And it’s, it took us six months to move her around in this new position. And it’s been a world of change for her, for me, for the team, for our clients of it’s like she filled such a great need and it, it comes easy for her.
AJV (34:33):
She enjoys it. She loves it versus man, she was stressy, you know what out? Because she was in spreadsheets and she does not like spreadsheets. It’s not good at spreadsheets. And it’s like it was like, it’s like, you know, you, you’re looking on the outside going, why is like what in the world? And you’re like, I gotta help this person be more organized. They need more accountability. And it’s like, no, they’re never gonna be successful in that role. Mm-Hmm like, it is such work for them. Like you’re gonna lose a great person, a great team member because you gotta ’em in the freaking wrong seat. And that was like hugely important for us.
MW (35:12):
I, I just had this thought, you know, you mentioned my daughter. I take every Monday off and we just play together. And so much of the play is actually like work. Like she wants to build things or she wants to fix something or she wants to go explore or she wants to start something, but it actually has a lot to do with work. She wants to cook. She wants to make something. And it’s like, that stuff is effortless and fun to her. So what happens between when we’re kids and then we have to go get a job and then at work has a negative context to it. Yeah. The reason why I think it is, is because it feels like work. If I show up and I have to do things I’m not naturally wired up to do. Right. But the, and that’s where stress comes honestly. And that’s why work takes longer. You know, people say like work will expand to the time allotted for it. I, I don’t think that’s necessarily true because if you have somebody doing something that’s natural for them, doesn’t feel like work they’re more efficient. Yeah. It doesn’t feel like work and they’ve got better morale.
AJV (36:11):
Yeah. And it’s, I think it’s so important. It’s like one of our big commitments in our company and it’s like, we’re definitely not perfect at this. Got a long way to go. But it’s like, if we know it’s the right person, it’s like, let’s find the role that you’re naturally gonna succeed in. Because otherwise we’re doing each other, a disservice, like we’re trying to make it work. You’re trying to make it work when it’s like, you could go out and find a position that you love. And you know, it’s interesting, cuz we’ve all heard that old saying is like people don’t leave companies, people leave people. I really believe that there’s a middle step in there. It’s like people leave jobs. Mm-Hmm right. And it’s not always a person’s fault. It’s not always like it was that they left because of bad leadership. It’s like sometimes I think people leave because they’re like, I hate my job. I don’t like what I’m doing. It’s like, I love you. Like I really do. Right. But I’m not happy with what I’m doing. I think when people say, I feel called to go do something else, what they’re really saying is you have me doing something that I don’t love.
MW (37:14):
Mm-Hmm
AJV (37:14):
so how do we change that?
MW (37:16):
Yeah. And there there’s some structures and organizations where there are limitations and it’s like, you may have been really enjoying this and good here, but then we don’t have another opportunity to leverage those strengths. And so they may have to leave. That’s not on the leader, but then a lot of it is in on the leader of if I don’t understand my talent and therefore I’m not optimizing them, then that really is on the leadership.
AJV (37:41):
Yeah. I’m so good. I love discussions like this. I love learning just about people and it’s like, I love all these. I love culture index, fascinate, engram disc. I do all of them. I’m just fascinated with learning about like human nature in general. Mm-Hmm but I think it’s interesting. It’s like, no matter what profile I take, like I’m an eight on the Igram I’m a, I’m a, are
MW (38:02):
You me too?
AJV (38:03):
I’m an eight go figure. I’m a di and disk. Right? I’m the Maro and fascinate, I’m the persuader. And it’s like, but they’re all complimentary. And it’s like, okay. I should probably like take my own advice here. It’s like, I know myself well enough, but yet like even in this conversation, it’s like, I have like this checklist of things that feel like work to me and it’s because I’m not naturally gifted in ’em. So I have to, it takes me longer. It’s it’s harder for me. I don’t enjoy it at the end of those days where I’m doing that. I feel stressed and overwhelmed because it’s, it’s not fun. And then I have other days where it’s like, man, it was a great day and I’m always asking myself what makes a great day for me as a business owner. And I think that’s a good question for everyone to ask.
AJV (38:50):
It’s like get really in tune with like what makes a great day. And I’ve just found like for me, it’s like, I, my cup is full when I get to spend time with our clients and with team members that, you know, are positive and happy. Like I love that. And been on days where I’m just like sitting behind a computer screen all by myself, crunching numbers, I’m like, Ugh, this is so hard. Like why does this feel like work? And so I think you just gotta get in tune with that for yourself too. And mm-hmm, taking things like the culture index assessment helps you get in tune with yourself, helps you get in tune with your team. So again, Matt has given us a free link for everyone to take. And we’re last question here, and then we’ll wrap up. So Matt, what would you say? And this is nothing related to the culture index. But what would you say out of all the different companies and leaders and CEOs that you’ve worked with over the years pre and post culture index, what would you say in your personal opinion? We don’t need any, you know, statistical validation here, just your personal opinion. What do you think makes the best leader?
MW (40:06):
Hmm, man, that’s a tough one. The first thing that comes to mind is humility, but then I had to check myself cause I, I think I’m a good leader and I wouldn’t necessarily call myself humility or humble. I’d like, I’d like to think that, but I think because I also see this, like I, I do, I engaged with visionary leaders all day long and some of them with same identical culture, next profiles have very different results because you could be a leader, but if nobody wants to follow you, it really doesn’t matter how strategic you are. And it really doesn’t matter how much vision you have or how you can hold team accountable. It’s like at the end of the day, if people don’t trust you and you’re not approachable and open for feedback as a leader, I think it’s gonna be very difficult to build a team around you because every good leader, I know they really believe like I couldn’t have gotten here without the team that helped me get there. And so, and maybe that’s just the, the other thing too, is like, I want to aspire more of that because the twenties and my thirties, it was like crash course in humility, especially the thirties. And I think I’m at a better place because I’ve gotten a little less ego.
AJV (41:28):
Hmm. That’s so good. I love that. Such a good conversation. If people wanna connect with you online social media, what’s the best platform for them to go to?
MW (41:39):
Well, I, I am not great with social media. I think it’s Instagram is Matt white, 3 21, LinkedIn is, is there. And then you know, like we said, if you guys take that survey, then my assistant will reach out and schedule a few minutes to review the data with you, either with me. One of my colleagues and well
AJV (42:03):
Since you’re self proclaimed, so Instagram, Matt white 3, 2, 1,
MW (42:09):
It’s Matt white, 3 21,
AJV (42:11):
Matt white 3 21. Or
MW (42:12):
It’s basically just pictures of sale though. or dirt, bikes,
AJV (42:16):
Pictures, basical, pretty much all I want. Well that that’ll be an offline conversation for me and you, we, I can help you with this. You help me with the people I’ll help you with social media. So
MW (42:27):
Yeah, I have no brand. So I’m, I’m your next client? I have no brand
AJV (42:31):
Note to sell note to sell Matt, so awesome. Thank you. So for being on here everyone be sure to stay tuned for the episode and we’ll you next time on the influential personal brand.
MW (42:44):
Thanks AJ.

Ep 303: Understanding Enneagram with Ian Morgan Cron | 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.
RV (00:53):
It is truly one of the joys of my career being a podcast host, and there’s many reasons why, but one of the reasons why is because of the fascinating people that I have gotten to meet over the years of, of hosting a podcast. And that was evidenced and, and a great example of it here was with this, this recent edition with Ian Morgan Cron, who is one of the world’s leading thinkers on the Enneagram, right? And he wrote the road back to you, very, very popular book. And you know, I’ve been hosting this podcast co-host of this podcast now for four years. I think about four years, three, three years, maybe three years, we started it. We started it a little bit late when we launched the company. And, and some of you don’t know, but when we sold our our last company that we had, I had been podcasting on that show, which was, had millions of downloads hundreds, hundreds of episodes.
RV (01:54):
And that was several years, maybe, maybe five years, something like that. So I, I have done a lot of interviews and I just, I absolutely love it. And if, if you are one of our mission driven messengers, like if you’re one of our members we always talk about this, that like, it’s, it’s the most amazing platform for meeting people. It’s, it’s like a free way to grow your own personal development. You get to interview these amazing people every, every single week. And it’s just, it’s the most incredible networking tool of all time. But anyways, I, I rant and say all that a little bit about the power of being a podcast host. And I guess just to take a minute and just to say, thank you like, thank, thank you for listening and I mean, thank you for the gift of your attention.
RV (02:36):
Like thank you for the compliment of being here. Thank you for downloading this. Or, you know, if you watch it on our YouTube channel or on our blog, or like wherever you’re listening, like just thank you. I mean, it’s, it’s the most, this is the most amazing, amazing, I mean, well, like getting to be a, I feel the same way about writing and speaking and, you know, my Instagram videos and I just, just think it’s, it’s, it’s the coolest thing ever. So you know, to get to it, to make sure we’re providing value to you. That’s why we’re here. I, I wanna dive into my three big takeaways from this interview with Ian Morgan, Cron which, you know, in a, in a weird way, I was like, ah, I think I should probably be more starstruck about meeting Ian than I am.
RV (03:19):
Cuz I just, I haven’t been a huge engram fan. Like I’m not, it’s not that I’m not a fan. I’m just not, I’m ignorant to it. We have some people internally Elizabeth on our team loves it and she’s really good with it and knows all about it. And you know, we, we took the test. She gave us the test for Christmas a couple years ago. And so it’s really cool. So like it’s a little bit of our culture, but I’ve always been more into like disk and Myers Briggs and KII temperament. And like I have done a bunch, a bunch of these types of things, but anyways really, really powerful insightful conversation with Ian and, and you know, here’s my, my top three takeaways. So number one, which I never really realized was such an important part of the premise of the ideogram was realizing that what is best about us is also what is worst about us?
RV (04:10):
What is best about us is also what is, is worst about us. It is our greatest strength is also our greatest weakness. Our greatest asset is also our greatest liability. The, the thing that we do extremely well is the thing that we can overdo, like we can overuse, right? And so I think I look at myself as an example and I go, okay, what are some of those things? And I, I think this would be the exercise for you, you’re listening and saying, okay, well, what are those things like? What is it about what is, what are the best things about me and how do those things become the worst things about me? And, you know, I think of discipline, which is like a core part of my, my, my personal philosophy, my personal brand, of course the centerpiece component of both my first book take the stairs.
RV (04:58):
And my second book about how to multiply time procrastinating on purpose is just like discipline. And you go, okay, discipline is how I’ve achieved. It’s how I’ve been successful. So that’s the best of me. How does that become the worst of me? Well, it, it makes me righteous. It makes me inflexible, you know, it, it probably makes me dogmatic to some extent and, and, you know, like one of the things I hate is being off schedule, like when there’s a, when there’s a routine and a rhythm and like it gets interrupted. I’m like, it, it, it throws my whole life outta whack. And so I, you know, I see that the other thing is, you know, I think if I had to summarize my entire body of work my entire career, you know, and if you said, what is Rory really an expert on? I would say the psychology of influence, moving people to action.
RV (05:45):
I would, that is what I would say. My, my expertise is the psychology of influence, which specifically stated is the psychology of moving people to action, including ourselves, which is where all the self development work comes from. But also my work in sales my work with leadership teams, and then of course, you know, our work, what we’re doing right now with brand builders, group, teaching people, how to become more influential. So I go, okay, well, what is it about influence? Like if I really understand the psychology of, of, of moving people to action, how does that show up as weakness? It, it shows up as weaknesses going, oh, I might be trying to, to, to move people in a direction that really isn’t fair or what they don’t want to go. And if you heard my last recap edition on, on, it was on the Catherine Gordon interview, Catherine who, John Gordon’s wife, John Gordon, longtime real close buddy of mine, author of the energy bus.
RV (06:43):
And then they wrote the book, relationship grit together, and they, you know, she came and did this whole amazing interview. If you didn’t listen to the episode with her about how to have a better marriage. I shared that in the recap edition that I think my greatest mistake as a husband or one of my greatest mistakes has been that I have not given AJ a safe place to share her feelings and emotions without trying to shape them. Right. Like she shares how she’s feeling. And I tell her why she shouldn’t feel that way. She shares how she’s feeling and I’m telling her why she should think about that different. She shares how she’s feeling and I’m telling her how I don’t really deserve to have her feel that way about something I said, or did gas, gas lighting is apparently is the term for that, which I was I’ve, I’m, that’s a term that I’m new to.
RV (07:39):
But yeah, I, I shared this, you know, pretty emotional moment for for me in, in that last recap edition, talking about that, and then listening to going back and listening to this, reviewing this interview with Ian and going, oh, where is my greatest strength? Also my greatest weakness, where is what is best about me also? What is worse about me? I go, ah, there it is, right? Like my ability to coach, to guide, to see things a different way to bring perspective to, to, to help do that for people is great, except in your marriage, in a moment of vulnerability where someone is sharing their heart and how they’re feeling and going, oh, let me, let me take your heart and tell you why that’s not right or change that that is terrible. Right? So anyways, if you wanna listen to me cry, you can go, hear the full, my, my full, my ad my full admission of guilt in that last recap, but what is it about you?
RV (08:38):
Right? So that’s the, the, to turn this to you, the question would be, what is your greatest strength? How might that be showing up also as your weakness and just being aware of that? So I thought that was, that was insightful for me. And the second thing, which is huge was that all of us have a false origin story. All of us have a false origin story, every single one of us, like we all have a story that we tell ourselves about who we are and why we are the way we are. And it is never true. It is always partially true. It is always based in some level of truth, but it is never accurate. Like it is never fully precise. It is a story. And, and it’s a story that we tell ourselves so many times that we believe it. And then the trick about this is like, this becomes our identity.
RV (09:32):
Our identity for the future is written by the story we tell ourselves about the past. Our identity for the future is written by the story we tell ourselves about our past. When we say the reason I am, why I am, is because of this happened. And because my parents were this way. And because I went to this school and my teacher said that, and the bully did this, and this happened in the economy and this happened in the world and this happened in politics. And like, I, I, I am, I am because of the neighborhood that I lived in and whatever, like that story that we look back and somebody says, how did you get to be how you are? That story is of, of our past is, becomes our identity for the future. And it’s never accurate. Like it’s never a hundred percent accurate.
RV (10:18):
It is always an interpretation of what happened. It is always based on a memory of what happened. It, it is always based upon a, a, a selective monitoring of key elements and components of a, of, of circumstances that we have crafted into a narrative that shapes our life. So why does this matter? It matters because if it’s not serving you, you can just drop it, right? Like, if, if, if you’ve been telling yourself your whole life, you’re not a smart person, because a teacher said that to you, when you were a kid. And most of these stories, we have most of this programming that we have was written when we were very young, like before we were even aware that our brain was a program that was being written, most of the program was written by other people and not by ourselves or, or by ourselves, but subconsciously, right.
RV (11:15):
And so you go, oh, okay, well, I thought I was dumb, or I thought I wasn’t smart. Or I thought I was gonna, you know, money doesn’t grow on trees, or, you know, you can’t, you can’t be successful in your career and have a great family or all of these things, which become, I’m not gonna call ’em limiting beliefs. I’m gonna call them confining beliefs. Right? A limiting belief is negative. I mean, it has the connotation of negative, but I wanna shift, I wanna shift the distinction here to say, it’s, they’re not all negative, but they’re confining. They shape the world in which we live. They sh they shape the world. As you see it, they shape what you believe to be true. Now, if it’s negative, that’s a limiting belief in some ways it’s positive, right? You might have said, man, I’m, I’m athletic.
RV (12:09):
I’m great at remembering people’s names, man. I’m good at sales. I’m good at speaking in front of an audience, I’m a great leader, right? Like there’s certain things that you have told yourself about yourself that are really positive. So they’re confining in a healthy way. Now there could be limitations to those, or there could be impacts on the people around you for those, because they’re the things that you believe to be true. Like we don’t actually believe what is true. We believe what we tell ourselves. Most often, we don’t actually believe what is true. We believe whatever we hear most often, whatever we say most often, whatever we tell ourselves most often, that is what we believe. Which means if, if your current identity stinks, like if your current current identity, isn’t a good one. If you’re not performing at the level, you think you’re capable of in your life or that you wanna perform at in your life, or if you’re not being the person, you know, you were meant to be, if, if you’re not operating at the potential of your, of your calling, if you’re not operating at the potential of your purpose, if you’re not operating at the potential of what you think God made you to be.
RV (13:17):
It’s because you have a negative story from the past that you are carrying into your identity for the future, and you need to drop it. You need to stop it. You need to cut it. You need to leave it and create a new one. You create a new one. All of us have a false origin story. So to the extent that it is serving you keep it to the extent that it is not write yourself a new one, write yourself a new one, write yourself a new one, sister, like get you a new program, get you a new story, tell yourself something different. Say I was this way, but now I’m this way. Proclaim that, repeat it and say it over and over until you believe it because we don’t believe what is true. We believe whatever we tell ourselves most often get yourself a new story.
RV (14:19):
My third takeaway was just his little tip for identifying these negative stories. And this was super practical, super helpful, like super insightful. This was just like so specific. So easy. So clear, just like, oh, you go. Where? Where, how do I identify the negative stories? How do I identify the, the places that I’m not serving myself with my own belief system? It says, it’s simple. Wherever your fears are disproportionate, wherever your fear is disproportionate disproportionate. That’s where you struggle. That’s that’s where there’s the, the, the glitch in your program. That’s where there’s the air in your system is whenever you’re experiencing fear, right? You’re experiencing fear. And it’s, you know, this old saying fear is an acronym. F E a R. It stands for false evidence appearing real. That is what what’s happening, right? Like, think about it this way. Two, two people stand on stage.
RV (15:20):
One person looks out and says, oh my gosh, I’m terrified. I’m not good at speaking. The other person stands on stage and looks out and goes, oh my gosh, this is the greatest moment in my life. Here. I am standing in front of a bunch of people. They’re both true, right? They’re both true for that person. Neither of them are true inherently of the situation. What is true is whatever we tell ourselves most often, what, whatever we’re saying inside of our own head is what’s true. Our own brain is its own echo chamber. And so you go, where are you experiencing fear? Where where is your creativity working in the wrong direction? That’s how I describe fear in my take the stairs book. Fear is your creativity working in the wrong direction. So you’re, you’re going, oh, this isn’t gonna work out. This is gonna fall apart. I don’t like this. I’m not good at this. I can’t do that. I’m not capable of this, blah, blah, blah. Like wherever you at that train is running. That’s where you got a crappy story. That’s where you got a, a broken program. That’s where you got err, bug in your system and you gotta capture that thing. You gotta squash it and you gotta just rewrite a new one. You just gotta rewrite a new one. So wherever you’re experiencing fear, that is where you have an ineffective story.
RV (16:42):
And yet all of us, every single one of us have the opportunity each and every day to rewrite our story, to rewrite our story of the past, to change the narrative that we tell ourselves about why we are the way we are, and also to change the narrative of our future, to tell ourselves what is going to come of us. That is one of the greatest sources of power and also the greatest sources of weakness that all of us have in our own life. You take agency over that. I promise, you’ll see your life. Start to change. I hope this podcast. I hope my, my blogs are our podcasts, our blogs, our free trainings. Our Instagrams are tweets, our Facebooks. I hope they are things that you find encouraging to you to help you write a better program so that you can have a better life. Thanks for being here. We’ll get you next time.

Ep 302: Understanding Enneagram with Ian Morgan Cron

RV (00:02):
Such an honor to introduce to you somebody who is a friend of several friends of mine, Ian Morgan Cron, I’ve, I’ve heard so many things about him. He lives in Nashville. Um, so we hang out with a lot of the same, uh, circles, Donald Miller, Michael Hyat, John AK, et cetera. It’s kind of the Nashville posse around here. And, um, but we’ve never actually met. And so, uh, we got, I, I forgot who connected us recently and said, Hey, you guys really need to know one another. And so it just made sense to bring him on the podcast. So you you’ve probably heard of his podcast. He has a podcast called typology, which has over 17 million downloads. He he’s the author of several books, um, including kind of the Enneagram primer, which was, is called the road back to you. And then he released a, uh, another book recently called the story of you in Igram journey to becoming your true self. And that’s a big part of what we’re gonna talk about today, but, uh, you know, he works with companies like Warner, brother music and Chick-fil-A, and, uh, we have all these, all these similar friends and, uh, anyways, I wanted you to, to hear it. And I know probably half of you have never heard of Anya Graham and the other half of you just are die hard and just know it’s such a powerful tool. And like you just run your whole life by . And so, uh, anyways, Ian, welcome to the show.
IMC (01:29):
Thanks . It’s great to be here.
RV (01:31):
So, um, let’s do start with the people who are not the, the, the super engram people. Um, you know, I think people hear it and they go, oh, is that like a disk thing? Right. And, uh, it’s not, there’s, there’s, there’s nine different types, but anyways, can you just kind of give us like the high level overview of it?
IMC (01:53):
Sure. Well, the Enneagram is an ancient personality typing system. It teaches that there are nine basic personality types in the world. One of which we, uh, gravitate toward an adopting childhood as a way to cope, to protect ourselves and to navigate the new world, uh, of relationships in which we find ourselves. Um, there are nine distinct types and each of them has an underlying unconscious motivation that powerfully influences how that type habitually and predictably acts things and feels from moment to moment. Uh, it’s a great tool. I’ve worked with disk, Hogan, Colby, uh, strength, binder. I love Myers Briggs. Obviously they are all great tools, but in my experience, as a therapist, as a corporate presenter and consultant, I really don’t know a better instrument for helping people develop the kind of self-awareness that not only improves the quality of their personal lives, but tremendously accelerates their success in their professional lives.
RV (03:06):
Mm that’s interesting. What, what, like, what do you think is the big, that’s a big statement, right? Those are big Myers Briggs, and, uh, you know, obviously disks and strength finders. Like, um, we we’ve, we had Tom we’ve had Tom Rath on the show. He’s a good friend. Like these are really, really powerful. So, um, what do you think really is the, is kind of the defining or the, you know, the big distinction between any Agram and you know, some of these other tools maybe that people have heard of.
IMC (03:33):
So to be clear again, I love any tool that helps people develop self-awareness I love it when I hear people tapping into multiple tools, uh, so that they get a sort of a 360 eye on everything. Mm-hmm that, uh, maybe going on in their interior world and to understand their God-given architecture. Right. Um, now what does, what, what sort of distinguishes the engram from these other tools? One is the engram just doesn’t tell you what you do. It tells you why you do it. Okay. So this is really important. It’s not enough to know just your characteristic traits. It’s important to know why those traits are in place, so that you’re getting, you begin to work with your strengths and your weaknesses at the level of the root system, right? You, you, you wanna understand what is it that’s making me be the way that I am in the world, how I show up for life. Secondly, um, one of the things the Ingram does is, you know, if you’re looking for flattery, the Enneagram is not the tool you wanna
RV (04:39):
Use. I love the, I know that there’s some, like, uh, one of the things that I, I thought was pretty entertaining was how they talk about at its extremes in the, in the negative direction. You know, it’s like the Hitler was this way, or like, you know, some, somebody like, uh, I thought that was kind of like, oh, that’s, it’s not flattering. Um, uh, always,
IMC (05:02):
So, you know, the Ingram does teach us that what’s best about us is also what’s worst about us. And what’s worst about us is also what’s best about us. Our strength is our weakness. Our weakness is our strength, right? And so, um, you know, in the beginning of the journey of understanding who you are and developing self-awareness, you are gonna have to confront those parts of your personality that are, uh, in direct opposition opposition to the person that you want to become, right? Like, like we all, we all should wanna know what is it that stands between me and the person who I want to become. And so, you know, that, that requires looking at the shadow aspect of our personality that said the Enneagram also will tell you what’s most wonderful about who you are, but you do have to kind of slog through the not so great stuff before you get to realizing, oh my gosh, at my core, uh, I have all kinds of competencies and, uh, personality traits that are wonderful and needed at the table of life.
RV (06:11):
Mm-hmm so, so the road back, like the road back to you was, is kind of like sets the founda. The, the foundation, I guess, is how, how I process it and think about it. And then the story of you is your newest book. So can you talk a little bit about why the new, why this, why this version of the book and this, this kind of angle?
IMC (06:39):
So, yeah, I mean, the road back to you was a remarkable, you know, at the risk of sounding self congratulatory, but I’m as surprised by it as anybody. So don’t, don’t hear it as me bragging, you know, it was a tremendous success that I could not have predicted. Right? Mm. Um, and the road back to you for me, was more of a book about, okay, so I have information. So now how do I begin to activate transformation? Like information is not growth, right? You can know everything there is to know about you. And if you don’t have a, a formula for transformation, it just doesn’t make any difference. Right now you’re just armed with data, but data doesn’t mean anything unless somebody can analyze it and then make decisions based on that new information. Right. Mm-hmm so, uh, so for example, you could have, um, all kinds of business data.
IMC (07:36):
You know, this, uh, you may understand your email list. You may understand who your customer is. You may have done all the, gotten all the metrics, but if you don’t act on those and know how to act on those who cares, who cares that you have all, all that information, right? Um, that’s not a perfect correlate, but it’s not bad either. Um, so this book was really about helping people understand that the engram just doesn’t describe nine personality types, but the nine stories, each of those types tell themselves and others about who they are, um, and how they think the world works. Because, you know, we all understand up we’re mutual friend, Don Miller knows this, um, who by the way, is featured in the book, uh, in one of the chapters, you know, we, we all know that we, uh, live inside. We, we experience our, our lives as being lived inside of a narrative inside of a story.
IMC (08:34):
But what if the story that you picked up as a little kid is wrong? Like, what if the story you picked up as a little person and now have dragged into adulthood is frustrating your ability to live a, a happy, productive life. And I’ve as a therapist, you know, as a person who works in that call it the self development space, right? It’s like, if you don’t unearth and examine the narrative in which you live your life, it will govern your life negatively from the shadows. You won’t even know it’s running. Right. Uh, it’s just kind of like, you know, like a system back here that’s running. And if you don’t confront that old story, then you will continue to live by its dictates. Um, this is why I think sometimes, you know, it’s interesting in my conversations with people, if I use the word stuck, nobody has once asked me to define what I mean by the word stuck. Mm. They, they just know it right away. Right. It’s just like, oh yeah, I’m stuck. Well, what is the reason for people’s experience of stuckness? Usually it’s because they’re living by an old narrative that no longer works for them. And I wanna free people from that narrative. And that’s what the book, the story of you describes.
RV (09:56):
So here’s what I wanna ask you about is I wanna try to like tie this together. The, yeah. The people listening here are, are, we would describe them as mission driven messengers. So they are experts who in some way they serve the world typically as an expert. And, um, you know, you, you, you said something earlier about your first book, you said, I, I had, I couldn’t have predicted its success. And I think it’s really, really true about, uh, in life. But even as, as a personal brand, we all have a, we live inside of a story. That’s subconscious, like it’s there. And it came from wherever it came from. Um, and it governs what, how successful maybe we allow ourselves to become, or it limits us in terms of, you know, maybe we’re not, we don’t wanna be self promotional or et cetera, et cetera.
RV (10:50):
What do you think are some of the stories that people who are on a mission sort of struggle with, or, um, you know, could be just entrepreneurs or just anybody who’s an author or a speaker, just having been that path, you know, both as, as the counselor and understanding engram, but also as an author who has built this tremendously successful and well respected, um, brand and reputation for such a, a very specific space. I mean, you, you have accomplished several of the things that we talk about and Def define and describe and try to provide training for. So I’m just curious, what do you think are some of those stories that you think we all have to overcome in our journey as an expert entrepreneur, author, speaker type?
IMC (11:38):
Well, there are some obvious ones. Um, you know, how many times have you heard people say, or you can vaguely pick up in your conversation with them? Something like, um, I’m not smart enough to do this. That’s a, that’s a broken story, right? Uh, or how about I’m too old to start a new business? Mm that’s a, that’s a broken story. Um, you know, you might hear, uh, someone say, man, if I, I had to do this perfectly or not at all right, that’s an old story from childhood, you know, that’s the Enneagram one story it’s sort of like you are raised with this belief that the world only rewards, good people and judges, bad people. And therefore you have to do everything perfectly. You have to perfect yourself, others in the world and you, uh, you can’t make mistakes. You, you, um, uh, have to live up to these high rigid, uh, internal standards that are impossible to meet.
IMC (12:40):
Now you wanna talk about something frustrating, the development of a business, try perfectionism. Right. I remember Mike Hyat saying to me once, and it was really revelatory. Cause I do have a little bit of a perfectionist street. And he said to me once, uh, Ian, don’t wait till it’s perfect to put it out there, do the best. You can throw it out, uh, fix it as you go, but don’t wait for anything to be perfect in life. Just get a product out there and see how it goes. And that was like so liberating for me. And it went against an old story. I’ve been telling myself about how the world works, you know, and about myself. Like I don’t have any value unless I’m perfect. Is that true? Now that’s an old story. Like now Mike is an engram three, that’s called the, the performer or the achiever.
IMC (13:25):
The performer believes that the world only values others for what they accomplish and achieve in life, but not for who they are inside. So therefore they become addicted and driven to succeed, to appear successful to other people and to avoid failure at all costs. Now that’s a, that story may have helped Mike or other threes as little people to kind of find their way in the world and make sense of their experiences. But that’ll kill you in business. That’ll kill you in your personal life, right? How many workaholics do you know who live by that story? Right? Or, um, people that, you know, become risk averse, cuz they just they’re afraid of not appearing successful. So again, I could go through all nine types. It would take too much time, but I, I think you get the idea here, right? You gotta see the story, you gotta deconstruct the story. You gotta take it apart. You gotta interrogate and challenge it and then decide, I want a new story. I, I want a story that’s gonna lead to a life that is genuinely happy, satisfying, you know, has fulfillment and you know, opens the door for the kind of success I had never thought I could achieve.
RV (14:34):
And yeah. And you mentioned the three, uh, which is like the, the achiever, right. Or the performer mm-hmm . And I think a lot of people listening to this would, would fall into that category just because it’s like, you know, they’ve many times when we meet people at brand builders group, it’s because they have, they have been at the top of their trade or their profession or their industry. And now they’ve already achieved that. It’s like, they’ve won all the trophies and the awards and now they’re going, okay. I wanna help other people do it. Um, so you know, the, and, and then also I think like the I’m too old, you don’t hear that as much, but I think it sort of shows up in ways like, well, I don’t understand social media or I don’t, you know, I don’t like that or I, you know, I’m just not good with technology or, um, those, those kinds of things. Um, so I, I mean, what is talk to us about rewriting the stories Ian, so like whatever they are or, or even identifying it. Like, I love how you said that. Okay, first you gotta like identify it and then we deconstruct it. Then we figure out which pieces that we want. What are the, are the, you have any tips for kind of identifying and going like, Ooh, here’s a mental trigger.
RV (15:51):
I am recognizing in a split second that I’m operating according to a belief that was set in place at some point in my past, maybe unintentionally, like how do we first identify? Cuz it feels like that’s half the battle here.
IMC (16:09):
Yes. So lemme just, uh, back up just for a second, because I want, I want to add something to this that I think that your audience would be interested in.
RV (16:17):
Yeah.
IMC (16:17):
So years ago, uh, Cornell business school, um, did a study of 72 high performing CEOs, leading companies in value, let’s say from 50 million to 5 billion. Okay. And what they wanted to determine is what specific trait accounted for their unusual success, right? And so they expected it to be grit, determination of strategic planning, charisma, you know, the typical things we read about in business books all the time here was the exact quote from the end of the study, the key determinant of success in, in leadership or executive among executives is self-awareness now that that stunned the researchers. Right? And I, this is why I get invited to companies all over the world. It’s because they’re looking around and saying, well, we got all these skills, these hard skills, but we don’t have the self knowledge and the self-awareness. And that makes us bad leaders that makes us bad entrepreneurs. Right. Because you know, you can have all those hard skills, but if you don’t have the ability to relate to the world in other people in healthy ways, you’re kind of screwed honestly. Right. You’re kind, you’re being held back in dramatic ways. I, I mean, I, I spend so much time coming in and doing cleanup it’s, you know, people save me all the time. I wish you’d been here five years ago. Would’ve saved me a lot of time. Right. Okay. So how do you go about identifying and
RV (17:52):
Well, and so to that, to that point, before you go into that, so is it, is it usually, if you, if you’re not self-aware are you just, are you delusional? Like you just, you think you’re something you’re not, or are you just completely like unaware and you’re just sort of like cranking along. I mean, is it basically one of those two, two things?
IMC (18:13):
Uh, it’s actually both of those things among others, right. I mean, on one level, you know, there’s a lot of people, you know, um, you have a lot of three sevens and eights in your audience, I guarantee you for sure. Right. There’s the three most assertive, aggressive types on the anti angiogram. Um, and,
RV (18:30):
And I’m a, if I remember right, I think I’m a three. And then what do you call it? A wing? I think I’m a three wing eight.
IMC (18:38):
Well, you can’t be an eight. You’d have to be a, your wing could only be a two or a four if you’re a three. Ah,
RV (18:42):
So
IMC (18:43):
It’s the two numbers adjacent to yours. It’s the only options
RV (18:46):
For wings. Oh, I got you on either side. Okay. But I’m, I’m pretty sure I’m a three.
IMC (18:51):
Yeah, I would imagine. So. Um, and uh, I actually could have guessed that in the beginning of our call. It it’s interesting if you, once you get to know the angiogram pretty well, you can, with a pretty high degree of accuracy, start to pick out where other types
RV (19:06):
Are. I peg people pretty quickly.
IMC (19:08):
Yeah. I mean, I could pick it up from your clothes, from your background, uh, from what you do for a living. I could pick it up from, um, the kinds of things that matter to you, your priorities. Um, so anyway, that’s one of the benefits. Once you’re able to start doing that, talk about knowing how to relate to customers and your staff is, you know, it’s a tremendous advantage that said, you know, um, I think that self-awareness is important because if you do not have the capacity to step back and self observe in the moment, like in every interaction, right. Able to observe yourself and you can tell, oh my gosh, I have slipped back into an old rotten story. And, and I need to make new decisions in this moment to live into the story that I believe is true. Right? It’s like, you have a true story, you have a false story.
IMC (20:08):
It’s usually one, we call it an origin story. You have a false origin story and that’s gotta go. Right. And the way we do that, I use the acronym. So S O a R. So the first step is you gotta see the story. Right. And that’s just a matter of looking into the past and saying, okay, where did this story come from? What is it? And what, you know, like what, where did it come from? So that’s where we start. Then we go to the second step, which is you gotta own the story, which is to say it’s a little bit like, um, you know, looking at the effects, living in that story have had on your life, how has it affected your marriage, how it, you know, affected your relationship with your children, uh, your career, your dreams, you know, I, you know, part of that is if you don’t own it, there’s, there’s, there’s not much impetus to go forward, right?
IMC (21:01):
Like you’ve just gotta say, yep, this is what it’s cost me. And you can also say, and this is how it’s helped me, but how it’s helped me is, uh, not nearly as powerful as how it’s negatively affected my life. Right. Mm. The, the third step is to awaken. So that, that is really to say, okay, um, how do I now in the present begin to recognize when that old story has taken the wheel again, and, and then also make new choices like, oh, I don’t have to do that anymore. Like, like I can live in a new way that are, that’s aligned with my values, with my goals, with my dreams. Right. And then the last step is to rewrite. And that’s also a very conscious exercise. Like what is the story now in the future that I want to live in? So it really does cover the past, the present and the future, um, and gives you, uh, you know, sort of a great 50,000 foot view of your life.
IMC (21:56):
Right. Um, and the book, the story of you, you know, I go through all four stages and detail and show people how to do it. You know, obviously we can’t go into the, the, the granular detail right now, but, and you know, what’s interesting, Laurie, and we don’t, I don’t want to go necessarily down this wormhole, but you know, companies tell themselves stories about who they are and how they think the world works that are not true. Right. Yeah. I always, I always think about Dunder Mifflin. You know, if you, if you were really to have a corporate retreat with all the people there, they might say that the story that der Mifflin tells itself about who they are and how they think the world works is we’re the crappy paper company. Like we sell crappy paper. Now they gotta see that they gotta own that. they gotta awaken to the fact that, you know, like when does that take and hold and rewrite the narrative of their company?
RV (22:49):
And you see that like all, basically most of these stories, they come, they go all the way back to childhood and it was some moments. So like, you know, I, I think you’re right, that there’s a lot of threes. I mean, in, in our audience, at some point you felt outcast or something, I, as a child or you didn’t experience love or whatever. And so you resolved to basically go, I’m gonna achieve my way into being important. Like that kind of a thing
IMC (23:20):
That could be one of many stories that might produce a three, um, you know, a classic three story. I actually was interviewing a three, the, oh, you know him, um, it was, uh, oh gosh, my brain just went dead. The only name that’s coming to me right now is Jay Sheti, but it is not Jay Sheti it’s it’s, uh,
RV (23:43):
Lewis. Was it Lewis house?
IMC (23:45):
No, it was a good friend of Michael’s and, um, others. And he’s a brand, uh, guy anyway, it’ll come back to me. He’s a three. And, um, what he said was, you know, I was a kid and, uh, if I brought home a paper that was a 97, my father, the first words outta my father’s mouth was where’s the other 3%.
IMC (24:05):
And, you know, the message he got, uh, from, as a kid was, uh, love is predicated on your achievement. So it’s like, if you carry that message into adulthood, you’re gonna continue to believe that success equals love. I mean, you know, it’s like, if I don’t succeed, no one will value me. No one’s gonna see me. No, one’s gonna appreciate me. And you know, part of the journey is you gotta see that story and realize, you know, I guess on one level, that story could produce success, right? It’ll also make you miserable. it will also make you not a very good person in your worst expression. It could make you someone who cuts corners and maybe becomes someone who’s so ambitious that you’re when willing to take credit for stuff that other people did of seeing that in corporate settings. Now that’s a unhealthy three, but you get the idea, right? It’s like, you have to wake up and realize I want to be a success, but do I wanna build myself esteem on success? I don’t think so.
RV (25:11):
And so you, you, you basically just have to become aware of it. Like you just have to recognize, oh, whatever, like we’re, I think work AISM is a good example of going all I’m doing. And I think there’s a lot of people doing that. And obviously working from home makes that E easier probably than ever before is just going, why am I doing this? This is connected somehow to a story. I once told myself this old program that’s still there.
IMC (25:40):
And then, and what, and maybe part of what you want to confront is the first objection a person might have is. Yeah. But if I don’t keep doing this, I won’t be successful anymore. And what I would say is, well, that’s gonna cost you a lot. That’s gonna cost you relationships with children. It’s gonna, you know, it’s, it’s restricting you from living a full life. Now, the old part of the old story you have to confront is, uh, that I won’t be successful unless I continue to live by those rules. That’s a lie. You can continue to be successful and productive and not live by those rules and live with more freedom and happiness, you know, can you imagine how great it is to be successful and enjoy, you know, product, you know, being a productive person without having to build your self esteem on it. I mean, that’s a great feeling of freedom and that’s what I want people to experience.
RV (26:36):
Mm-hmm yeah. Mm. Yeah. I mean, um, and so when you talk about the rewrite, okay, so you gave us, you gave a sore, you talk about rewriting. Tell us a little bit, tell us a little bit about that. Right? Cause it’s, it’s actually, to me, it, it’s not that hard to spot this in ourselves, if we’re just looking for it because you kind of go, well, what’s my greatest strength. That’s also probably my greatest weakness. Like what I do the most of it’s also probably something that’s harming me. And, and specifically you could just go, like, where am I? Where am I losing in life? Or where am I not experiencing life? The way I want it. And then kind of go on the, the co what’s the cause of that. The cause of that is, is some underlying message that I’ve told myself over and over again. And so on the rewriting part of it. So just to touch on it real quickly, I know we don’t have a ton of time, but like, is there anything specific you have to do to rewrite it? I mean, is it basically like you literally take out a pen or a blank piece of paper and you write and say, boom, this is, this is what I’m letting go of. And this is what I’m choosing to adopt for the future.
IMC (27:48):
Absolutely. It’s not that hard in exercise. I mean, you could do it 350 words, that’s one page, right. Or you could begin there, right. It doesn’t have to be, oh my gosh, I gotta write a novel here. You know? Um, and also I would say, if you do the SOA part, you see it, you own it. You awaken to it as passive as it, as it sounds, you will have cleared away enough to bring at that point, that the story you wanna live will begin to emerge on its own. You know what I mean? It just starts to come up like green shoes. Okay. And you just begin to enjoy it. What you just described is in part self-awareness, I’m able to see when the old story is taking place. I then start making new decisions, like pause and people who don’t have, self-awareness worry.
IMC (28:32):
Here’s what they do. They bang guardrail to guardrail through other people’s lives. They’re on autopilot. They don’t even know their, why they’re doing the things they do. And they don’t know why they continue to do things they don’t wanna do. And they continue to do things. Uh, they don’t continue not to do things they do want to do. Right. It’s like, they’re like stuck in ground high bay, but once you get self-awareness, you’re able to say, you know, and you’ve done the exercise of saying, sitting down and going, well, what’s the life I wanna live. What am I afraid of? Uh, are those fears justified? Like, let me ask you as a three, right? Imagine if I said to you roaring next year, um, what would happen if your business went down 50% and you say I’m terrified of that idea. And I said to you, okay, well just tell me five reasons why you’re scared.
IMC (29:24):
And you might say, well, if I was honest, I’m afraid of reputation loss. I’m afraid of maybe people not respecting me as much as they used to. Mm-hmm , I’m afraid of not looking as successful as I did. I’m afraid that my self esteem is gonna go down. Right. And you could write a whole list and then I could just say to you, okay. So let’s imagine that happened. Would that be the end of the world? Uh, would you, do you think it’s a permanent thing? If your business goes down by half, you see what I mean? Like you’re unearthing and, and sort challenging that this is gonna be the end of the world. Right?
RV (29:55):
You kinda walk in that for a minute and realize it’s not as bad as you think. Yeah. I was, I was actually having this conversation with Louis House once, because I was saying, you know, I grew up with so little that my mind immediately goes back to, we’re gonna be broke living on the streets. Like it’s like, we’re so far away from that ever being a reality. And we have so many skills and relationships that it’s, you know, it’s pretty near impossible that that situation would ever happen. But it’s almost like I’m running at times from, uh, that extreme of a fear, because it was so deep rooted in who I was growing up and how little we had. And it’s like, what a silly thing to be running away from when you’re, when you’re like, you know, light years away. Like for it to still drive you like that.
IMC (30:48):
Yeah. And, but it’s, but at the same time, it’s really understandable. So, you know, be kind, I tell this all the time, be kind, there’s a reason that fear is in place. You you’ll know you’re in an old story. You just described it too. If your fears are disproportionate, right. It’s like, wait a minute. That is an over the top fear. It’s like, that is not true. But you know, what’s happening is literally your little brain is lighting up like it did when you were a kid. And you’re like, you know, well, of course it does. It doesn’t mean you have to continue to live by the rules, but of that. But you know, you have to have a little self compassion and say, look, I know where this comes from, but I also don’t need to live in the old story that that’s gonna be the end of the world. It’s all gonna be okay. I got a great wife, she’ll be there. I got great kids. They’ll be there. I got, you know, I’m a really smart person, you know, I’ll be able
RV (31:37):
To, you have God. I mean, you have faith. I mean, when you have faith and it’s like, you you’ve got everything. The other story that I would, I would say, Ian, that, that I see a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with is, um, they can’t delegate things because they are stuck in that perfectionism. They really believe the only person who can do it is me. If other people do it, they won’t do it as well as me. Uh, I have to do this myself. I’m the only one who knows how to do it. That story, maybe more than any other is the one that I can, like, I, I see it every day. It, it exists as a reality in their mind. And it, it is a prison sentence of their own construction. If they ever want to scale the business or grow a company or have a team, or just have a life because it traps you to doing everything yourself, um, you, you come across that one ever,
IMC (32:39):
Oh my gosh. I mean, all the time, I mean, you know, I come into a company and someone go, this guy is, this woman is such a control freak. Like that’s typical of engram, one provers, right? Perfectionism. It’s like, they constantly are rewriting things. I write, uh, they assign me things and then they redo them. Um, they are highly controlling. They’re not very good at praise, right? They’re a little stingy with praise. Like they go on and on about this personality style. And you know, of course that’s gonna restrict, growth’s gonna restrict, as you said, scaling a business. Right. Because it’s gonna put it, it’s a, what I would call a drag coefficient. Right. It’s gonna, it’s gonna slow down the, the, the, the boat, right. It’s like having an anchor off the back
RV (33:27):
Of the boat. That’s a good way of thinking about it.
IMC (33:29):
So, you know, um, that is an old story it’s based on, you know, some, you know, for example, I meet a lot of ones that grew up in families where they, you know, either got explicitly, someone told them you have to be perfect and, you know, always good and never make mistakes, or you’ll be punished in some way, you’ll be shamed or you’ll be, you know, told you’re not a good person or whatever. And so that story has to be looked at, or, you know, sometimes they, they had to fill a role of a parent, you know, because, uh, some parent was absent. They had to become an adult way too fast, you know, and step in and take care of his sisters and brothers. And there were no rules. And so they had to come up with the rules for themselves, you know? Um, and so, you know, we have to see that we gotta own it.
IMC (34:14):
We gotta awaken to when it’s coming online. And then we gotta rewrite a new story that says, I don’t have not, everything has to get done perfectly. I can’t keep hiring people and then not using them and trusting them. Right. Uh, I have to be okay with other people and myself making mistakes. That’s part of the journey. In fact, mistakes can be a great asset if I approach them wisely. So again, you know, um, these are the kinds of things I want to, and, you know, in the story of you, my goal was how do I help people break out of the prisons? They don’t even know they’re in, because that’s when those, when you don’t know where you’re in a prison, that’s the most secure prison in the world, right? Is the one you don’t know you’re in. And so, you know, I want people to experience freedom in their work life and their personal lives. Um, I want them to not only enjoy success, let’s say in business, I want them to have happier lives. I want them to have better marriages, better friendships, uh, with their kids, with their, you know, their peers, you know, I want, I don’t want them just to be successful in business, man. I want them to be successful in every area of their lives and to experience the joy of fulfillment.
RV (35:30):
Yeah. I love that. I, I, AJ read a book recently by Craig Rochelle called winning the war in your mind. And, uh, she told me, she said, one, one of the quotes in there was that the devil’s greatest victory is, is convincing the world. He doesn’t exist. It makes me think of like what you’re talking about. It’s a prison you live in. You don’t even realize that it’s there is guiding your life. Um, you’re stuck doing things that you don’t wanna do when you, uh, and not doing the things you do wanna do really, really powerful stuff. Ian. So, um, the, the, the book, everybody. Okay. So the book is called the story of you, um, the podcast typology, where else do you want people to go, Ian, if you want them to like, learn more about, you get connected to you, like what’s the, what’s the best place,
IMC (36:17):
Right? So, um, obviously the road back to you and the story of you are both, uh, great assets. They can go to my website. I a N M O R G a N C R O N. And there, they can learn about courses. They can learn about, uh, you know, my Enneagram assessment. We’re just coming out now with a, in fact it may be available when, by the time that you, uh, you know, broadcast this, uh, this interview is called the I E Q nine couples report. So you could actually, you know, you’re an engram three, I don’t know what your wife is. Um, but let’s say she’s a six, I’m making this up. You would get a report that shows how three sixes get along, what their challenges are, what their assets are. And it, it’s a, you know, it’s like a 40 page report, so it’s not, you know, something that’s, uh, it’s robust, right. Um, they can learn about all kinds of, you know, my speaking, you know, op you know, options there. And of course, on social it’s at Ian Morgan PRN across all the channels. And, um, yeah, I think that, that, uh, that probably covers most of it
RV (37:26):
Really, really cool Ian. Well, um, I think what a great, what, what, what a great cause to dedicate your time and career to self-awareness and, and so clear and specific and actionable about the work you’re doing there and the power and the impact that it’s having. So there’s it, you know, it makes a lot of sense to me why it’s, it’s spreading. And, um, that makes me happy because it’s, it’s, it’s really, really great work. So thank you for making time to be here. We wish you all the best. We’ll continue to follow your journey and, uh, just, just keep helping people, my friend,
IMC (38:00):
Thanks B. This was a delight.

Ep 301: Turning Your Expertise Into a Certification Program with Lethia Owens | Recap Episode

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, y’all AJ Vaden here. This is the recap episode of my awesome conversation with Lithia Owens who bless her heart. Never corrects me when I use my very Southern accent and say, LA you it’s Lithia Lithia tomato, tomato sweet sweetness. Never corrects me, but prop proper name introduction. so here’s I’m gonna make this short and sweet. I try to keep these recaps to five minutes. That’s the whole point of a recap. I always encourage you to go and listen to the full episode, and this is no different than any others. There’s just so much inspiration and brilliance and technicality. I don’t know if that’s a real word, but I’m go with it. Of just learning from someone who’s been doing this who didn’t have a plan but followed her calling and built a plan as she went along and she’s wickedly successful in so many different arenas and coaches and consults with powerhouse, fortune 100 CEOs.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
She’s a speaker, she’s an author just a wealth of knowledge, but here’s a couple of my takeaways. Actually. I have my handy dandy and yeah, I took a lot of notes. Yeah, this is a really good episode. So here’s the first thing. Here’s my first thing about three takeaways. Number one is this concept of game changers and what is a game changer and what does it take to be one? And I loved this conversation so much. It is so close to my heart because a game changer has nothing to do about your resume and your credentials has nothing to do about what you do. It has everything to do with who you are and who you’re willing to be. And it doesn’t matter about how much money you have and how many resources or your education your socioeconomic status being a game changer has, has something or has everything to do with one question.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
And it’s the question that you ask. And the only question that you should be asking is what could be not what is not, what was, but a game changer asked the question of what could be and how could this be different? How could it be better? It’s believing deep in your core that you were meant to do something that you were put on this planet, you were put in this world to achieve something great. And that may be being the mother to a child. That’s gonna do, you know, world changing things that that could be right, being a leader of a team or a company. It could just be being that voice to someone in a moment that they were at their breaking point, right. Being a game changer says like, how could this be different? Right. It’s like, and that is, that means open your eyes and look for opportunities to be a game changer for someone else.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
And it’s not about who, it’s not about what you’re doing. It’s about who you’re being. Right. And I think about it’s I heard this on the radio the other day about this woman who had called in, I was listening to way FM here in Nashville, Tennessee. And they were talking about how, like, for some weird reason, they were in line at a red light and they could just noticeably tell that the woman who was driving in the car next to them was just distraught, hysterical was crying. And they said, for whatever reason, I just, just felt prompted to do something, say something. And so they were trying to get this woman’s attention and were like down the window, roll down the window. And they shared some words of inspiration and they exchanged numbers. And however, the rest of the story took, I, I don’t remember to be honest.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
But what I do remember is that the woman pulled over and the other person pulled along and as they were talking she had shared some very horrible news that had just happened. And later comes to find out it’s like she was contemplating suicide. And it’s like, you can be a game changer to a stranger by just taking a moment of going, I don’t know what’s going on, but like, do you wanna talk like I’m, I’m here. Game changers also is it’s building businesses, it’s leading teams, but it’s, there’s not any one definition to being a game changer, but it’s asking the question of what can I do and what could be like, how could this be different and how can I be different and how can I be better? And how can I make my situation better? And I just, I love that because it applies to everyone in every stage of life, no matter what your position is, no matter what you’re doing, it’s are you asking the question of what could be like, what could be different?
Speaker 1 (04:36):
What could be better? I love that. So that so much second thing I loved and she said that being others focused is the way to success. Right? And I think that it’s contrary, a lot of people confuse building a personal brand with somehow being self-centered or self focused or self promotional. And it’s the opposite. It’s about being others focused and others promotional and others centered. And she and I are so aligned on this. And one of the things that I’ve just come to believe it’s like your personal brand is not about you. It’s about your audience, your personal brand is that you feel called to share a message that you believe at your core is going to help someone else. Right. It’s a mission driven messenger. It’s that core belief of like, , I, I’m not trying to change the world or maybe you are, but I believe that there are people who need to hear what I have to say, and they need to hear it from someone like me.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
I’m not perfect. I’m you know, not a billionaire, right? Not a multi like million dollar or multimillion follower, social media influencer. I’m not those things. I’m a mom, I’m a wife, I’m a small business owner. And I got something to share and I feel called to share it. And just believing it’s like that, what you have to say matters. And it’s focusing on the one, not the 1 million or even the 100. And I think being others focused really helps take your eyes off the numbers and gets your eyes back on the people. And I know it’s easy to get caught up with looking at revenue numbers and profit margins and numbers of followers and subscribers. And it’s like, if you take that all away, and if you knew that you made a difference or you changed one person’s life, would it be worth it to you?
Speaker 1 (06:31):
And I bet most of you would say yes, like if something that you shared changed the trajectory of someone else’s life that is gonna have generational impact. And I bet most of us would say like at the end of my life, if I went back and I was like, I know what I did changed lives of people. We would feel good. Like we would say that was a life well lived. I doubt any of us at the end of our lives are gonna look back and say, man, I had so many social media followers I was a life well lived and I made so much profit. I did so much revenue. It’s like, that’s not what we’re gonna say, but in the day to day in the here and now those things are real and the real distractions and they’re real issues.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
So just focus on the one, the one person being others focused and right. Last thing I, I, that was gonna be five minutes, like where I’m at. Oh, seven minutes. Oh, alright. Last thing I’ll make this quick. As I love, this is just trying to be a legacy creator. I love that. And I love what she said. And I wrote this down. She goes, what I do today will have much more impact on my grandchildren than it will me, because I’m focused on being a legacy creator. So what are you doing today? How are you asking, like how could this be different for the generations that come after me, but how are you focused on creating a legacy that will have more impact for your children and your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren that you would even have on your own life? So it’s creating a legacy of influence and impact for generations to come. Y’all so good. So inspiring. Go check this out, come back visit, visit us again on the influential personal brand until then. We’ll see you next time.

Ep 300: Turning Your Expertise Into a Certification Program with Lethia Owens

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, y’all and welcome to another episode on the influential personal brand podcast. This is AJ Vaden here I am. One of your co-hosts and I am joined today, Bobby one and the only lathe Owens, I’m gonna give her an official introduction in just a minute. But I’ve had the privilege to get to know lathe over the last, probably like almost a year. I think it’s been a year that we were introduced by a mutual friend and on our very first conversation, I was like, oh, I like this girl. These are my peoples. She’s such a joy. She just exudes joy. And if you’re not watching this, if you’re listening you’re not going to get to experience the full lathe experience because she’s just one of those people that as you watch her, she’s just got a smile on her face from ear to ear.
AJV (01:43):
She’s like one of those people that makes you in a better mood when you’re in her presence and so such a compliment to you, but I love her. I’m so excited that you’re on the show. So let me give everyone a quick official background on who you are. But VE Owens is a bestselling author. She’s a tech CEO and a branding expert and market domination, strategist domination like highlight that word. right. I was ranked number eight among the top 30 by global gurus. She’s also the author of the book brand influence the art and science and building an influential personal brand. What, you know, we’re all about here is building your personal brand. So this is gonna be a perfect conversation for everyone today. But she’s also the creator of your brilliance, which is a program for experts who wanna turn their course book or coaching system into a profitable certification program. So let’s build those revenue streams. Laia welcome to the show.
LO (02:41):
Oh, it’s my pleasure. I mean, to get an afternoon that I get to spend with you and your tribe and a a R’s tribe is just a, I mean, a big blessing. So I’m excited to be here.
AJV (02:51):
Oh girl, we love you. I think you’re so awesome. And you might not be as familiar to some people listening here today. So in an effort to help them get to know you a little bit, I would love for you just to like give people a little bit of your back story, just a little bit of your background and help everyone get high level perspective of how you got, where you so fill in.
LO (03:17):
Well, one of the things that has been really foundational for me is words that my mom whispered into my ear. When I was a little girl, she said, you were born for greater than this. And we fled in the middle of the night out of a very dark situation. And that has always stuck with me. And so I’ve used a very I’ve used grit and I’ve used tenacity and persistence to, to be successful in school and, and so forth. But where things really started for me was I was being mentored by the VP of learning and development at state farm. I I’m a techie, I’m a geek, right? I love, you know, technology. And as my mentor, she basically one day just said, Lithia, you are bigger than any opportunity state farm could ever provide. And I thought to myself, AJ, I’m like, is this how they fire people nowadays?
LO (04:04):
Like, am I being fired today? What’s going on? Right. But she gave me one of the biggest gifts ever. She saw something in me that I didn’t yet see in myself. And she said, you were meant to speak, to teach, to train, to write books, and you need to go out into the world and be who you are called to be. And I thought, wow, two weeks later, AJ, I incorporated my first company. And 11 months later, I quit my comfortable cushy corner off his job at state farm insurance company. And I took on a role where I am unemployed at the end of every day, until someone else sends me an email or a contract to say, we are booking you for a keynote or training or something like that. But the, the beauty of that is that I entered into the speaking world really clueless in the sense that I didn’t have an experience or knowledge about how people took information and, and took the ability to transform people through speaking and, and coaching.
LO (05:05):
I didn’t really understand that, but I knew in my heart that there was something more that I was born for greater than where I was at the time. And so I went on to quit. My job, 11 months later started my company and was in 2009, ranked number, number eight among the top 30 brand Gus in the world. And I basically agent just served my way into building a very successful speaking coaching and digital marketing agency. So that really is kind of how I got started. And I have utilized everything that I’ve ever been taught. I’ve packaged everything about who I am, and I’ve learned to pull that together into a brand that that would allow me to influence others and to transform others and to serve others. And when I was building out my company, you know, when I first started AJ, I, I wasn’t focused on branding. I just wanna make that clear because I know some people listening are like, man, she started and she was so clear about what she wanted and where she was going. Well, when I first started, if you asked me what I spoke on AJ, I would say whatever, you’re writing a check for
LO (06:15):
Whatever you need. And if you have a C girl, right. And it was really interesting because two of my million dollar mentors basically said, we’re not going to take your call, take your email, don’t contact us until you figure out your lane, your needs. Like, what do you really want to contribute into who whom you want to contribute that? And that’s when I went back and did the work and realized that most of my life, I have found ways to just stand my ground, to stand out and to be more of who I really am. And that probably is my superpower, like, you know, being bold enough and brave enough to be more of who I really am. And I realized through research that most people don’t live their lives that way. And they live their lives according to what people want from them or expect from them and things of that nature.
LO (07:07):
So growing up and, and taking a job out of college where I was a minority, not just female, not just, you know, African American, but being a minority in the sense that I worked in a male dominated industry. So I was both black and female, and I was constantly pressured to be someone I’m not. And I said, no, I’m not going to you know, really most people want you to assimilate. And I said, no, I’m not going to assimilate because when you assimilate, you lose a part of who you are. Wow. But I said, no, instead I will integrate. I will find my fit. And then I will be great at that. And so when you look at what I did from a business perspective and a corporate perspective, I did the same thing. I showed up like a game changer, brave enough to be who I really am. And I found how out, how to integrate. So how do I integrate who I am into this corporate space and be the best at that? Or how do I in this big marketplace find my fit and integrate what I have to offer with what it is that people need. Right. So that’s pretty much kind of how I got my start and I have been loving, it’s been 17 years since I walked out of the door at state farm insurance company. And I would not trade anything for the world.
AJV (08:24):
Oh man. That’s so good. That’s like a tweetable moment. It’s like, don’t assimilate integrate. And so I think like there’s something really into there. I wanna talk about for just a second. And I’m just curious to get your thoughts on it. And you know, I have two young boys, right? I have a, a two and a half year old and just turned five year old. And my five year old has a lot of testosterone. right. He’s got a lot of what his teacher says leadership potential mm-hmm which other parents may say he’s a bully or whatever. And it was really interesting. And I’m really grateful for this homeschool teacher that we have. She’s a facilitator for a few families. And she, she says, AJ, God has given your child immense leadership potential, please don’t discipline it out of him.
AJV (09:15):
Don’t coach it out of him. Don’t train it out of him, help him channel it in the right direction. And so we’ve been trying to do that. And then he’s on this little tee-ball team right now. And at his last tee-ball game, he’s straight up body tackles another five year old, his teammate because the teammate got the ball first and he wanted it. And so I like marked up to the fence and I’m like, Jasper James faded get over here. And he goes, what? And I’m like, you have to respect your teammates. You have to respect your coach. And the coach was trying to get Jasper up and Jasper swung at his coach. And I was like, in this day, I was like, please, no one, no one arrests me. Like this is not like what we do in our house. And then the coach came up to me after the game.
AJV (09:59):
And I’m, I so appreciate this. And I’ll never forget this moment. And he said, listen I know you think that’s too aggressive. And he goes, let me tell you an aggressive ball player is the ball player I want in my team. He goes, Jasper is by far the best thrower and the most aggressive person I have on this team. You let me handle this. You don’t worry about it, but I don’t wanna coach that out of him. And I kind of feel like God was just like using these other people in my life to remember that each of us are made original and unique. He made us don’t mess it up. Don’t mess it up. Don’t assimilate, figure out how to integrate these skillset. Right. Don’t assimilate, figure out how to integrate. I love that. And so for all of those people listening, right?
AJV (10:44):
It’s like at some point we assimilated out of our gifts. Most of us did. So how did you figure out, like how, what did you do and what would you tell to other people to figure out, like, what is that lane that you wanted to be in? And like, how did you figure out? It’s like, no, I’m not gonna speak on everything anymore. Like, this is what I speak on. This is what I speak about. I, I would just, I know, you know, we talk a lot about this at brand builders group. I’d love to hear your take on this for the audience. Like how did you do it?
LO (11:15):
Yeah. So it, it, that excellent question. I was very intentional, first of all, and it started with me believing that there was some, I didn’t know what it was. I, I really didn’t, but I, I just had this feeling that I was put here to make a significant and unique contribution. Mm. And so I started trying to figure out, like, what are the attributes about me that are different than other others? What, what about how I do what I do and how I show up, how I show up, that’s unique to me. And when we look at our individual attributes and, and our wiring, those are all clues to the greatness that lies within us and the game changer. Like I believe everyone is a game changer or, or can be a game changer. I’ll say it that way. And when we take a look at, at the, in inner workings of why do we think the way that we think and start asking those deep questions and really analyzing what comes forth?
LO (12:15):
What I realized was in answering questions that, wow, I have been a person who even a missed, like really strong pressure, have chosen to stand for what I believe mm. Have chosen to be who I feel I am. And I, through the research, realizing through, ask, answering questions and asking myself questions. It’s always the cube, BQ the question behind the question behind the question behind the question, you keep going deeper and deeper and deeper. And I began to see things I’d not seen before. And I began to see patterns about myself. And, and when you take a personal brand assessment or do work in that, in that realm, you know, the many questions you answer and the, the deeper you dig patterns start to, you know, emerge. And I started looking at the patterns and I realized that, you know, I lead through serving. So I realize I’m a servant leader.
LO (13:11):
I realize that I am willing to, to take risks. And I won’t let, what, I don’t know, stop me from going after what I want. So there’s this, this little, a part of my brand is a little bit naivete. Right. So I, I don’t know that I’m supposed to fail in the first seven years of being in business. Like, I, I, I, I didn’t know that. Right. and so there are a lot of things I didn’t know. and I use it to my advantage. I didn’t know that. Right. I didn’t know that you’re supposed to, you know, that you’re not supposed to grow as fast as my business grew. I, I grew so quickly as a new professional speaker that I had speakers who had been speaking for 10 years saying, wait a minute, how did you do that? Yeah. And I’m like, I didn’t know that you were supposed to not do this.
LO (13:55):
Right. And so that’s how I really like discovered. And this whole idea of being a game changer, Hey, Jay, I asked deep questions of myself. Like I even, for, for MI, much of my life didn’t even leverage the whole thing of being born for greater that my mother told me it was just something that was in the back of my head. But as I began to realize that that’s part of my unique thinking that I am born for greater than this, whatever. I hit a wall. It’s like, this is not, this is not my portion. This is not where I’m supposed to, to, to, to stay and realizing that there’s always something more. And then that word game changer came up in me and real. And I realized, that’s the name of my business game changers international, because my mother was the first game changer I ever met.
LO (14:38):
AJ. She took me out of a very abusive relationship that she had with her, her boyfriend at the time. And we fled with nothing. And my mother survived and thrived. My mother didn’t even graduate from school with a high school diploma. But yet when I became a teen mom, my mother quit her job, got a job at night as a security guard so that I could go back to school. So I traveled from Dallas to Dubai, inspiring and transforming people all over the world because they game changer named flora Lewis had enough compassion, wisdom, and courage to make a decision that would impact me positively, even though it was sacrificial to her. Right? so you don’t, it doesn’t matter what your income is and what your, your economic status is or where you come from. You can be a game changer because it’s all about your mindset.
LO (15:32):
Game changer, obsessed with what could be. My mother looked at me and said, what could be with my daughter? They don’t focus on the past, right? People who are game Watchers, they, they, they focus on what has happened. Game changers, make things happen. They’re innovators and early adopters. And they take risks when others want to play it safe. You know, some people won’t and I heard Simon Sinek say this. He said, some people won’t get a new cell phone until they can’t get service on their old cell phone. They won’t get a smartphone until their flip phone can no longer be serviced. Right? So their early adopters and their mindset is just very different. They’re always asking and thinking about what could be in the future. And that’s really how I’m wired. So when I began to label and, and really package how I’m wired, that’s where, you know, you know, integrate don’t assimilate came from, I was able to really study how I’ve been showing up in the world, cuz it it’s worked now, what can I learn from that? And how can I use that to actually package a personal brand for me that I can use to go out and serve the world.
AJV (16:39):
Oh man, you said two things in there that were so good. And I love this. I wrote em down. I literally was like, strike this down. You said game changers, focus on what could be game Watchers, focus on what happened. Like what was, and you know, it’s like, that is so good. It’s like, are you gonna be a part of change in the game or just watching the game? And you know, and I think so much of that to what you said, it’s like, what could be like what could be, and you know, the second thing I love, you said, I love this so much. It’s like one of my personal mantras right now is people. It is so much more important for us to focus on who you are, not what you do. And like, to what you said, it’s like, you do not have to have a diploma, money, credentials, anything to be a game changer in someone else’s life. That’s right. You just gotta show up. You gotta just be that person, like be who God intended you to be. And like, I mean, is your mom still around? And she’s still alive.
LO (17:36):
She’s been deceased now for 10 years. But she lives with me every day. Cuz I name all my cars after her. So when I give him a car, I’m like, come on flow. Let’s go
AJV (17:46):
I love it. I mean, I was like, say, if your mom is still around, you have got to send her this episode. My mom too is deceased. She died when I was 15, but it’s like what an honoring legacy for your mother to have of like she created an environment and a mentality of teaching me that I can, I can do it. Like I can do this and focusing on what could be. And I think like the great thing that I, I heard in that it’s like just that reminder to everyone who’s listening who says to yourself, I’m not smart enough. Right? Right. I don’t know enough. I don’t have enough experience. I don’t have enough resources. I don’t have enough money. I don’t have enough time. I don’t know the right people BS that is BS. Like that is nonsense. That is fear talking.
LO (18:35):
Yeah. And we have to check our BS, check our belief system. Mm-Hmm because it’s what you believe about yourself and your situation that determines how you’re actually going to show up and what you’ll be able to realize and accomplish and like, right. Ah, yeah. So yeah. I heard that from coach qua. She told me that she said check your BS. And I was like, whoa. She said, yeah, your belief system, girl.
AJV (19:00):
I talk about this, this concept of game changers for a second. Right? Mm-hmm so like when it comes to game changers, right. Someone who’s willing to ask what could be like, I think that’s an unusual mindset. I think a lot of people look around and they see what other people are doing and that they think that’s what they should do. They assimilate. Right. But to be a game changer, you gotta think outside the box, you gotta do something different. So like in your mind, like what makes a game changer? A game changer?
LO (19:28):
Yeah. It kind of goes back to the, the mindset that I talked about and thinking about, and, and actually being obsessed with what could be, but game changers are the world may think they’re really self centered, but I think game changers are very other centered because what a lot of what game changers do. And at the end of one of my videos where I talk it’s called born for greater, I say that my grandchildren will benefit from the things I do today, far greater than I will. And game changers, I think have a legacy mentality. And they’re what they’re doing. They’re doing because they want the gift that they’ve been given and the impact of that gift to live long after they’ve, you know, taken their last breath. Great example, being a game changer. When I started, when I had my first grandchild, when she was probably three years old, Andre and I decided that we would start a company that would become a company that each of our grandchildren would become a part owner with us in.
LO (20:32):
So that when they say grandma, I wanna go to this spring camp, there is money that they, you know, have access to, to be able to, to do. When they say, grandma, I wanna go to this college. If they don’t buy some chance, get a full ride scholarship. We have a company that can fund their education when they graduate and say, grandma, I wanna be a doctor and I gotta buy my first office. Hey, you are now part owner in an organization that you can take your distribution and do what with it, whatever you would. So if you wanna be a doctor, you now have an, an income that’s coming from a business that was created so that you would have options when you get older that’s game changing, thinking like game changer thinks, you know, game changer thinking that’s how game changers do things differently.
LO (21:19):
Like they don’t just say, Hey, I’m gonna start a business for me, which I did. My speaking business is for me, but our digital marketing agency, that money is being saved and put aside for our grandchildren. And it doesn’t really even take like game changers. Don’t have to be brilliant or smart people. They are compassionate people who love serving others and who wanna leave and, and they wanna influence and leave an impact. So when you, who are you leaving an impact for? It’s not for yourself because when you die, you can’t take it all with you and put it in a coffin. So it’s usually because you’re thinking about lasting impact and lasting legacy. So that’s what I want people to know about being a game changer. It’s hard for people, I think to be game changers when they’re very self centered and self focused and it’s all about them.
LO (22:07):
And we have had some people who are narcissist and egotistical, you know, become very successful in life. And while they may be successful and rich and wealthy, I would question sometimes if they’re really truly game changers. Yeah. So those are some things that I think really help us to identify and to see game changers. And I love celebrating people who are game changers. And I remember telling you that I have watched you and Rory for a while and I wanted to be a part of the work that you’re doing because of who you were. I didn’t even know what, what were, what, what, what, what, what is it that I’m actually, you know, I didn’t know what I was exactly getting. I knew you were a game changer that I wanted to connect with. And when you see a game changer, I think we benefit when we make decisions that put us in the space with them, because game changer me game changer. Like that’s when, when the two collide that is a formative for, you know, just amazing things to happen. So I’m just excited that, you know, we’re a year into our journey together, but I know it’s gonna be something fabulous.
AJV (23:11):
You know what, there’s so many things that I love what you’re saying. We’re so like minded in this, you know, element of like building a personal brand. And you know, somebody asked me the other day I was on this a little local TV interview and she said, well, what would you tell people who think that’s building a personal brand is very self-centered and ego focused. And I remember her asking this question, I kind of like glazed over. And I was like, I would say, they’re completely wrong. I like this. Isn’t about being self focused. This is about being others focused. I said the only thing that is self focused is think, thinking that your personal brand is about you. Like, that’s the thing that is self focused and yes, that you’ve really built a business around serving right. About being this other focused mentality.
AJV (23:58):
And you know, it’s a funny thing to kind, kind of say, it’s like, my business is serving and I’m gonna make money by serving, but it’s like, what better business to be in than being in the business of serving like, right. Like what, so I’m curious to just like, hear that philosophy around like this creating legacy through serving and building a business through serving, like, how do you do it? Like, how do you create that mindset? What would you tell anyone listening who’s like struggling to put themselves out there because they don’t wanna be seen as self-centered or self-focused or too self promotional? Like what would you say to all those things?
LO (24:39):
Well, I would just say that and be very transparent and say that I’ve lived on both sides of the coin. So growing up so poor that we couldn’t even afford to pay attention. I have always wanted more than just enough and for a, a period in my life and in my business, the goal was to make money because when I went to the grocery store, AJ, if they said five for a dollar, I had to get five. My husband could see five for a dollar and get one. I couldn’t do that because I never wanted to be hungry again. I wanted to make sure we always had more than enough. And so I really out of grit in hustle and grinding, started building my business the first few years. And then a beautiful thing happened when one of my mentors sat me down and said, you are more than enough.
LO (25:39):
So I don’t have to strive. I don’t have to hustle. I don’t have to grind. I realized then that all I had to do was find my superpower, find my fit, the people I’m called to serve and then do that exceptionally well every day. Right? And so this whole idea of serving my way to the top and I, I often say I served my way into a better business because I stopped seeking profit. And this is gonna sound weird to a lot of people. I stopped seeking profit and I started seeking, how can I fulfill purpose? See prop profit follows, purpose, purpose. Doesn’t always follow profit, if that makes sense. So I realized that if I under, if I, if I can get clear about what I was born to do and the gifts that I have to contribute to the world, and I get really, really good at serving in that way, money would follow me all day long, all day long.
LO (26:34):
There’s even a scripture where God says everywhere you look, there would be blessings, blessings, blessings chasing you down. And I realized that, wow, I don’t have to seek money or wealth or fame. And actually the, actually the more successful I became, the less fame I wanted now I’m like, I don’t even want people to see my face. Can we do this zoom without showing my face? Right? Like I don’t care that they know my face as much as they experience the transformation that I can provide. If that makes sense. Yeah. I love that. So that’s really what it, what it’s about for me and this whole idea of, you know, serving, I, I just wanna share that sometimes you have to allow other people to serve you as well. I would not be where I am today. If my mother hadn’t served me. If, if people haven’t other people hadn’t served me and helped me along the way. So service is really a, a two-way a two-way street, but the idea that we get to not have to, but we get to serve the people that we touch every day. And it is an honor and a privilege because not everyone understands their gift and their purpose.
AJV (27:46):
Oh yeah. And I think you said something that just hit me cuz he’s like, I love sub serving others and sometimes I have a really hard time receiving. And I think what I just heard that just hit me for the first time that hit me this way ever in my whole life is that by me, denying someone else to serve me, I’m denying them their own uniqueness and their own purpose.
LO (28:08):
Yes, absolutely. You got it. You
AJV (28:11):
Got it. I say, I think, you know, it’s like you get into this mode of like, it’s my job to serve and you forget, well, it’s also other people’s job to serve and it’s like, you can be the giver and the recipient at the same time. Absolutely. And it’s, I’ve never heard it click that way before. It’s like the moment that I deny someone else serving me, it’s like, I’m denying them. They’re God-given purpose and they’re calling in their life.
LO (28:33):
Yeah. And you’re robbing them of the opportunity to go through the same beautiful experience that you go through when you serve. Right. And you mentioned something, AJ, you said, you know, what about the people who are listening? Who, you know, don’t know if, if they’re good enough or they don’t know if, if they can really, you know, do this right. And it’s important for them to understand that they have the ability to do everything they’re called to do already within them. It may take some refining of a gift in talent. It may take exploration of a gift in talent. It may be even that they PR if they just need practice with that, you know, exercising that gift and talent, but we all have a unique gift and something that we can bring to the table, game changers are duplicators. Mm God created us after himself and his own image.
LO (29:29):
He created, he was the master creator. Therefore we were created to create and to duplicate wealth, duplicate love, duplicate success, duplicate things. Right. Right. So when we talk about legacy and when we talk about impact and influence with other individuals, it really is about duplicating more good. Yeah. In this world, it’s almost like a, a brand I help the client build called intentional serendipity and, and serendipity is good fortune. And what we did through the work together and the research that, that I did to, to bring to her is I realized that you could intentionally create more good fortune. Yeah. Based on how you live and the brand you choose to BR to build.
AJV (30:10):
Mm there’s so much truth in that, like one of my favorite Bible verses is that of Genesis that says it’s real simple, be fruitful and multiply right. Be fruitful and multiply. Right. Yeah.
LO (30:23):
Anything that’s not growing is either dead or dying. Yeah. So when we are growing and being fruitful and when we’re duplicating, that means we are the zest of life that we are actually fulfilling, you know, our purpose. Oh, I could talk to you all day long.
AJV (30:40):
Oh, say we’re long sermon here in a second, but love it. I love these conversations. And you know, it’s like, I know not, maybe not all of our listeners share the same faith and that’s okay. But to be able to share, you know, business with people that man, they just, they, they feel called to their faith, whatever that faith is. It’s like, yeah, I’m a believer in Jesus Christ. And like he’s my Lord in savior. And to get to, you know, spread that and not be ashamed about it. Man, I just beautiful. I love it. I love that. You speak it. I love that. You know, it, I love that. It’s a part of who you are. You’ve got this service mentality and, and I think for everyone too, it’s like a huge takeaway in all of this is, and I love what you said. It’s like, like serve your way to the top. Right. That’s right. Serve your way to the top. Where is there any harm in that? There’s like, that is there , it’s like the more you serve, the more good is gonna come your way. Right. Right. I just, I so believe in that,
LO (31:40):
One of my biggest breaks in business has come from serving my way to the top. And here is another thing about game changers. They see what others don’t see. Mm they’re. Willing to go where others won’t go. So I remember being a very new speaker and I was at the national speakers association conference and they announced that the international Federation of professional speakers summit was gonna be in Dubai. And so I’m standing with all of these colleagues and I’m like, I’m going. And they’re like, yeah, we’re going. So a year later, when it’s time to register, I’m like, are you going no, I’ll see what happened was, are you going no, da da. So I ended up having no one who said they were going actually be in a position to go, but game changers can see what other people can’t see and will do what others won’t do.
LO (32:26):
So I remember my husband who was my business partner, he said, but honey we’re still trying to figure this whole thing out. Like we don’t have enough revenue for you to go all the way, halfway around the world to Dubai. And I looked at him and I said, without even thinking, I said, the gifts God has given me and the path he has put us on must be sufficient to provide for us. It just must be. And that’s that naivety that I talk about sometimes it’s like, I mean, like, it just has to work out, right. It just has to work out. And I remember being in Dubai, hanging out with the president of the national speakers association, everyone who was there, their, their, their speaking fee was like 20,000 plus. And I was like $3,500. so I’m like still at the bottom of the bottom of the bottle. And I was there on points. I was there on miles and I had Ram noodle in my suitcase, but AJ, I was there.
AJV (33:16):
That’s right.
LO (33:17):
And when I gave my presentation and, and not only that, I actually applied to be a speaker at the conference and was selected. So here I am presenting at this conference and someone sitting in the front row that had been someone I admired for years, who was a huge successful speaker sitting on the front row. And another woman sitting on the front row became a client. She booked, I mean, she, before I left Dubai, we had an engagement, a contract written, but the person on the front row said to me, Janice Stanfield said, where have you been all my life that I didn’t know about you? And then that led to an invitation to speak at the national speakers association with led, which led to other opportunities. And now every year I go to Dubai and do a seven day game changers mastermind retreat. So my whole business started to have these little spokes that came off of me seeing what other people couldn’t see and being willing to do what other people wouldn’t do.
AJV (34:18):
That’s truth all day long every day. If you don’t ask the answer is always no,
LO (34:25):
Absolutely.
AJV (34:26):
Don’t ask. It’s always no. Oh my goodness. I could talk to you all day long. I love this. And I’m gonna have I’m, I’m trying to be cognizant of the time sometimes I forget. But before we all go I asked you a question before I hit record, because like one of the big things that I’m focused on right now in my personal life is making sure that people get to know who you are as much as what you do. And so I asked you before we hit records, you know, I said, I wanna know one thing that’s not on your bio that you think people should know. And what is it? And you said I wish people knew that I was a builder. Like you love to build things, right? Like all kinds of things like actual building things like nails and hammers and tools. Like you love them build things. So I wanna know a little bit about that. Like, what do you like to build? Why do you like to do this? Where did this come from?
LO (35:15):
if it includes a compound Mir, so nails a drill hammer. Like I am on it. I have laid my own hardwood floors, ceramic pile. The thing that I’ve probably enjoyed the most outside of building the faux fireplace in my bedroom is I actually built out all of the cabinets and the whole beautiful woodwork that was in my previous office. I built that’s amazing over the course of maybe three or four weeks, but anything that has to do with getting my hands dirty or using my hands is what I love. And, and, and what I love about that too, is I can see the similarity and my love for building up people. Mm. You know, so even with people I’m not using necessarily my hands, but being a builder, I’m a builder of people and I’m a builder of things. So anytime there’s that process of being able to take something in this raws form and use, you know, my brilliance to transform it into something even greater, I’m all for it.
AJV (36:16):
Oh, there’s some good metaphors and analogies in that lathes the builder. And I know that I could continue talking to you for the rest of the day, if we had time that we did. I just so honored to have you on the show. And you’ve actually you’ve got a really cool thing coming up. Right. So in coordination with the release of this podcast, you also have a certify your brilliance that is launching. Right. So tell us a little bit about what that is. And we’re gonna put a really awesome link in the show notes to check this out, but tell us about certify your brilliance.
LO (36:52):
Absolutely. Well, what I’ve come to realize is that people who have books, people who have coaching programs and people who have even created amazing presentations and speeches, they are often thinking about what’s next for me? How can I generate an additional stream of revenue and, and what I’ve decided to do, because I’ve done it and beat my head against the wall, trying to figure it out. You’ve done it. And lots of other people have done it, but there’s no real resource anywhere that you can go pull a book off of the shelf or take a course to learn how to turn your expertise, whether it’s your book, your coaching program, or your speech into a certification program so that you can exponentially increase your revenue. And so I decided that I would talk to the most brilliant people in the world. People like you and interview them to find out, yeah, how did you do it?
LO (37:42):
And what I’m excited about is I’ve been interviewing people. I am getting like the nitty nitty gritty gritty inside the Diddy Diddy information. And they have been, I mean, people have just been so transparent and so giving to share, this is how I did it because it is not easy. And if you don’t have a roadmap or blueprint this is a place to come to really just learn how to take, you know, what you’re dreaming of and actually package it in a way and protect it so that you can actually reach more people than you ever could. If you only tried to, you know, do it and work through the process by yourself. So you’ll be able to reach potentially hundreds of thousands of people more because you have ambassadors. Yeah. Who all over the world are sharing your message and transforming lives. So I just, because it’s also a part of just being, it’s a game changing move to create a certification program. I’m just so excited to share that with the world. And I’m excited that you’re actually sharing the link and the information of how to actually access this free summit and this information with your tribe. Thank you so much for
AJV (38:50):
Doing that. Oh my gosh. Well I know just firsthand and it’s like, we’ll put the link in the show notes. It’s gonna be available to you, but I was fortunate enough to be a guest in all of this. And I know firsthand from the questions you’re asking, like this is pulling back the curtain, right? It’s like, like we’re, we’re not holding back. It’s like, these are the mistakes. This is what you should not do. This is what we did. This is what worked. This is what did it, this is how we charged for it. This is what’s included. It’s like, it’s literally pulling back the curtain of how do you like to what you said? And I love that. It’s like, how do you turn your expertise into a certification program? And that’s what it is. And so be sure to head over to the show notes, grab that link, check it out. You’re gonna get to learn all about all the things that you have to offer, including how to certify your brilliance. So, but on social, what’s the best platform to do that,
LO (39:49):
Or it LinkedIn or Facebook and my handle everywhere. Whether you have another platform you’d like to, to communicate on is at Lithia Owens.
AJV (39:57):
All right. So you heard it here. I’m so excited to introduce you to our community and our audience. I love your spirits. I love, I just love everything that you have to say is just it’s. I don’t know. There’s just something about your essence that I just, I just adore. So thank you so much for coming onto the show. Everyone stick around for the recap episode and we’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 299: Overcoming Sales Reluctance with Dean Graziosi | Recap Episode

RV (00:03):
Every time I get to sit down with someone like Dean Graziosi, it just like, I just think it’s the coolest thing that after doing this, I guess I’ve been at this for a while now, you know, 15, 15 years at least I mean, legitimately you would say, yeah, like 15, 16 years that I’ve been pretty much full, full time at this industry and getting to meet people like him, you know, it was like, this is someone I grew up, there’s watching on TV. Right. And Tony Robbins, like they’re doing business together. Like what an honor to just, just to, to get, to meet them and talk to them and then how valuable to get into this guy’s mind. And that’s what I wanna give you, these, these three core takeaways from me or, or from Dean that I took away, I took away from me.
RV (00:49):
And I love like if you didn’t listen to the episode yet, go back, go, go back and listen. Because a couple things, first of all, there’s sort of three things I’ve always wanted to like ask Dean about. And we got to all three thing, all three of them in, in that interview. So, and I’m gonna share the debrief of those right now, because I thought there was like, these are three very specific things that like, when I think of him and what he has done really well, I wanted to like, know how the, these, these parts that are really mindset things. And the other thing is, you know, and I just have to say, like, I just, I didn’t have much of a relationship. I had zero relationship with Dean other than what I saw online and stuff here and there in, in different promotions.
RV (01:31):
And you know, he’s definitely a, he’s definitely an information marketer. I mean, he’s, he’s one of the direct response Kings and and yet I never had a personal encounter with him, but I’ve had a few now. So this would be like my fourth or fifth time spending time with him, one on one. And every time I’m with him, I, I genuinely enjoy the guy. And I genuinely feel like, I feel like he is both serving and I think he is selling like I, and I think he’s, I I’ve known him as a salesperson, but also getting to understand a little bit more about, about his heart and stuff. And that’s why we wanted to bring, to bring him to you. We wouldn’t, we wouldn’t bring anyone to you that we, that we didn’t believe in. And obviously thrive 3 53 thrive, three fifty.com.
RV (02:18):
That’s our affiliate link. So we’re, we’re putting it in front of you because there’s a lot to learn from, from Dean Graziosi and Tony Robbins, a lot to learn, like whether you know, a lot about ’em or nothing about him, whether you think of Dean as a, you know, you might think of him as a direct response. Marker. You might, whatever you think about Tony, like they they’ve been around a long time or maybe you don’t know either, but like, no matter what you think about them, it’s indisputable to me to go. These guys know how to reach people. These guys know how to get their message out there. These guys have an influence. These guys, they are connected to the most
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Influential people in the world, athletes and billionaires and politicians and charitable organizations and like churches and, and entertainers. And like they have built massive influence both in terms of their indirect relationships, the people they know and their direct reach, their ability to like their audience, the number of people who come to their events, read their books, follow them on social media are in their email list, et cetera, et cetera. And you go, I think myself included here. Some of us struggle a little bit with, you know, maybe it’s knowledge like maybe it’s knowing what to do to reach people. But I think a lot of us mission driven messengers, we, we struggle with sort of the conviction and the boldness of telling people who we are and why we’re like, why, what we’re doing matters. And that was a really important interview. And you know, that’s what they’re, that’s what they’re they’re teaching, right?
Speaker 2 (03:55):
So anyways, you could check out three fifty.com go as soon as you, as soon as you get this, as soon as you listen to this, because they, they have a bunch of free training with Matthew McConaughy and Tony and Dean, obviously he mentioned, so Jenna Kucher is another, become another really good friend lately. She’s, she’s a doll like and so, you know, check this out, go there. And I would say if, if nothing else go register and watch how they do these launches, right? Like I’m fascinated being that we’re an affiliate for this launch for them is I’m learning a ton, just seeing the way that they do things and just like, oh, this is how that this is how that works. And this is how that works. And they, they have reaching people down to a science. And, and so that’s actually my first takeaway that I wanna talk about was the whole conversation around advertising.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
And, and it’s amazing, like what Dean said is so true where it’s like, do you know the person who wins is the person who can spend the most on ads. That is the person who wins when, when you’re talk, not just about making money, but just reach where you go, who’s reaching the most people. Is it the smartest person? You know, like, is it the, is it the neuroscience, you know, scientist? Is it the neurosurgeon? Is it, is it the, you know, the doctorate at the university? Is it the brilliant guy that lives in somebody’s basement? No, it’s like, they’re not reaching the most people, the people who are reaching the most, people are spending the most money on advertising is Coca-Cola the best soda ever. No, like probably not. I mean, I don’t drink soda, like but like, it’s it, but they reach the most people they’re spending the most on advertising.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
And so that to me is a really important switch that has to flip for you, right? Like at some point you have to get over that you have to get over that reluctance, that apprehension of telling people about what you do, like whether you like it or not. If you can’t get past that roadblock, if you can’t get past this limitation, this, this mental barrier of, of saying I am unashamed of what I do. I have to boldly and unapologetically tell the world who I am and what I do. If I cannot get past that, then I’m going to be stuck here in secret in private, the world’s best kept secret. And you know, the parallel that he used of, of like Martin Luther king Jr, is, is a gray one. Like lots of people wanted to, to affect civil rights and, and, and, and cure injustice and inequality.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
But Martin Luther king is remembered in history because he was able to do it through influence and, and understanding people and communicating and getting the message out and, and being able to rally an audience. This is a life changing skill set. And, and it, you, you got to have conviction in what you’re doing. And, and I, I think the first is sort of like a logical realization. This isn’t the order that we talked about them in the interview, we talked about ads in the middle of the interview. But to me, the first realization is that the person with the most reach is not the smartest. They’re not the best. They’re, they’re not the most credible or qualified or experienced. They are just the best at marketing. And that’s a huge part of this. No, if, if I don’t know about you, I can’t buy from you. If I don’t know about you, I can’t donate to your charity. If I don’t know you are there, I can’t be involved in your mission, your product, your service, your program, your institution, your university, your organization, like people have to know about you. And if you are not willing to get into the game of going, let, I wanna let people in the world know that I’m here than somebody who is probably less qualified.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Somebody who is less credible, somebody with less expertise, somebody with less experience, somebody with a less effective program is gonna reach those people, because they’re willing to overcome that, that mental roadblock about their somehow inconveniencing other people by telling them that they’re there. And this has been a huge continues to be a huge struggle and battle for me. And, and, you know, for so long, I’ve worn it as a badge of honor that we don’t spend money on advertising. It’s all referrals and word of mouth of which I think there’s some real beauty to that, right? Like you want, you wanna grow your business in the most profitable way possible. And, and I do think referrals is the best way to grow your business, but it’s not necessarily a, like, that’s not at odds with going, what’s the, what is the predictable way to constantly grow or to reach more people is to go, but how do you win?
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Who’s gonna reach more people. Is the, the, the person who can spend the most on advertising and the way you justify that will, you know, not just emotionally, which we’ve been talking about, but logically and financially is you go, you have to get really good at your metrics. You have to know your numbers. You have to understand customer lifetime value of, of every click and every step of the way. And you have to have a process of what you’re driving them to do. You know, these are the things that we, these are things that we teach that brand builders group in our, you know, revenue engine and high traffic strategies. Those are some of our phase two trainings to our clients. And, you know, that’s why I’m excited about learning from people like Dean and Tony in the programs they have, because they’re doing it right.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
And they’re directing so many people. So like you have to get past that, that roadblock, the second one is going, okay, not just telling people about it, but then selling people and collecting money. And so many of us struggle to sell. We’re afraid. It’s almost like we, we, we grovel at the idea of asking people like, oh, I’m sorry. I have to ask you, ask you for money. And we don’t think of it as, as a service. And I I loved what he said when it was like, you have to fall in love. You have to love so much. Here’s what he said. You have to love what you do so much, that you feel bad. If you don’t offer it to people, you have to love what you do so much that you feel bad if you don’t offer it to people.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
And you know, in this very moment, I feel that way. I go man, brand builders group, like we created this company because we don’t see anyone in the world that can do this better than us. Like our team cares so much about helping our clients succeed and in the human to human space of like getting real life coaching, like, and training human to human and, and live experiences encounters. It’s like, I don’t know anyone who has a better, a better program for that better curriculum. We spent our, our, our career life, learning these things and testing these things and putting together like, and the amount that we charge is so low. I mean, we literally have multiple clients who in the last few years have created seven figure businesses, a million dollar annual businesses from the stuff that they’ve learned from our curriculum. We don’t charge anywhere near that.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Like to, to, to, to know the value of it is we’re super convicted of it. And man, we’ve just, we’ve poured so much time into it to fall in love with it. And I feel that same way about Dean, right? Like I’ve gone, man. I have to at least let you meet Dean. I mean, because it, his results are irrefutable. Like the amount of people that they’re reaching. And it’s like a it’s, it’s like a predictable growth. He’s figured out a way to get his message out to lots and lots of people. And he’s done it consistent for 30 years. And it adds up over time to a lot of influence, a lot of influence. And so if you’re struggling with this, one of the practical things I think you do, like one of the practical takeaways is fall in love with what you do.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
The more convicted you are in what you do. The, the more convicted you are in your product, your service, your own expertise, the harder you’ve worked at crafting the thing, the, the easier, the more conviction you’ll have that people should buy it. And I feel like in many ways, brand builders group, I mean, honestly, we have spent the first four years of this business building a world class program, like we’ve, we have sold some like a lot. I mean, we’re a, we’re a, a very healthy, multi seven figure company. But like, I think we will become an eight figure company quickly because we haven’t been focused on advertising and reach. We’ve been building, we’ve been building the program, building the ship, tightening it, testing it, tweaking it. And we have poured so much into it, but it’s like, now we can go tell the world because it’s, it’s tight.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
And, and we have that conviction. You should do the same thing as go like, well, what, what would make you so convicted? Like if you had to cure for cancer that tasted like chocolate, and you knew somebody had cancer and you knew you could cure them, you would feel obligated to share with them. You would feel it was your duty, your responsibility, your, your privilege, your honor, to let them know that you have, that you can help them. You got to get to that, like, you know, to that level or somewhere close to that level with your own products and services. Like I’ve worked so hard at my craft. I’ve worked so hard at putting this together that I, I, I have to have the world know about it. And so anyways, we feel that way about, about brand builders group. And that’s why, you know, we’re putting out this podcast for you to sample us, our network, the people we’re learning from the things that we’re doing, so that hopefully one day you go, you know what?
Speaker 2 (13:55):
I trust these guys enough to take a chance on them. And by the way, if you, if you go to free brand call.com/podcast, you can request a call with our team. You know, if you want the more human based elements separate. And in addition to that, I would say, go to thrive three fifty.com and check out what Tony Robbins and Dean Grazi are teaching. Right? They’ve put together a program teaching how they’ve gotten to be, who they are hard to not pay attention to that. And I, I felt bad. I was like, I would feel bad about going Tony Robbins has put together something that teaches the things that he actually believes about what he’s done to help him become who he is and not give you at least the opportunity to check that out. And if nothing else, at least the opportunity to go through it, right?
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Like sign up, go through the training watch how they do it. And just from like, experiencing what they’re doing. And you know, even if you don’t buy it, buy it or check it out. But, you know, again, like Matthew, McConaughy free training with Matthew McConaughy and Tony Robbins, like that’s pretty legit. Like so anyways, that’s thrive three fifty.com or if you go, Hey, I love what brand builders group is up to. And I think I want like a human, you know, encounter like great do both of them, but free brand call.com/podcast is how you get in touch with us. Love. So love what you do so much that you feel bad that you, if you don’t offer it to people, that’s a great way to flip that, that mental switch. And then the last takeaway, which, which we talked about was just, you know, the mindset around money is to go, if you have a block of any type with making more money, and you somehow think that it’s evil, or you have to take advantage of people or it’s selfish, or it’s self-centered, or if you have any of that related to money, then just then just change the focus and go.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
The reason I wanna make a lot of money is so that I can give it away, because I tell you like, every non-profit that I know is doing that, that they’re doing amazing work. They need more money. Like they they, they need money. They need money to get the message out to about what they do. They need advertising and dollars and sponsor to raise money for what they do. And, and you, if you have a, a spiritual gift of making money, then you can write checks to solve problems. And that’s true in your business too, right? Like not just with charity as you go look making a whole bunch of money doesn’t mean you have to keep it for yourself. Doesn’t mean you have to like buy a private jet in an island. Like one of the amazing things about making money, like genuinely my heart.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
One of my favorite things, like one of the honors of my life is employing. So many people is saying like my work and my energy and my passion and my spiritual gift of generating revenue provides jobs. And, you know, I, I, I am motivated by paying our people more like that is something that has always been inspiring to me is like, I want to not only make money for me and my family and for our charitable contributions, but the people who on our team, like part of how I measure success is like, are we able to pay our team more and more? And are we able to pay them the top of the market? Like one day, I wanna be able to say that, like the people who work at brand builders group, it’s an amazing job. It’s an amazing mission. It’s amazing culture. It’s amazing people.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
And they get freaking paid girl. Like they get paid more than anyone doing that same role. Like that is genuinely in, inspiring to me is, is going. I want, I wanna provide jobs for people. And in order to build that kind of company, you gotta be able to write checks to solve problems. You gotta be able to hire people to do stuff. You gotta get copy written and videos, edited websites, built, and sales people hired. And, and, you know, whatever, you know, you need administrative folks and operational people and financial stuff like you need, you need legal contracts drafted, and you need all these things that it takes to, to run a business. And they all cost money. So you gotta make money so that you can solve problems. So you can write checks, not just so you can get rich and, and, you know, whatever, buy islands and drive cars and whatever.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
There’s nothing wrong with those things. But like, if those things feel off to you, then just shift your focus and go, no, my goal is because I want to, I wanna provide, I wanna provide charity. I wanna support charity and good works in the world. And I wanna support the people who are doing a good job and making a, a, a big contribution, right? Like, you know, the, the people who are supporting me are creating jobs and creating opportunity. I mean, that’s just super duper valuable. So if you struggle with those things, I mean, those are mental things that I, I think, you know, Dean has really pushed past this. He’s figured this out, he’s conquered this. And anybody who’s reaching lots and lots of people like anybody in general. Right? My, my, I am one of my, my, one of my central life philosophies was when mark Twain said, each man is my superior in some way each, I really believe that I really believe each person is my superior.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
In some way, everybody has something to teach. And if you’re struggling with reach and you’re struggling with like sales, I go, man, Dean and Tony, Tony Robbins, and Dean Grazi like, they have figured that out how to do that, right? Like they have figured out how to reach. A lot of people make a lot of money and do a lot of good in the world. So if you’re interested in learning from them, I am, I want to know, thrive three fifty.com thrive three fifty.com, check out the free training and the other resources that they’ve got going on. That’ll come your way. If you do that. Other than that, keep coming back here, stay plugged in. And, and I hope you’re, you’re enjoying this like, and stay here until you’re ready to take the next step, that whole conversation, that Dean and I had about, you know, when he was saying the, as you get, you become a more serious athlete, you go, I need the next level of coaching and when you’re ready for it, we are ready for you. So thanks for being here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand podcast.

Ep 298: Overcoming Sales Reluctance with Dean Graziosi

RV (00:03):
I am really excited and honored to introduce you to somebody who I’ve just recently gotten to know. And I wanna tell you why I’m bringing him to you. First of all, before I tell you who he is and what incredible things you’ve done, which you’re already gonna recognize who it is. But I saw this gentleman stand on stage and make a generous offer to support the victims in Uvalde, Texas, and their families, and to support another man who’s really, really near and dear to me at my let in a way that made a massive difference. And when I think of influence and how you create influence in the world, it speaks volumes to me about who are the people you surround yourself with and who are the people who will come out to help you. And Dean Graziosi stepped up in such a huge way with such a pure heart and being in the same room with him.
RV (00:53):
And we’d never met before, but the night before ed my let’s event, we were at dinner and I just caught, I caught 0% arrogance pretentiousness 0%. I’m better than youness. It was, it was a hundred percent. We’re here to do a mission to support ed, to support the people watching. And then he spontaneously throughout, you know, a pretty generous offer to help a lot of people. And you know, that was, that is how I got to know Dean Graziosi. Now you probably have heard of him before, right? He’s a multi New York, multi-time New York times bestselling author. He has worked with at least 14 major companies that are eight and nine figures that he’s helped him grow significantly. Of course he has millions of social media followers. He’s got lots of different programs, a couple of his books, millionaire success, success habits.
RV (01:45):
And then also the underdog advantage are have been, you know, read, bought, sold hundreds of thousands of people. And in 2019, he began a partnership with Tony Robbins and they started mastermind.com. And they have a, a, a program called the KBB the knowledge business blueprint, and they’ve helped over 50,000 people in this business. And the expert space understand how to better monetize what they’re doing, get their, their passion out to more people extend their reach. And so anyways, when I met Dean, I said, yeah, man, you know, we’re not gonna, we’re not gonna be one of your top affiliates probably, but the way that you have ENCA interacted over the last couple days, I would love to be a part of introducing you formally to our, our community who we hold sacred and dear. So with that, welcome to the stage, the one and only Dean Graziosi.
DG (02:39):
Sorry. Thank you, man. That, that was a great introduction. I’m on vacation for just five days of my family and just happened to what a perfect spot it’s like. It’s great. They got the flag out front. But it, this was important. I come on with you, man. It, it was a pleasure to meet you. I saw what you stepped up and did for ed. He he’s a dear friend of mine and, and you did nothing but serve and help him get that great book in a lot of people’s hands. And I, I just wanted to do my part for everybody else. Listen, I know you got lots of options. Glad you’re here with us today. I promise that we’re gonna deliver some massive value today in the next 25 or 30 minutes. I, I know people have choices. So when you’re here, I always feel like I’m, I’m on like I’m performing.
DG (03:14):
Like I, I gotta bring it because you got lots of other options. So, and I know how much the depth of how Rory cares. We got the chance to know each other a little better. So pleasure to be here. And this is the perfect audience. This, you just explained who this is and what you do. And it’s so amazing when we have that desired dream passion, or sometimes it’s not even a dream. You just so, oh my God, I could be in an industry of sharing. What I know help serve others, help people get faster to the end result, help people avoid the mistakes I made or go quicker to where they wanna be or a million other things. When you get that under your skin, that we can truly, and this is the, this is easy for me to talk to this audience when we truly can make an impact and serve while simultaneously having the ability to create massive success in an industry that’s exponentially growing.
DG (04:04):
That is a real, real a rare combo. There’s not many places where you can impact and serve and create a thriving business. That’s why I’m, I love it. That’s why I think you probably love it. And today I wanna help deliver whatever I can to help you go faster, quicker, because this is a time the world needs the best version of you. We know we have 41 year high inflation. We know we’re headed towards a recession. We know we’re in an economic winter. We know that some people are, a lot of people are gonna hurt through this time, but we also know this industry is gonna grow through this. This industry is gonna be there to serve and help people. So I believe right now is a time we have to find another gear. We have to tap into our full potential. We can’t leave anything on the table. God, the universe, people, the world, whatever you believe need us, need the best version of us. Now, our family need the best version version of us now. And this is one of those rare things that if you do it right, and as you know, if you’re in this, this is a time you’ll actually grow. So anything I can do to help serve any of those topics I’m here.
RV (05:05):
Yeah. So here’s, here’s a, here’s one that I’ve always, I’ve always wanted to, to ask you about for our audience. So we, we refer to our audience Dean as mission driven messengers. So they are people who truly care about the mission more than the money, but sometimes it’s to their own detriment. Sometimes they struggle to sell because they feel like it’s pushy. Sometimes they’re shy about marketing cuz they feel like it’s vain. Sometimes they feel like if I’m asking people for money, you, you know that like somehow it’s, it’s very selfish. And I think one of the things that you do really well is you are, you are super service minded in terms of trying to help people, but you’re also very bold and straightforward in terms of like being convicted in why people should take a next step. Yeah. So if someone is wrestling, how do you wrestle with that? Like how do you reconcile that? Like
DG (06:00):
Really great, really great question. I’ve been helping people with that. If you don’t mind. I, I I’d love to jump right in here because sales, because we grew up with watching cheesy sales people on TV and, and somebody might have been sold something that didn’t serve you. So many people have this negative association with sales mm-hmm . But the fact of the matter is if you don’t fall in love with marketing and sales, anything you’re thinking of doing is gonna be just a dream sales and marketing is the oxygen for every successful business on this planet. Do you think mother Teresa was a saleswoman? Of course she was. She’d go into a city and they’d say no protests here within three hours. She’d have the mayor, the governor and everybody else on her back supporting her saying, let’s do whatever this woman wants. You think Martin Luther king was a salesman.
DG (06:42):
Do you think there was other men who wanted to help civil rights and change the world because it was unjust. Do you think there was a lot of people that wanted he did because he was influential and a salesperson and marketed himself. And look at the change that man made to the world, right? Our association to sales is the reason that we might feel icky about it. If you don’t love what you do, if you’re selling an inferior product, if you’ve dabbled and created a half, half baked coaching program, then you should feel bad. But I’m gonna tell you the first thing to do love what you do so much. You feel bad if people don’t use it just simple as that. Mm-Hmm you creating a course, a workshop, a mastermind, a a weekend zoom call a weekend retreat at a hotel. Love it so much that you know, if people don’t utilize it, you’re doing them a disservice.
DG (07:28):
I’m gonna give you a quick little story here. I think it, it really, cuz I’ve been asked this question a lot over the last 25 years of doing this. And I was on stage with five. It was three or four or 5,000 business. Women and women sometimes feel this more than men when it comes to marketing and sales. And I said, who’s ready for, you know, I was in my middle, my presentation say who’s ready for another level. Who wants this? Who wants that? Ever. They were fired up amazing audience. And I said, who’s a little apprehensive or scared or don’t let, doesn’t like selling almost all of their hands went up. Mm. So there’s a woman in front couple rows in, I called on her. I said, Hey, what do you, what do you do? She’s like, oh my God, I help women through trimester four.
DG (08:06):
Nobody knows what that is. That is after the baby, you feel insane. You still look like you’re pregnant. You feel like your life isn’t yours anymore. Cause you got this baby and you don’t know if your husband loves you anymore. And it’s this crazy time emotionally. She goes, I went through hell. But then I found a way to get myself strong and save. And she goes, now I help women go through that. And I, I have gooses cause she’s so passionate about it. Or she was like, so passionate. I said, are you good? She goes, oh my God. I love these women. I empower them. I change ’em and she tells me this. I said, I wanted to break her state. I said, then why are you screwing women over? And she’s like, well, I don’t understand. I said, you said you don’t like sales and marketing and her mannerism.
DG (08:44):
She went, no, I feel bad. I said, so then you’re willing to let women suffer in silence because you have the ability to help them. Can you help them? Oh my God, are you good at I’m the best? Do you love the women? You help more than anything. I was put on this earth to serve these women. I said, here’s the thing. If you build it, they will not come. I don’t care how great you are, how much you love these women. It will not come unless you find a way to attach service to marketing. When you realize every time a woman says yes and cut you a check, you get to impact her lives, her life in an amazing way. And if you don’t only two things can happen. That woman suffers in silence and never gets help. Or she goes to someone who’s not as good as you, but they’re better at marketing.
RV (09:26):
Mm.
DG (09:27):
And I watched three, four, I, I think it was 4,000 women. I watched, I watched cheers and no one had ever given him permission to look at it that way. And I know you, maybe you have, or you thought, but really, maybe, maybe today’s the first time you really heard it. That if you don’t sell, you don’t serve. So you could keep working on your, if it’s comfortable to work on your curriculum, if it’s comfortable to design the logo, you’re probably, if you’re not making the money you want or the impact you want, you’re probably working on the things that make you feel comfortable. And you’re avoiding the things that, ah, I don’t know about the marketing. I’ll get back to it. I’m gonna encourage you today to lean into the parts that are, you’re a little uncomfortable with gain capabilities, fall in love with what you do on a whole nother level. Cause when you fall in love with your product, then gets what the byproduct is. You fall in love with gaining capabilities about marketing and sales from those who’ve already been there. And when that combo comes together, oh my God. It’s magic.
RV (10:25):
Oh, that’s so good. I mean, and, and, and also true, you know, like a lot of the people who are winning in this space today, they’re not necessarily the best or the smartest, but they’re, they are great at marketing. Like it is a marketing game. So here’s another thing I’ve always wanted to ask you. Ads. So ads is another thing that people are afraid to do. Like, oh, it feels cheesy. It feels maybe like I’m cheating or I’m scared of losing money or it’s like, how do I, you know, spend money, not knowing if I’m gonna make that money back or going well, is it, it’s not the same. It’s more competitive yet. I’ve seen, you know, you run ads, you’ve done info initials. Like you’ve done so many things of like, I’m gonna make sure I get myself out to the world. So can you just like, if someone’s reluctance about spending money on advertising, what’s your, what’s the Dean Graziosi? Like what goes on in your head to be like, yeah, I’m gonna dump a bunch of money into this. Not knowing if it’s gonna come back to you.
DG (11:26):
Yeah. So because we’re stuck in a frame of what traditional advertising is. So I really want you to hear this traditional say, brand advertising, say, you’re advertising Coca-Cola you might have somebody drinking a Coke while they’re playing basketball or on stage, or you might have a Coke and a movie, or you might have a billboard or a radio ad or a TV ad. But none of it equates to the exact sale, right? That’s more of brand advertising. I wanna get my brand out there. And I want everybody to know about me, right? What we do in direct response, marketing and advertising is you measure every dollar. If I spend a dollar on Facebook, does 75 cents come back or a dollar 25 come back. So first and foremost know that there’s never gonna be a time right now. We’re Tony Robbins and I are getting ready to do a challenge here.
DG (12:18):
We’re gonna spend a lot of money on promoting this free five day challenge, but we know our metrics. We know every time we spend a dollar, how much we need to come back in order to make it so we can be sustainable and not go broke. Right? So let me just back up a little bit. First thing is we are in an absolute when I first started, there was no internet. How crazy is that? There was no social media. We couldn’t target a demographic. We, I had to do an infomercial. There was no other way to get into people’s homes and see if they, they wanted what it was that I was delivering. But you have the opportunity with social media, where you can go to Facebook groups that are similar to your genre. You could start a Facebook group where you’re given all away, nothing but value.
DG (13:03):
You could post on Instagram and Facebook and YouTube and LinkedIn, and you can test different topics. So let me give you a little example, getting ready. I’m gonna pull back the curtain. We’re going, we’re doing this challenge. It’s called the time to thrive challenge. Over five days, we’re gonna help people in this space, how to go faster, quicker, how to be bolder, how to have more capabilities, how to thrive. Day three is all about selling. Day four is all about building an audience. Day two is about identifying exactly what you be sh should be selling. It’s five days. It is unbelievable. It’s free, but we still gotta get people to come. And what we wanna deliver so much value that people continue to work with us. That’s in complete transparency, right? Sure. But I wanna tell you, you know what I did last month, I was filming different one minute videos that I was posting on social.
DG (13:48):
Whether you have five followers, 500, 5,005 million, I was posting different content. And I found a couple of things. I did a one minute video and I said, Hey, during a recession, during inflation Warren buffet said, there’s two things you should do. Number one, invest in yourself, get better at what you’re doing, become the person that people go to. So you’ll get a bigger piece of the pie. Number two, be a part of an industry that has higher margins. Don’t get caught with supply chain issues or your product costs going through the roof. And then your margins are gone. I shared that in a video. And I said, why not consider the self education industry where you’re teaching your life experience? The margins are huge. You don’t have to store it. You don’t have to warehouse it. You don’t have to ship it. You could sell it over and over again.
DG (14:33):
And you really get to impact people’s lives while you make money. I did that all in one minute, that video skyrocketed people were sharing it all over the place. Roy. So then I had an unfair advantage when I was gonna run an ad. What do you think? One of my topics were when I ran an ad, I was like, oh, that video, everybody loved and liked and commented on. Let me shoot an ad like that. And then let’s spend 500 bucks on it and see if 500 bucks if 200 come back or 600 come back. Right. So just know it’s, it’s the art of Kaizen. It’s one step at a time. Don’t, you know, where people get in trouble is like, I gotta, I gotta market. I gotta do some ads. And they put a whole bunch of money in ads without testing it without tweaking it, without understanding the fundamentals and they could lose money, then they get stung. And then like, I’m never doing that again. It’s only cuz you didn’t have the right guidance. You didn’t have somebody step you into this one piece at a time.
RV (15:21):
Yeah. Yeah. And I want, I wanna talk a little bit more about that in a, in a, in a second here. I know I don’t wanna get too much in the weeds on this, but just a straightforward question. Do you ex do you expect to break even on your ad spend like on the first sale or is it more, do you have a longer lifespan of going ah, some of it I might make back over the second, third, fourth sale.
DG (15:41):
Yeah. So some of it that’s when you first start. So, so write if you’re gonna write anything down today, when it comes to ads, write this down, you know, who wins it at ads? Do you know where
RV (15:53):
The, the, the, the, the person who has the best metrics
DG (15:56):
Or the person who could spend the most?
RV (15:58):
Oh yeah.
DG (16:00):
The person who could spend the most to an acquire a lead wins. Yeah. So if you’re brand new and you’re selling, you know, a weekend, you’re selling your course and your course sells for 500 bucks and it’s costing you $200 to acquire that client. Oh my God, when you do it all day, you spend two, you give somebody a $200 bill. They give you back a $500. Bill spend as much as you can and you’ll get some of those sales, but then you’ll get to where it’s costing you $400 for a $500 sale. And then you’re getting to a point where it’s $500 for a $500 sale. And then most people go, this does this ad game doesn’t work. But when you look at serving people where they need it, sometimes you sell a course. And of course is enough for I sell a book.
DG (16:41):
Sometimes my books are enough for somebody to, I, we have thousands of testimonials just from my book. Then some people go books, not enough. I need Tony and Dean’s course, man, that, that project next, which is, I believe the greatest personal, you know, self education course ever created like that course, oh my God is amazing. And some people say, got the book amazing, got the course, but I need someone to keep me accountable. I need a coach or a mentor. I need to be on a call once a week to get these answers. These questions answered. It’s like the professor at a college, some kids could do it with the books. Some people need the professor, right? And some kids need extra tutoring. So if you have the books and the, and the teacher and the extra tutoring, some people are gonna self-select and say, Hey, I bought your course for 500 bucks.
DG (17:26):
Amazing. But do you have a coach that can help me through it? We do. And it’s X amount. So it’s, I know you guys get this. It’s about lifetime value. It’s not about trying to sell somebody so much stuff. They don’t need. It’s about delivering what they need. Some people need a coach. Some people need their hands held. Some people need to be held accountable, right? So when you have additional products, some people, maybe 80% of the people just need your course, thumbs up 20% might want a weekly coaching call or a deep dive. One on one coaching call. That’s more money. So, which means is your average lifetime value of your client over six months over a year for that $500 buyer could actually be a thousand dollars. Now I’m not getting in the weeds, but really think about that over time. Oh yeah. I want that coaching. Oh yeah. I definitely need that too. And all of a sudden, now that $500 buyer is worth a thousand. So you can go in and spend $700 to acquire a $500 client and you’re still winning and you’ll win in the ad game. Cuz most people can’t afford it.
RV (18:27):
Yeah. I love that. Parallel of some people can do it with a book, a textbook. Some people can do it by going to class. Other people need the tutor. Like, yeah. It’s just, it’s just the same.
DG (18:39):
Would you say, would you say, oh my God, that too, like that is horrible that
RV (18:43):
You’re taking, you’re taking advantage of people because you sold them tutoring.
DG (18:47):
Yeah. Because they’re struggling. You know, I I’ll give you an example. I’ll share this. We call it a value ladder. Right? So I wanna give you this. My daughter was in ninth grade last year. She pitched for her softball team JV. She pitched 13 outta 15 games start to finish.
RV (19:01):
Wow.
DG (19:01):
So proud as a father, right. Won about 75% of her games. And I think she’s gonna be I think she’ll be, if she sticks with it, she’ll be a superstar by the time she’s in 12th grade. If she decides I’m not the forceful type, but I wanna share something with you when she was younger, she watched YouTube videos on how to be better at softball. Right. And then there was a time she bought a $97 course on how to be better. And then we found the guy and he was doing pitching camps where like these little treat they’d spend an hour and it was 40 bucks to pop. It was $40 a pop. And she could go with like six other girls, right? So one was free. One was like 97 bucks. And now it’s 40 bucks. She was going once a or once or twice a week.
DG (19:49):
So let’s just say 80 160 say it was 250 bucks a month. And she was going to this clinic and all of a sudden she’s like getting serious. And the coach said she probably needs one on one she’s excelling. Now that went to 200 bucks, times four, it went to a thousand bucks a month for one on one. And he’s been teaching her a thousand bucks a month, one on one now for two and a half years. Right. It’s the difference where she’s at. You think I’m gonna say, how dare that coach offer us one on one to help my daughter. I feel blessed that I can I’m. So I feel blessed that I could afford it. Whereas some people can’t and if we couldn’t, I’d say work your tail off with that free video, hun, I feel blessed that I could afford it, but there’s somebody else out there in your niche right now?
DG (20:37):
That’s saying, I don’t just want the course. I want, I don’t just want the free YouTube video. I don’t want the $97 course. I don’t wanna work with seven other people. I wanna work one on one or maybe I do wanna work with other people. So when you offer those varieties as a value ladder, each one of those is value to my daughter. Each thing that you share will be value to someone else. But when you get done that client could be worth, you know, $480 a month on average between all of them. And you could spend $300 to acquire that client,
RV (21:06):
If you do, and what, what, what athlete do we go? Oh, you know, they got taken advantage of because they had the private coach. It’s the opposite. We go, they had an advantage because they had the best coaching in the world.
DG (21:18):
Absolutely. So, so when you shift your mindset is that you can be that person for someone else that holds them accountable. So they don’t fail this time. I mean, the, the worst thing I think about is somebody who’s bought 10 courses in their life and they never got the results they want. They need someone to go, Hey, stop buying courses. You need a darn coach that keeps you accountable.
RV (21:37):
Right? Yeah. Get in, get in there. I mean, it’s like those are, those are such, such great parallels. So and I wanna go ahead and throw this out, right? So if, if you go to thrive three fifty.com, the we’ve got some partnerships, there’s some free training, depending on when you go, the sooner you go, the more free training that’s gonna be available to you. So when you, if you’re hearing this, if you go to thrive three fifty.com, Dean and Tony have put together these free trainings and the sooner you get there, the more likely you’re gonna catch the catch, the free training. But it’s also like, it’s interesting to hear like, oh, Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi have to advertise. They have to go on podcast. They have to get the word out there. Like, of course you do. So I wanna mention that URL it’s thrive. And then the number three 50 thrive, three fifty.com.
DG (22:27):
Yeah. Let me, let me tell you, let me tell you if, if you’re watching right now and if anything I shared today is intriguing to you, then you need to go register and go see what we’re doing. The, the live portion it’s five days, it starts August 2nd. It’s gonna be probably two hours a day. It’s Tony, myself. It’s Jenna Kucher. If you know who Jenna is and Russell Brunson. Oh,
RV (22:45):
We know we know who Jenna Kucher is. Yep. For sure.
DG (22:47):
And, and Russell Brunson and Brendan Burchard and Lisa Nichols. And we even got Matthew McConaughy coming, cuz I loved his book, green lights. And you know, he really went into the self education industry with that and he wants to do more. In fact, we might be doing something special with him, but what we’re gonna do over five days is really pull back the curtain on how to really narrow down what you should be teaching who you should be teaching it to. Right. And I mean, day one, just with Tony, Robbin’s gonna blow your mind. You it’ll get you in a space, especially during, you know, recession during all this craziness out there, you need to get laser focused in here. And I don’t believe there’s anybody better on the planet that can do that than Tony. But over those five days, we’ll, we’ll narrow in that niche show you how to ethically market through service, how to build the following.
DG (23:26):
Even if you’re following is small or next to nothing and then how to tie it all together and how to launch your next sale. It’s either your first or your next sale, right? The whole goal of the five days is get your first sale, your next sale, inconsistent sales. That’s what makes this a real business where we impact others and and create success for ourselves. But it’s gonna be something really special. And it’s only happening once and it’s live. The two things I would share with you Zig Ziegler said if, if you don’t pay, you don’t pay attention. Really? Remember that in your business, think about the things you got for free and think about the things you worked hard for. If you worked hard for your first car, you cleaned it, you polished it. And we also know that we’ve bought children or friends that bought children in their first car.
DG (24:07):
They didn’t pay for it. And they wrecked it in a weekend. It was, it was so nasty on the inside, right? Cause they didn’t earn it. They didn’t have to pay for it. Right. I wanna tell you just because this is free, you need to value it as if it was 5,000 bucks. It’s Tony Robbins. I mean, he’s got a waiting list of people wanna give him a million dollars a year to be his coach, right? It I’ve been blessed. I get paid 250 grand a day for consulting just had one a month ago. I’m not saying that to brag. I’m saying, convince yourself, you paid five grand or a thousand bucks show up and play full out. And what I’d also do is take that 5, 3, 5, zero.com and send it to someone right now who needs it and have, ’em be your accountability partner, go through it with them, have them show up with you, go send ’em to strive three fifty.com. And yeah, it’s gonna be a fun. It’s gonna be a fun five days. It’s a lot of work and it’s worth it.
RV (24:54):
So before I let you go and, and, and check this out and like I said, I, you know, getting to meet Dean face to face in person was a, was a whole different experience and like, see, seeing your heart here. And, and this is, is really encouraging. So, so go there. One other thing that I wanna just like get into your mind a little bit before we let you run off, is your mindset about money, right? So this is another thing, sales, advertising, also money. You know, there’s big talks of recessions coming, obviously, you know, inflation, like there’s a what are you, what are some of the, or like, what’s one thing related to the mindset about money that a a mission driven messenger. I mean, that’s what our audience just, they all have that in common, which is also another thing where it’s like, ah, like making money sometimes feel like evil or like, you know, I, I have to take advantage of somebody
DG (25:47):
Money. Say, I’ll say, I’ll jump in here. Cause I’ve asked, I’ve had that question asked a lot and I love answering it. When people say money, doesn’t buy happiness. I say you haven’t given enough away yet. Mm, simple as that. Yeah. I haven’t given enough away yet. And, and I don’t say that to be disrespectful, but you know Richard Branson, I was blessed enough cuz I raised money for his foundation. It wasn’t, we were best friends and not wasn’t cuz I was super cool. But the billionaire of Richard Branson, I got the chance to spend a week with him on his private island in in the Caribbean Neer island. And I didn’t even know if I was gonna see him. I just knew I was going the same time he was there and him and I both got up at 5:00 AM one morning.
DG (26:25):
He said, Hey, you’re up early. You wanna sail? I’m like thumbs up. Right? And I got in a boat with him and I, and I had some of those thoughts, not a lot, but he said, Hey, I believe God gave us all unique abilities. And I believe some people, God bless their souls. They go to the soup kitchen or they go and they volunteer their time. And what would we do without those amazing humans? He said, but I believe all of us have different capabilities. I found it later on in my life that I had the ability to make money. And that was my purpose because I could cut checks to solve problems. He said, some people need to go work. There he goes, I might be able to do a campaign and walk in and hand that soup kitchen, a hundred thousand dollars gift.
DG (27:03):
And when I realized that I just wanna get better at me. And if I do the right things with the money, then I get to utilize my gift. He goes, favor, started coming my way in the biggest way possible. And that shifted for me too. You know, listen, when I was a kid, I would’ve, I dreamed, I used to dream that someday I could make a thousand bucks a week, 50 grand a year. Oh my God, that would’ve been that would’ve been like when I was in high school, I didn’t come for money. I literally lived in a trailer park with my dad. My mom worked three jobs to make nothing. And I remember, man, if I can make a thousand bucks a week, life will be good, 50 grand a year just because it was in my heart. When I was on ed stage, you know what it felt like that I said, Hey, you know, today, while I’m here last minute, I’m gonna donate $50,000 to the family.
DG (27:46):
Nothing lights me up more than that. And last year we passed eight mil, I think 8 million meals, seven and a half million meals through feeding America. We built two churches in Africa. I donated $600,000 to operation underground railroad to help children in slavery, man, what could be better than that? While simultaneously my business actually helps empower people to go faster, quicker, better to their own dreams. And we get to employ people and I get to make sure my family’s okay. So just like selling, I think you gotta find a way to shift what money means to you, make it and give it all away, make it and help change the world, make it and help your church. Do what serves you. But I just don’t think we’re put on this earth. I don’t think any creator would put us on this earth to play small. That’s just my belief.
RV (28:30):
Hmm. Yeah. What well in just fascinating to just get those perspectives and to see you know, that you’re, if you don’t have that belief, then the conviction to, to tell people about what you’re doing is gonna not, is not gonna be there. And, and, and, and people aren’t gonna feel the energy and they’re not gonna buy. And so getting, getting these mindsets right is so huge. And so that’s why I go to thrive three 50, you thrive three fifty.com. You can check this out. I mean, look, Tony and Dean are reaching millions and millions of people, like regardless of what you might know or not know, you go, you guys are reaching millions of people and you’re showing people how to do that. So like that is just really cool. And you’ve been so generous Dean with your time here, like so many great, great parallels. And just thank you for that conviction Dean. And, and, and thank you for this. I think this is, this is a leveling up my thinking and you know, to, to go, man, I wanna stand on stage and just go here’s $50,000 or a hundred thousand dollars, what an amazing way to to, to, to, to provide blessing the world. So thanks for being here, brother. And we just, we wish you the best.
DG (29:47):
Well, thanks man. Appreciate everybody spending time with us and we’ll see you on August 2nd.