Ep 310: The Fastest Way to Become a Paid Professional Speaker with Kindra Hall
RV (00:02):
Kindra hall is one of our dear real life friends, and she is a delight and she is one of the best female speakers in the world. One of the, the highest grossing, you know, highest revenue, grossing, keynote speakers, that’s out there. And Kindra and AJ and I like we’ve, we’ve known each other for years at this point. And it’s been really great to see how fast Kindra has launched her career. Specifically as a speaker. I, I remember meeting her earlier in her career where she’s like early on in her journey. She’s like, I’m gonna speak everywhere. And then it was like, within a matter of a couple years, she really freaking was everywhere.
KH (01:11):
Thank you for having me Rory so glad to be here,
RV (01:14):
Buddy. You are awesome. And I, I really mean that, you know, like we, of all the people who come up, you know, to me, and, and say, I wanna be a speaker, like of the people who have actually built like a really true, you know, career. I think you’re probably the fastest that I’ve ever seen that happen to where it was like, I have a dream to speak to. I mean, you and I are gonna be sharing the stage at MDRT together here in, at, in Sydney, Australia in a few months. That’s, you know, a lot of people say, that’s, that’s the biggest, one of the biggest stages in the world. So how did you do that?
KH (01:52):
Now I’m not to make me nervous. All of a sudden I’m like, wait, that’s a big stage. I didn’t think left that part out.
RV (01:58):
It’s a big, old deal. You should be totally nervous. You should be freaking out. It’s a big, it’s a big deal.
KH (02:04):
My, my heart rate just, just went up significantly. I’m starting to sweat a thing. You can’t smell me through here. You know, I, it, how did I do that? It’s a good question. I think I really was someone who I would see and I saw you speak for the very first time. Gosh, it would’ve been in like 2006 when 2007,
RV (02:26):
Was it that DSA convict with direct selling association? Yeah, that wasn’t, I had a, I had like a eight minute part of a showcase. Yeah. And you were, you were there
KH (02:36):
RV (03:04):
The pieces together. You’re like, okay, if they’re paying this guy to do it, then I think there’s a career for me.
KH (03:09):
Like, that was terrible. No, I’m just kidding. I’m kidding. But, but you know, you don’t really know what is possible until you see it. And I kind of put together that I, I had a topic or a thing that I was, that I knew a lot about that actually came later that I realized that that was important. I knew that I could be on stage. I’d been on the speech team as a kid through high school and college. And then it was kind of a whim. I got this whim, I wrote a little mini article in success, magazine. It like, like, it was a little insert, like a little paragraph and somebody saw it, you know how sometimes these things just happen. Somebody saw it and called like found me and said, will you be your keynote? Will you be one of our keynote speakers?
KH (04:00):
What do you charge? And I had no idea. I didn’t know what to do. I remember I gave a 90 minute presentation, no slides. I like it was the first time I put a message together in that way. And it wasn’t great looking back, but it was enough for me to go back to my hotel room. I’ll never forget it was in Las Vegas, but like not on the strip, like that one, that’s like south of the strip
RV (04:54):
Mm-Hmm
KH (05:38):
But that, I think that was more for me that was more a fluke. So I would say that at the be now, yes, people hire me because they’ve read my book. They’ve seen me on Instagram. They saw me at another event, someone they work with saw me at an event. So now it’s definitely word of mouth. Of course, I work with some incredible bureaus, so my agents are great. They’re, they’re great. They represent me well to their clients, but at the beginning, that one little article I feel like was a, a fluke. It was that obsession that hit me that day after I finished. And what happened next? And if I’ll share it with you,
RV (06:19):
Tell me, yeah, we wanna know, I wanna hear the, the
KH (06:22):
Actual story. This is the very specific thing that I did. So there was another guy at that conference who said, oh yeah, I speak all the time. He was being like, he was definitely bragging about it. And I was like, he knows something. I don’t like, how do I, so I offered the next day to buy him a coffee. And we sat down in the Vegas, whatever coffee shop. And he was like, well, you know, you just gotta reach out to people and see if they need a speaker. And I was like, but, but who, who do I reach out to? And he’s like, I don’t know, convention and visitors bureaus. And I was like, okay, I have a start. So I went home and I set a goal to reach out to 100 organizations or events a week for six weeks. Wow. Which would equal 600. And I started with convention and visitors bureaus. Now I will say, I never heard back from a CVB. Nobody ever that
RV (07:11):
Is not, I’ve never booked one of them. That was, I don’t think that was good advice. I, I was gonna
KH (07:16):
Say, no, it wasn’t, but it got me started because I would sit down at my computer and here’s what I had. I had a a really cheesy little demo video of me that was mostly words swooping in that my brother actually made that said fresh voice, stor new, new strategy storytelling. And then like this, a little clip of me talking at a sales event for a company that I was employed by, like I worked for. So, and then I had done, I did like little vlogs for YouTube. And so I cut in like me talking just so they could hear my voice, see what I looked like on stage. It was so low budget. I, but I had nothing else. And then I created a one sheet PDF or whatever, and I sat down and I Googled women’s events. And then I would enter ’em into a spreadsheet and I’d look up like, who is the contact?
KH (08:08):
Who is the whatever. And I would look up like, who else needs my message entrepreneur events. So I Googled entrepreneur events. I Googled. And a big thing for me was Amer the, I found the American marketing association and they have chapters in every city. And so I started, so I found the one in Minneapolis and they, so I made this list. And then at the end of the week after I had a hundred, I would send an email and say, this is how I can basically how I can serve your audience, because it’s not like they have a problem. So I’m trying to tell them that I know you have this problem and I can solve this problem. I included the link to the video. I attached a PDF and I sent it. And the majority of people didn’t write me back, but I remember the American marketing marketing association in Minneapolis did, and they said, will you come speak?
KH (09:01):
And I said, yes. And then I thought, well, wait, if there’s a Minneapolis chapter, maybe there’s a Nashville chapter. Maybe there’s a Dallas chapter. And so I then had 50 chapters that I could reach out to. And that’s how it started. So it wasn’t, I mean, it was brute force at the beginning. And I did, I reached out to 600 events. I heard back from probably 50, but it was enough to get me in front of people and, and make no mistake. The events that I was writing for the most part I got paid with, like, here’s a Chi, you can have the remaining chicken taco at the end bar
RV (09:39):
Buffet line.
KH (09:41):
RV (10:31):
Mm-Hmm
KH (10:33):
Was a long story.
RV (10:34):
No, it’s a, I mean, yeah, it’s a great story, but that is it. I mean, it’s like every association, every company has events. They need speakers and you, you call ’em and you ask ’em are you email? And you ask ’em, do you have speakers? And they say, send me your topic and send me your demo video. Like, and that’s how, how it starts. N now you’ve always been great at telling a story. You’ve always been fascinated at a story, your, your, I mean, this is a huge part of what you, you do. You know, your first book, which we also, I think really kind of became friends when you were launching stories that stick, cuz it was like, Hey, how do I hit the best seller list and all that stuff. Yeah. Which was awesome if I remember, I think it hit number two on the wall street journal.
RV (11:18):
Yeah. Like was legit was your great storyteller and a huge part of speaking is being a great storyteller. So what are some of the things, you know, I’m thinking more of stories that stick what are some of the elements that you need to tell? Great stories. And, and let’s say specifically from stage now, it, it might not be, you’re a keynote speaker in front of yeah. An arena of people. It might be a webinar or a podcast interview or an Instagram or a YouTube live or whatever, but like what are some of the kind of mistakes you see experts making when they’re telling stories?
KH (11:56):
Well, the first mistake is not telling any stories because the stories are the thing that people remember. Like I remember from early two thousands, your story about the stairs and I can still see you on the stage telling that story. And it’s, it’s been, oh my gosh, is that almost 20 years? I don’t wanna say that out like that. That’s embarrassing.
KH (12:47):
The second mistake that people make is it’s they choose the story because it’s a story they want to tell. Maybe because it’s funnier, it’s emotional or it makes people cry or it’s about their dog and they really love their dog. And they aren’t, it’s not exactly clear to the audience why that story for this message. And so I would say it’s, you know, it’s really important to make sure that when you are telling stories in any kind of presentation, whether it’s a, a keynote or a pitch that it’s a really clear to the audience, why you’re telling this story to illustrate whatever message it is that you want them to walk away with. And then I think the third thing is, well, there’s so many but I think one of the great, maybe not the mistake, but I think one of the great opportunities stories afford us is the opportunity to just be ourself, to not have to be the expert when you’re up there. Like you’re, you are just telling the story of, of how like something that happened to you or, or a lesson that you learned or an experience that you had. And, and it’s such a perfect opportunity to be human versus here is the salesperson standing in front of the room or here’s the expert that I’m supposed to listen to. So to choose stories that, you know, to recognize that like really cool thing, that story allows us to do and then to choose stories, to tell that that make that even more possible.
RV (14:28):
Yeah. And I that’s so true. This story is so humanizing. It’s like such a way to connect with people also a way to entertain. Like it it’s naturally entertaining and, and provocative, like if you were gonna write a new story. Okay. So let’s say you were gonna give a new speech. What do you think about in your mind? Like, what’s the thought, press you go through where you go, how do I select the story? I’m gonna tell, so maybe you go, okay, I’m talking to this group, I wanna make this point. And then from there you go, I should do a story or like walk us through the sort of thought process that goes on in Kindra’s head, where you go. Here’s how I select the story. Here’s kind of the high, the high level parts and how I sort of like outline it and then, you know, just like take us through that.
KH (15:18):
Yeah. Yeah. So I think I always start with the, well, some sometimes it, it, it can come in one of two ways sometimes. I stumble upon a story and I’m like, oh my gosh. Like and when I say stumble upon a story, either something happens to me or I remember something that happened years ago and I think, oh, wow, this illustrate, like this is a great story. This illustrates a point that I often try to make. For example, in stories that stick, the opening story is about buying a bottle of cologne on a trip in Slovenia. And I specifically, and the salesman told a story and he did such a great job of it. And I specifically remember standing in that situation, thinking to myself, this is a story. This is a story story is happening to me right here. Right now.
KH (16:16):
I need to remember this. So sometimes it’s the story first. And sometimes it is, which then gets engineered into a message is sometimes it’s the message first it’s, this is the message that I want them to walk away with. This is what I want my audience to think, feel know, or do, what story do I have or what story is there that illustrates this objective that I have. And that’s where it can be. It can be really, it can be really surprising like, oh, wait, there was I, and this isn’t a new story, but this is a story I tell this story about using a story in physics class. Like you wouldn’t think as a, as a, you know, as you said, a well paid keynote speaker that I would open keynotes with a story about a paper from physics class in 12th grade, but it illustrates the message I want to deliver. So very clearly that it ends up being the right story to tell.
RV (17:16):
Okay. So you can either start with the story and engineer the message, or you can identify the message and then sort of reverse engineer it back into the story that you want to tell.
KH (17:28):
Yeah. And I think that the most frustrating thing about the process, and I can say this honestly, like, I, I don’t want people to think that it’s like, oh, so easy. Is that often when you have a message it is really, really hard to find the story that goes with it. Like you can be like where you can sit there and say, what’s a, I have, what’s a story I have and one won’t be there. So I’ve gotten a lot better at saying, I have this message I want to deliver. And then allowing space in my own brain for the right story to come along. Now, it does require heightened awareness on my part. Like, do I witness something a different way? Do I recall something a different way, but, or sometimes you find the story you’re like, oh my gosh, this is such a great story. I have no idea where to use this story.
RV (18:18):
Do you keep a list or anything like, do you like, I, I have like,
KH (18:22):
And again, this is where I wish, I mean, in a perfect world, I would’ve created an app for myself and then I would sell it to all of you, but I have, I text story ideas to myself. I have multiple notebooks and scraps of paper and napkins. With story ideas. I, I put ’em in my notes. I email them to myself. So they’re kind of all over the place. I need to get better about that, but that’s
RV (18:47):
Also, but you do capture it, you at least document it and, and attempt to store it somewhere.
KH (18:53):
Yeah.
RV (18:53):
So what is the difference between telling a story and telling something that happened? And, and is there a difference? Cause I think a lot of people go, I, I’m not a good storyteller, you know, but like they tell friends like, oh, Hey, this is what happened, but then it’s, it’s not very compelling. It’s not very engaging. It’s just really flat or it’s like, oh, okay, well, like what was, what was the point of that? How do you make it engaging?
KH (19:22):
I think that’s kind of the, so if you think about telling something that happened the way I see it is, it’s kind of like a, like a flat line. Like you’re just not like dead, like flat line, but you’re just going along the things kind of in chronological order. Which isn’t necessarily, that can be a place to start with a story, but what a story needs is to kind of take that flat line and to bring the two ends together and then make it a 3d, like a sphere. So that there’s, there’s more intention to it. It’s not just this and this and this happened, it’s these things all happened. And this is, this is what it means in the world. So how that happens is, well, I have a three part, you know, a story has a beginning, a middle and an end, but as we’re thinking about stories to think about it in a way of, at first you’re establishing like this world of what was like, what, how you knew the world, what was happening basically setting the scene in what I call the normal.
KH (20:23):
And then the middle part of the story is the action point is the decision that was made. And the interesting thing is, as you’re creating a story versus telling somebody what happened, like this happened, that, you know, I come home from a flight, I say to my husband, we got delayed. And then we, there was a maintenance issue. So we turned back around and then we took off, but there was weather. So, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And now I’m back home. Whereas with the story there would be, it would be like you build it up in the normal so that the audience is thinking something’s about to happen. Something’s about to happen. Something’s about to happen. And that explosion is the thing that happens. And they’re like, oh yes, that’s what it was. And then the new normal is what you learned as a result.
KH (21:05):
What happened as a result? Now that’s the basic framework, but what, and in stories that stick, we talk about this, this is what the research is that a story really has. Then also four key components. It needs a character, an identifiable character it needs authentic emotion. It needs like a specific moment in the story that people can like be drawn into and really visually see it. So that they’re, you know, sitting right next to you on the stairs is in take the stairs case and then specific details. Because again, it’s the specific details that will have the lasting effect cognitively for people to remember that story. Interesting. Did that help? It’s a little mad
RV (21:46):
Scientist. Sorry. Yeah, totally. Sorry. Well I think it, it’s just, I think a lot of it is realizing that there’s a difference between telling a story and telling what happened and going a story is something you have to craft. Like it’s, it’s
KH (22:01):
Tension behind it, intention
RV (22:02):
And energy. And you know, so, and I like stories that stick. That’s really what that is about. So your, your newer book choose your story, change your life is interesting because that’s more about the stories that we tell ourselves.
KH (22:17):
Yes.
RV (22:18):
So I’d love to kind of marry that with what are the stories that maybe you’ve heard experts tell themselves about why they can’t be successful. And then what are some of the stories that you told yourself about maybe the industry or whatever, and then how do you rewrite your, your story to be more empowering?
KH (22:43):
Yeah. I, I mean the stories that we, because of course the stories that we tell ourselves have all of the components by nature that I just mentioned. And so the natural stories that are alive within each of us, those are crafted without effort. That is, we are very good at crafting those stories ourselves. And so we have within us, these very powerful forces, which are our stories that dictate our actions for better or worse. So for example and for talking, and if we’re talking about speakers here, it’s so funny, the, the stories that people tell themselves. So I was working with a speaker several years ago, long before I was a speaker who who was it, wasn’t for a lack of like, it wasn’t like imposter syndrome. But there was definitely some frustration around not being able to get to the next level.
KH (23:42):
And the stories were that this person was telling themselves as well. My content is serious and, and audiences just want they just wanna laugh and I can’t laugh, or I don’t make people laugh because I’m so serious. And so there were, there were some of these stories that were and, oh, I’m a even stories about the stories that could be told was I’m a very private person. I can’t share my stories. So therefore I won’t be successful as a speaker. Hmm. Or as successful as I want to be. You know, I had stories about myself, the stories that I was stories that I had about myself and then stories that were told to me, I was told on multiple occasions that I was too blonde to be taken seriously on stage
RV (24:38):
Really?
KH (24:39):
Yep. That I was too young. I didn’t have enough experience or success that I was too female. Right. So, so that there were, and, and so it’s really interesting too, because those were stories that I could have adopted for myself. As, oh, I, I guess I don’t have a place here instead. Some of the stories that I really struggled with were yeah, like what, what value can I bring to them or that audience I would be, I would be standing backstage thinking that audience doesn’t pair anything about what I have to say. And I would have the stories playing in my head of maybe an event, like way at the beginning that didn’t go so well. Right. Cause I was still getting good at speaking. And so it really is a matter of when you find these stories that you’re telling it’s, it’s seeing them for what they are. Right. Mm-Hmm
RV (26:22):
Yeah. That’s, that’s, that’s really amazing. Like one of the things that I picked up there is like, it’s funny how, when we’re trying to craft, like when we’re trying to tell a story at first stage or something, we have to sit down and go, all right, I need to craft this with intention. But when it’s the stories in our own head about our own life, those are crafted without much effort, almost invisible. Like we don’t even, yeah. You know, some, somebody says something, boom, we adopted as truth. We live, we live our whole life by it. We don’t even know that it’s there affecting how we think what we do. And so it feels like identifying and just going, oh, where did I learn that? Like, where did I, where did I even adopt that from? I think a lot of it is fake. Like it’s, it’s manufactured. They’re not real things.
KH (27:10):
I, I had a really, I had a big epiphany. That’s actually changed my life as a speaker. I realized that I, I had this belief that if I wasn’t terribly stressed and painfully nervous and out of my mind, terrified to go out on stage that I then didn’t, I wouldn’t do a good job. It was like, it was required for me to be really unsure of myself. And that’s how I used that. I would use those stories as like the adrenaline that got me on stage, but it made me miserable. I hated my job because I felt so terrible right before, sometimes days before I, my husband would call it the darkness before I would go and give a presentation. And so I used this self storytelling strategy because I just couldn’t live like that anymore. I would just feel too miserable before every keynote.
KH (28:11):
And so I would choose to tell myself stories that would stop that anxiety stop that, that nervousness. And, you know, you would think that one of the stories you would tell is a time you did a great job. Well, I do. I mean, forgive me for saying this, but I do a great job almost all the time. Right. And so my inner critic is like me, that’s not good enough. That’s not good enough. And so I would stay in this very nervous state. So I decided to, and we’re talking about carefully curating, crafting our stories. I decide, I figured out that the stories that worked were the stories of when all the odds were against me and I still did a great job. So there was this one huge event. So it was a big sales conference for tech. It was like the first tech event that I had spoken for.
KH (29:01):
And I got the stomach flu, like in the middle of the night, the night before I was so sick, they had to put a bucket off stage for me with strict instructions to cut the mic. If they saw me go towards the bucket I was, I was terribly ill and this was way before COVID. So you could, you know, show must go on. I gave a killer 90 minute presentation and then went to the airport and got some, you know, pretzels and Gatorade. And I was fine, but like that, I’m like, wait, I was, or the time where I was in The Bahamas and the whole electrical grid went out, all that was on in the room were the generator lights. And I just called out to the audience. Do, should I just keep going? Like my mic didn’t work. There were no decks.
KH (29:43):
And it was, and it just kept going. And it was awesome. Right? So telling myself these stories, but those are the stories. Those were the only stories. So this is, what’s really important as whatever your limiting beliefs are, whatever they are that you’re telling yourself that you’re, you, you gotta catch it. You gotta figure out where it’s coming from, but then it’s your job to choose better ones. And I have this set of stories that I consistently retold myself. I call it the fourth step it’s installing before I would go on stage until now. I don’t, I don’t have to struggle with any of that anymore. So for example, Roy you’ll love this. I was at an event just a, just a couple weeks ago. And the event got started late because for whatever reason. And so then the guy was going long and I was sitting there and then they, they called for a Q and a and everybody left the room because they didn’t wanna sit for the Q and a, and they went out to get the coffee. And then it was my turn to come up on stage and everybody was gone and they were like in the back, like dinging the gong. I would’ve freaked out before and now I, I don’t, because I know that I know the stories of when I’ve faced terrible odds and done. Great.
RV (30:53):
Yeah. That’s I, I love the word that you use there reinstall, it, it it’s, it’s like a program that you’re just in installing taking the old one out and going, oh, that one doesn’t work. I’m just gonna drop that one. I’m gonna reinstall a new program, which is just a new, a new story. Well I love this Kindra. So good Kay stories that sticks the first book, which is, you know, I would say is really kind of like the art of how to tell a great story. Yep. And then, and then choose your story, change your life, which is, is a lot about, you know, almost like a very personal development, kind of like your own mindset and about how you live your life and how much these stories impact us. Where should people go if, if they wanna connect with you and learn more about, about you and what you’re up to.
KH (31:40):
Yeah, well, you can find me. I’m Kindra hall.com. K I N D R a H a L L social I’m on LinkedIn, Twitter, kind of Facebook, Instagram. You can find me there. And of course the books are wherever books are sold
RV (31:57):
Uhhuh. Well we’ll link up to Kendra hall.com in the show notes. Thank you for this friend. Always, always such a pleasure to talk with you. I’m, I’m so excited about your whole career and the art that it’s taking and all the great work that you’re doing. So we wish you the best and we’ll keep in touch, look forward to, to seeing where you go from here.
KH (32:17):
Well, we’ll see you in Australia, Rory. Thanks for having me.
RV (32:20):
That’s right. I’ll see you soon.
Ep 309: How to Grow a Personal Brand and Build a Real Estate Empire with Vinney Chopra | 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 Vinney Chopra. Y’all he is just like a little pile of joy. Like it’s like, you know, you meet these people and it’s like, how do I bundle all of that up? Put it in my pocket so I can access it every single day. That’s just a contagious joy that he emos. And if you haven’t listened to the full episode, I will not do it justice. Please do. But in an effort of giving you the cliff notes version of my conversation with Vinney that’s what you’re here for. So let’s, let’s do this, sorry. Here are my three key takeaways from my conversation with Vinney Chopra. So here’s the first thing I loved this and it was such a great reminder. They said that teaching is just choice learning.
AJV (01:47):
That is so good. It’s like to be a good communicator means you need to be a great student, right? To be a coach, a consultant, a speaker, a podcaster, anyone who is conveying information to another human being. I E a teacher, an educator, an informer or a communicator. There has to be a level of choice learning. And although that was so good, and that happens in a variety of different ways. And we live in a unique era, a time in history, where information is at our fingertips to the better or worse of what that brings about, but fits there. So choose to use it for your betterment. It’s like, you can be listening to podcasts. You can read books, you can listen to books, there’s blogs, there’s social media, content posts, there’s courses, there’s webinars, there’s coaching consulting. There’s just so much out there.
AJV (02:37):
And perhaps that’s, sometimes the challenge is with so many options. It’s not easy to choose one, but to be a great educator, a teacher, right. You’ve gotta be a great student. And I love that was such a great reminder to me, of like my job is to learn right, as a human being, as a parent, as a business owner, like a huge part of my job is to be a great student, a great learner of information. So that was my first takeaway. The second is something that I’m just really fascinated with, which is real estate syndication, right? And so I loved this conversation. I’ve been having with him off and on through text and through conversations ever since he and I reconnected just a couple of months ago. But that this is somewhat of a newer concept to me of right.
AJV (03:24):
It’s pooling your money with another group of like minded individuals to be able to invest in larger things. And this is something that he has done extraordinarily well over the last seven years almost 700 million with real estate assets. And so much of that is through syndication. And I love it’s like, I may not be able to buy a 25 million multifamily complex, but I could be a part investor in one. And I love just the whole concept of right, if your money is sitting idle right now, sitting in a bank somewhere, it’s literally losing its value due to the rate of inflation right now. And I, I am not a financial analyst or forecaster. I’m not an economist, but I think there’s some certain things that we can all just consider is true, which is we are going to see the impacts of the choices that our government has made through the pandemic.
AJV (04:23):
Not making a side either way. It’s just choices always have consequences, the choices, bad choices, they all have consequences. And if we’re, we’re gonna fill the ramifications of that at some point in the next 10 to 20 years, if not sooner. And so it’s like how you’re investing your money, spending your money right now is gonna make a huge difference. And so investing into real estate is something that I’ve really gotten a lot of passion about learning, right? It’s a topic I’m learning a ton about right now. And syndication is just a really fascinating way. Then he has courses. He’s got books, he’s got podcasts on this. We barely scratch the surface of this today, but it’s pulling your money with another group of like-minded individuals who are all investing in the same thing to get more people’s money working together for you in a quicker fashion.
AJV (05:12):
So just fascinated about this concept. I think sometimes investing in those types of things can be intimidating, but this is a less intimidating way to go about it, at least through my lens. The third thing I love we talk about is the third, the three tsunamis that are impacting the United States today. This is so good. Like the whole conversation could have been around this. So here are the three tsunamis and a cliff notes version. The first tsunami is the gen Z and millennial tsunami. Right. and basically what that is, is the, the growing number of millennials and gen Z who don’t want to own properties, right? They are turning the country into a renter’s nation along with these other two tsunamis. And I think this is fascinating because it’s like, I have so many friends, I am a millennial, I’m an older millennial, but I have so many friends who are in this gen Z and millennial, you know, generation who don’t see the value in owning.
AJV (06:10):
They don’t want to they wanna be able to rent and hippity hop all over the country or all over the world. I was talking to someone today. The last time I talked to him, he was in Amsterdam today, he’s in Tokyo and I’m like, wait, what? And it’s like, it’s just this transient lifestyle, this laptop living this virtual work environment where we can do things from pretty much anywhere. And we’re seeing that grow and grow with the pandemic. And probably not going back to full time in office jobs for a lot of companies. And so you’ve got this first tsunami of gen Z and millennials who don’t wanna own anymore. The second one is the silver tsunami, right? The growing number of people who are turning age 65, there are 10,000 people every day in the United States that are turning 65.
AJV (07:01):
That’s huge. He said, there’s another 6,000, every single day that are turning 70. And then another 4,000 that are turning 80. Y’all, that’s huge. This comes down to what is the quality of living and life gonna be like for our parents, for grandparents in the next 10 to 20 years with everyone living longer they are, there’s going to be additional requirements for when this person can no longer sustain living in their home alone. Maybe just due to the upkeep that’s required. Some of it may be to illness or sickness or, you know, some sort of injury or handicap, but a lot of it is just due to the upkeep of they don’t want to anymore, or maybe they need to sell so that they can downsize. And there’s this huge, huge era of what are we gonna do with the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who were living well into their seventies, eighties, nineties, in terms of their living arrangements.
AJV (08:01):
And I love any passion around reimagining and redefining what senior housing senior living looks like. And this is probably what I am most passionate about. Learning about. My dad is about to turn 71. He is nowhere near meeting this sort of thing, but if he ever would, I wanna put him in a place that is fun and awesome, and somewhere that he enjoys and he doesn’t consider it being in a senior living home. It’s like, no, this is like spring break for someone in their eighties. Right. and I think that’s a huge thing. This is a huge tsunami that is impacting this trend towards a renter’s nation here in the United States. And then the last is the immigrant tsunami, the amount of people who are moving to this country on a variety of different statuses. But they are moving here and they are not able or eligible to buy a home.
AJV (08:54):
So there is forced renting. Right now in the United States, there is a 20 million how a 20 million home housing shortage right now. That’s extraordinary. And what does that look like in five years or 10 years? And the difference between renting and owning and multifamily and single home and all these different concepts that make up, you know, all the different ways that we can be investing in real estate is a way of making our money work for us. And this was just such a powerful interview. And the reason I wanted to have Vinnie on the show was to talk about like, when your business, when your personal brand is growing and succeeding and you’re making money, because it will, it will do that. Like, you’re probably already doing that now. It’s like, how are you then reinvesting that money so that it’s working for you.
AJV (09:41):
And I just, I wanted to have him on, he’s got amazing podcasts and books and courses. He’s got this amazing personal brand, but simultaneously he also has this really powerful, real estate investment side of him, of a real estate syndication and senior living and multi-family unit housing and hotels and all these different things. And it just got my mind thinking of how are we investing our money and there’s a time and a place for Roth IRAs and 401ks, and then there’s another time and a place of, yeah. And what else am I doing? And I just thought this would be a really great opportunity to talk about as your business scales. How do you make sure that you are scaling up your investment strategies? And just a, a brilliant mind who was doing this exceptionally well? Both in the personal brand space and in the investment space. So I have not even scratched the surface here. There is so much more to talk about, check out this interview follow Vinney Chopra. You can go to Vinney chopra.com, VI N N EY chopra.com. If you go to Vinney chopra.com/free book, you get to get a free copy of his book. The E version check him out, follow him. Y’all just was so good. Hope you enjoyed it. And coming back next time on the influential personal, see you later.
Ep 308: How to Grow a Personal Brand and Build a Real Estate Empire with Vinney Chopra
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 buildersgroup.com/podcall. We hope to talk to you soon.
AJV (00:53):
Hey everybody. And welcome to another episode on the influential personal brand. This is one of your co-hosts AJ Vaden. Here I am here today with a, a friend we recently got reunited. We randomly were at the same mastermind event together. And I don’t think until here recently, I had seen Vinney in probably 15 years, been a really long time and was such an honor to get to run into him. He’s the happiest, most joyful human on planet earth. You all have a taste in just a moment, but first before we kind jump into a conversation, I might give a couple of high level things that you need to know about Vinney Chopra and why you need to stick around. This is, it’s kind of gonna be one of those interviews where we talk about personal branding. We talk about business, we talk about entrepreneurship, but we’re also gonna talk about scaling through investing.
AJV (01:52):
And Vinney is just a fascinating human being. And some of the most fascinating things that I think you need to know about him is that when VI, he moved to the United States almost 40 years ago, he moved here with $7. That’s right. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, $7 in his pocket. That’s it. And today he’s got more than 650 million under assets. He’s the author of two amazing books. He’s a podcast host, he’s a crypto investor. He is a man of many talents. And y’all, I’m just so excited to learn from him like selfishly, I’m having Vinney on the podcast today, cuz I want to ask him all these questions and learn for myself. And I know that if I can gain something, I know that you’re gonna gain something about.
New Speaker (02:46):
Real estate syndication of being an author, using that, to help your personal brand, but growing your business and your reputation, which are all things that Vinney has done exceptionally well and going from $7 when he moved here to over 650 million in assets 40 years later is nothing shy of incredible. I’m so excited to have you on the show. Vinney. Welcome.
VC (03:12):
Thank you, AJ. Thank you. I’m humbled. I’m privileged to be with you. I appreciate that. When I met you and Rory few months back, maybe last month we were there, you know, in Sarasota it’s it was fabulous to meet you all. And I saw you in presentation here, dynamic. I mean the company you have built is super, you know, just so great. And I’m so fortunate to be with you today.
AJV (03:40):
Oh, I’m the pleasure is all mine. He’s like even in Vinney’s text, y’all he just emos joy. It’s like even his text messaging, he’s just like the happiest guy and I’m so excited to get, to spend an hour with you. So all Vinney. So I kind of gave you a little bit of advanced notice and I clearly shared a tiny, tiny little microcosm of all of the things that you’ve accomplished, but here’s what I wanna do first is I wanna help our audience get to know you. And so here’s, I’m just gonna lay it out there. You can tell us as much or as little as you want, but how did you go from moving to the United States with $7 to being a multi-time international bestselling author podcast, host and most impressively, this incredible real real estate investment empire. How did this all happen?
VC (04:31):
Thank you. Thank you, AJ. Actually, I came with a very humble beginning. We are six siblings four sisters and two brothers, including me. We lived in one bedroom apartment. I think it was 300 scare freak total, literally like one bedroom, one living room and a hallway, never had a television, never had like a telephone or a refrigerator when I was growing up all the way till 11th grade. I think we only had a bicycle and you know, the two legs cycle, right?
VC (05:39):
So that really gave us very good in, you know, power to learn and be aggressive. And to really top in the class, if I may post a little bit, you know, in the junior high, I kind of topped in the high school I taught there also in studies, I got a free scholarship, five year scholarship from the Indian government to, I always wanted to become an engineer. So I’m a mechanical engineer. I took my five years to get the degree that I worked with Larson turbo, which is reliance group, one of the biggest company in India. But then I came here. I always wanted to do MBA masters in business administration. I thought, you know, marketing and engineering, I can make a good living in USA or in India. So I came here with $7. Now I could only bring $7. My grandpa actually paid for my ticket to come here.
VC (06:39):
My parents didn’t want me to come here.
AJV (07:44):
This is amazing. Like it’s like, I mean, it’s like one of those stories of when we think about overcoming the odds as someone who lives in America, it’s a really different story when you compare it to really no access to ed education and like no vehicle, 300 square foot with eight people living in it. Like that’s a, that’s a different level of humble beginnings than what we hear most often specifically on this podcast. And so I know that after college, right, you took clearly a job. So what was your first job? Like? Did you go into engineering or did you say the sales and marketing?
VC (08:24):
It just so happened. I worked like 80 hours a week. I know Ru also worked, I think, you know, in the similar profession, but that was like selling through summer months while I was going for George Washington university and we’ll sell books and encyclopedias 13 hours a day knocking on doors. And that really made me tougher. It made me being very, you know, accepting rejection and making sure that I could really down deep in myself, you know, figure out ways how could to overcome and be happy. I guess, you know, I was not always smiling like this, but I just always felt like, okay. And they gave us great many books by the way, Mandino in the greatest salesmen in the world, Charlie, tremendous Jones, you know, Dale Carnegie’s book how to influence people and, you know win France then think and grow rich, you know, Napoleon Hills. I remember those seven books really got me going mind wise and thinking, oh, I forgot magic of thinking big by WJ Schwartz. You know, all, these are very, very great books. So that’s when after about three summers, I said, you know what, I’m enjoying it so much. Let me just put the engineering in a box literally for some time and let me try out other revenues. So I became promotional consultant, fundraising consultant. I ranked, you know, raised my bar high. So I never went back to engineering. Can you play it?
AJV (10:02):
I, I mean, it’s kinda one of those things where, you know, I think people forget the power of learning, how to be a great salesperson. Yeah. Right. It does not matter what business you’re in. Right. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, having the skills of knowing how to make a sale and have influence like, like even as a parent, right. It’s like I’m selling every day and my kids are the best negotiators on the planet. Right. It’s like, there is just so much power in knowing how to make a sale that makes you a great business person. So I know that you went on and you were in fundraising for 40 years.
VC (10:41):
Yeah.
AJV (10:46):
For a really long time,
VC (10:47):
He retired in 2015.
AJV (10:50):
So I want everyone to pay attention to that. Let me call that out. So Vinney retired after a 37 year career with the same company, right. But 37 years. And you retired in 2017. It’s 2022 y’all. So your real estate investing really started five years ago,
VC (11:10):
Two eight. When I really took big, big strides, we start, we’ve been married 42 years just to say everybody, and I’ll be 17 this year. I’ll be, you know, after 50, I say, every birthday we go backward. So actually I’m only 30 mind of 17. Maybe
AJV (11:32):
I love it. I love it. But it’s like, I think it’s really important that I think just so often we feel like we look up at some point in our life and we just feel like we’re, I just thought I would be in a different place by now, or I thought I would have more or do more or something by now. And what I love about your story so much is that so much of the monumental success that you’ve had in books and everything has happened post retirement, right? Retirement is not retirement for you. Retirement. Truly
VC (12:05):
Seven years have been spectacular growth years. For me, I’m making more and doing more and being happier more. I was happy all these 40 years also. And we’ve been married 42 years, but what I have really scaled up has been in seven years.
AJV (12:23):
This is incredible. So, okay. So what click, what changed? What’s different? Like what did you start doing seven years ago? Because really what happened is you left kind of the quote unquote corporate America. You left your, you know, quote unquote nine to five, even though I know you’re working more than nine to five, but you left that and you said, all right, this is my, you know, next era, right? This is the next thing I get to do in life. Why real estate? Why investing? Like, what was it like, what was that next step that you took when you quote unquote retired?
VC (12:55):
Surely, you know, actually when we got married, it all depends. You know, when the opportunity knocks, you gotta open the door. I always say that and you should embrace it. That’s what is the other thing, you know, and being consistent in, you know, in the things we do. So when we got married, I was in Ohio, Finlay, Ohio, and we moved to bay area. My peer group started talking about real estate, hold on, I’m a promotional consultant, but I’m meeting over the weekend and all, and they’re saying rental homes and investing over here and there. So when Neil and Monica were born, our two children, we started, we said, okay, let’s dabble into it. Right? So we started investing into single family homes and we were getting cash flows. Okay. Cash flows. Then we went to Arizona, we bought two homes in one day, then another home, another rental later on, on the internet, went to Georgia, bought over there, went to Texas.
VC (13:56):
So we kept on buying these single family homes 2005 while being working full time. Also, you know, we have a lot of free time. What we do with the free time is our own choice. So I became a broker and I declared it to the company. I’m a broker, but I’m not going into that profession. So that helped me a lot to really start building my side hustle. Let’s say, you know, in real estate. So when I retired in 2015, I started a company in 2014, December, November, actually. And that is monil investment group, our kids name, Monica and Neil kind of put together. But before that, I had another company with a big major partner. I was not major partner. And then we sold all the assets in that one, you know, later on. But this Moni investment group has seven companies now in the last seven years. And it’s got monil senior living, monil management, monil you name it academy multi-family academy, then hospitality, Mon hospitality, and all these different, you know, crypto. And now we are going into Bitcoin mining, Mon mining just got built last 10 days. What
AJV (15:17):
VC (16:22):
You know, my main passion is really to make 1 million millionaires. What, I mean, that’s a pretty big goal, but if you look at 8 billion people on the planet, you know, and I think how many I was told out of eight, 4 billion have internet. I really believe that you could pass the information through the internet online education, and that can be spread all over the globe. So that has been my passion. I’ve recorded maybe 1,300 lectures right now, which can really manually teach everything that I do even better. And again, with all the tools and things, and we have dropped it down to 330, 6 of them into a course where people can really learn everything and everything. But writing book also makes the author really dig deeper into themselves. And they even, I say teaching is twice learning. I always say that because you try to perfect the art because you are going out in the open to tell other people about it in simpler ways.
VC (17:32):
I just have to say that I, you know, in Scottsdale, we finished the trip, right. You know, last week. So mark ter Hanson and crystal Hanson invited me for dinner. And as you know, mark ter Hanson wrote that book chicken. So for the soul, they sold 500 million copies, the number one writer, author in the world. So they want to write a book on me. I said, what they said, Winnie, we wanna write a book on you, fictional character, but your life and that book, fictional book is getting more coverage and people are learning about the principles much better. Anyway, I thought I might, it’s been on my mind. And I told them yesterday that yes, I gave permission. And we’ll be now doing interviews and all, and then hopeful. Yeah.
AJV (18:25):
I mean, I think that is just a, it’s a Testament too, of what a personal brand is all about. Right. It’s becoming known for something that you wanna be known for. And it’s like, I love what you said. It’s like teaching is just choice learning. Yes. Right. And I think there’s so much power in what you said of like writing a book or even creating a course or creating content in general really is more self-reflection of what do I have to say? Yeah. And how do I wanna say it? And it’s an R to fine tuning your message in a way that it reaches this very specific audience, but then two was like, you’ve got this enormous goal of helping a million people become millionaires. Right. And a part of that is it’s information, right. It’s education. And so one of the things that I wanna share with the audience today, anyone who’s listening is Vinney has made one of his books available.
AJV (19:19):
And e-copy so if you go to Vinny chopra.com Ford slash freebook. Right. So Vinney, V I N N E Y Chopra, C H O P R a.com Ford slash freebook. I’ll make sure to put that in the show notes, but you can go and grab an E version of one of his books. And I just, I love so much that you’re, you’re leveraging all of your success to help other people have success. And I think that’s really incredible. And I think that’s a power of a personal brand and creating valuable information is that you’re helping other people succeed, but simultaneously you’re becoming more successful every single time someone else hits their goals. And I think that’s a beautiful part of this whole puzzle. And so I, I’m super curious. And then I wanna actually talk about, you know, investing your business through, you know, real estate and scaling, but I’m curious, it’s like, there’s a lot of things that you could do. So why a book? Why a course, like why, why those specific things for you?
VC (20:24):
I would say definitely no, that is passing down the knowledge so that in simpler terms and having people to really act on, right. A lot of people just read and read and read. I like to also hold them accountable. So I do group coaching, every Wednesdays in my masterminds. Then I have personal coaching, only four students. I take a year that way, but that’s just one part of my thing just to give back forward, give giving. Then other side of my business is really getting into the deals and the structures and raising money. That’s what I’m good at. I just waste 4.5 million in three hours on vacation, literally. And you know, and I’ve got four interviews this week with my half a million dollar investors who are very already seen the package, cuz I’m buying $65 million multi-family right now. And then also crypto Bitcoin mining is very big in my mind.
VC (21:25):
And we, even though the stock, I mean, crypto Bitcoin went to 31,000 or whatever, 32, we can mine it at 12,000. So still there is a huge, huge profit. And that’s what I’m very, very excited about right now. Then hotels that’s the other one and senior living is my other one. So I mean every angle it’s kind of like, I give some time to this pocket this time, this, this, this. So I always have believed in, you know, AJ that you never should say, I can only do this or this or this or this, but always replace the R with an a and D and just your subconscious and your brain will just, you know, become so infer. I say, when you say I can do this and this and this and this and this, that has been the real success principle for me to really send it out in the Cosmo with the law of attraction.
VC (22:31):
Like the book was the secret, right from Rhonda burns, which is kind of going for the last, you know, a hundred years, what we think, what we conceive and we send strong signals all around us in the Cosmo. You don’t even know how it’s gonna happen. I don’t even know what, how these things are under unraveling right now.
AJV (23:56):
You know, it’s interesting. It’s like, although you’re doing a whole bunch of different things, there is a common through line. And you know, we talk a lot about that at brand builders group, but it’s, you really have the common through line, the common thing in every component of what you’re working on is investment. Yes. It doesn’t matter if it’s personal investment in learning or it’s real estate or Bitcoin or mining, or, you know, you know, senior living or hotels. It’s all about investments. Good, true. Right. It’s like, that’s that through line. So, you know, we talk about this a lot in brand builders groups. So for anyone who’s listening, who’s been around for a minute, you know, that we really much believe that you break through the noise by becoming known for one thing mm-hmm
AJV (24:45):
Right. And it’s like, now you’re doing a little of this and a little of that, but you’re doing all those little of this and a little of that, but it’s all through the lens of investment wealth building. Right. And I think that’s really important for everyone who’s listening of going, oh my gosh, well I’ll never be at that level. It’s like, no, you are. When you find that common, when you find that common thing that you’re passionate about, that you’re really good at doing, which I do wanna talk about how do you raise several million dollars in on vacation? So we’ll talk about that in a second. But it’s like, once you find that thing that you’re naturally good at you’re superpower, it’s like, then you’re, I really do believe that your mind activates and it goes, and it’s like, it could come in this form and then this form, it’s just like, it’s the same thing with information.
AJV (25:27):
You could read it, you could hear it on a podcast. You could be in a coaching program, a Masterman program, a course, but it’s all the same information, but it’s how it’s delivered in a variety of mediums. That makes it unique. And I hear you saying invest investing is very similar, right? It’s like plenty of people invest in a 401k or in a Roth IRA. And it’s like, but there’s also real estate investing. And then even in real estate, you’ve got senior living, you have hotels, you have multi-family units, you have single family homes. It’s like, there’s all these different ways to expand it. As long as you know, what your focus is. And what I hear you’re saying your focus is really investment. Even when it comes to education, it’s personal investment,
VC (26:07):
You are so right about it. A is you are so right. Two streams just too very focused, you know, attack is of course on the passive investors who are rich
AJV (27:15):
VC (27:53):
I love it to give credit to Monica Chopra, our daughter, she’s our partner else in the business. You met her in Sarasota. She’s wonderful. She’s been with us seven years. Of course. And the good part is that we have in mail Chi designed these beautiful emails that we have used for previous undertakings, where we use raise money. We just clone it. What? Just clone it and put new information in it. Yeah. So we were able to, she was able to design it. She sent it test market while I was there sipping, you know, pina colada or something. And then she said, dad, should we send it out? And we did. We sent out to 1,330 investors we have in our database and we never talk to anybody. But in our bullets we share all the good information and then give them soft commitment forms, clickable links.
VC (28:54):
So as soon as they like the whole system and the brochure and everything, they click on it, then it goes into a survey automatically. And then when they fill out the survey, it goes into Google sheet in real time, in real stamping, we find out if they wanna put 200,300, 500 and so on, and then how will they believe will be investing? We have a whole questionnaire that way. So that’s how we raise that money. Then in the mail chip, it says, oh, so many people clicked and opened and how many did not open? So we resend it again. Mm-Hmm
AJV (29:50):
Know? Oh, let me tell you what y’all I don’t know. Who’s been saying email marketing is dead, but they’re dead wrong. Oh, raising millions of dollars and email marketing right here with Vinney Chopra.
VC (30:23):
In our, in our CRM. In our, I know you mentioned it. I think I saw that in Sarasota. You said your next customer is in your Rolodex, in your right school, literally, which is so true. I love texting also huge, huge fan of texting. So I copy the same message
AJV (31:02):
Great. I think that’s such a great reminder of the power of your email list. And if you’re not building your email list right now, like if, if this was not clear enough, raising millions of dollars yeah. In an email blast, like let’s tune into what are you doing to build your email list, but not just build it, but nurture it right. Provide value to it. That’s huge. Like that’s a really big deal to raise millions of dollars off of, you know, 1300 investors is a really big deal. You know, we, some of us have email lists of 10, 20, 30, 5000 thousand people and couldn’t raise that much money with a launch. So I think there’s one thing in building a great email list in terms of numbers, but there’s a difference in having a quality email list versus just a quantity of an email list. I’m
VC (31:49):
So glad you said it, AJ. Now this was mail Chimp. I used the word that’s very sacred for us. That’s 1,330 investors, but my active campaign list is 14,000 mm-hmm
AJV (32:13):
VC (32:40):
Sense urgency. I should definitely mention that. I get sold out very quickly because I tell them it’s first come first served. Even if you have 5 million with me before I will not put you above the line, you got to make that commitment. It’s time stamped and everything. Mm-Hmm
AJV (33:23):
I mean that, I think again, that’s good old fashioned sales, right? How to create that limit, that sense of urgency. Yes. Something that moves people to action. That’s that’s 40 years of amazing sales that work right there, Vinney
VC (33:38):
Work. And you know, I collect almost 98 to 99% of my commitments, which is unheard of in the syndication world. It’s very unheard of. Even my coach told me, Vinney, you gotta get twice as many commitments to get half of it, money collected to buy anything. But somehow in the other, I always felt that if I can educate my investors nicely, not selling them, nobody wants to be sold at all. But as a consultant and show them all the different avenues, what can go wrong or whatever, and then make them understand right about the investment they will endear to you. And the more open you are, more trustworthy, you are, they will bring money more and more and tell more people about it and everything
AJV (34:31):
True.
VC (34:31):
So we collect almost 99% of soft commitments into hard commitments.
AJV (34:37):
Yeah. That’s awesome. You know, I heard this the other day and I’m paraphrasing it, but it’s, it’s really simple provide value, build trust. Yeah. Right. The more value that you provide, the more trust that you build. Right. that’s so good. So, okay. You kinda mentioned something that’s gonna kind of transfer us into the second part of our conversation. So we’ve got, you know, 15, 17 minutes left here. So we wanna talk about investing, right? So your personal brand is all around investments. It comes in a variety of formats. But you you’ve chosen a very distinctive, you know, path post your corporate retirement into this world of investing. And a lot of people don’t know what real estate syndication is. And so fill in like, what is that?
VC (35:24):
It’s very simple syndication. If you do the word, you know, in the Wikipedia or dictionary, it’s pooling of money together of likeminded people for profits. And you could, you know, syndicate to raise money, to buy a plane and put the plane to use. And that is where the profits will be generated. You could buy apartment building, which I’m in quite a bit and hotels, you could buy office building mobile home park. You could build a company, you know, a VC company mm-hmm
VC (36:34):
When you buy in Mar in stock market, Google stock, you have to pay a hundred percent of it cash or do margins or do options and all that more risky. But in real estate, guess what? You come up with 25% of the money. The bank comes along, they look at the property. They say, yeah, we feel comfortable. We’ll give you 75% of the money. What you bring only 25. They give you three times more and you give the whole hundred to the seller. Now you own the property. What the bank says, just pay us the interest only loan for five years or three years, or give us interest and principle, you know, principle, payback, Orlu payment. We call it right Uhhuh. But now you made that property increasing value. The bank says, you keep all the profits, you keep all the equity. You’re not gonna take any equity out. You. I mean, this is the craziest thing.
VC (37:48):
First of all, you put a hundred thousand, you are buying $400,000 worth. And when the 400,000 increases to 40 million now 40,000, all that gain is yours to keep, oh my gosh. And the tax laws say, depreciation, what is that? Depreciation is that your building is going to be worth zero. If you buy it for 1 million. After 27 and a half years, taxation code says it’ll be worth zero. And you can deduct the losses every year.
VC (39:01):
We call it three DS, but the property management companies took care of it. Right? But then when we started buying apartments, we were having 20 homes in one place, kind of because 20 units, you collect rent from all 20 and they’re paying the mortgage down. That’s the other part. I didn’t talk about that deposition and all that. And bank is separate. Now comes to residence. Mm-Hmm
AJV (40:34):
Up. That’s amazing. So, but
VC (40:36):
It’s the only reason AJ, because I’m able to get money from my family, friends, people I know. And they gave me money. That’s the power of syndication.
AJV (40:47):
That’s amazing. I mean, it’s, it’s a pulling of funds. Yeah. Where everyone wins.
VC (40:52):
Yeah. Everybody wins.
AJV (40:53):
Everybody, everyone wins.
VC (40:55):
70, 30 splits means our investors get 70% of 30 returns and the cash flow, I get only 30, which is great, but they, you know, get benefit and we get benefits to
AJV (41:09):
You. Oh, so much of the win-win I love this. And I think the, that, there’s a couple of things that you said that I wanna kind of go back to, and I’m just curious for everyone who’s listening. Who’s going, I’m at a place where I know I need to be investing specifically in real estate, cuz right now, if you’re not investing, your dollar is losing money, right? Yes. You just have dollars in the bank. You are losing money at the rate
VC (41:30):
7% each year.
AJV (41:31):
It’s insane. So it’s, we’re not really at a time of like, you know, should I invest? It’s like, no, what are you going to invest in? Cause otherwise your money is literally losing its values sitting where it’s sitting. So you went residential versus commercial. Why?
VC (41:48):
The reason is because of economies of scale, because instead of having single family or duplexes all over in different cities and different because you don’t wanna buy everything in one place, mm-hmm
AJV (43:13):
That’s a love it. Well, I think too, especially in this world that we’re living in where how much of a virtual environment are we gonna stay in? Yeah. It’s like, regardless of people ever return to offices, they’re always gonna need places to live. Sure. Right. and so that kind of leads me to my second question. And I don’t know, what’s, you know, it’s like this doesn’t have to be academic, but I’m just curious on your perception with millennials. Yes. Younger millennials specifically. And then the rise of gen Z, right. Which, you know, Monica is, you know, in the verge of this millennial gen Z era, I’m curious, like, what are your thoughts on the importance of how you invest in money in terms of, you know, multi, multi, how like multi-family housing units versus single family homes. Because I’m just so curious, like how many of these people are going to want to buy? I have so many people that I know that are in this younger millennial generation where it’s like, they don’t want to, yes. It’s a decided choice that they’re choosing to rent because they want the freedom and flexibility.
VC (44:16):
You know, you hit the nail in the head. I talk about three tsunamis flowing through the world and USA one is the millennial and Zen Z, just like you said, they like portability. They don’t wanna move lawn. They want to be moving into remote areas and working from laptop, enjoy the beaches and this condominiums renting. So portability is number one on their mind. They don’t wanna be tied down. Some of them saw their parents lose their homes in the last recession or something. Right. So that is a huge, we are investing. It’s a rental rental nation. We call it, we are a rental nation, you know, rent. Yeah. Rental nation, renters nation. Second one is our tsunami, which is a silver tsunami. 10,000 baby boomers are turning 65. So seniors are growing more and more and more 10,000 every single day. So there’s a simple tsunami going through. The third tsunami I talk about is the immigration, the immigrants coming, our population growth is very low. 2.4%, you know, and with the death rate and all. So we do need influx of other nationalities and different people coming through. So three tsunamis are all making USA, a renter nation again. So we have been renter nation. We have so much shortage. 20 billion units are shortage in America right now, 20 million. Even if I built so many apartments still, we will not be able to capture it.
AJV (45:57):
That’s insane. And I love this. And I heard you talk about this just as a tiny bit in Sarasota around these three tsunamis. So I just wanna repeat this for everyone. We’ve got this generational tsunami with gen Z and millennials who don’t necessarily wanna settle down and buy a home. They wanna be flexible and move from city to city or place to place in this, you know, laptop living world, which I think is fascinating. And only growing with the natural, you know, distant work environment that we’re experiencing with virtual work. Second is the silver tsunami. Right? And I wanna kinda go back to one of the steps. You said, you said 10,000,
VC (46:39):
Every night turned into 65 years of age. So there are so many, I’m 70, I’ll be 70 this year, right? August. But up to 2031, what almost nine more years, all these people who are in the sixties, you know, on 61, 62, 63, 64, all the way, the last person will turn 65.
AJV (47:58):
That. That’s not your typical senior living in bar city. But I think that’s amazing because that’s true. It’s like people are living longer and they want better quality of life. No one wants to go to what you think about now, when you think about a retirement home, it’s very yucky and scary. And quite honestly like what kid wants to put their parents in that, right. That’s not ideal, but you’re, so I think this is amazing because it’s like, we’re saying 10,000 a day, you’re entering into this and all these people are living longer. It’s like, where are they gonna go? Right. When they are not able to stay into their home, they’re not able to upkeep it or they don’t want to. And so you’re, you’re doing a ton in this senior living environment. Like, like what do you think is the potential for this particular a real
VC (48:44):
I’m setting my goal at 2 billion, with a B billion in this decade, rest of the decade, I’m doing five projects right now in Florida and Virginia Williamsburg, Virginia should be opening up end of October. Beautiful, beautiful place. If anybody would like to, you know, watch and see and meet me there. That’s Hampton Manor is our brand Hampton, a M PTO N manor.ceo is the website, but Williamsburg, Virginia, Chesapeake, Virginia, we are building. Then in Punta go, we just opened up. We are not even open yet. We are 60% occupied already. We are not even open yet. So people have already given us deposit. And as soon as we open the door, they’re going to all seniors will be coming in. And even the corner of Florida is coming. I just found out yesterday to our facility. There’ll be a big, big write up on our communities because what we are building. So that’s gonna be great. Cape coral. We built it. Palm bay, Sebastian vane Jacksonville, Mari island. So building in all these locations then St. Louis, then Texas, we are coming Nashville. We are coming Nashville. I know we all over
AJV (50:04):
USA. I’m harassing VI like, come on. When are you coming to Nashville? You have two investors waiting on you. This is the it’s incredible. Like I think this is amazing. And then the immigrants tsunami. Yes. Right? Which again, renters I think this is really interesting in hearing this perspective of one syndication where you don’t hold all the responsibility. You don’t hold all the liability. Yes. But you’re pulling it together to do something larger. Right. but then it’s this, I love this multifamily housing component. Especially when you get into like 5,000 units, plus it’s really exciting. And then what I’m most interested is you senior living? Like, I think that is fascinating mainly because it’s so needed. It’s so needed to reimagine what senior living looks like for this, you know, next 10 to 20.
VC (50:54):
No, that’s so true. What you said, AJ, our goal, our motto is let’s spoil the seniors. Yeah.
AJV (51:01):
Love that.
VC (51:02):
You know? I mean, we want them dignified life, respectful life, cuz that’s their golden years. I love that. And we start at like 3,300, I think is the amount which includes all the meals, rents, all the ADLs activities are daily, living, caregiving, linen, laundry, everything included, transportation, all that. And then the care of service. If they need us, it might go to 4,000 or 4,500 and seniors don’t have to pay a penny because there are certain livings where you have to buy a condo or something. Hours are rental units. They are five to seven acres of land. One story, no two story, no elevators and courtyards are built with the waterfall functions, but in greens and swing pools and other things so that, and they can put vegetable garden outside. Just enjoy the life. Yeah.
AJV (52:05):
Oh, I love that. I, I mean, I think too, it’s like, my dad is 70. He turned 71 this year. Yes. And I, you know, I’ve heard him tell me if it comes down to putting me in a home or killing me, just kill me. And I think a lot of that comes down to this mentality around there’s a, a horrible association with, there’s gonna be no quality of life. Right. I don’t wanna be in this stale hospital-like place. And I’m like, well, dad, we’re not killing you. No. So we need other options. And I love this because I think this is so needed and it’s so necessary. It’s not going away. It’s only growing and that’s the power of investing and specifically in this way. And I love this concept of syndication. I think it’s so cool. I could just like sit here and talk to, we didn’t even, we haven’t even scratched surface of Vinney’s knowledge and
VC (52:57):
Exactly. If other people who are asking, listening to us, if you say to AJ, you know, bring Winnie back, I’ll be here whenever you need me.
AJV (53:06):
VC (53:11):
So my gosh, I didn’t talk about the cyber security. My company is doing really well with the venture capital fund that we have also started with my partner, our, our, you know, I’m thinking about bit mining, maybe going to NASDAQ, you know, up there. And also the re small re that I have in the back of my mind. So we are just, you know, mind is a good thing. Right. You know?
AJV (53:34):
Absolutely. and I think this too, it’s like, I know most of you probably aren’t watching our video, you’re listening, but Vinney couldn’t look further away from 70. If he tried it’s, there is power in keeping your mind active and keeping business and keeping just full of life and busy of doing things that you enjoy. That keeps you young. Like the joy, all of this is just, it’s amazing.
VC (54:03):
ADI, you said it. You know, my grandpa, he passed away at 94. He was driving our Indian friends. They might know the traffic in new Delhi. It’s pretty bad. He was driving at the age of 91. What at 91, able to see and manure the car and everything. That’s the thing I will, I’ll be 70 in August. I wanna be like him.
AJV (54:50):
Oh, I bet. That’s how it feels when you’re doing what you love. Right. It’s how it feels.
VC (54:55):
Never a work. No, not at all. I,
AJV (54:58):
Oh, I love it. I love all of this. Y’all I think this is just so fascinating. Not only do I think it’s awesome that you should check out Vinney and follow him. Because he’s got this awesome personal brand that’s growing out of really just a desire to help other people succeed. And it’s like a Ziglar used to say, if you help enough people get what they want, then you can also get what you want me too. And you’re so living back. And so Vinney, when it comes to social media, do you have a preferred platform? Like where should people go to stay in touch with you?
VC (55:29):
Oh my gosh, you just go Google Vinney Chopra. You’ll come with 1000 pages. I, somebody told you, and then you could go on Instagram, smiley, Winnie I’m smile a lot. You know, you could go on Amazon, Winnie smile, Chopra, Winnie Chopra. You could go to Facebook. Youtube channel is growing big time. Tiktok is also getting bigger now Pinterest. They started and of course, iTunes and bus bar. I mean, all my, you know podcast that I’m doing and my live show is every Friday live at nine 30 wi and Bo show my partner and I do it together. No, it’s been fun. It’s been fun. I’m writing a book by the way, Uhuh, my third book is gonna be this one. Oh,
AJV (56:20):
You’re
VC (56:20):
Living, investing made easy look
AJV (56:22):
At, I love.
VC (56:23):
So it’s almost half done. And then of course I’m gonna be coming up with my big book with mark Victor Hanson and his company is going to be, you know, he just personalized it last week. You know, when we met, oh, I don’t know if
AJV (56:39):
Cool, love this
VC (56:40):
With a great book ask. And they’re gonna write a fictional story on me, which I’m very excited about
AJV (56:47):
You. Oh my goodness. So we’ll put all of these different links in the show notes so that you guys can connect with Vinney. And then don’t forget, go to Vinney chopra.com/freebook. Yes. Grab a copy of his book. Follow him on social, subscribe to his podcast. If you wanna learn about growing your personal brand through watching someone else do it, which is what he’s doing. And also learn about the power of real estate investing check him out stay tuned after our recap episode that I’ll do after this Vinney. Think this, thank you so much for being on the show.
VC (57:22):
Thank you, AJ. Thanks to you and R you guys are doing amazing. God bless you.
AJV (57:28):
And thanks everyone. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal.
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,
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
RV (17:07):
Mm-Hmm
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.
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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,
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
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
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
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
AJV (32:40):
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
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
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
MW (37:14):
Mm-Hmm
AJV (37:14):
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
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,
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.
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,
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
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
RV (04:39):
Use.
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
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
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,
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
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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,
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
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.