Ep 281: The Power of One More with Ed Mylett | Recap Episode
RV (00:03):
Wow. That conversation with Ed Mylett man, I am humbled. I don’t know if you picked it up, but the, what he said about working with us and our team man, that was, that was powerful and edifying to, for him to say those things about us and, and, you know, we really feel the same way about him. I mean, ed, I, I have really gotten to know ed. I mean, we have talked on, I, I mean a daily at least once a day for the last several months, like 6, 4, 4, 4 or five months at the time of this recording, like and I really love this guy and I believe in him and that’s part of why we have lent our like you know, time and our resources and our, our, you know, strategies to be a part of it.
RV (00:56):
And what just, what an amazing guy. And, and y’all it, it’s he’s he has, is operating a level of success. That’s just extraordinary. And it, it, I wanna share with you, of course, the three, the three big highlights or takeaways from the conversation from the inter from that interview specifically some point maybe I’ll do another training. That’s just like what I’ve learned from Ed Mylet over the last several months, cuz I’ve learned a ton from him also. I’ll keep this focused on just the interview, but one of the things that, you know, I want to start with that is encouraging to me is it’s it’s encouraging to see people like, you know, I think of like, you know, ed Mylett or you know, whoever Dave Ramsey, like these, these huge, very successful influential people and to realize how much of their life has been dedicated to personal development, not just teaching, but learning, not teaching.
RV (01:53):
I mean, learning it, I’m talking about the people you probably most respect a huge portion of their time is personal development. Like this stuff actually works. I mean, this stuff actually changes lives. And, and, and these people who are changing the world are living by the, by the principles that, that we teach and talk about collectively in this industry. And that’s why brand builders group exists is we want to help mission driven messengers, get their message out to the world because the world needs it. The world is desperate for this, for this help, for this encouragement, for this education about how to live a positive life, how to be successful, how to control your thoughts, your money, your time to have better relationships, better health, have more joy and peace. And it’s, you know, it’s age old principles, but they’re delivered through new modern day messengers.
RV (02:48):
And that’s what ed is. And that’s what we believe you are. And that’s why we believe that you’re listening. And that’s, you know, it’s super fun to work with people like ed. I mean, you, you, I mean I tell you, I don’t remember what the number was when we recorded the podcast, but right now, as I’m recording this we just hit 50,000 units. Pre-Sold of Ed’s book 50,000 when we still have a week before it launches like this is a massive, I mean, this is someone, you know, literally affecting millions of people, all the, all the people he’s reaching through his own platform. Plus all the people who are promoting it, this event that we’re doing with Eric Thomas and Mel Robbins you know, Jim quick, John Gord, Marie Forley Odine Graziosi. I mean Jenna Kucher and Rob Deard deck and Maria Manos.
RV (03:38):
I mean, the list goes on Andy fr like it’s gonna be this huge event and it’s reaching all these people. But I say all that to say, he’s a student of personal development, which, which, which tells me two things and hopefully tells you two things. One, you should be a student of personal development, right? Like you may not wanna own multiple private jets and own islands like ed does. But like, you know, maybe you, you wanna have money to give away, like you wanna do something, right? Like pretty much anything big in the world takes some money like, and, and, and, and impact and reach and go, man, I’ve reached a lot of people. Well, that means there’s you’re student of personal development. And the second thing is you should be a teacher of it because the world needs you. That’s why you’re here. Right. That’s why you’re listening. There’s there’s a calling in your life. There’s a prompting saying, you’ve got some message inside of you. And if you’re not doing it, my guess is it’s because there’s a, there’s another voice which I would call the devil who immediately follows up and says, yeah, but someone already said that, but like, who would listen to you?
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Who would listen to ed mylett
RV (04:44):
Five years ago, ed Mylet
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Was posted. Did you hear this story about Tony Robinson? He was posting videos of hash
RV (04:50):
Brown. So
Speaker 2 (04:51):
My gosh, that video, that story of him with Tony Robbins on his backboards, he thought Tony Robbins said, you have to use hashtags. Ed thought. He said, hash Browns. You have to post pictures of hash Browns. Are you kidding me? Like what in the world? Like that is crazy. So, you know, nobody knew who he was even like five, seven years ago. So it like,
RV (05:18):
It just, it, I don’t know. That’s inspiring to me and I, how inspiring to me and the fact that I hope it inspires you and it inspires you to go, your voice matters. Like somebody else out there needs it. It may not be millions of people. It may be 10 people. It may be one person, but like, that’s a person that’s a life. So anyways, let’s get on with the three highlights. I I’m ranting I’m ranting cuz I just moved. Ed. Ed is in powerful, powerful dude. So my three biggest takeaways from the interview with ed Mylet all right. First, first one here is his premise of this book. All right. The book’s called the power of one more. The, the event’s called max out. So we, you know, we’re helping run the, the book launch the event, you know, Ed’s following our playbook by those, by the way, those of you that are brand builders. Like I said this in the interview, but like he is following our playbook to a T he’s executing it at a bigger scale because his platform, but I mean, he is following our playbook to a T is working. This is gonna be one of the biggest book launches of this year. Like it works and, and his premise of this book is you’re a lot closer to the dream life than you think you are.
RV (06:31):
That’s a powerful thought. You’re a lot closer to the dream life than you think you are. Right? The, the, the devil, the self doubt tells you you’re far away says this impossible says, okay, that could happen for ed, but not for me. That could happen for Rory, but not for me. That could happen for Marie or whoever, but not for me. Like, and Ed’s going, no, you’re closer to it than you think you’re one decision away. You’re one, you’re one piece of knowledge away. You’re one relationship away, you know, AJ and I had this conversation and, and, and I told her, I said, I don’t know this was, this was several months ago, right? When I first met ed. And I said, babe, I don’t know. But I feel God telling me that we’re supposed to go all in on helping add my lead. This is before he is a client.
RV (07:21):
This is like, right. I first met him like before any of this is taking shape. And I don’t, you know, even by the time you hear this, like there, the, the, the, the trajectory that this is on is becoming a really massive thing that he’s doing like, and, and going, I don’t know, but I, I feel like we’re supposed to go all in on this. It’s very possible that this one relationship with ed my lead is gonna change our whole life. It certainly did with Lewis, right? Like brand builders, droop would not exist if it were not for Lewis howes inspired this business, he asked for it. And then he’s the one who said, you guys need to create this. I know a whole bunch of people who need this, and I’m gonna help you meet ’em. I’m gonna light the spark to kick this thing off one relationship.
RV (08:02):
Now you might go, I don’t know, a Lewis Howes or ed mylett. It doesn’t every, but every relationship we met, like every relationship we had led us to the next one and the next one and the next one, you’re a lot closer to the dream life than you think you are like, it’s right there. Right? One relationship away. One moment away, one big shot. 1, 1, 1 missing piece of the puzzle of, of the knowledge you need. And you go, ah, it clicks, right? I’m I’m there licks right on, on there. It might be one video post, one podcast post, like, but we just don’t know when it’s gonna happen. And people give up too soon. That’s a powerful, powerful premise. And that’s this whole thing. The power of one more is like, you’re, you’re closer than you think. So do one more. Just like, if you just keep doing that, it’s it’s in the moment, it feels like you’re behind. But over course of your life, it’s like, you’re guaranteed. It’s the success is guaranteed. Like if you follow all these principles, it’s not like that are not gonna work. Like they’ve worked, you know, for millions and hundreds of millions of people to accumulate millions and billions of dollars. Like the principles of success are timeless. They work for, I like they work. Like there’s a reason why people teach them follow them and stick with it. Second big takeaway from ed was that identity is the thermostat of your life.
RV (09:27):
What you think you’re worth is what you’re going to get. So whatever the story is that you’re telling yourself about yourself is going to continue to be the true story for you. Right? If you’re telling yourself I’m a victim, I had it harder than everybody. O O other people have pushed me down. I’m not in control of my circumstances. I have it. I have it harder than everybody else. If that’s the story you’re telling yourself, then that is your certain future. Like, that’s what he’s saying. There is like, whatever is going on in your head, the story you’re telling yourself. If you know, if you say like, I’m the, you know, I’m an overcomer, like I’m, I rise above. I figure it out. I find a way, then that is your future. Like, it’s not just your present. That is your future. That is your identity, right? If you think I’m not good enough, nobody cares about me. I’m not smart enough. I’m stupid. I don’t have what it takes. That’s your future. Not just your present, that’s your future. And if you say, man, I’m loved. I’m a child of God, God creates. And so in me is the power to create, right? That God lives in me. He created the world. Then I too have the power in me to create things with my own breath, to speak creation in into reality.
RV (10:55):
Then that’s your future. So what is the story you’re telling yourself about yourself? You’ll never exceed your identity. You have to grow your identity. And I love how open that ed is about Jesus. Not that you know, you have to be believe in Jesus to be successful. There’s lots of successful people who don’t believe in Jesus. Ed happens to believe in Jesus. I happen to believe in Jesus, but what matters is even people who believe in Jesus, like what he was saying is they go to, they go to church on Sunday and they go, yeah, I believe in God. And then they go out in the, we work weekend, go, ah, I don’t, I don’t have what it takes. And it’s like, no, no. Like if, if you following scripture saying, God is in you, right? Like the holy spirit is with you inside of you, you have the ability to create, to make, to multiply.
RV (11:41):
And he and ed believes that like, he believes that about himself, which what’s funny is like, whether, whether it’s true or not, it’s true. Like it became true. Like whether it’s true or not, it becomes true because it is the story that you’re telling yourself. And, and, and, and if you stumble across success, if you happen to get to lucky break, you happen to get a big moment. But your identity is at odds with it. Then you’ll, you’ll turn the air conditioner on in terms of your thermostat. And, and you’ll, you’ll, you know, you’ll start heating up and getting success. And you’ll cool yourself off. You’ll self sabotage because that’s your identity. Your identity will say, ah, that was just luck. I didn’t deserve that. That lucky break. Right? Couldn’t do it again. Right. Anybody could do it once. Can’t do it twice. Like you’ll self sabotage.
RV (12:24):
And that’s why he’s saying like, you gotta understand your identity. You gotta rewrite your identity. You gotta be mindful of the story. You’re telling yourself about yourself. That’s what’s gonna change your life. And, and here’s, what’s crazy is like, whatever is your present story is your future story. But also whatever is your present self is your past story. Like in many ways, like mostly, I mean, there are circumstances, right? There are some things that happen to people that are unavoidable. Like I’m not, I’m not suggesting that you are making the horrible, every horrible thing that has happened in your life. But, but there is some truth to that to go, who I am today is in part the result of the story I’ve been telling myself about who I have been in the past and who I will become tomorrow is largely in part affected by the story. I tell myself today about who I am today.
RV (13:22):
And if you wanna change your life, rewrite your story. If you wanna change your life, rewrite your story. And then the third big takeaway from that conversation with ed for me, was just sort of the, the profound thought of, you know, this idea of one more, like, what if this is my last conversation, right? Like what if, what if this is, what if this is my last podcast? Like, what if this is the last podcast recap I ever do? What if this is the last, tonight’s the last date night I have with my wife? What is, what if, what if this is? What if this is my last shot to introduce myself to somebody who, you know, has the knowledge and the relationship to change in my life? What if this is my last shot to learn from somebody? Like, what if this is? What if this is my last shot?
RV (14:13):
Like, what if this is it? What if this is my last day? Am I living with it going like, man, what if, what if this is it? What if this is my last, my last moment? Am I capitalizing? Am I maximizing it? Am I even appreciating in a small minuscule percentage of how I would, if it were my last, because it could be our last, it could be my last, it could be your last, we don’t know. And this idea, the power, one more is going, look, I should be grateful because I got one more. I have one more day. I got one more breath. I got one more. I got at least one more podcast episode of me. I got one more, one more chance to meet somebody. I got one more opportunity to change somebody’s life. And if there’s a calling on your heart to go out and serve somebody and help them, it might be because there’s at least one more person out there
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Who still needs you
RV (15:07):
One more. And what if this is our last chance we would view it differently. We, we would think about it differently. We would act differently and, and we would be more grateful. I, I think I would, I would be more grateful. I’d be more thankful. I’d be more precise. I’d be more deliberate. I’d be more intentional. I, I I’d, I’d put more in, you can do that. You can do that sooner or later. That’s gonna be true. We don’t know when. So you might as well enjoy the richness and the fullness of life that is available to you right now by treating everyone as if it’s your last and just being grateful for the power of one more. So by Ed’s book everybody else’s,
RV (16:13):
I mean, it’s like you reminds me of the early days when I was learning from Zig Ziegler and like, man, this is an amazing, this is an amazing person. This is a world changer. You know, like a lot of our clients, I feel that way about Lewis. I’m like, man, this guy’s a world changer. Like that’s that powerful stuff. And we have other clients, some of them can’t tell you who they are, but like, I’ll go, man. They’re amazing. And all of our clients, I go to our events. Every time I go to one of our brand builders group events, I’m
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Like, gosh, I you’re amazing. You, people are amazing. You have so much more working for you than I did. Like you have so much more working for you than so many of the people that I have seen be successful in this industry that I’ve seen impact millions of lives. Like you have so much more going for you where you are at now than when, where they did when they were, where you are, but they, they, the difference is just
RV (17:09):
Believing it and telling yourself the story that it’s
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Possible instead of telling yourself the story that it’s not possible.
RV (17:24):
So I hope that this podcast and that brand builders group and that my life and AJ’s life and our team and our family and our kids, I hope this is a place you continue to hang out in because I hope we’re a people who help you believe what’s possible for you. I hope that everything you experience from us and our family and our team
Speaker 3 (17:48):
And our community helps you write the story that you were meant to write for your own life and thereby the lives of so many others. So keep coming back, we’ll catch you next week on the influential personal brand podcast.
Ep 280: The Power of One More with Ed Mylett
RV (00:00):
To one of the great honors of my life is getting to play a role behind the scenes for some of the most influential personal brands in the world. I’ve actually found it much more enriching and fulfilling to be behind the scenes and be a part of the team. That’s coordinating that for other people than I have, even for us building my personal brand in our company. And today is truly one of those moments for me. A few months ago, one of my O other mentors, John Gordon introduced me to a gentleman named ed Mylet, who you’ve probably heard of. And ed and I started talking and I found out he had a book launch and book launches is something that we know something about. And so ed and I became friends and it has been an absolute honor and privilege to work alongside of ed here for a few months now and a pretty close working relationship, helping him launch this book.
RV (00:56):
That’s coming out called the power of one more. And we’re gonna talk about the book, but if you don’t know, ed just really quick I’ve known ed, I’ve been following him for years. He’s one of my favorite people to follow online. He’s got over 3 million online followers at, at the time of this recording. He is in the Forbes fiftys wealthy under 50 years old. He’s the host of a podcast called the ed Mylet show, which has had, I mean, everybody Terrell Owens, Mel Robbins, Dabo Sweeney, John Maxwell, Jay Sheti. It goes on and on and on. Ed is one of the best speakers that I’ve ever seen. And I’ve personally learned so much from him. And he’s also the real deal. I mean, he has a, a net worth that is in the nine figures, which is not his focus by any means, but a Testament to the fact that he’s the real deal. It’s not, it’s not fake. And he loves Jesus. He’s humble. And man, what an honor to introduce you to my new friend, ed mullet,
EM (01:58):
Hey brother, Rory, great to be with you. And you’re understanding your involvement and role in my life now. You’re the centerpiece of this book launch. You’ve been leading it from the front the entire time and I’ve been in business for 30 years. I’ve never worked with anybody like you before you are remarkable. He is just so you all know his brilliance is only exceeded by his generosity. And he’s a remarkable man. I actually can’t even believe as I’m saying this, I’m getting a little bit emotional. I did not think I would, but I’m very grateful for you brother, grateful for your friendship and mentorship. Cause I’ve learned so much from you for the last 60 days. And I know it’s just the beginning of a lifelong friendship and, and also business relationship too, so great to be with you today.
RV (02:41):
Well, thank you, man. That means just so much coming from you and, and I want, I want people to hear your real story. Like your life story is tremendously inspiring. Thank you. Also, you know, I hope you don’t mind me sharing this, but like ed is working his butt off. I mean we are running him, we are running him ragged. He is following our, our, you know, bestseller launch plan, which we take our clients through. Can I share how many units we’ve pre-sold ed? Is that okay? Or,
EM (03:11):
Yeah, that’s fine. Sure.
RV (03:12):
40,000 units of this book have already been pre-sold and we have, at the time of this recording, we got about six weeks to go. We’re doing a huge event in Raleigh, but so ed, take us back to like, I wanna hear the story of how you started building your personal brand. You’ve got this great story as a kid. Yeah. You crushed it in business. You still crushed it in business. And, and just, but like, take us back to where do you, where do you demarcate the Genesis of you building your personal brand?
EM (03:43):
Yeah, I really didn’t know what I was doing. I, I had been an entrepreneur and a speaker for a number of years and I sort of resisted the, I wanted to stay private. I really, you know me well now, like I buy homes where I’m very private. It’s not that I don’t love people. I actually adore people, but I’m introverted. And so, and just exposing the, my life, I, most of my friends are famous, unfortunately. Right. And so I knew what came with that and I didn’t want all of it. And so I did it very reluctantly, but the encouragement of a lot of the people that I coach, some people like Tony Robbins also like, Hey man, you need to, you need to go out there and share what you know. And and so I made the decision. It was a really funny story.
EM (04:19):
I’ll tell you this, cuz you’ll laugh. Tony Robbins told me, Hey man, you need to, you need to get on social media and I’m I’m idiot and I’m not very good at posting. And he challenged me in a way that sort of made me want to do it. So we’re sitting on my balcony. My son was in the other room and he goes, I said, max, you’re now the head of my social media team.
RV (05:01):
Nice.
EM (05:01):
And I called Tony, I’m going, Hey, this stuff doesn’t work. And my son, like I thought you knew who you were doing four views. And only one of them even liked it. I, this is not for me. And this is what I hear Tony say, I Rory, I swear to you on our friendship. This is what I hear him say. He goes, dude, you gotta post at the right time of the day. You gotta post at breakfast time. So if you watch my social, I post every morning to this day at 7:30 AM. Yeah. Pacific time. Every day, every post on my main feed that’s cuz back in the day, Tony Robbins told me to post at breakfast time. This is what I think he says to me next worry. And by the way, you gotta post at breakfast time and you need to have hash Browns in the video.
EM (05:38):
This is what I hear him say hash brown. I’m like, and I don’t wanna sound stupid. I’m like really breakfast and hash Browns. All right. Okay dude, I’ll make another one. So I call max and go, Hey, I thought you knew about this stuff. Tony says it’s gotta be breakfast videos around breakfast table and there’s gonna be hash Browns in the video. Max is like, daddy, I don’t, why would there need to be a breakfast? I go, I don’t know. But that’s how this stuff works. So the next video you can go to my social media. It’s a video of me with a plate of eggs and hash Browns. And I make a video. I swear to you, you don’t know this story. And then, then that video gets like three views and no likes. And I tell Tony, I go, Hey man, I call him up. I go, this is crap. The hash brown thing tanked. He goes,
Speaker 3 (06:20):
He goes, what did you just say?
EM (06:22):
I go, I did the breakfast post with the hash Browns.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
He goes dummy.
EM (06:30):
Hash Browns.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
I said, well I
EM (06:32):
Heard hash and breakfast. He goes, no, it’s the time of the day with hash tags. I’m like what? The heck’s a hashtag. He goes, I don’t know. It’s like a pound sign with a word. And it helps him find your video. I go pound
Speaker 3 (06:43):
What? He goes. I, he goes, dude, just
EM (06:45):
Do the hashtag thing years and serious up. That was my start on social media. And I wake up like a year later cuz the content’s good. Right? I wake up a year later, I got a million followers on Instagram. You know, I’m getting, I’m growing like crazy. And I’ve ended up growing to these millions of people, man. And as you know, I’ve never run an ad. It’s completely, it’s completely authentic growth. Like it’s spiral can.
RV (07:06):
I’ve never, I need a, I need to say this right now because this is important. I’ve actually, I haven’t, I don’t think I’ve told this to you directly, but I’ve said this to several people since you know, working so closely with you, which is that one of the thing there’s so many things about you that amaze me. But one of the things that amazes me most is like everybody else out there in the space doing this, this is their full-time job. Right? They got teams, they’re spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s, it’s all they’re doing. And, and you, you don’t like you have a pretty thin team. This is like a side project, which it’s like almost a distraction for you, which makes me admire you. And it also really me off, like it really, really jealous, but like it, it
EM (07:53):
Is that’s where, that’s why you’ve come into my life. I mean, we’ve become one of the, you know I think influencer magazine named me the fastest growing businessman in the history of social media. And as you know, I have very few people on my team. It’s here’s the good news. It’s been content driven. And I don’t say that to brag. I just say that like my content’s good and in a diverse amount of content and that’s, what’s grown and now I’ve met a pro in fact, I’ve met the best in you. And so now between the book, the power of one more, that’s coming out, the event we’re doing with it that, you know, that’s pretty significant. And then what we’ll do with my social going forward, I actually feel like I’ve now met the best people in the world. It’s gonna get real scary. What’s gonna happen when you take the best content. Now married with the best team of people who know how to build a brand, which is you. And so I’m fired up, man. I cannot wait for this thing to explode even to another level.
RV (08:40):
Yeah, for sure. Well, I, I also, you know, another part of that little story is how coachable, I mean, for you to be somebody who’s incredibly successful. I mean, that’s a vast understatement to, to say Tony Robbins says post a video with hash Browns. And without even thinking about it, you just, you just do it. What year was that?
EM (09:02):
That was probably seven years ago.
RV (09:04):
That’s when I started. OK.
EM (09:06):
But by the way, you know me well enough now I’m still that way I’m coachable to you and other people look, I’ve built lots of wealth and lots of different businesses by knowing I’m not the smartest guy in the room. I know what I’m good at. In fact, I talk about this on the book, taking advantage of your giftedness and allowing the gifts of other people to flourish around you. I think what does strike people when they start to interact with me? I’m a confident dude. I’m an intense dude. Mm-Hmm
EM (09:42):
Well, where I need to be, believe me, I’m dominant. And I assert myself, but I’m I’m. I just, I laugh at people who think they know everything. Look it, you are the, you’re the premier guy. What you do, I’m blessed to have you in my life. Why would I not let you do what you’re great at? And I’ll do what I’m great at. I’ve built and sold many, many different businesses on the premise that if you surround yourself with great people, take advantage of their giftedness, use your giftedness. You’re unstoppable. And that’s really the lot, which as you know, that’s, there’s a lot of that in the book and you’ve watched me do it with you. I’m like, Hey, I don’t know what should we do? And I listen. Now, if someone proves themselves consistently not to be equipped to do the job, that’s a different story altogether with me, I’ll make a switch. But until that time comes in your case, every single thing you basically told me to do is worked. And you’ve exceeded what you told me you were going to do when we first met one another. So why wouldn’t I give you more space to lead? I think that’s how you build something. Great.
RV (10:37):
Yeah. It’s, it’s an interesting dichotomy like ed, cuz it’s throwing me for a loop cuz you’re, you’re both physically intimidating. Like you are, you know a very behemoth of a man, your stature, but your reputation is huge. Your track record is huge you’re and you are very intense, but then you are very open and re and receptive to this. I mean it it’s, it’s really interesting. It, I, it actually inspired me to make a post recently about the difference between like confidence and pride. And I was just basically saying how you know, confidence is how you do something mm-hmm
EM (11:40):
I’m also doing what you’ve asked me to do on the book, different things. So my favorite people, Roy, I talk about this in the book and how to establish self confidence. The whole chapter on it’s pretty detailed. It’s not, this book is heavy. I mean, it’s a very heavy everyone who’s read it. That’s friends of mine’s like, whoa, this is there’s no breathing room. It’s cont I mean it’s specific stuff, but my favorite people have this nuance and it’s a very, very difficult line to nuance. In fact, the ultimate person who’s ever exemplified this is Jesus, but there’s this line of tremendous confidence combined with humility. So the people that I love most have a lot of self-confidence, but their humility, it causes ’em to be curious, kind, open grow. We all know people with tons of self-confidence have no humility. They, they, their, their egos outta control.
EM (12:25):
They eventually burn out. They eventually make a mistake. They eventually self-destruct. We also have friends with tons of humility with no self-confidence and you have to carry them through, like, you can do it, you can do it. So it’s the, it’s the, it’s the nuance of the two. Jesus knew who he was, but he was humble enough to present himself as a man. He was humble enough to submit. He was humble enough to feed the masses. He was humble enough to give his life for us. Talk about the ultimate level of sacrifice and humility yet at the same time simultaneously knowing who he really was. And so the, the best people that I know that I, I like to get close to. They tow that line. Sometimes you arrow one side or the other, but I’d love to. I hope that I continue to have a very level of, I know how to build self-confidence.
EM (13:07):
I detail that in the book, I know how to help you become self-confidence I’ve helped the top people in the world do that. I know how to do that. The humility part is a character of trait. You have to want to grow. You have to know that you, that for me, man, like it’s weird to write a book called the ultimate guide to happiness and success. And I give all these keys yet. At the same time, I have a whole chapter on faith. I also know that there’s many times in my life brother, where the truth is, I don’t know what happened. My reflections are vague. And the truth is all I conclude is that during those difficult times, the Lord just sort of picked me up and carried me for a while and then set me back down in a better place. And then I went to work and then he picked me back up and carried me for a while. And it’s why it makes me so emotional because it’s odd to write a book about here’s how you become happier or more successful, knowing that so much of it wasn’t me. And so much of it was, was God in my life was favor, was blessing. And so it’s, I’d be remiss if I said I have all these answers, cuz I, I actually know I don’t the older I get, the more I realize what I don’t know mm-hmm
RV (14:16):
To grow there. Well, your, your, your faith is another example of this humility, right? Like you’ve got the money, you’ve got the influence. You have the followers, you you’ve got the most famous people in your cell phone. Mm-Hmm
RV (15:04):
And I see you doing that and it’s inspiring to me. It’s also impactful kingdom work. I mean, you’re a secular author. This is a business. This is a business book. But man, if ed, my let is, you know, if Jesus is good enough, like for an ed, my let or, you know, to hear somebody like you go, no, this is, this is what it’s really about. For me, it’s inspiring. And it also, it makes, it makes me more excited to be a part of what you’re doing, cuz you’re reaching a lot of people who would not hear that message.
EM (15:34):
I was just talking about this with a very, very, very, actually two of them, maybe the two most famous pastors in the world. I won’t say their names, but two of very famous guys. And I was talking about that. I said, listen, when they come listen to you, man, they know what they’re getting your pastor. What’s cool with me is they come for me for the jet or the island or the money or the other stuff. And they’re gonna get all that. I want them to have all that stuff, but then they’re gonna hear this other thing that they didn’t expect to hear. And I’m hoping that maybe that I can reach people to some extent that God’s using me to potentially reach people that maybe not everybody else can get to the other. You know? So that’s a, that’s a, you know, really significant thing in calling for me.
EM (16:10):
And I just, you know, I hope that I’m, I hope that I’m bold enough. I hope that I’m becoming more and more bold with it. It’s never that I’ve not been willing to be bold. It’s that I’ve sort of learned to express it more as I’ve gotten a little bit older and I just love the Lord man. Like you can’t, you have to conclude when you get to a certain point in your life like, Hey man, I’m not, this is not me. There’s no way this is me yet. I am. I here’s what I really think. I, I believe, you know, broader that I represent a little bit. I think there’s this notion in the world of faith world that you can’t believe in science or facts or details or strategies and still be a person of faith. And then I think secular people think that if you, if you believe in faith that you can’t believe in these other things, I believe in the brain, I believe in brain science.
EM (16:50):
I believe in neuroplasticity, I believe in the re particular activating system in the prefrontal cortex of your brain, brain and visualizations and neuroplasticity. And I believe in epigenetics, I believe in all these different things. I just happen to believe there’s a holy God in heaven that created all of it. I just happen to believe that I know where it comes from. And so I’m both a person of faith and a person of science. And by the way, oftentimes my faith confirms the science and my science confirms the faith. And so amen. Maybe that’s too deep, but I write about it in the book.
RV (17:20):
Yeah. So let let’s let’s talk about the book for a second. Y’all your story is moving ed. Like, can you take, just take us back to your dad? Yeah. Like the relationship you have with your father is like your earthly father I’m talking about is a important part of your life. It’s an important part of this book. And can you just talk about like where you started in your relationship with your dad and how that evolved and how did that influence the direction of the book?
EM (17:49):
Everything. And like most people were influenced by who raised us. Right? So I wrote the book after my dad died last year and it’s called the power of one more because my dad embodied this. My dad was an alcoholic. The first 15 years of my life was not living a great life. I believe so deeply that humans can change because I watched my hero do it. I watched my own father live, not as a great father or husband for the first 15 years of my life. And then I made, he made one decision and gave one more, try to get sober. Then my dad stayed sober the second half of his life and lived as magnificent of a life on earth as anybody I’ve ever watched in my entire 50 years on the planet. So I know humans can change because my dad made that one decision to get sober and everything that I am I’ve learned from my dad.
EM (18:33):
I really do believe the premise of the book is this. That you’re a lot closer to the dream life that you want than you think you are. And the fact that you think you’re so far away causes you to pace yourself like it and keeps it in the distance. But what if it’s true that you’re one decision, one relationship, the ultimate relationship is with your heavenly father. One thought one emotion, one meeting, one guy meet Rory. Rory meets me to completely changing your life. And then the question becomes if I’m right about that, and I know I’m right about that, then what are the two books I always carry with me are my book, the power of one more and think and grow rich think and grow rich is my second favorite book. Other than my scriptures. I love it. Having said that you don’t just think and get rich.
EM (19:14):
You have to do things. And so I wanted to write a book that told you what are the thoughts? And then what is the, the collective action that you do in congruency that create, change the thought. And then the action doing them together is what creates the change. I’m just tired of reading books, Rory, that it’s the same it’s think and grow rich, written a little bit differently. I wanted a book that’s modern and profound and links, faith, but also links the brain strategies you need in the techniques and the habits and the goal setting. How do you create standards? What’s equanimity, right? What’s the particular activating. What’s the matrix of your life? How do you build self confidence? What’s your identity, all these different things in the book. And I’ve done that because my dad, I learned these things from, and every day I believe in one more try. I believe in redemption. I believe that, you know, you’re saved. Not because you’re perfect, but because of God’s grace in your life and that no matter what age you are, what mistakes you’ve made or what baggage you’re carrying around, bankruptcy, divorce, a sin, you’ve had something you’re ashamed of. You can drop those bags at any moment in one decision in one moment and completely change your life. I watched my dad do it. The, if that’s true, then how do you, how do you, and that’s why I wrote the book is the, how do you,
RV (20:25):
Yeah, it, it, it is, it is fire. You know, I, I got obviously a little insider preview to a lot of this in these interviews, but you’re like the, the concept of identity mm-hmm
EM (21:37):
Well, the identity, part’s huge. It’s a, it’s the thermostat of your life. Your identity is sitting on the wall of your life and, and it it’s, it regulates everything. So it’s what you believe you’re worth. You’re going to get. This is a fact. So if you’re a 75 degree of wealth or happiness or faith and your results begin to exceed at 80 95, a hundred, you will find a way to subconsciously sabotage it and turn the air conditioner back down to get what you believe you’re worth. It’s a fact. I watch people, people think it’s coincident. Oh, I lost my money cuz of the market or my car broke down. I had to loan someone. Nope, not you turn the air conditioner on and you got it back to what you believe you deserve. So this identity thing is huge to heat up to 85, 90, a hundred, 120 degrees.
EM (22:15):
So that your results, your faith, your happiness, your abundance continues to grow. You will never exceed your identity ever, no matter what skill, what business, what real you gotta grow your identity. The question is, how do you do it? And in the book I go through detailed what I call the trilogy of identity. The first part of identity, believe it or not is faith. If I come from a all-knowing all loving God who made me in my image and likeness, aren’t I supposed to do something great with my life. There’s so many believers. They, they got God on Sunday. They got God on, you know, Bible study on Wednesdays. But when they walk into a boardroom or a sales call or a meeting, they’re alone, they forget all about it. Wow. And then their identity reduces. But if I’ve got Jesus with me right on my shoulder, he’s got my back.
EM (22:56):
Every single call, every single podcast, every single meeting, man, my identity, can’t be 75 with Jesus impossible. Second thing of your identity intention. You have to start to give yourself more credit for your intent. Too. Many of you are basing your identity on your ability or what you’ve achieved or who you are. And you’ll always be chasing it. In other words, it’ll never catch up. But what if you started to say, I intend to serve. I intend to do good. I intend to make a difference with this customer of mine or this client of mine or with my social media or with my brand. My intent is to serve right before we started. I swear to you. I say a quick prayer connect with my faith. Lord help me serve because I’m connecting to my intention, man. My identity goes through the roof cuz I know two things.
EM (23:34):
I know Jesus has my back. And number two, I know I intend to do well. I intend to serve third part of it is association. Who are you around? If you’re a 75 degree or, and you’re around somewhere 120 degrees of financial identity or faith, they will heat you up eventually through proximity to their thermostat setting. So if you combine faith intention and, and association, you can shift this identity and then your thermostat setting on your entire life. By the way you have a happiness thermostat too, you could start to achieve all the external stuff. You could even be a church going person or have all kinds of, but you’re just not any happier than you used to be. It’s because you’ve got a thermostat setting of happiness that was installed in you when you were a child at 75 degrees and you just reinforced it all your life with all these references. So I teach you how to change that in the book. So there’s all types of thermostat settings we have.
RV (24:24):
Yeah. I mean that is so huge. And, and what you hit on and I just want to Edify for everybody is this book strikes the balance of this thought and action. It’s the intersection of this high level sort of cerebral and science and visualization. And then also the practicality, the, the pragmatic nature it’s it’s palatable, right. Is to go, what do I do if I want to raise my identity, I need to remind myself of my faith and my creator. I need to remind myself and set the right intention. And I need to associate with the right people that takes such an obscure concept, like identity and makes it real. And that’s why y’all you, you need to go buy this book like, and, and buy the book now. I mean, you don’t get a chance to learn from somebody like ed and just even to pull out, like for someone like him to take a whole lifetime worth of lessons and, and dump it out. And I mean, the thing that blows me away is it’s like it’s 20 bucks or 25, 20 $8. It’s insane. Yeah.
EM (25:34):
It is brother and I wrote the book when my dad passed because you know, it dawned on me in that moment that I’m the next one, you know, I’m gonna pass someday. And I think, you know, Napoleon hill says in think and grow rich begin with the end in mind, you know what? That’s for a goal that’s true in life. Begin with the end in mind and work your way backwards. And so for me, I thought, you know what? I want my great grandkids to know what I thought about life. What I learned about success and happiness. And I wanna write about it until I’m dad and gone. And the truth is, if you wanna know the power of one more, let me take it from you. You wanna know the power of see the whole premises. If you’re gonna be in the gym, doing 10 reps, do 11, you’re gonna be 30 minutes on the treadmill.
EM (26:17):
Do one more. You’re gonna tell your sweet daughter. You love her. Tell her one more time a day, you start stacking up the one mores in your life, right? All of a sudden you’re a different human being. Self-Confidence is the process of keeping the promises you make to yourself. It’s a relationship with you. And when you have a reputation with yourself that you keep the promises you make to yourself, you are a self confident person, long term, but if you wanna be a world class achiever, build a relationship, a reputation with yourself where you do one more than you promise yourself. And all of a sudden you’re a monster of achievement, but you know what that power, my favorite thing to do, man, was play golf with my dad. And neither one of us are good golfers, but it was five hours with my hero and my best friend right next to me in the golf cart.
EM (27:01):
And we would talk deep about life and politics, which we disagreed on and all kinds of different stuff. Rory, do you know what I would give right now for one more round of golf with my dad? I can’t even tell you brother, one more conversation. I could hug my dad one more time and I can’t, but it shows you the power of how precious one more is. So if you do have someone you love here on earth, what if you started to look at her? Like what? This was my one last conversation with her. What if, when your wife walks in the room, what if, what, what was the last dance? What if was the last dinner? What if only had one more? What if you started to look at that call that sales call? What if this is my last shot? I only have one more.
EM (27:48):
When you begin to take the one more away, you start to understand the power of it. And so the power of it when it’s absence is magnified, the good news is we are still here. If you’ve had someone pass away and you can’t have that conversation, honor them with your life. But if they are here, make it more precious. It does matter. And I don’t know how many more you get to talk to your parents, but I know it’s not infinity. And so take advantage of the times that you have with the people that you love. Take advantage of the opportunities. Look for the relationships. Look for the decisions. Look for the thoughts. Look for the meanings. I just had to play golf, talking about money. I played golf two weeks ago. I’m talking about win one relationship in one decision away. I think I told you this, but again, here, the guy goes, Hey you’re gonna play golf with this guy.
EM (28:32):
Net worth are real similar. He did it in a really interesting way. So we first tee, I go, Hey man, I wanna know how you how’d. You build your fortune. He goes about 30 years ago, a guy asked me a $50,000 loan. He actually asked me and my other friend, I gave him the 50 grand. So did my friend, but my friend a week later asked for it back and he got the money back. I didn’t ask for the money back. He goes a 50 grand turn into about 700 million. Whoa. I went say that again. Cause he had about 700 million. I go, who’s the, who’s the guy you loan the money to. He goes some. Do we back in the day named Jeff Bezos
EM (29:14):
But in some way, the small ones like that end up stacking up and you really are. Think about if you’re married, that one relationship, how much has changed your life? That one decision to ask her or him out that one decision to get married, that child, you have that one relationship, how much it changed your life. So this ISN’ up for debate. The question then is how do I foster these new relationships? How do I make these new decisions? How do I uncover these new emotions? What are the new thoughts I have to have? What’s the one more thing I gotta do. And if you read the book, you’ll know
RV (29:47):
Where do you want ’em to go? I, I have one last question for you before that though. Where, where do you want people to go? Ed let’s we practiced. We’ve practiced your call to action. Where do you want people to go by the book right now?
EM (29:59):
We, we want you to go to the power of one more.com. That’s where we want you to go, but you can get the book anywhere, but if you go to the power of one more.com, you’re gonna find some cool stuff there as well. And I gotta tell you that if, if I’ve ever believed more strongly in something, I don’t know what it is. I just feel very strongly. I’m convicted that it can make a difference in your life. Whether as a mother, a father, a business person, a leader, an athlete, just as a human being, I think you’ll find keys to becoming more successful and happier. That’s why I call it the ultimate guide to happiness and success. So go to the power of one more.com and get the book. Anywhere books are sold.
RV (30:37):
I love it. Guys, go get the book. I mean, seriously, this is it’s insane. $28 and $30 to have access to somebody like ed, my lead and what’s going on in his head is, is incredible. Ed. The last thing I wanna leave, I, I want to you to leave the audience with is you talk, you have this I don’t know if it’s like a game or, but there’s this thing that you do in your life, where you, you about meeting your potential mm-hmm
EM (31:12):
A hundred percent. I do for sure. It’s how I live every day. It’s my dominant thought. We all have a dominant thought. The dominant thought running through my mind is that, listen, I know that when I get to heaven someday, I, all I need is the Lord to go, Hey, well done, good and faithful servant. Get in here. That’s what I want. Right? But I have this hallucination that he made me as image and like this, and there’s a destiny version of me. And I have this feeling. At least I let myself have it that when I do die, you’re talking about beginning with the end in mind. This is what I meant. When I said this earlier, I believe I get to meet the destiny version of me. The man I was born to be the man. He made me to be the guy who had the contribution, the moments, the memories, the feelings, the emotions, the experiences, the difference he made in life. I get to meet that guy someday. And every decision I make as I go through my life, one more decision is to catch that guy. I wanna catch that dude. And when I die and get there, I want him to look back at me and go, Hey, man, I seen you’ve been chasing me all your life. You caught me. And I go, dang. It I’ve been after you forever. To me, heaven. Heaven is I meet the man. I was cable of becoming and we’re identical twins. That’s heaven.
EM (32:16):
Hell is we’re total strangers. And I can’t live with the idea that that might possibly happen. I don’t want that. I wanna meet the man. I was capable of becoming. And so when I’m thinking about making a decision or whether go for it or to have a new relationship, does it move me closer to heaven or not? And if it moves me to closer to heaven, then it’s a step I should take. And that’s why I live my life. Thinking that
RV (32:46):
Now follow ed, buy the book, listen to what this guy’s about. I’m telling you, we I’ve gotten the more I’ve gotten to know him. The more I’ve liked him. I’ve always been a fan. And the closer that we’ve gotten, the more that I’ve I have have developed a respect and a true admiration for this guy. I’m, I’m glad that he is out there in the world, doing what he’s doing, brother. We wish you the best of luck. Thank you for the compliment of being here. Thank you for the privilege of allowing us to play a tiny part in everything that you got going on. And we just wish you the
EM (33:17):
Best. Roy. It’s not tiny. The feelings are at least mutual and I love you. And I’m grateful for you, bro.
Ep 279: Building an Empire with Life Changing Content with Cary Jack | Recap Episode
AJV (00:03):
This is AJ Vaden. Your co-host of the influential personal brand. Welcome to the recap episode on the conversation that I had with a dear friend and just the ha the happiest hustler. I know Cary Jack such a good conversation and I would highly E you, if you were struggling with content or trying to figure out how to take that first step, or even trying to figure out, like, how do I curate my business with content? Like, this is the episode for you. So highly recommend it. Go listen to it. If you only have a few minutes today, that’s why we do these recap episodes. So here are a couple of my key takeaways from my conversation with Cary Jack. And this is the, the biggest one single handedly is that you only need one set of life changing content to build your business.
AJV (00:57):
I think there is a huge misconception that you need all these different sets of content and all these different topics, and you need a variety keynotes, and you need multiple courses, and it’s like, you can, but you don’t have to, you can build a multi-layered business off of one set of content. If you just focus on provide, providing very good content in real value, something that will actually help someone else it’s like, you can turn into a course, make it a podcast, make it a webinar, make it a membership, make it a coaching program, make it consulting make it a retreat, right? It’s like, turn it into a live event. Like you can do so much with one very good set of content, and you don’t need to change your content all the time, create content that is evergreen and universal. I, I liken it to Roy Aden’s first book take the stairs and it’s like, take the stairs sell pretty much as well.
AJV (01:55):
Today, 10 years later, as it did at the end of year one, it’s like that content hasn’t changed. It’s evergreen content. It is this great ever remind component that we have problems doing things that we don’t wanna do. And there is a discipline that is required in a mindset shift that is required that doesn’t get old, but that content is in a a membership called the focus 40. It was a course, a book it’s a keynote. Just, just a great reminder that you don’t need tons of sets of curriculum. You don’t need all these different content sets. You can do that, but you can also build at a very amazing business off of one core set of content, right? That one life changing set of content could be the, for growing your entire business. So I think that was really big.
AJV (02:51):
I think that’s very significant. The second most important thing is that, how do you decide what kind of business model that you would have if you have a content based company? Right. This is not the conversation for someone who is not a content based company, but if you are a content based entity, right. Then how do you know if it should be in a course or a membership or coaching program or a mastermind or retreats or live events or a book, or should it be, you know, what should it be, right? It’s like, there’s a lot of different options there. And I probably didn’t mention 10. So how do you choose? And I loved what he said when I asked him that question. He goes, look at who your audience is and think about how they would consume it. Start there. So simple but yet so significant, so important.
AJV (03:46):
It’s just stop looking around and look at the audience that you’re trying to serve, that you’re trying to help and go, how do they need this? How would they want this? And if you’re not entirely sure ask them, right, you have this idea persona, this like ideal avatar of who is the person that you’re trying to serve. You know, someone like this, right? Maybe they’re a personal friend or a family member go and ask them. It’s like, Hey, if I was gonna do this and like, really go after this and grow scale, or start this business based on this content, how would you want to get it? And then, then think about the different layers of that person. Like maybe what they would want in the very beginning is free content on a blog, or maybe they’d want it in a podcast. Then it’s like, well, maybe they’d want more consistent.
AJV (04:32):
So maybe it’s like a low level membership, or maybe it’s a course, or maybe they want one-on-one help. And you just gotta like, have these conversations, but completely centered on who, who is the person this is designed for, who is the person, this, this content is supposed to help and lean in there so wise loved it so much. And then the last thing, and it’s the very last thing that we talked about on the podcast. If you’re listen to it, don’t it to the very, very end to get this. But I loved it. And I just said like, what’s one life lesson. That’s had the most significant impact on your life as a entrepreneur business builder, just as a, an individual. And he said the book, the compound effect by Darren Hardy and specifically in that is the importance of doing the small things consistently, right?
AJV (05:24):
It’s, it’s doing those small things in a very consistent manner that, that snowball into bigger things. And so it’s just asking yourself, like, what are the, the small things that you can start to do right now that if you did them consistently could change your life. Most of us do not have these large grandiose huge things that we need to change in our life in order to feel extraordinary impact for most of us. And I do mean most of us, they, they are the little things like maybe you need to stop working an hour earlier every day. Maybe you need to start an hour later, right? Maybe you need to Institute a date night with your spouse or your partner. Maybe you need to start picking your kids up from school or taking ’em, or it’s doing a phone detox, a technology detox every Sunday.
AJV (06:11):
Like that one actually would be a really big one for me, but it’s like, what are those things that if started doing in a really consistent manner that are small in theory, that could be life changing if you actually did them. And then how do you do those in a very consistent manner? So that you feel the, the benefit and the impact of those small changes. So good. Y’all love this conversation. Love Cary Jack. His book just came out the happy hustle. He’s got an awesome podcast. I mentioned this in the podcast, but if you go to the happy hustle book.com, if you actually get the book, read it and DM Cary Jack online, he will give you 20 minutes free coaching. There is no sell at the end. It is just what did you it from the book and how can I help you on your happy hustle journey? I would highly encourage you to take up, take him up on it. So good. Go listen episode, go check out Jack. And we will you next time on the influential personal.
Ep 278: Building an Empire with Life Changing Content with Cary Jack
AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody. And welcome to another episode on the influential personal brand podcast. This is AJ Vaden. Here I am. One of your co-hosts as well as the CEO and one of the co-founders of brand builders group, along with my partner in crime, Rory Vaden, who is not here with me today, this is my solo episode, but my good friend, Cary Jack, whom I’m so excited to have on the show. And I know Cary personally, I got to be on his podcast a few months ago, which was probably one of the funnest podcasts that I’ve ever been on. And so total shout out to the happy hustle podcast. You should definitely go check it out. It was so fun and I love all the things that you do with that. But before we get started and I turn it over to Cary and help you guys learn a little bit about Cary, I do have a professional bio, but I will read because undoubtedly, I will forget some of these really awesome accolades, but I think are also fascinating about Cary.
AJV (00:58):
So, all right, I’m gonna give you kind of like what to me sticks out that you should really know listening to this, why you should stick around and why this is a really important episode for you. So Cary Jack is a lifestyle entrepreneur. He’s an author, he’s a podcast host. He’s also a professional actor and model. He’s a biohacker eco warrior, martial artist, humanitarian. I mean, it’s like, what aren’t you do? So there’s so many things going up, but when I say like he is doing really extraordinary things, he’s also worked with extraordinary brands. I mean, I’m talking about like he’s represented international brands like Burberry EZ top man, Corona Marriott Royal Caribbean Cadillac, Vogue home Depot, like the list goes on and on and on. So with all of that said, we literally could talk about just interesting things for the next 40 minutes, but in an effort to keep this call very focused, we’re gonna talk about some really unique things that I think are gonna help our listeners. So Cary, welcome. I’m doing the show,
CJ (02:05):
AJ, thank you so much for having me. It’s an honor to be here and yep. We definitely could go down many rabbit holes, but I’m all about adding value to the audience and ID. I have, you know, a really great insight to building and growing and izing your personal brand. And I really am excited to share. So some of the wisdom that I’ve acquired and the mistakes that I’ve learned from along the journey,
AJV (02:28):
Oh my gosh, this is gonna be such a great episode one, because I know your background and I know your story. And I’ve seen so much of it firsthand over the last few years, but also just because you’re so humble and you’re just such a, a joyful human being. I’m so excited for this. So all right. So I know a ton about you, our listeners do not so help everyone kinda get to know, like, how did you get to where you are? And then tell us a little bit about where are you, right? Like what are you doing? And how’d you get there?
CJ (02:59):
Oh yeah. So I grew up half in Sarasota, Florida surfing the beaches and you know, enjoying that, that Florida lifestyle and then half in the mountains of red lodge, Montana camp and fishing, hunting, hiking. And, you know, that’s where I first realized the importance of balance, you know, both balance with my environment, but also just balance, you know, professionally and personally, my, my childhood, wasn’t the easiest. Everyone has a story, but you know, I, I actually was dropped on my head as a child. I don’t even know if you know that AJ, but I had a very severe stutter. I couldn’t speak I was very angry. I a very angry kid because I couldn’t articulate myself. And my mom actually cured me with chiropractic and she would adjust my cranial SAC bones and I can speak okay now. And I, but due to that, I, I was very angry. I went to many years of anger management, which is odd because I run a company called the happy hustle now. And
AJV (04:00):
You’re so joyful. I said that,
CJ (04:04):
Yeah, well, I wasn’t always and then I got into some trouble when I was young, you know, there was a gut wrenching divorce mixed in and, and mental and physical and emotional abuse. And I actually ended up moving 24 times before the age of 18. So I was on the move a lot got into some, some crime. I’ll, I’ll leave a lot of that out, but I ended up in jail that’s for a
AJV (04:27):
Happy hour conversation.
CJ (04:28):
Yeah. That’s for drinks. And and you know, one on one where I can’t incriminate myself, but I learned the hard way basically. And I’ve always been a, a hustler I’ll say, but I ever, I, wasn’t always a happy hustler. You know, always been an entrepreneur at heart. Fast forward, you know, I changed my ways. I operate now with a hundred percent integrity and I really, you know, like I just completely did a 180 because I saw that path and where I was headed and I just didn’t want to go that direction. And I actually launched a company in New York city with my brother business partner in friend grant. And, you know, we were grinding AJ. I mean, we were working our, our tails off just a hundred plus hour weeks, you know, getting less than five hours of sleep and you know, all for what, for profit success, ego, you know, title.
CJ (05:15):
And I feel like a lot of people out there can resonate with, you know, grinding, but not necessarily for the right reasons. Yeah. You know, and, and I was no different. We had this big tech company that we were soliciting, these seven figure VC funding deals. And we actually ended up getting the seven figure VC funding deals. We inked partnerships with Microsoft and IBM. And we had everything for this like grandiose tech company that could have had a five year exit and multiple millions of dollars come with. And I just realized, right, when we were sitting down to sign the contract, that I couldn’t take the money, like my brother and I were just so unhappy, we were so burnt out and I just feel, now there’s an epidemic going on. Sure. There’s a pandemic, but there’s an epidemic and it’s this entrepreneurial burnout. Yeah.
CJ (06:00):
And I just made up my mission to solve that problem for myself. And I had to make a choice. I, I said no to the money, my brother and I folded the company in 18 months of hard work scrapped, you know, completely, I, I then moved to ANCO Thailand for 10 months and I just figured out a better way to work and live over there a, a way to truly be happy within the hustle. And that’s where the happy hustle was born. And that’s kind of where I’m at now is, you know, running this, this company that helps entrepreneurs mainly, but really anyone who’s struggling with balance imbalances. My one word, if you know, BBG, you know, your one word problem imbalance is the one word problem that I solve for people. And I do that in a multitude of ways, but that’s really kind of the journey in a nutshell.
AJV (06:48):
Wow. You know what I love so much about almost every single person who comes on this show and really anyone who has really ingrained themselves in the BG community is they all have done it over this like mission focused of, I wanted to make a difference for myself, for someone else. It’s like, it’s like money has always been the byproduct of it, not at the forefront. And I love that. It’s like I turned down the money because I wasn’t happy and I had to figure out a better way to live. And so I’m so curious what happened in Thailand? Like what did you discover in Thailand?
CJ (07:26):
Well, a lot of things happened in Thailand. You know, I traveled around a bunch went to all sorts of really cool places from Vietnam to Singapore, to Bali and everywhere in between. But what really had happened was I made my first dollars online, you know, and I was like, I rented this amazing penthouse apartment for like 400 us dollars, you know, and I was working from a laptop and I just realized that you don’t have to like sell your soul to make a living. You could actually make money and a difference, you know, if you get clear on who you wanna help. And so it kind of just came full circle when I was over there, like, okay, I want, I really want to enjoy my everyday, you know, journey. And I, I think what happens with a lot of people especially type a driven individuals is, you know, lack there of a better cliche. They get to the top of the mountain and they realize they’re the only one there. And they isolated everyone. And then they gotta go all the way back down and then climb a different mountain. And that’s kind of how it happened to me. And, you know, I just, when I was over there, I realized I can enjoy every single day. I can enjoy the journey, not just the destination, you know, as a happy hustle life that I actually love.
AJV (08:44):
Ah, I love that. And I’ve been there too. I felt like I, I spent 10 years basically putting myself in this like tiny little corner where I missed every wedding, every birthday party, every baby shower, all in the sake of revenue and profit ambition. And I’ve been there. I know that feeling. And so, okay. So you kinda like figured out, like, this is my life cannot be about money. If there there’s gotta be this balance here, I have to figure this out. You go to Thailand, you travel around, you start money online, right? Yep. So walk us through that for everyone’s listening, because we have a ton of people who listen that they are in the grind and they’ve got a full time, you know, corporate job and maybe they plan on leaving, maybe they don’t, but how did it all start? Like what did you start doing online? How did you generate that first dollar? Like what did that look like?
CJ (09:35):
Yeah. Well, for me, you know, I kind of evolved my, my brand and my messaging, which I think a lot of people out there will end up doing as well. You know, what you start as, will not be what you finish as, or even in the middle where you end up it’s, it’s honestly getting clear on like who you want to help first and foremost, and what problem you actually wanna help them solve? Just like, you know, the brand builders group, like core three questions is what’s the one word problem that you wanna solve for people who do you wanna solve it for exactly. Right. Customer, demographics and psychographics. And then what’s your uniqueness. And like, although I didn’t do it that specific, you know, with that specific terminology, although I am a BG client, as well as a BG evangelist, you know, I’m going back to Thailand. I wasn’t in that mindset. I just said, you know what? I can help these people just through a webinar. I just sold a webinar. And I just started, you know, open with like accountability and mindset. And it was just really like basic stuff, you know, but I, I just, it was, and it was a very low price point, but it, it gave me social proof that, wow, I can, I can do this. I
AJV (10:53):
Can do this. So for anyone out there, who’s going, would anyone actually want what I have to say? Would anyone sign up? Would anyone pay for this? Like, what would you tell for that person who just is hesitant to take that first step of saying, I’m gonna do a webinar, I’m gonna do it for free. I’m gonna charge for it. I’m just gonna start. Like, what would you say to them?
CJ (11:15):
I would say 100%. Don’t let the fear hold you back. You know, we all have that, that little voice inside our head. We all have the self-limiting beliefs and the compare and despair, who am I to share this message, you know, X so and so is so much more qualified. And as soon as you he R’s advice, which I love, you know, when the mission to serve is clear, there is no fear. And so I think if you can just get out of your own head and start to focus on service and realize that you have a message, you have a gift and the world needs it. Then you, you can push past that fear and, and really just start and, and that, and you nailed it, AJ. That’s what it is. It started like you have to take action and, and just start.
AJV (12:00):
Hmm. That’s so good. I’ve never actually heard it. Say I’ve never heard anyone say it that way. Compare and despair because that’s what happens when you compare, you immediately like self isolate and go, well, I can’t do this, this person’s already doing this. It’s like, the more that you compare, it’s like that fear just like takes over and tells you no, you can’t.
CJ (12:19):
Yep. Yep.
AJV (12:20):
That’s so good. I love that. Right. So that’s amazing. So clearly you don’t live in Thailand anymore. You’re back in the states. You’re in good. All of Montana. So tell us a little bit about like, what are you doing right now? Because you just recently had a major accomplishment with your first book. Right? I already talked about your podcast. So how did you go from, I think I’m gonna do this one thing online to now you’re a published author. You’re a speaker. You’re got this amazing podcast. Like, how did that happen?
CJ (12:54):
Yeah. Well, I do have to give credit to BBG. I, I went to finding your brand DNA and that was the catalyst. Like, it’s always easier to reverse engineer, you know, the process looking backwards and say, oh, that’s what the step was. And then the next step. Yeah. But truly when I look at my journey, you know, I was thrown to spaghetti on the walls for like the three years, you know, I was like, oh, I can help this person. And I can help this person. Oh, you need help. And fitness coaching, oh, you need business or entrepreneur, you know, and I wasn’t clear. And you know, when you try to be everything to everyone, you actually become nothing to know one. And so you have to get clear. And, and when I went to the finding your brand DNA event in Nashville, you and R you know, this was like, this was like, oh, G B B G, just when it started, it was like
AJV (13:37):
Very in the earlys.
CJ (13:38):
Yes, it was. And, and that, you know, that event really helped me crystallize my message. And it just helped me clarify the, the vision. And I’ve always been big into goal setting. However, when you actually go through and get someone like AJ or Rory, or the BBG personal brand strategist to help give you perspective, you know, sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know. And that is really what happened. It gave me perspective. It helped me identify, who’s my perfect target, avatar. Who, where do they hang out? You know, how do I reach them? What problem am I actually gonna solve for them? And I actually gonna solve a forum so fast forward, you know, I’ve, I’ve run high level masterminds for my perfect avatar of, you know, imbalanced entrepreneurs. I’ve I’ve done, you know, all sorts of online courses. I’ve done books and, and speaking and events right now, what I’m focused on is my podcast, which, you know, that’s been a great tool to build the know like, and trust with my tribe.
CJ (14:42):
Yeah. However, it’s also a great tool to network. And I know you and Roy talk about the power of networking through a podcast. I, so I essentially use my podcast to add as much value as possible. And then I have my free plus shipping book funnel, which my book acts as a lead magnet. And then it transitions into my online course. And I have this blisful bouncer whiteboard, fridge magnet that then par lays into a reoccurring membership model. And then I have a high level, a mastermind, epic camping adventure, where I actually take high level entrepreneurs into the back country, Montana wilderness for five days. And we, we camp out we hike in about 10 miles and we bring in a primitive survival expert, a fly fishing expert. You know, we have a back country chef and we have a business mastermind in the wilderness, completely connected.
AJV (15:30):
I’m gonna right here. Cuz I think this is really significant to anyone who is out there trying to build their personal brand, trying to monetize it. I’m just realizing it’s like, you really have one set of curriculum, but with that you have a podcast, you have a course, you have a book, you have a lead magnet. You have speaking, you have this membership program, you have this high level mastermind, but it’s all centered around one set of curriculum. And I think that’s a really significant thing of going. You don’t have to have tons and tons of tons of content. You need one set of life changing content that actually makes a difference. And then you just create it in a variety of, to meet people where they are.
CJ (16:15):
You nailed it. So how did,
AJV (16:16):
How did you determine which formats were best for you and your audience? Cause I think that’s a really important thing is people are trying to figure out with so many things that I could do. How do I know what I should do?
CJ (16:29):
Yeah. Well again, just echoing your point. You’ve really want to get crystal clear on your framework, your content, how you solve the problem. You should know who you solve the problem for, but how you solve. The problem is going to determine where you are going to solve the problem in terms of medium, right? Someone potentially who listens to my podcast, maybe isn’t ready to invest in the Montana mastermind, camping adventure. So I need to meet them where they’re at with free content, a free lead magnet, you know, all sorts of valuable things that build that no like, and trust. Then when they’re ready, I can nurture them to potentially joining my online course. You know, that’s a scalable offer that can really add a ton of value, but further nurture that relationship. Then when they’re ready for more, then they could, you know, ascend themselves or through my marketing to an online membership model. And I just think anyone out there listening, who’s struggling, you know, in, in terms of where to start, you have to think who is your perfect avatar? Like, you know, if you’re, if you’re working with busy entre who are, you know, maybe 40 to 50 years of, of age, well, they’re probably not gonna be on TikTok. Okay. They’re probably gonna be on LinkedIn. Right. Maybe they’ll be on TikTok. I feel like who knows these days? Who knows?
CJ (17:50):
I don’t, I don’t know. My team handles all that. I, I, I just can’t do the dancing as I love dancing, but that’s with my fiance and at the, you know, at the dance hall anyway, the point is, you gotta think about like, they’re not gonna think of where your avatar is and then serve them there where they’re already at. Like again, like BBG does these high level strategy days, you know, some people aren’t like, aren’t going to sit in front of a course. They’re just not gonna watch a video on their laptop on a Saturday. They, they want one on one hand holding, you know? So you have to think about where your perfect avatar is. And then where is going to be best to connect with them, to be relatable for them to share your story and your, your process and your message so that you can make a positive impact in their life.
AJV (18:37):
Oh man, I’ll tell you what I took away from that, that I think is so significant is stop looking around at what everyone else is doing and look directly at the people you need to serve, that you are meant to serve and go, what do they need need? How can they consume this? Yep. And stop trying to do the next trendy thing just because someone else is doing it, they may not have your audience. So focus on your audience, focus on the person that you’re trying to serve and build it for them.
CJ (19:05):
Yep. And into that,
AJV (19:07):
I love that. That’s so good. Now, speaking of this curriculum one of the things that I, I do wanna talk about, cause we mentioned this earlier is you don’t need five different sets of curriculum or all this content and five different keynotes. Like that’s not necessary to build an empire worthy business. You need one life changing set of content. So let’s talk about content from in it because yours is really good. And it’s, it’s really awesome. And I just want two things out of this kind of like last piece of our conversation. I know we’re almost out of time. So I think the first thing is how did you come up with this content? Like how did you actually go, this is a book, right? This needs to be in a book and in a course, and here’s what I’m gonna do. And then two, what is it like give us some of the fruits of all of your labor.
CJ (19:59):
Yes. Well, again, it starts by just, it started for me at least by scratching my own it, you know, I was outta balance. I needed to get back to flow in, in a, in alignment, you know? And so I just broke my life into these 10 different areas. I’m now calling them 10 alignments. And this was basically, you know, me just determining how I can get back to this state of blissful balance. And for me, I broke it down into an acronym. It didn’t start as an acronym. Obviously it evolves, you know, we
AJV (20:29):
Love an acronym, Cary.
CJ (20:30):
I know you love an acronym. Yep. And that’s really, you know, one of the things that I realized is acronyms and frameworks for everyone listening are so imperative because people have a lot going on. And if they can’t remember your content, well, chances are, it’s not going to positively impact their life. You know? So you have to think through this and you wanna make it so easy to consume and so easy to implement, but not necessarily, you know, repetitive, you don’t wanna like be a copycat. So for me, my framework’s not rocket science. I’ll be the first one to tell you, it’s not rocket science. It’s just, I broke my life down to these 10 different areas. It’s called the soul mapping, you know, framework it, it’s essentially your soul’s mapped to the blissfully bounce promise land. And you know, AJ, I’ll, I’ll run through this real quick for the audience, but I want everyone out there to actually quantify where they’re at in each of these 10 different areas, these 10 different alignments and AJ, if you wanna get put on the spot, I’ll if you’re feeling brave, I’ll ask you where you’re, where you’re at in these.
CJ (21:39):
But basically I want you to think about five is like an a you’re crushing it. You know, you’re, you’re really happy hustling in this alignment, like an F you’re failing. And as you know, what you measure you can manage. So it’s really important to measure yourself in each of these 10 alignments. And I do it every Sunday. I take my own medicine every Sunday and I look at where I am lacking in the week, you know, prior and where I need to prioritize change in the week ahead. And so it’s this cons ebb and flow of adjustments. Now S stands for selfless service. Are you living for yourself and your own personal gain or are you giving back to others, your, your expertise, your time, your money, think right now where you’re at in the last, just give yourself in the last seven days where you’re at in selfless service five as an a, as an F, write it down.
CJ (22:30):
Okay. And everyone out there listening, be an active participant here. I get the most outta podcasts like this. When I take action, I actually, you know, implement, but also do the work O stands for optimized health. Are you, you know, optimize mentally, physically, and emotionally or not so much, I are you, you know, shoving garbage down the, your pie hole at, you know, feeling sluggish and just not, you know, not nearly optimized and, and be honest with yourself. One to five, five’s an a, one’s an F you unplugged digitally. Are you constantly plugged in connected to your devices? Like looking at social media, watching Netflix and Amazon prime and all these other things that we’re inundated with, or are you being diligent and having barriers and using your tech, not letting it use you L loving relationships, are you, you know, having love in your life? I mean, what’s it all for, if you don’t have love in your life, right. AJ, I mean, you, you want to make sure that you’re connected with your personal relationships, your family, your friends, but also your lover, you know, making sure that that relationship doesn’t, you know, get sacrificed in the process of your Ascension. Right. So this is the sole part. Okay. In AJ, do you wanna run through yours for the so part real quick?
AJV (23:51):
Yeah. I have no shame in this. So and the Fs, I’m a four. I feel like I’m, I’m pretty good with that. On the O I’m a four to feel pretty good about that. Yeah. On the U I’m a one I fail. It’s a major, your F terrible I need help. And on the L I’ll give us a five, I got lots of love. I feel lots of love it’s all around so that I feel really good about.
CJ (24:14):
Yep, exactly. And that’s, and here’s the thing, guys, just give yourself grace, you know, right now this is just your baseline and you have to be honest with yourself, but you also wanna give yourself grace. Now we get to the map and part M stands for mindful spirituality, you know, are you connected to a higher power? Are you, you know, meditating and praying and, and, you know, practicing breath work, like, are you believing in something bigger than yourself, right. That’s, that’s an M rank five is an, a, one is an F a, a above financially, you know, are you living paycheck the paycheck, or are you doing what you want when you want with who you want? You know, are, are you abundant? And, you know, oftentimes many people think this is the most important alignment, but it’s not rank where you’re at. It is important, but it’s not the most important.
CJ (25:03):
They’re all equally important. First P personal development, are you growing every day? You know, learning and reading and, you know, listening to a podcast like this and watching inspiring and educational shows or not so much, you know, decide where you’re at in personal development. The second P which I find a lot of driven, you know, entrepreneurs and, and type a high performers lack is this one passion hobbies, you know, are you doing fun things for yourself? Are you like getting out there and actually enjoying things that you used to really enjoy? Maybe it’s a martial art or fly fishing or horseback lighting like me, or maybe it’s painting or singing or whatever it is for you rank where you’re at in passionate hobbies. And then you got eye impactful work, you know, are you getting up every day and really excited about what you’re doing infused in your passion, which is, you know, that, that inward calling on your heart strengths with your purpose, just that outward serving mission to make a positive impact, right?
CJ (26:11):
Like, what’s it all for, if you don’t make a positive impact, you know, so rank where you’re at, maybe you’re, maybe you’re not, you know, feeling very fulfilled by your work and that’s okay. But just, you know, recognizing it awareness is the first step to change rank where you’re at one to five in that alignment and then N nature connection. Are you actually connected to nature? Are you getting outside and, you know, tapping into Pacha mama, our beautiful planet and, oh, by the way, are you protecting it? You know, like this is where being a conscious consumer actually plays. Like, are you voting with your dollar and supporting B corporations? And I have a whole nother company with my brother and business partner and best friend, you know, called eco breakthroughs. And, and we’re fighting the plastic pollution epidemic. And we’re up to some very big things in this realm. And I’m really excited about this, but it’s so important now more than ever that we take care planet. So this all falls in nature connection. So, Hey, Jay, you should have your mapping scores. Let’s hear it.
AJV (27:10):
These are good. I love this. I love this kind of stuff too, because I think it’s so important to have that gut check. Yeah. And again, like back to what you said, what I love about this, and then I promise, I’ll tell you, my scores is that this came from knowing where you were out of a line. It’s like, if you know, you are, there’s a likelihood, someone else is too. So it’s solve the problem that you have, knowing that it’s simultaneously gonna solve problems for other people. And I love that. I think this is so clever on the M mindfulness. I gave it spirituality connection to God. Like I gave that a five. Like, that’s probably the strongest for me that, and love, I feel good about really a, I gave it a four, right. So pretty good. The first P I gave it a four feel pretty good about that. The second one I said at first I said, this was like the hobbies, right? Passions. Yes. I said one, but then I remembered not my goal for this year is half more fun. And then I was like, actually, I’ve been, I’ve been doing some new things. It’s like, went surfing.
CJ (28:09):
Oh
AJV (28:10):
Yeah, hiking. We’re in a little bike gang that my five year old has named whirlwinds where the whirlwinds we go biking. So I feel maybe I gave myself a two. And then on the eye of four, and then on the end a two.
CJ (28:25):
Mm, yes. Well, I will say you’re crushing it in many regards, but those ones, the unplugged digitally, you know, the nature connection and the passion of hobbies, you know, these are all very important areas of your life. If you want to achieve that blisful balance. And you know, right now, if you tally your scores up, everyone listening and, and you’re above a 37, congratulations, you’re happy hustling. If you’re a 36 or below, well, you got some work to do. And so this is again, a, a tool, a system and assessment will you, that I do every single week and the happy hustlers in my community do every single week be cuz balance. Isn’t this finite destination.
AJV (29:09):
You said 37 is a happy hustler. Yep. Oh, I fell short. I’m a 34. I got work to
CJ (29:15):
Do. Yep. You do. Hey,
AJV (29:17):
What I tell you about, for everyone listening to this too, like who doesn’t like to do stuff like this? It’s like, am I hustling, happy hustling? I don’t know. I need to take this quiz. So in things like this into your content, make it so engaging.
CJ (29:29):
Yes, exactly. Yeah. And it’s so important be that you do it regular because I’m gonna give ultimately one of the, the biggest, happy hustling principles that I could ever bestow upon the BBG community and anyone listening. And that is, you must give each area of your life equal importance, but focus on one at a time. Hmm that’s right. So you must give each area of your life equal importance, but focus on one at a time I’m on this podcast with AJ, I’m all here. Hundred, 10%. When I go on my date night with my lover later, I’m gonna be a hundred percent there. When I go to my martial arts karate class, I’m a hundred percent there. You know, it’s like people, I feel like where the, the disconnect is, is when they’re at work, they’re thinking about their family. And when they’re with their family, they’re thinking about work. And so we’re not doing anything to our a hundred percent capability or effectiveness. So it’s really important that you give of equal importance to each of these 10 different alignments, but you must focus on one at a time.
AJV (30:25):
Okay. So I have a question for you about that, because I think that’s that really plagues, most human beings is, you know, we’re at work, but we’re thinking about this problem at home, or we’re at home and we’re consumed with checking our emails. And so I’m curious, right? Just in your opinion, why, why, why are we such a distracted community right now? And it’s like, why can’t we put one thing down to focus on the thing right in front of us. And then two, any tips on how to do that? Better?
CJ (30:54):
Why one, I would say is because our human brains are not necessarily built to encounter thousands of notifications in one day or thousands of pieces of information. We were, you know, we were cave men and women, you know, for millennia. And here, we now have little smartphones that have more capabilities than, you know, like hundreds of thousands of years prior in our pocket. And so we’re just inundated constantly by these dopamine dumps. And we become addicted because the people who are designing them are, you know, these are that’s, their sole job is to help make sure that their product and services are addicting for you. So we’re, we’re outgunned, we’re outgunned as human beings. And so you have to create barriers, stance to, to parlay into the second part of this question. You have to create barriers. You have to have discipline. You know, I have rules in my life that I adhere to the majority of the time, you know, 60 minutes in the morning, 60 minutes before bed, no devices, right? Just Sundays, you know, 24 hour digital detox. For the most part, I just did a seven day dopa meeting detox where no social media, no you know, YouTube or like movies or stream shows or any of that stuff. And I’d made more money and was more effective than I have been in. I don’t even know how long, you know, and it’s like, we’re so distracted. So the, the answer is create barriers, have discipline to adhere to them and have consequences if you don’t.
AJV (32:24):
Those are good. Those are really good. Any specific examples, just one tip of like, what’s one barrier that you’ve said in your PLA in your life that you feel like has really made a significant difference.
CJ (32:37):
One barrier would be, I, I would say time blocking, you know, just in terms of work, we’re all trying to build, grow and monetize our personal brand and, and really spread our message and make a positive impact specifically, in terms of work, I have a be focused timer on my computer and I’ll, I’ll airplane mode, my phone, and I’ll do a 30 minute block and then I’ll do a five minute break, you know, and then I jump on my rebound as a break which I think is really important to shake out the lymphatic drainage system, going back to my biohacking days, you know, I used to run a biohacking company where for the top, you know, 1% highest performers. And I took a lot of those little biohacks and that, that one barrier, that one time block, I can be ultra productive and I work 20 hours per week. Like, that’s my, that’s like my sweet spot. And, you know, I’m a lifestyle entrepreneur, you know, so I’m not looking to like run this massive conglomerate, but I will tell you, you know, the reason I can work so little and still be where I’m at is because I time block and I, and I’m disciplined in those time blocks.
AJV (33:38):
Hmm. So all right. Last question. I’m just genuinely curious when you’re doing all the other things and the other 20 hours of your week, how are for, for all of us aspiring to one day, have a 20 hour work week and still be where we are. How are you spending the rest of your time?
CJ (33:56):
Well as I mentioned to you pre ATT, I was just at that hot Springs here, and I was soaking in thermal natural, hot water. And then I went and I, I do a hot and cold thermogenesis, so there’s a cold pool and a hot pool. And I, I, you know, get a workout in. And then I have you know, the ski mountain here in Montana where I go snowboarding regularly. And, you know, I IM training to get my black belt in Eastern Ru KA with my fiance. And, you know, I go fly fishing and horseback riding, and I stay busy. I volunteer with a, a bunch of organizations here. And yeah, so I find, I find things to do,
AJV (34:37):
But here’s what I know. It’s like, that is not a pipe. Your that’s a created intentional life.
CJ (34:44):
Exactly.
AJV (34:45):
Anyone can have it if that’s actually what you try to create for yourself. I believe truly that most of us are living a default life that we’ve just set into whatever has been around us. And we keep moving and going, actually that’s not the life I want.
CJ (35:00):
Yeah.
AJV (35:00):
And you’re living a super intense created life. I love it. You live your content, which is why it’s so successful. You can, it just exudes out of you. I love this soul mapping. I’m a 34. By the time we talk again, I’m gonna be a 37, Cary. I’m on it. Hit a
CJ (35:15):
Girl, get a girl. It’s
AJV (35:16):
So good. Right. My last question. And then we’re gonna wrap this and I’m so grateful. Thank you so much. So I would just want you’ve been building your personal brand for several years. You’ve also built and scaled companies like you’ve done so many successful things. I wanna know, like, what is one lesson that you think has made the most dramatic change or impact in your life that you think all of our listeners should hear
CJ (35:43):
The compound effect? Darren Hardy, great book. I know you guys know him, but that book really resonated with me little actions consistently. Over time, I live by this, this phrase, persistent consistency every single day, getting better than who you were yesterday. Don’t look at other people in compare and despair, look at who you were yesterday. And I know it’s cliche again, but I’m gonna hit you with the truth that persistent consistency every single day has that compound effect. And I wanna leave one question with everyone listening. And this is what allowed me to create this lifestyle. And it is what does success act actually look like for you? Because a lot of people chase other, you know, versions of success, society deems this successful. So we chase it. But truly that’s not what success looks like for you. So you end up achieving it and then you’re unhappy and unfulfilled. So you have to answer that question. What does success look like for you?
AJV (36:37):
Ah, so good. And it’s true in every area of your life small, consistent step taken over an ongoing amount of times. You hear this all the time. It’s like, what’s the key to content creation, consistency. What’s the key to growing your online, following consistency. What’s the key to staying outta debt, being consistent, right? It’s don’t spend money. It’s like be consistent with what we’re doing. What’s the key to staying in love. Be consistent with time with each other. It’s consistency, consistency, consistency. We can talk about that every single area of your life. And most specifically for this podcast, how it relates to your personal brand it, you have got to be consistent with what you do. It doesn’t happen overnight. This is a marathon, not a sprint Cary Jack. Yes. So good to have you on this show. Thank you so much. This was awesome. Yeah. So, so good. Love it. For everyone else please follow Cary Jack. We’re gonna put these links and the show notes, but we want you to go to the happy hustle book.com. You can get the free ebook. You can do his free plus shipping. You can check out his membership. You can come camping with him this summer in Montana. Whatever it is, check out his podcast, that the happy hustle book.com. We’ll put that in the show notes, Cary, we love you so grateful for this. So good.
CJ (37:56):
Let me give one, one special give to the BBG community, cuz I’m a, I’m a part of it. And I, I love this community, AJ, and I wanna do something special as you know, time is our most precious commodity. I very diligent with mine. I want to give anyone who does pick up a copy of the happy hustle book. If you read it and you send me a DM on Instagram with your biggest takeaway, I’ll have my team send you my Calendarly link and we’ll get on the 20 minute happy hustle huddle. I’m gonna help you happy hustle your dream reality, whatever that looks like. It’s there’s no ulterior motive except me to just give value to you. So take action. If you wanna connect with me and I I’d love to serve however I can. Oh,
AJV (38:31):
I love that. That should be another incentive. Go to the happy hustle book.com. Get it, read it, get that Kaly link. Schedule some call what they wanna only Cary Jack. Y’all so good. Catch us next time on the influential personal brand.
CJ (38:46):
Peace and love y’all.
Ep 277: How to Build Your Business with Radical Confidence with Lisa Bilyeu | 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 the 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 Martin 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 (00:55):
Anytime I come across someone who has sold their company for a B billion or has made a billion, it grabs my attention. I have to admit not because I want anything from them. It’s just like at that scale, you’re talking about somebody who has done something real, real big, and that is what Lisa BIU did as the co-founder of quest nutrition with her husband, Tom Bilyeu, who I have recently become, I guess, friends, acquaintances of, of ours through a various number of different things, not the least of which is Lisa’s recent book launch, which is what we were just talking about here and had a chance to interview her on and, and to give you access to her, which is pretty awesome. It’s not, not easy to get access, you know, sometimes to, to people that are, are high profile like that.
RV (01:48):
And I, I loved it. I have loved my interactions with Lisa and Tom. There haven’t been a ton of ’em, you know, little messages here and there. That was probably the longest dedicated conversation. I had with Lisa about her content specifically, and, and I, I had never really heard the full story from her. I had interviewed Tom years ago on my old podcast that we sold a few years back, right. When they were started, but never really have had a, a focus conversation like that, like just did with Lisa and man. She’s awesome. Like I started had fallen her on social. I mean, she’s spicy,
RV (02:48):
And we come across a fair number of ’em actually at brand builders group. We’ve we’ve had a few of ’em on our podcast. Jamie cur Lima is another friend that comes to mind. We interviewed her, she sold her company for a billion dollars to L’Oreal. And that was also amazing story. And actually Lisa and Jamie are friends. So you know, small circles, it’s a small world especially I think the, the more successful you become the smaller the world, the, the world even gets. So I wanna share with you as part of this recap, these three of my takeaways from this specific conversation that I just had with Lisa, which are things that I’ve, I’ve never have never hit me in, in things that I’ve heard her say or, or learned from her before. And so I’m excited to share those, share those with you now.
RV (03:36):
And the first one is so simple, but this is so important and so powerful. And so edifying to what we teach all of our members. And, and it’s, it’s such a small thing that you probably missed it in the conversation, but that’s why I want to come back right now. I wanna highlight it with a big mental high. I wanna make this a salient point to go. Don’t miss this. This is huge. It has huge implications. It’s so small though. It’s so easy to step over this and you’re gonna, you’re gonna think I’m silly, cuz I’m making such a big deal out of this, but I’m telling you, this is one of those things that you will here. You won’t notice it. And yet this one little tiny tidbit can change everything for you. And here’s what she said. She said, when we first launched our product, which was quest these health bars, she said, we sent them to people for free.
RV (04:41):
We sent the, we sent influencers free product and it was fascinating to me because those of you that are in our, you know, monthly members of ours or you do private brand strategy sessions with us, you know how we’re saying all the time, the fastest way to take someone from a complete stranger to lifelong fan is a one hour presentation. And so what you have to do is you have to go speak for free. And this is what I did. I spoke 304 times, 304 times. I spoke for free before I ever got paid 300, four times. And we used this analogy in inside of our, our train inside of our course, like our official coursework. And we talk about chicken on the chicken, on a stick, right? Because when you go through the food court, they give you a piece of chicken on a stick, which why do they do that?
RV (05:34):
Because if you’ve never heard of me, you’re not familiar with me. If you don’t know my product and as it relates to your personal brand, if I don’t know who you are, if I’ve never seen you, I, I Don recognize you, letting me sample you for free is the fastest way to make me a believer. And so you have to give your product away for free. Like you have to give your service away for free. And it’s like, when people first start they’re, they’re so nervous about like, no, I, I, I have to sell this to everybody. And it’s like, when you’re just beginning, it should be the opposite. It’s like, you’re just begging people and you’re giving it away for free. And my, of Damon, John I heard Damon John, one time, we shared a stage at an event about a year ago.
RV (06:23):
And, and Damon was telling this story about how he got LL cool J to wear FUBU. And he just like gave it to him and then took a picture of him wearing it. And it was like such a pivotable point in their journey. And like, you have to, you have to give away your service for free. The newer you are. And the lesser known you are, the more that this matters. And it’s so simple, right? And we overlook it. But when you don’t get paid in money, you get paid in testimonials, you get paid in feedback, you get paid in credibility, you get paid. And you know, sort of like this, these early test pilots that you can, you can adapt and, and, and modify your offering and you get paid in referrals. So if you’re just starting out, you might have to flip this switch and, and, and go from like, how do I sell everybody to instead going, how can I give this away for free?
RV (07:17):
And just get a lot of people, just get a lot of people hooked on this. And, and that applies whether you’re selling, you know, FUBU as a clothing line. And you’re Damon John, whether you’re Jamie Kern, Leman, you’re selling makeup, whether you are Lisa BIU and Tom BIU and you’re selling candy bars, or whether you’re a personal brand, trying to get someone to book you for a speech or hire you for coaching. This is our whole model at brand builders group. Like you’re you’re, you don’t pay anything for this podcast. It’s extremely difficult to get someone like Lisa bill, you to, to, to spend this time. Like we spend a lot of money and a lot of energy and a lot of resources trying to bring people like this to you for, and then on social media, it’s free. And then we have all these free trainings.
RV (08:03):
And what does all of our free content do? It drives you to request a free call with our team. We do the first coaching call for free. Why? Because we know that if you don’t know us, you’re not familiar with us. We don’t have millions of followers, but if you, if you hang around long in a, after you go, you know what? I actually like what these people are about. I think I am gonna talk to them. I think I am going to request a free call, which by the way, [email protected] slash podcast. You can request your free call and we do the first free call. We do the first free coaching, first coaching call with everybody for free so that they can get a sense of what it means to work with us and how we can add value. You gotta do the same thing.
RV (08:45):
People gotta sample you. They gotta, they gotta taste your product. They gotta know who you are. They gotta have an experience with you. And so that happens with content marketing. It happens, you know, with speaking, I mean, I don’t speak for free very often anymore these days, but I’ve been doing it for 20 years. But in the beginning, that was all we did. That’s how we built our, our whole first company was an eight figure business. Our whole model was that we sent people out and they would go speak for free in, in offices, like to small groups of five people, people, three people sometimes, and they would speak for free for a chance to earn trust. And, and I just don’t miss that, right? Like, especially if you’re just starting out the earlier you are in your process, the more this matters or the earlier you are in a new product or a new revenue stream or a new business venture, this really, really, really matters.
RV (09:38):
The second big takeaway for me. And this came up several times in the con conversation in several different ways. And you know, I’ve kind of heard of this idea before, but not so sharp and not so keen as when Lisa was talking about this, you could hear, you could hear that this was like a part of their philosophy. Like this is a part of their culture and it hit me cuz I was like, wow, that’s, you know, this is important. I know it’s important, but I’ve never quite, you know, captured it like this. What she’s saying, you know, is, is she said in her words, when she was talking about their nutrition bar, she was saying, how do you make something yummy for people to eat? That actually happens to be good for them.
RV (10:24):
Which actually is good for them. And then later when she was talking about how they started with the, the, this, how they started impact theory and this whole new, this whole new brand and this whole new company, it was basically about this idea of how do we create enter? How do we create content that’s impactful and inspiring and yet make it so entertaining that people want to watch it? What, what a great as what a great it’s kind of like going, how do I create the, the cure for cancer that tastes like chocolate? How, how do I you know, we, we kind of try to do this with take the stairs with my first book which still to this day, of course I speak a lot on and that’s the message of self-discipline and we go, how do we make self-discipline more, more palatable and, and easier, you know, more digestible and, and, and easier and fun even for people to embrace.
RV (11:27):
And that’s really important because there is, there’s the truth, like there’s principles that change lives and there’s truths that make a difference for people. But then you have to package it in a way that makes it digestible. You have to, you have to solve the real problem. Right. And a lot of times that requires work or at least discipline, or at least the unfamiliar, right. To change your life, you have to do something different. But the, the part that’s so inspiring here is in their, in their sense, it was, it, it wasn’t just the physical packaging, but it, it, it was the physical packaging. And then also the taste right. Of the actual bar. So it’s like, how do you take your business? I, and your personal brand, which solves a problem in the world and how do you put it inside a rapper, right?
RV (12:18):
Like it might be medicine. This, this makes me think of, you know, how do you get a dog to eat medicine? You wrap it in peanut butter, right? And so the dog eats the peanut butter and they take the medicine. Or, or you, you do the, you could do this, you do the same thing with kids, right? Like you mix the medicine up inside of something else. So you gotta have the, the transformation in people’s lives. That’s your content like that’s the inside of the book. But then the, the title of the book has to be enticing and your whole branding, your whole positioning. I remember talking to Louis, how one time about photography? You know, somebody asked him this question. I, I was actually, I, I, I wasn’t a private conversation. I was in a room and he was, he was speaking. And somebody asked him, what’s the most IM like, what’s the most important part of building a personal brand.
RV (13:06):
And he said photography. And that blew me away. I was like, what? That’s, that’s crazy. Like what a weird answer. And, and he talks about it because he think the photography you know, the way that he thinks about it is it is, it, it, it captures this energy, the, the, the image portrays emotion and energy, which is what communicates, what the brand is all about. And I was like, wow, that’s deep
RV (14:02):
How, how do you, how do you make it to where it’s, it’s, it’s what they need, but it’s also what they want. And to me, this is sort of the difference between you know, for those of you that are brand builders in finding your brand DNA, where we do talk about finding your uniqueness. We refer to all of that as internal Mar moniker, internal messaging, internal alignment, your uniqueness is internal. But then in phase two, we talk about marketing, which is external, and that’s the marriage of this, right? It’s, it’s sort of like to use the quest nutrition bar since that’s the topic here is going there is there’s the guts of the bar, but then it’s wrapped in chocolate and then it’s wrapped in beautiful packaging. And that’s what you wanna do for your message for your, you know, for whatever your personal brand is like for the, for the most part, success is fundamental.
RV (14:52):
Success is built on fundamental truth. And so you’re finding a way that’s, that’s the art of marketing is wrapping fundamental truths in a new and exciting and enticing way. So I love that. And then the third thing, the third thing was when Lisa said, even to this day, she’s the chief creative officer at impact theory and hearing her talk about her passion for storytelling and movie making and, and video editing hit me hard. And I, and I think I’ve missed the boat here. I’m, I’m quite confident that I have the least not I’m nowhere near the way that sh she thinks in her mind is, you know, like when we create content, I’m going, how do we create useful content? But she is going, how do we edit this in a way to where it changes people’s emotion. If you go back and listen to the recording, she said, what I love about V is you have the ability to change a person’s emotion with video, right?
RV (15:59):
So she’s not just, she’s not just asking the question, what’s the most efficient way to transfer an idea. She’s also saying, how do I transform their emotion? And that is like, almost like science and art, right? It’s going, I wanna, you know, I’m, they’re in the business of, of helping people with great ideas, but it’s not so much that the idea itself is maybe, you know, original or, you know, groundbreaking, at least it’s not, it’s not like they’re sharing things that nobody else has ever said, but they’re doing it a in a way that is in literally inspiring. It moves people emotionally. And, and so, you know, this is, this is where the connection point is for us, where in our world class presentation, craft training. So we’ve got, you know, all together inside a brand builders group, we have 14 different two day trainings, 14 different two day experiences.
RV (16:54):
One of ’em is called world class presentation craft, where we talk about how do you construct the perfect keynote? And one of the, you know, the, the central premise of, of that whole training is that you have to learn to move the audience emotionally. You have to move them emotionally. There’s these things that you, there’s so many things you can do with a speech from the way it is structured to the way that the slides are laid out, to the way you use the stage, to the way you tell the stories, to the way you develop the characters, to the way you, you write jokes and add punchlines to the way that you use your voice, your body, your facial expressions, there’s all of these things. And we go through all of these different techniques. And the reason all of them are there is they are arrows in your quiver.
RV (17:36):
And the objective them is to move people emotionally. But the thing that has never quite clicked in my head like it did listening to Lisa was going, oh, that same level of meticulous crafting that I would do with the speech that I’ve been doing my whole life with speaking is the same amount of crafting and effort and energy that needs to go into video editing. And I’m going, yeah, I I’ve been missed the boat there, right? Like, to me, I’m just going, how do I get someone to like, edit this video and like put a bumper on it and, and some music underneath it, but not thinking about it as like, what is the real art here of what is the emotion we’re trying to create? And how do we use imagery and text? And what’s being said, and voiceover and transitions and all of the things, and you can just tell that how, how much she has crafted and, and how much she, you know, they think their, their team and in their brain.
RV (18:38):
And, and that they’re, they’re doing the art of not just communicating information, but doing it in an inspiring, inspiring way to get more views sure. Of, of course, to get more subscribers. Yes, of course. But it’s deeper than that. It’s to actually make an impact. The reason you have to work so hard at crafting your message is because the more well crafted it is the, the better packaged it is, the more entertaining it is. The more likely it is to get through the, the more likely you are to break through somebody’s defense mechanisms in their walls and these barriers that they put up, and the more likely you’re able to impact them. So, and that takes work and energy and, and craft. It’s not just, you know, throwing something up. It’s, it’s, it’s actually thinking about it and constructing it with, as a gift for the person who’s receiving it, not just spewing out like what’s on your mind, but actually reverse engineering, the construction of your message so much to the extent that it is a gift for the other person on the other end, who’s receiving it.
RV (19:53):
That’s beautiful. That is art. That is personal branding at its finest, far above vanity, far above likes and far above just information. It’s truly being centered on the mission of serving people and changing people’s lives. So I hope that you see a rising commitment from our team and a desire at least to be creating content that is moving and useful and powerful and practical and applicable for you in your journey here on this podcast, every single week. I’d love it. If you shared this episode or any of our episodes with someone who you think needs to see it that you’re checking out our free trainings that we have at brand builders group to.com and then you just stay plugged in until you’re ready to request a free call. And then hopefully our team will get the privilege of talking to [email protected] slash podcast, and then that we get a chance to help you start to craft your personal brand journey. Thanks for being here. We love you. We’re grateful for you. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand podcast.
Ep 276: How to Build Your Business with Radical Confidence with Lisa Bilyeu
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 the 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 Martin 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):
Ah, I am so excited to introduce you to Lisa Bilyeu . So we’re newer friends, but y’all know that me and AJ, our business partners and AJ is our CEO and my wife and I have been business partners from the beginning. We started as business partners and then a year after we started dating and then we fell in love. And so I love and just admire when a couple can work together. And so Lisa and tom were the co-founders of a company called quest nutrition. And this company grew 57000% in three years. It was number two on the inc 5,000. And then in 2014, they sold it for a billion with a B so a billion dollars. I met Tom the very first time on my old podcast. I interviewed him right after he had the right after the exit.
RV (01:50):
Oh. And then him and Lisa started a brand that you’re probably familiar with. So they, they started impact theory studios. They host the impact theory podcast, the women of impact podcasts. They have over seven and a half million people who listen to this. Lisa has had over 20 million views on her YouTube channel. She’s got over a million followers on social and she has a new book that is called radical confidence. And I tell you, I was just flipping through, I got a, a release copy just recently. So I haven’t read it all the way through, but I was flipping through it. And this is like, it’s an kicking book from an kicking lady. And y’all know I don’t cus very often. So that’s, you know, that’s powerful. So anyways, Lisa, I’m so excited to have you and meet you. Welcome to the show.
LB (02:38):
Oh my God. R this is such a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me on.
RV (02:42):
So can you just like tell us your journey? You know, I like just in the little of what I see from a distance is like, you, you started out in your own words, you know, unfulfilled housewife like that was, and, and then there’s this big transformation you become an entrepreneur. Quest goes crazy. I mean, that’s like massive growth. And then you reinvent yourself with impact theory and women of impact. And now you’re an author. So like, can you just talk to us a little bit about why you wrote a book on confidence and how that’s like tied into that whole journey?
LB (03:19):
Yeah, absolutely. So I get asked a lot right now, Lisa, how do you get your confidence? I want confidence just like you and you have no idea, Roy. I was like, are they talking about someone else? Like I would like, look over my shoulder, just thinking they were talking to someone else, cuz in my head I don’t feel confident in head. I have a negative voice that is constantly telling me I’m not good enough. Who do I think I am to dare to go after this, my entire life. And so I think what P what I identified was people saw me doing it anyway and they equated my actions with confidence. And that’s where I started to think about the book, cuz I was like, it’s the fact that I use tools and techniques in order to show up every day to try and be confident to try things.
LB (04:08):
And when I fail, how do I get back up? It’s not confidence is I use specific tools. So that was like, okay, I understand how my journey goes, but what about other people? Where, how are people struggling? And it really is so many people resonate with me saying I was stuck for eight years and you know, what’s happened to the world over these last few years. So many people are feeling that. And so it all comes back down to people say, if I had the confidence, I would do this. And what I realized Rory is we are using that as a way as a, a thing that we think we need in order to get started. And what I started to ask people was, hang on a minute, you want confidence in order to do what? Because people are so focused on, I want the confidence that they’re losing sight of what they’re using confidence to get to.
LB (05:02):
So I say to people and I want people to think right now, what is that goal you have now? Don’t worry about how you feel about getting there, right? Cause confidence is feeling good, feeling good about doing it. Don’t worry about that. Focus on the goal and then come up with a strategy and steps on how you are going to get there. Because if I only went by, do I feel confident? And that’s, if I say yes, is when I’m going to take my take that action, I will still, I would really, I really, really would be right now. The person that is completely unfulfilled, you know, and housewife is just a thing that wasn’t feeling my soul. So that’s just my journey, but I, what is the journey people are on now? And is it feeling your soul? And don’t wait to feel confident to do it because that isn’t the end goal.
LB (05:49):
You want confidence in order to tell your boss, you wanna pay rides. You want confidence in order to tell your parents, you no longer want to study math and you actually wanna be a standup comic. You want confidence to tell your partner, you’re not happy in the relationship, but you want the confidence to do something. So that’s where I just start. And that’s where I wrote the book, radical confidence in order to try and get people out of their own heads about feeling confident to get started and let people, no, it, the most amazing news is that you don’t need confidence to get started. You can actually use radical confidence, which is a set of tools and you can be scared and do it in a way. And now you’re taking control of your life and you are not worried about if you feel good about it or not.
LB (06:34):
You just focused on how do I get to my goal? How do I get to that dream life I want? And that’s the whole purpose behind it. And each chapter gives a very succinct lesson and no BS lesson on this is what I actually had to do to go from being the completely unfulfilled person for eight years to then really living the life of my dreams and all it being the hero of my own life because I was waiting, I was waiting for someone to save me. I was waiting for my husband to come home and bring me some fun and the emotion that I was looking for. And I realized that the day my life changed was the day I stopped waiting for confidence and started to look inwards and say, I can control if I’m the hero of my own life.
RV (07:19):
It, it reminds me, my mom used to say this thing, like you know, I did martial arts when I was really really little. I was, I was raised by a single mom and I was in martial arts and I, you know, would tell her, I don’t like this. I don’t enjoy this. And she used to say, that’s okay, Rory enjoying it. Isn’t a requirement of doing it.
RV (08:08):
They’re basically like each of these different affirmations that you have. And one of the, one of the first ones that you talk about is betting on yourself and the why I wanna bring this up is because I actually think that I personally struggle with this is going all in on yourself, like saying, like taking, taking the, you know, like the, the, the, the gamble. So can you talk about that? Like, if somebody is listening or right now, and they kind of have a dream, they’re like moving in a direction, but it’s like, they haven’t really gone all in on themselves. Like what what’s going on there.
LB (08:53):
Yeah. It want, you know, and so it’s do, do you want to go all in? That’s a thing. Everyone needs to judge for themselves, because for me, let’s take this book for instance, as I was writing the book, I said to myself, okay, what is a result I want to get? And what are the steps I’m going to take in order to get there? And what, and I like to call it no BS, what would it take? So once you’ve laid that out and say, well, what would it take for me to get in New York times? Number one, let’s just say, right? It’s like, okay, Lisa, in order to get in New York times, number one, you have to do 400 podcast interviews. Let’s just say, and I just go, wow, that’s a lot. Is that the life I want? What does that look like? And am I committed to it?
LB (09:33):
Because it becomes a decision. And I don’t think we should beat ourselves up over the decisions we make, but I do urge everyone to make the decision with their eyes wide open. And so in those situations where let’s say worry, you’re saying that you’re struggling with going all in. Are you reaching your goal? Yes or no. And if you went all in, would you reach your goal, looking at it like that, and then saying, what would to take for me to get there? Maybe you’re not willing to do it. Maybe that isn’t the life you want. And I think that being able to look with your eyes wide open is imperative to then go, okay, I’m gonna go all in. And that means betting on yourself because let’s face it. No, one’s gonna freaking fight for your dream harder than you. No one. So if you are not willing to go all in, why would anyone else around you be willing to go in for your dream or your life?
LB (10:21):
And so I also, for me, I like to take away the excuses that I make for myself. So if I’m not achieving my dream, what excuses am I using? Right. Oh, well I, I didn’t wanna work on days. Okay. Well, that’s, it’s not an excuse. It’s a valid thing. Or that’s how I want to live my life. Mm-Hmm
LB (11:06):
And I decided not to go all in, but you gotta identify what is actually holding you back from going all in. Is it what comes with the life that, that, that brings so running your business right? There is no nine to five. You know, if you are expecting your team to work hard and you are putting videos out on a Saturday at 3:00 AM, let’s say right, there is no nine to five, but is that the life you want? So you need to identify what are the things that are holding you back and is it a valid reason or is it an excuse that you’re using?
RV (11:41):
Mm-Hmm
LB (12:04):
So timing was very big. It was just as Facebook was kind of getting hot. And there were multiple things. So more, we created a product that we really wanted and didn’t exist. So my husband at the time, my husband, my husband and his business partners at the time were all building a technology company that was kind of like, oh, he was going out. He was working. He was trying to make, make enough money for us to actually make movies. Cause our background film. So the problem is when you’re just chasing money, he got caught up in the, in the you know, the hamster wheel. So what was supposed to be, he’s just gonna work for a year. I’m gonna support him. We’re gonna earn enough money so that we can make movies turned into eight years of him just chasing money. We forgot our dreams and left them behind.
LB (12:51):
So as we were doing that it re I realized that money doesn’t bring happiness. And in seeing my husband chase money, I was like, I want my happy husband back. So what does that mean? So he went to his business partners. They all agreed. They were unhappy. So they sat down and they said, what would make us happy? Something predicated on passion. And because when you’re just chasing money, it’s empty. And so when they stepped back and said, okay, what are the, what is the product or the thing that we really feel passionate about? Everyone was into fitness. And at the time, I dunno, if you remember protein bars, there was basically two types of protein bars, bars on the market. One, it tasted so good, but it had so much sugar in it. So it was like, it had 30 grams of sugar and five grams of carbs, but they can call it a protein bar, sorry, pro five grams of protein.
LB (13:44):
Or it was the opposite. It literally tasted like soar dust where you have to hold your breath and drink a glass of water as you’re chewing it. And so it was like, okay, well, what if you can make a protein bar that is actually shelf and taste wonderful. Now of course, every expert, every expert said we were nuts. That protein bar would’ve been made already. If it ex if it could be done, there’s a reason why that protein bar doesn’t exist. Did you know there’s 1400 protein bars on the market currently, who the hell do you guys think you are? You guys know nothing. That’s all the feedback we got.
RV (14:20):
Wow.
LB (14:21):
But we all believed in the product and we believed that can we overcome the hurdles that were ahead of us? So that’s the big thing is do you believe in the product and is it possible in your mind? Forget about what other people and not just, is it possible? Are you, you willing to keep pushing to see that when you hit a roadblock, are you able to get past it? So there were so many multiple things. And then that last piece was the marketing. Was that when everybody else was like, the prestigious is going into stores, if you’re in stores, it means that you are official. If you’re online. I mean, this is 2010. So just to give context, people like online meant that you were lame selling your product online meant that you were pretty bad and that no store would ever hold you.
LB (15:09):
And so everybody was like, we need to sell in stores. We need to sell in stores. And my husband who just has, he understands marketing and human nature. And he was just like, well, shouldn’t we do, what’s convenient. Like online is where we don’t have to pay a third party. Right. And there’s a whole thing about if you sell to stores and it doesn’t sell, they ship you back and you’ve invested all this money and it’s, it’s just bad for business. So my husband was like, no, we were selling stores. And we will make the people eating it believe by proving ourselves and let the people speak. And now obviously that’s what everyone does, right? Social media. And it’s like the influence of the people that had the most voice back then no one was doing it. So the idea behind find authenticity, giving product to people and be asking them for their honest feedback.
LB (15:58):
So what we would do is we would, if with every single product, we had this little piece of paper that said, please, if you like this bar, please talk about us. If you hate this bar, please talk about us. We want truth. And we were one of the first companies to have these letters. So what we ended up doing is so many people, cause it was a brand new product that so many people wanted, but no one had, we were selling online. So we were actually marketing to the really, really experienced people. The people that understood nutrition to a, a high, a high level. And then we just used the trickle down effect. So we were sending them free products. If they really believed in us, they were telling the people that were following them, the people that were following them were the fitness junkies, the fitness junkies, who were like the real, like the, the trainers and the hard school people. They were hearing them. Then they loved the product. They were telling their clients, clients were hearing, they were telling their friends. So before you knew it, it became this wildfire of everyone and their mothers were eating quest bars because they had heard it through people speaking about it. So it was the real accumulation of having something that is hot and new, a product that doesn’t exist, exist. And in the true freaking leaf that you are gonna work and bust your to make it happen and succeed.
RV (17:18):
And you guys sent so just to catch that. So you sent free bars originally to influencers. Like that was like the beginning of influencer marketing, even right there.
LB (17:29):
It was, we’ve had two bars cause we had two flavors and literally we had zero, but we were making bars just to send out to people for free. And so we had a budget and we said, how much can we afford to send out us and the business partners, how much can we afford to send out on a weekly basis? And what is the letter we’re gonna have in? Are we gonna follow up with them and see if they got it, see if they like it, see if they have any friends that like it. And it was just free. It literally was free, free, free for free. If you like it, let us know if you hate it, let us know. And because of that, it becomes a brand that you trust. And so all of that contributed to the new way I think of, you know, marketing and social media and things like that.
RV (18:15):
Well, and you also like with impact theory. Okay. So when I hear about the start of impact theory real quick, because so then you do this, you build this consumer package goods company, like you’re doing you’re, you’re, you’re selling bars. Then one day that’s done, it’s all over. And then you start all over again. And but even like what you do now, you give away free. I mean, you’re like giving away content for free hooking people on that. So like, you didn’t go back into making movies. You guys jumped into the whole personal development space. So like what, what was the thinking there on starting pack theory? Did you know, by that point, did you know you wanted to do it? Did you know, you wanted to write a book one day and you’re like, okay, we gotta build the audience. Or like that’s a, you know, a whole new level, a whole new chapter.
LB (19:01):
Yeah. So the reason why I really wrote the book is I spent eight years not following my dreams, not trying anything new, being scattered, make a start on anything. And now, because I so learned that lesson, I just committed and promised myself, I would never go the rest of my life, not trying new things that excite me. And so I just try things and see if I like it. And giving ourselves the, the space to play is so important. So at quest, when we built the bar and the, a lot of it was, we were creating content behind it. So we started the YouTube channel when other products weren’t doing YouTube channels. And so what we were doing is we weren’t making the bar about us. We were making the bar about the consumer and then what the consumer could do to it. So we started the cooking show that blew up.
LB (19:47):
We started a transformation show that blew up. So cause we were making it about the people and it’s where my experience was. It was about making content. And so when I started to learn at quest and I was helping build our shipping department, I realized the opportunity of the social media side and our marketing, our head of marketing at the time just had that vision. And so I was like, let me build the studio. Like I really, I wanna like try. So I went in, never done it before. And my first task was literally build a kitchen set. And so I just figured it out. And as I was doing it, it still tapped into the love that I had of movie making, which was using visual visuals and all your senses to impact someone. Right? So that’s what film is to me. You use music, use edits, use action, use character, use lighting, all this to make a person feel a certain way.
LB (20:39):
And you have the ability to make someone feel amazing about themselves. You have the ability to make someone cry. Like, just think about that for a second. You could, how many, you know, sad movies are there, but you can change people’s emotion with video. And I just loved that form. And so we still took the core of what my husband and I believe in. And we started to do content and that’s where he, he started to do his show inside quest. And that was really the catalyst of bringing will people on and talking to them about mindset that led us to the idea of wow, true transformation, like actually changing someone’s life. Isn’t just about impacting the body. It’s about like my mom, my mom, as quest was getting bigger. My mom was getting heavier and heavier and more and more in hell. And as I was trying to just fix it by throwing money at it, which obviously is the wrong solution.
LB (21:32):
But I was like, mom, I can, you know, I can hire you a professional trainer. I can get you a share the words that would come out of her mouth worry were I’m too old. I can’t lose the weight. And all of it. I started to realize it was mindset. It was mindset. And so the people we weren’t reaching were the quest bar were the people that were too anxious to walk into the gym in the first place. It was the people that were too depressed, depressed to even believe they’re good enough to look after their health. So me and my husband, we basically were like, well, are we just playing impact? Or are we actually going to impact people? Because put your money where your mouth is, put your money, where your mouth is. And so for Tom and I, that was where it was like, we started to realize our passion really was behind the creating content side of it.
LB (22:22):
And his business partners wanted to focus on the body. So that’s where I’m like, well, you know, effort, let’s just take a, our money and do something that’s really meaningful to us. So we started the studio, but there’s a big picture. There’s the long vision. So going back to your question is we actually see, these are all stepping stones. So right now we’ve actually got, I think eight, we may have nine, but we have eight fiction stories going on. So we’ve got storytelling, got writers on board. We’ve got artists on board board. We’re creating comic books. We’re putting them up on web tunes. Cause storytelling, everything comes back to storytelling for us. So now with what we did with the quest bar is how do you make something yummy? And people wanna eat it. And it happens to be good for them. How do you translate that into content movies growing up? I dunno what movies you watch growing up, but things like the karate kid or like adventures in babysitting.
RV (23:21):
Oh, I lived on the karate kid girl. That’s now you’re now you’re talking about both my jams right there.
LB (23:25):
Okay. Now think about that. It was so fun. So, but you know how many times I use the analogy as an adult of waxing on and off? Yeah. I probably say wax on wax off at least twice a week.
RV (23:42):
I knew. I like you for a reason and now it all makes sense. Now it all comes together.
LB (23:48):
It’s the analogy, right? Of being prepared, doing things that you may not like for the greater good, good of a vision or a dream that you have. And eventually you get so good, but you have to put in the time you have to put in the work, how many blisters did he get on his? Cause he was freaking waxing. It’s like, it’s the most beautiful metaphor. But as a kid, you don’t necessarily get it. So how do you blend entertainment and impact? So that’s where me and my husband come in. And so we’re like, great. There’s gonna be different divisions to our company. And it’s gonna be a graduation process. The very top of the, the tier is impact theory, university, whereas actually classes and courses that you can take that people wanna study. They wanna take it seriously then below that there’s that our content, it’s still very heady.
LB (24:36):
Right? We do like our interviews where you’re talking about deep things. Sometimes, you know, I talk about suicide with, you know, some of my guests and therapists and things like that. So it’s very deep and hard. And then it’s the next tier, which is entertainment. So it’s like, then, so now you’re just entertaining and you’re threading through the empowerment so that people can meet you where they are. So you hope to empower them with our entertainment, with all the, the storytelling, the movies that we are working on, the, in that we’re working in the comic books that we’ve got in production. And then they take that to the content that is on YouTube. And then they take that to impact their university where now they actually take a curriculum. And then the book is so new to me that it becomes part of that where it’s like a physical guide step by step of what you need to do.
RV (25:29):
Yeah. That, I guess it’s never hit me quite the way that it is now. Just like hearing you sort of riff on this, that like you guys deliberately are making content that’s so entertaining. You would watch it anyways, but it happens to be good for you. Like it’s the same thing you were doing with the quest bar. It’s like, you build a candy bar. That’s so good. You would eat it anyways, but it happens to be good for you. And that that’s basically like what your secret formula is, is mm-hmm
LB (26:09):
Absolutely.
RV (26:11):
I also you know, I think the video editing, like hearing you talk about that of just like the passion for the music you’ll use and the lighting, because it creates this emotional experience for people. So were, were you involved, are you still involved very much with like the production element of like the content and things that you do?
LB (26:31):
Oh yeah. So I’m still our chief creative officer
LB (27:17):
Whose idea is it bring in making sure they’re heard, like sometimes, like we, we literally have massive meetings and anyone’s welcome to bring any idea to the table. If you’re an intern. Great. I wanna hear it. If it’s a hot idea, come on over, you are now leading this project because I, I don’t freaking always have the best ideas. Neither does Tom. So it’s about bringing the most amazing team together that love being with each other that have the same passion and desire for content. And then the, the last final thing is making sure that everyone is aligned on that goal. So for, so going back to your question, I do oversee new content that gets created to make sure that it’s kind of established as this is the field. This is the form. And then we have just an amazing team that it now goes to, but I have those moments that there are certain things that my heart still wants to make sure that I see
RV (28:05):
Mm-Hmm
LB (29:03):
Yeah. It was one of those things RO where everyone kept saying, be kind to yourself, don’t talk, you know, like you need to be nice. You have to always love yourself. And the truth was, I didn’t find that actually was true with me. Like, so then I started to beat myself up over the fact that I wasn’t able to be kind to myself. Right. And now it’s like this like double edge sword and you like, know where to go. So I kind of thought about
RV (29:25):
You idiot to yourself. You moron,
Speaker 4 (29:29):
LB (29:32):
Even get yourself to shut up. So it was one of those. Okay. I, every time I fail, every time I do something wrong, I, I find myself beating myself up. You shouldn’t have done that. And so I was like, okay, how do I, how on earth do I spin this around? Because I recognize it’s holding me back. And I go to I’m very goal oriented. So does this voice in my head help me towards my goal? Yes or no, the truth wasn’t didn’t right. It was just making me more fearful to try new things. It was becoming more crippling for me to start new things. And so just like, I think it’s Tony Robbins that said something like, you know, how can you take the most amazing the worst thing that’s ever happened to you and make it the most amazing thing. So it all comes to perspective.
LB (30:15):
So I was like, okay, I know about perspective. I’ve done enough mindset work to know perspective is very powerful. So how do I use a perspective right now on my negative thought? I love superheroes and allergies and you know, I wear a wonder woman, necklace. I have superheros behind me. So I was like, okay, what if, instead of it being your cryp tonight, it was your superpower. So now I’m using language around it, right. To soften. So I even use cryp tonight and superpower as to step out of the sting of the negative thought. And then I start to think, how can I actually do that? Okay. Thery is it holds me back? So how can I use it to propel me forward? Which is your superpower. Okay. It’s like, what if it’s trying to tell me something, because really when you think about it, a negative thought is actually a ti tied to your ego.
LB (31:01):
The reason why my ego is telling me don’t you dare do that. Oh my God, you’re gonna embarrass yourself. You know, nothing. It’s because it’s trying to protect me from being embarrassed. It’s the ego. It doesn’t wanna get bruised. So if I can see as the mean, girl is my ego, trying to protect me now, maybe what if it was a friend or a family member that tries to protect you, right. Tried to give you advice like your, maybe you shouldn’t try this and maybe they’re trying to highlight something in your life that you are blind to. So I actually flipped it. And I was like, what if this negative voice, this mean voice in my head is my best mate. If she was my best mate, what would I do? Would I, would I try and shut her up and throw her out? No, she was my best me.
LB (31:44):
I’d actually like welcome her. I’d give her a cup of tea. I’d put a blanket around her. And if you can, when your friend is giving you advice, if you trust them, you listen. So I was like, what if I just listened to her? And so what I realized was my ego was actually telling me all the things I was bad at. And she was right. I was bad at things. And so I go, okay, let’s say, I want, I wanted to start my show, this perfect example. I’m I wasn’t comfortable being in front of the camera.
RV (32:12):
You’re talking the women of impact show.
LB (32:14):
Yes. Thank you. Okay.
RV (32:16):
So you’re gonna start that one. Cause that came after the, like, after impact theory started women of impact came later, right?
LB (32:22):
Correct. Yes. Okay. So as an example though, of how you use your negative voice, so getting in front of the camera. So we built impact theory, get in front of the camera like five years later because everyone was urging me to, everyone was like, oh my God, you know, you really impacted me when I heard you talk to Tom about this. So I go, okay, I wanna get in front of the camera, but I’m so scared. Like I literally would freeze up in front of the camera and not know what I’m saying, not know what I’m doing. And the negative voice would come in and tell me, I’m no good. You’re gonna embarrass yourself. Lisa. You’re not as good as Tom. And everyone’s gonna have high expectations of you and you’re gonna, you know, totally mess up. And everyone’s gonna think that you are a moron, right?
LB (33:05):
And I’m, I’m like tech, this isn’t the negative voice. So I go, okay, if this was my ego and I can flip it, what is it saying? It’s telling me, I dunno what I’m doing. And the truth was I didn’t, I wasn’t expert at being in front of the camera. So it was given and me warning. So I go, okay, negative voice. What are you actually saying? He’s like, you need to get prepared because you don’t know what you’re doing. So get prepared so that you don’t embarrass yourself in front of the camera. Mm-Hmm
LB (33:46):
And that, that flipping perspective now has changed everything. So now, now when the voice comes back, cause it’s absolutely still here because I’ve positioned it as a friend. It’s no longer crippling at all. In fact, when it comes up, it gets that like three seconds sting. And then I’m like, thank God. She was, she was helping me because I was about to go in this situation and I would’ve messed up or I would’ve failed or whatever. So I’m very grateful now that I have this kind friend that is warning me of the, is that the traps I may get myself into.
RV (34:24):
Yeah. It’s like it’s very similar to feedback externally, right? Like if people give you feedback, you go, oh, you know, like screw them. They had, they gave me feedback. But so many of the successful people are like, no, that’s the gold or your customers. Like you talked about this earlier with quest where you’re like, if it’s positive, tell us, but if it’s negative, tell us we, he want to know. I heard recently there’s like a little author mastermind group that I was in and somebody was J talking about James clear. And James has, James is not in this, in this group. But they were saying that one of the things they learned from him, he wrote ATO author of atomic have, is sells Bazi.
LB (35:01):
Oh, oh my God.
RV (35:03):
It’s crazy. So what he said was one of the things that he did was he went and looked at the reviews of other people’s books that were in the category of the book he was writing. And he said, but I ignore the five star reviews. Mm-Hmm
LB (35:59):
Mm. I love that.
RV (36:02):
That’s really, really cool. So Lisa, so I, I have one more question for you before we leave, but before we do that, I wanna make sure where do people go to if they, if they want to check out radical confidence, get the book where would you point people?
LB (36:18):
Yeah, thanks. So people can go to radical confidence.com where we’ve actually got a ton of bonuses over there. Or you can go to Amazon or target anywhere books are sold target and Amazon have been just great partners to me or so far already. So I wanna make sure that I shout those guys out as well.
RV (36:35):
I love it. I love it. So all right. I’m gonna, I’m gonna ask you that if there’s, there’s, let’s, let’s, let’s say somebody is listening to this right now and they kind of have a dream. Right. They kind of have it in their, in their head. That there’s something that I want to do, but they don’t feel like they have confidence and they don’t feel like they’re equipped and they don’t feel like they’re smart enough. And, you know, to, to take it back to where you were, where you were kind of like at home and going, you know, who, who am I to do this? What, what, what, what encouragement or advice, like, what would you say if that, if that person was just like sitting here in the room right now with the two of us, and it was just like the three of us talking, what would you say to that person?
LB (37:30):
I think it’s gonna be super important to identify where they are currently and what their belief system is, because everything I’ve spoken about doing, you know, radical confidence, showing up to do the hard work. You know, I’ve got a chapter where I really talk about asking yourself the hard questions and I call it, you know, open the can of worms and embrace the I, because that’s, I think something that holds us back a lot is that we don’t necessarily look at the reality of certain things and ask ourselves, does this feel right? Is this right? And yes, yes or no. And why not? And what am I gonna do about it? So for instance, the example that I like to go to is, let’s say you are married and you find yourself, you’re no longer happy in the relationship and you’re stuck and you dunno what to do.
LB (38:20):
You have to actually ask yourself, is this a relationship I wanna be in? Like, when you ask that question, like, do I have to do I need to leave? And the reason why people don’t ask those hard questions is cuz sometimes we’re so fearful of the answer, you know? Because what if the answer is yes, and now you’ve got four kids, a mortgage and now you have to go, oh my God. Well, does he, is he willing to do therapy? Am I willing to do therapy? If when, if this relationship won’t work, who gets the kids who gets some Christmas, who gets them all weekends or do we do about the mortgage? Like there’s so much that comes with asking a hard question and answering the hard question that so many of us, it’s just easier to go. Well, screw it. I’m not gonna do it anyway.
LB (39:07):
Right? And so that’s where I think we all get stuck over time. And I’ve had so many therapists on my show, worry. So many therapists and women of impact who turn around and say, you have no idea just sticking to relationships for now as the analogy, you have no idea how many people come relationships come on my couch. And they say they did something five years ago or whatever. And I knew it was a deal breakup, but I stayed cuz I thought it was easier. And they like the therapists say they always end up breaking up, but you stay in this period where you fear leaving cuz you fear doing the hard things and the unknown. And so going back to right now, if someone’s feeling stuck, I think it’s gonna be imperative to ask yourself the hard questions on what is you not working in your life right now?
LB (39:58):
Like nobodys take away the emotion of what you have to do about it. You just have to identify what is it in your life that isn’t satisfying and that isn’t making you happy and don’t judge yourself for it. Like when I started, when I realized I didn’t want children anymore. And I went from wanting four kids to not wanting any because I realized how much I loved being in business. I had to actually say, I have to talk to my husband about it. And the, the, just bringing up the subject and telling him, babe, I love you more than life itself, but I never wanna take care of you again. I don’t wanna put out your clothes. I don’t wanna cook for you anymore. That’s a hard discussion to have. And so I stayed there for eight years cause I didn’t wanna have the discussion cuz it was too hard. So I beg people to just look with no judgment and actually identify what those things are cause until you do. I don’t think you can move forward.
RV (40:55):
Mm-Hmm
LB (42:15):
Thank you so much for having me pleasure.
Ep 275: Spiritual Truths About Marketing Bestselling Books with Gabby Bernstein | 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 the 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 Martin 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):
So I knew when I was gonna sit down with Gabby Bernstein, that we were gonna talk about books and book launches and book writing. That was, that was part of like what we decided on the front end that we were gonna talk about. But I had no idea that we would get into such a conversation about spirituality and what the spiritual connection is to launching books. But I’m, I’m so glad that we did, because that was a conversation. If you haven’t listened to it, you have to go back and listen to this interview with Gabby Bernstein. I mean, she’s a number one New York times bestselling author. She’s written nine books. Several of them have hit the New York times list. And several of them sell very, very well. She’s built a huge social media following. You know, she’s a, and she’s a, she’s a spiritual teacher which, you know, like I don’t follow her super closely on that side of things cuz you know, I’m a hardcore Bible thumpin Jesus freak.
RV (01:54):
So I, I tend to follow more of like, you know, pastors and stuff like that. But I like, I like following Gabby, but I thought what was really the interesting, and I’ve always followed her as like a marketer to see what, what she’s doing and she’s just sweet and kind. And so, you know, I built a relationship with her just recently with some of the other stuff we were doing. And then she mentioned, Hey, she is doing a free training for authors on how to become a bestseller. And I said, well, Hey, that’s something we should talk about. Like our community would, would really care about that. And so by the way, if you go to brand buildersgroup.com/gabby, so brand builders, group.com/gabby, G A B B Y you can check out depending on when you hear this you can sign up for the free training that she’s doing.
RV (02:42):
And if you miss the free training, it’ll just point you directly to like whatever the course is. But she’s, she’s you know, doing this free training on it. And I said, Hey, well, we should talk about it on the podcast. And so anyways, we got into this wonderful conversation and, and I guess that that was enlightening for me was never really not so directly connecting the idea of just what a spiritual journey writing a book is. And so I just thought it was really a beautiful conversation. I’m gonna share with you kind of my three biggest ahas, my three biggest takeaway, my, you know, what, what was, what were the highlights for me? And the first one was about vulnerability. So here’s here’s, I’ll tell you, these are the three things I’m gonna talk about vulnerability, responsibility and clarity. These are the three things that came out of the conversation, vulnerability, responsibility and clarity.
RV (03:36):
And the first one is vulnerability, cuz this is something that I’ve always with, which is how vulnerable should I be? Meaning how much should I expose to the world? What is going on in my private life? And you know, just how intimate exactly should we, should we be? And so I’m always fascinated by people who have these really massive platforms, how they, you know, reconcile that issue and, and, and, and use it cuz you know, everyone talks about vulnerability and of course it, it builds a deep, deep, you know, that’s what intimacy is right. Is you’re, you’re sharing these, these intimate details about your life with somebody and, and that’s what makes people feel like, you know, you, but at the same time, people, you know, on the internet, there’s a lot of strangers on the internet who don’t really know you. And so it’s kind of a kind of weird thing.
RV (04:25):
And, and I thought the answer that she gave when I asked her that question, how, where do you draw the line of how much you share was really brilliant? Cause I kind of thought she was gonna say one of two things, which is what most people say is they say, Hey, you should share everything. And just like, you know, you, you know, this is, this is the modern way of the world. Just like, you know, share everything and that if you wanna build fans, you would share everything, which is like, I, I kind of thought maybe she might say that or she might say the other thing, which is you hear a lot, which is like, Hey, these your followers, these are not your personal friends. They don’t need to know everything going on in your marriage and you know, what’s going on with your kids and, and, and whatever.
RV (05:01):
But her answer was so eloquent and brilliant and she didn’t even have to think about it. And she said, share only what you feel safe in share what you feel safe in. And I thought that was just such a, a great thing to go share as much as you feel safe sharing. That’s a really beautiful way to answer that because it’s like, if I feel safe sharing it, then it, it means, you know, that God, the universe, you know, I, I call it God Gabby calls it the universe like, but I think you’re, you’re you have a sense of going it’s I feel good about this. I’m I’m I’m talking about something that I’ve processed enough to where I’m past it. I’m not in the middle of it. And that was another, another really key point that she said, which I thought was a real practical step is she said, make sure you’re able to tell the story safely without being triggered by it.
RV (05:58):
And I think that’s a, that’s a key delineation point is to go, okay, if what I’m sharing triggers me, then that means I’m probably still too close to it. Like I’m still, I’m still, I’m still living inside of it. And so that’s gonna be dangerous because I don’t yet really have the full perspective on what happened, which means some of my emotions might be taking more of center stage or front stage versus like, you know, rationale or logic of, of, of what really it went on. So I thought that just was, was, was really good. Like you know, and it doesn’t give you necessarily a hard and fast answer, which is kind of what I was looking for, but it kind of does it actually gives a, a better answer share only what you feel safe in. And so I think that’s just really, really good.
RV (06:44):
So that’s, that’s vulnerability. That was my, my first takeaway, my second takeaway, which I think is gonna be looking back on this, this, this is gonna actually be my biggest takeaway from this is about responsibility. And when she said launching a book is a spiritual practice like that really hit me. I mean, I, I know that at a distance because I connect everything like for everything I do, you know, I connect spiritually and for me and AJ, like I mean our work is our, is our ministry. I mean that, it, it it’s a, a part of what our ministry would be, but like the, the speak thinking. So specifically that of, of your, of writing a book and marketing a book is a, is a spiritual practice and there’s two parts. There, there are several parts of it. She said, it’s having the first of all, you have to have the bravery to reveal the truth.
RV (07:41):
And that’s really true, right? Is like you gotta have enough faith and enough comfort enough, a confidence security that like what you are sharing you know, is like, you have to be brave to let people see into your mind and see into your heart and see into the things that you’re thinking. And I, so anyways, I think that was really, really good. And then you, and then you also have to establish the worthiness in your own life. Like believing that what you have is worthwhile to say, and I think everybody, right, when they first start out the idea of being an author, every single author has this question of like, well, why would anyone in the world listen to me? Or like what gives, you know, like what gives me the right to, to share this? And I think that’s just the, that’s the wrong way of processing it.
RV (08:30):
You can’t ask yourself who am I to share this with the world? You have to ask yourself who in the world needs this. And if somebody in the world needs this, then that’s why you are experiencing that calling. I mean, this is why we say the calling that you feel to share your message with the world is the result of a signal that is being sent out from someone else. And that person needs you more than you need them. And it is your responsibility to share that message, not because of what it will do for you, but because of what it will do for them, that’s a spiritual practice that that’s powerful. That’s, that’s allowing your, your life to be used. It’s allowing your voice to be a vessel, right? It, it’s allowing your, your, your story to be a conduit to impact and better improve somebody else’s.
RV (09:28):
And, and that is a great responsibility. And so, you know, she said this so directly, which very much aligns with what we say. You have to make it less about you and make it more about the impact that you’re gonna have on other people. And specifically, again, I loved how it was like, you know, really kind of like spiritual and, and, and, you know, like up there, but then it was also so practical the way she brought it down. And, and she said, visualize your reader, like reading your book and visualize the moment of them having a breakthrough in their life. Right. That changes everything. Like, you’re not going, am I good enough? Am I smart enough? Are people gonna think I’m stupid? Like, is anyone even gonna read like this? Like, no, one’s gonna, you know, I don’t, who am I in the world, all these negative self doubts.
RV (10:16):
And, and then when you visualize the idea of somebody, can, can you visualize, can you visualize the idea of one reader, one person looking at the work that you’ve done and saying, whoa, this is going to help me live a better life for the rest of my life. And if so, like, then you have to do it like that is a spiritual calling. And that is just a real powerful thought. It’s your, it’s your responsibility? It’s your privilege? It’s your privilege? It’s your, it’s your pleasure, hopefully, but it’s also your obligation. It’s your duty, it’s your responsibility. And that’s what we believe that that calling that you feel on your heart is the result of a signal being sent out by another person. And so that’s just a different way of, of thinking about it and, and going, gosh, you know, where she was, she was talking about being unapologetic, right?
RV (11:13):
You have to be unapologetic. She said, yes, I have unapologetically put my face on the cover and told the world about the works that I have created. Why not, not out of vanity for myself, not out of a, a, a desire to, to boost, you know, my own self-esteem, but out of a desire to serve and a desire to love and a desire to be useful and helpful to the world around me, which is like the H that’s the highest expression of my life. That what a great way to, to think about it and to overcome, and, and to really put in context what you’re doing when you are writing so that’s responsibility. And, and, and by the way, so just inside of her course, you know, she talks about this. So this is interesting. So I haven’t gone through her course yet.
RV (12:01):
You know, that one of the reasons that we’re, we’re, you know, at least promoting the free training, which again, if you go to brand builders, group.com/gabby Gabby and, and press me enough from a distance you know, I, I know that I have something to learn from her because I mean, the, the woman has sold a lot of books. She’s impacted a lot of lives and she’s got a huge platform and she is speaking to a lot of people, right. So on a practical side, I go, I, I have something to learn from this woman on a personal side, she’s just been totally endearing and just warm, just a complete doll, like and so, you know, and so she’s got this free training, so, but I haven’t, I’ve never gone through her course, but I planning on going through it. And, and I thought, what was interesting is this, this whole kind of module she has on this spirituality and like, you know, and she does meditations, things like that, you know, I would, I hall and prayers, whatever, but she’s, she’s got, she’s guiding people through meditations in terms of the mental component of this, of getting yourself to move past some of these limiting beliefs.
RV (13:03):
Cuz I think that’s really true. We really do struggle. Like most of our brand builders clients I’d say most of them have this issue of they’re worried about self-promotion, they’re worried about healing vein. They’re worried about not being humble. And so it holds them back from impacting people. And so I think this is a really, really big obstacle that we gotta make sense of. And, and, and I think, you know, the approach that she’s taking here is, you know, V very similar in terms of the, the posture, right? It might be a little bit different in of like the exact philosophy, but, but the posture of making it about other people and doing it for them and doing it out of service is exactly the same thing that we teach. It’s exactly the same thing that we believe. And so I’m really curious about that.
RV (13:49):
And, and, and what she’s doing there with those with, with those, you know, those thoughts. So I, I would call ’em prayers. She calls ’em meditations, you call ’em limiting beliefs, call it mindset whatever you call it. It’s, it’s a reality that the way, whatever you think in your own mind about marketing is either going to empower you to reach people, or it is going to disempower you to reach people. And so this is something we have to explore and I’m, I can’t wait to see it. So anyways, brand builders, group.com/gabby, if it sounds interesting, you could, you can, you can check it out. Of course, we have our best seller launch plan training too, and it’s great. And you, and, and you might go, well, why do you promote both of them? Cuz we have an abundance mindset around here and I wanna learn from Gabby and I go, Hey, you know, we do, we want you to learn from us?
RV (14:38):
Yeah, we do. Like we think we’re some of the best in the world at launching books. You know, we sent this, this big email out a couple weeks ago, we’re working with ed millet right now and his book launch. We we’ve helped him sell over 45,000 units. Like mostly he’s done it, but he’s following our system and we’re, you know, he’s a client and he’s following our plan. So like our system works too, but it’s, it’s not a, it’s like, I want more. Right. And there’s not that many people in the world that teach how to launch a book who have actually launched books at the level that Gabby has. So you know, I, I wanna learn. And so I go, Hey, if I wanna learn from her, then you know, some of you probably do too. It’s not a matter of either.
RV (15:17):
Or it’s, it’s a matter of both. So anyways, you could check that out brand builders, group.com/gabby. And then the third thing, which again, is also very aligned with us is clarity is clarity. You have to have this core message the through line. I mean, sh the things that we teach in finding your brand DNA about boiling your entire book down to one sentence, boil your whole speech, your entire personal brand down to one sentence. And I, you know, we talk about it all the time and then I think people come and they go, man, that’s a lot of work. And I don’t know, like I wanna talk about all these different things and it’s like, fine do your own thing. But listen to the, listen to the interviews. It’s not just me or AJ it’s, it’s the Gabby Bernstein. It’s the Donald Millers. It’s it’s the Michael hyats it’s it’s everybody we have on this show.
RV (16:03):
Who’s like making worldwide global impact is saying, you gotta have that core message. That central message it’s, it’s gotta be boiled down and the hardest work you’ll do. And nobody does it, except the biggest, the biggest, you know, brands, biggest personal brands in the world, the biggest influences, the biggest authors and the speakers, cuz they do that work and it’s, and is difficult. But you have to know it because it becomes the litmus test of what is allowed in the book and what isn’t in the book. And, and it clarifies who you’re marketing to and who you’re not marketing to. You know, not every book you write is gonna be a fit for everyone in your audience. Like there’s gonna be new people that your new book is a better fit for that. Aren’t yet in your audience. And there’s some people in your current audience that aren’t a great fit for your current thing.
RV (16:51):
So that’s why it’s like, you’re always evolving in your, and, and you have to have clarity about who you’re trying to serve too many, too many times. We go, well, what’s my purpose. And it, the faster way to get there is not to ask what’s my purpose is to ask, who can I help? Who can I serve? How can I be of value and, and narrowing down? Who is this for? Like, what is the core message and who is it for? And then the practical thing she said again, this was super, you know, the super practical. She said, this prevents you from, from writing five books in one. And that is so true. That’s what happens. Like the reason why the majority of books don’t transmit and sell and get passed on from person to person is because they say a little about a lot.
RV (17:38):
And as my mentor, Eric Chester taught me the very first day. I met with him when I first set out on this journey, like in my early twenties to say, I wanna be a speakers. He said, Rory, don’t say a little about a lot, say a lot about a little, right. And that’s what Gabby’s talking about here. Don’t, don’t try to combine five books into one, take one idea and deep dive on that. That is what makes a great, a great book. And I just, yeah, so I just, I think that, I think that is, is really genius and useful and Edon to all the things that we talk about. So I hope you enjoy this. The conversation is totally different than I expected, but Gabby was delightful and, and sweet, you know, and intelligent and brilliant as she is. You know, and to me, it’s just like, I’m curious to learn from people like that.
RV (18:24):
And, and even though, you know, if you, if you don’t know or you haven’t picked up, you know, we have different spiritual views on the world. I think Gabby’s just, you know, sort of prided herself on just being very like open, which is, which is great. You know, I happen to be clearly a Christian, but, but I still can learn so much from her. And we’re so aligned. It’s like, they’re not mutually exclusive. And, and I, so I’ve learned ton from her. I hope you’ve learned a ton from her. I love following her. She’s so uplifting and encouraging and what an honor to get to interview her. And you know, somebody that has, has impacted as many people as she had and, and for her to share. So generously some of these things that she has learned. So I hope you enjoyed it.
RV (19:10):
I hope you get a conversa. You got to listen in on a conversation between two people that you wouldn’t hear anybody else or you wouldn’t hear anywhere else. Excuse me. Like you would right here. So if you know somebody who is an author, aspiring author wants to be better marketing, send them this episode, send the, the interview of me and Gabby. And hopefully you’ll keep the coming back on and listening week in and week out to the influential personal brand podcast. Thanks for being here. We’ll catch you next time. Bye. Bye.
Ep 274: Spiritual Truths About Marketing Bestselling Books with Gabby Bernstein
RV (00:02):
Well, as sometimes happens, I tend to make a lot of friends whenever somebody is launching a book because we are involved with lots of book launches. And of course, right now, things have been pretty hot and heavy with ed my let’s book launch. And part of that led me to meet Gabby. Gabby Bernstein was in the middle of her launch. And so she’s a recent friend of mine. And I have to tell you, I adore her. She is so sweet and charming and kind. I followed her for years. Like she’s brilliant and intelligent and all those things, but if you, if you’re not familiar with her, she is the number one New York times bestselling author of nine books including the universe has your back super at attract and then be days, which is her newest Oprah’s SuperSoul Sunday called her the next a next generation thought leader. The New York times has referred to her as a new role model and she’s just extremely insightful and warm. And anyways, I somehow suckered her to coming onto our show to hear the, of how she built her writing career and share some of her secrets with us. And so with that Gabby, welcome to the show.
GB (01:11):
What’s up, man? Well, you’re welcoming me and my kitten, Jimmy blue. She everyone’s gonna probably hear her purring in the background because she’s very attached to her mommy and she wants to be in the room with me.
RV (01:22):
Jimmy blue.
GB (01:24):
Yes, girl. She says, hi. She says hi to every blue
RV (01:29):
So Gabby tell us, like, how do you get started as a writer? Like I know, I know you get this question all the time. So that’s part of why I want to ask you is you go somebody’s listening. Did, did you think you were gonna be a writer? Like, did you, when you were a kid, you’re like, yeah, I’m gonna grow up a and I’m gonna, I’m gonna write a bunch of books and, and podcast and like do social media lives and all that.
GB (01:50):
Well, I didn’t know that I was gonna be a writer growing up, but I did have the desire to be a spiritual teacher. And I, when I was in my early when I was about 14 years old, I was the president of a regional Jewish youth group from my temple. And we went all around and we would host these big weekends with hundreds of young Jewish kids. And I was the leader, right? So I was there kind of like this spiritual Sherpa for these high school students and fast forward a decade later, that’s what I started to do as my career. But I, and so I often think that the things that we do by choice is children can often reflect what we end up doing in our, in our career path. I was led to becoming a spiritual teacher, also through my own personal growth journey.
GB (02:39):
When I was in my early twenties, I ran a PR company and was a nightlife PR or firm. I worked really hard to be seen and heard, and ultimately got very addicted to drugs and alcohol, given the nature of the type of work I was doing, where I was doing it. And the age I was in New York city, but also because we become addicts when we’re running from something. So for me, I was running from something I wasn’t even aware of. I became addicted to drugs and alcohol and by the grace of God, I got sober at 25 on my own with, you know, finding a, finding a, a program and not going to treatment traditional treat, just recognizing I had a problem in getting myself clean and sober. But the reason I was able to also get to that level of understanding and awareness was my devotion to my spiritual practice, even when I was using.
GB (03:31):
And so I had, you know, all the stack of self help books next to my bed, my original mentors who are now my friends and, and sometimes deceased mentors, Wayne Dyer, and Louise hay. They were all my mentors even before they were my mentors sitting me sitting next to my bedside. And I, I would even be in after hours parties with people that I didn’t even know, and I’d be pointing to my books and I’d say, I’m gonna be a self-help book, author and motivational speaker. And at the time they’d be like, yeah, good luck with that. But I had the vision and upon getting sober, I got very spiritual. I reconnected to my spiritual roots and I started speaking about it publicly. And the more I started speaking about it, the more I started coaching people, it became very clear to me that I had many, many books in me.
GB (04:13):
And that was the plan and the path I was great at sales. I was, I knew how to sell myself. And I knew I had a very important message to share. And I sold my first book. But when I sold that book, I was really freaked out. It was like that, holy moment of uhoh. How am I gonna write this book?
RV (04:41):
I, I had, I had a very similar, so the very first I, I had a very similar experience. It took us four years to get our first book deal. And I was so focused on like, gotta get a deal, gotta get agent, gotta get a deal, gotta get deal. Like, and then it happened. And I like, when I sat down to write the first word, I had like a, a, a panic attack, I had not even realized the gravitas of what I had just committed myself to. You know, and that’s something I don’t think people always realize is that, you know, when you self-publish, there’s not as much of that, cuz it’s like, oh, if it works out great, you know, if not, it’s like, it’s kind of just you. But when you do, when you do a traditional book deal, there’s real money on the table and a lot of, a lot of lives and livelihoods at, at stake. So that’s interesting. I, I had similar experience.
GB (05:27):
Yeah. And thankfully I was 27. I’ve always had this. And so I was sort of like, I’ll figure it out. And I’ve, I’ve always had that mentality of, if I wanna do this, I’m gonna do it. I can do anything that I want to do. If I don’t wanna do it, I can’t do it. Like if it’s not something I’m excited about and it’s not something that’s passion driven for me. And so I was willing to do whatever it took to figure it out. And so at the time I hired a writing coach and she just taught me how to structure a book and how to structure the outline very quickly. I found my voice as a writer. My, my literary expertise ended in eighth grade. You know, my literary education ended in eighth grade. So I didn’t have any awareness of how to string a sentence together, but I was self-taught.
GB (06:12):
I, I, I wanted to get my message out. And that first book, when look back to the writing, my writing now is much more, much more effective, much more colorful, just a lot better grammar, but you can always have an editor fix those things for you. If you have a message and you wanna get that out to the world, there is a way to do that through a book. And so for me, I’ve written nine books now in 11 years, I think I I’m an excellent writer now, without any experience as a writer, I write very, very vulnerable, authentic stories. I write clear messages, and if anyone’s out there, like I wanna write a book or I have a message I wanna share, but I don’t know how to write or don’t know where to start. I hope my story’s really empowering to for people because I didn’t have anything going for me other than a really important message that I wanted to share and where there is a will, there is a way. And I think that’s the perfect example of that.
RV (07:09):
It is. I, and I, I think I, you know, I texted you a picture. We had a recent leadership retreat of brain builders group, you know, there’s like 10 of our leaders, our all together, and we’re sitting on the beach and two of them had Gabby Bernstein books, two different books of yours. And you know, that like, you know, your impact is, has been, has been really in incredible. Like I talk, talk to me about the vulnerable part. Okay. Like, because this is something that I think there has been a trend in recent years, I feel like more and more for authors to, I guess, share the very intimate details of their life. And to some extent, that’s been really, really healthy for people to see because they read and they, oh, this person’s not that much. You know, that person just like me, on the other hand, there’s been some backlash of life. Oh, well, this person isn’t like maybe who I thought they were or whatever what’s here. My question is, how do you establish the line of what you share and what you don’t. So like is there, and, and this could apply to social media too, but I’ll, I’ll say specifically for books since that’s kind of the thread of our conversation, is there no limit to what I should share with the audience? Nothing. Should I hold back? Or like, what’s your philosophy there,
GB (08:30):
There’s a big limit. I think that you can only share what you are safe in. So if you share about something that’s too vulnerable, still triggering for you, you haven’t fully processed it or moved through it, or you’re kind of good at it, but you’re not a full expert in it quite yet. If it’s something that, you know, if you don’t believe in your own ability, recovery, whatever that may be, that lack of confidence, safety belief is gonna come through in the book. And if you’re too vulnerable in a way that in a time when you’re not fully grounded and steady in your own recovery, that will trigger you and trigger your reader. My most recent book happy days is a great example of that. I wa I wanted to write this book in 2016, I was 36 years old. I just remembered a dissociated trauma. I knew I had to write a book about trauma, but I knew I could not do it until I was on the other side. So the book didn’t come out until, well, I was 42 years old and I had lived a lot of recovery and had done a tremendous amount of work to be safe enough grounded enough and enough of an expert in that experience to really tell that story safely and to take care of my reader at the same time.
RV (09:50):
Hmm. Yeah, that’s a really good, that’s a really great litmus text. So as long as were able to tell the story safely, not be triggered by it. Mm-Hmm,
GB (10:04):
But you don’t have to be like the expert in your field to write what you wanna write. For instance, every book I’ve written, I was an expert in what I knew then, and I look back to my first book and to the today’s book, and there’s a lot of depth. That’s still congruent, even though there’s so much more psychological mentions and, and, and references neuro biological met references my own personal training and therapeutic practices referenced this most recent book than there was 11 years ago. But the depth, the intention, the authentic vulnerability was matching where I was then as much as it is matching where I am now.
RV (10:50):
Mm-Hmm
GB (11:25):
Yes.
RV (11:26):
So why like how do you balance the frequency of writing a book and marketing a book and how do you know, like, do you think that the fact that you’ve written nine books in 11 years is why all your books have done so well, cuz you’re constantly marketing a new book or do you kind of look back and go, gosh, I think maybe some of the books would’ve done better if I would’ve spent more time marketing them before turning my focus to the next one. Like, I’m curious about that, like interval frequency of writing and marketing mm-hmm
GB (12:00):
Well, the number one reason that my books do so well is cuz they’re really good. They’re really good books. And I think that’s probably one of the things that’s overlooked often in the marketing space and when people are talking about like launching and like, you know, making sure you’re buying bulk books and you know, doing all the right events and promotions and keeping your launch going all right, cool. Like maybe you have a big platform. Maybe you can get on the number one New York times bestseller. Maybe you can, maybe you can, you know, sell a tremendous amount of books, but if the book isn’t good, then it’s just that launch. It just it’s it’ll flatline. And you know, I think about my book, the universe has your back. It still just sells tons, thousands and thousands of copies every week because it’s a very good book, you know, are all my books that caliber and some, some are not as great as others in the sense of like, they gonna have that wow power.
GB (12:54):
That’s gonna be so shareable, but they all are good. They all are healing. They all have had a major impact on people and you could meet 10 people and they may all say, yeah, I’ve read the universe has your back. And then one will say, but I also loved judgment detox and I was willing to go there with her or I loved may cause miracles cause of that 40 day practice, you know? So the content has to be really good.
RV (13:56):
Which is what ha, which is what most books do. I mean, there there’s a it’s everything is in the first few weeks and then it just kind of is a slow fade to zero.
GB (14:05):
Yeah, exactly. So you don’t wanna slow fade to zero, so that’s where you write a good book. But I, to answer your question about the cadence with which I’ve written these books and how so in some or early on I would have launched a book and that same week sold the next book and then on the flights of the book tour of the most recent book, I’d be writing that next book. Wow. I do not recommend that to people.
RV (14:33):
It’s insane. I mean, that sounds so crazy.
GB (14:35):
It was so crazy. And some of it was related, you know, some of the speed with which that was happening was related to the, my agent’s advice, you know, like let’s sell the next book, right? When you’re number one, New York times bestseller, it’s a very hot time to sell the next book. Like great. Okay. some of that advice was related. Some of that was related to the fact that I had a book that wanted to come out of me. And so I was ready to, for instance, my book universe has your back. There was a chapter about judgment. And when I was writing that chapter, I was like, oh, Gabby. Like this is a book, you know? And so I needed to get it out because I was like, I was just like sitting on it, you know? So some of it was, it had to come out some of it. And as I got a little bit further along in my literary journey and maybe I’d had about seven or six or seven books out, I actually started to put more space in between the books because give myself a year to write it. So it wasn’t like every year I was putting out a new book, it was almost like every year and a half suppose. And
RV (15:32):
Which is still super fast. I mean, it’s still super fast,
GB (15:36):
So fast, but you know, my most recent book came out two years, so my super tractor came out and that’s actually totally not true. Super tractor came out in the fall in 2020 and then, oh no. So target 2019 in the fall. And I had an audio book that I had come out in March of 2020, and then I hadn’t had a new book until now, 2022
RV (16:01):
Mm-Hmm
GB (16:03):
So, so yeah.
RV (16:04):
So you’re always, it seems like your path has always been like, you see the next one coming already and you go, okay. Like, oh
GB (16:10):
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I just sold my public. Sure. One of my publish, I, I have two publishers. I publish separately two separate types of platforms, but one of my publishers just like, you know, they’re like, what’s next. And I was like, this is what I wanna write about. And they’re like, great. So I kind of already sold the next one, but I’m not gonna start writing it until the fall. You know, I, I have, I wanna have time because the most recent book just wrote, I, it needs air, it needs breathing room. It needs space. It needs nurturing. You know, you’re like, oh, are you winding down? And I’m like, yeah, the launch is winding down, but the, the movement is revving up.
RV (16:46):
Right.
GB (16:47):
And that’s a important distinction.
RV (16:49):
Yeah. the other thing is your platform is always being built consistent. I mean, you have been someone who has just dominated on social media. And so it’s like, you’re, it feels like every book is like growing the audience grows, the, you know, grows the audience.
GB (17:07):
It is, it’s a big platform builder. Yeah. Books are a big platform builder, because think about it. You know, you take your ideas, you put them into writing. It’s such an easy way for someone to act access you. It’s a great beginning of the customer journey. They, they, they read this, they have an experience with you. They sleep next to you every single night on their bedside, you’re on their bedside and you have this intimate relationship with them. And so of course that really is a platform builder. It’s also a beautiful time when you just get a tremendous amount of, of publicity when you’re in that law launch mode and you give the, the media something to write about and you give the podcast or something to talk about. And it really, if you, if you are in that personal growth business, a book is a V a very important asset for you to have absolutely without a shadow of a doubt.
GB (17:55):
And in fact, look, you know, I, I, don’t always recommend that people put their face on the cover of their books. I started that from the get, from the get go, and it has benefited me, but with, but my vision for my, my writing was so that my books would be a, a huge part of the movement I was creating and the brand that I was building. And so all of my books to date have my cup face on the cover. I think this one smaller book I’m gonna print won’t because it’s, it’s the title is you are the guru it’s I it’s an audio, but I’m gonna print it in, in print. And so I think that you gotta take, you know, the teacher off of the cover when you’re saying you are the guru. So that will be one that won’t have my face on it, but the rest of them do, and for me, that has been a platform builder, for sure. You know, people recognize me from whatever they, other places they may have seen me. But a lot of times people like, oh, you’re that girl on that book cover that woman. I’m not a girl anymore.
RV (18:50):
So you’ve, but you’ve done that. You’ve done that deliberately and intentionally, and you’ve never had any, you’ve never had any worry about self-promotion or vanity or like, cuz cuz I’ll say this like a lot of we, we describe our, our audience as mission driven messengers. They’re exactly the people you’re talking about. They’re they’re not writers per se. They’re someone who goes, I have a message. And I would say that I feel like a strong number of our clients, Gabby. One of the biggest I’ll call it a limiting belief that they have is self-promotion they, they, they they’re stuck. They’re stuck. It’s like they’re trapped in these two prisons. One says you have to get this message out to the world. The other says that’s arrogant and vain and don’t be shallow. Like, you know, whate whoever like it’s and they just like, it’s a real pickle. It’s a connector
GB (19:44):
Beautiful point. Yeah. You know, I’ve had the privilege of, of training authors. I, and I have a training, the bestseller masterclass training. And in that training, I address this head on because I think that writing and publishing a book is a spiritual practice. The first step is having the bravery to reveal the truth, particularly for your audience that are just like me, they’re, they’re wanting to carry an empowering message. And then the next step is really establishing the worthiness. Like who am I to be the expert here? Who am I to tell this story? And in that training, I have a lot of meditations and spiritual practices for grounding yourself in the, who am I not to because we have, in order to show up with our highest purpose in this lifetime, we have to dissolve all boundaries to the expression of that truth. And that must come from a place of who am I not to do this.
GB (20:48):
And more importantly, really grounding yourself in the empowering message that you’re here to share and the impact that it can have. And the message mainly is making it less about you and more about the impact that it will have. And I do this whole me in the bestseller master class about visualizing your reader and really grounding yourself in that experience of the reader, taking in your content. And when you can see your reader in that way, and you can sort of have that, that visceral experience of feeling into that journey that you’re gonna take them on. It really takes your, in your feelings of inadequacy, your feelings of unworthiness out of the picture, it makes it bet something so much bigger. And so, you know, we gotta get our own ego out of it.
RV (21:39):
Yeah. But that that’s beautiful. I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s a beautiful thought and I, I I’ll tell you so, so by the way, Y also if you go to and builders group.com/gabby, we’re, we’re part of why we have Gabby here is because she’s someone who practices what she preaches. And we like to, we like to celebrate people who do that. And so we’re, we’re, we’re helping her promote this bestseller masterclass. And if you go to brand builders, group.com/gabby, you can, you can learn about it. Depending on when you get there, there’s a free training going on. So go, go Pronto ASAP. And when you and I were first talking about this Gabby and you were telling me one of the things that really hit me was what, like, to what you just said, that writing a book is a spiritual practice. It’s this and that really hit me both as a power concept that I think people think of it as like a tactical thing.
RV (22:33):
Oh, I’m just gonna like put some words on a page, but it’s actually a tremendously, you know, spiritual practice. It, it, it also really felt like a great example of you living in your uniqueness, that you apply your, your expertise to spiritual teacher, this topic of writing and marketing books. Mm-Hmm
GB (23:27):
Yeah. And I think that, that, you know, as much as I am writing this, creating this course from the lens of spiritual teacher, which there’s no way I couldn’t cause that’s who I am. I’m also a really great marketer. And I have been very unapologetic about carrying my message and putting my face on the cover and being the ex the very loud mouthpiece for my great work. And that is required of us if we wanna get our books out to the world. And I, and I believe that it is our, it is our responsibility to UN ally share our great work with the world. And so that comes through in all of the marketing techniques that comes through in all the spiritual practices that comes it through in all of the, you know, the practices on how to craft and write your outline and your core message.
GB (24:19):
Every single module of that course is infused with the spiritual foundation in the marketing, the, and the profound gift of, of marketing, because it’s, there’s so many people out there that have so much to give, but they have no idea how to give it. They have no, or they have no idea how to ma market it message it, and they have no confidence or they lack the value and the understanding and the awareness of the importance of how much it has to get out to the world. And so that’s what this training offers you. It does. It’s more than just, and I think that’s just in general, what I think my my literary journey has been, has been a journey of having this, this experience of allowing my books to heal so much that I’m, I can hold this book happiness right here. You know, I’m holding this book and I gotta tell you with my friend, you asked me like, is the launch over no way? Like this book has so much value in this world. This book will save lives. This book will transform people on a molecular level, and I will do everything that I can to make sure that every human that needs it finds it.
RV (25:36):
And when you say the term responsibility, that’s what you’re talking about. You’re talking
GB (25:40):
About a hundred percent. Yeah. I wrote a book called happy days, the guided path from trauma to profound freedom and inner peace is the most important book I’ve ever written. Yeah. Maybe it’s not as sexy as super attractive about manifesting, but it’s life changing and it is profound and it is healing. And it is giving a reader who, who may identify as having some kind of trauma with a big tier or small tea, giving them the guided path that I wish I had had when I went through that. And so I’m gonna do anything I can to get it out into the world.
RV (26:11):
Love that. I mean, that, that to me is, is such a huge part of this because, you know, like there’s, there’s tactics, right? Like, oh, you can, you know, dig it on, do PR and like do free events and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All that stuff is super helpful. But if you don’t believe that the world desperately your message, you will find a way to self sabotage, like, and you’ll blame it on the tactics. But the reality is it’s the beliefs that are holding you back. Mm-Hmm
GB (26:41):
RV (26:45):
Yeah. I love, I, I, I, I think that’s so good that said, okay, just a couple minutes. So do, do you have a few tactics? Cause like the tactics are helpful, right? Mm-Hmm
GB (27:28):
For you actually an interesting point. Yeah. See. So with regard to getting the book out, I, I created a six month marketing plan for in inside my bestseller masterclass. It’s actually, one of the modules is teaching it and then they can download the plan. Like they can really walk away with that plan it, if you follow those steps, you will be able to launch a bestselling book. And the thing that you’re saying, that’s so important in terms of tactical practical methods is giving yourself the space to prepare for birthing something so valuable into the world. And of all the products that I launch in the, you know, podcast and everything that I do in my life the most time, attention and energy goes into launching a book because for me, and I really go six months out. And, and now I’m thinking about that as it relates to, you know, pregnancy, right?
GB (28:22):
Like the first three months, you’re kind of like fun and then six months out, you start to plan. Right? And so that, that planning period, and I, I actually even start planning even for further back than that, but it’s really a six month journey of marketing this book out into the world. And then sort of what happens after the book the, the, the strategy and the, and the commitment and the planning is effective and necessary. In addition, there’s other tools I could give people right now, and I go deep into this, in that free training that you mentioned, and these are, and the free training, I actually share my four secrets to your best seller. And they’re, it’s a good sneak preview of what you get inside the bestseller masterclass, but to touch into some of that. Yeah,
RV (29:04):
So real quick. So just again, Y so if, if, if you’re hearing this podcast, right, when it comes out, you can, you can get the free training because it we’re gonna publish this right before it happens. If you go to brand builders, group.com/gabby, the free training will be happening. So hit, as soon as you hear this episode, go to that lake. And then if you it’s, It’s live
GB (29:25):
Right now.
RV (29:27):
Oh yeah. It’s a live free training. Yeah.
GB (29:28):
Live free training. Yeah.
RV (29:29):
If you miss it, if you miss it, we’ll have that link redirected to either, you know, something other free training she’s got or to, or just to the masterclass itself. Okay. Go ahead. So, so brand builders, group.com/gabby, don’t miss it. Okay. Continue on your four secrets.
GB (29:44):
And so I’m gonna share these secrets in the training. And what I’ll touch into right now is that the number one thing you have to know to write and market a best selling book is what your core message is. And your core message is the through line of your book, an example of a core message, happy days, the guided path from trauma to profound freedom and inner peace that is often the subtitle of the book is the core message, right? So the universe has your back transform fear into faith, the super methods for manifesting a life beyond your wildest dreams. Having that clear core message is so crucial to making sure that you don’t write five books in one, it’s so crucial to making sure that you’re sticking to the message rather than, you know, veering off into a thousand different directions. And it’s so crucial to the marketing process, because if you have written a book that has five different core messages, then you don’t know how to market what you’re marketing. You don’t know who you’re marketing to you. Don’t right. So it’s like the, the core message is so important. And I give a practice on how to establish core message inside that free training and a whole module on it inside the bestseller masterclass.
RV (31:06):
Yeah. that, it’s, it’s interesting, cuz we think of that, that message. It’s almost like a litmus test for what makes it in the book and what doesn’t get, make the cut. Exactly. And then, you know, less like the podcast that you, that you, you take on, you know, like which, which media appearances do you take, which speaking engagements do you take? Like who do you go? How
GB (31:25):
Do I pitch it? How do I even pitch it? Right. It’s like, if you don’t, if you’re trying to tell people how to manifest and how to overcome trauma, you don’t, what are you pitching? You know what I mean? Like it’s not the same book. And so you really need to have that clear core message before you start.
RV (31:39):
Well, Gabby, I, I think I will take you know, I will take away so much from this conversation and, and this idea that writing a book is a spiritual practice and marketing book is a spiritual practice. It is a responsibility that you owe to a reader who’s out there that needs you and they need the work that you’ve been called to be a conduit for. And so check out brand builders, group.com/gabby follow Gabby online. You probably already are. She’s got millions of people, but thank you so much for this time and your insight and your wisdom. And I just, I, you know, I’m honored to, to feel like I’m a little bit of a friend of yours and to, to know the true GE you’re on of all the people you’re gonna impact just in the years to come Gabby. So we wish you the best.
GB (32:30):
Thank you. Thank you. So to talk about this.
Ep 273: How to Make Money Selling Online Courses with Amy Porterfield | Recap Episode
RV (00:02):
Amy Porterfield legend. I mean, did, when it comes to digital marketing, online marketing, personal branding, I mean, she’s a legend, she’s one of the, one of the, the fairy godmothers of this industry or this space, you know, I would say godfather, but you know, clearly godmother and she’s, she has just helped a ton of people, 40,000 people to be exact 40,000 people have gone through her paid courses. And I just, I just love that conversation. I I’m honored when we get a chance to be introduced to people like her and get to go behind the scenes a little bit and bring you the stories, right. Of like she’s working with Tony Robbins for seven years and she’s helping Tony do his first live webinar and she accidentally pushes the wrong button and, and, and, and notifies hundreds of people that the webinar is canceled.
RV (00:53):
I mean, just to hear those stories to me is just so rich and rare and, and, and, and powerful because it just, you know, it shows you where these people start and, and, and hopefully that gives you encouragement for where you can start. Like, you can start right where you’re at. And and I just, yeah, I didn’t know exactly what to expect from the conversation like Amy and I have been sort of acquaintances and, you know, a little bit messaging back here and there, and then more recent, we’ve gotten to know a little each other a little bit since she moved to Nashville. And and I’ve just always liked her, just never really known her that well. And, and this was so cool to get to learn from her and hear her story. So I, I let’s talk away. I’m gonna share, you know, my three top highlights from the interview with Amy Porterfield and the first one, one is, you know, we don’t sell a ton of courses.
RV (01:47):
It’s not a big focus of what we do at brain builders group. We, we do one on one personal brand strategy, coaching and training, right? Like we, we do human to human. And so we don’t, we haven’t like put a lot of time and energy into selling courses. It’s it’s and we don’t even really do it at all. I, a lot of our clients do and we’ve done it before, and we know, you know, we know something about it, but like this, the number one question that we’ll always get that always get from people when it comes to their course is how long does it need to be? Like, how many, how many videos and how long? And for some reason, people really get, really get stuck on that. And I loved Amy’s answer. She said simply however long it has to be to get them the result, what a great answer and just the true answer.
RV (02:41):
Like people aren’t paying for the amount of time, right. They’re paying for a result. If you’ve, if you’ve hung around our, our brain builders community, you’ll hear us say this a lot. People don’t pay for information. They pay for organization and application, right? They they’re, they’re, they’re paying for the application. They, they need help applying information to their life. And so in some ways, the, the better you are at teaching, the shorter it can be, and the shorter it should be. You know, I think it was mark Twain, who said, that said that brevity is the essence of wisdom. I shared that David Brooks, one of my speaker coaches in the world championship of public speaking said, tell the audience every word they need to know and not a word more. And, and Amy is applying that same principle here. It, however long it has to be to get them the result that you’re promising them.
RV (03:34):
So, but do it the fastest way possible, be efficient with it. Don’t just like don’t drag on and on with content, cuz you think it needs to be longer in order to justify a higher price. It’s, that’s lowering the value of it. Like if you can deliver the secret and you know, and you can do it concisely just that’s, that’s even more valuable. And I, I, I do also wanna mention a little subnote here where she said bake in pep talks to your course. I love that. That was such a great tip. Bake in little pep talks into your course and realize that it’s not just information. People need encouragement. They, they need motivation. They need inspiration. They, they need, they need wisdom and direction and, and, and they, they need help believing that it’s possible. And you know, it was funny when she said the, the more like signature course, the bigger course, the longer the course, the more motivation they need.
RV (04:33):
And that makes sense because there’s more places where they can get tripped up, right? There’s there’s more, there’s more points on the journey anywhere they can fall off. So bake little pep talks into your course. It’s not just information. It shouldn’t just be boring drudgery through like content, inspire them, challenge them, help them, coach them, encourage them. That’s a really, really important part of, of the journey. So that was really, the second thing was how do you sell a course? And I love, I mean, she said exactly what we do, exactly what she does, exactly what we teach and exactly what we’ve seen works, which is you don’t even really sell the course. What you do is you create a free training. You create a free one hour speech. The way we would say it is the fastest way to take someone from being a total stranger to a lifelong fan is an incredible 45 minute to one hour presentation, right?
RV (05:41):
It’s your speech now? You’ll that is a webinar like in recorded format. That is a webinar. If it’s, if it’s in live format, it it’s a speech. It could be a live on social media. Like it could be a podcast interview, but it’s like, you have to work to create this tightly bound content, rich value added 45 minute, just delicious and impactful training. And then you gotta deliver it to people like you gotta, you gotta run your mouth. You gotta go out and tell the world. You can do it by podcast. You can do it by going live on social media. You can go on other people’s podcasts. You can go, you can do it as webinars. You can break it up into smaller video funnels. You can, you can go out and do speeches. You like, you can do. ’em Virtually you can do ’em in front of humans, but like you have to give people a chance to sample what you have to teach.
RV (06:37):
And that’s why that 45 minutes is it’s gotta be so good. Not smoking mirrors, not flashing the pan, not a bunch of teaser. And then I’ll teach you the good stuff, like 45 minutes of life changing content that you give away for free give people. And, and you promote that. Drive people to that. You drive people to the free thing where they experience you. And then the people who are still there, which are the ones who are interested. They’re not only interested, they’re super interested because they were interested enough to register and then interested enough to show up, interested enough to stay and interested enough to be there at the end. So it’s like, those are the people who want to buy. So if by the time they’re there with you at the end, they want to know what you have for sale. That’s why they’re there.
RV (07:29):
So, you know, use your email and your blogs and your social media and your podcast and your YouTubes to drive people to a free training. And then at the end of the free training, that is where you make the, the pitch to sell. And, and I, I love the way that Amy said that she said, earn your right to sell to them, earn your right to sell to them. It’s like paying in rears instead of paying in forwards, right? Like some of your bills you pay in rears. Like you go, you pay for the service after you’ve experienced it. Right? You do that like at a restaurant, right? You eat a meal, they give you the food first and then you pay for it after, right? That’s, that’s, that’s paying in rears. Other other bills you have to pay first. And then you, then you get the service.
RV (08:15):
Well, when it comes to content marketing, it happens in rears. You have to deliver the training, add the value first. And then you get the, the, you earn the right to sell. As she says by giving immense value, like 45 minutes of truly immense value. So simple, so simple. The fact that it’s a webinar or a summit or a challenge or a podcast or YouTube video or a live stream, or a standing on a stage, like all of those, those are just details. That’s just the modality of delivery. The concept here is add values to people’s add value to people, add value to people’s lives, show them a sampling of, of what you have to, to teach. And, and then that you earn the right to sell. And then the third thing that I learned from Amy, you know, my takeaway, which is like the grand PBA of them all is we, we always are saying, if you have did focus, you get diluted results.
RV (09:18):
Focus is power, right? Those, those are concepts right out of our first book, take the stairs all the way back in 2012, that it is focus. That creates power. And you hear us say it, but you don’t believe it. And those of you that are members of ours, when we’re telling you, no, you don’t need five revenue streams you one, right? No, you don’t need to have 17 social media channels. Like you really need one. Like just, just like the ultimate thing that matters is your email list. Right? And, and then she comes on, like the queen of course is like one of the, one of the OGs. If you’re not familiar with Amy, the baby, this doesn’t make sense to you. But, but there’s a good, you are like, if you’re listening to this show, you’ve probably heard of her before. Like she’d been around from the, from the beginning of online marketing and, and her, her, you know, like that, she is one of, one of the, the creators of the space.
RV (10:11):
And to go 13 years into the business, she got two avenue streams courses and a membership site. But the membership site, she only sells to people who’ve been through the courses like her primary business model is courses. How many courses does she have after 13 years? Three? That’s it three, three courses, 13 years, one business model, one focus courses are not the answer. Coaching is not the answer. Speaking is not the answer. Consulting is not the answer services are not the answer. Any of these business models work. The answer is having one, not having one, having one, meaning you have a so low primary business, this model that it is, it all other things are subservient to that. You’re choosing it for us. It’s one OnOne coaching, right? Like one-on-one training. Like we’re pushing people, we’ve got a curriculum, but we do it through a modality of talking to you one-on-one every month.
RV (11:15):
And, and coming to our, you know, live coaching events, but we’re human based. Whereas you know, Amy’s doing it through courses and, and, you know, group, group, group teaching, other other people will do it through like selling tickets to their events. Or they’ll just, you know, they’re monetizing their podcasts, all the business models work, but it, none of ’em work when you do them all at the same time. So you gotta find your, your primary. And, and I love what she said too. She said, I’ve I never, one of the things that I did well was I never added something new until the thing that I was currently doing was working really well. I never added something new until the thing I was currently doing was working really well. And, and that’s how you get 40,000 clients. I didn’t do the math on this, but like, you know, you go, okay, if you’ve had 40,000 people, let’s just say, it’s, let’s do a a hundred dollars course buy a $500 course on average y’all that is 20 million in revenue, 20 million at 500, if it’s a thousand dollars, it’s, it’s $40 million.
RV (12:28):
Right. So, and if it’s $250, it’s 10, you know, per course it’s million dollars. All of those are pretty good, right? Like all of those are, all of those are pretty good. Again, it’s not that the, the, the, that courses are the answer. Courses might be the answer. They might not be. That’s part of what we help people sort out, but it’s like, you can make money doing this. If you just do this one thing and you do it really well, and you focus on one thing and you drive that and thing, that’s the secret. And she’s living proof of it, living example of it. And it’s just like, you gotta believe in it and you gotta just go. What is my one thing? And now if you’re struggling to figure out what is my one audience, what is my one message? What is my one business model?
RV (13:09):
What is my one marketing platform? Then request a call with our team, go to free brand, call.com/podcast, free brand call.com/podcast, request a call with our team. And we will help you sort that out. That’s why, that’s why we do what we do, but choose one thing, go all in and it will succeed. You can’t fail. If everything you do, if you have all, all of your focus on one thing, you fail because of distraction, you fail because of diluted focus. You fail. Cuz you’re trying to focus on too many things. Narrow the focus make focus on fewer things and you will guarantee your success. Amy, such a great example of that. So encouraging hope you loved it. Hey you know, share this episode with someone who needs to hear it. Tell someone about this podcast, leave a comment for us. And if you’re ready to find your focus, request a call with our [email protected] slash podcast. We’re ready to talk to you. Keep coming back here, week in, week out, we’re doing our best to bring you the legends and the fresh faces of everything in this industry, teaching you the best of what we can, as we are learning alongside of you here on the influential personal brand podcast. Bye bye.
Ep 272: How to Make Money Selling Online Courses with Amy Porterfield
RV (00:02):
Oh, oh, I’m so excited and happy for you to meet someone who is a, a newer friend of mine, but somebody that I’ve known for years, I mean, she is the definition of someone whose reputation precedes her, which is what we’re always talking about is building trust, building reputation, doing things that last in her significant over time. And those are all things that I think of when I think of Amy Porterfield. Amy is one of the, I would say original, like or online marketing experts. One of the founding people of this space that is digital marketing and course creation and content creators. She’s extraordinary. She has one of the biggest podcasts in the world it’s called online marketing made easy. I mean, if you go on iTunes, you’ll see it like every week, it’s right in the top five. And before, before she, you know, started this business you know, she’s got several different things that she does, but DCA digital course academy is like one of her flagship products that really, really became well known and really helped create the space that a lot of us live and operate inside of.
RV (01:13):
She worked with mega brands like Harley Davidson and she worked with Tony Robbins actually is where she started before. And so she just does things the right way. She believes in action. She helps people take, you know, small steps and she just has a really amazing track record of success. And I’ve had an awesome time just getting to know her a little bit here and there over the years. And so anyways, Amy, welcome to the show.
AP (01:37):
Well, thank you so much for having me. Yeah. I love that. We’ve gotten to know each other more and more, and now that I’m in Nashville, we’re practically neighbors, so that’s a lot of fun. So thanks for having me.
RV (01:47):
Totally. So I know that, you know, so much about online marketing, but what I would love to hear is the story of how you got started, because I think it’s really easy to go, oh, you know, one day, you know, a lot, I know a lot of people, a lot of our clients, a lot of our team members look up to you and go, oh, I, you know, Amy Porterfield, like, she’s amazing which you are, but how did you get started in the beginning? Like before anyone knew your name before you had the email list before you had hundreds of thousands of social media followers in a top rank podcast, like, can you take us back to that moment for a bit?
AP (02:23):
Yes. And I have to say it’s a little bit of a Rocky start for sure. So let me first take you back to when I was working for Tony Robbins. So I was the director of content development, which really meant I was lucky enough to get to travel the world with Tony and work on the content that he did at his live events, unleashed the power within date with destiny, all these amazing events that he still does. Well, I got to be a part of that from a content standpoint and work on his infomercials back in the day when he was doing his infomercials. So it was an incredible time, but I had this one fateful meeting where Tony invited a bunch of internet marketers to come into our San Diego office and talk about their digital courses in their online businesses. So people like Frank Kern, Brenda Rashard, Evan pagan, Jeff Walker were all at this table.
AP (03:12):
Now I didn’t really know who these guys were, and this is very humbling. It’s a big table. I was asked to come in and notes. So I was literally sitting at a different table, taking notes while these guys went around and talked about their online businesses. Tony wanted to sell digital courses at a, a deeper level. And he always looks at people who are getting it right, and figuring out how they’re doing it. So it was a really cool meeting, but I took the worst notes ever because once these guys started talking, all I heard was freedom. All I heard was like, I get to create my own content, call my own shots. I get to build my audience and work with people I love to work with. And they had lifestyle freedom, financial freedom, time, freedom. And I just thought, I don’t know what these guys are doing. And it was all guys. I don’t know what these guys were doing, but I want a piece of it. So my life was forever changed in that one very specific meeting. And over the next year, I
RV (04:07):
Decided what year was that?
AP (04:08):
So that was 2008. Wow. And so for the next year I worked on how would I have my own online business? And I remember turning to a girl I was working with at Tony Robbins and saying, you’re a writer. You have a skillset that can translate into freelancing and doing your own thing. I’ve been in corporate all my life, like from Harley Davidson publishing, before that I’m a corporate girl. Like I have no idea what I would do as an online business, but I was so wrong because I believe that everybody has some in them that they could take and turn into an online business. I am a, a huge believer in that. So fast forward about a year when I finally said, okay, I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna take the leap. I’m gonna start my own business. I quit my Tony Robbin’s job and start my, how have
RV (04:58):
You been there business? How long had you been at Tony Robbins?
AP (05:01):
Almost seven years. So I was there for a
RV (05:03):
Good that’s long time, a long time.
AP (05:05):
And it was an amazing job. They paid me well, I had a lot of clout. I got to call, you know, make big decisions. They respected me like it was, and I got to travel with Tony. I mean, come on. It was an amazing experience, but I wanted that freedom so bad, so bad. You know, I was traveling probably 200, 250 days a year to these events and these other things that we were doing, I had just gotten married. I never saw my husband. So shout
RV (05:33):
Up to Hoby, shout out to what’s up, man.
AP (05:36):
He’s such a good man. So I wanted to spend more time with him. So I thought, okay, I need to change. So I quit my job about a year after that meeting. And I started to do consulting for social media. So I would do I say consulting, but if I really looked at it, I was doing social media for small businesses. And social media was the wild wild west 13 years ago. And so basically I got to kind of just be in a market that was very, very hot at the time, but I hated it. So for two years I built a business I hated. And what I mean by that is I went from one big boss. Literally Tony’s is a huge guy to like eight mini bosses. My clients who I literally let treat me like an employee, I had no boundaries.
AP (06:24):
I was the yes girl. And so I would work way more hours than I did at my Robin’s job, which was a lot of hours. And I didn’t know what freedom was. And I thought, I don’t know who said being your own boss is a great thing, but this is not my cup of tea. So for the first two years, when I started this business, I didn’t like I had a a situation with a free contractor. I was a contractor for the guy in internet marketing, and he had a problem with something, decided to take it out on me. I was getting off of a plane going marketing conference, and he’s on the phone and he’s screaming at me like you did this wrong and you did that wrong and this, and he just needed someone to blame. And I was the girl. And I thought in that moment, I am done with doing this kind of work. It is not the thing I wanna do. I literally fired all my clients. I said, I’m not doing this anymore. I gave him a little runway. That is the day that I started creating digital courses in order to sell online and teach people how to do marketing. So it was a rough two years. I, I went into debt. Things didn’t work out, but it finally did. Thank God.
RV (07:31):
Wow. So, okay, so that’s a, that’s awesome. I, I didn’t realize that you were at Tony Robbins for that long. I mean, that’s pretty cool, like to get really good working knowledge of what a personal brand, you know, operating at that scale. So, so fast forward now, okay. To today, can you still make money selling courses? Like do, like, because people, I hear all the time, right? It’s like, nah, you know, like everyone has a course, like everyone makes courses on courses and how to do courses. Like no one courses anymore, no one finishes courses. Like, but then I go, I don’t know. Like I think my friend Amy’s like doing pretty well and like a lot of our clients are like doing pretty well.
AP (08:11):
Yes. Okay. So the, the short answer is absolutely you can make money with courses, but we’ve also seen the landscape change over time. And I think one of the biggest changes I’ve seen with people who create courses and deliver courses is that people are craving that interaction. We just came out of a two year pandemic. So yeah, people are craving that engagement, that interaction and wanting to get involved with the course creator or the course creators team, so that there’s some and catching going on. And so what we’ve seen is the best courses that are making the most money and the most impact are those were the course creators, willing to show up or willing to create workshops within their courses to actually implement and get things done. I think that’s a shift we’re seeing where back in the day, when I first started creating courses, you could create a course. You didn’t have a community. You didn’t even have live Q and A’s. People could email you if they have a question gone are those days, for sure. But I’m glad that that’s how it is because I love that. I get to see the transformations happening in inside of my courses, but courses are alive and well, and not going anywhere. If anything, we’re continuing to see the climb in people taking courses and really smart people, creating courses.
RV (09:26):
Yeah. I mean, it’s kind of like, I mean, as long as there’s something to learn, there’s gonna be a reason for a course. And it’s like the more and more, it, it becomes easy to produce a high quality product. You know, just using like digital tools. I think to me, the real pressure is gonna be put on like colleges and institutions like that of going like, wait a minute. Like, why should I spend a hundred thousand dollars going somewhere to like, learn from people who have never done it when I can spend a few thousand bucks and learn from the someone who’s the master at this
AP (10:01):
It’s so true. I’ve heard over and over again, not to too my own horn, but to answer that question or to address that where people have said, I have a college education, I have an MBA and I got more out of this, the specifics of what to do than I’ve ever gotten out of that college education. And I think that is very normal for people who create courses that really take it seriously, like find great value in creating impeccable content. I think that’s what’s happening.
RV (10:29):
So, so let’s look at the course then and you go, like, there’s a lot of people. I mean, you know, and a lot of like our listeners and our are like profess service people, right? Like they might be an accountant or they’re a, you know, they’re a dentist or they’re a lawyer or, you know, something like that. And, and, and in those industries, you know, course creation is, is kind of even just coming, you know, just becoming a thing. So how long does a course have to be? I mean, like, I I’d be totally curious in some of these really fundamental questions, just like you said, you’ve been there from the beginning. You’ve seen the transformations that like how long does a course have to be, do I have to, can I shoot it on an iPhone? Does it have to be a six camera shoot? Like how much, how much does it cost? Like just the making of the, of the course itself. Like, okay,
AP (11:16):
I love where
RV (11:16):
We’re at today.
AP (11:18):
Love this question. So first of all, let’s talk about investing and creating a course. Absolutely. You can create it on a smartphone. Absolutely. But you can also even do it easier and use a simple software and do slides in audio. So they hear you, but you’re using slides and you’re educating in that way or a nice little mix of both, but you can do that at on a very tight budget. So number one, you do not need a big budget. Definitely don’t need a crew to help you six cameras, none of that. And I don’t do any of that either. So you could keep it really simple. Also when you ask how long does a course need to be? I teach three different courses and really four with a caveat. So let me tell you about the three courses. Okay. First I teach a starter course where that’s, where you’re helping people just dip their toes in the water just to get started, get that instant momentum.
AP (12:07):
So that could be a course that they get through over the weekend, three modules, a few videos in each module. It’s just the basics. So that’s a starter course, usually around a hundred dollars or so, the second type of course is a spotlight course where you’re gonna take one area of your expertise and you’re gonna go deep. So one of my students is a photographer and he did a spotlight course on flash photography that looked like natural light. So that was his spotlight course, really deep in one topic, never launched anything ever online made $12,000 with this first launch with a list of a hundred people. Wow. So $12,000, just some of you’re like, I wanna make way more than that. Well, yeah, when you have an email list of a hundred, that’s incredibly impressive. Imagine what he can do when he grows his email list.
AP (12:52):
And so that’s a spotlight course, usually around $250 to $500 is what you’ll charge. And then the third type of course is a signature signature course. I call this the Mac daddy of all courses. That’s where you’re giving someone a total transformation from start to finish everything they need to know for that total transformation, how to go from never running in your life, to running a marathon, how to go from never creating a digital course to creating and launching a digital course. So it’s total transformation, usually between 500 and all the way up to $3,000. You got a lot of wiggle room there. So those are the three different types of courses. But I wanna add one thing to that. I was actually reading an apple article about how they’re moving away from the word pro to studio for some of their products and this concept that you need to be pro is going away.
AP (13:43):
And I’m so excited cause I’ve been preaching this forever. You don’t need to be the ultimate pro in your topic, the expert of all experts in order to teach it, all you need is what is what I call a 10% edge. So Jill and Josh Staton are dear friends of mine. They first said this. And I was like, I’m stealing that. That’s exactly what I’ve been talking about. A 10% edge, which means you’re 10% ahead of those that you serve. You’ve done something or you’ve gotten results for, let’s say clients or customers. Now you’re gonna teach how you got those results. As long as you’ve got results in an area. And you’re a few steps ahead of those you serve. You’re perfect to create a course.
RV (14:22):
I love that now. So going back to, okay, so the starter course, you said it might be three modules, three videos in each module, you’re talking about nine, nine videos. How, or yeah, maybe like nine videos. How long are each of the videos?
AP (14:37):
Okay. So an ideal situation and where the market is right now, shorter videos, but multiple videos is better than, let’s say one hour long video. So if, if you need to teach something, it’s gonna take you an hour to teach. Let’s break that up into 15 minute short videos where they’re progressing on each other. People
RV (14:54):
Like four or 15 minute videos, you’re saying
AP (14:56):
Yes. Yes. Okay. Because what you had said earlier makes a lot of sense that people aren’t finishing their courses, we’re obsessed with, with the psychology behind how to get someone to finish a course. So we do a lot of things in our own course and I teach how to get people to the finish line. And one of the ways to get people to the finish line is allowing them to feel as though they have momentum quick 15 minute videos gives you that feeling of momentum. So for a starter course, yeah, you could do three modules in each module. There’s three or four videos let’s say. And that, but I think the more important quite is what do you need to do to teach them how to get the results, whatever it’s gonna take te you know, to get them to that place that you’ve promised that roadmap is really important, but when you’re looking at, how am I going to get them results, if you can do it in the fastest way possible people want instant gratification, let’s give them what they want as close as we can so long, drawn out courses, not ideal.
RV (15:57):
So then you might have, so I love that answer, right? I love that answer of going. It should be as long as it needs to be. Right? Yeah. The the one of, one of my, my speaking mentors in the world champion chip of public speaking said, Rory, tell the audience every single word they need to know and not a word more.
AP (16:18):
Yes, exactly.
RV (16:20):
Very similar to that. And, and so I love that. But like, and so if you’re putting your mind around it, it’s like, okay. It, it might be, if it’s 45 minutes long, like you have nine videos, they’re five minutes. Each that could be a starter course. Like it, it
AP (16:35):
Really could a couple hours. It could really get that way. Absolutely.
RV (16:39):
And then a signature course might be longer.
AP (16:43):
Yeah. So you’ve seen the courses out there like Marie Folio’s B school, it’s a six week course, digital course academy. It’s a seven week course. And there’s seven modules in that seven week course. And they’re gonna take you a few hours to get through now. And I said, you know, don’t create a long out, drawn out course if you don’t need to. But I’ve, if I’m teaching someone how to create and launch a digital course, who’s never done. So might not even have an email list to start out with there’s some things I’ve gotta teach. So then one of the things we do in our course is if it’s a longer course bake in pep talks, it’s a very big deal. So when someone’s going through your course, you’re teaching them something very specific, let’s say nutrition, or how to get their babies to sleep at night or whatever. It might be. There’s moments in the course, you have to stop and say, okay, this is gonna be a tough module. You’re gonna get stuck here and here. And you’re likely gonna think X, Y, Z going. And here’s why like stopping for the pep talks in a digital course are essential to someone getting to the finish line. So the longer, the course, the more mindset type of content you’re going to need to bake in.
RV (17:48):
Ah, that’s so good. I mean, cuz that it’s funny, cuz people are always like, Ooh, I want the, you know, I want the meat, like give me the technique, cut to it. But the reality is the reason they don’t execute is not cuz they don’t know what to do. It’s cuz they get scared and burnt out and frustrated and discouraged and it’s like, they need the pep talk. Like they need, they need that pep talk. Okay. So let’s say this is a big, you know, fast forward, but all right. I created the course, right? Like whatever I did, I, I have the thing now. Yes. how do I get people to buy the thing? Okay. So I got the thing, but if you build it, they don’t come and you go, I don’t have hundreds of thousands of social media followers. And I, you know, I’m, I’m not a like, you know, TV star. I don’t have millions of followers. Like what do I do to sell the thing?
AP (18:40):
I’m so glad you asked this question because one of the things I tell my students is a digital course with, let’s say a sales page is not a build it and they will come kind a situation. You need what I call a marketing vehicle in order to drive traffic. So what I wouldn’t do is I wouldn’t create a course and then create a sales page and then go on social media and email my list and say, I’ve got a course. Here’s what it’s about. Go check it out. I don’t believe that that is the most valuable way for you to get the word it out there about your course. So what I believe is you need a marketing vehicle. My favorite is a webinar. Now it’s funny. Some people will say aren’t webinars going away. 13 years ago, when I came on the scene full time, they would say aren’t webinars going away where they kind of just started.
AP (19:28):
So it’s just people like to, if they’ve a webinar, it hasn’t worked for them. Well, webinars don’t work. Well, let me tell you, I’ve got thousands of students who would disagree with you. Webinars are valuable because if you do it right, and in my course, I literally teach slide by slide by slide because it’s that important when you do a webinar, right? You are giving immense value for about 45 minutes, which I say is you are earning your right to sell. You are giving value before asking anything in return. They see how you teach. They see your personality, your teaching style is so important for them to know and just they get a good sense of what you’re about. And you start changing their mind through that webinar. What do they need to know or believe or understand before they’re ever ready to buy? You’re answering that question in your webinar.
AP (20:14):
So when you get to the selling portion, they’re more likely to buy your conversions will increase so much more. If you do, let’s say a webinar to a sales page. And then of course, if they don’t buy on the webinar, you use email marketing to a sales page. But also there’s other things you can do. You can do challenge challenges. Challenges are really big right now converting. Well, one thing that we’re doing in may that we’ve never done before is a paid challenge. So we’ve done tons of free ones, but now we’re having people. Is it really a paid workshop that we’re then going to sell our course in that workshop? So we’re trying different things, but webinars, workshops, challenges, it’s that vehicle that then gets them to the sales page.
RV (20:55):
Yeah. And I, so, you know, it’s funny when I was in college, Amy, I, I went door to door for five summers knocked on 15 hours a day. This is in, this is the year 2000 to 2005. And people would say, nobody will buy from a door door salesperson. I made $250,000 in five years, five summers knocking on doors. And it was like, there could not be a more antiquated old school doesn’t work anymore. And it’s like, when it comes to content marketing, like here’s the thing, you can call it a video funnel. You can call it a webinar funnel. You can call it a challenge. You can call it a summit. You can call it an IGT or a TikTok. The bottom line is if you give value to people first, if you teach ’em what you know, through whatever the medium is or the modality, the, they will trust you. And then they will buy from you. If, if you want more yes. Or like, yes,
AP (21:55):
Yes, yes. And yes, it’s so true. I love that you use the door to door example. Yeah. People will knock it, but then the people who have actually done it, taken it seriously, look, you’ve gotten amazing results with fit. And I think that the, the thing that people get a little bit stuck on webinars, is it that, that live aspect going live? What if the technology breaks down? I’ve been on many, many webinars where the technology broke down. Yeah. Real quick. When my very first webinar that I’ve ever done was with Tony Robbins and it was back years before I left the position and Tony was doing his very first webinar. Like he had never done it. It was on go-to webinar. He’d never done a webinar before. And he was selling people to unleash the power within, through this webinar. But they paid a hundred dollars cuz Tony’s Tony. So he can get ’em to pay a hundred dollars even be on that webinar. Right. And then he was selling them into U P w we had 800 people signed up the night before Tony and I. He was at his home. I was still in the office and we were practicing. And then he’s like, okay, I’m good to go. I pressed a button. And all of a sudden Tony goes, Amy, why did I just get an email saying our webinar has been canceled? I’m like, no, no, no, no. It’s not no
RV (23:06):
Way
AP (23:07):
Everybody got an email saying your webinar has been canceled. Yes. I literally deleted the webinar. I will say there were tears. I literally stayed in the office all night. Never went home that night. Thank God. Go to webinar, pieced it all together after hours and hours of figuring out what we’re going to do. But yeah, we had to send out an email saying just joking, it’s not canceled. I’m sure Tony wanted to fire me in that moment. But things happen. And I think as an entrepreneur, building a brand that you firmly believe in and that you’re here for the long haul, you have to roll with those challenges. You have to say like, I’m gonna look like a fool on this webinar. Maybe it might not go as planned. I’m gonna figure it out. And I think I’m better because of all the many mistakes I’ve made along the way.
RV (23:51):
Yeah. That’s such a, such a great story. And it’s people like to blame a tactic or blame a tool. And it’s just like, they all work. Like none of ’em, none of ’em are, none of ’em are perfect. They all work. If you work, like if you work it and you gotta, you just gotta keep going now. Okay. So, you know, this is helpful for me. Like even we have, you know, we see a lot of courses and all that stuff. We, we don’t sell a ton of them cuz we’re coaching. But Tony Robbins is using webinars to, to sell events. You’re using webinars to sell courses. We use webinars to drive people to free calls and then we sell ’em coaching. Like, like it, it, you can’t say it doesn’t work. It totally works. Cuz it’s just, it’s not the webinar. It’s human psychology.
RV (24:32):
It’s like I’m teaching, I’m giving value. What, what I am curious while I, while I have you, I know we only have a few, few more minutes, but like while I have you since we haven’t been, you know, all in on courses like, like this, I wanna kind of move to more of the, a little more of the advanced stages and talk about scale. So how many, how many courses can you really sell of the same one? Cuz I hear people be like, well, you know I sold 500 or I sold a hundred and I need a new course. Like, do you have any thoughts on like how often do I need to create a new course?
AP (25:09):
Okay. So you and I are new friends, so you don’t know this, but this is my favorite question ever, because I teach my students that it only takes one course to essentially make a million dollars. I made a million dollars with a $97 course that I did with Louis House. Back in the day, we partnered on a course and also I’ve made a million dollars with courses that were more expensive in a very short period of time. Now the million dollars is not what we should be chasing. That’s not a number that I want my students to fixate on. What I’m saying is that if you create one course and you launch it over and over and over again, and each time you relaunch it, you marketing gets better. Your webinar gets better. Your course is updated each time based on the feedback from the last student group, you can create one course and continue to launch it.
AP (25:57):
And I want you to launch it at least three to four times before you ever move to anything new. Every single one of my mentors, my peers that have done really well with digital courses, they don’t jump ship. They stay with that same thing, keep it simple, get fancy later. And what I mean by get fancy later is once you’ve dialed that in once, that course is making you money. You might wanna turn it on evergreen. You go from a live launch to evergreen and then you wanna add something else to the mix. So right now I have two courses on evergreen, one that I live long lunch once a year and I have a membership. And the only way you can get into that membership is if you go through my signature course. So I have four core things that I do and I do them really well, but I don’t do a lot of other things as well. I get asked to do a bunch of stuff and I gotta get on the no train because I wanna be really good at what I do. The last thing I’ll say to that though, is I’ve never added something new until what I was working on was fully optimized and dialed in and could run itself so that I could move on to something else. So my answer is you don’t need a lot of courses. You don’t need a lot of memberships do one thing. Well Del will down and don’t move on until you’ve perfected that
RV (27:06):
That’s so good. Like y’all, if you, those of you that have heard us talk about Shehan wall and if you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. Yes. You just heard it from the mouth of the queen of this, of this whole space. Like how many years you’ve been doing this? Amy? Oh,
AP (27:23):
Al over 13. So almost 14,
RV (27:26):
13 years. And after 13 years you got three courses, 1, 2, 3, and a membership site, which is just a place to, for people to go after they’ve been through the three. Yeah, they
AP (27:35):
Have. Yeah. You don’t even market it publicly. Yeah.
RV (27:38):
So three courses, 13 years you said.
RV (27:42):
And, and you go, I mean just, if you think about it, you go, if you spend 13 years perfecting the, the sales of three things, do you think you’ll figure it out? The answer is yes. Anybody could figure it out, but when you spend 13 days and then you launch something new and then you go, I didn’t like that. And that webinar didn’t work and I need a new CR am and I need a new social media strategy and a new, I mean, that is so powerful. Like you’ve made millions and millions of dollars from three courses. How many students is this? How many people can you, can you really reach before you go? The market is saturated.
AP (28:20):
So we’ve served over 40,000 students over my
RV (28:23):
Lifetime. Oh man. That is awesome.
AP (28:25):
Yeah. Of building the business. So we’re really proud of that. And this whole idea that the market is saturated. I just feel like you could say that in so many different places, but then you always see people coming out on top. And I always think, well, why not me? Why can’t that be me? And I also really know what I do. Well, I do many things wrong and I’m weak in a lot of areas, but I know step by step teaching. I know taking people through the details, holding their hand virtually. And so I just bank on what I know best and whoever likes that kind of style of teaching, they’re gonna like what I have. So I just don’t focus on the saturation cause I just don’t think it serves us.
RV (29:03):
I mean, well, even if we say, okay, 40, thousand’s the number. Once you’ve sold 40,000, then we’ll call Amy back and we’ll say, Amy, our market is saturated. What do we do next? But
AP (29:13):
Call me then
RV (29:14):
We know 40,000. Okay. So 40,000 times $500 course. Eh, that’s a good bit of coin that you can make between between here and there. Amy, this has been so great. I know you just, you have so much information. One of the things that you mentioned that I wanted to get into that we’re not gonna have time to get into is list building and you building your email list. I know you did a, you did a ton with that. You did a brilliant job of building your own list. You have a a program called list builder society. Yeah. And we’re, we are a new affiliate for Amy because of this. If you go to brand builders, group.com/porterfield, brand builders, group.com/porter you can learn about this. So te so tell us a little bit about what that is and like, you know, the email list.
AP (30:07):
So I always say that the energy of your business is directly tied to the strength of your email list. I wanna repeat that one more time. The energy of your business is directly tied to the strength of your email list. Notice I did not say size because I know lots of my students was small email list, doing big things. But the energy that I’m talking about is your impact, your revenue, your engagement, your audience, building, all of that is surrounded by what you can do with this email list. Social media is fickle that algorithm, you can’t trust it. People will see two to 3% of your post on social media, but email can convert at four times higher than any social media post. So I always tell my students, if you’re asking, where do I start? What do I do? How do I make my business more profitable? You have to focus on your email list, the best time to do so was yesterday the best next time is today. So I created this free master class. It’s called we, why is starting an email list. So dang hard and what to do instead. And it’s all about what you can do to make your email list grow quickly, free masterclass. Whether you buy from me or not, you’ll walk away with value. So go check it out. I’d love to help people get started with that.
RV (31:17):
Yeah. See. So there you go. So brand builders, group.com/porterfield, you can check this out, you know, okay, Amy’s going to deliver 45 minutes of the best stuff she has.
AP (31:26):
Absolutely.
RV (31:28):
This is one reason we’re aligned. One of our mantras that we talk about all the time, Amy is we say, save the best for first. Save the best
AP (31:35):
First. Oh, I love that.
RV (31:36):
Just and, and, and you do this, you give the goods like, so go there brand builder, group.com/porterfield, go there, watch the training. You don’t have to buy the course. The training’s gonna be awesome. Watch Amy do this, right? Like here she is. Right. What? And do what she’s doing. You go on podcasts, you make friends, you share tips on social. And then you say, go watch my free training. And that’s how you, that’s how you build your email list. And on the free training, you say, she check out my course and that’s how you, how you sell the course. It’s. I mean, I think one of the things that’s gonna stick with me the most from this, especially since you and I haven’t like spent a ton of time together is just you know, you, from a far Amy, you look at somebody like you who’s accomplished so much.
RV (32:20):
You’re so influential in the space. You know, so many people like you, you know, everybody that is an, is OG in this whole space. It’s easy to get enamored. Like, well, of course she would, or she started earlier or you know, all of these stories, but to hear you go, I use webinars. I sell courses, I got three courses. I teach people as much value as I can in 45 minutes. And then I show ’em how to take the next step. It’s like, you’re, it’s, it’s, you know, not to take away from your magic whatsoever, but you are, you are a master at the fundamentals.
AP (32:56):
That is like the biggest compliment ever. I appreciate you saying that.
RV (33:01):
It’s awesome. So it it’s
AP (33:02):
Important. So thank you for recognizing that. No one’s ever said that about me before like that, and I appreciate it cause it’s important. And I hope I’m an example to people that it doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t have to have a tons of tons of bells and whistles to make this work. And, and I hope people see that today.
RV (33:19):
I love it. I love it. So anyways, we’ll link up to Amy’s free training. You can check it out, follow her on social. Amy, we wish you the best. I know you’ve got some big things coming up here in your future, which we’ll be praying for and cheering for. Thank you. And
AP (33:33):
Well, you’ve been such a, a great new friend and I’m, I’m excited for us to get to know each other even more. So thanks for having be me.
RV (33:40):
Yeah. You’re part of the Nashville posse. Now, like once you move into Nashville, it’s just like, we gotta, we gotta stick together,
AP (33:46):
Bring it on. I love it.
RV (33:48):
All right, friend. All the best. Thank you so much.
AP (33:50):
Thank you.